Rolly Crump - More Cute Stories Volume 2: Animators and Imagineers

By Rolly Crump

C over Art: Rolly Crump

Cover Design: Pentakis Dodecahedron

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[b ackground music]

Jeff Heimbuch : Hello, Im Jeff Heimbuch co-author of Its Kind of a Cute Story by Rolly Crump. For this volume of More Cute Stories , weve decided to put the emphasis on the people that Rolly worked with at Disney throughout the years. While some are names that youve certainly heard before, there are also quite a few that may be new to you.

To Rolly, all these people made up the heart and soul of the Animation department at WED. No one deserves the spotlight more than the folks who helped make the magic, and Rolly is more than happy to tell you a bit about them. Sit back, relax, and enjoy More Cute Stories Volume Two: Animators and Imagineers .

[background music]

Rolly Crump : Here are some stories of the people who I worked with during all those years. I think I found them all, the stories, to be very interesting, humorous, and enjoyable.

[background music]

S he was a delight to work with. Harriet was one of the cutest little people you would ever lay your eyes on. She was dressed immaculately and she was just a gorgeous little creature, working in the model shop in the back of the Disney lot studio.

The interesting thing about the Harriet was that everybody loved her who was on the back lot. The head painters, the carpenters, everybody just loved Harriet. Theyd come in and schmooze with her and talk with her and everything because she was such a gorgeous little thing. Then they found out that she had a marvelous little kinky sense of humor. That sense of humor was almost, kind of hard to explain. Well, smutty. She would tell smutty jokes, which was just marvelous. We had passed back and forth the little smutty jokes between she and I and Fred Joerger.

And I mentioned to them one day that I had done some erotic art when I was in Animation and they said, Really?!

And I said, Oh yeah, we all did that. When you are in Animation, you get tired of doing Mickey Mouse, and you do a little of erotic stuff on the side. I have a whole stack of the erotic art.

And they said, Bring it out to the model shop, will ya?

And I said, I would love to.

So I brought it out and Harriet took one look at it, and just absolutely loved it, cracked up, and just enjoyed it to no end.

Well, unbeknownst to me and at that particular time my daughter needed a bicycle and we talked that out, out there in the shop and everything Harriet decided that she would charge the guys at the back lot a dime to see my artwork, and it was going to be a dime towards my daughters bicycle. Therefore it got to a point where everybody at the back lot had seen all of Rollys erotic art and my little can was filled with dimes. It didnt quite make enough to buy a bicycle, but its kind of a cute story because of how the Company was a family, whether you working at work or whether you were with them personally on the outside, you still were family and that was just marvelous.

B laine Gibson was absolutely an incredible animator. I worked for him on Sleeping Beauty . Hed animated a scene of a bunch of little fairies flying, and I did the in-betweens on those.

Then Blaine became a sculptor. He did a lot of sculpting on the side, and he had shows at Disney Studios, showing his work, and eventually he started sculpting all the heads full for a lot of the figures that we had down at Disneyland. He sculpted the Indians, and he sculpted the natives.

The interesting thing about his sculpting was that he actually was a farm boy. He grew up on a farm and he loved sculpting. So what he did was, he took mud balls that he made himself and started sculpting little animals from the mud balls, and that is how he got started.

And of course, the bottom line is all the gorgeous, gorgeous sculpts that he did for all of the presidents - which was the Hall of the Presidents - he did them all. He was just a delight, and a very, very sweet man. And he was also the very best Frisbee thrower. We used to play Frisbee in the Model Shop, and he was the very best. We loved playing Frisbee with him and we would throw the Frisbee across the Model Shop, models or no models, and not hit anything. We had a really good time with him.

T his is a story about something that changed my entire life, and it starts with a black wing pencil.

Wathel Rogers was an Assistant Animator that I used to pick scenes from and do clean ups on. One day, when I went over to his desk, there was a little propeller on a push pin spinning around on his desk, and I said to Wathel, God, thats really neat, how did you do that?

Wathel said, Its a secret Rolly, its a secret.

I said, Oh, okay.

I kept picking up scenes and dropping off scenes with him, and every time I went over there, Id ask him about the propeller, he wouldnt give me an answer. He just said, No, no, no.

This probably went on for about six weeks.

Well finally, one day I said, God, please, Wathel.

He said, Okay, Ill tell you what, Ill sell it to you.

I said, Oh okay, Ill buy it. How much?

He said, A penny.

So I bought this little black wing eraser clip that he made the propeller out of for a penny.

I had tried making them. I had taken some of the black wing pencils apart, taking the little clip out, and tried to make a little dot in it so itd ride on a push pin, but it always would get caught. That was because I was using a nail to make the dent.

Well, the secret was, that cost me a penny, was that he used a pen, a ballpoint pen. A ballpoint pen pushed into it made it kind of a nice smooth little surface to ride on. So, I learned how to make a propeller, so I made a little helicopter and I had it in my office with the propeller spinning. And I found out that the air conditioning in the room, if you put the little propeller over near the wall, would make it spin. Therefore, I have a little helicopter with a spinning propeller on it, and I was really, really proud of it.

Well, what happened was one of the young fellas that worked in the art props apartment fell in love with my propeller, and wanted to know how it was done. And I told him I wasnt going to charge him, and Id tell him how to do it, which I did.