Some Really REALLY Big Roots

me and THE TREE

I hope I'm not the first one to tell you that there is much more to Anaheim than Disneyland. If you have never explored the hidden treasures "outside the berm" I encourage you to do it.  I adore Anaheim - heck, I was born here! - and I recently purchased a home in the Anaheim Colony historic district.  To say that this neighborhood is up-and-coming would be a gross understatement, since the Colony is already over 160 years old, but the area and its history are being rediscovered, restored and made to shine once again.

Since we're revisiting the Swiss Family Treehouse this week, let's take a short drive up West Street, just north of Disneyland to gawk at the gigantic Moreton Bay Fig Tree. During construction of Disneyland's treehouse in 1962, Imagineers came here to poke around and examine the twisty roots of this behemoth tree planted in the 1800s by Anaheim's first horticulturist Tim Carroll.

 The tree is completely impressive and a living piece of Anaheim's heritage - just one of the fabulous features you'll discover along this street.

Sculpting the roots of Disneyland's Treehouse in 1962

And while we're on the subject...

The original movie set for the Walt Disney picture "Swiss Family Robinson" was constructed in the 200-foot spread of a living Samaan tree on the island of Tobago near Trinidad.  Art director John Howell famously spotted it through a gap in a fence at the corner of a cricket field just outside the town of Goldsborough.

Although the Disney Studio was expected to remove all evidence of movie-making from the island at the end of shooting,  the native Tobagoans regarded the treehouse highly and left it in the Samaan tree as a tourist attraction. In 1960 the tree and the three remaining  thatched-roofed rooms (barren of any props or furnishings) was put up for sale for $9000. While I don't know if anyone actually bought it, it's well-known that the treehouse remained until a hurricane swept the structures away.  

HOWEVER!  From all reports, the Samaan tree itself still survives today, its branches now filled with orchids and bromeliads.  I've checked online for a picture of the tree as it currently looks but haven't been able to find one.  Is anybody out there reading this in Tobago who could snap a photo and give us a report?

The Swiss Family Tree Sprouts

It's the early part of 1962 and six tons of steel are rapidly 

becoming the Swiss family's island homestead.

Had construction stopped right here it still would have 

been a very impressive work of minimalist modern art.

By summer things are filling out fast.  

Wood planks across scaffolding provide access for the 

crew attaching branches and red vinyl leaves by hand.

Artful rock formations are sculpted of concrete over a steel 

frame for the jungle riverbed at the tree's base.

While way up high, a sloping roof is fashioned of fireproofed 

palm thatch for the "Crow's Nest", treetop quarters of Fritz, Ernst, and Francis.  

(Notice the telephone in the foreground, for 

emergency calls back to civilization.)

68 Steps Up, 69 Down

 Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1962

Returning Very Soon, I Swear.

So, what happens when you get a blog going strong over three years and then all of a sudden you cease posting for four months?  Here's what:  Your readership dwindles from a rip-roaring freeway of 2000 visitors-per-day...to a weedy frontage road of 32.  To those 32 people who drop by daily to see if anything new has popped up on this stale little blog, I salute your devotion.  Like trick-or-treaters pressing doorbells after the porch lights have been turned out, your attendance - fruitless as it is -  is truly something.

But as you may have noticed, my porch light has been left on, burning day and night, week in and week out since early December, brainlessly wishing the world a Merry Christmas all the while the calendar pages tear away, possibly causing some of those frazzled 32 to wonder if I might be keeping a dried-up Christmas tree browning in my living room on St. Patrick's Day.

No, no, it's simply a matter of life getting in the way of blogress.  In December I bought my very first home (after years and years of renting) and am preoccupied setting up house and studio, all the while keeping several spinning dinner plates balanced on the ends of broom handles. 

So let me express my appreciation for all your many card and letter inquiring politely if I have died.  I'm delighted to tell you I am completely alive and will start blogging again any day now.

As for those persistent 32, I am forever your ardent admirer and fervent friend.

Snow What?

If you love Christmas songs of all kinds - even the oddball ones - ask Santa to bring you the new home-made double-CD compilation from LuxuriaMusic.com.

Snow What? A LuxuriaMusic Holiday Happening is 39 tracks of vintage audio weirdness pieced together by the music-geeks at my favorite internet radio station.

A $25 donation (which entirely helps Luxuria keep the turntables spinnin' into the new year) will introduce some rare gems to your record shelf, including: Lem the Orphan Reindeer, Indian Santa, Beatnik's Wish, Santa's Italian Wife, Candyland Christmas Ball, and more.

I've been listening all week in my car and can't get enough of The Day Snowflakes Were Born. It's ... indescribable.

Get it here.

Emporium Windows - Part Three

Behind the Glass

Every now and then comes a rush project that is so crazed I just want to get it finished and move on. Then after it's all over, I usually kick myself for not taking pictures!

In 1991, I was one of four artists making figures for Disneyland's Main Street windows. It was the year of Beauty and the Beast, and the miniature displays debuted the same day the film arrived in theaters.

Belle, book and sheep by me.

None of us had yet seen the movie or were even very familiar with the characters, but we had reference sketches provided by Disney Feature Animation. Figures with movement were sculpted directly over internal mechanisms, and doll-sized costuming was added last. Disneyland's decorating department dressed the characters and was responsible for the beautiful miniature sets.

Rich Collins sculpts a large figure of the Beast.

Apparently there wasn't time to spend making molds, so our "one-and-only" handmade sculptures were painted and placed in the windows without back-ups. Artist Rich Collins created a little Gaston (in the first photo) that had an unfortunate mishap. We didn't know it at the time, but the Emporium windows are constantly changing temperature. The alternating warm days and cool damp nights actually caused Gaston's wrist to crack, and after a month on display, he performed a fatal swan dive off the roof leaving his hand behind - still attached to the building! The pieces were sent back for repairs, and we all learned a valuable lesson on the importance of a well-made armature.

The famous dancing figures of Belle and the Beast were sculpted by Jackie Perreault (Gonzales), and can be seen today as part of a display of historic Emporium figures at Disneyland. Considering that beneath the clothes and flocked "fur" are Jackie's actual sculpts, they've held up surprisingly well over the years.

Jackie Perreault with dancing couple in progress.

Jackie, herself, has also held up extremely well! After Disneyland, she went on to sculpt full-scale dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park films, and movie creatures for Stan Winston. In recent years, her exquisite sculptures for the Walt Disney Classics Collection have attracted a devoted following of fans - me included!

Big Potts by Jackie... little Potts by me.

The final figures created for the windows were two versions of Mrs. Potts for different scenes in two scales. Jackie and I worked straight through the day and night before the windows were to debut the next morning. We speed-dried the paint with a hair blower, attached the false eyelashes, and delivered them to the park an hour before opening.

The images above, blurry and grainy, are the only record I have of Disneyland's Beauty and the Beast windows. Jackie believes she may have a few more stashed somewhere, and I'll share them in a future post if any turn up.

Emporium Windows - Part Two

Nose Prints on the Glass

Disneyland, Summer 1986

After setting up the windows for the Manhattan Bloomingdales in 1988, our team travelled to Chicago with two more units for the Bloomingdales located at "Miracle Mile". These were bigger as they had originally been designed for Walt Disney World's larger Emporium windows. Housed inside giant rolling "shadow boxes" the units consisted of a Snow White scene (with the Old Hag at her cauldron) and a scene from Pinocchio.

Here's another display that I believe had been created for Florida in the early 80s:
This scene from Mickey's Christmas Carol is so large that, you'll notice, it's TWO-stories -- with a chair and bed upstairs! These scenes had toured around a bit, as well, including a trip to New York in 1984 or 85.

And if you still can't get enough of this, here's a magazine article from 1974 about the ultra-deluxe windows promoting the theatrical release of "The Island at the Top of the World." The windows were better than the movie!

Click for Part One

Click for Part Two

Emporium Windows - Part One

Deck the Mall!

A waaay younger me in New York, 1988

I'm playing the Ghost of Christmas Past this week and taking you with me to revisit another holiday season that happened twenty-one years ago. (Ready? Touch my robe!)

We've traveled backward in time to this exact week in November, 1988. I was a skinny kid working with a few other creative "kids" from Disneyland's Entertainment division on Christmas windows for New York's famous Bloomingdales department store in Manhattan.

Every year beginning at Thanksgiving, the store-front windows at Bloomie's (as women with designer sunglasses and gigantic handbags call it) are as much a part of the New York tradition as slush in the winter. In 1988 the retailer had asked Disneyland for assistance in coming up with something unique.

For the first time in history, several of Disneyland's original Main Street Emporium window displays, featuring hand-made scenes from Disney animated films, went on a road trip.

Click to Enlarge.

Each set of miniature figures and scenery was carefully cleaned and restored (some were decades old even back then) and shipped to the East Coast for a month-long engagement along Lexington Avenue.

We installed the displays in full view of people passing by in the street outside, attracting crowds of lookie-loos, as you can imagine. It was a lot of fun!

Bambi scene made in the early 1970s

(Say, how much are those doggies in the window, anyway?)

This scene with Peter Pan and the kids flying off to Neverland was actually kind of a headache for us, I remember. The monofilament that suspended the animated figures would get wound up in the mechanisms (located above the arch) and sometimes break. If the characters didn't end up dangling by their ankles over the London cityscape, then they had dropped completely onto the buildings below. We were constantly rescuing them.

Peter Pan figures from the late 60s.

Robin Hood and the gang

from the animated film's initial release, 1973.

I really liked that Allan-a-Dale figure.

And lastly, here's a scene the public never saw...

The backside of the displays! The windows at Bloomingdales were a lot bigger than those of Disneyland's Emporium, so custom prosceniums were built to narrow the openings down to the edges of the miniature sets.

There were a few more scenes, as well, including one with Captain Hook and the Crocodile, but I wasn't able to photograph everything. Maybe some New Yorkers out there have more pictures??

Future Bright

Artist Sam McKim has long been one of my idols, not only for his immense creative talent, but for being one of the finest gentlemen I've ever met.  His positive, enthusiastic nature was so uplifting, so encouraging, especially to a young artist like myself in awe of this man.

Here's a stunning 1957 illustration by Sam for a short story titled "Butch and Jan Meet the Atom".  Chock full of hopeful visions for the year 2000, the narrative promises a world of power, health and peace through atomic energy.  In Sam McKim's hands, "tomorrow" certainly seems like a good place to be. 

Click to see the published spread. 

Walt Disney's  Mickey Mouse Club Magazine, April 1957.

And now, a toast!

Today this blog is exactly two years old, and to mark the occasion, I popped open a whole bottle of champaign all for myself.  

So, here's to me! (gank...gank...gank...gank...)

This oddball illustration, created in 1955 for an LP of Disney songs by the Lawrence Welk Orchestra, bubbles over with cut-out paper heads glued to a painted background board (Yup, that's Davy Crockett there, but did you recognize Captain Nemo?!)  I love the way this artwork tickles my nose.

"ah-one and ah-two..."

The Hot Car

Hop in, Blog Reader, and we'll go for a jolly ride!  Down the open road, over the dusty high-way, and through every hammy hamlet by the sea, disobeying signs and cops, taking every wrong turn, and all the while merrily, merrily text messaging.  Wheeeee!

There's no better way to traverse the "roads perpendicular" than in this sporty little conveyance right here. Why some guys would hand over their entire estate to a flock of weasels for one.

Toady's "hot looking car" in the film "The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad" is comparatively different from the attraction vehicles down at Disneyland, as you can see in this 1940s animation model sheet.

Click for Full-Size.

The cartoon motorcar's design includes the parts and pieces of  an authentic 1906 Autocar Roadster:

"Ah-OOO-gah."

 

For Mr. Toad's wild little dark ride down at Disneyland, designer Bruce Bushman combined the rich luxury of the Roadster with the charm and floating fenders of a 1904 Glide:

"Poop-poop."

And as Cyril Proudbottom would say, "Lumme Guvnor, it's a motorcar!"

Hot off the 1955 assembly line.

The twelve original Disneyland Toad Cars were hand-made of sheet metal and fiberglass by Arrow Development and for the first few years, the cars had no built-in safety bar.

By 1961, bars were added to ensure that wilder riders 

remained in those cushy upholstered seats at all times.

"Pull down on the lap bar, please."

Now hold on and give your steering wheel a spin, as we bang through the doorways of Toad Hall and out to the English countryside.  Tally Ho, and keep off the train tracks.

Ichabod and Mr. Toad Fan Card

One of the most fun studio fan cards ever, promoting the 1949 debut of two fabulous characters in one fabulous film:  The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.   So full of action and excitement, it's hard to resist these 7"x 9" cards for fans who wrote the Walt Disney Studio.

Unlike the flat painted animation cels seen in the movie, promotional materials like this allowed for the characters to be more fully rendered to a higher level of detail.

Artist Hank Porter created the illustration of Toad in his motorcar racing alongside Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, and here is the original sketch!  I think it's beautiful.