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John Hench: There was even beer service before lunch for the guys right to their desk, which is very curious. I don’t know how long it lasted, but after a while it was considered a bad thing to do. Of course, some guys I personally knew had four beers before lunch, so they were generally a pretty unruly group. They did mostly whatever, besides doing their work, they entertained themselves. You were always waiting for some great gag that somebody pulled during the day. Most of the time it was Ward Kimball. It really kept the interest very high. We had a telephone system that you could hear everybody else on, any conversation.

Michael Broggie: Like a party line?

JH: Yeah.

MB: This was at Hyperion?

JH: Yeah.

MB: How did it come about that you came to work for Disney? How did that happen?
JH: I worked for a Broadway department store right at the time and I designed all things for the seasons, for Mother’s Day or, of course, Christmas and the different holidays. They decorated the inside of the store and the windows and they needed some kind of a design to work at that would fit in with the holiday. I was in Hollywood when they opened up an office to interview people for, the rumor was for a classic music type of picture, which interested me. So one noon I walked across Hollywood Boulevard, up Vine a little ways, and had my portfolio and they offered me a job right away. It was not too bad an offer. It was not what I was making then, but I decided it certainly might be more fun than the job I had. It wasn’t too much of a hardship.

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