"Hot Chocolate Soldiers" sequence from Hollywood Party

I had the marvelous surprise to receive today an email from Ettore, one of the readers of the blog, sending me a link to the sequence from the movie Hollywood Party that I mentioned in a post yesterday. I would like to thank him tremendously for sharing with us such a jewel.

I would also like to thank Mark, Bill and Jim Hill who all sent me information about Hollywood Party, including the fact that it can be found on Amazon, secondhand (VHS version).

According to JB Kaufman's seminal article on the subject, the animation of the Hot Chocolate Soldiers sequence was "done by a group of artists under the supervision of Ben Sharpsteen. Sharpsteen's group of animators on the sequence included both Cy Young and Ugo D'Orsi, who would go on shortly to form the nucleus of Disney's effects animation department.

Hot Chocolate Soldiers moved through production during the summer and fall of 1933. Both of Disney's background painters, Emil Flohri and Carlos Manriquez contributed paintings to it. The sequence was completed and delivered to MGM on or about 1 November [...] while retakes on the closing scenes were delivered to MGM on 22 January 1934.

The date of the final script [for the Mickey Mouse scene] (late September 1933) and the date of delivery of the finished scene to MGM (early November) indicates that most of the production work was done in October. The Disney exposure sheets suggest that the Mouse animation was largely in the hands of Fred Moore."

Now if I could only get access to that animated dream sequence from the movie Servants' Entrance...