Jack Zander, one of the few surviving members of Hollywood’s “golden age” of theatrical animation, is now 99 years old.

Jack Zander is one of the few surviving members of Hollywood's "golden age" of theatrical animation. His career began at several all-but-forgotten animation studios in the 1930s and continued through the decades and into the 1980s. One year short of his centenary (and a few days short of his 99th birthday), Jack was kind enough to share some of his time with me over the phone. With so many memories and anecdotes to recount, our conversation did not always follow a strictly chronological path or explore every tangent touched on, but was never less than entirely fascinating. We began talking on Monday, April 30.

Joe Strike: How and when did you get into animation -- and why?

Jack Zander: It's kind of an interesting story. Do you know the name Pete Burness? He was a compatriot of mine. He and I went to Chouinard School in California. I guess we had both been there three years. We were sitting around the [school] one morning when the nice lady picked up the phone, turned to us and asked, 'Are you fellows animators?' Now I didn't know what animator was, but being out of a job I said yes right away.

She said there's a guy on the other end and told him, 'I happen to have two of them right here.' She gave us the address of Roemer Grey. Remember an author named Zane Grey? Roemer Grey was his son and had converted his father's garage to an animation studio. Roemer asked us if we were animators. We said yes and he told us, 'Okay, go ahead.' What do you do when you don't know what the hell you're doing?

JS: You figured it out pretty quickly.

JZ: Well we did. Fortunately a couple of fellows who were already there helped us out. The McKimson brothers Tom and Bob were moonlighting from Disney. We worked a few minutes for them and they quickly saw we weren't anything. They taught us on the spot. It took about a week to learn the fundamentals, and all of a sudden we became animators.

JS: In a week?

JZ: I'm a stretching it a little bit. We made it through glaring blunders, which they straightened out and in so doing we caught onto some of the tricks. Of course Roemer didn't know an animator from nothing so it was alright with him. He gave us some stuff to do, which we did. There was a character he was developing called Binko Bear, so we started drawing Binko. At that point we had the label of animators applied to us like a sticker on our foreheads and we proceeded to work.

Roemer was using up his father's money, which didn't last too long: one summer I think, the summer of 1930 or 1931. They closed the studio and we were out on our butts. As a matter of fact, sir, let this go down on the record, he still owes me 150 bucks -- I doubt I'll ever get it.

We were out walking around. Pete was living Pasadena and I was living in Beverly Hills with my mother. I ran into a neighbor one morning who played the trombone in the Warner Bros. studio band. He asked me what I did and when I told him he said, 'I hear they're desperate for animators -- you'd better apply,' so Pete and I did.

I went to Warner Bros. the next day. Ray Katz was the guy in charge of the cartoon department. He worked for [Leon] Schlesinger, as a matter of fact he was Schlesinger's son-in-law. He said, 'I'm sorry we don't have any jobs at the moment.'

I went home, I was not very expert in looking for work. The next morning here was the trombone player. He asked, 'How did you make out?' I said they told me they don't need anybody. He said, 'You go back there and push. There are no artists around and they desperately need some help.'

I knocked on the door again. 'What, you again?' 'Yup, I want a job.' 'We don't have any jobs here, you might as well quit knocking on my door.' I said, 'Okay.'

It was a little repetitious, but the same scenario played out again the following morning. My neighbor says, 'This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I happen to be close to the top' -- I don't know how a trombone player gets close to the top -- 'Push.'

I went back and Ray says, 'Are you really an animator?' and I said yep. Fortunately he didn't ask me what kind of experience I had. He gave me a contract for $14 a week. This wasn't bad because it was in middle of depression. One of my star animators later on in the business was making $12 week. So I snapped up the job and my mother and I lived happily ever after you might say -- until one day Norm Ferguson called up from Disney.

Norm left a message with a mutual friend. He said he had friend working in New York and they needed experienced animators. Of course by this time I'd had a year and a half experience of working with the McKimson boys. I had the nerve to call up the guy in New York and he said, 'Are you?' and we said yes. 'Well we're hiring.' So I'm scared to death. I said I'd send him a telegram. In it I said I couldn't make a move for less than $100 a week.

What do you think? I got it. He sent a wire back. 'The next time you're in New York drop up and see us.' We firmed it up a little bit more than that. I took an airplane back to New York. This was 1933. I got a job with this guy. This was the Van Buren studio. They weren't much better than Roemer Grey, which was fortunate for Pete Burness and me, because we were still neophytes.

JS: Pete went with you?

JZ: Pete went first. He sent me a telegram saying in effect, don't come back, you won't like it here. You've got a studio in California with green trees, etc. Back here there's nothing but tall grey buildings.

Anyway, I went back. By this time I had to work doubly hard, because I was doubly a non-animating animator. I had gotten my first job by saying I was an animator, which I wasn't and I'd gotten this $100 a week job by saying I was really an animator, which of course I wasn't, so I had to work twice as hard.