Once more around the block...

Børge Ring sent me this to put up here. It adds to the fray of Culhaniana of late...

"Does Shamus shame us?
a tate gallery mystery

Shamus Culhane said many times that the best piece of animation he did for Walt Disney Studios was the scene in the coachman inn where Fox and Giddy are horrified and cling to each other.

The scene IS beautiful but I think his VERY best job was a sequence in a Geronimi short (Beach Picnic 1939), where Pluto fights in the water with an inflated rubber animal he thinks is real. One difficulty was to keep the inflated doll looking dead in spite of all the hefty action. Culhane ended up building an "inflated doll of paper" that he could "scotorope" like Disney's later would do with automobiles during "The Dalmatians." (Probably also during "Wynken Blynken and Nod" where a wooden shoe turns around its length axis in 72 frames on ones.) In "Alpine Climbers" Ferguson manages to throw a frozen stiff Pluto on to a hard surface.(for which he became "Artist unknown" in a famous book.)

Drafts have become Runic stones and are (to at least some of us) our favourite whodunnits. But whose honor was really at stake?
The fox and coachman sequence was suffused by Norman Ferguson's delightful brand of "theatricality" (as Natwick called it) and Shamus Culhane and Norman Tate played first and second violins to Fergies score that Disney had sanctioned.

On the Geronimi short Shamus was "on his own" with the director and the story whizz.
Modest Norman Tate later had the job to update the model on Fergies animation of Goofy in the colour remake of "Orphans Benefit" and he added the chin that the Goof had acquired since last. -B"