Happy Birthday, Eric Goldberg!

I see that today, May 1st, is the birthday of that master Disney animator, Eric Goldberg. Here's a photo of myself and Eric when he came to do a presentation at Sheridan College back in September 2013. Eric is a delightful, jolly little fellow, and his sprightly animation for Disney famously includes the Genie from Aladdin, which Eric caricatured to resemble his voice actor, the great Robin Williams. I have written about that in this previous blog post.

Other characters that Eric has skillfully brought to life in Disney films include Phil, the grouchy little satyr who reluctantly agrees to act as personal trainer to Hercules (who looks uncannily like his voice actor too - Danny Devito!) He also animated Louis, the alligator and aspiring Dixieland jazz trumpeter from The Princess And The Frog. More recently, Eric revived Donald Duck, José Carioca the parrot, and Panchito the rooster, known collectively as The Three Caballeros, for the renovated boat ride in the Mexican pavilion at EPCOT's World Showcase. Which was a fitting assignment, given that the original film characters were masterminded by the legendary animator, Ward Kimball, and Eric is very much this generation's equivalent of Ward, with the accent on highly cartooned design and rapid fire movement in much of his output.

But my favourite animation by Eric Goldberg is the brilliant Rhapsody In Blue segment from Disney's Fantasia 2000, which he directed with so much passion (with wife, Susan Goldberg art directing), as he got to base the overall look on the style of one of his artistic heroes, New York's legendary Broadway caricaturist, Al Hirschfeld. I too share Eric's admiration for Hirschfeld, as he has been the biggest influence on my own approach to drawing caricatures.

I know that Eric was just up this way again only a week ago, giving a lecture and workshop at the Toronto TAAFI animation festival. I regret not being there to see him myself, but I've heard back from several of my former Sheridan College students who were thrilled to hear his lecture and learn animation tips from him. I'm sure it would have been a most enjoyable event.

Happy Birthday to you, Eric Goldberg!

RIP Robin Williams

I just got home to hear the tragic news of the death of Robin Williams from an apparent suicide. For all of his outward wild humour, he must have been a tortured soul. His death only a couple weeks after the death of Jim Garner marks a very strange coincidence for me, as I had met both of these actors while on my vacation to Los Angeles in 1982. I'd written about my visit to the set of Mork and Mindy on the Paramount lot on this earlier blog post.

As I mentioned in that post, I noticed that Robin Williams could turn it on and off so suddenly, as he was wild on the set while rehearsing, yet was very quiet and reserved backstage in the break room. Sadly, it does not surprise me to now find out that he was given to severe bouts of depression. I really don't know what else to say, as this news is a real shocker. I hope the poor man has found inner peace now.

Happy Birthday, Robin Williams!

I mentioned Robin Williams in my last post, in regard to the Disney short film that he appeared in with Walter Cronkite. As it happens, today is Robin Williams' birthday, so I figured I should celebrate it with this little novelty pictured above. Here's the story behind this particular caricature:

Back in 1982 I went out to visit my friend, Bryan Stoller, whom I had grown up with in Ottawa but who was at that time aspiring to become a film director in LA after having graduated from the American Film Institute. Bryan had made some contacts within several of the studios, enabling us to visit the set of the series, Bret Maverick, filming at Warner Brothers, where I got to meet my hero, James Garner. I've written about this at great length in this previous post. But Bryan also knew a producer at Paramount, and was therefore able to get us onto the set of the popular sitcom, Mork and Mindy, which was pretty much what had launched the career of Robin Williams, playing Mork, the alien sent to study earthlings.

When we arrived on the set, the cast and crew were busy rehearsing for that week's show, with the director setting up camera angles as the actors went through their paces. Bryan and I went up into the empty stands where the audience would sit for the taping at the end of the week. I had brought along my sketchbook and so I started sketching the cast while they rehearsed. This was to be the final season of the series, and Jonathan Winters had joined the cast as Mork and Mindy's (strangely fully grown adult) baby, Mearth, hatched from an egg laid by poppa Mork. (Okay, the 70s really was a strange decade!) The main reason that Winters had been added to the cast, however, was that he had been the lifelong comedic idol of Robin Williams, who had patterned his own scattergun style of improv comedy after this comedy legend.

One of the most memorable events while watching this rehearsal came when the cast took a short break while the camera crew set up the next shot. Jonathan Winters had wandered over to a chair on the set and had started a one way conversation with it. Robin noticed what he was doing and was soon joining in on this madcap bit of improv with the chair. It was really neat to see how these two guys, the master and his disciple, worked off of each other, obviously having great fun with such off-the-cuff invention.

After they were through with the rehearsal, Bryan and I went down to say hello to the cast and the producer, Gene Sultan, who had kindly given us permission to visit the set. I showed them the quick sketch caricatures I'd been doing and the cast members were quite excited with them. We accompanied them back to their breakroom for coffee and to chat for a bit, and they asked if they could photocopy my sketches. Interestingly, I found Robin himself to be a bit quiet and reserved, quite unlike what I would have expected. In contrast, Jonathan Winters was very outgoing and funny, and even sketched a cartoon for me! I must admit, though, that I was most of all enjoying the company of Pam Dawber, who played Mindy. Pam was just as cute and sweet in person as she was on the show, and I came away quite smitten! As our visit wrapped up, the producer gave us tickets to come back and attend the show's taping at the end of the week. I couldn't believe how gracious they had all been and I wanted to do something for them in return.

Once I had returned back home from my trip, I decided to work up the rough sketches (as well as some new ones I drew from the TV show) into a finished piece of art. Actually, I did three identical originals, then mailed them to Bryan with the instructions to keep one for himself as thanks, and to give one to the producer, Gene Sultan, and hopefully see if he could get the cast to autograph and return one to me. Bryan came through, and several weeks later I received my original back, signed by the cast, as well as an 8 x 10 photo reproduction of it. There was also a note from the producer, thanking me for the caricature and hoping that I didn't mind him taking the liberty of having it printed up and distributed to all the cast and crew at the end of season wrap party. Of course I was flattered that he had done that, happy that they all had a momento of their final season that featured my art.

Just as a postscript, I've always thought it was funny how similar an approach Disney animator, Eric Goldberg had 10 years later in caricaturing Robin Williams' features and incorporating them into his design of Genie in Aladdin. Both Eric and I are highly influenced by famed caricaturist, Al Hirschfeld, so I think we were both somewhat guided by his sense of flowing design in the facial features. It's uncanny how similar our approach is when you look at that profile of Genie in the centre of this model sheet:

Walter Cronkite Signs Off For The Last Time.

Though he lived a long and full life, passing away at the ripe old age of 92, Walter Cronkite will be well missed. I was too young at the time to have witnessed the pivotal moments in America's history that he famously covered, such as the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, or the first walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong. But for a teenager growing up in the 1970s, Walter Cronkite was a familiar and comforting presence on the evening news, speaking in that calmly reassuring voice of quiet authority. In fact, with his bushy eyebrows, neatly trimmed mustache, and warm midwestern tones, he very much put me in mind of that other Walter - the one who went by the name, Walt Disney.

Like Disney, Walter Cronkite came across to we youngsters as a trusted older uncle or grandfather type. It's no wonder that he had earned the nickname, "The Most Trusted Man in America", as he always seemed to be giving us the straight goods, devoid of the type of hype we're fed today, especially on the all-news channels. I suspect that I wasn't the only one who had noticed his similarity to Walt Disney, as there seemed to be a distinct Disney connection for Cronkite in his later years. On October 1st 1982, my family and I were at Walt Disney World for the opening day of EPCOT Center, and it was very exciting to be among the first guests to experience this new park. Of course, we wanted to do things right, and immediately joined the big line-up just inside the park entrance for the attraction within EPCOT's iconic geosphere, Spaceship Earth. This attraction was sponsored by Bell, and simulated a time machine trip through the history of communication. As guests who visited Spaceship Earth in the early years will recall, the narrator of this trip through time was none other than Walter Cronkite. Again, I couldn't help but think of Walt Disney's voice back when he hosted his TV show, as I listened to the warm, rumbly midwestern tones of Mr. Cronkite.

A few years later, Walter Cronkite would make an onscreen appearance at another Disney theme park - the Disney/MGM Studios that opened in 1989. He appeared alongside Robin Williams in the whimsical featurette, Back To Neverland, that accompanied the Animation Tour at Disney's Florida Feature Animation Studio. Although the film in its entirety may not be available for viewing, here is a short segment featuring Robin Williams as an animated Lost Boy from Peter Pan, going through a succession of animated impersonations, including one of his very dignified co-star. Yes, Walter Cronkite, that respected and beloved CBS anchorman will be missed, but well remembered: