On The Shoulders Of Old Men
“From this day on it will never be like it was, but only as each person remembers it.” - Woolie Reitherman, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men.
The quote above was made in reference to the death of Walt Disney, but I think it’s just as fitting in describing the passing of Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney’s Nine Old Men, who passed away yesterday.
As an animator I feel that the death of Ollie Johnston, and, as a result, the dissolution of the Nine Old Men, is an era-defining event that’s hard to articulate. My animation teachers would tell their students of the excitement they felt upon the release of The Illusion of Life, the book considered by many to be the animation bible, co-written by Ollie Johnston with fellow Old Man Frank Thomas. It was a revelation to them. Even if I had never read the book myself, through my teachers I learned their lessons. More important to me than that was John Canemaker’s book devoted to The Nine Old Men, a tome that detailed the triumphs and tragedies of those nine animators, their mentors and peers, and the studio that grew up around, and eventually away from them. I came away from their stories with the realization that great art was as much the result of sweat and happenstance as it was natural talent, and their example reminded me that life outside of animation is not only desirable, but is also necessary to the creation of art.