The secrets of Uderzo, the comic book giant: the man who dreamed of being Walt Disney

Our file on Albert Uderzo in 4 episodes

The man who dreamed of being Walt Disney

In Neuilly, in Asterix's daddy's office

Anne Goscinny and Sylvie Uderzo: "Our fathers were like two brothers"

Life after Goscinny

Childhood dreams don't always come true. But they can take you far, far. Until approaching his star, until he touches the destiny of his idol. Here is the story of a little boy named Albert, son of Italian immigrants, who, throughout his life, will dream of being Walt Disney, and who will succeed, at the very least, in creating one of the characters. most famous in the history of comics.

Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), early 1930s. Silvio Leonardo Uderzo, who arrived in France in 1922, buys Le Petit Parisien, the ancestor of the Parisian, every day to keep abreast of the news.

Her second son, Alberto, 7, waits for his father to finish before pouncing on the newspaper.

Only one page interests him.

The one where, since 1930, the daily has published in strip, at the bottom of the page and in black and white, the adventures of Mickey Mouse, created two years earlier.

He curls up in front of the antics and mad races of the mouse in short pants.

“This is the first comic strip that I discovered.

Disney has influenced my life for a very long time ”, he confided in 1999 in a book-interview with Numa Sadoul.

Fan of "Mickey's Diary"

In the modest family apartment, little Alberto of course does not yet have the ambition to become a designer.

He rather imagines himself as a clown, with a big red nose, to make people laugh.

But, instinctively, he no doubt understood that one could also achieve it by the only force of a pencil… The comic strip begins to conquer the world, and in the kiosks, the “illustrated ones”, it is like that that it is. 'they are called then, start to flower.

The boy throws himself into it with delight.

He devours "Mickey's Diary" and all the newspapers of the time.

Tip not to spend too much money: in his group of friends, each buys his newspaper and then passes to his neighbor, which allows young Albert to discover "Hop-là", "Robinson", "Junior", "l 'As', 'Adventures' ...

In Albert Uderzo's primary school notebooks, there is like a pencil stroke!

Uderzo family archives

Over the pages, the little boy will also discover other heroes who will feed his imagination.

Popeye, for example, whose famous punches and the propensity to use spinach as a magic potion will obviously have influences thereafter ... To the catalog of references, are added "Felix the Cat", the "Terry and the pirates ”by Milton Caniff, the“ Flash Gordon ”by Alex Raymond or the“ Prince Vaillant ”by Harold Foster, in more realistic styles.

Here he is immersed in the great bath of American comics.

Finally, at the age of 13, while working (already) in a publishing house, he will rub shoulders with Edmond Calvo, a French designer this time, specializing in animal drawing, also an admirer of Disney, who will provide him with the first advice. Because in adolescence, thanks to his first drawings and to the wise eye of his brother, Albert Uderzo begins to foresee his possible destiny. Not just because of his readings.

From time to time, when the finances allow it, he goes to the movies.

Burlesque still holds the bill: Chaplin and his Charlot, of course, but also Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton.

In 1938, French screens also lit up with the grace of “Snow White”, Disney's first animated feature film.

"You can't imagine the shock that was ..." he will say.

At the bottom of a forest populated by small animals, live apart a "tribe" of irreducible dwarves, all decked out with big noses and each with a specific character… Does that remind you of anything?

But let's not anticipate ...

"If that's the cartoon, it's not my job!"

"

At the end of the war, partly spent in Brittany, Albert Uderzo was 18 years old and more really other projects than drawing.

Wink of fate: the young man spots a classified ad in a newspaper.

A studio is looking for an animator for a cartoon short film.

"Me who dreamed of it!"

In reality, my great ambition was to make cartoons, always because of Disney, ”he admits.

Hired, there he is intermittent on “Carbur et Clic-Clac”.

Alas, he who thought he had landed in a dream factory finds himself in a drawing factory, repeating the same image a hundred times and being regularly reprimanded by the boss.

"If that's the cartoon, it's not my job!"

»He will decree.

In 1942, Albert Uderzo, aged 14, in front of the Souzain viaduct (destroyed in 1995), in Brittany.

Uderzo family archives

The producer, not resentful, holds him back by the sleeve.

He started publishing and looked for a designer.

For him, Uderzo will invent his first comic: "Flamberge, gentleman gascon", very marked by the Disney style ... much more awkward.

From 1946, he thus began to make a living from his art.

Drawing on his catalog of American references, he alternates between frankly comic (Clopinard) à la Mickey and semi-realism (Arys Buck), offering himself in the process an American-sounding pseudo: "Al Uderzo", failing that, without doubt, to sign "Walt Uderzo" ...

Friend Goscinny

Promising beginnings interrupted by military service. On his return in 1949, Uderzo struggled to find orders and for a time became a reporter and designer for France Dimanche. But a meeting will change his life and bring him back, it seems inevitable, to Disney. In 1951, while working for two agencies, the International Press and the World Press, he was introduced to a certain René Goscinny. He is not Italian, as the immigrant's son once believed, he is much better: almost American. After a youth in Argentina, the one who was then also a designer, arrived straight from New York, where he frequented the band of Harvey Kurtzman, the future creator of the cult magazine of American comics, "Mad".

Between Goscinny and Uderzo, the current flows immediately.

They share the same passion for drawing, humor, and cultivate the same dream of America.

"I had gone to the United States to work with Walt Disney, but Walt Disney did not know anything about it", summarized René Goscinny with humor, to evoke his ambition.

One detail does not deceive: the two men, separated by thousands of kilometers, had in adolescence made an almost similar drawing of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" ... Their counter conversations are populated by these common references and admirations .

And if, forced to earn their crust, they flirt a little with the Belgian school in Spirou ("Benjamin and Benjamine"), the two friends are biding their time ...

The United States, a dream that disappears

Their first real attempt in duo, Oumpah-Pah, an American Indian (hold on!), Will not be conclusive.

Rejected in France, comics will not be more successful in the United States where Goscinny, who left there to create a TV magazine invented by Belgians, is trying to export it.

The USA, a land of plenty where Uderzo, necessarily a little fascinated, had to join his new friend.

He will be dissuaded, without regrets, by his meeting with his wife Ada.

“We believed that comic book nirvana was in the United States… We were seriously wrong!

[…] Across the Atlantic, nobody is expected, especially in comics, ”he observed years later.

In 1938, Uderzo drew "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", after Walt Disney.

Uderzo family archives

The second attempt, everyone is successful. In 1959, in an emergency, on the balcony of an HLM in Bobigny, the two friends gave birth to Asterix to feed the Pilote magazine in full launch. Asterix, a story of Gauls, what could be more French… Think again. “The specter of Disney meets at the bend of the boards of

Asterix the Gaul

. Even frozen, the movement unfolds dynamically, the sets are enchanting, the paper world recalls a

silent

Silly Symphony

(

Editor's note: the first Disney cartoons

).

And then, how not to think of Goofy in the face of Obelix's soft stupidity or Mickey's vivacity when considering the “dwarf” Asterix (dixit Goscinny)?

»Estimates the journalist Nicolas Tellop, in a special issue of« Cahiers de la BD »devoted to Asterix.

Animated like Disney

In just six years, “Asterix” went from comic strip to phenomenon, with exponential success.

To the point that it whets appetites: why not go compete with Disney on its favorite field, the cartoon?

Strangely, the idea was not born from the fathers of Asterix, but from the Belgian animation company Belvision, as its name suggests.

In 1963, she launched studies to produce "Asterix le Gaulois".

The editor Dargaud is informed and gives his approval.

Without ever warning the authors ... Furious, Uderzo and Goscinny, however, could only allow this cartoon to be broadcast, in 1967, which they considered to be totally failed.

Anxious to take back the reins, they demand and obtain to supervise the next one, "Asterix and Cleopatra".

To read also “Asterix”: films, amusement park… an incredible business doped with the magic potion

Scared, and since ultimately they always wanted to make animated films, the two creators launched themselves in 1974: they invested with their own funds in the creation of the Idéfix studio.

“After all, René and I wanted to be the Walt Disney of Bobigny or Montreuil,” Uderzo will comment in 2019 in Le Figaro.

In this new adventure, they will be able to count on a strong support (1.90 m), that of Pierre Tchernia. As early as 1961, the bond was evident with the duo. Think about it: forerunner of television, the journalist was above all "Monsieur Disney" in France, animating on the small screen "SVP Disney" from 1964 to 1978. He had even had the privilege of interviewing the idol Walt Disney in 1961 for "5 columns in the spotlight". It is therefore he who will sign the adaptations for the cartoons, while lending his voice, to the point of being considered as the third father of Asterix.

If the studio does not survive the sudden death of Goscinny in 1977, Albert Uderzo will not give up his dreams.

And will even find another way to follow in the footsteps of the great Walt Disney.

In 1981, he flew to the United States to visit the American Disneyland amusement parks.

He comes back with the firm idea of ​​offering his own to Asterix.

If the project is difficult to mount, it will be successful seven years later.

Ironically, at the time it was in direct competition with another park installation project in France: Euro Disney…

Read also April 30, 1989: Asterix opens the doors of his Gallic village

In 2011, Albert Uderzo, 85, constrained and forced by a bruised hand, announced to arrest Asterix.

Six years before, for his last album, "The Sky Falls on His Head", the designer had slipped a huge wink to his master, with the arrival of a Tadsylwien alien on Earth.

"With this album, I would like to pay tribute to the great Tadsylwien ... sorry, to the great Walt Disney who, famous and prodigious druid that he was, allowed us, some colleagues and I, to fall into the pot of a potion whose he alone held the great secret, ”he indicated in the note.

There are childhood dreams that never leave you.

Find on newsstands our special edition "Uderzo, the secrets of the comic book giant" from May 26

, 6.90 euros, 100 pages.