What if? Kimball and Jones...

above image from the Cartoon Modern blog


Michael Barrier has a new post up today with some very interesting ruminations on what might have been regarding Disney's "Sleeping Beauty". Well worth your time.

Podcast and Post alerts

A quick heads up to let readers know that Clay Kaytis has just posted a new episode of his Animation Podcast, this one an interview with Disney veteran Dale Baer. He's a man with a long and distinguished history as well as an enormous amount of goodwill in the industry; I've known dozens of people who worked with or for Dale and not one had anything but very happy memories.


an example from the pen of Dave Pimentel
And on Drawings From a Mexican there's some very good tips about drawing an uninspiring model. Dave Pimentel has been even busier than usual lately, so an update from him is always welcome.

And one more [technical] thing: although I like the "new" template that you currently see here(in particular its organizing sidebar that directs the reader to just how obsessive I am about Fred Moore and other subjects), the interface for adding links is a huge pain; they must be done one at a time, laboriously. Anyone who has a way around this, give me a tip, won't you? I cringe at losing all my links to blogs I love and want to point the reader to...but this one-by-one thing is for the birds.

Long Ago and Far Away

Yes, that's me.

Lou Redux

Lou Romano" "The House"

The mailman just now brought my household the Nov. 5 issue of the New Yorker. Flipping it open, I am looking at a page of artwork, all by various artists. One is obviously a John Currin...William Wegman's costumed weimaraners on the opposite page, and--what's this one at the top? Another lovely painting by--Lou Romano! With a cute character sketch underneath!

Lou's work is in the magazine again(he did a cover for them a while back) as part of a portfolio of artists' variations on the theme of Hansel and Gretel, to celebrate the Met's remounting of that opera in New York. All the art will be on display, the magazine tells me, at the Metropolitan's Gallery Met(I didn't even know they had a gallery, but it makes sense) from November 16 through February. I'd scan it but maybe you should buy the New Yorker and check it out. It's a good magazine.

As Steve Jobs would say "Pretty cool, huh?".

ETA: The New Yorker's online edition has much more from the exhibition posted on its website; there are two more of Lou's paintings there, including the image I linked to at the top of this post. Check it out by all means.

Happy Birthday, Ollie! With love and thanks for everything

Thanks to an alert by John Canemaker, I know that today, Halloween 2007, is Ollie Johnston's 95th birthday.

Really, what can be said about a man on such a day when he's lived so long that he's influenced millions--both professionally and personally--and it's all been said before, often by people who knew him well, worked with him and love him dearly?
It's a tough one. I met Ollie just once at his home many years ago, shortly before "Illusion Of Life" was published. I saw him speak at festivals and animation events; mostly I know him through his animation, which has always entertained and touched me, and always, always expertly fooled me into completely and utterly believing his drawings were alive.

Happy Birthday, Master Animator!

It's hard to find an image of Ollie alone in a shot--of course, for virtually all of his working life he's most often pictured with his dearest friend, the late Frank Thomas, as above. From David Nethery's blog I swiped the other shot of Ollie at his desk at the very beginnings of his illustrious career. Three guesses who's giving some guidance while Ollie looks on.

Fred Moore and family-previously unpublished

Here's a wonderful photograph: Disney animator Fred Moore, his first wife Virginia (for the record, his second wife was also named Virginia) and one of their two daughters, probably taken about 1938 or so.

Of course all we animation fans love the glimpse into the private, candid life of a legendary Disney animator, but as someone else (someone not in the business) pointed out upon seeing it: "it's great to see these kinds of images of people from seventy years ago. It's so vivid and casual-it's as if you're in the moment with them and makes you see them as real people, not caricatures, not just names on the credits or in a book." Indeed. The scene looks strikingly contemporary--the young Mrs. Moore could easily be my mom 30 years later, Fred one of my friends in the story department mugging with their own babies.

When's this insouciant artist going to get his own book? Until then, I'm grateful to be able to pass this happy snap along to Diary readers.

The return of the Carthay Circle

Here's some good news for lovers of animation and film history-and theme parks that could most certainly be a lot better:

Disney's California Adventure will be vastly rehabbed, including a reproduction of the long-demolished Carthay Circle theater.

From the article:
"Favorite California Adventure attractions -- including the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, one of several added in an effort to address criticism that the park had too few blockbuster rides -- won't be dismantled. A host of new attractions will include several based on Pixar animated films such as "Cars" and "Toy Story."
The entrance plaza will be redesigned and iconic structures reminiscent of old-time Hollywood will be added, including a replica of the Carthay Circle Theatre."

The Carthay was where "Snow White" had its lavish Hollywood premiere; in a generous gesture--considering that A list stars like Marlene Dietrich and Shirley Temple were crowding the theatre for the unveiling of Walt's 'folly'--Disney had arranged for all his key artists to be invited to the black tie occasion.
Years later, several of them recounted what it felt like to be there with the creme de la creme of the movie business going nuts over the film they'd slaved on for the longest couple of years of their lives: incredible.

What a neat idea to do this. I can only imagine who came up with it. Thanks, whoever you are.

One Moment Please...

Miss Mary Pickford catches up on her correspondence, circa 1917

I just wanted to note that in choosing a new template for the Diaries, I've inadvertently wiped out all my links. This after sagely counseling someone else that it was possible to put it all right again/not lose links. Uh, yikes. Well, I did save a text file with all the raw linkage so as soon as I'm on that computer I'll do my best to restore the good stuff.

The thing I like about this differently-written template is the ability to organize posts by tags(although I'm chagrined at all the tags being represented at right; there are quite a few that aren't that important). Now the "Fred Moore" and "story" posts can be accessed easily, instead of by searching.

So, just an FYI. More anon.

More Dance of the Hours illos

See the previous post--I'll be updating it further today and later during the week. These scans are tedious work, but I'm happy to be able to share them.

Fantasia "Dance Of The Hours" storybook

This is an interesting little book I just acquired.


It's dated 1940; 20 pages, a first edition--although I'm pretty certain there weren't any other, later editions. If I remember correctly, this was published for a specific purpose.
Way back in 1981 I was visiting the Disney Archives, hosted by Dave Smith(still there, I believe). Then as now the Archives were filled to bursting with all kinds of rarities on display. There was no Frank Wells building then--but there was a much bigger backlot instead(all the much-filmed Disney homes were there: Fred MacMurray's, Hayley Mills', Zorro's street, etc.).
The archives were on the first floor of the Roy Disney Building that also housed Buena Vista and other corporate divisions.

Things were awfully quiet on the lot then. It was easy to wander around the manicured grounds, meeting no one save the occasional "traffic boy" on a bicycle delivering interoffice mail, and daydream about the great animators of yore as younger men and women.

So back to the archives: I'd look throught the tip of the iceberg of material there, bookshelves with all sorts of rare volumes of Disney publications. There was a series of slim picturebooks, each with a title relating it to one of the segments of "Fantasia". I believe Dave told me these were published to establish the copyright to Disney's version of what were public domain musical compositions. The book itself wasn't meant for big sales, just to exist in the marketplace as token objects. Without them, presumably, any producer could have rushed out a short with elephants and alligators, say, dancing to ballet music(after all, those animals were public domain too--and Henrich Kley's drawings were available as freely to anyone as they were to the Disney Character Model department)...but with the book, the exact actions and look of the whole thing could be protected. And thus the books are all filled with lovely character art too.


I'd never owned one of these books before now, and reading the text I think I remember the story correctly. This isn't so much standard storybook style at all--it's a literal recounting of the sequence--exactly the way a story man would pitch it to Walt. The resulting writing makes for curious reading.
A sample:

The chorus forms a semi-circle around the pool. One elephant comes to the center, dips her trunk in the water and drinks deep. Then she lifts her trunk high and blows a bubble of tremendous size, far larger than any of the others. Gently she breaks it from the end of her trunk, and then, as it floats slowly across the stage she runs quickly after it, leaps in the air and lands astride the bubble. It carries her gently about the stage as the other elephants blow it from one side to the other. Suddenly the bubble breaks, and the elephant lands on the floor, as gracefully as possible under the circumstances.

It goes on like this--loads of minutely descriptive text while the accompanying pictures seems almost randomly chosen from the film's visual development. There's also (as you can glimpse in the text reproduced here) a hint of what may have been originally intended to be animated, but was cut. It was ever thus!

If there's interest I'll post more of the pages, adding them to this entry.
EDIT: Okay, here's more:





There's plenty more, but it's the weekend and the day is waning. Later!

Don Shank's Kurt

A lot of artists love to moonlight with girlie drawings, and many are superb at it. Few do the same with guys, likely because 99% of the artists are guys themselves and they'd prefer to work with a little more curvature when they're goofing around having fun.

Don Shank is tops with both genders on the pages of his sketchbooks. Back in the Turner development days Don had a fat sheaf of his girl drawings so choice that he was always granting requests for copies; I have one (and I wish I knew where I pu the darn things); they're completely wonderful--great designs and attitudes.

But since his blog has been up I've enjoyed his character Kurt even more than the ladies. Here's a guy I feel I know, who'd fit right in at a party, bar or in a 1961 film kibitzing with Bobby Morse or someone. It's definitely worth a trip to Don's blog to backtrack and vist the various Kurt posts--but be warned: the vast majority are rated G but a few aren't family-friendly.

"Dumbo" publicity

Here's another still I picked up from the same dealer as the last one(at Cinecon a couple of weeks ago--all of you in this area should get on their mailing list for next year, by the way). It's from the reissue release in 1949--you can tell by the numbers along the bottom there on the lower right: [19]49/278.

Judging from the overall look of the image I don't think it's a scene still that's exactly corroborated in the film--I'll check later. Not as cool as a story or rough sketch, but what the hey.

All The Cats sketch

This is a publicity still dating from the original release of "Make Mine Music". The caption is still affixed to the back and reads in part:

"THE JOINT IS JUMPIN'---These 'ickies' and 'alligators'[?] cut a rug when the jam session gets under way[sic] with musical and vocal backgrounds supplied by Benny Goodman's orchestra and The Pied Pipers. The scene is from "All The Cats Join In" sequence, one of the highlights of Walt Disney's latest full length comedy musical in Technicolor "Make Mine Music".

I wonder if this is an actual story sketch from the boards, rather than something drawn just for publicity? It looks like the former. I was just rereading Michael Barrier's biography of Disney; in an interesting anecdote it's mentioned (by one of the story men) that Walt looked at a pitch of the early rough boards for this sequence and was singularly unimpressed, telling them to "tighten it up", try again or something along those lines.

Instead, the guys had Joe Rinaldi take the drawings down and trace over each one, inventing nothing new but making everything look a heck of a lot better. When Walt next saw it, he approved the "changes" and this great number was good to go. This does look as if Joe Rinaldi drew it.

Fred Moore & Pete Emslie

Here of course is a lovely, interestingly unfinished Fred Moore painting. It appears courtesy of the generosity of Pete Emslie, cartoonist, collector, caricaturist, blogger, Sheridan Collge teacher(animation) and all-around nice guy, judging from his posts.
He's a very thoughtful man as well as a prolific artist, and I can't recommmend regualr visits to his blog too emphatically. Here's a sample of a recent post's illustration(by Pete):

Pete's gesture drawings of model Heather

In addition to the Moore above, he posted yet another painting by Fred he's acquired, as well as several centaurette cleanups that are a must see. Really lovely.
Thanks for sharing, Pete!

Christmas in August--a Marc Davis greeting

This is one of my Comic Con purchases: one of many Christmas cards designed by the superlative Marc Davis (with a self-caricature).

I'm not sure when this was done--how young would he have been to have looked as slim as he's depicted here? It's a wonderful drawing and I was glad to find it at the Van Eaton Galleries booth.