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Richard Hollis: How did you first come to hear about the Walt Disney Studio?
Joe Grant: The best way I can tell that is that I used to drive to work, to the newspaper as a budding cartoonist, and I passed the Studio every day. As a result of that, knowing the Studio and what they were doing excited me, and I thought it was so remote that there’d never be a chance. One morning, I got a call from the Studio that Walt Disney wanted to see me, and that was such an incredible thing that I couldn’t believe it. When I did get there, he had seen caricatures that I had made for the newspaper and, as a result, I started on a part-time basis. It was three or four weeks or so that we were working there and he asked me how I’d like to stay on full-time. It had nothing to do with the monetary side of it, because I was doing quite well with the paper at the time, but you can imagine how I jumped at the chance.1

RH: Can you remember what they were working on when you came?

JG: Yes, they were working on Water Babies and a few Donald Ducks. I can’t recall the names of them right now. About that time, we were working on Gulliver’s Travels [Gulliver Mickey] and I went home that night and made a fantastic large drawing, about the size of a storyboard, of Mickey being held down and Lilliputians running all around. That made quite a hit with Walt because it was the first time that anybody seemed to take the time to finish a drawing and visualize something in the round.

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