Backgrounds in 1931

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 later had a studio in Mexico, and painted backgrounds for Warner shorts.

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[Note the upside-down visor/cap on top of Flohri's desk - it seems to be the same as in Jack King's caricature at the top of this post.]

It is interesting to look at details in this picture! Here we see on the left the background that Manriquez is holding - on the right a frame grab from scene 2 of the Mickey Mouse short CM-13 The Moose Hunt (rel. 5/8/31), as animated by Dave Hand.
If Manriquez was just finishing this background, which looks to be so as there is no writing on it yet, this would date the photo to around April 1931! Manriquez would just be 23 years old.
On this blog we have met Flohri before, on the draft of CM-10 The Birthday Party, released five months earlier than The Moose Hunt. The background on Flohri's table is a bit of a puzzlement to me, as I have tried to look through all of 1931's shorts for it, without any results. Here it is, adjusted for perspective... [See below!]
(Comments are welcomed!)
[Thanks to Alex Rannie, I was able to find the BG and make a little mosaic of screen grabs. It was used in CM-8 The Picnic, a Mickey short released 10/23/30, which would push the date of this photo back to late 1930, which is quite impossible, as this room is in the L-shaped "Animator Building" which was not finished well into 1931. It seems likely, though, that the long BG was staged especially for the photo, as the BG for The Moose Hunt would at not have been done at the same time! Alex supports this suggestion, remarking that the background seems to have been cut loose from the backing board they normally are stretched onto during the painting process. How intriguing! Bottom line, this photo was taken several days after April 17th (that day is when the 2/26/1931 Haverty sprinkler plans were approved by the "Board of Fire Underwriters") and before July 1931 (but closer to April), as a part of a "look at our new building" series of photos.]

Another interesting detail are the crusty old books on Flohri's shelves: I can just make out (after refocusing the image) that the spines read "Judge," so they may very well be bound versions of the magazine that Flohri himself illustrated, as described by Mike Barrier!
He had his claim to fame, his portfolio, right there!

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Think what you want, I find this stuff fascinating!
If you like this stuff too, check out any of my previous 500 postings - that's right, the posting on "The Blend" was number 500!