Among the many things you'll enjoy there are a production drawing from the Silly Simphony "Bugs in Love" (for which, by the way, David provided a commentary in the "More Silly Simphonies" Treasures set) and storyboards for "When the Cat's Away" (an early Mickey entry where he and Minnie have the size of real life mice!)
I really liked this one!
Thanks again, David!
Yours,
Duck Dodgers
Oh, man. These are beautiful. I always loved this cartoon, and wondered why Disney made Mickey and Minnie the size of regular mice. These early boards are a treasure!
ReplyDeleteIf readers can't tell from the style of the photos, by the way, I should point out that I got these images from decades-old Christie's auction catalogs. There is a shocking proportion of extremely rare, even historically significant art sold in these auctions that evidently vanishes into the collection of reclusive private parties — or, worse, buy-everything shopowners or "Disney geeks" with no understanding of the material's significance. It may never be reproduced in high quality again.
ReplyDeleteSometimes its contributors don't know its significance, either. In the old days when pre-1935 Disney cartoons weren't available on video, auctioneers could often just guess at which cartoon a piece had come from.
I've given Andrea a large number of scans, and while I believe I've identified them accurately, about half were originally misidentified. (Almost every Mickey cartoon featuring dancing or set on the farm has had production drawings misattributed, at some point, to THE BARN DANCE.)
One catalog featured what appeared to be Win Smith's original character development sketches of Sylvester Shyster, presumably drawn prior to the milestone 1930 Mickey Mouse daily strip continuity, "Mickey Mouse in Death Valley." Shyster was misidentified by Christie's as Big Bad Wolf, despite Shyster's name actually being on the sketch in Smith's handwriting. Hashem only knows where the drawing might be, decades later. Its owner might still think "Sylvester Shyster" was just a discarded name proposed for Zeke Wolf.
I´m really amazed... how did you get all these sketches?? I'd like to watch more about Woody Woodpecker and the jazz style ones. Hope you can post 'em later!!:)
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