The Walt Disney Family Album - Peter & Harrison Ellenshaw (1985)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This ninth episode focuses on Disney matte painters and special effects wizards Peter Ellenshaw and his son Harrison Ellenshaw.

After World War II, when Walt had to spend funds earned in the UK that were frozen in that country there, he started making live action films he could export back to America. Peter Ellenshaw was a matte painting artist working at the UK studio where Treasure Island was filmed at. Peter had been trained under one of the pioneers of matte painting, W Percy Daily and Walt, who'd never heard of matte painting before, was intrigued in how it opened up the scope of his films while staying under budget.

Over the next several years, Peter continued to work on all of Walt's films shot in the UK. When Walt left the UK and had given Peter an open invitation to join his studio in America, Peter sold everything and moved to America with his family. When he arrived at the Walt Disney Studios Walt wasn't expecting him and hadn't anticipated his arrival so soon but put him to work on Disneyland. Peter painted the first map brochure used in the park.

From there, starting with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Walt had begun making films in America regularly and Peter was the matte painter on nearly all of them. From historical epics such as Johnny Tremain to Toby Tyler to fantasy films like Darby O'Gill & the Little People and Mary Poppins, Peter Ellenshaw's matte paintings were largely responsible for the Walt Disney live action film look. Peter became the master matte painting artist in Hollywood sometimes incorporating special effects that were developed by Ub Iwerks into the shots. No other matte painter did the sorts of things Peter did. He continued to work at Disney before his retirement in the late 1970's but occasionally returned now and then. His final film was Dick Tracy in 1990.

Peter's son, Harrison, sometimes worked with him having grown up on these film sets since he was a boy. By the time he was a young adult, Harrison was already a seasoned matte artist. He began working at the Walt Disney Studios where he contributed to such films as The Apple-dumpling Gang, Pete's Dragon, Tron, and the Black Hole. He also began a collaboration with George Lucas working on the original Star Wars trilogy. Harrison continued working in the film industry for decades, often consulting his father's experience on how he achieved some of the special effects shots he'd been a part of.

Peter Ellenshaw remained immensely loyal to Walt Disney his entire life. Walt looked over Peter like a surrogate son, as he often seemed to with his favorites. Walt even encouraged and sponsored Peter and his wife to become American citizens. His autobiography Ellenshaw Under Glass" Going to the Matte For Disney was published in 2003. Peter continued doing paintings of both Disney and non-Disney subjects for the rest of his life. They're highly sought after by collectors today.

Peter Ellenshaw was named a Disney Legend in 1993. He passed away in 2007.
Harrison has not been named a Disney Legend but he should be.

Original air date February 3, 1985

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.