An Animated Conversation With 2 Veterans of the Disney Studios

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston are not brothers but they might as well be.

They have been friends and colleagues for five decades. Their mothers came from the same town. Their fathers grew up on farms and later became educators. They shared the same philosophy of what’s right and what’s wrong. And as animators for the Walt Disney Studios they gave the world some big thrills. And they’re still lively and full of fun after all these years.

“Ollie’s the one with the best feelings,” Thomas said. “If I needed a character to express emotions I’d go to Ollie.”

“Frank’s the actor,” said Johnston, “and I’d go to him. That’s how we operated. No egos. We just wanted the best work and we knew who to go to to get it.”

Johnston’s pencil “performed” Thumper’s recitation to Bambi about eating greens and Pinocchio’s nose growing as he lied to the Blue Fairy. He put the sass into Br’er Rabbit, the showmanship into Mowgli and Baloo as they sang “The Bare Necessities” in “The Jungle Book” and the wonder into the fairies in “Sleeping Beauty.”

Thomas, starting with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” worked on all of the Disney animated films until his retirement in 1978.

Obviously a perfectionist, Thomas says there is a scene in “Robin Hood” that he still would like to change. “And there’s a scene between Captain Hook and Tinker Bell (in “Peter Pan”) that no matter how many times I see it, I would like to take out an extra gesture by Captain Hook. I was never happy with the stepsisters in ‘Cinderella,’ either,” he said.

Both men started working for Disney as “in-betweeners”--the artists whose drawings fill in the slight, incremental movements by characters that link together the key drawings created by the animators. “It was during the ‘30s and Walt was doing ‘Snow White,’ ” Johnston said. “He had animators but he wanted artists.”

Thomas grew up in Santa Monica, the son of the principal at Santa Monica High. He and Johnston met as students at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, from which they were later recruited by Disney. They never finished art school.

“The worst part about going to art school is that someone is bound to tell you how to draw,” said Thomas, “which is terrible because you don’t want anyone to tell you how to look at the world. Now with the Thumper character, we had a voice--this surprising voice popped out of the mouth of this 5-year-old kid. He had his own brazen takeover voice. We adapted Thumper to this kid’s personality. I think he’s selling real estate in New Jersey today.”

Johnston and Thomas ended up raising families as next-door neighbors in La Canada Flintridge. In the years since they retired from Disney, they have continued their collaboration. They have written three books together, and another titled “Disney’s Villains” will be published next year.

As they approach their 80th birthdays, Johnston and Thomas say they’ll probably blow out each other’s candles. On the subject of staying young, they both agree that you need to be with people who see the fun in things.