This morning do not miss:

- All of the recent updates from ToonsAtWar and

- Jenny Lerew's great post about Ward Kimball.

For some reason I kept forgetting to add the great blog Stuff from the Park to my list of permanent links. This is now fixed.

And to end 2006 with a huge smile, this great document sent by Jim Korkis with the following comments:

[This sheet of sketches from the 1940s were in the collection of Imagineer John Hench. They aren't Santa's elves but likely concept sketches for leprechauns for the Darby O'Gill and the Little People project Walt was planning. A friend sent me this copy thinking that it might be early concept sketches for the Gremlins project since I was finishing up the article for Hogan's Alley. Even though they aren't gremlins, it was a nice holiday gift and I thought I would share it with others.]

Happy New Year to you all!

Don't forget to check the blog on Tuesday, as I will make sure we start the year in the best possible way... with a mysterious project that involved Fred Moore.

Quite a few readers of the blog sent me emails about the Redux Riding Hood project.

Celbi Pegoraro sent me the URL of an article he wrote (in Portuguese) a while back on Animagic about that same subject and that clarifies, among other things that:

Jack and the Beanstalk was directed by Peter Tolan ("Larry Sanders") and seem to have stopped in post-production and that Three Little Pigs with a script by Frank Coniff seems to have been completed but never released, not even in festivals.

Jenny Lerew posted a comment that mentioned:

I freelanced some storyboarding on Three Little Pigs for Darrell Rooney (I was working at Turner feature animation development at the time, where I'd met Darrell). I believe Ricky Nierva, now at Pixar, and Scott Morse (also up there at Pixar) did freelance boards too (Ricky, who is a brillaint young designer, might have done the character designs as well--I'm not sure--can't remember).

I never saw the finished product, either, though--why Disney never released them is a mystery to me, but they were having a kind of rollercoaster of management at that time, and perhaps a new exec in charge couldn't see a venue for them. They were at one point supposed to be released on a home video(now it'd be a DVD, of course). I'd be surprised if they stayed unseen forever.

I can't remember what the "4th" film was...hmmm...it's about 10 years ago now."

For some odd reason, I mention the history of the Disney parks on this blog much much less often than stories about Disney animation and vintage Disneyana. However, I just discover two great blogs that will help you fill that gap (if you don't know them already):

Gorillas Don't Blog and Daveland are definitely making it to my list of permanent links.

Ub Iwerks' Fiddlesticks



As mentioned in a previous post, one of the blogs to which I make a daily stop is 2719 Hyperion. That blog recently posted a great article linked to Disney about the short Bimbo's Initiation, which I stupidely forgot to mention when it appeared. It's a really enjoyable post, which I encourage you to read until the end as it contains a nice surprise.

Through the comments that followed that post, I also discovered Ub Iwerks' short Fiddlesticks. I would encourage you to jump to minute 3:26 to understand why I featured it on this blog.

Great artwork from Bambi posted this afternoon by Stephen Worth on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog.

This beautiful photo of Walt and Lillian is courtesy of Mark Sonntag, once again!

Mark wrote: "Here is a photo I just aquired from the San Francisco Examiner photo files. Photo touch up doesn't do LillianDisney justice, the interesting thing is, it has the date on the reversewith the published version attached."

Speaking of great photos of Walt, I would recomend you check both this post on CartoonBrew and this one on The Blackwing Diaries to discover two others.

Dewey McGuire was kind enough to send me scans, yesterday, of all the articles I wanted to read in Animato! issue 39.

One of these articles intrigued me due to its title: Redux Riding Hood - Disney's Forgotten Short. After having read it, I must admit that I am even more intrigued...

The article mentions 4 shorts of very good quality (at least 3 were of good quality according to the article - one was apparently cancelled because it was bad) produced by Walt Disney Television Animation (of all places! - Not that I have anything against the artists there, don't get me wrong, but I am a "purist" when it comes to animation and therefore like full animation or productions with strong scripts and high artistic values when it comes to limited animation).

One of the shorts, Redux Riding Hood, was so good that it was nominated for the Academy Awards in 1998. The other two (apparently good) shorts were Jack and the Beanstalk and Darrol Rooney's The Three Little Pigs.

I have not seen any of these shorts. Can anyone tell me more about them? Were they ever released on DVD or elsewhere? Who directed Jack and the Beanstalk? Have Jack and the Beanstalk and Darrol Rooney's The Three Little Pigs even been seen, even if just in the Festival circuit? Are those two as good as Redux Riding Hood?

Hake's new auction catalog is now online. It contains quite a few spectacular vintage Disneyana items, including this stunning Jose Carioca figurine from Zaccagnini, which was featured in Alberto Becattini's article about Zaccagnini in Tomart's Disneyana Update number 22.

I guess it's my missing Brazil which made me single out Jose to talk about this auction.

A few weeks ago, when I was in Paris, I picked up a copy of the art-book Loisel dans l'ombre de Peter Pan by Christelle Pissavy-Yvernault. Regis Loisel is the author of two extremely popular French graphic-novel series: La Quête de l'oiseau du temps and Peter Pan (a very dark, pessimistic version of the tale). Although I have been disapointed by the ending of the Peter Pan series as imagined by Loisel, I still admire his art tremendously and Loisel dans l'ombre de Peter Pan was a must-have for me this Xmas.

What made it even more so is the fact that Loisel has always been a Disney-enthusiast (and a serious collector of original Disney art), which led him to include in the book quite a few Disney-related documents.

You can see above one of his drawings combining Mickey and the "Fourreux" character from La Quête de l'oiseau du temps. Below is his attempt at creating a Disney comics when he was a kid (Donald and the vampires).

Loisel also acted as a concept artist on both Mulan and Treasure Planet, which explains this photo with Joe Grant and Hans Bacher.

Great document found by Mark Sonntag on ebay a few years ago which relates to the costs of the animated segments in Hollywood Party.

One must read article this morning on Mouseplanet.com: Ruth Patricia Shellhorn - Disneyland's First Landscaper by Wade Sampson.

Beautiful Xmas gift from Jim Korkis' collection:

[Here's an unusual photo from 1933. I never think of Walt posing with other celebrities although he often did in the Thirties. Also, it was my understanding that Walt wasn't necessarily a big fan of President Roosevelt so it is interesting to see him posing with Roosevelt's son who apparently is returning from a trip for a quickie divorce in Nevada. You'll notice that this is in Chicago where Walt was born.

I bet there is more to this story and maybe some of the readers of your blog can fill in some of the blanks. ]

Speak of an amazing memory! I got a call on Friday from my friend Sébastien Durand about the post from last week concerning Are Myklebust's question about Bertrand Lavier's scupltures. Sébastien called me to say that he remembered having seen the comics that served as inspiration to Lavier. Called Traits Très Abstraits, it appeared in the French book by Michel Mandry about the 50 years of Le Journal de Mickey.

I am almost certain that this comics was created in the '70s, not in 1947 as claimed by Lavier and that it is of French origin. I will try to get more information about this in the next few days, though.

I hope you all enjoyed a relaxing and very happy Xmas. There were quite a few exciting posts all around the web in the last few days. Here are the ones I believe should not be missed:

- I forgot to mention last week this excellent article by Wade Sampson called A Disney Family Christmas.

- The Xmas card on the left comes from a series of cards sent to Richard Huemer's father, Disney legend Dick Huemer. Richard Huemer posted those on his website last week. Jenny Lerew posted Ward Kimball's 1963 Xmas card on the Blackwing Diaries.

- In case you have not seen this yet, ASIFA's Animation Archives posted a scan of a great article from Life magazine about the Disney Studio during WWII.

- Also related to WWII is Michael Barrier's post from December 25.

- Finally, Michael Sporn's gives us scans of two excellent articles about Ub Iwerks as a nice Xmas gift.

Happy Reading.

(Image courtesy David Lesjak)

Merry Xmas to all of you. See you all on Tuesday...

From David Lesjak's collection: 1939 16 page Kay Kamen Christmas giveaway.

From Mark Sonntag's astounding collection comes this facsimilie of the Alice Comedies campaign booklet. If this is not the ultimate Xmas gift for a Disney historian, I wonder what is!

A question from Are Myklebust:

[The French artist Bertrand Lavier (1949 - ) has made a serial of artworks in different mediums he has called “Walt Disney Productions” (!!).

I found the following information on the Internet: “Bertrand Lavier: Walt Disney Productions, explores the tenuous realm between high art and the everyday. Lavier’s series, Walt Disney Productions, was inspired by a 1947 Disney cartoon that reflects a sophisticated play with the cliché of Modernism. The original cartoon, entitled, "Very Abstract Lines," shows Minnie Mouse defending modern art to a skeptical Mickey as they visit an art museum in which caricatures of Modernist painting and sculpture abound. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Lavier usurped the artworks pictured in the cartoon, enlarging them and further manipulating them in the form of Cibachrome photographs imprinted on aluminum, aquatints, black-and-white photographs, photogravures, inkjet on canvas, and three-dimensional polyester sculptures, continuing to find in this theme new and fascinating permutations. Removed from the intentionally ironic atmosphere of the comic strip, these artworks hover between formal elegance and out-of-whack surrealism.”

I am very sure that this art installations was inspired by a Mickey Mouse newspaper Sunday page drawn by Manuel Gonzales (probably from 1947) – and not by a “Disney cartoon”, but does anyone know anything more about this – and/or has a copy of this specific Sunday page?]

Are clearly has more imagination than I do. Would anyone (who can see the things I do not) be able to help him?