[Michael Barrier] interviewed Ty Wong on January 13, 1979, at his home in Sunland, California — [...] not just Asian in character but with a refinement that testified that an artist lived there.[...]
Fifteen years after [Michael Barrier] interviewed Ty Wong, John Canemaker interviewed him in 1994 for his book Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists (Hyperion, 1996), still the best single source on Wong's life and career. There was talk in that later interview of the racial animus Wong experienced at various times in his life, as a young immigrant and as a Disney artist, but nothing of the sort surfaced in [Barrier's] interview with him. No doubt that was because [he] focused less on his personal history than on how his work fit into the larger scheme of work on Bambi. When other Disney people talked to [Michael Barrier] or Milt Gray about Wong or his work, the worst anyone could say was that he was so good that he displaced Harold Miles as the principal stylist for Bambi.[...]
Given that Wong's work was almost universally admired, why was he laid off in September 1941, after the strike? [Barrier is] sure it was because he was so closely identified with Bambi, and very little work remained to be done on that feature — certainly very little that called for a stylist's input — by the time the strike ended. He was one of many excellent artists who lost their jobs as the Disney studio contracted.
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