Erdman Penner was born in 1905 in Rosthern, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is a well-known Walt Disney screenwriter. He was the only child of Dr. Erdman Penner and Blanche Mallette. Erdman’s father was a Mennonite, while his mother was a Roman Catholic. All records regarding Erdman’s family in Canada indicate that his parents maintained their different religions throughout their marriage.
His father had been born in Russia and had come to Canada in 1874, when he was just two years old. His father became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1889 when he was seventeen. After this, he went to university in the Canadian province of Manitoba and in the United States. He received his M.D. degree at McGill University in Montreal in 1901 and became a physician.
It was while studying in Montreal that Erdman’s father met his mother, Blanche. A good Roman Catholic girl from a French-Canadian family, she had been duly baptized into the church as an infant, and grew up diligently performing all of the standard Roman Catholic customs.
What drew the young Mennonite and the Catholic girl together is not known, but they married each other in 1903 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Their only child, Erdman Heinrich Penner, was born two years later.
Scholarship must have been valued in the Penner household, as Erdman attended the University of Saskatchewan, which was near his parents’ home. After graduating, he went to Chicago in the United States, where he attended the American Academy of Art. After this, Erdman made his way to Hollywood, California, where he attended the American School for Writers.
Records show that Erdman arrived in the United States by crossing the border in Minnesota in 1926, when he was twenty years old. The following year, he officially declared his intent to be naturalized as a United States citizen. The naturalization was completed in 1939, when he was thirty-four years old.
In 1935, Erdman was hired by the Walt Disney Company as a writer. That same year, he married Irene Grosso in Inglewood, California. The couple did not have any children together.
Settled into his new life in the United States, Erdman enjoyed married life while working diligently for the Walt Disney Company. His work there led to some notable animated film credits. Erdman wrote and adapted stories for the animated films Pinocchio, Fantasia, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Melody Time, and Alice in Wonderland, among many others. He also wrote the song lyrics for the songs in the animated film Peter Pan. Additionally, he was an associate producer on the animated film, Lady and the Tramp.
During his time at the Walt Disney Company, Erdman was granted the excellent opportunity to work with some of the most notable screenwriters of the time, including such luminaries as William Cottrell, Ted Sears, Perce Pearce, Winston Hibler, and Bill Peet. This experience surely assisted him in growing as a screenwriter himself, and helped him to finely hone his craft. The way he moved up the company ladder to better and more illustrious positions leaves no doubt that he was well-respected at the Walt Disney Company.
In addition to being a screenwriter and songwriter, Erdman was also a talented musician. In fact, he was a skilled multi-instrumentalist, playing the violin, tuba, and saxophone all quite capably. His tuba and saxophone skills were admired enough that he was able to become the original soprano saxophonist, as well as bass saxophonist and tuba player for the band, Firehouse Five Plus Two. Erdman began with the band on the soprano and bass saxophones, which he played on the band’s earliest recordings, then later switched to playing tuba with them.
The Firehouse Five Plus Two band, like most things in Erdman’s life at this time, was an offshoot of the Walt Disney Company. The band played Dixieland jazz, and was popular in the 1950s. It was made up of members of the animation team at the Walt Disney Company. Ward Kimball, a lead animator and director at the Walt Disney Company, put the band together after spending time with members of the company’s animation and sound departments. He discovered that they all shared a common love of jazz. Discussions of the jazz genre with each other at lunch eventually became lunchtime jam sessions. Those jam sessions led the group to become a band.
The band was initially called the Huggajeedy Eighty, then the San Gabriel Valley Blue Blowers. The Firehouse Five Plus Two was settled on as the permanent band name after Ward Kimball restored a 1916 American LaFrance fire engine for the local Hollywood Horseless Carriage Club. The “Five Plus Two” part of the name came from the fact that the band had five members. Erdman was lucky enough to be one of them.
The band released thirteen records between 1949 and 1970. These records were quite popular. They were regularly featured on television on Disney programming, including on the Mickey Mouse Club TV show. They even appeared in animated form in a Disney short cartoon.
In addition, the band made a handful of television and radio appearances, including one on Bing Crosby’s radio show on the CBS network. The band, including Erdman, even appeared in a couple of movies as themselves. Walt Disney himself was supportive of the band, even inviting them to play at company Christmas parties, other Disney Company social functions, and even at Disneyland itself, on the sole condition that none of them ever fully leave their jobs at the Disney studio.
It was in the middle of all of this personal and professional success (as he had just been promoted to associated producer) that Erdman unexpectedly crossed to the other side in 1956, and fifty-one years old. He pre-deceased his parents by four years for his father and six years for his mom, respectively. His widow lived another four decades beyond him, and did not re-marry. He is buried in the Mission Hills cemetery in Los Angeles, California. His work, though, will live on, possibly forever.
