This just in from Are Myklebust:

[When it comes to Hazel George, the nurse at the Disney studio for several years and one of Walt's few confidentials, I realized one day, doing some private “Disney research”, that I have never seen a photo of her! Can you – or some of your blogs reader – help out here?]

I was thinking the same thing just a few weeks ago while reading an interview with composer Paul Smith and Hazel George (who also served as lyricist from time to time at Disney) that will appear in a future volume of Walt's People and am glad Are raised this very point. Let's hope one of could can help.

Along with Snow White, The Jungle Book is my favorite Disney movie, Ken Anderson is my favorite Disney artist, and as you all know I love concept art and storyboards. So I could not resist sharing this beautiful scan that I just received from Van Eaton Galleries.

Two articles that should not be missed today:

- Brian Sibley's tribute to Peter Ellenshaw and
- The Gospel According to Walt by Wade Sampson.

Unfortunately I just got an email from Jeff Kurtti informing us that Disney Legend Peter Ellenshaw passed away yesterday in Santa Barbara.

An interview of Peter Ellenshaw by Jim Korkis is featured in Walt's People - Volume 4 and Jim Hill posted a nice tribute this morning.

I forgot to mention that I am travelling all this week to Barcelona for 3GSM and that the blog will start being updated again on Friday.

Escalation - A Film by Ward Kimball



Interesting coincidence. I was correcting this weekend an interview with Ward Kimball by Richard Shale which will be included in Walt's People - Volume 5, and which mentions Kimball's privately produced short Escalation, a short I was extremely curious to see. That short happens to have been posted on YouTube this weekend thanks to the Kimball family and to Ted Thomas. Here is what Kimball said about it in the interview that will be released in Walt's People - Volume 5:

[Richard Shale: Is Escalation the only film you did outside the Studio?

Ward Kimball: Yes. It's recognized as the first animated editorial cartoon. And it was an underground film, believe it or not.
We were getting involved in Vietnam... 500,000 troops. And like so many other people, I’d just come back from Europe, and all my friends, in the different studios, in Copenhagen, Paris… were all asking, "Why are you doing this in Vietnam?" And I didn't know. Everybody said it was wrong. I said it was wrong. So I decided to do a cartoon on my own. First time I'd ever done that. I did it all with my own money: a three-minute picture. It was all shown underground, because this was before censorship had been lifted. And to compare the growing of Johnson's nose to an erect penis, which it finally achieves at the end, was shocking. It was all done to The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The first chorus was sung by Johnson. Paul Frees did it in his twang and where he pronounces the word sword: "swwword" [w is heard] and an out-of-tune guitar is heard behind the voices. We used a big choir like the Mormon Tabernacle: it was Los Angeles City College. Finally, the brass is added to the trumpets. But every time the word truth… we come to that bar where you say the word truth, which he says at the end: [whistle sound like a censor's bleep.] Remember they used to have on TV if you mentioned the other guy's product, you have a cuckoo. Even with the big brass ensemble at the end, it stopped for that little cuckoo. And it just tore up audiences. It was first run down at the [Cinema?] Theatre in Hollywood. I had it run there so it'd be accredited to go into the Academy Awards. It was a facetious [garbled] The guy called me up and said, "You ought to come down here." They were running the Newport Jazz Festival film. And he had run it three times the night before. I came in in the middle of a show—full house—and it just tore them up. Now, the film is rather conservative as far as our moral standards are concerned. The openness in treatment you now have: scenes in bed and everything… but it’s still recognized in the industry as the first editorial animated cartoon.

RS: What year did you do that?

WK: It was released about three months before Johnson decided not to run.

RS: So that would be '68?

WK: Yeah. It would be in the latter part of '67, first part of '68. Here's an interesting thing about this film. I had asked certain guys to help me, like my cutter who worked with me on Disney TV. He didn't want to touch it. He thought he'd be harassed by the IRS or something. Well, this has all come out in Watergate: the pressure of using agencies to put the heat on you. I didn't give a damn, and I got some other guy to cut it for me. Everybody donated their talents, and when I put it up for the Academy Award, for the first screening with a group we have which picks out a certain number of films out of this avalanche of films, it tore them up. They fell down laughing, and it went into the second group. The second group pares it down into three pictures. It was mysteriously withdrawn, because they all came to me and said how everybody laughed at this thing, just made them scream. Somehow, it didn't get into the finals, and I figured it was an embarrassment to the Academy.]

This just in from Celbi Pegoraro:

[Hi Didier,

I hope you are well.

Only writing to share this info I got from Ultimate Disney´s forum. It looks like Disney will release a DVD and a Blue-Ray disk on April 25th about the "The Art of Disney" exhibition released last year in Tokyo.

Trailer:
http://club.buenavista.jp/disney/product/preview_bb.jsp?cid=761

Forum discussion:
http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5

All the best,

Celbi Pegoraro]

On March 2, Focal Press will finally release Nancy Beiman's book Prepare to Board! I have been looking forward to this book for a while as it contains interviews with Disney artists T. Hee, Ken Anderson and Ken O'Connor.

Nancy has posted an animated ad for the book on her site and has sent me the following blurb:

[PREPARE TO BOARD: CREATING STORY AND CHARACTERS FOR ANIMATED FEATURES AND SHORTS discusses the all-important connection between story and character development in animation. It is profusely illustrated with artwork created by Nancy's students at the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Film and Animation and over 300 of Nancy's own illustrations. Guest illustrators include Floyd Norman, David Chelsea, Dean Yeagle, Doug Crane, Nina Paley, Mark Newgarden and Nina Haley. Three historic interviews Nancy obtained with Disney studio veterans T. Hee, Ken O'Connor, and Ken Anderson when she was still a student at the California Institute of the Arts are published here for the first time, and there is an extensive glossary of preproduction terms.]

Nancy was also kind enough to let me reproduce here a key part of her interview with Disney layout artist and art director Ken O'Connor, which reveals a fascinating aspect of Donald's early history:

"BEIMAN: Could you talk about some of the short films you worked on?

KEN O’CONNOR: Oh boy, that’s like picking out of the Sears Catalogue! Well, I liked CLOCK CLEANERS, because we got violent angle shots. There were some who felt that perhaps the layout man put in angle shots just for the sake of putting in angle shots! However, the picture called for it.

BEIMAN: What characters did you work with?

KEN O’CONNOR: I worked with all the characters. I was with Freddy Spencer right from the very beginning when he was first developing the Duck, before the Duck became cute.

(c) 1979, 2005 Nancy Beiman"

I was checking out the book Who's Who in Animated Cartoons a few weeks ago when I stumbled opon the name of a un-released Disney cartoon that I had never heard about. This is clearly the kind of stuff that fascinates me, so I sent an email to the talented director Darrell Van Citters who tackled the project at the time (mid-80s) and he was kind enough to send me the above image and the following text:

[Swabbies was the second in what was supposed to be a number of half hour projects to get the classic Disney characters back in the spotlight. The first was the ill fated Sport Goofy in Soccermania caught in the midst of studio regime change. This was the very first Disney Special Projects Unit and was set up off the lot to cut costs and train new animation talent. It was a bold stroke at the time, using Acme-punched paper rather than Disney punched paper (so that more people could use existing home set-ups to freelance on it). Everything was done on Acme 12 field rather than Disney’s much larger paper (which roughly translated to an Acme 16 field) to save line mileage. Paints were off-the-shelf Cartoon Colour Cel Vinyl rather than the Disney Studio’s custom mixed paints. It also inadvertently turned out to be a great training ground for the new bruising method of studio politics as practiced by some of the masters of full contact studio politics, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner. Needless to say, Special Projects did not fare well under such heavy hands.

The basic premise of Swabbies was a retread of Stripes, the now classic Bill Murray/Harold Ramis comedy. The story found our heroes, Mickey, Donald and Goofy out of work, out of luck and in need of a job. They end up enlisting in the Navy and going to boot camp with Pete as their exasperated drill instructor and then meet their feminine counterparts, Minnie, Daisy and Clarabelle who are all WAVs. Once they put to sea, they encounter a submarine full of the Beagle Boys, who all spoke a Russian sounding gibberish (remember, we were still in the Cold War in those days). Of course, our heroes came out on top in the end.

The entire film was storyboarded, recorded and an animatic was created. Complete model sheets of all the characters were printed up and layout as well as some animation had begun before it came to an abrupt halt. Some of the talent involved was Ed Gombert, Joe Ranft and Michael Giaimo on story, Kelly Asbury and Fred Cline in layout, Chris Buck, Toby Shelton and Ed Gombert on animation, model sheets by Chris Buck and Mike Gabriel and it was to be produced by Tad Stones and directed by Darrell Van Citters. I suspect that Swabbies would not have been seen as a classic since its basic premise was derivative and the Disney Studio direction in those days was to look backwards rather than forwards. However, the Special Projects Unit did provide opportunities for a new generation of animation talent. People like Kirk Wise, Chris Bailey, Kevin Lima, Bob Scott and David Cutler all made their first entrée into studio production in that unit. ]

If you have not done so already, do not forget to check out the 1938 Disney Studios Artist's Tryout Book that has just been posted by ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Archive.

We are flying back to Madrid this evening (arriving tomorrow morning) and I will be posting some great material I have just received about an un-produced Disney project between tomorrow and Friday. For now, here is some material from the Serbian Veseli Cetvrtak number 11.

Michael Sporn has just posted scans of an other issue of the in-house Disney Bulletin publication from November 1940.

Here is an original drawing which is currently offered for sale on ebay with the following caption: "Offered here is a very rare Walt Disney Mad Hatter concept painting by Ward Kimball for a Hudson Car Commercial.I aquired this over 15 yrs ago indirectly from Ward Kimball. It is in exceptional condition. The Hatter measures a large 9 inches tall. Email with any questions."

Ward Kimball or Tom Oreb? Amid: Any thoughts?

And now for the 1 million dollar question. As we all know the book released in 1957 and titled The Story of Walt Disney was based on a long series of interviews with Walt conducted by journalist Pete Martin. I was wondering if any of the readers of this blog would have access to copies of the interview recordings and would be willing to send me a copy. Needless to say those would be purely for my personal enjoynment and would not be shared. I also realize that this request is a long shot.

What best way is there to resume our "normal programming" than to feature a photo of Walt at Swope Park from the stunning collection of Mark Sonntag?

For those of us who love good Disney comics, especially those featuring the Ducks, Carl Barks is our "god" and for many, Don Rosa is his prophet :-) If you pertain to that club, this news about Don's new posters will interest you.

Since I also use this blog as a reminder of what I should print out and save when I am back from my trips, here are the other important news and posts I forgot to mention last week:

- Information about the JP Miller article by John Canemaker in the magazine Cartoons.

- Eddie Cantor endorses Snow White on CartoonBrew.

- Return to Hyperion Avenue on 2719 Hyperion.

- Legend Imagineer Don Edgren Dies mentioned by Hans Perk.

And let's not forget that about 10 days ago the Walt Disney Family Museum site was updated. The updated includes a pieces about JB Kauman and Russell Merritt's new book.

While I was away I also received an email from my good friend JB Kaufman mentioning that his (and Russell Merritt's) latest book is finally available here for order.

This is a "must-have" as all of you know. I am hoping to receive it next week after returning to Madrid (after which I will post a review - which I already know will be extremely positive).

How much tremendous Disney related material can be posted in just one week? A lot apparently. Do not miss the amazing post about Clair Weeks by Stephen Worth on ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog as well as all the scans of the leaflet from 1943 The Ropes at Disney on CartoonBrew. After having checked that one out, also read Jenny Lerew's comments.

One of the most interesting pieces of material that got posted while I was away is the whole storyboard of Plight of the Bumble Bee as well as a few bits of animation for that same unreleased short. Thanks to Hans Perk for this!