Russell was far too old, far too bent, far too gnarled for his sixty years; he was not a very good janitor, and his territory was vastly overextended. It was an old building, more of a loft, a moldy beehive, dry and dusty. Dirt and waste could hardly be removed, so Russell’s way was to stir it about, redistribute it, rearrange the patterns in mysterious halting ways of his own. Forty-five minutes of his every night were spent napping on the private toilet of our producer, who believed this plumbing to be sacrosanct to his sacred frog-belly white buttocks. The needs of nature Russell answered were never physical, the elderly building was never shaken nocturnally by the pompous gush of its only truly modern piece of plumbing. It was rather, I think, Russell’s quiet contribution to the studio-wide contempt and studio-wide rebellion against the toilet’s proprietor, who badgered waiters, women, and Russell Jones, because they were helpless in the face of economic threats that floated always on the surface of our producer’s pale eyes. Yet this nocturnal sedentary gesture was Russell’s only rebellion and, to the studio personnel, the only gift he could afford. And we loved him for it.
Russell Jones at work
It is twenty years too late for me to tell Russell Jones that I know now the value of his gift: that those scrubbed and stained bundles of confectionery sticks in their clean jar were the best that Russell could do for me; and because in all tasks his pain-ridden body forced him to do one at a time, I know each stick he rescued meant that he must painfully bend over again and again for me, and I know too well from watching him work how difficult this was and how reluctantly he had to set his twisted brown feet for any bending action, and yet he did bend a hundred times or more to provide the only gift he could provide and he knew I needed.
The six-day war at the Schlesinger studio, May 1941
Familiar names support the Disney strike that followed soon after the six-day war. A telegram from Dorothy Parker read: “It’s time that Walt Disney decided whether he is a man or a mouse”
Many of the producers of animated cartoons were just as ignorant, foolish, and dangerous as their counterparts in the feature division. From Fred Quimby at M-G-M, who admonished Tex Avery in the midst of the war to be circumspect in his caricature of Adolf Hitler in The Blitz Wolf (“After all, Tex, we don’t know who’s going to win the war”), to Leon Schlesinger at Warner Bros., whose lisped admonitions contained such jewels as: “Put in lottsa joketh, felleth, joketh are funny”; and after looking around at our shabby quarters, “I wouldn’t work in a shit-hole like this.”
Leon Schlesinger was a master of good taste who often bought a win ticket on every horse in every race at Santa Anita in order to demonstrate by flashing the winning tickets to his underlings his acumen and knowledge of horse flesh. Leon’s sole method of determining the quality of an animated cartoon was how far it came in under budget.
Until he sold the studio in 1944 to Warner Bros., Leon Schlesinger had functioned as an independent producer, financing his productions and selling them to Warner Bros. After the sale was completed, Eddie Selzer was installed as producer by Jack Warner, following a diligent search of the studio to find out who hated laughter most. Eddie won, hands and dewlaps down.
Fifteen years after I started directing, Eddie inveigled a luncheon engagement for Friz Freleng, Bob McKimson, and me at the ornate private dining room where the brothers Warner and their minions would have a chance to patronize us in comfort. Harry Warner set the tone of our day in court by observing that he had no idea where our cartoon division was, and added, “The only thing I know is that we make Mickey Mouse.” We were proud to hear that and assured him that we would continue to keep Mickey at the top of his popularity. Jack Warner suggested that it would be healthiest for our future if we did so.*
Friz Freleng contends that the Warner brothers implicitly believed we made Mickey Mouse, until 1963—when, shocked to discover that we did not, they shut the studio.
Leon had been, in contrast to Eddie, a real charmer, a sort of snazzily dressed Gila monster in a Panama hat, white flannel trousers, and black-and-white pointy shoes. He did, if memory serves, inadvertently contribute one of the most vital dramatic factors to our little company.
It was Tex Avery’s duck that memorialized Leon Schlesinger. In Tex’s Porky’s Duck Hunt—the first Daffy Duck film (1937)—Daffy’s voice was a sort of cross between a stuttering “hoo-hoo” and a spluttering laugh. Tex felt that “hoo-hoo”s could go stale with repetition and that there was a vital difference in a duck that was nutty and a duck that enjoyed being nutty. But he still needed a voice, and it was Cal Howard (whose claim to immortality was already well established by his subterranean hot-dog stand) who suggested that Leon Schlesinger’s lisp plus Leon’s absolute belief that the world owed him a living made him a perfect prototype for Daffy. Mel Blanc saw no difficulty in marrying Leon’s voice to a duck, so the deed was done, and Daffy found a new voice as well as a new personality, an acquisitiveness to match Leon’s.
Daffy mistakenly asks Elmer Fudd for a bit of sport
But all unbeknownst, and only when we were well into the production of the new film
