Babbitt and Graham fostered a mutual amity.  In 1935, Walt bought a new building across the street with space used exclusively for art classes.  Above the entry to the studio space, a sign read, with typical animators’ wit, “Don Graham Memorial Institute;” underneath that:  “Semper Gluteus Maximus.”  Babbitt captured the dedication with his 16mm camera.  Graham invited Babbitt, as well as Tytla, to his home in Malibu Canyon.  They sat, savoring red wine, Gorgonzola cheese and Syrian bread, and joined Babbitt “verbally correct[ing] all the wrongs in this cockeyed world.”[16]

In 1941 Graham left the Studio, but remained in touch on a consulting basis.  Babbitt led the strike against the Walt Disney Studio, and eventually focused his career elsewhere.

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“In 1957, eighteen years ago, I was teaching at USC,” said Babbitt.  By 1975 one of his ex-students had students of her own. They wrote to him and “they asked if those guys who did Fantasia, were they on drugs?  I wrote back and said, ‘Yes, I personally was addicted to Pepto Bismol and Feen-A-Mint.’”[17]

Before Babbitt joined the staff of the University of Southern California, a single animation class was taught by ex-Disney inbetweener Lester Novros.  For the 1961 academic year, the USC animation program and department of cinema issued a progress report:

It’s been about one year since members of the animation industry and the department of cinema put their collective heads together to try and develop a sequence of courses in animation for the purpose of upgrading present industry people and developing new talent for the industry.[18]

The report ushered in a new 5-course curriculum, with Babbitt helming “448: Animation Art.”  This course discussed the basic principle of animation and its use in entertainment, industrial and educational films.  It consisted of a one-hour lecture with a three-hour lab. 

One of those students was Carl Bell, who, after studying at the Ontario College of Art with fellow student Richard Williams, traveled all the way to southern California to study animation.  “There were no animation schools,” he says.  “There were art schools around, but nobody was teaching animation.  And when you got into the industry, hardly anyone was passing along information.” [19]

According to Bell, there were only two books about the craft of animation in publication: Preston Blair’s guides from the Walter Foster art book collection, and E. G. Lutz’s famously outdated tome from 1920. Babbitt had not lost his passion by the time Bell was enrolled in his class in the fall of 1960.  “You left his class absolutely inspired, on top of the world,” says Bell. “He was such an exuberant teacher.  I would say he was like a nightclub performer, he had that kind of charisma with the students, teaching.”

 

 

Another of Babbitt’s students was Chouinard Institute alum Maggie Julian Wisdom.  Chouinard had a lasting relationship with Disney animation and would later be absorbed by the Disney-funded California Institute of the Arts in 1969.  Nevertheless, opportunity to learn the skills at Chouinard was all but absent.  “T. Hee – Thorton Hee – taught a kind of animation storyboarding class,” says Wisdom, “but that was it.  Nobody taught animation when I was there.  That did not happen until after it became Cal Arts – until Disney took it over.”  In 1959, Wisdom eagerly became part of Babbitt’s roster, but only after impressing him with her portfolio. “It was kind of an honor to be in his class,” she adds.[20]