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Disney Couples: Howard and Amy Green
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The Disney Couples
Howard & Amy Green
by
Scarlett Stahl
During a luncheon interview near The Walt Disney Studios, I had the opportunity to meet Howard Green again and his wife, Amy, for the first time. The Greens are co-authors of the remarkable book Remembering Walt: Favorite Memories of Walt Disney and they've recently been asked to write a similar book about Walt’s daughter Sharon, by The Lund Foundation, a charitable foundation devoted to children with educational challenges, animals and more.
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Amy surprised me by interviewing me thoroughly before I did my own interview! Howard impressed me as being an intelligent, caring individual, who loves the past as well as the present. He appears to be the grounding force in their relationship. Amy is a sprite, who bubbles with vitality and a love of life. They are very different personalities, but with similar interests.
On January 30, 1954, Howard was born in Philadelphia, Pa. As Howard points out, this is the same birth date as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Gene Hackman. He was the youngest child with two older sisters and their parents were of Eastern European Jewish heritage. Howard’s father was a clothing manufacturer, who really wanted to be a writer and had even sent gags to Bob Hope, though unsuccessfully. As a boy, Howard loved watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” at his grandfathers house, especially, as his grandfather had one of the first color television sets in the neighborhood.
As Howard recalls, Disney‘s “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” was a film that made a lasting impression on him because the banshees were realistic and frightening. But the first animated Disney film he remembers seeing is “Sleeping Beauty”, when he was only five years old.
A marketing major, Howard attended the University of Southern California as a graduate student with an elective in films. One of his friends at U.S.C. was a Disney stockholder who took him to a stockholders' meeting. There he saw “The Rescuers” and his interest in Disney was rekindled.
After graduating in 1976, he applied for a job at Disney and was hired as a sales trainee at Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. Howard worked there a year writing press books and letters to exhibitors while also arranging promotional contests. He claims that he learned to write puns there, which has since become a mainstay of his writing style.
Howard then moved over to Publicity, which is where he really wanted to be so he could apply his marketing background to films. “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo” was being released on his first day of work and, as Howard recalled, his initiation into show business was one of old-fashioned ballyhoo. As part of a planned publicity stunt, a banner was placed on a department secretary naming her “Miss Monte Carlo.“ She was then taken to the legendary Chinese Theatre in Hollywood where Herbie, the Volkswagen Bug, was waiting to put his tire tracks in the cement as all the famous stars had done with their handprints. Later, however, Herbie’s track were pried up and removed.
In 1978 Howard worked with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Walt's original Nine Old Men. They were semi-retired but were assisting on “The Fox and the Hound”. He visited them at their office while they were working on their book “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life”. This started a relationship that begun as a working one but became a close friendship which endures today.
Howard was fortunate enough to know six of the Nine Old Men. Four of them - Marc Davis, Ward Kimball, Wollie Reitherman and Eric Larsen - also became his friends. Story artist Joe Grant, who developed “Fantasia,” “Dumbo,” and more is another close friend, as well.
After 25 years in various positions within Publicity he is now Vice President of Studio Communications writing Studio press releases about the motion pictures, press kits for all the animated films, speeches and special projects for Roy E. Disney, Dick Cook, and others.
Howard also wrote a book, “The Tarzan Chronicles,” which describes the making of Disney’s animated feature “Tarzan.” He considers himself a historian within the Publicity department and he said his goal is to help “keep the magic alive.”
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