After having read both the interview with Jules Engel in volume 11 of Walt’s People and the one presented below, Charles Solomon offered to write the following introduction:
Jules Engel (1909–2003) was deeply loved by many of his students at CalArts. He was a somewhat more controversial figure among animation professionals. Bill Scott, a gentle man who’d known Engel at the First Motion Picture Unit and at UPA, said he’d fallen prey to a selective memory; others were considerably less charitable. I knew Engel, and I would say our relationship was generally cordial, although neither of us was the other’s favorite person. I wrote his obituary for the Los Angeles Times.
Sadly, there is no evidence to support many of his claims, including ones in Zolotow’s and Weschler’s interview, and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. […]
