Dave Smith: Let’s start at the beginning. When did you come to Disney?
BOB JONES: I came to Disney in 1937. I’m not an artist in two dimensions, and the only way I could get into the studio, I thought, was through the Camera Department. So for four months I just bothered Gail Papineau. I called him up every week. I wrote him a letter every week. I dropped in on him once a week. And he kept saying, “If I have an opening, fine.” Meanwhile, I was going full bore with my puppets. I had just finished a run at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre—thirty-six weeks—and then was playing the Cocoanut Grove. […]