Prod. CM6 - The Chain Gang

Released 8/18/1930 and directed by Burt Gillett, The Chain Gang mysteriously has Mickey Mouse as convicted criminal, animated by Norm Ferguson, Les Clark, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack Cutting, Jack King, Dick Lundy, Tom Palmer, Johnny Cannon, Wilfred Jaxon, Dave Hand and Charlie Byrne. This was the period where the crew alternated between Mickeys and Silly Symphonies, and scenes were dealt out from the top, first come first serve...For those of you who "arrived late," this is shorts draft number 58 on this blog - you can also find two features (Pinocchio and The Three Caballeros) and three sequences from other features, all as drafts...

Dream Come True for Ray Bradbury

Last night, Halloween night, famed author Ray Bradbury was honored with the dedication of an oak tree in Disneyland's Frontierland in his name as "Halloween Tree." This was his dream come true.
The ceremony at the tree followed a dinner at Club 33 in his honor, "An Evening with Ray Bradbury."

The images depict Mr. Bradbury at the tree, and a close-up of him being very happy. Next to him Imagineer Tim Delaney, who co-hosted the event with Tony Baxter. It was a very warm, sincere evening, and everyone seemed touched by Mr. Bradbury's joy. At the same time, my thoughts went out to Ollie Johnston on his 95th birthday. I hope he is doing well up north with his family...
So many wonderful memories...

Fritz Lang's "M"

Released in Germany on May 11th, 1931, "M" is the gripping story of a child murderer played by Peter Lorre. About 17 minutes into the film, a police investigator asks around in a candy store.
Check out the decorations!

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Ducky Nash on Pantomime Quiz

A still I fell over the day before yesterday: Clarence "Ducky" Nash and his Donald Duck hand puppet with the hosts of the TV show Pantomime Quiz. The date is unknown. Pantomime Quiz ran from 1947, and was later known as Stump the Stars...

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The Duck puppet was made by puppetry legend Bob Jones, who among many other things also made the Pinocchio marionette and maquettes for the Disney studios. I bet the folks living in his old house on Las Palmas in Fullerton do not realize that Stan Laurel swam in their pool!

Somebody Else...

Another thought by Børge Ring:
"HOW DID A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU GET INTO THIS?"

A number of renowned persons in American animation originally set out to become something quite different. Here are some of them:

Walt Disney (director of live action)
Art Babbitt (headshrink)
Joe Barbera (playwright)
Ham Luske (engineer)
Shamus Culhane (archeologist)
Woolie Reitherman (aviator)
Bill Littlejohn (aviator)
Ward Kimball (magazine illustrator)
Eric Larson (writer)
John Canemaker (actor)
Marc Davis (fine arts painter)
Richard Williams (jazz trumpeter)

Of these, Joe Barbera, Bill Littlejohn, Woolie Reitherman, Marc Davis and Richard Williams managed (to varying degrees) to reach both goals.

Some of you probably know of many more;
A select few may have wanted to become jailers or dentists...

Prod. UM9 - The Mad Doctor

Since Jeff Pepper has posted at length here and again here on this short directed by Dave Hand and released 1/20/1933, I thought it topical to post the draft here.

We see animation by Ben Sharpsteen (the junior animators under his supervision are not mentioned here), Tom Palmer, Johnnie Cannon, Hardie Gramatky, Les Clark and Jack King...

Woman Power Revisited

Nearly ten months ago I posted a small article on Bee Selck, a lady assistant director at Disney's in the 40s and 50s, since "women in animation" was the topic around the blogs. It becomes more and more clear to me that this is an area open for a lot more research:
I had a look at who was at the studio in March 1945, and I counted 81 (yes, eighty-one) women at in the animation building alone!!! If we count a handful secretaries, assistant directors and stenographers, we are left with maybe as many as 50 or 60 ladies pushing pencils!

Below is a very short excerpt of the fateful talk Walt held for his employees on February 10th and 11th, 1941. This part deals with the rumour that the studio was hiring women to replace the higher-paid men at the drawing tables. It is still quite male-centric ("Little" Retta Scott), but one senses that he means well...

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The talk itself, which I am not going to reproduce here, by the way, was seemingly fair enough - but the timing and the "angle" were all wrong: it seems to me that if Walt instead of complaining had asked for help from his employees, the strike might not even have occurred. It seems he was councilled poorly - it would have been hard for himself, as Big Boss, to come to this conclusion...

Disney Film Recording Co., Ltd.

Here is a fun ad I stubled over in the 1930 Motion Picture News Blue Book. While using Pat Powers' Cinephone sound system, the Disney brothers became the West Coast representatives for that system, and their recording truck can be seen in the baseball (sound-)footage on the second Silly Symphonies Treasures DVD set...

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Børge on Babbitt

This in from my old mentor Børge Ring:
When the production of theatrical cartoons dried up during the late 1950es a lot of Disney-trained animators moved over to the studios that made limited animation for TV series.
One who did not was Arthur Babbitt...no Flintstones for him. He opted for animating commercials because they had budgets that allowed for full animation. For some years he was heading a department for commercials at Hanna-Barbera winning 80 Awards for them.

"How big was the department, Art?"
"You mean the staff and the whole staff?"
"Yes."
He got up from his chair and into a soldier's pose, arms stretched down the sides and said: "You are looking at it right now."
Sitting down again he recounted: "I had everything made in free lance, even camera. My favourite animator was Irving Spence and I let all commercials be done in full animation regardless of the design style."

After some years he moved to London to the studio of Richard Williams to train Dick's young staff all the while animating on Williams's feature about "The Cobbler and the Thief" and incidentally directing a few commercials.
One day I asked Richard Williams what Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were doing about their commercials with Art Babbitt over here in London. "Oh" said Dick, "They are so big they don't even know they have a department for commercials."

Here, at the 2007 Disney Legends, 10/10/2007, is Roy Disney introducing Art's bubbly widow, and her acceptance speech.

A Very Good Choice...

Dave R. Smith, Disney Archivist Emeritus, has been the hub of interest for many Disney enthusiasts, myself included. I met him for the first time 8/14/1978, when he personally showed me the collections' highlights and the basement of the ROD building, then the seat of the Archives. He is seen here receiving the Legends award, 10/10/2007. Congratulations, Dave! It is well deserved!

Congrats, Mr. Fun!

Just came back from the Disney Legends awards 2007. One of the recipients is writer and animator Floyd Norman, a.k.a. Mr. Fun.
Here is Roy Disney presenting the award.

And here is the recipient. Congratulations!

Country Gentleman - March 1934

Here is an article that appeared in the March 1934 issue of Country Gentleman magazine, written by a J. P. McEvoy. I quote: "I have often suspected Mrs. McEvoy's little boy Joseph is a trifle dumb" - it really shines through the entire article - it's amazing they didn't throw him out of the studio immediately!

But it is an interesting tidbit anyway. The last column on the last page has a sweet, candid interview with Walt, where he speaks of his feature plans publicly - remember, this is three years and nine months before the release of Snow White! It is also the first and only time I have seen anything from this period speaking about animation to a beat, even mentioning a 4-12 beat...

Changing servers...

As we are changing our website, we are moving it to another server. The image URLs for this blog will for the most part be wrong, but I am working on fixing all 273 postings! If you cannot see images, please excuse me and try again a bit later!
Note: if you are in dire need of information, exchange the www in the link with ftp, making it https://www.afilmla.com/blog/...

[Status: links in all postings back to 6/1/2007 should be ok.
I also fixed all postings on Barsheets and Click Tracks.
Though I don't have time to fix everything yet, I try to fix things that are related to current topics...]

[Update pr. 3/12/08: all links should now be ok!]

Constructing Disneyland

Not normally a topic here, but I do like Disneyland. Especially Walt's Disneyland - he knew what he was doing, and he loved doing it.
I could feel this when I first visited the park in 1978.

Though it of course is a pity that so much of the original atmosphere was destroyed during the Pressler years in the 90s, it is certainly good to find that during and after the 50th celebration the trend was reversed. I have high hopes that this will continue with the new "regime," and I enjoy the park more each time I visit it.

Anyway, I thought this was a nice image, and it goes well with the production papers that give sort of a similar look at the films...

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Home from the Studio in 1933

Early in 1933 there were 175 people working at Walt Disney's studio, 2719 Hyperion Ave., Los Angeles. On below images you can see now who lived where as they were working on Three Little Pigs!

The first map is rather crude but shows who lived further away from the studio. The other maps get closer and closer to the studio, and clearly most employees were centered around it.

Note that at this time, Walt had just moved to Woking Way, and Norm Ferguson took over Walt's old house next to Roy's on Lyric Ave., and lived there until 1938...Images exported from DeLorme's Street Atlas USA 2007 Plus...

Sleeping Beauty Under Pressure

Here are a few sheets prepared by Production Assistant (later Production Manager) Ed Hansen, whom I remember as he showed me around the second floor of the animation building in August 1978. These sheets were prepared for the clean-up department during the production of Sleeping Beauty, but anyone who has worked in animation for some time has probably seen similar sheets...

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Prod. UM31 - Mickey's Kangaroo

Directed by Dave Hand, released 4/13/35, this draft dated 12/11/34. Disney's last black and white film - before TV, of course.
Animated by Les Clark, Fred Moore, Dick Lundy, Gerry Geronimi and Hardie "Little Toot" Gramatki...Available on Treasures DVD: Mickey Mouse in Black & White vol.2.

Sound Conundrum

I have discussed the timing of the Mickey Mouse short The Pointer, prod. M-27 aka. 2227, at length. Here is a memo from assistant director Jack Cutting (situated in Music Room B) to Dave Lurie in Short Cutting, 1/30/39, about changes in the effects track.

I would like to ask anyone to come forth, who knows why they would air-brush the train sound at Measure 494 etc. Did they add generic noise all the way through? Or did they produce fades up and down by air-brushing them straight on to the optical sound film? Anyone?

I really like the expression "Blooping Ink..."

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When revisiting The Pointer, do not forget to check out my little program I wrote that I called the Beatronome. It is a metronome specifically for animated film beats. It's free! I was hoping that some of you would use it to find the beat structures in other short films, and send them to me or add them as comments, so all can learn from this. For those of you who cannot run PC programs, here is a screen shot of the interface...

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At the Disney studios, music was recorded using a click track following beats, even for live-action scores and theme park music! On later (50's, 60's) production they could be found to be using 1/8th of a beat, like in 14 3/8th beat! Sometimes they would abandon it, and record in Wild Beat (W.B.). Other times they would go for a W.B., but start on say a 14 beat. For animation, though, it was usual to record in the whole beats that were standard in the late 30's...

Hand's On...

More from Børge Ring:

Pluto's Judgement Day, Alpine Climbers, Building a Building, Camping Out, The Dognapper, The Mail Pilot, Who killed Cock Robin?

These (mentioned at random) are some of the shorts that David Hand directed for Disney. One of them titled Mickey's Polo Team was a breakthrough being the first short to be completed in ruffs before further steps were taken.
In 1950 Dave was asked how he went about directing a short for Disney, and this is what he told:

"I would isolate myself with the storyboard for three weeks. I would not go to meetings, but I would answer the telephone.
I begin timing the film, not necessarily chronologically, but certain passages are already clear in my mind. (I do the pertaining layouts as thumbnails all the while.) Lots of what you decide is instinctive and intuitive, but afterwards you sit back and rationalise it. You analyse what you have being doing. Walt would keep asking WHY you did such and such (also in the story department). He insisted on your knowing WHY and he would get angry if the answer was "because I thought it would be nice."
Thus after three weeks you have the picture clear and timed in your mind and on barsheets and can answer any questions of WHY.
This is necessary because the first animator you call in may not have seen the material before and will respond with an abundance of suggestions of wonderful things to do. And you must be able to tell him precisely WHY you cannot do these wonderful things.

"But has it really never happened that the animator came up with an idea that was even better than the one already there?"
"Oh sure."
"What did you do then?"
"I said: "Thank you, John. Come back in 24 hours." and I would carefully work his idea into the total."

One piece of Dave's advice was: "If you have only one gag, have it at the iris out."
Another was: "Don't move the camera unless it means something. That is to say: Don't move the camera about just to make it look like film."

Grim Natwick on Fergy ruffs

Børge Ring relates this personal insight into 'Fergie ruffs':

    I asked Grim Natwick if he had known Norman Ferguson in a work context. Here is what he told me:

    "Yes, Fergy and I worked in the same room. On monday morning he was pacing up and down the room thinking intently about the scene he was going to do. At three in the afternoon he had the thing clear in his mind and sat down at his desk.
    He scribbled very, very fast with a red colour pencil "hammering while the iron was hot." If you looked at the red scribbles you couldn't see what it was. But if you took the pile and flipped them, you knew instantly.
    Fergy had been a professional stenographer in NY before he joined Paul Terry and he whipped out a tall amount of "shorthand scribbles" to conserve the spontaneity of his concept, filling in exposure sheets very fast. A test cameraman might appear with sheet 3 to ask whether a particular scribble WAS number 7 or meant to be a 9.

    At that time Disney had a 24 hour linetest service working in three shifts and no one needed to wait more than three hours to see a developped negative of their scene in a loop. Fergy viewed it on his movieola, and would spend the rest of the week honing the timing."
That is what Grim told me.

Dave Hand gave the second part of the story:
    "When Fergy was content with the way the scene played he went over selected red scribbles with a black pencil making them into drawings. He added spacing charts and gave the whole pile (both black and red) to his assistant."

    I was young and inexperienced, animating in cleanups. And all of this ruff-ruff-stuff was new and disturbing to me and so I asked Dave: "But what happens if the assistant cannot read the scribbles?"
Dave's tone hardened: "Then Fergy calls me on the telephone and says "This here feller is too damn dumb. Give me somebody else."

    Timing was of paramount importance to him and a prime version of a Pluto scene might have stiff movements, mingled with passages on twos. The dog would be scratching his ear using a straight "plank" for an arm. Both scribbles were exposed four frames. He didn't care (yet). At this stage it was all about the timing. How long should Pluto scratch? Later on he would work the ear scratching up into supple dynamic movement on ones. He was nothing if not a man of movement. It shows up as early as 1930 in "The Firefighters" where Mickey Mouse rescues an unconscious Minnie from a smoke filled window nearly losing her. During the years following, he "developed enormously" accordng to Art Babbitt in a 1973 interview with Michael Barrier.

"Fergy animated very fast," Dave Hand said, "but it was not an economic advantage because it took expensive people to finish his animation."

Babe...

Babe is the ox of Paul Bunyan (in production papers often misspelled Bunyon), here shown from all sides in this Tom Oreb model sheet. Oreb was character stylist on this film. Backgrounds were by Eyvind Earle and Walt Peregoy, story by Lance Nolley and Ted Berman, directed by Les Clark, who ok'ed this sheet. It was released 8/1/58 and can be found on the Disney Rarities Treasures DVD...

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Prod. UM48 - Mother Pluto

Directed by Dave Hand and released 11/14/36. This is a rather early draft - as of 8/1/36 some scenes were not yet assigned.
Animators that WERE assigned: Izzy Klein, Johnny Cannon, Bill Roberts, Norm Ferguson and Gerry Geronimi.

Note that the film is found on the Treasures DVD Silly Symphonies, while its production number shows it was part of the Mickey series...
[UPDATE: After the making of this draft, it was moved to the Silly Symphonies series and given prod. nr. US-38. Thanks, JB! Teaches me to check my sources!]

Prod. 2237 - Put-Put Troubles

Directed by Riley Thomson who picked it up 7/7/39, this 6th draft was prepared 3/21/40. The film was released 7/17/40.
It was most likely also known earlier as RM-37. Excuse the fact that some scenes are missing due to bad copying: nrs. 9 and 48 completely, though one still can make out Emery Hawkins as the animator on scenes 17 and 37.1. A lot of changes have been made due to continuity changing, and assistant director Ralph Chadwick must have had his hands full - one wonders when these changes were made, and if any of the cut scenes were actually animated.

This draft interestingly shows the animators AND the effects animators and their respective footage, as on the features - compare with Pinocchio. We see animation by Nick DeTolly, Judge Whitaker, Jim Armstrong, George Goepper, Ken Muse, Lee Morehouse, Volus Jones, Emery Hawkins, Johnny Cannon (his last Disney credit according to Alberto, he died in 1946 age 39), Ken Peterson, [Claude or Paul J.] Smith and George Kreisl, with effects by Ed Parks, Jack (Joseph) Gayek, Jack (Joseph) Harbaugh, Murray Griffen, Art Fitzpatrick, Jack (John) Huber, Reuben Timmins, Andy Engman, Miles Pike, Al Stetter, Frank Follmer and Jack Boyd. Again, several Joe's and John's called Jack. Layout by Bill Tracy, and Carl Barks worked on story. The shorts animators were considered pretty much the second string, as the features had gobbled up the first violins (see Mike Barrier's interview with Dave Hand), but some, like Lee Morehouse and Johnny Cannon, were very experienced. Andy Engman and Ken Peterson later were managing all the animation production...[Oops - sorry - fixed the links to the right draft!]

Prod. CM9 - Pioneer Days

Directed by Burt Gillett, released on Walt's 29th birthday, 12/5/1930.
We again meet Ben Sharpsteen, Jack King, Norm Ferguson, Johnny Cannon, Les Clark, Wilfred Jackson, Dave Hand, Tom Palmer, Dick Lundy, Frenchy de Tremaudan, Jack Cutting and Charlie Byrne.
This is the group (minus the last two) that animated most all of the Mickeys and Silly Symphonies in the early 30's - and made most of the animation-technical discoveries that we take for granted today...