Bill Tytla - Continued Disney Career

Continued Disney Career

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was eventually completed and released on December 21, 1937. Tytla was next assigned to animate Stromboli, an explosive puppeteer and kidnapper in Pinocchio (1940). Larger-than-life, a monster of mercurial moods—comic and menacing by turns—Stromboli is one of Disney's most three-dimensional and frightening villains.

"Bill was powerful, muscular, high-strung and sensitive, with a tremendous ego," wrote Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in their book The Disney Villain. "Everything was 'feelings' with Bill. Whatever he animated had the inner feelings of his characters expressed through very strong acting. He did not just get inside Stromboli, he was Stromboli and he lived that part."

Brave Little Tailor was a 1938 short featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Tytla animated the giant who was as dumb as he was huge. The character "became the model for all giants throughout the industry from gags to personality," according to Johnston and Thomas. The short was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film of 1939. But it lost to Ferdinand the Bull, another Disney short, directed by Dick Rickard, animated by Milt Kahl and Ward Kimball.

Early in 1938, Tytla animated Yen Sid, the old magician in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," which would eventually become a segment in Fantasia (1940). However the character from Fantasia which Tytla is better known for is Chernabog, his own version of Crnobog the Black God, from the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence.

It is often said that Chernabog was based on actor Bela Lugosi, and Walt did bring him in to do live action reference for the character. However, Bill already had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do and did not like Bela's interpretation of the character. Instead he had Wilfred Jackson (who is credited for the music of Steamboat Willie) act out the part for him, and that is what he used as live action reference. The scene is pure pantomime, but shows the full emotional range of the character, from unabashed glee to profound despair, expressing physical pain at the sound of the church bells at dawn. Chernabog is considered Tytla's supreme achievement in personality animation and marks the zenith of his career.

By 1940 Tytla was tiring of animating heavies. Not one to want to be typecast Tytla requested as his next assignment Dumbo (namesake star of the 1941 film), the baby elephant ridiculed and rejected because of his big ears.

This time his reference was his own infant son, Peter. The intent was to do something untheatrical and sincere, to try to put the personality of a human child into that of an elephant so that it rings true. The happy sequence of Dumbo splashing and blowing bubbles in a bathtub, or playing hide-and-seek between his mother's legs contrasts with the later scene in which Dumbo visits his mother in prison. Dumbo, climbing onto his mother's trunk shows a slight apprehension as she begins to swing him gently back and forth. He relaxes, yet his sadness over the temporary nature of this maternal solace always there. When they finally must part, the slow reluctant pull of Dumbo's trunk away from his mother's is heartbreaking.

His son, Peter Tytla, has grown up to become a collage artist focusing on images made from photographs of junk cars.