Do not miss today:

- How Does the Show Go On? by Jeff Pepper

Regarding the poster below titled "L'Heure Joyeuse de Mickey", Sébastien Durand notes:

"This could well have been the poster of the compilation of shorts that Walt saw during his trip to Paris in 1935 and that convinced him that the audience could accept a full-length feature. This would be wonderful."

This Swedish poster (above) and those two French ones (below) found by Mark Sonntag on ebay are truely exceptional. I had never seen any of them before.

I found this great photo of Walt and David O. Selznick a few weeks ago on ebay. Thanks to Ian Lawson for cleaning it up.

Two articles to check out this morning:

- "To Infinity and Beyond!" is an entertaining look back at Pixar's first two decades by Jim Hill
- Disney Cartoons That Aren't Disney by Wade Sampson

I hate typos. I really do. Unforunately they have a tendency to crop up everywhere.

- In a post that Jim Korkis sent yesterday, Ruthie Tompson is wrongly identified by Variety (and us) as Ruthie Johnson. This is now corrected thanks to Don Peri. By the way: is the right spelling Tompson or Thompson? The Disney Legends site say "Thompson", the book Walt in Wonderland spells it Tompson.

- While checking the interview of Floyd Gottfredson by Arn Saba in Walt's People - Volume 2, I realized that I quoted 1907 as Floyd's birthdate instead on 1905. Grrrr...

From the collection of Pete Merolo come those scans of the original finished pencil artwork from the Model Sheets of Goddess of Spring (1934).

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[As a child, Ruth Tompson lived right down the street from Disney Brothers Studio on Kingswell Avenue. She would hang around the Studio and saw Roy Disney filming cels. Along with other neighbor kids, she was in a group scene of at least one of the Alice Comedies. She remembers being paid a quarter and using it to buy some licorice candy. She was made a Disney Legend and that information is at this link.

From Daily Variety November 20, 2007, here is Tompson (strangely identified as Ruthie "Johnson") who is now ninety-seven years old talking about her time at Disney:

It was a different era when Johnson got her start in animation, when a "nosy kid," as she laughingly refers to herself, walking by the Walt Disney studio would be invited to come in and observe. As a child, Johnson was a neighbor of Walt Disney -- in fact, he used to film her and her friends playing for animation studies.

As a young adult, Johnson was working at the Burbank stables, where Disney and several of his animators came to learn to play polo. "All of a sudden this guy looks me in the eye and says, 'Ruthy Johnson, what are you doing here?'" Disney suggested that Johnson come work for him, and when she demurred, telling him that she couldn't draw, he insisted. "'You don't need to, we'll teach you,'" she recalls him telling her. "And if you do it, we'll give you the job, and if you don't, goodbye."

Johnson began night school to learn how to ink animation cels. "I didn't know how to draw, and they used these delicate little pens," Johnson explains, noting that if you did it wrong, the tip would break and splatter ink all over. The second night, the instructor tactfully suggested that Johnson switch to painting. She was called in to work on some Christmas shorts, and later she joined up full time, staying until forced into retirement in 1975.

"What impressed me when I first went to work at the studio (was) here I am a peon, basically, and the first thing they did was give me the script for 'Fantasia' and said, 'Take it home and read it and if you have any suggestions, please let us know,'" she recalls. "Fantasia" won an honorary Oscar in 1942 and is considered to be a groundbreaking film.

Employees also got paid for any gag that made it into a finished film. Johnson once suggested a different tune for a Pluto short, earning herself $5.

At lunch, rough cuts of animation were shown and bits that got laughs stayed in, while those that didn't were cut. Johnson remembers Disney overhearing her humming "Baby Mine" from "Dumbo" and deciding, on the basis of that, to keep the song. The song was nominated for an Oscar.

She went on to work in different departments, including scenery planning, before ending up as head of the department. Her less-than-stellar inking came back to haunt her when a batch of cels she'd proudly signed were thrown back at her when she criticized a newcomer's inking skills. She was one of the first women in the cinematographers society: She didn't actually handle a camera, but her job involved plotting camera moves. It was more than a year before she got paid the same as her male predecessor, thanks to an employee who complained on her behalf. "I got a big check after that," she smiles.]

Do not miss today:

- D.C. Heath, Purveyor Of Disney Books Par Excellence on Isn't Life Terrible
- Bill Peet's Dumbo board by Michael Sporn
- A long series of fascinating new posts on Toons at War by David Lesjak

I received last week through Michael Barrier a large selection of articles I had been looking forward to get . You may remember that I posted a few months ago an article by Janet Martin titled "Librarian at Disney." I liked that article so much that I started looking for other articles by Janet Martin. The only one I could find listed was "Bringing Bambi to the Screen," which I had planned to post online this morning. You can therefore imagine my surprise when - this morning of all mornings - CartoonBrew decided to post part of another article by Janet Martin I had never heard of before and that I would love to read in its entirety.

Who was Janet Martin? I suspect she might have been Studio publicist in the late '30s and early '40s, the equivalent of today's Howard Green. Could anyone confirm this?

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[While researching an article that will include some information on the Carthay Circle Theater, I ran across these photos of the theater in the 1930s and 1940s around the time when "Snow White" and "Fantasia" premiered at the theater. Here's a photo of a premiere at the theater on September 13, 1937 of "Life of Emile Zola" . This is from the UCLA library.]

Two new items that you might want to check out:

- Extinct Attractions has just released a DVD of interviews with Imagineer Rolly Crump. I do not have that DVD but it sounds interesting.

- A must have that is now offered for sale on Amazon is Don Peri's upcoming book Working with Walt: Interviews With Disney Artists. That one should not be missed.

Do not miss today:

- Hey Kids! No School Tomorrow! by Jim Fanning
- Interviews... And Ideas posted by Michael Barrier on November 26, 2007
- Your Charm article about Disney by Amid Amidi (interesting coincidence there that I will explain in my last post today). Would anyone have access to the complete article?

A few odds and ends:

- News about Walt's People - Volume 6: I have received this weekend the last corrections on the manuscript, which I will integrate within the next few weeks. Pete Emslie is working on the cover (but we are missing video footage from Roger Broggie to get 4 caricatures instead of three). Provided we can solve this remaining issue soon, I am hoping to get this volume to the publisher by early January and have it ready by March at the very latest, a bit later than I had hoped.

- I received last week some wonderful new interviews for future volumes of the series, especially an extremely in-depth interview with Art Stevens by Pete Docter and a fascinating "best of" from the exchange of letters between Göran Broling and Frank Thomas that spans from 1979 to 1996.

- One last thing: I bought a few months ago on ebay all the issues of Sketches Magazine from Volume 1, number 4 to Volume 8, number 2. Would any of the readers of this blog have any of the missing issues for sale?

This great piece of artwork and story just in from Pete Merolo:

[Didier,

Here's a Matching 'Pinocchio' Setup, from 'I've Got No Strings', that I have that I think you'll enjoy seeing.

About 2 years ago I purchased a collection of original Disney artworks that were part of the personalcollection from Mr. Guthrie Courvoisier of the Courvoisier Gallery in San Francisco.

After he closed the Gallery in 1947 he went into another business manufacturing plastic Service Ware for the home.H is managers in this new business were given gifts by Courvoisier of original Disney Art for special Holidays or as Bonuses that he retained for himself after closing the Courvoisier Gallery.

I was able to purchase a number of pieces, both Courvoisier Setups and Setups on Disney Production Backgrounds from the films, from one manager's wife.

Here's a 16 field Matching Production Setup of 'Pinocchio' on Stage with his Trumpeters. It is in Mint original condition and the background looks like it's never seen the light of day.
All of the artwork that I purchased were sealed in a box in their garage since the late 1940s.

Pete Merolo]

This just in from Jim Korkis under the title "A belated Thanksgiving gift".

I have updated the Disney Books Network this weekend.

Also interesting to check this morning:

- How to Hook Up Your Animated Short at Disney by Bill Desowitz
- Ray Bradbury Revisited by Hans Perk
- All the new Alice animator drafts posted by Hans Perk

This just in from Tamu Townsend:

[The 4th annual FPS charity auction is live on ebay until the 30th of November.

Emru and I have some items that may be of interest:

Disney -
Art of Disney Japanese exhibit catalogue, Art of Disney Japanese exhibit DVD, Once Upon A Time/Il etait une fois Walt Disney Montreal exhibit posters.
(donated by me and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, respectively)

Shorts -
Madame Tutli-Putli
The Danish Poet
Ryan
(donated by the NFB)

Books -
Although not all books were received in time, so we couldn't list them, we received a handful of coffee table books and our first donation for this year's auction is a 1926 edition of EG Lutz's Animated Cartoons, donated by J.J. Sedelmaier. Apparently J.J. has another book that will go in the mail this week for the 2008 auction. Talk about ahead of the curve!
A full list of items is available here.

Tamu]

A few months ago I posted some information about Disney artist Bob Wickersham. His son David was kind enough to send me last week a photo of his father taken around 1960. JB Kaufman added the following information about Bob's work on Snow White:

[For that film he was one of the dwarf animators. He did some of the scenes of the dwarfs sneaking into their home when they first returned from the mine and discovered there was someone inside (this was known within the studio as the "Spooks" sequence). Later, during the bed-building sequence that was cut from the film, he animated at least one scene of Happy sewing.]

Speaking of auctions, while I was away in Brazil I missed on ebay this spectacular piece: a Mickey Mouse book published in Denmark in 1933.

If the bidder who won this auction reads this blog, it would be great if he or she could contact me, as I suspect he /she might have an interesting collection of vintage foreign Disney books that might help put together a few articles for Tomart's Disneyana Update.