Four Artists

From 1958.



Walt Disney narrates the tale of four Disney artists painting a tree. ...

It's been up before in other places, but I thought it would be useful to post it again here ... and profile the two artists in it that I spent some time around as a kid.

Marc Davis was an animator's animator. I met him once, briefly.

Eyvind Earle had a long career as a fine arts painter. He worked at the studio for a decade, known best today for his background styling on Sleeping Beauty. I never met him, though he and my dad worked in the same department.

Josh Meador lived a few blocks from where I grew up in La Crescenta. Josh was one of my father's close friends, and they painted up and down the coast of California together. At the studio, Mr. Meador was the head of the effects department. He had been put in that position by Disney in the 1930s, jumped over the heads of several senior artists. Josh worked on both live-action and animated effects, and was one of the artists who worked on Forbidden Planet when Walt Disney Productions sub-contracted the effects work from M-G-M.

Josh was known for his classy oil paintings. Walt Disney owned several, some (most?) of which hung in Disney's Palm Springs home.

Walt Peregoy. Feisty and out-spoken (some would say "irascible") Walt Peregoy started at Disney's during World War II in the traffic department, left, then returned to work in the animation department. Eyvind Earle helped him get into the background department, though Walt didn't like Eyvind much. (You can listen to Walt speak his mind here and here.)

I knew Walt when I was a little kid. He was just as curmudgeonly then as he was decades later. "Speaking his mind" only covers part of it. "Blow torching his enemies" comes closer.

Knowing how Walt REALLY talks, it's almost comical listening to him speak in this Disneyland segment. Where the %$#@?! are all the four-letter words?!