I have to admit that I am really looking forward to seeing Amid Amidi's biography of Ward Kimball released by publisher Antibookclub. It is now scheduled for some time in 2019 apparently.

I just noticed that The Art of Incredibles 2 can now be pre-ordered on Amazon.

I was helping a friend with some Disney history research this weekend and stumbled upon this great WWII poster.

As David Lesjak explains in his seminal book Service with Character:

[In 1941, United China Relief, an organization was formed to aid the people of China, set a goal to raise five million dollars in donations. The Sino-Japanese War, which had started in 1937, caused untold misery for hundreds-of-thousands Chinese citizens who suffered under the yoke of Japanese occupation. The main purpose of United China Relief was to raise money to help ease the suffering of the displaced and sick, as well as aide wounded Chinese servicemen and guerilla forces fighting in the country’s northwest region.]

A few stunning items in this upcoming auction, including an extremely rare concept painting by Mary Blair for Susie, the Little Blue Coupe (page 10 of the catalog).

One mistake in the captions: the drawing on page 40 by Ken Anderson is not from The Jungle Book but was created for the abandoned project Scruffy.

You can download the catalog here. 

Interesting auction coming up at Van Eaton Galleries.

This just in thanks to Garry Apgar and Robert Neuman:

[Canteen Muralized

New York’s successful Stage Door Canteen has set off echoes in cities from coast to coast. The latest is the Hollywood Canteen, in which glittering motion picture stars administer to the recreational needs of servicemen stationed in the vicinity.

To brighten the Canteen, the sponsors called in the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild, which in turn assigned Elmer Plummer and Mary Blair, shown above, to design and supervise the painting of a mural. The Guildmen worked nights and in five working periods turned out a bright, gay pictorialization of a cowboy’s dream of heaven. Beer, blondes, cards, gold dust, horses (some starry-eyed from inhalations of schnapps), and blowzy red-nosed semi-angels lend gaiety and sparkle to the walls.

Calcimine color, Plummer reports, “was used to get the most brilliant effect. For instance, the skin tones varied from magentas to greens on the characters; cloud colors ran true to fantasy, etc. Plenty wild, eh?” In a postscript to the DIGEST Plummer added, “Oh yes – and we also had to add clothes to our plump nudes (old stuff).”

The artists, besides their work as screen cartoonists with the Disney studios, are serious painters, their work appearing in major museum exhibitions throughout the country. Assisting in the execution of the four-paneled, 336-square-foot mural, were Lee Blair, Marc Davis, Earl Murphy, Retta Scott and Virginia Plummer.

The Art Digest, June 1, 1942, p. 18. ]

 As Disney historians, we are always trying to put faces on names. Here are three Disney story artists from the 1930s for whom I finally managed to find photos. At the top is Lew Landsman who worked for Disney then for Warner.

Below, the photographer is Peter O'Crotty, who also worked for Disney and then Warner before the war.

Finally, at the bottom is Dick Creedon, a prominent Disney writer in the 1930s.