A. Film L.A. test

This year's Disney event at the Newport Beach festival did not feature Roy E. Disney as it did last year, which sadly resulted in many empty seats. However, it did see the return of Don Hahn (Producer, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Hunchback) and Dave Bossert (Director & Producer, Special Projects) introducing the wonderful program of films that are rarely seen on the big screen. Shown in 35mm were: Prod. CS-4 "Hell's Bells" (1929) >> Prod. US-3 "Flowers and Trees" (1932), Prod. 2608 "The New Spirit" (1942), Prod. 2732 "The Winged Scourge" (1943), Prod. 2611 "Food Will Win the War" (1942), Prod. 2643 "Out of the Frying Pan into Firing Line" (1942), Prod. 5975-013 "Fun with Mr. Future" (1982), Prod. 2527 "Vincent" (1982), Glago's Guest (2008) and a trailer for "UP", to be released May 29th 2009. The consensus was that the films were great, with at the top of the list...

Having just returned from the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills where the tribute event Milt Kahl: "The Animation Michelangelo" took place, I would like to show the program for those less fortunate who were not able to attend. First the cover: since it was in negative, next to it is an inverted version. The program was a wonderful mix of panel discussion, film clips of Milt's work, clips of interviews with Milt including of the master while drawing, a five minute video message from Richard Williams and my favorite section: nearly an hour of Andreas Deja showing a very large stack of (copies of) drawings and discussing their virtues. Especially the (never before seen) drawings that Milt did for other animators to help them with drawing problems or start them out with a scene were amazing, and showed the level of simplicity that Milt had reached through many years of observation and hard work. Andreas Deja's exuberant enthusiasm was a large part of what made this...

Mickey Cuts Up was directed by Burt Gillett and released 11/30/1931. It is found on Disney Treasures DVD: Mickey Mouse in Black & White Volume 1 disc 1. You may still find it here on YouTube. Have a look, if you need a clearer understanding of the following documents! Gillett left some documents pertaining Mickey Cuts Up behind, and I would like here to show a few of these that I recently lucked into. It is interesting to speculate in which order these were written - they seem to all be in Gillett's own handwriting and would probably date to late August or early September 1931. First we have two pages, numbered 1 & 2, with ideas linked to names, Otto and Webb, which to me seems to mean that the ideas were originally thought out by either Otto Englander or Webb Smith. There are interesting ideas that did not make the film - they are crossed out: "mower bumps up and down on hedge - trick cuts." Some were not crossed out and made it in the film: "Cuts down tre...

Silly Symphony CS-7 called "Autumn," produced ca. January 1930 and released 2/15/30, has long scenes of squirrels gathering nuts. Here is a drawing I have and a screengrab that goes with it. The specific animator is not known; the backgrounds are by Carlos Manriquez... The drawing, an inbetween (note the arc for the nose!), does not fit entirely: e.g. the tail is a bit different. I suspect this was a reject that was kept by assistant Jack Cutting because of the drawing on the reverse side: << Click to enlarge! Just WHY this drawing of small people looking up at the underside of Wilfred "Jaxon" Jackson at his animation desk was made, we will probably never know for certain... "Autumn" is an interesting Silly Symphony because it was the last one directed and (with Les Clark, Johnny Cannon and Jaxon) animated by Ub Iwerks and scored by Carl Stalling before they left Disney in the last days of January 1930. Their departure was a big blow for production, ...

The 1930 Silly Symphony "Winter," CS-14, was laid out in September 15 to 27, animated September 16 to October 10, with backgrounds by the gentlemen in my previous post. It was delivered 10/22/30. A central character in the film is the ground hog, animated first by Jack King, then dancing by Tom Palmer. Jack King Tom Palmer Here is a drawing I aquired a year ago: it was among the amazing documents that the film's director Burt Gillett gave to "little Jeannie" when he moved to New York back in 1934... << Click to enlarge! A note about the coloring of drawings of this period: it was the convention to paint areas indicated in blue pencil with #1 Grey, in red pencil with #2 Grey, unless a number was written in the red color...

Emil Flohri and Carlos Manriquez as drawn by then animator Jack King in 1931. Not long ago, March 18th to be precise, Mike Barrier described below photo, and told the story of Emil Flohri (1869-1938), the background painter we see sitting there, with his assistant Carlos Manriquez standing next to him. Until Mique Nelson joined around July 1931, this was the entire Background Department, on Hyperion Ave.! Carlos Manriquez (10 April 1908 - Mexico, May 81) actually joined Disney before Flohri, late 1928 or early 1929, but I seem to remember reading that he left the studio around 1933 after he could not get a requested raise because he was not deemed good enough. On the other hand, Manriquez had a Disney Social Security Number, between Claude Coats and Vern Papineau, and that indicates that he still was on the Disney payroll in November 1936! [Added in 2018: he actually worked at Disney from 5/26/1929 until 5/27/1938. Flohri started 3/19/1930, with Disney until "ca. 1936."] He ...

    --The two Disney patents of Mary Louise Weiser The Pinocchio Blu-Ray really brings home to us the amount of work that went into the creation of the beautiful imagery. The characters have a rounded look that adds dimensionality and realism to the otherwise flat surfaces. The technique used to accomplish this look is generally just referred to as "The Blend." On the Special Features one can hear noted historian J.B. Kaufman refer to it as such. << Click to enlarge... I recently found this image of Mary Louise Weiser, head of the Ink and Paint Department at the Walt Disney Studios in 1939, during the period when the techniques for painting Pinocchio and Fantasia were finalized. Ms. Weiser has two patents to her name, assigned to Walt Disney Productions: one for a formula for grease pencils (filed Nov. 14, 1939, granted Apr. 28, 1942, nr. US 2,280,988), and one for a method of adding roundness and texture to characters - in other words, "The Blend" (filed a we...

Greetings from California...where even the Easter Eggs register on the Richter Scale! (Or at least...that is ALL we want to do so!) << Click On It! Scene from Funny Little Bunnies (1934), animated by Dick Huemer. Image courtesy of Van Eaton Galleries 2006.

This article from a 1938 Photoplay magazine talks of Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia, at a time when only Cliff Edwards was cast, filling the roll of Jiminy Cricket. That Bambi (prod. 2002) truly was conceived as the follow-up to Snow White (prod. 2001) is here described as a rumor, though this was the case up to about a week before Snow White's premiere, when Walt announced that Pinocchio would be proritised. In any case, the article gives us an interesting insight into Walt's plans and how much of them were public knowledge...