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JAY HORAN: How did you first come to work for Walt Disney Productions?

HERB RYMAN: That is not a short story, but I’ll try to make it as brief as possible. I had been working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and doing sketches. I was the only artist in the art department. I started there in 1932. I was a young man and I was very proud of my job and proud of my work. I worked seven days a week. And I took a trip to China and Europe, and when I returned, in the year 1937, Irving Thalberg had died. He was kind of a guiding genius for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and things were no longer the same. In the spring of 1937, my friend Vern Caldwell—who was the head of Mrs. Chouinard’s art school, and also a friend of Walt Disney’s, and who was feeding young talents for animation into the Disney Studio—said, “Herb, would you ever consider working for Walt Disney?” I said, “No, of course not, because I’m not a cartoonist. My work is the work of a fine artist. I admire Walt Disney very much, and in fact he’s my favorite motion-picture producer, but there would be certainly no place in that organization for a person like myself because I am not a cartoonist.”

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