Chapter 2 -- Meeting Mr. Clemmons

Not Samuel L., but Larry. (Chapter 2 of a Series. Here be Chapter 1.)

Disney's head animation writer (in 1977) was cartoon veteran Larry Clemmons, first hired at the studio in 1930. At the time, he was a Yale graduate with a degree in architecture, but an ivy league education was of little value in 1930 when the economy was collapsing ... and few buildings were being erected.

So Larry took the job he could get (don't we all?): Work as an in-betweener at Walter Elias Disney's Hyperion Studio. He soon worked his way up to assistant on Mickey shorts before moving to Ward Kimball's unit and (finally) the Disney story department. When World War II happened, Larry left the studio and moved to the Midwest, where he wrote technical manuals for wartime production.

But Mr. Clemmons hadn't given up on show biz. He free-lanced in radio, and at the end of the war, landed a job on Bing Crosby's prime-time network radio show, where he spent nine happy years writing weekly scripts for Bing and assorted guest stars. When the radio gig ended, he returned to Walt Disney Productions as a writer and segment producer on "The Mickey Mouse Club." And when that assignment ended, he wrote Walt's spoken intros for the television show entitled "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color." ...

And so on and so forth.

Few writers are gainfully employed in their chosen field over four decades, but Larry Clemmons is one of them. A storyman at Disney's in the late thirties and early forties, a network radio writer after World War II to the 1950s, Larry then swung over to network television where he wrote and produced t.v. programs for Walt Disney Productions into the early sixties.

Assigned by Walt to the animation department, Larry worked almost exclusively on animated features from Jungle Book to The Fox and the Hound. He retired to Friday Harbor, Washington, at the end of the 1970s.