Help Needed - From Mickey Mouse to Curious George?

When the creators of Curious George, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey, were living in Paris, France, in the mid-'30s, they created a series of cutout figures for the publisher Hachette which included a set based on Mickey Mouse and one on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, both released in 1938.

I believe we could probably learn how they got involved in this project by checking H.A. Rey's journals from those years, which are preserved in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in the Grummond Children's Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi. [H.A. & MARGRET REY PAPERS (DG0812) (V. Personal / C. Journal and Diaries / 1. Personal Journals & Diaries / 166/1-20 H.A. Rey's annual journals, 1936-1955)]

Any volunteer to go there and check?

Who's that guy?

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[An acquaintance of mine recently purchased a box that included the three dimensional stereoscopic picture below and asked me if I knew who was standing next to Walt.  I don't but he looks familiar.]

Can anyone help?

This just in from Gunnar Andreassen:

[The enlosed photos show Clarence Nash and his Donald Duck Doll. Since the doll wears a uniform, it must have been taken during WWII.

On one of the photos "Donald" is given a badge/pin, and as the photo is of very high resolution it was possible for my son to read on the badge: Father Duffy Canteen. When zooming in on the photo, I was able to read the same. See close-up scan.

Father Duffy was a well known person in New York, and probably also in the whole USA and there is a statue of him on Duffy Square. He was an American soldier and Roman Catholic priest - a military chaplain during WWI. and he died in 1932.

There's a large article about him on Wikipedia, a quote from this:

In the 1940s movie The Fighting 69th, Father Duffy is portrayed by Pat O'Brien.

This is what I found about Father Duffy Canteen on the web:

Having a little extra time on my hands I founded the Father Duffy Canteen, Inc., a group of 125 women who nightly with their ambulance canteens cover the water front and anti-aircraft bases of New York, serving the men on sentry duty. We average 60,000 servicemen and women a month, and have served over 1,250,000 since our inception. All food is prepared in Reuben's Restaurant and is financed by public contributions. There are no salaries in the Father Duffy Canteen. The drivers are the USAAC Emergency Corps men.

The Billboard, Dec. 25, 1943 (Probably by Alan Corelli, Executive Secretary, Theater Authority, Inc.)

New York, May 22. - Father Duffy Canteen, organized by showfolk and catering to local servicemen, is running a Canteen Ball next Saturday (29) night at the Hotel Astor. Harry Brandt is chairman of the arrangements committee.

The Billboard, May 29, 1943

My friend David Lesjak found a couple of newspaper items which show that Nash was in New York for three weeks in March 1943 doing what appeared to be a promo tour for Saludos Amigos. The other was from February 1942 and he was in Niagara Falls (on the American not Canadian side).

Even if "Donald" was given this badge, it doesn't necessarily mean that this was an event organized by Father Duffy Canteen, but it's not impossible. What seems pretty clear is that it did happen in New York. There's a New York photographer's stamp on the back of the photos.

Do any of the readers of your blog know anything about these photos, and possibly on what occasion they were taken - to share with us ?]

Disney artists and former Disney artists Frank Thomas, X. Atencio, Jules Engel, Willis Pyle, Berny Wolf, Rudy Ising, ... all worked during the war in the 1st Motion Picture Unit at "Fort Roach".

While this part of animation history is not as such "Disney history" the links with Disney history are so strong that I would love to see an animation historian write an in-depth article about the subject.

Charles Solomon, maybe, since his book The History of Animation, Enchanted Drawings contains a few great pages on the subject... or maybe one of the readers of this blog?

It looks as if a whole book is being written about the 1st Motion Picture Unit itself (but not its animation division as such). I really hope that an animation historian will decide to tackle the subject in the near future.

This just in from Jeff Kurtti about my post from yesterday regarding ZaSu Pitts and Mickey and the Beanstalk:

[Much of the recording of Mickey and the Beanstalk was done in 1940. That's why the soundtrack is a mix of really solid Walt Mickey and nascent Jimmy MacDonald Mickey.

Pitts was very popular and very famous in this era, her star faded and she is seldom remembered today.

There is a famous "Snow White" drawing of either the Queen or the Princess as ZaSu Pitts.]

I just finished reading the book Gato Preto Em Campo de Neve by the Brazilian author Erico Verissimo. Erico Verissimo, who I often think is the Brazilian counterpart of John Steinbeck, visited the US for the first time in the late 1940 and early 1941 on a good will tour and tells of his trip in this book (which is far from being his masterpiece).

There is a whole chapter about his visit of the Disney Studio in which he tells of a meeting with actress ZaSu Pitts. Verissimo asks John Rose who seemed to be the Head of Publicity at the time what Pitts is doing at the Studio after seeing her record some dialogue and is being told that she is the voice of a harp.

A harp in early 1941 (around April or May)? This sounds like a recording for the voice of the singing harp in Mickey and the Beanstalk. But that featurette was only released in 1947 as part of Fun and Fancy Free with Anita Gordon as the voice of the singing harp.

That being said we know that Disney was already working on this project before the war. What I did not realize is that the project had gone beyond storyboard phase. By the way, on another note, ZaSu Pitts appears as a caricature in the Disney short Broken Toys.

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[It has been claimed that on President Nixon's historic trip to China in 1972, he took along some Disney costume characters thanks to the connections of this guy. I don't remember that being the case and I don't remember any photos of that happening (especially since it would have been pretty notable) and in my research haven't been able to track down any confirmation. The Nixon Library has no record of Disney characters accompanying Nixon but libraries don't always have all the information. So, can anyone supply information whether Disney costumed characters accompanied Nixon to China in 1972? I am trying to help out a friend on this project.]

Can anybody help?

While I was in training last week, Mark Mayerson posted a fascinating "discovery" on his blog. We knew (thanks to JB Kaufman's seminal article on the subject) about the sequences created by Walt for other studios in the '30s: one in Servants' Entrance, the other one in Hollywood Party, but I had never heard about the one that can be seen in the travelogue Around the World in 80 Minutes by Douglas Fairbanks.

Here is what JB Kaufman could tell us about the sequence:

[I had wondered about this insert for a long time (sorry to say I didn't know about it at the time I wrote that "Before Snow White" article). So last year I screened it at the Library of Congress. Up until then I would have been willing to believe it was just a clip from an existing cartoon, but it's not; it's a special scene created just for the Fairbanks feature. This is evident for several reasons, but partly because the music, which starts in the preceding live-action scene, continues uninterrupted through the cartoon scene and Mickey's dance is synchronized to the rhythm of it. Also because he makes a point of imitating the hand and arm movements of the real dancers, on which Fairbanks has commented during the preceding scene.

Basically, it's a long pan; Mickey enters from a doorway at screen right, moves across the screen toward the left, and after an interval turns and dances back the way he came. His moves in the first half of the pan are imitations of the Siamese dancers; on the way back he's all American, with moves borrowed from the Charleston and other American dances. The whole thing is one uninterrupted take. It runs 53-2 in the LoC print, and Mickey's appearance looks to me very much like Dick Lundy's drawing. Of course that would make sense because it's a dance scene, and Lundy came to be the dance specialist on the Disney animation staff.

This scene is an intriguing rarity, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a mystery. It's certainly no mystery why Walt would respond to a request from Fairbanks; at this time Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, if no longer the king and queen of Hollywood, were still very close to it, with a popularity and influence far exceeding those of any movie stars today. The fact that they were taking notice of Mickey is one more testament to how quickly he had become a popular phenomenon. No one would blame Walt for taking some pride in the attention he was suddenly getting from Hollywood royalty (don't forget the portraits of Doug and Mary that turn up in The Wayward Canary and the Fairbanks caricature, among dozens of others, in Mickey's Gala Premier).]

This is a good start, but I have not finished investigating this intriguing subject.

Weird

I was interviewing retired Imagineer Frank Armitage a few weeks ago and he mentioned the following:

[I worked on a bunch of things. I mentioned the Upjohn and the Mormon film for the World Fair. They asked me to create the "Hereafter", for which I had to get a Vision from the Elders before I illustrated it.]

His wife then added:

[Frank says he does not remember how Disney got involved in the Mormon film. He just said that Disney also did work for Upjohn Pharmeceuticals. He said he remembers that job distinctly because he was asked to illustrate an erection which he did... ( he worked with Ken O'Connor on it) When Walt saw it - he said "no way"... so they panned up the shaft with the voice over info and stopped before they got to the end!!!]

The film at the fair’s pavilion, Man's Search for Happiness, is described here.

The Disney Archives have no record of the Disney Studio being involved in this project.

That movie and the documentary about the Mormon pavilion were directed by Judge Whitaker, a former Disney artist. Aside from Frank Armitage and Ken O'Connor, another Disney artist who was actually working at the Disney Studio at the time, Eric Larson (who was a Mormon) also animated on the project. In addition, former Disney composer Leigh Harline, who, unlike Frank, Ken and Eric, was no longer working at Disney, provided the music.

So was the Studio involved in this or not? I see no reason why they would have been, but I would love to know why so many Disney artists were part of its cast.