John Basmajian was born September 23, 1899, in Jersey City, New Jersey of  Armenian parentage.  His father and mother came to America before the beginning of the Turkish – Armenian massacres of 1895.  They did not know each other until they met in America and later married.  The father was from the Dickran area of Armenia and came from a long line of silk printers who used wooden blocks carved to make the designs.  Of the seven brothers of the Basmajian family in Armenia, only John’s father and one other Brother came to the New World.  Another brother went to Lebanon.  The rest were killed, so there is no further record of what happened to  any other family members who may have survived.

     The senior Basmajian, after spending some years as a foreman in one of the silk

Mills located on the east coast (either Massachusetts or New Jersey) finally decided to open a tailor shop.  The family lived upstairs over the shop on Palisades Avenue in Jersey City.  Before Johnny Basmajian was ten years old, he was already helping in the shop, learning to clean and press and some other rudimentary steps in tailoring.

     There were two younger brothers.  The father kept a tight reign on the boys.  The mother disciplined them simply by pinching them on the arm very hard.   This was a greater punishment to the boys than the rod.

     “I was just a plain little rascal,” Johnny once reminisced to a granddaughter.  “I played hooky many times from school.  We guys would go down to the docks to go swimming in the Hudson River.  The first time I jumped, I didn’t know how to swim, but I was dared to jump and I did.  The I paddled for dear life, dog fashion to a small square wooden raft of some kind.”  This scary experience did not stop young Johnny from repeating himself.  “I got better each time I jumped,” he would say.

     As a young teenager, Johnny worked in the shipyards during the last years of World War I.  He caught hot rivets.  The war ended before he came up for the draft.

     Before and after this time of rivet catching, Johnny was going  to art school at night, helping his father at the tailor shop after school and finding time for a bit of fun.  He often went around “hawking” seat cushions  at the open-air concerts or movie showings during the summer at five cents a cushion if rented.  That way he got to see the programs, too.  Many of the early films were being made in Englewood, New Jersey at the time.  Johnny would be an interested bystander whenever he found a movie being filmed on the streets, along with many other onlookers.

     During these youthful days, Johnny got a jog as a runner  for Osgood’s , a major advertising business in New York City.  “We were called runners because we did exactly that for the company.  The company made advertising pictures , mostly fashions for catalogues.  In the old days, they didn’t have color photography, fax or Xerox.  They had to paint illustrations of the fashions they used.”

     Johnny would give an example, saying, “These artists were so good  they were able to make serge material for suits and coats look like the real thing with just a few strokes of a pen or brush – not easy to do.  Runners used to take messages and such to be delivered safely tot the customer.  Communications were more direct between local businesses then.  So I was a runner.”

     “I don’t remember Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck as being customers of Osgood Company.  Bellis Hess was the catalogue company who featured fashions of the time.  The runner was the contact between the advertising company and the customer, often having to wait at the delivery point for an “OK” and back again to Osgood to be printed  and then to the catalogue page.”

     It was about this time that Johnny started going to the Art Student’s League in New York.  He was particularly impressed with the Gibson Girl artwork and decided to go in for clothing design.

     The artists who worked for Osgood’s took an interest in Johnny.  They were helpful to him in correcting his drawings and making suggestions for improvement.  The wash artists showed him how to put on the water color wash and the technique of drawing garment textures.  Johnny was about fourteen at that time and it was Osgood’s that he learned to make silk look like silk and serge look like serge.  He also mastered the detailing work of buckles, buttons, laces and other trimmings for the fashions.

     The Art Student’s League taught many of the well known artists at the that time, Norman Rockwell included.     Johnny greatly admired N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle and J.C. Leyendecker.  To study their work, he used to stand in front of art stores displaying their illustrations.  He was particularly fascinated by J.C. Leyendecker  because of his style, which differed from that of his contemporaries.  “The lines of Leyendecker fascinated me,” Johnny would often remark.

     Overall, he got a very good education from the artists at Osgood’s who took him in tow and taught him through experience.  The Art Student’s League further formalized and advanced his training and talent.

     Johnny never forgot his mother who died when he was sixteen.  He always spoke of her as a ‘real Honey,” the kindest and nicest mother anybody could have.  He had a strong bond with his father , saying he had the black hair and eyes of his sire as did the youngest brother.  It was the middle brother who favored the blond coloration of the mother with blue eyes.  Johnny was always appreciative of all his father did for him in encouraging him in his art.

er the disaster.  Johnny was left with the responsibility of raising his younger brothers, one nearly eighteen, the other going on eleven.

     Once, when asked when his art career really got started, Johnny laughingly replied,  “Not until 1923.  I learned to paint signs.  After Dad died, I went to Los Angeles, California.  I got a job with the Bentham Sign Company.  In the beginning, I drove the sign truck, delivering and hanging signs.  Then I was advanced to the laying-out of signs, using perforated patterns which were traced on the sign boards.  We used little ‘pounce bags’ filled with powered chalk to get the tracings on the boards.  We made these pounce bags ourselves , using little circles of this cloth and tying the drawn-up edges with string.  Similar to the sachet bag.”  At Bentham’s, Johnny was taught how to do pictorial work, lettering, silk-screening and how to use gold leaf.  He became adept at all of these.

     Johnny liked to remark of those days in 1923, “That’s the year Walt Disney came out here.  Imagine the difference though!  We both came to Los Angeles about the same time, only he went one way and I went the other.”

     Around 1925, Johnny went to work for Richfield Oil Company, now called Arco, in the graphics art department.  While there, he took time off to work on the cartouches of The Ten Commandments which were commissioned for the Los Angeles Court House, which was nearing completion.

     In a matter reminiscent of Michelangelo, lying on his back, Johnny did all the lettering for the Ten Commandments, which were all around the walls of the big hall, and the gold leaf designs on the ceiling pictures.  “Gold leaf is made by pounding gold into very thin flat sheets.  It’s a real mess if one is not careful; it tends to disintegrate and fly all around.” He often reiterated.

     Marriage came in July, 1930 tot a non-Armenian girl, Edna Lee Fox.  They were married in Las Vegas, Nevada, as yet only a little desert town.  It was not an elopement, but rather a convenience in that Johnny had to do a job for Richfield in that area at the time.  He was doing the huge racing car monuments being placed along the highway from California to Nevada.  He was also in charge of the bulletin board advertisements to promote the oil company.  This was before the depression caused by the stock market debacle of 1929 had begun to take a radical effect. The marriage lasted for 58 ½ years.

     In his twenties, Johnny like to amateur box.  He belonged to the Los Angeles Athletic Club.  He was also an excellent swimmer.  But most of all, he liked to be busy.  It seemed that work was really more of an avocation than something he was forced to do.

     An amusing incident is told of the marriage of the young couple.  It was the noon hour, lunch-break time, in an old church with the only minister, his wife and the choir organist as a witness.  After a brief ceremony, the minister presented to the bride a copy of the marriage license at the court house – just in case perhaps.  When they had gone to purchase the marriage license at the court house before they found the little old church, Johnny had humorously told the clerk he did not have the $2.50 license fee since he had lost in the nickel slot machines.  He then turned to Edna and said, “How about it?”  edna paid the fee.  That became a prize story of Johnny’s and he never lived it down.

     When Richfield Oil Company folded during the depression, Johnny got work at the movie studios.  He painted the familiar Republic Eagle logo on glass which was used in the opening credits  for many years by Republic Pictures.  He also worked on the sets for the pictures being filmed.  However, work was sporadic and a long driving distance in those days without freeways.  He returned to oil company work, contracting for Violet Ray gasoline which became General Petroleum and is now Mobil Oil Corporation.  As a licensed general contractor, he did work for the Shell Oil Company in the field doing pictorials and advertising bulletin boards as well as work in their art publicity department.  Recalling those days with Shell Oil, Johnny laughed, “They used to serve tea at 4:00pm every day in our department.  I guess it was because it was an English-Dutch company and the English must have their tea.”

   

      The family built their home with FHA funds.  There was nothing very spectacular about their lives .  They worked together  -- the father outside the home, the mother inside the home.  They engaged in church activities , Girl Scouts and later Boy Scouts.  They had family gatherings most Sundays.  They enjoyed the beach and the neighborhood city-owned swimming pool.  There were barbecues; Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinners were spent with family and friends.  In other words they lived each day to the best of their joint abilities. They possessed “togetherness.”

  Then came the World War II years.  It was during this period that Johnny decided to try to put into action a long-held dream.  For years he had talked about wanting to go to the Walt Disney Studios and learn to be an animator.  He greatly admired Walt Disney from afar and what he was doing.  Johnny had done a log of sketches  and cartoons for his own pleasure.  He often would clip cartoons from the newspapers that appealed to him and make comments on the style of the artist.  He made charcoal sketches of his family and cartooned humorous events around him, but he was never really satisfied with what he had done, so he tossed most of them away.

     Johnny admits being a little scared when he got his appointment with Hal Adelquist, personnel manager of the studio.  Previously a family friend and also an employee of Disney, Hal King, advised him to take along some samples of his work when he went for the interview.

     The family still has the cartoon Johnny took with him to the studio.  “I had a little string tied around my finger and I had a billy goat running towards me.  I was bent over and the billy goat was going to butt me in the rear.  The caption read, ‘Thanks pal for reminding me of my appointment Thurs. with Mr. Adelquist.’”  Johnny would demonstrate how he looked bent over with the goat going for him – everyone would laugh who saw the demonstration and heard the story.

     Adelquist enjoyed the cartoon , but he told Johnny, “Well, let’s put it this way.  We are not hiring people your age..  We like to get kids from high school, then we can break them in to our methods.  We like to mold our animators.”  Adelquist went on.  “However, we are hard up.  All the kids are being drafted and we need men.  We need artists and so we are going to have to hire older people.  I guess you can have a try at it.”

     It is certain that Johnny did not get the job solely on the basis of his cartoon nor the studio’s need for replacements.  He also got it because he had good references and a lot of experience to help him.

     “Right then and there he took me to Johnny Bond’s department in the animation section.  I was put in a room flipping papers.  These were practice animation sheets, as I later learned.  Yes, Johnny Bond was the first person to show me how to flip the animation sheets, holding your hand so there is a sheet between all your fingers and thumb.  As you flip the sheets you can see what animation is needed for the action.  Then you draw in that action so that it seems continuous as the sheets are flipped.”

     He continued his explanation:  “Then the rough action is cleaned up and more defined as you proceed to flip and draw, correcting and examining carefully all the time you are flipping.  When we were kids, there were little flip-books of cartoons, I remember, like Buster brown, Happy hooligan, Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt & Jeff.  This is based on the same principle.”

     Johnny Basmajian and Johnny Bond became fast friends as the years went by.  Their families have kept in touch with each other as well.

     “That first day Johnny Bond told me to ‘sit here, Basmajian, at this table.’  He handed me some sheets of paper with five perforations at the bottom of each sheet – a bar, three holes and another bar.  “Now flip these,’ showing me how to hold my fingers.  ‘Flip them from the first to the last action.  You have to train your fingers.  The you flip until your heart is burnt out,’ and he turned and left the room.”

     Later, Johnny learned that expert flipping was the first step in becoming an animator.  The animator made rough drawings of the extreme points of action within a given sequence of motion.  The “in-betweener” had to fill in the action between the animator’s extremes.  This was also done is rough form with as many drawings as necessary to render the motion smooth.  This was all pencil work.

     There were three other men in the room doing the same kind of work:  Milt Banta, Bruce McIntyre and Dick Lucas.  Johnny had been introduced to them via the pointing finger of the animation head.  The men each paused and shook hands with Johnny, then went back to their work.  But they were friendly and Johnny watched them at their work when he could.  They gave him a lot of sound advice and help.

     Several weeks were spent just learning the flipping technique.  Then one day Johnny was called to go down to the camera section.

     “It seems there was a rush job and they wanted someone down there to put film sections between two glass slides and tape them together.”  Not very exciting, but it was then that Johnny met Ken Brier, in charge of the department.  This activity lasted about a week, then Johnny returned to his assigned room and found he had been given some actual to-be-used animation sheets to be cleaned up.  Before this it had all been practice.

     Johnny had become acquainted with Ward Kimball, one of the top animators, about three days after he went to work at the studio.  Kimball had a room just across the hall.  As time went by, Johnny did work for Ward, althought he was never stationed in his room.  He did a lot of work with Freddie Moore.  Bill Justice was another of the artists. with whom Johnny worked.  One time Johnny came back form his lunch hour to find a large caricature of him pinned to the front of the door.  In it, Johnny was smiling broadly, showing a gleaming gold tooth.  Johnny always said the caricature was done by Bill Justice, but it had not been signed by anyone.  Throughout all these years, Johnny had kept that caricature.

     Afterwards, Johnny was made assistant to George Kreisl, drawing Pluto.  George Kreisl was the supervising animator for Pluto at that time.  Johnny was also assigned to work on the animation of Figaro the Cat (introduced in the film Pinocchio) when that character was used in later cartoons.  Johnny was never the innovator of any Disney characters.

     Johnny’s wife, Edna, recalls that during the World War II years, ‘We had blackout curtains, food ration coupons and out aluminum pot and pan salvages.  Whatever happened to all the cookware is hard to say, but we thought most of it ended up in a scrap heap, unused.  There was no problem with gasoline rationing for us because Johnny moonlighted under his contractor’s license for the oil companies.  He worked long hours, weekends and evenings, lettering oil tankers, oil storage tanks and airfield landing strips.”

     “Once, Johnny was on a landing field of the military base located off the highway going from Los Angeles to San Diego.  Camp Pendleton, I believe,” Edna recalled.  He was painting large letters and numbers on the runways.  Suddenly the MP’s came racing up to him in their jeep, ordered him to get in, and rushed back to the gate entrance.  It seems no one was around when Johnny came through the credential check-point.  He had waited a few minutes, then impatient, he simply had gone to the work site, parking his little red truck at the side of the runway.  After a bit of a furor, he was allowed to go back to work.  This time the MP’s escorted him back to the job and the little red truck.”

     She added, “I remember another time at the same base, when he was lettering the identification markings for the landing strips, a big military plane flying very low roared part him to another strip.  They must have spotted the little red truck parked on the edge of the strip.  This incident should never had occurred if prior information had been relayed to incoming planes since the strip was supposed to have been closed until the work was finished.”  Johnny would laugh over these happenings as he recalled them in later years.  He said, “I really ducked down fast that time!”

     Many times Johnny would take several of the studio workers who lived in the San Gabriel valley area to work and back during the rationing period.  Ward Kimball and five or six of the “ink & paint” girls ride with him, some of them seated on cushions in the back of the open bed of the little red ’38 Chevy pick-up.  That little red truck certainly helped contribute to the war effort!”

     Johnny liked to visit the ink and paint department, watching the deftness and skill of the girls at work.  When the assistant animator had cleaned up and defined the action lines, all done in pencil on the animation sheet, the drawing went to the ink and paint section.  The girls would trace over the pencil lines with ink on the top side of the cel.  Then they would reverse the cel and put in the colors on the back side of the sheet.  The perforations on the bottom of every cel or piece of animation paper is the same and keeps everything aligned with no slippage.  The artists all use what are called peg boards to make sure of this.  The perforations and the peg board are very important to the proper development and making of a cartoon.  Sequential development is also a very important factor.

     Colors are charted by number to facilitate painting.  The medium was water-based.  Of course, in handling the cels by everyone, white cotton gloves were worn to prevent smudging or fingerprints.

     Everyone Johnny met at the studio liked him.  Even the carpenters made him a sturdy sign kit to replace his own worn-out one that he carried everywhere he went.  He always took it to the studio saying, “I might need something in it anytime.  You never know.”

     When asked once, Johnny said, “Yes, it’s true the animators sometimes use mirrors to help get the proper expressions or positions of their characters.”

     Ward Kimball and Johnny became good friends.  Kimball was a lively person, very talented and interested in many things.   He was a teacher for a live art class set up for his fellow artists.  He also formed a little group for musicians, The Fire House Five, who jazzed up the studio lunch hour with their brass.

     Kimball owned a large piece of land in the San Gabriel Valley of California.  Interested in model trains and in the real ones, too, he had built a railroad track around his land to run an old-fashioned steam engine and several cars to roll along these tracks.  He had also acquired the set of the train depot used in So Dear to My Heart.  Today, the station filled with memorabilia, the old steam engine and the cars, have been given to a railroad and trolley museum in Perris, California.  Many times we had taken our Scout troops over to see the train and ride it.

     Kimball also had an old fire engine.  He had Johnny show him how to do the gold leaf lettering on the truck.  Johnny said when asked about it, “Ward wanted to know how to size the stuff and lay the gold leaf.  Once it was explained, he did all the work on that fire engine; the son of a gun was good!  I went over to have a look when he finished and it was perfect!”

     When Walt Disney was beginning to formulate ideas for The Three Caballeros and Saludos, Amigos!, the studio opened a Spanish language class for studio members who wanted to participate.  Both Johnny and Kimball attended the language classes.  Johnny also went to the live art classes, of course.

     Occasionally, Johnny brought home cartoons to show the neighborhood kids.  He obtained Little Hiawatha to show at the school’s Halloween Carnival.  They couldn’t charge an admission fee, so bags of popcorn were sold for 10 cents tickets to the show.

     It was an extremely hot August day when Edna’s Girl Scout Troop visited Disney Studios.  Johnny had arranged everything.  There were about 25 girls with some parents.  They all had lunch at the cafeteria as guests of Walt.  The troop installed him as an honorary member of Girl Scout Troop 319 of  Park School, Alhambra, California.  ‘Walt had a kindly look and a twinkle in his eye as he accepted the little scout pin,”  Johnny would later comment.  “I watched his face closely and wondered what he was thinking.  I could see that he was enjoying the moment, though.”

     Later, the girls asked for Walt’s autograph.  He suggested that since there were so many girls, he would see that they received the autographs later in the day.

     Then the troop went to a preview showing of a cartoon the studio was about to release.  Films were often shown at the theater on the lot to employees during the lunch hour.  As they were walking to the theater, the girls were excited to point out the different street signs, all named for different characters: Mickey road; Goofy Street.  Their appreciation of the show pleased Walt very much.

     The last event of the day was going to Walt’s penthouse office and receiving the promised autographs.  He showed the girls around, pointing out pictures of his family.  It was quite a day for the Girl Scouts.  The troop received a letter of thanks from Walt and kept in touch with him for a long time afterwards.

     Johnny also arranged studio tours for our oujt-of-town relatives  and friends who came to see us.

     Johnny moved up in status in those years from in-betweener to backgrounds, to assistant animator.  Later he worked in the publicity department.

     From the very first time Johnny went down to the camera department to bind the slides, he was very impressed with the camera and the way they put the cartoons, composed of thousands of cels, together for production.  The camera was about fourteen feet high, encased in an iron framework.

     “I went to work at the studio about the time the multi-plane camera was perfected.  I think the first prototype was used for filming The Old Mill, totally using three dimensional effects.  The picture won an oscar for Disney in 1937.”

     Disney had long held the idea of a camera which would produce the illusion of depth.  However, it was Ub Iwerks, who had been with Disney at the beginning, who perfected the multi-plane camera.  Iwerks was interested in special effects and improved ways of animation.  After personal difficulties with Walt, he left the studio on Hyperion.  After a time, he returned to Disney and continued to work on a moveable camera that was not as cumbersome as earlier attempts.  This was a vertical multi-plane camera, later refined with the ability to move horizontally.  This refinement permitted simultaneous movements, vertical and horizontal, across the frame as well as into it.  Larger backgrounds could also be used now.

     Johnny often remarked, “of course I didn’t understand some of the technical stuff, but I did know that the camera took some beautiful three-dimensional pictures.  I did learn the working principles of it first hand, and I saw it in action.”

     In the beginning, Disney shunned any and all publicity about the multi-plane camera.  But he was very proud of that camera.

     Johnny learned about the camera and its function from cameraman Ken Brier.  Johnny had to go to the camera department many more times throughout the years.  He tried to explain in layman terms:

     “The camera took inverted shots from where it was placed in the top of the framework.  There were grooves in the shelves which were on different levels.  The cels to be photographed  were put in the grooves sequentially and filmed.  The camera could also be used for many cels to show the movement across it.”

     When asked how they animated before the use of the multi-plane camera, Johnny replied, “I guess it was a slower process, all by hand.  Brier told me they started with all the cel drawings to be used.  These were all numbered, of course, to keep them in proper order.  The camera was fastened to a table lighted by mercury bulbs.  Then they put the background on pegs fitted to the size of the drawings and matched all the holes of the cel and background.”

     Johnny further explained, “Brier told me they clamped a pane of glass over the drawing to press it smoothly.  Then they could photograph.  The glass comes up from the drawing and goes on to the next.  According to Brier, they had a hard time getting depth so they tried to do it by removing the top cel and photographing the under cel.”

     Johnny was intrigued by the multi-plane camera. The idea of the multi-plane camera is to put separate cels on separate planes according to the perspective you want.  The distance to the lens works with the illusion of size from foreground to background.  Yes, I learned a lot about that camera, indeed I did!”

     Almost immediately after America’s entry into World War II, the government took over the studio.  The army annexed everything, turning the place into a military base.  They even stored ammunition in the parking lot and they made use of some of the buildings for sleeping quarters.  They were preparing for a Japanese invasion of Southern California, so they said.  Everything was topsy-turvy at the studio.  Disney was directed to make training films for military use.

     Once, for some reason, Johnny had to go to the projection booth.  He did not know the army brass were previewing one of these  strategic films.  The projectionist whispered loudly as he opened the door, “What the hell are you doing here!  Quick, get in that corner and sit still before anybody sees you!  If they do you’ll be in the calaboose and they will toss away the key!

  So, in the corner sat Johnny.  “I didn’t see anything of the picture.  The projectionist did not want me to see what it was all about.  He wanted to be able to truthfully say that I knew nothing if the issue arose.  All went well, however, and nobody else knew me.”  Johnny made his exit after the big boys had exited first.

     Johnny was assigned to work on Victory Through Air Power, written by Major Alexander Seversky.  Disney placed great importance on the film’s message.  Production on it was given high priority.  The theme of the book proved itself in the conflict with Iraq in 1991.  In the 1940’s it was just an idea forming in military thinking.  Seversky’s ideas were only tested towards the close of the World War II conflagration.

     Johnny was responsible for lettering on the huge maps used in the film.  They had to work many nights on them.  Walt Disney was there overseeing the project most of those nights.  Also in production at night  were many other studio projects.  This was necessary because of the heavy air traffic flying in and out of Burbank airport during the day, interfering with the sound stages.

     Disney was also anxious to get the film done and have it over with.  It was the second time around – the government rejected the first version so they had to do it over.  That was the one reason Disney kept a close personal watch over the project.  He also wanted to begin other projects he already outlined.

     Disney cautioned Johnny not to let anyone change the maps in any way, even the Major.  Johnny had to be very tactful not to lock horns when he had to be politely, but very firmly tell the Major to see Walt about any changes he suggested first.  Seversky did want to make certain changes and took the matter to Walt who said “OK.”  This satisfied him, but the maps stayed the same until Johnny had Walt’s go ahead.

     On completion of Victory Through Air Power, Disney threw a party for Seversky and other military officers at the studio.  Walking down the hall after work one afternoon, walt stopped Johnny and said, I’ll need these show cards for the bar tonight.  Guess what, Johnny?  You are elected to do them.”  So Johnny stayed late and barely got the cards out in time for the festivities.  Some of the cards read:  OUR DELAYED HI-BALL; SINK OR SWIM WITH A FLAT-TOP FRAPPE; TRY SASCHA’S DELIGHT, THE P47 THUNDERBOLT!  YOU’LL TAKE OFF; THE CEILING ZERO – RICKY’S HI-BALLS AND COCKTAILS (“Ricky” referring to Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker).  The party was June, 1943.

     Later on, when Johnny was sent to the advertising and publicity department to work with Joe Reddy, he became involved with child actors Bobby Driscoll and Luanna Patten.  They were making Song of the South.  Johnny became responsible for the children and their parents for some time.  He always said they were nice kids.  “It bothers me very much that their early adulthood resulted in Bobby’s dying from drugs and suicide.”  The actor who played Uncle Remus in the picture suffered a heart attack while it was in production.  James Baskett later came back and finished the picture.  In the meantime, the scenes were shot around his character.

     Johnny’s wife Edna remembers the day he first came home with a stack of cels from the studio.  He seemed very upset that day.  He told her, “They are throwing out everything in the morgue!  They said they needed the space.”  Continuing, he said, “Johnny Bond gave everyone in our section some of what they were getting rid of today.  He told us if we want more to go ahead and get them before they are all tossed.”

     “I can’t believe it!  I can’t believe it!  They are trying to wash the old cels clean, hoping they can be re-used.  It’s not going to work Edna!”  And Johnny was right.  Many cels were wrinkled because of poor storage conditions.  Washing only salvaged a minimum of them, maybe one in a hundred could be re-used.  The attempt to save cels for re-use was because there was a shortage of materials required in their manufacture due to war needs.  Nitrate was an important component needed to make celluloids.  But more important, it was needed in making gun powder for explosives.  Since storage space at the studio was a problem, they got rid of old material they couldn’t re-use.

     In the days that followed, Johnny brought home more of the disgards.  Being war time, tight security prevailed at the studio.  To take anything from the studio, a signed permit was required.  All personnel had to have government identification badges with their pictures.  Johnny Bond gave him the permits without question whenever Johnny had something the morgue saved for him.  Ben Mosely was in charge of the morgue and he would put things aside for Johnny as the files were cleared.  Even the ink and paint girls, as they tried to wash the cels, would save some material for him theta could not be re-used.

     One day Johnny was very infuriated when he observed some of his fellow workers throw cels on the floor and skate around the room on them in celebration after the completion of a production.

     Often at night, when he came home, he would carefully separate the artwork, powdering the back of each cel with fine talc.  He hoped it would prevent the cels from sticking together.  He would count out so many cels and put them in a manila folder with tissue paper between sheets as well.  Then he put them in cardboard boxes in the garage.

     When they first started ridding the studio morgue of the surplus, Johnny went to personnel and asked if they were aware of what was going on.  “I told them this stuff is too good to be destroyed, but they were not very interested,”  Johnny said.  However, he gave some of the workers in personnel the cels when they asked him.  But no one seemed to realize that cartoon history was being tossed on the ash heap.  They saw it as a nice little something to hang in their child’s room  or in their den.  No one appeared to recognize the work as a form of art.

But Johnny did recognize the historical value of it.  Animation art had no monetary value at that time.

     Johnny simply could not believe that this was happening.  “Even Walt Disney did not appear too overly concerned when I mentioned the matter to him.  He just shrugged , saying “We’ve got too much of everything stashed away we are not going to use anymore.  We need space and we are going to have a better filing system from now on.”

     “So, no one made a concerted effort to save anything.  They pulled no punches about it at all.  Other employees took stuff.  I don’t know how many, but I don’t think they felt about the pictures as I did.  I hated seeing them destroyed so I saved what I could.  I don’t believe the other people who took stuff ever did much  about trying to preserve it.”

     When Johnny started working at Disney Studios on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, California, little did he know it was the first step that would change the direction of his future.  Nevertheless, going to work at the studio was the focal point of events that would greatly affect his life and the lives of his family.

     Johnny often talked about how, during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the labor unions moved into Hollywood to organize the movie industry.  It was a time of unrest and uncertainty; of Communist exaggerations and union corruptions.  The mafia muscled in on the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).  Willie Bioff was the underling in charge of the screen capital’s recruitment for a labor union.  The studios were in real trouble then.  Most, if not all, of the movie studios were targeted.

     In the beginning, Walt Disney Studios was not affected.  Their staff were not members of any union, at least not openly.  So the studio went about its business normally.  This fact was probably due to the relationship between Walt Disney and the employees.  They regarded him as a friend, respecting and standing a little in awe of him at the same time.  He was rather a father figure, regardless of their main grievance against his policy for not giving screen credit  for the contributions of others., until Snow White.

     Snow White helped Disney Studio out financially.  When times were tough, Disney told his men he would give them bonuses and raises when things got better.  So the employees continued to work with no salary increase because they expected to have a share in the Disney profits.  However, it never quite worked out in the way Walt had said.  He said he had to put everything he could back into new productions.

     The Hyperion studio was bursting at the seams, so they moved to the new Buena Vista Studio location in Burbank.  The artists patiently waited for their increased benefits.  The only screen acknowledgements were to be given to feature movies now, no cartoon credits.

     Financially, things must have been very rough for Disney with the new studio expansion.  Indeed, he finally had to sell stock in the open market.  Stock was also offered to the employees at approximately $2.00 per share.  He didn’t want to, but it was necessary for survival.  Moving to the new location caused Walt to have to delegate more organizational and studio concerns to other people.

     Disney Studios became the objective of the Screen Cartoonists Guild, led by Herb Sorrell.  He signed up a lot of employees already disgruntled by what they felt were Walt’s unfulfilled promises.  Sorrell prevented a “right of choice” secret ballot from taking place.  Walt wanted the men to vote on a closed shop.  Sorrell threatened Disney with national boycott.  He declared Disney would be put on an ‘unfair’ list all over the country.

     Johnny recalls, “I have movies of that strike.  It was an ugly one.  I got the film from a participating studio friend.  Only less than half of the men walked the picket lines.  The rest crossed over them.”

     “I never walked the picket line.   I didn’t believe all the rumors going around about Walt and the operations of the studio.  I know he tried to tell the strikers at a special meeting what his position was.  I think he felt betrayed, right or wrong.  He was hurt because some of the men he had trusted very much were against him.  He was even booed at the meeting.”

     After that, things changed at the studio,  Walt withdrew from his employees.  The old camaraderie was lost.  Johnny used to say, “All I know is that when I first went too work at the studio, it was like an honor system.  You came to work, you did your job and when you finished you left.  There were no strings on coffee breaks.  Often you would go down to the cafeteria and sit ant talk to Walt over a cup of coffee.  There were not time clocks.  You were trusted to perform your allotted task and you did just that.”

     Afterwards, when things settled down with union demands having been satisfied, there was a complete turn-around.  Time clocks were installed, punched in and out for everything.  Coffee breaks were limited.  Walt did not fraternize with the men.  He stood more and more apart from them.  Decisions were being made by in-between executives.

     It was during Johnny’s time in the publicity department that he was approached about going to New York to work.  Johnny said that he was not interested because he had lived back there and didn’t want to uproot the family.  But he always felt it was a great compliment.

     In the advertising department handled by hank Porter, posters and advertising were his responsibility.  Johnny did the pen and ink drawings and lettering on articles and advertisement for magazines and newspaper publishing.  Once he was given a huge bulletin board on the studio lot to do.  He felt frustrated at not being allowed to do more animation work just because he had these other skills.  Then there came the sudden reorganization of the studio.  Efficiency was going to be the prime aim, not creativity.  At any rate, the entire studio closed for several weeks – only top executives remained.

     Johnny was discouraged.  There were bills that had to be paid.  He felt he was going nowhere in being a cartoonist.  He never returned to the studio when it reopened.  Instead, he went back to being an independent commercial artist and general contractor in partnership with his brother, Leo.

     Some twenty years passed.  Johnny retired from active work in 1965.  To celebrate, he and his wife visited Hawaii.  On their return from the islands, Johnny was at loose ends and became very restless because of his inactivity.

     One day, edna saw Johnny in the garage going over some of the Disney artwork.  He was selecting some cels he had promised to a friend.  As she watched, she thought that Johnny would certainly be kept busy if he ever got down to doing something with them.  For years he had talked about doing it someday.  He wanted to have an art exhibit at a museum one day for other people to enjoy.  So, with repeated encouragement from both his wife and son, Johnny got started.

     A few framed pieces already hung in their home, but Johnny never made a concentrated effort about the remaining artwork.  So a few frames were bought to begin.  Being on a limited budget with only Social Security and a small savings, Johnny would buy twelve assorted frames each month, paying for them before the next month’s purchase.

     That began Johnny’s work on the salvaged pieces.  He used an old-fashioned paper cutter and razor blade to cut mattes.  He hand-striped every matte with a French matte design, using a simple felt-tipped pen.  He worked long hours daily in the kitchen near a sunny corner window.  He had a lot of patience and he had no pressing deadline pushing him.  The first thing he had to do was to remove the talk he had so carefully dusted on the cels to prevent them from sticking together.  Needless to say, this was a very painstaking operation.  To do it, he used a Q-tip and the finest camel-hair brushes.

     Johnny worked hard on those pictures initially doing all the work himself, feeling his way along.  He systematically inventoried, catalogued, matted, framed and labeled each piece of artwork.  He insisted on saving the entire cel regardless of its condition when he could.  Some of the cels had been in questionable condition when he got them from the studio.  For over twenty years after he retired, Johnny was occupied with these cels.  He established a regular pattern of work.  The most important thing was that he thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing.  He felt happy about it, too.  He was doing what he liked to do and keeping busy.

     As the pictures were completed, they were carefully boxed and stored in the house and not the garage.  That is, until the back bedroom looked more like a storage room with boxes stacked everywhere.  He finally had to put in steel shelving to place the finished work on so he could walk around the room.  The bedroom also contained materials for doing the work such as matte boards, labels and envelopes of unfinished cels, carefully indexed.

     Johnny, now in his eighties, needed help with the project.  His son, John Orin, continued to organize and refine labeling information, indexing and a chronological storage of the art.  At the same time, archival quality transparencies were taken of each piece by Jacqueline Darakjy and her partner, Henry Schwartze.  Weekends, the young men came to do the cataloging.  Johnny continued his matting and striping.  He progressed in the techniques, sometimes using circles or triangles for his backgrounds when there wasn’t a studio original to couple with a cel.  He was always innovative in his matting and framing.

     Johnny’s health began to fail around 1983, aggravated by a bad viral infection.  He also became emotionally upset when it was decided that he must do something with the pictures he had completed so far.  The finished products had been put into storage, eliminating some of the bedroom clutter.  But that was inconvenient when it was necessary to have the material easily available for reference.

     So it was decided that there would be an auction.  Christie’s in New York was chosen.  It was hoped the auction would be a means to call attention to the world that this animation art was a true American fine art form.  That was really Johnny’s dream.  It was this belief that sustained him while the auction preparations were being made.  He had always wanted to have an exhibition for public viewing when the preservation work on the pictures was finished.  So, he was pleased and reassured by keeping enough of the artwork back for this purpose when a more opportune time would present itself.

     The very thought of turning over his pictures to others at an auction did not help Johnny very much in his recovery from physical problems.  He felt the pictures were a part of him – which they were.  He had put so much of himself into this work for such a long time.

     Once, when they were readying the pictures for Christie’s four had to be resealed with a new backing material.  When it came time to ship them, they were nowhere to be found.  Until pressured, Johnny said nothing.  But he learned they were already committed for the auction, he produced them.  He had hidden them away because he just didn’t want to let them go.

  The auction at Christie’s was scheduled for December 8, 1984.  But a bombshell exploded on the Basmajians.  Disney filed suit to stop the auction and took Johnny to court.  He was served notice only four days before the auction was to be held.  The hearing was held in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Robert L. Carter presiding.  Disney charged that the artwork was the property of the studio and that it had not been given to the Basmajians.  Several studio employees and executives appeared to testify.  Johnny’s health had not permitted him to go to New York neither for the auction not for the hearing.  His son took his place.

     It was shown by the Basmajians that Disney Studios had been aware of Johnny’s collection since at least 1970.  They also had been contacted by Christie’s early in July, 1984, regarding a charity benefit sponsored by both Christie’s and Disney.  The Basmajian collection would have been featured.

     Prior to that, his son , John Orin, had taken some of the artwork to the Disney Studios seeking to verify their origin.  This meeting was in 1983 with the studio archivist and some other studio representatives.  Later, he desired to know if Disney would be interested in publishing a book using the art pieces.  During all this time, no one ever suggested a legal battle.

     It was pointed out and confirmed by the studio members at the hearing that when Johnny was employed there, a conservative estimate of “some 20 million pieces of artwork, cels, sketches, etc. were completed in connection with the Disney short subjects and feature films.”  In actuality, the number is probably closer to 160 million.  Only 10% of this material was considered important.  Some of the material was used again and some was sold to an authorized vendor, Courvoisier Galleries.  Disney’s archivist from 1970 testified that Disney had some fifty cels from this time period in its possession.

     The judge’s summary concluded that “since only fifty cels remained in the studio morgue out of a possible 10% that had monetary value to the studio, it was clear to him that the studio had not placed great value on most of this kind of material.  It was also certain that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the 10% were considered of sufficient value to sell to the public.  But this would leave millions of pieces, cels, sketches, etc., unaccounted for.  The declared purported carefully policy of preservation by the studio was simply non-existent.”

     It was also ruled that ‘where a copyright owner sells or transfers a particular copy of his copyright work, he divests himself of the exclusive right in that copy and the right to sell and passes to the transferee.”

  In his final remarks, the judge further noted, “Basmajian is now 85 years old.  He is a resident of California.  Plaintiff filed this action on Monday, December 3.  The matter was set down for hearing on December 6 and 7.  Basmajian submitted an affidavit.  In view of the time pressures created by plaintiff instituting suit so close to the date of the auction, they could hardly expect an 85 year old man who, the court is advised, is somewhat infirm to be present in New York on December 6 and 7 in person.  Had plaintiff filed this action earlier, perhaps Basmajian could come to New York in person or his testimony could have been preserved in a deposition.  Under the circumstances, the affidavit must be accepted.”  The conclusion of the case established “Basmajian’s lawful possession and the lack of irreparable injury also defeat Disney’s claim for a preliminary injunction based on state law….”  So, the auction went on as scheduled.

     Johnny felt vindicated.  Although urged by his legal counsel, he was not interested in filing a slander and libel suit against the studio.  He was old and suffering from a serious heart problem.  His family abided by his decision.

     John Basmajian died suddenly on January 22, 1989 at home with his entire family present.