Please note: if an earlier link doesn't work, it may have changed following an update! Check the Category Labels in the side-bar on the right! There you can find animator drafts for sixteen complete Disney features and eighty-six shorts,
as well as Action Analysis Classes and many other vintage animation documents!

Thursday, May 03, 2018

Prod. CM12 - The Castaway

Over the coming weeks I intend to post a few more very early Mickey Mouse drafts, especially for my old mentor and friend Børge Ring.

Here is an early draft for this Robinson Crusoe-type Mickey Mouse film directed by my favorite director, Wilfred "Jaxon" Jackson, released through Columbia on 4/6/1931.
12
We find as animators: Jaxon himself, Charlie Byrne, Rudy Zamora, Cecil Surrey ("Sizzle"), Johnny Cannon, Gilles Armand "Frenchy" de Trémaudan, Jack Cutting, Les Clark, Dave Hand and Dick Lundy - with Norm Ferguson sharing two scenes with Jack Cutting.

On page 18 in Ross Care's must-have book about Jaxon, one can read how he (Jaxon) asked Walt to "handle" a whole film by himself, with which he meant "animate a whole film." Walt, however, thought he wanted to direct a film, and gave him the assignment of pulling together several previously discarded musical Mickey scenes, having him put them to music by a new composer Walt wanted to try out, Frank Churchill. This eventually became "Shipwrecked Among Animals," later renamed "The Castaway," and resulted in Jaxon "getting stuck" in the role of director.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Vimacone says...

Looking forward to these posts. Ive always found it amazing that documentation and art still exists for these early films.


I have an off topic question: a few years back, you posted a list of the Disney features by production number. Would you know if one exists for the Disney short subjects?

Monday, May 7, 2018 at 7:40:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous Hans Perk says...

Hi Vimacone - I believe it was Disney production manager Ed Hansen who created a document in the late 1960's called the All Pictures Book, which to my knowledge still is updated; it lists all Disney Features and Shorts by production number (not the TV productions or educationals/commercials, though). I have an old photocopy that was made at a studio outside of Disney back in the 80's. This is a large document (many many pages), which I must admit I have no plans of uploading...

Thursday, May 10, 2018 at 1:45:00 PM PDT  
Anonymous John V. (The Spectre) says...

He also mentioned that this was his first cartoon when interviewed by Don Peri (collected in "Working with Walt") - but Merritt and Kaufman's book on the Silly Symphonies claims he directed the earlier cartoon "Midnight in a Toy Shop".

Wednesday, December 23, 2020 at 12:23:00 PM PST  

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