Pierre Lambert's Pinocchio, originally published in France by Demons et Merveilles and in an English translation by Hyperion, ranks as the loveliest animation book of recent years. The pages seem to overflow with exquisitely reproduced cels, backgrounds, drawings and set-ups. Recently, two of the Nine Old Men of Disney, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, who animated key scenes of the title character, sat down with animation critic Charles Solomon to discuss Lambert's work.

Charles Solomon: What were your reactions to the book?

Frank Thomas: I thought it was exceptional. When it first came out, I was amazed they would spend that much money on all of the technical aspects of putting the book together--the artwork they were able to find, the paper, the coating on the paper to get true colors, everything that Walt was trying to get in there. It didn't have quite the sparkle that I remembered in the picture, but it sure had everything else. If you like Pinocchio, this is really the place to see it.

Ollie Johnston: That's what I felt. Pinocchio has more wonderful locales than almost any other picture--almost more than Snow White, and is more refined. There are the wonderful shots of [Gustave] Tenggren's looking down on the city--just fantastic! I never get tired of looking at them. The text is good, but the art dominates the book, and it should. There are errors in the text, as in all the books.

CS: How accurate and thorough do you think the book is?

OJ: Somebody says that Eric Larson took over Fred Moore's Lampwick at the end, when he turned into a donkey, because he knew how to draw animals from living on a farm. That's not true: Fred did that stuff. I know, because I was working on a couple of scenes and worked with him.

CS: Milt did some of that too, didn't he?

OJ: He did a lot of the Pinocchios. I just did two or three scenes in there. Bill Tytla did not work on Geppetto. (To Frank) And didn't it say that you worked on the character of Alice?

FT: Probably. In reading through the book, the errors bothered me, but then I got to thinking, "Well, it's got the spirit of the thing." The quotes from the guys, even though they were wrong--if he'd gotten the right people, I think they would have said the same thing. So from one standpoint, it doesn't hurt the book. A technically accurate book is pretty hard to get, and it would be a different type of book. Of course, being a perfectionist you always think, "Why couldn't they do a book that would be all this?" Kimball gets a lot of credit on Peter Pan, for Captain Hook, but there's no mention of the Indian Chief, whom he did a very good job on.

OJ: He didn't do any of Hook.

FT: He did the Indian Chief, he did the Lost Boys.

OJ: Pinocchio lends itself to a book of this quality. We had Claude Coates, we had Tenggren. We had the animators, we had [Hugh] Hennesy and [Charlie] Philippi, those great guys. One reason, of course, for the level of quality was Walt: he was behind every idea, every character, every word, every color and literally every thing. That was the last picture he was that closely involved in.