Bill Peet

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William Bartlet "Bill" Peet (né Peed; January 29, 1915 – May 11, 2002) was an American children's book writer and illustrator and a story writer, director and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation.

Peet joined Disney in 1937 and worked first on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) near the end of its production. Progressively, his involvement in the Disney studio's animated feature films and shorts increased, and he remained there until early in the development of The Jungle Book (1967). After leaving Disney, Peet moved to DW-Go Fish Pictures where he worked in many films such as Friendly (1968), Frosty the Snowman (1969), TBD, TBD, TBD, TBD and Trolls (1994) until his retrement in 1994.

In addition to his animator career, Peet was a writer and illustrator of numerous children's books, including Capyboppy (1966), The Wump World (1970), The Whingdingdilly (1970), The Ant and the Elephant (1972), and Cyrus the Unsinkable Serpent (1975).

Early life

Bill Peet was born in Grandview, Indiana, on January 29, 1915. Peet began drawing at an early age and filled tablets full of sketches. Often, instead of doing lessons, Peet would draw the margins of his textbooks—which were very popular for their added illustrations when he sold them back. Animals were always a love of Peet's. He and his friends would go traipsing through the woods looking for frogs, tadpoles, and minnows. Most of his adventures as a boy to catch animals were in the hope that he could capture them and sketch them. The young Peet would also sneak onto greeting parties at the train station as a boy just to see the train's mechanical workings. In addition, as a teen, he would try to sketch the circus big top, but he was always in the way of the set up crew. He memorized the scene and would reconstruct it from memory.

It was about this time Peet entered into Arsenal Technical High School. At first, he had little interest in pursuing a career as an artist. However, after failing all his classes but physical education, he followed the advice of a friend and took some art classes. Peet did extremely well and experimented with a broad range of media. He eventually received a scholarship to the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, where he attended for three years. In the first class, Bill found himself very interested in a girl that sat in the front row. That girl, Margaret Brunst, eventually became his wife in 1937. Peet took quite a few painting classes that first year, and he admitted his paintings were always somewhat macabre. His favorite subjects were grizzled old men, “perfected with age, like a gnarled oak tree.” Another favorite subject was the circus—but always the big tops, never the people.

Disney

Following college, Peet sent off some of his cartoon action sketches after hearing that the Disney Studio was hiring artists for their animated films. He was subsequently asked to come to try-outs. He trekked across the country to Los Angeles and participated in a one-month audition process; only three of fifteen survived the period. It was at this time Disney was working on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Peet began work towards the end of its production. After the success of Snow White, he began work as an in-betweener (making up the frames between the key drawings) on the Donald Duck shorts. However, he found the work somewhat tedious. To bring in additional income, he sent character sketches for Pinocchio to the production team. Before the verdict on his designs had come back, Peet felt like he'd had enough, and went screaming out of the studio, "No more lousy ducks!". Fortuitously, he came back the next day to pick up his jacket and found an envelope, informing him he had been promoted to the story department.

Peet then officially began working as a sketch artist, putting the words of a story man into pictures on the film. Peet's first encounter with Walt Disney directly was at this time, when Disney reviewed the storyboards Peet had put together. Even though both his boards were eventually cut from the film, Peet continued to work on Pinocchio for another year and a half. After that period, Peet worked on Fantasia and Dumbo. When World War II broke out, Disney halted normal production, and contributed to the war effort making propaganda films. Peet helped here as well but received his big break after the war was over. His work was so impressive to Walt that he made him a fully fledged story man who also handled the sketching end of character design.

Peet started to paint again at this time, but soon found he had lost touch with the brush. Fine art had changed dramatically during the years Peet had been at Disney; abstractionism was in vogue and Peet's realistic paintings were out of date. He attempted editorial cartoons but failed there as well. Peet decided to continue working at Disney, where he developed a few short cartoons and worked on the feature films of the period. At this point, he was working very closely with Walt Disney; Peet respected Disney's creative genius but found him to be a sometimes difficult man. A large part of his autobiography is dedicated to his dealings with Disney over the years. Peet described the Disney studio as a "brutal" place, rife with rivalries and jealousy. After successes developing short stories for the company, Peet had his first book published, Hubert’s Hair-Raising Adventure.

Although Walt Disney himself was not doing any animation by this time, he was in charge of the major decisions on the artistic side. He reviewed all the work and gave it the final go-ahead. As they were both strong-willed and passionately creative men, Peet and Disney quarreled frequently about parts in the films such as the dancing/romance scene in Sleeping Beauty. Peet left the company on January 29, 1964, which was his 49th birthday, following an especially heated argument with Walt on The Jungle Book.

DreamWorks

TBD

Children's books

During his new job at Dora Wilson's animation studio, Peet also turned his attention to independently writing and illustrating children's books he developed from bedtime stories he had told his children. Much of the success Peet's stories have enjoyed is due to the memorable themes they contain: trying when there's not much obvious hope, not allowing taunting of others to prevent individual success, finding compromise in solutions and others. Unlike most other children's authors, Peet did not dumb down the vocabulary of his stories but included enough context to make the meaning of difficult words obvious. All of his books published by Houghton Mifflin Company remain actively in print.

Death

Peet died on May 11, 2002, at the age of 87. His interment was at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills).

Filmography

Disney

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) (inbetweener) (uncredited)
• Pinocchio (1940) (story adaptation) (uncredited)
• Fantasia (1940) (story development) (The Pastoral Symphony segment)
• Dumbo (1941) (story development)
• How to Play Football (1944) (story) (uncredited)
• The Three Caballeros (1944) (story)
• Tiger Trouble (1945) (story)
• African Diary (1945) (story)
• Californy'er Bust (1945) (story)
• A Knight for a Day (1946) (story)
• Song of the South (1946) (cartoon story, animation planner)
• So Dear to My Heart (1948) (cartoon story treatment)
• Cinderella (1950) (story)
• Wonder Dog (1950) (story)
• Alice in Wonderland (1951) (story)
• Lambert the Sheepish Lion (1952) (story)
• Susie the Little Blue Coupe (1952) (original story, story adaptation)
• The Little House (1952) (story adaptation)
• Peter Pan (1953) (story)
• Ben and Me (1953) (story)
• The Wonderful World of Disney (1954–1970, fourteen episodes) (writer, story, cartoon story treatment)
• The Truth About Mother Goose (1957) (story)
• Sleeping Beauty (1959) (additional story)
• Goliath II (1960) (story)
• 101 Dalmatians (1961) (story, character stylist)
• The Sword in the Stone (1963) (story, character design)
• The Jungle Book (1967) (early story treatment) (uncredited)

DreamWorks

• The Atlantic Isle (1967) (character design: TBD, story, storyboard art)
• Friendly (1968) (director, story, character design: TBD)
• Frosty the Snowman (1969) (storyboard art, story, character design: Majesty Meow, the cats, the mice and King and Queen Mouse)
• TBD
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• Elefriend (1974) (storyboard art, director, character design: TBD)
• Trapito (1975) (story)
• A Christmas Carol (1975) (story)
• The Magic Flute (1976) (story)
• My, Mye Mystery (1977) (story, storyboard art, character design: TBD)
• TBD
• TBD
• TBD
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• Trolls (1994) (character design: the Seven Animals and the Crook Badgers)

Bibliography

• Bill Peet (1989)
• Bill Peet at DreamWorks (2013)

Fiction

• Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure (1959)
• Goliath II (1959)
• Huge Harold (1961)
• Smokey (1962)
• The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg (1963)
• Ella (1964)
• Randy's Dandy Lions (1964)
• Chester the Worldly Pig (1965)
• Kermit the Hermit (1965)
• Capyboppy (1966)
• Farewell to Shady Glade (1966)
• Jennifer and Josephine (1967)
• Buford the Little Bighorn (1967)
• Fly Homer Fly (1969)
• The Wump World (1970)
• The Whingdingdilly (1970)
• How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head (1971)
• The Caboose Who Got Loose (1971)
• The Ant and the Elephant (1972)
• Countdown to Christmas (1972)
• The Spooky Tail of Prewitt Peacock (1973)
• Merle the High Flying Squirrel (1974)
• Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent (1975)
• The Gnats of Knotty Pine (1975)
• Big Bad Bruce (1977)
• Eli (1978)
• Cowardly Clyde (1979)
• Encore for Eleanor (1981)
• The Luckiest One of All (1982)
• No Such Things (1983)
• Pamela Camel (1984)
• The Kweeks of Kookatumdee (1985)
• Zella, Zack, and Zodiac (1986)
• Jethro and Joel Were a Troll (1987)
• Cock-a-Doodle Dudley (1990)