Profile of Bill Peet on Famous Like Me

Bill Peet (January 29, 1915 - May 11, 2002) was an artist and story writer for Disney Studios. He joined Disney in 1937 and worked on The Jungle Book, Song of the South, Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians and other stories.

Early Life

Bill Peet was born in Grandview, Indiana just before World War I. His father was drafted into the military when Bill was three. His father abandoned his family and did not return after the war, except for brief periods to get money. As a result, the young Bill Peet grew up without a father. Bill began to draw as a youngster, and filled tablets full of sketches in his boyhood. Sadly, none of these drawing survived. Bill had a hard time in school. Instead of doing his lessons, he was illustrating his textbooks. At the time, the students sold their textbooks, and Peet’s were very popular for their illustrations.

Young Peet loved animals. He and his friends would go traipsing through the woods looking for frogs, tadpoles, minnows and crayfish. He would draw the little creatures from life. In addition to animals, Peet loved trains. In order to learn more about animals, Peet read voraciously, especially about animals.

About ten years old, Peet’s father showed up on their doorstep. His happy boyhood was over. He was broke and desperate and decided to rejoin his family. His mother and father fought constantly, and Peet’s father at one time even punched his son. Finally, his mother paid his father to go on another sales trip. In a week or two, he would be broke and back.

It was about this time Peet entered high school. He had nothing to do with art, and didn’t take it seriously as a career. However, after failing all his classes but PE, he followed the advice of a friend and took some art classes.

Peet did extremely well in his art classes, and experimented with a broad range of mediums. He also received a scholarship to the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis.

In the first class, Bill found himself very interested in a girl that sat on the front row. Margaret Brunst eventually became his wife. In 1987 they had been married for 50 years. Peet took quite a few painting classes that first year, and he admits his painting always was somewhat macabre. His favorite subjects were grizzled old men, “perfected with age, like and oak tree.” Another favorite subject was the Circus, always the big tops, never the people.

Bill’s first taste success was at the Indiana State Fair. All of his painting entries were accepted, including one of a rat in a trap.

After three years of art school, Peet left. He loved the school and learning, but he was tired of being broke and running out of paint and canvas. Now he was on his own. He set up and easel in an old warehouse and started painting. Only one painting was completed there; it won a 200 prize, quite a bit of money during the depression.

Disney

It was at this time Peet was asked to send in some cartoon action sketches to Disney. He did, and was asked to come to try outs. Bill trekked across the country to LA, and participated in a one month tryout. Only three of fifteen survived the period. It was at this time Disney was working on Snow White and the seven dwarves, and Bill got in on the last minute effort. Of course, the film was a big success, and Disney was off. Bill was also married during this period.

Bill was an in-betweener, making up the frames between two scenes. It was boring work. To make some extra money, Bill sent some ideas about some crazy characters for Pinocchio to the team making the movie. Finally, Bill had enough, and went screaming out of the studio, “No more lousy ducks.” He came back the next day to pick up his jacket and found a envelope. His monsters came through in the nick of time.

Bill began as a sketch artist, putting the words of a story man into pictures. Peet’s first encounter with Walt Disney was at this time. He reviewed the storyboards. Both of the sequences that Peet had worked on were cut. In all, about half the storyboards were cut from the film. Peet continued to work on the film for another year and a half.

Peet also worked on Fantasia. He hated it. He was part of a large group. Bill was a loner, and working in a large group did not suit him well. The war came, and Disney was part of the war effort making propaganda films. Bill helped here as well. Finally, after the war Peet got his break. His work so impressed Walt that he made him a full fledged story man that also handled the sketching end of it as well. Bill handled the character design for Cinderella, but he was quickly getting bored with Disney.

Peet started to paint again at this time, but soon found he had lost touch with the brush. When his young son Bill accidentally destroyed the painting, Peet was actually happy. Fine art had changed dramatically in the years Bill had been at Disney; everything was abstract and his realistic paintings were not in vogue. Bill also tried editorial cartoons, but failed there as well.

Bill continued to work at Disney. He developed a few short cartoons and worked on the feature films of the period as well. Bill was now working very closely with Walt Disney, and found him to be a sometimes difficult man, but it is evident that Peet respected him deeply. A large part of his autobiography is dedicated to his dealing with Walt. After successes developing short stories for Disney, Bill had his first book published, Hubert’s Hair Raising Adventure.

Children's Books

After an argument with Walt on the Jungle Book, Bill left the Disney company on his birthday. Bill initially wanted to go out with a bang, but was glad he didn’t when Disney died a year later.

Bill went on to illustrate many more children’s books, including Chester, the Worldly pig.

Bill was trained in Arsenal Technical High School and in college at the John Herron Art School. Peet says that you can’t really teach someone to draw except to tell them to “draw better.” He believes that if you don’t have any talent there is no point in trying to teach. Many of his colleagues at Disney described him as a natural artist. Art also ran in the family; his brother George ended up as a commercial artist.

More than anyone, Peet was affected by Walt Disney himself. Although Disney was not an artist, he was the final gatekeeper on the artistic side. He reviewed all the work and gave it the final go ahead. He was rather tempermental; if he saw something to much he might give it the boot just because he was tired of it. Peet and Walt quarreled frequently, and from several anecdotes it seems that Bill was very temperamental himself. It is said the two were very similar and it is because of this that they quarreled. Before Disney Peet had never done any cartooning, so it is because of the Disney company that Peet has his zany, interesting cartooning style. Bill discovered his story telling ability by telling bedtime stories to his children and working at Disney. Quite a few of his bedtime stories metamorphazised into full fledged story books.

Peet is known mostly for his cartoon illustrations for his children’s books, but he has dabbled in a wide variety of mediums. At John Herron he was also taught commercial art. He enjoyed some success out of college as a fine artist, but turned to commercial art, such as greeting cards. After tiring of that, he moved to LA to work for Disney. Peet’s favorite subject is animals, trains and the circus, seen over and over again both in his books and his autobiography. His beginnings with art began when he went to the zoo, took some photographs and then when the development failed, took up sketching. 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. If Peet’s autobiography is any indication of his favorite medium, it is the pencil. Almost all of the illustrations in his book are pencil drawings.

Peet left a legacy at Disney. In fact, Disney once tried to buy the rights to his books. Peets stories were upheld as great examples of story wrighting. Now, Disney seems concerned with messages of political correctness. Bill Peet died May 2002 at the age of 87. He was known as a member of the children's story book triumvirate, including himself, Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss.

Bill Peet's books for children are all beautifully illustrated, and many are poetry, although they read like prose. The stories have themes very suitable for children, such has trying when there's not much obvious hope, not allowing taunting of others from preventing you from succeeding, finding compromise solutions that make everyone happy and other uplifiting themes. Frequently, the stories have surprise endings.

Unlike most other children's authors, Bill Peet did not dumb down the vocabulary of his stories, but somehow managed to include enough context to make the meaning of difficult words obvious. Both the illustrations and the stories themselves easily capture the attention of almost all children. These features make these books excellent for both reluctant readers, and those needing to build their vocabulary.

Books

• Big Bad Bruce
• Buford the Little Bighorn
• Caboose Who Got Loose, The
• Chester the Worldly Pig
• Cock-a-Doodle Dudley
• Cowardly Clyde
• Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent
• Farewell to Shady Glade
• Gnats of Knotty Pine, The
• How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head
• Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure
• Jethro and Joel Were a Troll
• Kermit the Hermit
• The Kweeks of Kookatumbdee
• The Luckiest One of All
• No Such Things
• Pamela Camel
• Perle the High Flying Squirrel
• Spooky Tail of Prewitt Peacock, The
• The Wingdingdilly
• Wump World, The
• Zella, Zack, and Zodiac

External link

• Bill Peet interview

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