Meet Disney Archivist Rob Klein

03.10.09 - Hello everyone. My name is Rob Klein, and I'm an archivist with the Walt Disney Archives. Before I tell you the story behind a couple of the Pinocchio treasures we have here in the Archives, I wanted to introduce myself to you.

Rob mulling over some of his latest finds in his office at the Walt Disney Archives.

I was born across the street from Mickey Mouse — meaning, of course, Providence St. Joseph Hospital, which is adjacent to the Disney Studios in Burbank, California. I grew up not more than a few miles away and remember frequently driving by Disney Studios, which always captured my imagination. I wondered what was going on behind the studio gates, and what exciting projects the artists were working on inside. Were they creating new movies and television shows like the ones I enjoyed watching Sundays on The Wonderful World of Disney or on new feature animated films that would be as enjoyable as the classics I saw in re-release in theaters throughout the '70s?

Today it is my job to care for and add to the Company's archival collection and to design and fabricate exhibits to share with Disney employees and Cast Members. Some days I feel like an archaeologist or even a detective, hot on the trail of new treasures that have been forgotten in a closet or lost in a cupboard at the studio. It is not easy to recognize an iconic costume, and to identify it among thousands of similarly styled costumes within the Disney Wardrobe Department, but when a treasure is found in the wild or "on the tree" as I say, it's a real thrill!

The marionette model for Pinocchio; one of the oldest character models in the Walt Disney Archives.

Because a new, remastered Pinocchio comes out today, I wanted to talk about a couple of the important Pinocchio artifacts we have in the in Archives. To make the film, Walt relied heavily on the Character Model Department, the fabled department— started by Walt and led by Disney Legend Joe Grant — that designed characters and props to be featured in Disney films. One of the Model Dapartment's early challenges was to finalize the look for the characters in Pinocchio. It only took a few short weeks to create the model sheets for Jiminy Cricket and Figaro, but nailing Pinocchio down was more of a daunting challenge. It took 12 artists 18 months to arrive at the cute, innocent Pinocchio we know so well today. To help them, world-famous puppeteer and fabricator Bob Jones built a marionette puppet.

Frank Thomas, one of the animation directors on the film and one of Walt's famous "Nine Old Men," remembered this Pinocchio puppet very well. He recalled: "That's how Pinocchio looked when we began drawing him in 1937. He was a smart aleck with a long, thin nose, and he was very wooden. After about six months Walt Disney said, 'There's no

A rare photo of Bob Jones in the Model Department working on the clock model used in Pinocchio.

heart or warmth in the story, and the character is not coming off.' So the writers went back and re-did the story. They changed Pinocchio into a softer likable, innocent little boy. That, of course threw everything we'd done before out of the window. They dumped our old model of Pinocchio. I thought, 'Oh, gee, I've spent a lot of hours with this guy. I'll take him home and save him from the ash pile." Frank Thomas returned this Pinocchio to the Disney Archives years later, where he is still greeted by employees and fans every day.

Another fantastic artifact from Pinocchio is a working clock, also built by Bob Jones. It has a mother spanking a boy over her knee who was caught with his hand in the jam jar. You can see this clock near the beginning of the film in the Geppetto's workshop sequence. The Walt Disney Photo Library image of Bob Jones working on this clock, shown on the left, is a rare treasure we are happy to share with you. The clock still exists all these years later and is in excellent condition. It is perhaps the earliest example of a "working" prop in the Walt Disney Archives.

We will continue to share stories like this one on the D23 Web site as we discover new treasures, and re-discover artifacts that have been safely archived years ago by Disney Legend Dave Smith. The expression "if these walls could talk" applies to these treasures in the Walt Disney Archives, where each and every piece has its own story to tell.