Disney Animator Gag Drawings for Joe Magro, 1937

• Gag drawing by Disney art director Hugh Hennesy. Animator Joe Magro goes nose to nose with the Old Hag. Mixed media.

Who was Joe Magro? The good folks over at Cartoon Brew give us the answer...

Italian-American artist Joe Magro was hired at Disney in 1936 during the studio’s expansion to produce Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Originally from Rochester, New York, Magro was attending Mechanics Institute (now Rochester Institute of Technology) when his teacher Fritz Trautmann suggested that he apply to the Disney studio.

Magro left Disney in 1937 and returned to the East Coast. He apparently stayed long enough at the studio to make friends with the other artists. We know that because when Magro left, his Disney colleagues presented him with a “good luck” book filled with gag drawings. The drawings from that book are currently being auctioned by Heritage Auctions and include pieces by Fred Moore, Ward Kimball, Bill Tytla, Grim Natwick and Marc Davis, among others.

Since Joe was at the Studio during the height of the Snow White production, the majority of drawings within the “good luck” book included some kind of reference to the film. All the pieces were created on 12-field 5-peghole sheets of animation paper (12" x 10").

• Gag drawing by Marc Davis. Snow White thinks Joe is "chicken". Mixed media.

• Gag drawing by Vladimir "Bill" Tytla. Note Mickey Mouse on the blackboard and Dopey as one of the students. Graphite and colored pencil.

• Gag drawing by animator Dave Rose. Original layout drawing of the poison apple antidote has been collaged with another piece of art. Graphite and colored pencil.

• Gag drawing by Grim Natwick. The fairest on the beach meets animator Joe Magro. Rendered in colored pencil.

• Gag drawing by Fred Moore. Snow's red bow in hair. Tongue-in-cheek caption reads: "But -- what could you possibly do with me in New York?" Mixed media.

• Gag drawing by animator, Jack Larsen. Joe Magro in the lap of luxury. Colored pencil.

• Gag drawing by Marc Davis and Charles "Nick" Nichols. Another humorously cheeky piece. Mixed media.

• Gag drawing by Charles "Nick" Nichols. Grumpy says goodbye. Graphite and colored pencil.

Images via Heritage Auctions.

The rest of the (non-Snow White) drawings can be seen at Cartoon Brew. Learn more about Heritage's Animation Art Signature Auction in the previous archive entry.

Deleted Scene - Grumpy and Doc Argument

One of the many and varied elements that makes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs so timeless is the tightness of its story. Walt Disney made sure of it. No matter how painful it might have been for artist or animator, in the end, if a scene was not needed, it had to go. The bedroom fight between Grumpy and Doc was one such example.

Fred Moore animation...

Animation clean-up by Fred Moore. Images and info via Treasures of Disney Animation Art, p.91-93.

After the dwarfs discover Snow White asleep upstairs. Grumpy wants her gone, but Doc says she can stay. A skirmish ensues. In the end, the sequence was dropped from the film because it "was thought to make too much of the dwarfs' argumentativeness." 

I tend to agree. You can view the pencil test video and see it was a bit too much for the story, though the animation is superb.

Ollie Johnston - Disney's Nine Old Men

Ollie Johnston (October 31, 1912 - April 14, 2008) was hired by Disney on January 21, 1935, four months after his friend Frank Thomas. He worked his in-betweener stint for just two months before being promoted as an assistant to Fred Moore on March 23, 1936.

Johnston at Stanford, 1931...

Fred Moore, one of the studio's most gifted animators, would sometimes get pinched by mood swings and creative blocks. Yet, Johnston (like Thomas before him) looked back with fond memories on his time as Moore's assistant, "It was the greatest learning experience I ever had."

Fred draws a sketch for Ollie...

When production began on Snow White, Fred (along with Bill Tytla) became a supervising animator for the dwarfs. Under Moore was a small crew of animators that included Frank Thomas, Les Clark, Dick Lundy, and Fred Spencer. Johnston's job was to supervise all the cleanup for this team's drawings.

One of Fred Moore's dwarfs...

Ollie would also attend...

...all of the "sweatbox" (projection room) meetings with the top directors and Walt who "criticized the hell out of Fred's stuff. 'Cause he was using Fred as his standard. John Canemaker's Nine Old Men p.214

A screen capture of the "sweatbox" from the RKO release How Walt Disney Cartoons Are Made (1938)...

During the final four months of production, most of the artists, including Johnston, worked from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm each day to get the movie completed on time. In addition to overseeing cleanup, Ollie was also handed small scenes to animate such as the dwarfs hiding by the bed.

At the conclusion of Snow White, Moore lobbied Walt to promote Ollie to junior animator. Johnston worked on sections for the Brave Little Tailor and was then teamed with Frank Thomas on Pinocchio. The rest is history.

In 1981 the two lifelong friends published their book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. In 1995, they were featured in the documentary Frank and Ollie. Pictured below, the two reenact a pose from a photo (seen in Frank Thomas post) taken at Stanford nearly fifty years earlier.

Photos and dwarf sketch via John Canemaker's Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, 2001.

Movie image scans copyright Disney.

Further reading:

• Mouse Planet 2008 article
• Disney Legends: Bio
• 50 Most Influential Disney Animators: Ollie Johnston