by Jim Denney
Disneyland celebrates its 62nd birthday on Monday, July 17, 2017. Jim Denney, the author of Walt’s Disneyland: It’s Still There if You Know Where to Look, concludes his two-part examination of some fascinating Disney-Fresno connections.
To read part 1, click here.
FresYes columnist Craig Scharton has been a Fresno city council member, a restaurateur, an urban farmer, a teacher of urban entrepreneurship at Fresno State, and more. While representing District One on the City Council, he had the opportunity to serve as Mayor Pro Tem the day Mickey Mouse came to town.
Mickey arrived at Manchester Center in his red Mouseorail—the forty-foot-long lead car of the classic Mark III Disneyland Monorail, the last of the bubble-top Monorails. Disney Imagineers had converted the Monorail car into a road vehicle with a V8 engine and automatic transmission. The Mouseorail was touring the country to celebrate Disneyland’s 35th anniversary, and would return to Disneyland on the Park’s birthday, July 17, 1990.
Standing on the east side of Manchester Center with his son Cole in his arms, Craig greeted Mickey, then shouted to the crowd, “Who loves Disneyland!”
The people of Fresno roared back, “We do!”
Craig shouted, “Who loves Mickey Mouse!”
The crowd responded, “We do!”
Craig shouted, “Who loves nap time!”
All the moms in the crowd chorused, “We do!”
Fresno truly loves Walt and his most famous creations, Mickey Mouse and Disneyland. In the second part of “Disney’s Fresno Connections,” we’ll see some more surprising intersections between Walt Disney and our hometown.
Scoopy the Bee
When James McClatchy founded the The Sacramento Bee in 1857, he wrote an editorial saying, “The name of The Bee has been adopted as being emblematic of the industry which is to prevail in its every department.” Translation: McClatchy expected his employees to be as busy as bees in delivering the news.
In 1936, James McClatchy’s granddaughter Eleanor took over as publisher of the McClatchy papers, a position she would hold for more than four decades. In 1943, she decided to give the McClatchy newspapers and radio stations an appealing new visual identity—and she wanted it to have that Disney touch.
Eleanor McClatchy had seen the Disney Studio turn out cartoon mascots for various branches of the service since the start of the war. Disney characters ranging from the cantankerous Donald Duck to Bambi’s cuddly pal Thumper had appeared as airplane nose art and squadron patches. These cartoon mascots were a morale booster for servicemen who had grown up on Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons.
So Ms. McClatchy personally approached Walt Disney with an offer: If his studio would create a Disney bee character for the McClatchy company, the newspaper would donate $1,500 to the Army Relief Fund—a significant donation in 1943 dollars.
Walt agreed, and he assigned artist Hank Porter to the project. Porter was already handling most of the Disney military insignia. His forte was drawing theatrical posters, lobby cards, merchandise boxes, and newspaper comic strips (he drew both the Snow White and Pinocchio Sunday strips).
Hank Porter created two “busy bees”—Scoopy, with newspaper in hand, and Gaby (pronounced “gabby”), with a radio microphone slung over his shoulder. Scoopy was the mascot for The Sacramento Bee, The Modesto Bee, and The Fresno Bee. Gaby represented the McClatchy radio stations, including Fresno’s KMJ 580. Porter signed Walt’s distinctive signature on the artwork.
All three newspapers carried the same front-page headline on their September 4, 1943 editions: “Two Busy Bees, Straight from the Pen of Walt Disney!” That same night, McClatchy radio stations KFBK-Sacramento and KMJ-Fresno broadcast a fifteen-minute interview with Walt, who talked about the two bees, Scoopy and Gaby, who were flying from his Burbank studio to their new home in Sacramento, by way of Fresno and Modesto.
Years later, the Disney Studio produced two more characters as emblems for McClatchy’s FM radio stations (a bee named Flutey), and Fresno TV station KMJ Channel 24 (a bee named Teevy, who bid the audience “good night” in a cartoon at the end of every broadcast day; KMJ is now KSEE-24). Some later drawings of the McClatchy bees were produced by Bee staff artist John Lopes.
Many people see a resemblance between Scoopy and Mickey Mouse. Both have large, intelligent eyes, a round black nose, and a broad friendly smile. The resemblances aren’t surprising. After all, both Mickey Mouse and Scoopy were born in the same inkwell.
Frank Thomas, Artist of Motion and Emotion
Another key Disney-Fresno connection is the late animator Frank Thomas. Not only was Thomas a member of Walt’s inner circle of animators known as Disney’s Nine Old Men, he was one of the most influential animation pioneers who ever lived. Longtime Warner Bros. artist Chuck Jones called him “the Laurence Olivier of animators.”
Franklin Rosborough Thomas was born in Santa Monica, California, on September 5, 1912, and his family moved to Fresno a few years later. His father, Frank W. Thomas, was a college professor and administrator who served as president of Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) from 1927 to 1948. Like Walt Disney himself, Frank Thomas began drawing as a boy, and took up filmmaking in his teenage years.
Thomas spent his freshman and sophomore years at Fresno State, and was elected president of the sophomore class. As a school project, he directed a comedy film about college life. Thomas’s student film was so well-received, Fresno theaters exhibited the film commercially, and the profits were donated to a school fund. Fresno’s enthusiastic support of his student film convinced Frank Thomas that he should pursue a career in the film industry.
He completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at Stanford and drew cartoons for the school’s humor magazine, The Stanford Chaparral. While at Stanford, he met Ollie Johnston, a fellow art major who also went on to become a famous Disney animator and one of Disney’s Nine Old Men. The Frank-and-Ollie friendship spanned seven decades, and they were profiled in a Disney documentary, Frank and Ollie (1995). After Stanford, Thomas studied art at Chouinard Art Institute, and went on to join the Disney Studio in September 1934.
At Disney, Frank Thomas drew some of the most famous sequences in the history of animation, including the dwarfs mourning the death of the princess in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Bambi and Thumper sliding on ice in Bambi (1942), the “Bella Notte” spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp (1955), and the penguins dancing with Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins (1964). Thomas once expressed his philosophy of animation, saying, “I wanted believable characters that the audience would care about.”
Animation historian John Canemaker said that Frank Thomas was famed for his special ability “to animate emotionally sensitive material.” Canemaker added, “The saddest scenes, the most romantic, most deeply felt sequences, the sincerest heart-tuggers usually found their way to his drawing board.”
Thomas also played piano for The Firehouse Five Plus Two, a Dixieland jazz band led by fellow animator Ward Kimball. In collaboration with Ollie Johnston, Thomas authored four books on the art of animation. In 1989, he received the highest honor in the Disney universe, being inducted as a Disney Legend. He died in La Cañada Flintridge, California, on September 8, 2004.
Just as Walt Disney drew inspiration from his early years on a farm near Marceline, Missouri, and just as William Saroyan drew inspiration from his early years in Fresno, Frank Thomas reached back for inspiration to his early years in Fresno. The positive, creative way Frank Thomas lived his life and pursued his art are an inspiration to us all. Frank Thomas was one of Walt’s favorite animators, and he was a living symbol of the spirit of FresYes.
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Jim Denney was born in Fresno and lived most of his life here. He now lives in Southern California. Jim is the author of Walt’s Disneyland: It’s Still There if You Know Where to Look, a guide to Walt Disney’s theme park legacy. He blogs at WaltsDisneyland.Wordpress.com.
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