Working with Disney by Don Peri

Author:Don Peri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2011-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

Xavier (X) Atencio

Xavier (X) Atencio was born on September 4, 1919, in Walsenburg, Colorado. He moved to Los Angeles in 1937 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. He began his career at the Walt Disney Studios in 1938 as an inbetweener on Pinocchio. He became an assistant to Wolfgang Reitherman on Fantasia and Dumbo before leaving for four years of service in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He returned to the studio and worked on short subjects, including Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom and the innovative Jack and Old Mac (1956), Noah’s Ark (1959), and A Symposium on Popular Songs (1962), which he and Bill Justice were instrumental in creating. The team of Atencio and Justice also created innovative titles for The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Parent Trap (1961), and Babes in Toyland (1961) and created the special effects for the memorable scene in Mary Poppins where the nursery is magically tidied up. X moved to WED in 1965 and worked on many attractions there, most notably writing the lyrics for “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” for the Pirates of the Caribbean and “Grim Grinning Ghosts” for the Haunted Mansion. X retired in 1984 and was named a Disney Legend in 1996.

I interviewed X at WED Enterprises on October 12, 1978, immediately before I interviewed Bill Justice. As an ardent fan of The Mickey Mouse Club, I enjoyed seeing some of the artwork on the walls of his office. As we were saying good-bye outside his office, he introduced me to Herb Ryman, who I was able to interview a couple of days later on this same trip to southern California. (On this four-day trip, I had the opportunity to interview X and Bill, Larry Clemmons, Ken Anderson, Marc Davis, and Herb Ryman!) I have seen X over the years at various events, most recently at the D23 Expo in September 2009, and he is always warm and kind and a great representative of the Walt Disney Company. Had I known that the Pirates of the Caribbean Disney attraction would spawn blockbuster films, I might have dug a little deeper into X’s involvement with the song and the attraction.

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