Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures/Album/Newscom Walt Disney may have created the House of Mouse, but bringing Disney magic to the big screen took a pixie-dusted village. For his recently released book, Directing at Disney: The Original Directors of Walt’s Animated Films, longtime Davis resident and Disney historian Don Peri teamed up with Pixar’s Oscar-winning chief creative officer Pete Docter to tell the story of the forgotten pioneers of animated movies. First things first: What is your favorite Disney movie? Probably Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It’s such a powerful film and it’s so tightly edited that there’s no wasted time in that movie. When my daughters were little and we watched all the Disney movies, that’s the movie that scared them the most, so I was impressed that the oldest movie with the least amount of special effects had the most power. It was also just such a game changer for the Disney studio. The roots of your career as a Disney historian stem from your days as a student at UC Davis, when you met an Aggie alum—former Disney director Ben Sharpsteen, who directed 22 shorts and parts of nine feature films, including Snow White, Fantasia, Pinocchio  and Dumbo. How did you meet him? Ben Sharpsteen was a 1916 graduate of the University Farm. [UC Davis was originally UC Berkeley’s farm school until 1959 when it became the seventh UC campus.] When I was an undergraduate student at Davis, their 1972 Picnic Day—which is a big event on campus—had a magazine. The cover was a painting of a picnic by [Sharpsteen]. And inside, it mentioned that he was a graduate and that he had been an animator, director and producer at the Disney studio and lived in Calistoga. The next year, The Art of Walt Disney  by Christopher Finch came out and [Sharpsteen] was mentioned prominently in there. I looked up Ben Sharpsteen, wrote him a letter and asked if he’d sign my copy of the book, thinking it’d be great to meet somebody who actually knew Walt Disney. He sent me a letter back and said he’d be honored to sign the book [at his home]. My sister and I both went to see him. We were there all day. He brought out a program from Snow White, signed by everybody in the studio. And he just told us story after story. This was on a Friday. And on Monday, I got a letter from him saying, “I really enjoyed the visit. I have a proposition I want to talk over with you.” He hired me to help him record his memoirs. We worked together for about three and a half years. [Sharpsteen passed away in 1980 at age 85.] Fast-forward five decades and you’ve written four Disney history books. Your newest, Directing at Disney, which came out in September, was co-authored by Oscar-winning Pixar director Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out, Monsters, Inc.). How did that partnership happen? He contacted me in 2006—he was working on Up at that point—and said, “I understand you did an interview with Wilfred Jackson [who directed 50 Disney shorts, and portions of 11 feature films, from Snow White  to Cinderella, Peter Pan  and Lady and the Tramp]. I’m a director, and I’d love to see a copy of the interview.” He invited me down to Pixar [in Emeryville], and we kind of became friends. I had done several talks at the Walt Disney Family Museum [in San Francisco] on different topics. And I thought, “Well, Pete and I should do something there.” So we did a talk about directors at Disney. And after we were done, Jonas Rivera, who is a producer at Pixar, said, “You guys should write a book about this.” Directing at Disney authors Don Peri (left) and Pete Docter at Disney’s D23 event in Anaheim in August 2024 (Courtesy of Don Peri) The book profiles roughly a dozen early Disney directors, from 1920 to 1973, drawing from more than 40 interviews with the directors and their families, as well as notes, memos, and even letters written by Walt himself. How long did it take you and Pete to complete the project? It took us 10 years, mostly because he was making movies during that time. We gathered all the material we could. We worked really well together. When we did interviews, I think we came at that from different perspectives, because I had a broad range of Disney history, and he had the practical experiences of actually doing these kinds of things. Did Pete ever come visit you in Davis? He did come once, in 2016. Pete and I were in Bloomington, Minnesota, having lunch with his parents—he’s from that area. We were in Minnesota doing some research on one of the Disney directors. His mother happened to mention, “I’m going to be in Davis next week.” And it was like, In Davis? Of all the gin joints, you’re going to be in Davis?!  Both his parents were really involved in music and she worked with a program called Bravo, which helped kids learn about classical music. She was coming to visit Pioneer Elementary. And so his parents came, and Pete and his wife came up, and we all got together for dinner at our house. What did you and Pete hope to accomplish with the book? Part of it was to draw attention to these directors, who are pretty much overlooked in film history. We wanted to tell their stories, but also show the evolution of the director during Walt’s time, because there were no animation directors when he started. In most of the New York studios, the animators would come up with a story idea and then divide it up among themselves. They would then tie it together after each of them animated independently. But when sound came in, everything had to be much more detailed—synchronizing sound and action and dialogue. [Mickey Mouse’s 1928 debut, Steamboat Willie, was one of the first cartoons to feature synchronized sound.] We were interested in telling that story of how the director role evolved, and how Walt worked with each of these people. One story that stuck out to me was that Ben Sharpsteen actually cut four minutes from Dumbo  just before it was released, while Walt was out of the country.  Yeah. Dumbo  was already a short movie, and he felt it needed to be tighter. So he cut four minutes. It wasn’t [one four-minute chunk]. It was a few seconds here and there. Now for a lot of people, like [Pixar co-founder] John Lasseter, Dumbo  is their favorite Disney movie, so, you know, it didn’t hurt the film. And Ben said that he didn’t think that Walt was ever upset about him doing that. Peri with veteran Disney director Ben Sharpsteen, a fellow UC Davis alum, and his wife Bernice at the couple’s Calistoga home in the 1970s (Courtesy of Don Peri) What surprised you most about Disney’s directors? Probably how difficult the job was, both psychologically and physically. A lot of them had health issues related to the stress. Walt was very demanding. If the movie did well, it was [often attributed to] the animation and the story. If it did badly, it was considered the director’s fault. So they felt a lot of pressure. But Walt was different from the other studios and was creating a 20th-century art form that others followed. This is where people wanted to be. This was where the magic was, and it was going to define their lives. When they were there, Walt brought out their best work. You’ve written about being interested in Disney history even as a child. What was your relationship to Disney growing up? I grew up in the Bay Area. Disneyland opened in July of ’55—my family and I went in May of ’56. Our home movies of that visit are great to look at because Disneyland was so undeveloped at the time. And I had always been a fan of Disney films. Peter Pan  was the first movie I saw in a movie theater. The first book I ever bought was The Story of Walt Disney  by Pete Martin and Walt’s daughter Diane Disney Miller. I think I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. Plus the Disneyland TV show and Mickey Mouse Club  came on the air. Those all had a big impact on me. [Many years later], I worked in Disneyland one summer. I was a ride operator. I worked on the Rocket Jets, which is now the Astro Orbiter, and I worked on [the now-closed] Mission to Mars. Sharpsteen is flanked by Walt and Roy Disney at his retirement party in 1959. The director was awarded a Mousecar trophy in recognition of his contributions to the company. (Courtesy of the Walt Disney Archives) You attended UC Davis and have basically been living in the Sacramento area ever since. As a longtime resident of this region, is there any fun local Disney trivia you can share? I interviewed Marc Davis, one of the Nine Old Men of animation, in 1978. [“Nine Old Men” was Walt’s term for his core group of animators. Davis worked on films like Snow White, Cinderella, Bambi  and Peter Pan.] And I have a note from him saying that he saw Three Little Pigs  at the Alhambra Theatre when he lived in Sacramento. It was a happy memory for him because that was one of the movies that got him excited about working in animation. I didn’t know that one of the Nine Old Men lived here! Yeah, his father tried lots of different careers, and the family moved a lot. Marc Davis lived all over, but he was in Sacramento for a while. This past August, you appeared on stage at D23, the annual Disney convention, hosting a panel with Pete Docter, Jennifer Lee (chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios and director of Frozen), Jared Bush (Zootopia, Encanto) and other modern animation directors. What was that like? That was a new experience for me. It was an audience of 1,400 people. I was really impressed with how much all of the directors opened up about the emotion and energy and anxiety they go through. Animation directors today are more like live-action directors in terms of being more auteurs and carrying the story forward with a huge crew that they work with. I was teasing them about how this was a therapy session. I just really enjoyed their earnestness. Jared Bush talked about using his 5-year-old son in Zootopia. His son was going to be the voice of a koala bear, and then later they cut the character out of the film. I think that was a hard thing to explain to a 5-year-old. In conjunction with the book release, you and Pete have curated a Directing at Disney  exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum, which launched in October and is on display through March. And you are leading a tour of the show on Nov. 7 with UC Davis’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. What can people expect? I will talk not only about the exhibit we’re doing, but what’s in all the 10 galleries at the museum, so people have a jumping-off place, because it’s easy to be overwhelmed. It’s a huge museum. One of the big terms at Disney is “plussing.” When you do something, no matter how good it is, can we “plus” it? Can we make it better? The museum is a chance to plus the book. There are going to be monitors set up showing around 10 minutes of cartoon footage from each of these major directors, so people can actually see how this works. There will be a kiosk where they can try directing themselves. Somebody at Pixar has been developing that. You’ll be looking at the footage and deciding on the timing or adding different aspects to it, and then you can play it back. I think that will be a highlight of the exhibit. The last question of your D23 panel was “What question would you ask Walt Disney if you had the chance?” If you had that opportunity, what would you ask Walt? I would ask him, “Why were you so driven to make films and television shows and theme parks, to make people happy? To create environments that help people feel better about the world and better about themselves?” The whole time I was growing up, Disney was something that I could find comfort in when the world didn’t always seem as inviting as I wanted it to be. I feel like he, more than anybody, is responsible for that. This interview has been edited for length, flow and clarity.