I just can't resist stories about early Mickey Mouse costumes and events. Those two articles are simply great and put a huge smile on my face (Thanks to Mark Mayerson for the heads up):

- A Rat Patrol Was Upon Us!
- Follow-Up To Yesterday ...

This just in from Jeff Kutti:

[Jim Korkis may be referring to the film Roy O. Disney mentions in this quote from an interview of 1968 with Richard Hubler:

"As I have said before, Walt was a natural publicist, public relations type fellow. He was from the start… For example, real early in the game down here, you wanted to get your pictures into a good theater. We used to have a theater down here on Figueroa near Seventh street that was quite popular. The best pictures ran there then. So we happened to know the manager – got acquainted with him. Walt made a deal with him. We had a picture –Mickey Mouse. So we made a reel of Mickey coming out on the screen and leading the live orchestra down beneath him there. And then they took exception to him and they started quarrelling back and forth and then the live orchestra makes a gesture like they’re throwing things at Mickey. On the screen come all these things that drive Mickey off the screen. It was just a novel little introduction for him with his orchestra, and for that he booked our cartoon in the theater and he put it up on the marquee for one afternoon to give us time enough to get out there and photograph it. So with those pictures we could get it in the trade papers and so on, just to start making other exhibitors think they were worthy of booking."]

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[Thanks to a Disney friend, I was able to see an old episode of the original Mickey Mouse Club television series that had an interesting segment that I had never seen before entitled “Karen in Kartoonland”.

As a kid, I loved (and still do) the “how to draw” cartoon character books. Apparently, Walt knew that the kids in his television audience loved to know how to draw Disney characters as well. When the “Disneyland” television series was being developed, one of the project proposals for that first year was a section entitled “Everyone Can Draw”. Supposedly, Roy Williams would handle the segment. The idea never developed any further for the show and Williams ended up using his cartooning skill at Disneyland itself delighting guests with quick sketches of Disney characters and on the Mickey Mouse Club.

In fact, for the original Mickey Mouse Club television series, the idea of a “how to draw” segment was revived.

The idea was going to be called “How To Draw” but by the time the project got going, little Mouseketeer Karen Pendleton had become popular so someone had the clever idea of calling the sequence “Karen in Kartoonland” and having her visit a Disney artist. The title was an allusion to Alice in Wonderland. The episode I recently watched had her visiting Disney artist Bill Justice who showed her how he animated Mickey Mouse and asked Karen to model facial expressions that he then duplicated on Mickey’s face.

Apparently, there were four “Karen in Kartoonland” episodes: January 19, 1956 (Pluto), February 2, 1956 (Mickey), February 16, 1956 (Things), March 1, 1956 (Jiminy Cricket).

For me, this is just another example of one of the many Disney “lost treasures” that should be included as an “extra” on some Disney DVD.]

Rare 1955 Disneyland Color Footage of the Mickey Mouse Club Circus

Alain Littaye from Disney and More was kind enough to point me in the direction of this great clip. More info about it can be found here.