A. Film L.A. test

April 10th, 1940 was one month to the day the Nazi armies marched into Holland. More positively, it also was the day the new theater opened on the newly constructed Disney lot in Burbank... < Click on it!

Here is the new Disney animation building in Burbank, about ready to be used, some time in 1939, with Camera, Ink & Paint and the power plant in the foreground. The corner of Alameda and Buena Vista is still a romantic country scene... < Click on it!

The following images were sent to me by Steven Worth of the ASIFA Archives , who graciously allows me to post them here. They were taken by the husband of ink & paint lady Helen Jordan. The first image shows Buena Vista Street in 1938 - with grazing cows! Note the buildings: they are also seen in my yesterday's post ! Then an image of the building site in 1938 and a near complete studio in 1939, and the last image shows the plowed fields along Alameda on the plot that would later become St. Joseph's Hospital. Cool, huh?

The old polo field of the Black Fox Military Academy, then owned by the Burbank Department of Water and Power, was in 1938 sold to Walt Disney Productions for $100,000, as the location for the new Walt Disney studios. It was soon to be filled with KEM Weber's campus-like architecture--ground was broken for the new Animation Building February 1939--and the artists would move into the new buildings between December 1939 and May 1940. Compare this image with the aerial photo in my previous post on the subject. The image on the right has the Disney plot highlighted. < Click on it!

Here we have musician Ollie Wallace in a situation with the studio nurse. Now - would this be the illustrious nurse/writer and Walt's confidant Hazel "Gil" George??? It's a fun photo, anyway... < Click on it!

When the "Dispatch from Disney" was sent out to "the boys in the service," April 12th 1943, Walt added a cover letter like this one: < Click on it!

Jeff Watson sent me another mosaic to upload on my blog, this time for Mickey's Orphans . Jeff writes: "There is a likely mis-attribution in the draft for scene 22: Gerry (Geronimi) is named and the action description is "Kittens on piano - belly-whopper stunt." However, scene 22 is just a closer-up version scene 19 which is attributed to David Hand. Since there is nothing in the footage approaching scene 22's action description, I'm pretty sure it's David Hand's work. Also, scenes 32, 33, 37, and 38 are unattributed. I don't have a sense of who might have animated any of them. I'll give those scenes a closer viewing and see if I can relate them to either David Hand's or Hardie Gramatky's earlier scenes with multiple kittens. Maybe Gerry Geronimi got to work on these?" Thanks again, Jeff!

Though oftentimes crude in its animation, The Flying Mouse is both a sweet and a bit disturbing, haunting film. The bats that sing their song "You're Nothin' but a Nothin'" are a highlight in the film, just as the butterfly-fairy is a lowlight, and I do not know if I agree with the moral of this tale--stick to what you know even if you do not like it--but I do like the film as a whole. Its dated Technicolor charm far outweighs its drawing problems... Directed by Dave Hand, The Flying Mouse was originally numbered US19, but was exchanged with The Wise Little Hen, Donald Duck's debut picture. The story was developed between July 1933 and March 1934 by Bill Cottrell and his staff, adapting it from Jean de la Fontaine's 1668 story "The Jay Dressed Up in the Peacock's Feathers." It premiered 07/12/1934 at the Radio City Music Hall in New York at a negative cost of $31,386.62, and it can still be seen on the 2001 Disney Treasures DVD "Silly Sy...

We have often seen the pin-up girls from the loose sheet that was in the "Dispatch from Disney", the little publication that was sent from the studio to all military personel around April 12th, 1943, accompanied by a letter signed by Walt himself. Here is the backside of the pin-up page: it features a list of all Disney employees in the forces (or in detention, see Chris Ishii)... < Click on it!

Jeff Watson sent me these mosaics for The Fire Fighters . Thanks, Jeff! I am still having computer problems, but I will try my best to get some meaningful stuff uploaded!

I'm having a bit of a computer problem, folks - so it is difficult for me to post stuff. There is lots more, but please bear with me as my postings may be very erratic in the next days (weeks???)