Dumbo and other drafts...

...or getting around the limited posts shown when clicking on a label.

Michael Barrier, who unwittingly drove my desire for historical information on animation through the invaluable magazine Funnyworld when I first came in contact with it through my mentor Børge Ring in 1978 (where I also saw my first animation drafts) notes on his great site that "unfortunately, I haven't figured out to get to the earliest installments, but a full page of later posts of the draft comes up when you click on the label "Dumbo.""

If you look to the right column, there you find the "Archives" links.
In the case of Dumbo, the first posts are from April 2010, so pressing that link will show them.

This should give you access to most of the 630 earlier postings. Whenever there are too many posts to be able to be shown within a month, this can cause the last ones to "drop off," which has annoyed me for quite some time. In this Blogger template, I do not know how to add an "Older posts" link, and I tried updating to the newer template, but I had problems running the Javascript necessary for te conversions.

John V. wrote a very helpful comment: "As I eventually discovered, if some of the posts "drop off", then go to the last post displayed (this can only be done, I think, by clicking on the "comments" link, then on the title of the post) and on the right hand side of the page there will be links to the previous few posts. Then you can just continue to follow the posts back by clicking on each individual post title."

Prod.2001-Snow White&the Seven Dwarfs(XXIII)

Seq. 15-A "Snow White Dead"
- Dwarfs by Frank Thomas, animals by Milt Kahl
Seq. 15-B "Titles"
- Three titles by the effects dept.
Seq. 16-A "S.W. in Coffin - Back to Life - Away with Prince"
- Snow White by Ham Luske, Grim Natwick and Jack Campbell, dwarfs by Frank Thomas, Dick Lundy and Fred Spencer, animals by Jim Algar and Bernard Garbutt.

Frank Thomas' famous sequence of crying dwarfs - the sequence that had hardened moguls crying at the premiere - is so well described in The Illusion of Life that I will suffice to refer to that most important of all books on animation. If you do not have it, GET IT! It is still in print! Then look it up on pages 173ff. and 475ff...

This concludes the draft for Snow White: it is no secret that they lived happily ever after...
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Walt Disney's BIG gamble, which grew bigger as it went along. At first it was thought that it would cost about the same as ten short films, since its length would be similar. But then costs ballooned, and it ended around a million and a half dollars. When the L.A. liaison of Bank of America, Joe Rosenberg said to Walt "That thing is going to make a hatful of money," he wasn't kidding! (By the way, I saw a documentary recently that spoke of "the evil banker." If Rosenberg, under orders from A.P. Giannini, really was an evil banker, there would NOT have been a Snow White!) Currently, IMDb has its Domestic gross as $184,925,485. Adjusted for inflation it ranks as the number two film after Gone With The Wind with $2.36 billion!!!

The eight million the film made in its initial release was quickly plowed back into the studio, with new films (Pinocchio, Fantasia) lined up and a whole new studio to be built. Eventually this led to a darker period, as well, as the money got spent so quickly that the bonuses that were promised during the production of Snow White were left unpaid. This became one of the breeding grounds of the unrest that fostered the 1941 strike. But let's not get too much into that - let us instead return to the tranquil beauty of the first successful Technicolor animated feature film Snow White. It was Walt's first, the film that took up all his attention. It will stand forever as a touchstone for all further success and advances in the field of animation!

Here is a line of trivia that I swiped from IMDb: "Publicity material relates that production employed 32 animators, 102 assistant, 167 "in-betweeners", 20 layout artists, 25 artists doing water color backgrounds, 65 effects animators, and 158 female inkers and painters. 2,000,000 illustrations were made using 1500 shades of paint."

For those of you who followed the last 23 postings and would like to be able to browse the Snow White draft more freely, you can find all 110 pages that are available on this blog in this handy 3.42MB .zip file! Just please remember where you saw it first! Note that if you haven't read the postings from the start, you are not invited to download the .zip file yet, go back and read them all first!

By the way, I am on a small trip, back some time next week! Please do not let that keep you from commenting on my Snow White postings, and remember to look at John V.'s blog for more of his thoughts on character casting etc.

Remember to check out the archives (see labels in the right column!), where you can find eighty (80) short film drafts, six other complete features and parts of others, as well as some twenty Action Analysis Classes, twelve patent descriptions and a lot of other documents, clippings and videos, and most importantly, information about my own studio, A. Film!

Happy Friday the 13th!

Prod.2001-Snow White &the Seven Dwarfs(XXII)

Seq. 14-F "Snow White Starts Wish"
- Snow White by Bob Stokes, Witch by Norm Ferguson
Seq. 14-G "Dwarfs on Way to House"
- Animals and dwarfs by Bernard Garbutt
Seq. 14-H "Snow White Dies"
- Snow White by Jack Campbell and Ham Luske, Witch by Norm Ferguson, Dwarfs on deer by Eric Larson.
Seq. 14-J "Dwarfs Chase the Queen"
- Witch by Norm Ferguson, Dwarfs by Bill Roberts, with fast action scenes by Jim Algar, Bernard Garbutt and Eric Larson, vultures by Ward Kimball.

Fast cutting, lots of excitement!
Not a lot of surprises on the draft...

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs(XXI)

Seq. 14-B "Dwarfs at Mine - Animals Warn Them"
- Dwarfs by Shamus Culhane, Bill Roberts, Al Eugster, animals by Eric Larson, Jim Algar and Bernard Garbutt (incl. incidental dwarfs).

Culhane will always be connected with Heigh-Ho! Also it is interesting to see the "animal expert" Garbutt be entrusted to "put dwarfs on his deer," as if they are just part of the animals' overlapping action.

Seq. 14-C "Witch Urges Snow White to Make Wish"
- Witch by Norm Ferguson and Frank Kelling, Snow White by Bob Stokes.

Frank Kelling, another of the animators that found their way onto Gulliver's travels, like Shamus Culhane, Grim Natwick, Al Eugster and Stan Quackenbush, not to mention Joe D'Igalo, Tom Palmer, Bob Leffingwell or even Thurston Harper and Ben Clopton (who worked on Disney's Alice series), may here have been animating assistant for Norm Ferguson. We know that Kelling was animating for Disney already in 1931. He worked on Oswald for Lantz as seen in the group photo in this recent posting by Mike Sporn.

Seq. 14-E "Dwarfs Start for House to rescue S.W. - Meet Turtle"
- Dwarfs by Bill Roberts, Les Clark, animals by Bernard Garbutt, Eric Larson and Jim Algar. Whether Ham Luske animated the turtle or the passing crowd of dwarfs is not clear. His experience from "The Tortoise and the Hare" may be a clue.

Les Clark's scene FEELS like it is taken out of context, and lo - it is, originally from the lodge meeting, where Sleepy suggests building a bed! Does this mean that that sequence was animated in its entirety?

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs(XX)

Seq. 13-A "Snow White Making Pies - Witch Enters House"
- Snow White by Bob Stokes, Witch by Norm Ferguson, animals by Eric Larson, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball (vultures) and Bernard Garbutt.

This very scary sequence has some very interesting cuts: having the vultures land while the Witch says "Just wait till you taste one!" is a strong statement of imminent death. The birds attacking the Witch again is very symbolic - nature tries to help poor innocent Snow White. Bob Stokes' animation is, of course, based on photostats, but he manages to make it look natural and not just boring tracings, while Fergy's witch is deliciously over the top.

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs(XIX)

Seq. 11-B "Bed Building"
- Dwarfs by Ham Luske, Al Eugster, Dick Huemer, Marvin Woodward, Bob Wickersham, Woolie Reitherman and Dick Lundy, animals by Eric Larson, Jim Algar and Milt Kahl (incl. one dwarf scene).

How much of this sequence was actually animated, I do not know. Again, the missing check marks on this Morgue draft tell me that there are no animation folders extant. This sequence was all storyboarded, though, and at the very nice exhibit a year or two ago in DCA (south of Disneyland), quite a few of the story drawings were on display.

Al Eugster complained that all his animation was cut out of the film. We will see later that this was not altogether true, but at least here went one scene. We haven't anything by Dick Huemer either! But what I find most interesting to see is the (quite logical) casting of Woolie Reitherman on action scenes with the dwarfs...

[Quick note, nothing to do with Snow White: publication date of Colin White's book on Kay Nielsen now shows as February 2010!]

Prod.2001-Snow White&the Seven Dwarfs(XVIII)

Seq. 10-B "Queen on Way to Dwarfs' House"
- Witch by Norm Ferguson, Vultures by Ward Kimball.
Seq. 11-A "The Lodge Meeting"
- Dwarfs by Ward Kimball, Les Clark and Dick Lundy.

The Lodge Meeting is the second of the three sequences cut from the film, where the information is still found in the draft, and the second cut sequence with animation by Ward Kimball, in this case nearly a minute and a half (133-03 ft or 1min:28sec:19fr), basically only leaving him the vultures that follow the witch. It would be interesting to know just how far the animation had been finished when the sequence was cut. Since there are no check marks in this, the Morgue's, draft, I am tempted to deduce that there are no animation folders in existence...
(But wait and see Seq. 14-E Sc. 12!)

Prod.2001-Snow White &the Seven Dwarfs(XVII)

Seq. 10-A "Dwarfs Leave for Mine"
- Snow White by Jack Campbell and Grim Natwick, Dwarfs by Fred Moore, Frank Thomas and Bill Tytla, animals by Eric Larson.

In the first part of this sequence, Jack Campbell shares the screen with Fred Moore, with a Bashful scene by Frank Thomas and a Grumpy scene by Bill Tytla. Then Grim Natwick takes over on Snow White, and the final Grumpy character scenes are all Bill Tytla. Somehow all this sounds logical - only the scene by Frank Thomas is a bit of a surprise.

My old mentor Børge Ring commented to me, based on the sequence where Snow White tells the dwarfs to go wash, that during a lunch in Amsterdam in 1984--when I got Frank and Ollie to lecture in Holland--he (Børge) told Frank "You were the first to reduce squash and stretch to its present day proportions." Frank laughed and said "Yes, and the others warned me "You'll get killed for this!""

An addition to previous postings: Tony Rivera, who seems to have been an animating assistant in the Snow White unit, had quite a career afterwards. A few days ago, I happened to see his name on "A is for Atom" (with animation by another ex-Disney artist, Emery Hawkins), then looked him up on IMDb, and found layout credits on Magoo's Christmas Carol, The Man from Button Willow, Chuck Jones' The Phantom Tollbooth, and even The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat!

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs(XVI)

Seq. 9-A "Witch at Cauldron - Prepares Apple"
- Witch by Norm Ferguson, Effects animators not named.

One animator for the whole sequence, the great Norm Ferguson...

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (XV)

Seq. 8-C "Going to Bed"
- Snow White by Ham Luske and Grim Natwick, dwarfs by Marvin Woodward, Riley [Thomson], Les Clark, Fred Spencer and Dick Lundy, effects (clock) by Cy Young.

Basically we have character dwarfs by Les Clark, slapstick dwarfs by Fred Spencer and sleeping dwarfs by Marv Woodward...

Note that we start with scene 6A, and there are, again, many inserted numbers, where a situation is divided into several scenes. This seems most often to entail cutting to a close up and back, which could have been instrumental in heightening our nearness--and thus our interest--in the characters.

I cannot come up with an explanation as to why scenes 22 and 23 have extra footage (1-08 and 3-01 respectively) added "for real out." What would that mean? Should it be "reel" and not "real"? Why the odd length? I mean, 1-08 is one second, that's a good length in any circumstance, but 3-01? Any takers?

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs(XIV)

Seq. 8-B "Story Telling"
- Snow White by Ham Luske and Grim Natwick. Dwarfs by Dick Lundy, Les Clark and Marvin Woodward. Animals by Jim Algar.

In a way, this is the extension of "I'm Wishing," a reprise of the
"I want" song, but here it is a whole new song, and a very memorable one, to boot. Several scenes are credited to both Ham and Grim, but in a way I am most surprised by scene 18, a long shot of the dwarfs gathering around Snow White, that has no "dwarf animator" credits.

It is interesting to see the Christie's auction in London on the 24th of this month, as it does not only have the "Future Fantasias" book that I referred to in an earlier posting, but it also has a sketch of Sleepy in scene 25 in the sequence described above.

By the way, I bet the Alice shot list originally came from the same box of Burt Gillett documents that I talked about earlier!

Prod.2001-Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (XIII)

Seq. 8-A "ENTERTAINMENT"
- Snow White by Ham Luske, Grim Natwick, Jack Campbell and Paul Busch. Dwarfs by Bill Tytla, Fred Moore, Dick Lundy, Les Clark, Fred Spencer, Marvin Woodward and Riley [Thomson]. Animals by Jim Algar and effects by Andy Engman. Marc Davis, Max Grey and Amby Paliwoda animated either Snow White or dwarfs.

I suggest that "Riley" is Riley Thomson, on Snow White the assistant to Dick Huemer according to Alberto Becattini. Now - there was also a Larry Riley somewhere who started at Fleisher ca. 1938, and who knows, maybe he was an assistant at Disney in 37? Things like that were seen before - Izzy Ellis is not a known Disney entity, and yet his name is all over a lot of 1937 Action Analysis Classes I have. [See the comments where it is pointed out that this could not be Larry Riley!]

I will have to leave further analysis to my trusted commenters, as
I really do not have a lot of time to wallow in this material today!

Prod.2001- Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (XII)

Seq. 7-A "Queen Leaves Mirror - Prepares Disguise"
- Queen by Bob Stokes and Art Babbitt, Hag and Raven by Norm Ferguson, Mirror by Woolie Reitherman. The first two scenes (seemingly afterthoughts, judging from their numbers) credited to background painter Sam Armstrong. Effects scenes credited to George Rowley, Campbell Grant (of Model dept.), Stan Quackenbush, Eric Larson (hands) and Josh Meador. Who is "Tony" in sc. 32?

After the sequence with the dwarfs at the tub, we get back to the core story with this ominous sequence. Scene 21 was split into five very memorable effects scenes, that together with scene 26 lead into one of the most frightening scenes of the picture, scene 26A -
"A Perfect Disguise!"

I thoroughly enjoy Fergy's theatrical acting - it is big and flamboyant, and deeply entertaining! Interesting also to see the queen as animated by Bob Stokes. We saw him share Gepetto with Babbitt, as well as having animated Bo-Peep in Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood and scenes in Ferdinand the Bull. He animated on Fantasia (1940), and passed away in Palm Springs in 1980 aged 71, so this begs the question, what did he do in between?

For a particularly interesting article on the drawing of Snow White and a bit on Bob Stokes, as well, read "The Four Faces of Snow" by David Johnson.