Prod. 2224 - Beach Picnic

Released June 9th, 1939, this short directed by Gerry Geronimi features some of Shamus Culhane's best animation for Disney. Børge Ring reminded me that Culhane had problems NOT imparting life into Seabiscuit the rubber horse, and ended up making a paper model of it, which he shot just as they did many years later on Cruella de Ville's car etc. (We even had paper models shot on our 1986 Valhalla...)

Also, Børge notes that the animation of seawater is very effective. You can almost taste the salt during Pluto's siesta in the beginning of the film. It also shows a reprise of Norm Ferguson's flypaper scene, this time in color, reworked by Culhane.

Other featured performers: Al Eugster, Frank Oreb, Lester Novros, Paul Satterfield, Milt Schaffer, Preston Blair, [Claude] Smith, Stan Quackenbush, [Chester] Cobb and Lars Calonius.

Note the number, 2224. This was the time the studio changed to four-number production numbers. The actual materials show the original number, RM-24 (RKO distributed Mickey nr. 24)...
1234
5678
This constitutes shorts draft number 66 on my blog.
I thought this one was missing a page, until I looked at the scene numbers...

Comments

  1. ThadJanuary 30, 2008 at 6:25 PM

    Thanks for posting more drafts highlighting Culhane's animation. I'll have to take a look at this one soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. the spectreFebruary 6, 2008 at 4:41 AM

    "Beach Picnic" isn't one of my favourites, but it's interesting to have the draft. Some of the scenes are credited to Culhane but are identified as being "from Playful Pluto". If the animation is re-used, what exactly did Culhane do? Why isn't it credited to the "Music Room".

    Also interesting to see how it was "cast": A lot of Culhane and Eugster for most of it, then suddenly a bunch of lesser-knowns do one or two scenes each towards the end.

    ReplyDelete

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