Re: Sleeping Beauty Art returning from Japan

The good news that the Art of Animation exhibit art used for the Japanese Art of Disney exhibit is returning to Disney itself has me plugging the Japanese Blu-Ray disc again! Get it before it is too late!

A Note on Anniversaries...

Yesterday saw a nice screening of films by Tex Avery and Mike Maltese at the Academy's Pickford screening facility on Vine in Hollywood. The reason being that this year is the 100th year of their birth. It was a fun screening, and especially the panel discussion afterwards, with guests including June Foray and (unannounced) Stan Freberg was very interesting. I would just like to interject here that we may want to remember some other people this year, as well!
To name a few:

Jack Cutting (01/19/1908 - 08/17/1988)
   - animator, 1st asst.dir., head of Foreign
Fred Madison (02/13/1908 - 09/09/1982)
   - animator
Ted Sebern (03/26/1908 - 01/29/1975)
   - assistant director to Jack Kinney
Carlos Manriquez (04/10/1908 - 05/1981)
   - background (Disney in early 30s, Warners)
Bob Stokes (04/19/1908 - 02/17/1980)
   - animator
Louis Schmitt (04/24/1908 - 05/03/1993)
   - animator
Joe Grant (05/15/1908 - 05/06/2005)
   - story / head of Character Model Dept.
Ken O'Connor (06/07/1908 - 05/27/1998)
   - layout / art director
John Hench (06/29/1908 - 02/05/2004)
   - layout / legendary Imagineer
Nick DeTolly (10/06/1908 - 09/17/1991)
   - assistant of
Shamus Culhane (10/12/1908 - 02/02/1996)
   - animator and author
Buf Nerbovig (10/16/1908 - 10/01/2000)
   - inker and checker
Preston Blair (10/24/1908 - 04/19/1995)
   - animator and author
Murray Griffin (11/24/1908 - 07/01/1989)
   - animator (Iwerks & Disney)

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.009 Pongo Gets the News

Directed by Woolie Reitherman, laid out by (Vasili)Basil Davidovich. Animation by Frank Thomas, Blaine Gibson, John Lounsbery, Bob McCrea, Hal Ambro, Milt Kahl and one scene with Dick Lucas and effects by Dan MacManus. Again, lots of reuses! I wonder about those scenes where Milt and Frank share credit, as Milt was mainly working on the human characters in this film.

In my early days I only knew Bob McCrea to be the animator of Mickey in the 1977 New Mickey Mouse Club. Of course, on this blog we already saw him in 1D-8, next door to Ollie, in 1946...

This final draft of 8/18/60...

Another Little Addition...

...this time to a posting by Didier Ghez who shows Walt receiving a statue by a Alfredo Herculano back in 1934. Here are different angles of this, here in its very prominent place on the corner of the awards cabinet that was the first thing you saw when you entered Walt's offices in Burbank. It was sort of sticking out into the first ante-room: anyone seeing Walt would have to have noticed it!I would think that the Disney family has it now [Confirmed by DisneyDave], so who knows, maybe we will be able to visit it in the Walt Disney Family Museum at the San Francisco Presidio next year? [Yes! I saw it there (09/25/09)!]

Spotlight on Dalmatian trivia...

Several times today, The Sound of Music was on tv, and I was reminded that horrible Herr Zeller the Nazi rat was played by none other than Ben Wright who had voiced Roger Radcliff in Dalmatians!

Then, looking on IMDb, I find this line in the trivia section: "When he voiced Grimsby in The Little Mermaid, no one working on the film realized that he also voiced Roger Ratcliff in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He had to tell them this."
Amazing...

Another IMDb trivia item: "In the early 1990s merchandise tied-in with the video's release was quickly pulled from shelves because the word Dalmatian had been spelled incorrectly as "Dalmation" on some of the product packaging. The merchandise was only available at Disneyland or the Disney Stores."

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.008 Puppies Discovered

Directed by Woolie Reitherman, laid out by Basil Davidovich and Vance Gerry. Animation by Eric Cleworth (Towser), Bill Keil (Lucy the goose and Sgt. Tibs), Don Lusk (Lucy), Julius Svendsen (Captain the horse and Sgt. Tibs), Cliff Nordberg (Sgt. Tibs-acting), Dick Lucas (Sgt. Tibs-action), John Lounsbery (Colonel), Hal King (Sgt. Tibs), Ted Berman (Puppies), Eric Larson (Puppies), Ambi Paliwoda (Horace & Jasper) and Dan MacManus (effects).

Already here, Woolie shows his knack of reusing animation! Scenes from previous sequences, but also from Pinocchio (prod. 2003) and others (prod. 2048, which to my mind is part of a package feature, but I do not have the drafts of these handy) are strewn around here. This may have been caused by the need to save money after the huge budget over-run of Sleeping Beauty - why animate it again if we have a good reusable scene? Of course, Woolie went on to reuse lots and lots of animation in his later films, where we find Pooh's Christopher Robin throwing a stick in Jungle Book (or was it the other way around?) and Snow White dancing in Robin Hood.

This final draft of 7/25/60...
Happy Easter!

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.07.1 Twilight Bark

Directed by Woolie Reitherman, laid out by Basil Davidovich. Animation by John Lounsbery, Hal King, Bill Keil (who became a Hanna-Barbera staple) and John Sibley with effects by Dan MacManus.

This final draft of 8/16/60...

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.007 Pongo Sends Message

This short intro to the Twilight Bark was directed by Ham Luske, laid out by Mac Stewart and Don Griffith. Animation by Hal Ambro, Blaine Gibson (again) and Frank Thomas.

This 2nd draft of 4/28/60...Thanks, thespectre, for telling me about my faulty links!

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.006 Dogs Make Decision

Directed by Ham Luske, laid out by Mac Stewart, Dick Ung (his first appearance on this blog, I believe) and Al Zinnen. Animation by Marc Davis (Cruella), Art Stevens (Horace and Jasper), Ollie Johnston (Pongo and Perdita) and Les Clark (Roger and Anita).

This 2nd draft of 8/18/59...

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.005 Puppies Stolen

In come the Badduns (Horace and Jasper) and with them director Woolie Reitherman and his assistant director Danny Alguire. Layout by Basil Davidovich and Vance Gerry. Here I was thinking Gerry was only a writer/storyboard artist, but no, he laid out (parts of) several shorts/specials, Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone, before becoming full-time writer on The Jungle Book.

In animation we find Roger and Anita drawn by Dick Lucas, the Badduns by Eric Cleworth, John Lounsbery and John Sibley, puppies by Hal King and Nanny Cook by Cliff Nordberg and Don Lusk. Many of these animators "need looking into" like Lounsbery was in Canemaker's book on the Nine Old Men and Sibley in Pete Docter's article in Animation Blast #9...

This final draft of 6/30/60...