Monday, March 23, 2009

Prod. UM30 - Mickey's Service Station

One of my favorites, and one of the last Mickeys in Black and White, Mickey's Service Station has a great score by Leigh Harline. It was directed by Ben Sharpsteen, and premiered 3/16/35.

We meet a great cast of animators! Milt Kahl, Eddie Strickland, Art Babbitt, Dick Lundy, Fred Spencer, Don Towsley, Jack Kinney, Archie Robin, Bill Tytla, Paul Allen, Eric Larson, Leonard Sebring, Nick George, Ferdinand Horvath and Woolie Reitherman in a role we see him in so often later: action scenes at the end of the film!
123456

Labels: , ,

5 Comments:

Anonymous darmok47 says...

Hi, it's "the spectre" here, but I have to use my livejournal name in order to post...

Great to see another shorts draft, and the kind which involve the different characters getting their own scenes are always fascinating to me, to see how they are cast.

Art Babbitt clearly forged his own path as the "Goofy expert" -- he's mostly assigned to Pete scenes, or scenes that Pete shares with the other three characters. Leonard Sebring gets as much Goofy footage as he does.

Note that Babbitt's Goofy scene is apparently 54 feet long, so the draft was obviously written after he had improvised with extra material. There are a few differences with the finished cartoon, though - there should be a Goofy scene between 15 and 15A and a Donald scene between 17 and 19 (I'd guess this was scene 18...) Also, the draft describes scenes with Mickey, Donald and Goofy and the end which don't seem to appear in the final cartoon.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 3:27:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous Zartok-35 says...

I always wondered if Milt Kahl animated on this one. Thanks for the post!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 7:18:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous warren says...

Amazing stuff, Hans! I'm having a hard time keeping up! Don't stop, though, it's a post-graduate study in essentials for me.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 8:15:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous Patrick Malone says...

There's a curious thing about this short. If you watch it carefully, you'll note that there's one scene where Pete's pegleg shifts from one leg to the other! I'll have to go back and watch again to see when it happens; I'm curious now if it was done by the same animator of if two were involved who weren't communicating with each other.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 5:38:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous ramapith says...

Babbitt mentioned in at least one interview that he was given the long Goofy scene as a trade-off for doing the Pete scenes, which he wouldn't have normally taken on (Pete was "a character I detested," or something to that effect!).
My books aren't handy; anyone remember the source for this?

David Gerstein

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 7:45:00 AM PDT  

Post a Comment

<< Home