Walter Lantz/Quotes

""Our films didn't have a prayer against Warners or Disney or MGM. We didn't have writers like Tedd Pierce or Mike Maltese--you could lean pretty heavily on those guys. Ben Hardaway, who was in charge of story, couldn't compete with those guys; neither could the other story man, Milt Schaffer, although he had a better idea of structure. It was no secret that Walt Lantz didn't have the money the other guys did. Even Warners probably spent half again as much per cartoon; Disney spent three or four times as much. Still, we managed to do something interesting films, consindering the limitations.""

- Shamus Culhane

""The fascinating thing about the studio was that there was no story department. They would put a little notice up on the bulletin board saying: 'The next Oswald will take place at the North Pole. Anybody having any gags, please turn them in before such a date.' If you turned in gags regularly, the way Tex Avery, Cal Howard, Jack Carr and two or three others of us did, you'd be called into the gag meeting. The group would go into Walt's office and talk about whatever the subject of the cartoon was. Walt would put it into some kind of form and that was the story--no scripts, no storyboards.""

- Walter Lantz animator Leo Salkin

""I never tried to make a cartoon for a certain age bracket. I just tried to make entertaining pictures. That's why they still play and why they play so well in foreign countries.""

- Walter Lantz

""Laverne came to me with a beautiful portfolio, so i gave her a job. She became one of my top animators and was the only woman animator in the business for years. Most producers didn't believe a woman could draw the exaggerations needed for action, that they could only handle birds and bees and flowers. They were wrong, of course.""

- Lantz, referring to his female animator Laverne Harding.