What a Character! - Professor Owl

His career was brief, but oh so significant.

Professor Owl has quite the pedigree. Imbued with the creative energies of Disney Studio veterans such as Ward Kimball and Bill Thompson, he found his way into two Disney cartoons, both of which remain critically celebrated and historically significant: Adventures in Music: Melody and Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom.

The two cartoons, both released in 1953, are largely credited with infusing the then emerging cartoon modern style into Disney animation. In addition, each short represented an animation first; Melody was the first cartoon presented in 3D, while Toot was the first cartoon to stretch across the widescreen Cinemascope format. Toot would also be honored with that year's Academy Award for Animated Short Subject.

In many ways Professor Owl became a stylized incarnation of a similar character that was featured four years earlier in the film So Dear to My Heart. The Wise Old Owl of that movie delivered morality tales via animated vignettes to film's young protagonist played by Bobby Driscoll. In Melody and Toot, Professor Owl replaced morality with music education and taught his lessons within a birdhouse schoolhouse, populated with the likes of Bertie Birdbrain, Penelope Pinfeather, Suzy Sparrow and the Canary Sisters.

Kimball provided Professor Owl with his more minimalist but still dynamic aesthetic design while Bill Thompson supplied the character's personality rich voice. Thompson's resume at Disney had also notably included the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and Ranger J. Audubon Woodlore from both Donald Duck and Humphrey Bear cartoons.

Professor Owl was certainly a non-traditional design and a clear departure for animators such as Kimball. Colored in shades of blue with large oversize spectacles, he was a stark contrast to the studio's prior canon of animal characters, and his two star outings ushered in Disney's 1950s era of cartoon modern-influenced productions.

Marvels of Production Art

Upon seeing yesterday's post on the Donald Duck cartoon Modern Inventions, Bob Cowan kindly sent on some wonderful production art pieces from the short.

I recently became aware of Bob and his amazing collection of Disneyana that he has so generously made available via his site The Cowan Collection, and through the sharing of his extensive resources with other Disney history sites and blogs.

Thanks, Bob!

Museum of Modern Marvels

The future frequently envisioned in the 1930s was a bright and shining place, filled with tall skyscrapers and mechanical automatons that took even the most common laborious tasks and functions out of the hands of the common citizens. It was a great big beautiful tomorrow as presented in films such as Metropolis and Things to Come and a popular culture phenomenon that ultimately culminated at decade's end in the World of Tomorrow presented at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair.

Donald Duck experienced that particular vision of the future for a brief time in 1937 when he visited the Museum of Modern Marvels in the cartoon Modern Inventions. It was released on May 29th of that year.

The Museum, like much of era's pop culture futurism, what no so much a showcase of emerging technologies but a series of robotic appendage-based contraptions designed to perform the mundane rather than the magnificent. Hydraulic potato peelers, pneumatic pencil sharpeners and robot nurse maids were among the exhibits within the halls of the museum's sleek, streamline moderne architecture. No doubt many members of the cartoon's audience, as they were then emerging out of the throes of the Great Depression, could dream of owning a robot butler, despite Donald's own exasperation with the one that haunted his steps as he toured the museum.

A standard archetype of these earlier era future visions and also present in Modern Inventions is the robotic barber chair. Donald comically gets his tail trimmed and head polished by the friendly automation. Disney would in fact revisit that concept and the whole of 1930s futurism some forty years later in a set piece of the Horizons attraction at EPCOT Center.

Fleischer Studios, home of Popeye and Betty Boop, would also explore similar themes in 1938 with the short All's Fair at the Fair, a cartoon that anticipated the upcoming New York World's Fair. It as well featured an automated robot-based shave and a haircut sequence.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

EPCOT 1939

Melody Time

Vastly underrated, largely unrecognized, and sadly little discussed by even the most serious and well respected of Disney historians is the 1948 animated feature Melody Time. It is in many ways an unheralded classic and a very notable showcase for many of the studio's most talented writers, artists and animators. It was released six decades ago on May 27, 1948.

The initial lack of financial success for Fantasia forced Walt Disney to abandon plans for successive reissues of that film with new material, but he did in fact revisit the style and structure of Fantasia, though not its classical music format, in both Make Mine Music which followed in 1946, and then Melody Time. Along with the other late-1940s "package" films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the films quickly lost their identities when Disney chose to subsequently break them apart into individual sequences for later theatrical releases and television airings. It was not until the mid-1990s that Melody Time emerged again in its original form, though albeit in very low profile Disney Channel airings and then a few years later in home video releases that, at least in America, included the unnecessary editing of cigarette smoking references. These factors, combined with the film's very distinct post-World War II popular music have sadly served to diminish its otherwise significant artistic and creative achievements. Even contemporary critics tend to still compartmentalize the film, analyzing and discussing its component parts rather than addressing its overall theme and presentation.

Melody Time is comprised of seven musical vignettes--Once Upon a Wintertime, Bumble Boogie, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot, Trees, Blame It on the Samba and Pecos Bill--presented in the form of an overall musical program, somewhat akin to a concert hall program. Though it jettisoned the classical music trappings of Fantasia, it still retained that film's prominent theme of artistic interpretation. Each sequence begins with a paintbrush and canvas introduction. Though generally well received, most criticisms of the film focused on these connecting narratives, considering them generally weak, and undermining the film's overall presentation. While generally praising Melody Time's individual segments, Leonard Maltin remarked in his book The Disney Films:

"What Melody Time lacks is unity. The paintbrush format and Buddy Clark's introductions are a poor substitute for cohesion, and, though one can enjoy the various segments, there is a feeling, when Pecos Bill brings the film to an abrupt conclusion, that something is missing. Fantasia was episodic, too, but one felt that it was cut from a whole cloth, as it were. There was never a feeling of fragmentation."

It is an opinion with which I must respectfully disagree. The cohesion that Maltin found lacking is in fact present on a much more subtle yet still overriding level. The overall art direction of Melody Time represented a dramatic shift away from the more literal artistic interpretations that had characterized most Disney animation up until that point. Mary Blair, Claude Coats and Dick Kelsey, despite the episodic format, provided the film a unified visual style heavy with impressionistic influence and very atypical uses of color. It is a film that is consistently painted in very bold strokes and in many places truly bears the mark of Mary Blair's artistic genius. This is especially apparent in Once Upon a Wintertime, Trees and Johnny Appleseed. It is indeed ironic that Blair's legacy has been recently so wrapped up in It's a Small World, by individuals who tend to disregard efforts such as Melody Time where her talent and creativity are so very better represented.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed in particular is easily one of the most underrated and unappreciated works of Disney animation. Studio veteran Winston Hibler created a rhythmic narrative and successfully combined it with wonderful songs and Blair's often stunning tableaus. Hibler's eloquent and frequently beautiful poetic narration is complemented so often by Blair's amazing designs. The sequence's final moments that highlight " . . . John's heavenly orchard of apple trees," where apple blossom trees merge into a cloud-filled sky, is simply breathtaking.

And this is not to in anyway discount any of the other six segments. Once Upon a Wintertime is a holiday greeting card come to life and is especially notable for the aforementioned atypical uses of color. Though brief, Bumble Boogie is a high energy tour de force through a surreal piano inspired naturescape. Well realized are both Little Toot and Pecos Bill, which stylistically come closer in storytelling and design to Disney's then more traditional efforts. Blame It on the Samba returns to the visually dynamic settings, music and characters of The Three Caballeros, while Trees presents a dramatic and again clearly Blair-inspired interpretation of the Joyce Kilmer poem. Ward Kimball's broad interpretation of Pecos Bill is especially well realized.

Similar to Make Mine Music, Melody Time is also an entertaining representation of pre-rock and roll American popular music figures. While little remembered today, Dennis Day, Frances Langford, Freddy Martin, Ethel Smith, and most especially the Andrew Sisters and Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers were well known personalities via both film and radio. For many, it serves as a nostalgic musical time capsule; for others it unfortunately severely dates the movie and diminishes its overall appeal. Regardless, in the history of Disney music, songs such as Johnny Appleseed's "The Lord is Good to Me," "Blame It on the Samba," and Pecos Bill's introductory "Blue Shadows on the Trail" deserve far more recognition than they have heretofore received.

The film's most lasting legacy would certainly be the Pecos Bill segment. Those particular characters successfully transitioned into theme park incarnations over the years, with Walt Disney World's Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe being the most prominent example.

It is unfortunate that Melody Time has suffered somewhat unfair comparisons to Fantasia, and also the often very unfair perceptions of stagnant creativity associated with the post-war package films. It certainly deserves better.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

What a Character! - Pecos Bill
What a Character! - The Aracuan Bird

The Toontown Field Guide: Horace Horsecollar

Horace Horsecollar is certainly one of the better known of Disney's secondary cartoon players. Like his female counterpart of sorts Clarabelle Cow, Horace predated even Goofy, Donald Duck and Pluto. Significantly, his debut was in the Mickey Mouse short The Plow Boy, which was released on this date in 1929.

In Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland, Horace is a fitness entrepreneur, being the proprietor of the Horace Horsecollar Gym. The image that appears on a punching bag sign is drawn from the 1941 color version of Orphan's Benefit.

In the book Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters, author John Grant noted:

" . . . it must have been galling for Horace and Clarabelle to take part in so many of the early Disney "greats" and then watch Johnny-come-latelies like Goofy and Donald Duck ascend to the heights while they remained forever struggling to reach the first rung of the ladder of stardom."

Roadside Disney: Trailer Tales

It is an icon of roadside popular culture. A home on the road for tin can tourists. Over the years, Disney cartoon makers incorporated the American travel trailer into a number of short subjects, but perhaps never more famously than in the Technicolor classic Mickey's Trailer, released on May 6, 1938.

Mickey's Trailer was not born out of happenstance. A mere decade earlier, everyman Arthur Sherman, a modest bacteriologist, turned the then fledging auto camping movement on its ear when he introduced a solid-walled trailer that was devoid of the more traditional canvas and tent based designs that had been popular up to that point. Jokingly dubbed the "Covered Wagon" by Sherman's children, it would launch both a successful new industry and a popular culture phenomenon. In their book Ready to Roll: A Celebration of the Classic American Travel Trailer, authors Arrol Gellner and Douglas Keister elaborated on Sherman's unique achievement:

"Sherman's Covered Wagon Company was a rare success story in the bleakest years of the Depression, and naturally, it attracted notice—both from competitors and from the American press, who were desperate for stories containing some glimmer of economic hope. For their part, Sherman's competitors—including those who had specialized in all manner of sophisticated, fold-out gadgetry—were eventually obliged to adopt the Covered Wagon's hard-walled construction."

This Depression-era trailer boom reached a peak in 1936, followed quickly by an unpredicted and near devastating decline shortly thereafter. Manufacturers dramatically over predicted growth and demand and the bubble quickly burst. This was coupled with a sudden public disenchantment with many aspects of trailer culture. Gellner and Keister noted:

"The media's giddy, rose-colored accounts were gradually supplanted by more hostile examinations of the trailering phenomenon. Trailer parks were pilloried as a new kind of American slum-on-wheels and were even accused of being a breeding ground for epidemics, while trailerites were increasingly portrayed as freeloaders helping themselves to public roads and facilities without paying taxes for their support."

When it was released in 1938, Mickey's Trailer encapsulated many of these both positive and negative associations. Via Walt's well known "Probable Impossible," the canned-ham style trailer featured in the short embodied with extreme exaggeration the trailer manufacturers much hyped claims of style, luxury and countless conveniences. Its interior featured a series of ingenious if not impossible transforming set pieces; a bunk room dramatically morphs into a bathroom (complete with sink and already filled bathtub) and then into its final incarnation as a dinette upon which Mickey serves up breakfast.

Yet the cartoon's creators, in a subtle yet still noticeable manner, poked fun at the various negative associations to trailer culture that began to emerge in the late 1930s. The short's opening reveal of the trio's city dump campsite is indicative of what Gellner and Keister described as local government fears of trailerite slums taking root on city outskirts. The perception of trailer campers as freeloaders is distinctly portrayed when Mickey, without conscience, absconds corn from a nearby farmer's field and similarly draws milk from a passing cow. The background music for that particular scene featured the song "The World Owes Me a Living."
A post-World War II boom returned the travel trailer to a more than receptive American public. The industry itself experienced a distinct split as larger residence-based mobile homes became as equally popular as their recreational-centric counterparts. The smaller travel trailers became linked with then very popular outdoor sportsmen dynamics that included camping, hunting and fishing. This pop culture phenomenon was not lost on Disney animators; they used it to great effect in the 1950 Donald Duck cartoon Trailer Horn. A canned ham-style trailer is the focal point of Chip and Dale's inspired antagonism and Donald's resulting frustration.

In the 1952 cartoon Two Weeks Vacation, Goofy falls victim to a well known highway convention--getting stuck behind a lumbering, slow-moving car and trailer combination. Mixed in the short with the Goof's other road trip pratfalls is a recurring encounter with an oversize and impassable trailer. Similar gags would be revisited quite famously a couple of years later in the classic Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz comedy The Long, Long Trailer.

Disney Imagineers have similarly drawn inspiration from the travel trailer and have peppered Disney theme parks with numerous trailer-inspired set pieces. Trading on mid 20th century nostalgia are trailers that appear in Animal Kingdom's Dinoland, at Disney's Pop Century Resort and in Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland. Trailers were also a featured part of a character greeting area at Disney's Hollywood Studios prior to that particular location's current Pixar Studios redesign. But likely the most prominent use of travel trailers and their connection to roadside culture are the "Elfstream" designs found at Winter Summerland Miniature Golf at Walt Disney World. The theming mixes roadside campground nostalgia with retro Christmas trappings for a truly entertaining and often hilarious experience.

The Toontown Field Guide: The Simple Things

A simple homage to the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Simple Things can be found just inside the front door of Mickey's house in Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland. In that particular cartoon, Mickey heads to the beach with faithful pal Pluto, but also takes along a fashionable hat and fishing rod, both of which are represented in the entrance foyer of his home.

The Simple Things, released in 1953, represented Mickey's initial retirement from animated short subjects. It just recently celebrated its 55th Anniversary on April 18. Check out our earlier post that details the significance and simple pleasures of this often overlooked cartoon.

The Toontown Field Guide: Toby Tortoise

In films, Toby Tortoise was a long distance runner and a boxer; in Disneyland's Toontown, he is a private investigator and a proprietor of soup products.

Toby was one of the early stars of Walt Disney's Silly Symphony series of cartoons. He was introduced along with co-star Max Hare in 1935 short The Tortoise in the Hare, a retelling of the Aesop Fable. The pair returned a year later in the sequel Toby Tortoise Returns, this time squaring off against each other in a boxing match.

Toby made a cameo of sorts in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? In an alley in Toontown, a poster lining a brick wall advertises Toby's Turtle Soup. Imagineers reproduced that set piece for the queue area of Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin in Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland.

Nearby in Mickey's Toontown, a window advertises the services of the Toby Tortoise Detective Agency with its motto, "Slow & Steady Solves the Case."

From the Mailroom: Mickey's Nephews

The past weeks have been especially busy for me, primarily due to trips to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Content has been a bit lighter here and I have certainly been neglecting the mailroom. More articles are on the way (look for new entries in both Disney's Hollywood and Roadside Disney series soon), and for today we'll at least take a look at one email inquiry.

One of our favorite 2719 Hyperion readers, David Caffey, recently posed this question:

While browsing around the web this afternoon I checked in at Jessica’s If We Can Dream It… blog. The most recent post featured photos from Fulton’s General Store at Port Orleans Riverside and among the characters hard at work in the store displays are Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse. Who in the world are Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse and why do they look so much like the boss?

Unlike Huey, Dewey and Louie, Donald Duck's long famous nephews, Morty and Ferdy have not experienced the fame and notoriety of their waterfowl counterparts. While the younger ducks' collective resume lists many appearances across numerous media, Morty and Ferdy have largely been confined to the four color world--the comics medium, from which they emerged in 1932.

Disney Legend Floyd Gottfredson introduced the pair in the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip Mickey Nephews that appeared on Sunday, September 18, 1932. They are the children of Mrs. Fieldmouse. Gottfredson very likely drew inspiration for the characters from the Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Nightmare, which had been released to theaters a little over a month before. The comic strip incarnations are identical to the dream sequence offspring portrayed in the short.

A similar brood of toddler Mickeys were featured in the 1933 short Giantland. Mickey is identified as their uncle when he tells them a story that is a variation of Jack in the Beanstalk.

One year later, two toddler Mickeys appeared in the cartoon Mickey's Steamroller where their mischievous antics produced calamitous consequences for their famous uncle. They are not identified by name but numerous Disney texts consider this to be the one and only screen appearance of Morty and Ferdy. It is a convenient and easy connection to make, though it is likely the cartoon's creators never considered such an identification and were merely carrying over the toddler Mickey models from the prior shorts. The same character model would be used again in Mickey Plays Papa, Orphans Picnic and both the 1934 and 1941 versions of Orphans Benefit. Four decades later, a similar model would form the basis of the Tiny Tim character in Mickey's Christmas Carol. Twenty years after that, similar characters would make a brief cameo in an episode of Mickey's Mouse Works that would lated be recycled into the House of Mouse program.

The comic book incarnations of Morty and Ferdy in subsequent years grew more distinct and defined and eventually became fodder for both merchandising and theme park appearances.

The Official Encyclopedia Disney A to Z lists "Ferdy" as the official spelling, although it frequently appears as Ferdie as well.

Bring 'em Back Alive!

It is likely there are very few people under the age of sixty for whom the name Frank Buck would have any degree of meaning or recognition. A early-20th century adventurer, world traveler, animal collector, author and filmmaker, Buck would become forever associated with his famous mantra,"bring 'em back alive." For our purposes here, Buck would inspire tribute and parody in Disney-produced cartoons of the era.

Buck earned his reputation not so much as a big game hunter but as a big game collector. "Bring 'em back alive" was more than just a catchy motto, it was the basis of Buck's very own business model. His goal was not wall trophies but actual live specimens that he could sell to zoos and circuses. In the early 1930s, he became world famous when his animal collecting adventures were chronicled in both books and films. In an interesting contrast, his second movie, Wild Cargo, shared the screen with Disney's Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies at Radio City Music Hall during the spring of 1934.

Disney cartoon makers translated Buck and his adventures via gag and parody into the 1946 Donald Duck-Goofy short Frank Duck Brings ‘Em Back Alive. Donald assumes the Frank Buck persona as he heads deep into exotic jungles in search of a "wild man" that can be returned to the mainland for eventual circus sideshow display. The Goof plays the distinctly crazy yet still very clever quarry. The ensuing contest would be recycled shortly thereafter in 1947 when Donald would similarly chase the Aracuan Bird in Clown of the Jungle. Those cartoons, along with Goofy's own 1945 short African Diary, made spoof of Hollywood's then very popular jungle movies and serials, a genre that was inspired in part by Buck's early productions.

Buck was very popular with young people who were thrilled by his globe trotting exploits. He was especially proud of the elementary school reader he wrote entitled On Jungle Trails. Evidence of this juvenile-based popularity can be found in the treehouse hideout of Huey, Dewey and Louie in the 1949 Donald Duck cartoon Donald's Happy Birthday. Pinned on the wall is a poster emblazoned with a tiger and proudly advertising the Frank Duck Circus, a clever aside to both Buck and the earlier Frank Duck cartoon. Buck was the proprietor of animal attractions at both 1934 and 1939 World's Fairs, and he also established a combination base camp and zoo on Long Island in the mid 1930s that was famous for its Monkey Mountain habitat. Buck worked briefly for Ringling Brother and Barnum and Bailey in the late 1930s. Just prior to his death in 1950, he appeared as himself in the Abbott and Costello comedy Africa Screams.

Roadside Disney: Cartoon Crazy and Studios Programmatic

"At the beginning of the automobile age, in that most car crazy of places, Southern California, roadways were dotted with eye-catching beacons for travelers. Diners shaped like chili bowls, pigs, and coffee pots; hotels and theaters in Aztec and Mayan motifs; and all matter of oddly shaped buildings were part of the western architectural landscape--a trend that spread across the country."

From the book California Crazy and Beyond by Jim Heimann

Programmatic architecture, more commonly referred to as "California Crazy," was a visual mainstay along the roads and highways of southern California for much of the early half of the 20th century. It was not surprising then when Disney cartoon makers drew inspiration from programmatic design when creating the 1949 Donald Duck short All in a Nutshell.

In the cartoon, Donald Duck is the proprietor of a roadside stand called Don's Nut Butter. Shaped like a giant walnut, the stand is not just simply a background element--it is the gag that propels the story. Coveting this huge "nut," Chip and Dale set about attempting to crack its shell. When they breech an opening near the top, they discover its non-organic nature, but then decide to instead dedicate their efforts to pirating off as much of the duck's nut butter as they can possibly manage.

Don's giant walnut was inspired by numerous roadside establishments that were typically produce stands or counter service cafes. Very similar in appearance and style to the Nut Butter stand was the Jumbo Lemon, one of a chain of drink stands with locations throughout California. Other notable examples included the Chili Bowl, the Mushroom Cafe and the Tamale, all small diners that sprang up in southern California during the 1920s and 1930s.

Two years prior to All in a Nutshell, Disney animators made reference to one of the most famous examples of programmatic architecture, in the 1947 feature film Fun and Fancy Free. At the end of film, Willie the Giant is seen walking through the Hollywood landscape, searching for a "teensy-weensy little mouse." He spies the famous bowler hat architecture of the Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant, picks it up and places it on his head. This very funny and then quite topical gag poked fun at the original Hollywood Brown Derby on Wilshire Avenue and its over the top California Crazy design.

When Disneyland opened in 1955, it could be said that it was in many ways an extension of California Crazy, taken to a much more sophisticated level of design and execution. But the Walt Disney Company would in fact revisit programmatic architecture in the style's more historic context when, in 1989, the company recreated an idealistic golden age of Hollywood as part of the theming for Disney-MGM Studios. Included in the park's initial design were two very distinct homages to 1930s era California Crazy motifs. Both were located into the Echo Lake area of park; both were counter service food establishments (as were the vast majority of vintage-era programmatic buildings), and they both bore thematic connections to early Hollywood productions.

Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction paid homage to the star of Windsor McKay's landmark animated cartoon from 1914. Dinosaurs have long been a popular subject for novelty architects and Gertie is similar in design and scale to other roadside dinosaur structures. Other creature-inspired establishments ran the gamut from dogs and chickens to pigs and fish.

Min and Bill's Dockside Diner was inspired by the 1930 film Min and Bill starring Wallace Berry and Marie Dressler. Imagineers drew on the movie's waterfront setting to create the counter service venue that takes the form of a vintage tramp steamer. Nautical design was an especially popular theme of California Crazy, distinguished typically by land-bound ships, boats and even inspired interpretations of Noah's Ark.

In an interesting, and somewhat ironic twist, Imagineers did not reproduce the original bowler hat design when they recreated the Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant at the Studios park. Instead they based the signature eatery's design on the Hollywood Brown Derby location that was built near the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. But Imagineers did recreate the storefront facade of the Darkroom, a well known Hollywood retail store, for the park's own camera shop on Hollywood Boulevard. And it certainly could be argued that the oft-debated giant Sorcerer's Hat that has become the icon of the Studios is but another shining example of programmatic architecture.

One final interesting Disney-California Crazy connection to make note of: comics writer-illustrator Dave Stevens incorporated one of the more famous programmatic structures, the Bulldog Cafe, into his graphic novel The Rocketeer. Disney recreated the cafe when it adapted the work into a film in 1991, and that particular set piece resided for a number of years on the back lot at Disney-MGM Studios. The original Bulldog Cafe dated back to the 1920s and was located on West Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles. A very similar building, called the Pup Cafe, was a popular hot dog stand and served the citizens of Venice, California during the early 1930s.

Screenshots © Walt Disney Company

What a Character! - The Aracuan Bird

A 1940s era Disney cartoon star that breaks the fourth wall and circumnavigates the borders of the movie screen, engaging in inspired insanity that ranges from mischievous pranks to over-the-top attempts at suicide.

Wow . . . . what a character!

Born out of the 1945 animated feature The Three Caballeros, the Aracuan is that rare bird that at times was more akin to his Warner Brothers or Walter Lantz counterparts than to his slightly more benign Disney cartoon costars. His antics bears strong associations with avian cartoon cousins Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker, but with a South of the Border sensibility owing to his origins in the Disney Latin American film canon.

The Aracuan Bird debuted in the Rare Birds segment of The Three Caballeros, memorably emerging from a home movie screen and crawling up the projector beam to shake hands with a befuddled Donald Duck. He reappears later in the film to derail the train taking Donald and Jose Carioca to Baia. As the train travels through a stunning chalk drawing-inspired landscape, the Aracuan cleverly uses his own piece of chalk to draw new rails that split apart the engine, its cars and the caboose.

Studio veteran and Disney Legend Eric Larson created and animated the Aracuan Bird for The Three Caballeros. Despite the character's relatively brief appearances, Larson infused the Aracuan with a frantic, mischievous personality, yet combined it with an innocent, endearing nature that ultimately made him both entertaining and very memorable. In his book Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, author John Canemaker observed:

"Larson animated the the mad bird like a mechanical doll, puttering along, turning an occasional cartwheel as it goes on its giddy way. The Aracuan is a spirit of the film medium itself and its elements . . . he toys with the substance of film itself and its mechanics, literally running off the film frames as they race by--thus affecting the audience's perception of what they are watching."

So great was the character's impact that he was brought back in two subsequent productions. He returned first in the 1947 Donald Duck cartoon Clown of the Jungle, and appeared again with Donald and Jose Caricoa in the Blame It On the Samba segment of 1948 package film Melody Time. He would also bear a distinct physical resemblance to another Larson-created character: Sasha, the little bird with a similar red tuft of hair from the Peter and the Wolf segment of Make Mine Music.

Clown of the Jungle extended the premise first visited in The Three Caballeros, as the Aracuan disrupts another South American birdwatching vignette. But the cartoon quickly spins away from the prior film's generally benign trappings into a fast paced outing very reminiscent of earlier Elmer Fudd-Daffy Duck confrontations. Director Jack Hannah recreated the bird's trademark song and the here-there-and-everywhere popping in and out of frame innovated by Larson. But suddenly, and hilariously, the short exhibits somewhat darker humor. Responding to Donald's rebuff, the Aracuan becomes the centerpiece of a suicide gag where the bird engages in the plausible impossible act of hanging himself from his own arm. The gags continue fast and furious, culminating in an uber-violent machine gun attack by Donald that the Aracuan naturally, and quite casually dodges. The escape results in Donald losing hold of his own sanity, and the cartoon ends with him mimicking the Aracuan's now very familiar song and dance.

While his crazy nature remains intact in Melody Time, the Aracuan's malicious mischievousness is replaced with the more noble purpose of cheering up forlorn friends Donald and Jose. As Disney character scholar John Grant notes, ". . . they are in this feature really less like characters and more like 'experiencing objects,' battered around by the whims of the turbulent, pulsing music." The sequence is clearly a return to the style and presentation of The Three Caballeros, but this time making the Aracuan Bird the catalyst for the eye-popping visuals and stunning mixes of live action and animation. The climactic exploding organ sequence featuring Ethel Smith remains one of the most amazing moments in a Disney film, and it was the Aracuan Bird who planted the dynamite stick under the foot pedal.

While Melody Time would be the Aracuan's last big screen appearance, he would return in a 2002 episode of the television show "House of Mouse." But more significantly, like his Samba costar Jose Carioca, the Aracuan would go on to enjoy a successful incarnation in comic books produced in Brazil. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he would be a featured character in a series entitled Os Adolescentes (translated Disney Teens).

Images © Walt Disney Company

From the Mailroom: The Star of the Acorn Club

We are going to start visiting the Mailroom here at 2719 Hyperion on a regular basis. I've been wanting to showcase reader feedback and questions for sometime, so hopefully this will be the start of an ongoing feature.

First up, I piqued the curiosity of David Caffey when he was listening to a recent episode of the WDW Radio Show:

Jeff – You just can’t toss out a name Clarice Chipmunk on WDW Radio without providing a little more info on 2719 – I’m now going acorns trying to find out more about her and see a picture. Hows about a short blog entry about this star of the Acorn Club (that’s all I could really find). Thanks for all you do!

Thanks for writing, David. Clarice, sadly, was a victim of the very era she was born into.

A new generation of characters began to emerge in Disney cartoons in 1950s. Humphrey Bear and Ranger Woodlore grew out of the Donald Duck shorts into adventures of their own, specifically In the Bag and Hooked Bear, both released in 1956. Chip 'n' Dale had also spun off into cartoons of their own, and it was in one of those efforts, Two Chips and a Miss from 1952, where we encounter the nightclub vamping Clarice in her one and only appearance. But unfortunately for all these then rising toon stars, within a few years, production of cartoon shorts would all but dissolve at Disney. Clarice was subsequently never brought back for a return engagement.

Two Chips and a Miss was an unusual outing for Chip and Dale. It was a rare instance where the two were rivals instead of partners. And for all her cuteness, Clarice was no innocent. She deliberately plays the boys against each other with competing invitations to meet her at the Acorn Club, and clearly takes pleasure when their rivalry later comes to blows. There can be little doubt that director Jack Hannah was taking inspiration from Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood series of shorts at MGM. In fact, one very funny gag has the pair's heads morphing into wolf features that, in context to the setting, bears a direct connection to Avery's "Wolfie" character from the Red shorts.

Despite her one night stand in cartoon history, Clarice lives anew, albeit just not in animated form. Her entertainment resume has recently earned her a spot as a walk around character at Disney's Hollywood Studios. She even sports her original Acorn Club costume.

As always, I welcome your feedback and questions. Email to jeffpepper@2719hyperion.com.

Screenshots © Walt Disney Company

Roadside Disney: Looking for a Good Night's Sleep

One of the themes I revisit often here at 2719 Hyperion is the traces of popular culture that can be found in Disney entertainment, especially in productions from the Studio's first three decades. The emerging dominance of automobile transportation during those decades gave birth to a roadside culture that permeated the American landscape until diminishing with the advent of Interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s. Disney artists and animators would often inject their work with roadside inspirations, and its easy to understand why. Based out of southern California, they existed at a focal point of roadside Americana. The mother road, the legendary Route 66, cut a path directly through Hollywood.

Overnight lodgings became necessities for weary automobile travelers. As author John Margolies notes in his book Home Away From Home: Motels in America, "The roadside hostelries that evolved were not only creative and efficient institutions, but they became part of the ethos of American mobility and popular culture. The setting of a motel room or a tourist cabin has provided moments in movies and literature."

The 1947 Donald Duck short Wide Open Spaces is the first time that a Disney character seeks out a motel for a good night's sleep. The Hold-Up Motel is no more than an old house distinguished by its clever gun motif sign, but it evokes an archetype setting made especially famous by Hollywood in countless crime noir films of that time period. Background artist Howard Dunn did a terrific job of capturing that darker, moodier style, even though the tone of the short was generally light and comical. Seedier roadside venues were clearly the inspiration for the Hold-Up Motel and those places were often distinguished as criminal hideaways or as author Margolies remarks," . . . venues of choice for those with less than honorable intentions." Even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover attacked the tourist camp industry when he wrote an expose called "Camps of Crime" for The American Magazine in 1940. Fortunately, the only supposed crime Donald encounters at the Hold-Up Hotel is the proprietor charging $16 for "the cot on the porch."

When Goofy took Two Weeks Vacation in 1952, his adventures were the cartoon equivalent of a Route 66 road trip in everything but highway name. At the beginning of the short, a desk bound Goof dreams of golfing, boating, hunting and fishing, but his reality instead becomes roadside escapades involving crooked mechanics, reckless trailer jockeys and the quest for a neon sign proclaiming VACANCY. These vignettes and gags were very much rooted in American roadside culture. Motor courts and tourist cabins were still in their heyday at the time of Two Weeks Vacation, and that is reflected in the backgrounds created by Art Riley.

In his search for lodging, Goofy encounters one of the common marketing mantras of the open road: LAST CHANCE. When countless miles often separated small towns and their roadside establishments, the term LAST CHANCE was frequently used when advertising or identifying restaurants, service stations and motels. To his horror, the Goof discovers he has passed the LAST CHANCE MOTEL and that the NEXT CHANCE MOTEL is still some 500 miles distant. He ultimately arrives at an unnamed motel claiming vacancy. Riley clearly drew inspiration from existing establishments. The motel's adobe architecture can be found in motor courts that dotted the American southwest. The cartoon design is an almost direct copy of vintage motels such as the El Vado Court in Albuquerque and the Adobe Motel in Santa Fe.

Goofy is trumped out of the last room at that particular establishment, but manages to subsequently secure a room at a motel-type that was once a mainstay of automobile travelers: the tourist cabin. In what is perhaps the cartoon's funniest gag, he walks through a quaint and picturesque cottage facade that could have been lifted from a mid-20th century linen postcard. But things are not what they seem, for a ramshackle shack is what lies behind the cottage door.

This is not just a simple cartoon gag; it represents a dynamic that Margolies describes in Home Away From Home:

By 1935, in another article in National Petroleum News, cabin camps were described as being of two types — the $1 cabin and the 50-cent cabin. The dollar cabins weren't all that bad: a bed with good springs, lavatory, toilet, tub or shower, chairs, lamp, and many had interior walls. There was usually a restaurant or a kitchen in a separate building, and some operations even had a swimming pool. The 50-cent cabin was much more spartan, offering little more than a bed with bathroom facilities and electricity, and a lunch-counter-type eating facility. Even so, James Agee, in his 1934 article in Fortune, could wax poetic about "the oddly excellent feel of a weak-springed mattress in a clapboard transient shack."

In the same article, Agee described in detail an even nicer two-dollar cabin: "In this one you find a small, clean room, perhaps ten by twelve. Typically its furniture is a double bed—a sign may have told you it is Simmons, with Beautyrest mattress — a table, two kitchen chairs, a small mirror, a row of hooks. In one corner a washbasin with cold running water; in another the half-opened door to a toilet. There is a bit of chintz curtaining over the screened windows, through which a breeze is blowing. ...Inside you have just what you need for a night's rest, neither more nor less. And you have it with a privacy your hotel could not furnish — for this night this house is your own."

It would appear that Goofy paid for a two-dollar cabin with attractive chintz curtaining, but ended up with the 50-cent transient shack. A closer examination reveals that the bed in the room is in fact an old door propped up with wood posts and bricks. While Art Riley is likely better remembered for his work on such feature films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, his efforts at bringing forth these then mundane scenes of 1950s America have in effect become artistic time capsules of a now bygone era.

While there are many who would likely consider animated incarnations of motel courts and tourist cabins to be no more than cartoon minutia, they are in fact a testament to artists such as Dunn and Riley whose efforts, especially those associated with short subjects, often go uncelebrated. For through their work, they preserved small pieces of history and popular culture that sadly, continue to fade from both memory and view.

Stay tuned for more Roadside Disney in the future, as we explore the gas stations, roadside stands and other open road ephemera of vintage Disney animation.

Screenshots © Walt Disney Company

Caxanga!

"Down in Brazil there's a sing-song game they play,
When you hear this tune it haunts you night and day.
Just play it once and I'm sure that you will find,
This quaint melody will linger in your mind."

Buried within the depths of Disney historical obscurity is a hidden gem known as Caxanga. It is one of my very favorite Disney cartoons. But among the likes of The Band Concert, In the Bag, Who Killed Cock Robin or the many others that occupy the very subjective halls of Jeff Pepper-determined fame, Caxanga has one very unique distinction. It was a production that was never completed, and hence, has never graced a movie screen.

Alternately called A Brazilian Symphony, Caxanga was one of many concepts that emerged from the early 1941 Latin American junket by Disney Studio personnel that ultimately gave birth to Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros and a number other similarly themed film sequences and cartoon shorts. The creative roots for Caxanga were documented in the film South of the Border with Disney, released in 1942.

South of the Border with Disney was a thirty minute film released in late 1942, that collected footage Walt Disney, artist Lee Blair and production assistant Larry Lanburgh took with 16mm cameras on that 1941 research trip-goodwill tour of Latin American countries. It predated the releases of any and all efforts it would ultimately inspire, primarily Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. The matchbox game, like other concepts showcased in the film, were then just ideas and notions of the potential entertainment to come.

Footage from the film shows production supervisor Norm Ferguson, story man Bill Cottrell, technical director Jack Cutting and artist Mary Blair demonstrating the matchbox game. An off-screen narrator explains--

"And here's an old Brazilian game called Caxanga. They say the Indians played it centuries ago. It was played with shells originally, but today they use matchboxes. The object is to go through this passing routine without missing. Here again, rhythm plays an important part. First you sing the verse, then hum it, then play to the tempo in silence."

The next scene shows an artist drawing a number of story sketches, suggesting a future cartoon or sequence of Donald Duck playing the game.

Attempts were made to incorporate caxanga into ideas that were being considered. At various points of development, the game had been in story plans for "Aquarela Do Brasil," a sequence ultimately completed for Saludos Amigos; "Carnival Carioca," a unrealized vignette that followed Jose Carioca and Donald Duck visiting the carnival in Rio; and an early concept for "Blame It on the Samba" that was to have featured Carmen Miranda. Storyboards for the proposed sequence featured Jose and Donald visiting Miranda during a nightclub performance of the title song. The two then reminisce of an earlier visit to Rio on the Night of San Juan, where Donald had become infatuated with a Miranda-styled lady parrot. She, Donald and Jose had then played the matchbox game for a few moments. "Blame It on the Samba" later evolved into a segment in Melody Time, in a more abbreviated and distinctly different form, due mainly to the unavailability of Miranda caused by contractual difficulties.
The game later became the centerpiece of two separate proposed cartoon shorts. The first borrowed elements from the aforementioned "Blame It on the Samba." It featured Donald and Jose out for a night on the town in Rio. Donald falls for a cute duck, this time a caricature of Aurora Miranda, who would be showcased in The Three Caballeros. Donald and Jose play a game of caxanga with the stakes being a date with Aurora.

The second concept progressed to the beginnings of pencil animation with some recorded music and dialog. In 1995, a reconstruction of the short was included on the laser disc set Exclusive Archive Collection Three Caballeros-Saludos Amigos. Despite its non-animated, rough draft nature, it is in many ways a wonder, and an entertaining indication of "what might have been." As I said, it is one of my favorite Disney cartoons, despite its unfinished status.

The short opens with Donald Duck, Jose Carioca and interestingly enough, Goofy, seated around a table on a rooftop patio, playing the matchbox game. The setting is Rio as reflected by the view from the nearby balcony; it was no doubt based on a similar panorama of Sugarloaf Mountain enjoyed by Disney artists while staying in Rio de Janeiro. The details of a photo featuring Lee and Mary Blair that appeared in the book The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, bear a clear resemblance to the crude but still distinct scenery and location depicted in the Caxanga storyboard sketches.

Donald is quickly exasperated by both a clever gag involving on-screen subtitles and the furious pace of the tabletop game. The short then quickly transitions more into a clear musical vignette as Donald carries the melody of the aforementioned catchy tune with him into sleep and dreams. As Donald lies in his bed, water faucets, a clock, window shutters, a chandelier and even the lights of the city all begin to sound off in tempo to the melody. The storyboard sketches exhibit a pulsing, wacky dreamscape not far removed from the Pink Elephants sequence in Dumbo, but reflecting visual styles successfully executed in both Saludos Amigos and Three Caballeros. Sheep of the counting nature transform into matchboxes; Donald's bed becomes one with the game; oversize matchboxes morph into versions of Donald, Jose and Goofy who then substitute Donald for the matchbox in play. In on especially creative sequence, Donald precariously scampers across the tips of igniting matchsticks. Upon attempting to balance on the final one, his form goes into silhouette and then morphs into a crowing rooster, announcing the dawn and a hopeful respite from both the music and its inspired torment.

It's interesting to speculate as to where the creative process might have ultimately taken Caxanga. Based on the reconstruction, its clever and entertaining conceptualizations certainly had the potential to make it a vibrant, imaginative addition to Disney's Latin American canon.

Images and Video © Walt Disney Company

Freeze Frame! - Mickey's Polo Team

While the 1936 short Mickey's Polo Team is best remembered for its many movie star caricatures, it also features a number of scenes that serve up a veritable who's who of Disney Studio cartoon characters from the mid 1930s. Most prominent are Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the Big Bad Wolf as the players for the Mickey Mousers team, who square off against the Movie Stars team comprised of screen comedians Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx and Laurel and Hardy.

But even more interesting are the numerous personalities that fill the grandstand:

1. Legs Sparrow, one of the three prime suspects from the Silly Symphony Who Killed Cock Robin.

2. Peter and Polly Penguin from the Silly Symphony Peculiar Penguins.

3. Three of the many miniature Mickey orphans that appeared in the shorts Orphans Benefit and Orphans Picnic. Because there are three, I identified them as such rather than as Morty and Ferdy who made their lone screen appearance in Mickey's Steamroller.

4. Cock Robin and a distinctly off-model incarnation of Jenny Wren from Who Killed Cock Robin. The Jenny Wren character was in fact a caricature of Mae West, though the resemblance is not apparent in this particular version.

5. The Wise Little Hen from the Silly Symphony of the same name. That short is best known for the debut of Donald Duck.

6. King Midas and Goldie from the Silly Symphony The Golden Touch.

7. The title character from the Silly Symphony The Flying Mouse, who is accompanied by his mother.

8. Ambrose and Dirty Bill from the Silly Symphony The Robber Kitten.

9. Pluto and his occasional girlfriend Fifi.

10. The Three Little Pigs surround famous child star Shirley Temple.

11. Two unnamed rabbits possibly derived from the Easter-themed Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies.

In separate scenes, Max Hare from The Tortoise and the Hare and Toby Tortoise Returns shares the screen with film star Edna May Oliver . . .

. . . while Clarabelle Cow swoons over ladies man Clark Gable.

Cheering the Movie Stars team in another area of the grandstand are a number of other notable Hollywood personalities of the era:

Clockwise from top left are Charles Laughton (from his title role in Henry VIII), Eddie Cantor, Greta Garbo, W. C. Fields and Harold Lloyd.