Interview With a Legend: X. Atencio
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LP: Before you joined the Walt Disney Studios what was your training?

X.: I went to art school for one semester. The teachers we had at Chuinard Art Institute, also taught at the studio. After I completed a semester they said why don’t you put a portfolio together, we’ll take it out to the studio and have the animators critique it for you.

So we did that. Meantime, I contacted the studio to see if I could get a summer job. Then at the same time I was at the studio applying for the summer job, they called my home to arrange for an interview as an apprentice animator. Unaware, I got there and three other fellows from Chuinard were there. I said, oh well, there goes my chance.

Instead the studio said, we like what you have on your portfolio, would you like to come work for us. I lived in Hollywood at the time, about three or four miles from the studio-which was at Hyperion, and I ran all the way home yelling, “I got a job at Disney.” $12.00 a week was the pay.

LP: When was that?

X.: That was in 1938.

LP: You worked in Feature Animation for 27 years. As far as your animation accomplishments, what are you most proud of?

X.: I started as an apprentice animator with Willie Rodeman on Pinnochio, then I worked on Dumbo. Next came the war and I was gone for 4 years in defense of our country.

LP: Where did you serve?

X.: In England most of the time. On an RAF base in photo intelligence. I was drafted to Greenland. I said "is there anyway to get out of Greenland?". They said, "apply to OCS and join the air corps." I got my commission down in Florida and from there they shipped me off to England.

LP: When you returned, were the studios still working on the War Time Animation effort?

X.: No, they had finished with that. After I served my four years, I called the studio and said I’m ready to come back to work. Of course, they said your job is waiting for you. But the thing is, all the guys that hadn’t gone to war had advanced to be animators. I was still an apprentice animator. I was joined up with Bill Justice and we did a series of little short films.

Eventually Walt sent me over to WED. He said he’d been wanting to get me over there for a long time. When I got over there, well nobody knew what I was supposed to be doing. Then one day he called and said I want you to do the script for the Pirates of the Caribbean. I had never done any scripting before, but Walt seemed to know that’s what I could do.

I did one scene, the auctioneer scene, and sent it over to him. He said that’s fine, keep going. And then after the script was done, I said I think we should have a little song in there. I had an idea for a lyric and a melody. I recited it to Walt, I thought he’d probably say that’s great, get the Sherman Brothers to do it. Instead he said, that’s great, get George Bruns to do the music. So that’s how I became a songwriter.

LP: So many kids have grown up thinking “A Pirate’s Life For Me” is an authentic pirates song. They don’t realize it was created for the attraction. When you joined WED about how many people were working there?

X.: I have no idea number wise. It was very small. I liked it. It reminded me of how the studio was when I first started there. A small group where everybody knew everybody and it was great.

I hated to leave the studio. I had a nice office there. Then when I got over to WED I had a couple sawhorses and a piece of plywood for my desk. That’s the way it was until I got my feet wet. They didn’t have posh offices then.

LP: So are you still working for the Walt Disney Company? Or are you totally retired?

X.: I’m retired. I sign a contract for them every year as a consultant. But I say, don’t bother me, if I wanted to work I’d stay there. I go back there every 6 weeks to 2 months to talk to people and tell them how it was-how it was working with Walt.

LP: I think there is a big mystique regarding what it was like working with Walt. It’s almost as if he has been elevated to a god like status. What was it like having Walt come and look over your shoulder while you were working on a project?

X.: Well it was great. He’d pick things up. Like on the pirate ride-one time we mocked up the whole scene of the auctioneers. All the figures in there were working. We rigged up a little dolly and pushed it through at the same speed the boats would go through.

As we went through the scene there was noise on all sides. I kind of apologized to Walt, you couldn’t seem to hear what was going on. Oh hell, he said, it’s like when you go to a cocktail party. Tune in on this conversation. Tune in on that conversation. Every time they go through they’ll hear something different. Why didn’t I think of that? That’s the way he was.

Even the animation part of it-the telling of stories. Using the storyboards and things; he’d get into it. Jump up and start acting it out. What if we move this over here and move that over there? He was a great storyteller. He had a great knack for that. He wasn’t a great artist, but he sure was a storyteller.

LP: Do you think there will ever be another Walt Disney.

X.: Probably not. There are a lot of talented geniuses around who are doing this sort of thing, but the magic of Walt Disney is a thing that will probably live forever. I think in generations to come, when people talk about Walt Disney, it will be the way people talk about Hans Christian Anderson and people like that. They were great storytellers. They didn’t write the stories, they just told the stories. That is the way Walt was. He just told the stories better. I think he’ll go down in history as Story Teller of the Century.

LP: What do you remember about the last time you saw Walt?

X.: I don’t remember really talking to him. But I remember the day he died. How I was affected by it. John Hench came into my, office I had an office by that time, and we talked about Walt and about his passing away. We reminisced about things we had worked on together.

They dismissed us at noon that day and I came home. Traditionally I always bought my Christmas tree on the 15th of December [Walt died of December 15, 1966]. Since I had the afternoon off I came home but felt real bad just sitting around. So I thought, oh I’ll go out and get the tree. I bought the Christmas tree and came home. As evening fell I started thinking about Walt being gone again. I sat in the living room and started to cry. I cried and cried, just balled my eyes out. It was as if I’d lost my father, you know. I really got choked up.

Being as it was Christmas time, I started getting amazing Christmas cards. People from all over, even friends I had in England, all wrote a little note in their Christmas card. A note of condolence, as if someone in my own family had died. In essence someone in my family had died. That’s how I felt about Walt’s passing.

LP: What was the atmosphere like at work when you came back and had to finish Pirates?

X.: Well, it was pretty much done. It was just a case of tying up all the loose ends. But then working on the Haunted Mansion, that was another story. There were still two schools of thought on how we were going to do it. Should we make it really scary or should it be kind of funny? How would Walt want it? I guess there we started running into a little conflict.

On other projects too-Walt was always the last word on how things were going to be done. Like on EPCOT and projects like that. But now without Walt there to say this was the way it was going to be, we were all kind of floundering around. I think if Walt had been there we’d have built the place [ EPCOT ] about three years before we did. No one seemed to take leadership.

LP: How long did it take the company to recover from losing Walt... or has it never recovered?

X.: Oh, I think it has now. It took several years though. They had a committee of directors and producers who were deciding what to do. Theatrically, nothing much was done after Mary Poppins. Then the new regime came in.

I remember when Eisner and Wells joined the company, just a month before I retired. They came over to WDI to talk to us and to introduce themselves. I said to Michael, don’t screw up. I hope to live comfortably on my stock. And boy they haven’t.