Fifinella WWII

The Life magazine archive of photos has been google-ized. There's a wealth of old photos available on line.

Here's a wonderful Disney-related picture from 1943 of a World War II pilot trainee in Sweetwater, Texas wearing the Disney Fifinella Gremlin pin.

The great blog Toons at War has a lot more on the Disney designed insignia made for the various combat units in WWII.

The photo is by Peter Stackpole, July 1943. The google archive comes with captions and always provides the date and photographer.

Here's the caption for the above:



Girl Pilots/ Avenger Field

Anne Armstrong McClellan, pilot trainee in Women's Flying Training Detachment, sporting an official dress uniform of white blouse, tan slacks and overseas cap & a Fifinella mascot pin designed for the girl pilots by Walt Disney, at Avenger Field.

Sherman Brothers Receive National Medal of Arts Award

Their music "has helped bring joy to millions"

The Brothers Sherman, Richard (L) and Robert (R), who wrote so many of the great Disney songs (as well as Disney-like songs for the Disney-like film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) received the highest honor an artist can receive from the US government.

The Shermans received the National Medal of Arts Lifetime Honor on November 17, 2008 at the White House.

The official statement is at this link and it has a nice biography of the brothers.

They wrote the Small World theme, Tiki Room song and the Mary Poppins songs, including Chim Chim Cheroo, for which they won an Oscar.

The Stay Awake song that Julie Andrews sang to the children is a wonderful lullaby. And Feed the Birds is such a great song, Walt Disney used to call them in on late Friday afternoons to play it.

They wrote the carousel of Progress song and a huge host of others. I looked for an actual listing of all their songs, but did not find it. There were lists of movies or plays they scored and those lists themselves were quite long.

Congratulations and more so, thanks, are in order for these two still active brothers. Their music very literally has helped bring joy to millions of people and they deserve the recognition for this.

From the Press Release:

The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government. The National Medal of Arts is awarded by the President of the United States to individuals or groups who, in his judgment, "...are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and availability of the arts in the United States."

Though her words
are simple and few
listen, listen, they're calling
to you

Disneyland's New House of the Future

The House of the Future 2008





Once upon a time, back in the day, Disneyland had an attraction called the Monsanto House of the Future. It was opened in 1957 and was meant to exhibit what a house would be like in 1986. When I was young we lived close enough to Disneyland so that we could watch the fireworks from my bedroom window out on the horizon, so I began to go to and remember Disneyland from a very young age, but the House of the Future is one thing I don't remember at all. I've heard about it and was intrigued. Now there's a kind of update on it that opened yesterday for preview visits. I had a chance to go, so my daughter and I went down to Disneyland to check it out.

First off, it isn't really equivalent to the House of the Future, it is more a house of todays most recent gadgets and computer tech-wizardry available from Microsoft and its partners. And there is truth in advertising: it is not called the House of the Future. It's called Innoventions Dream Home.

It's inside the bottom floor of Innoventions, the old Carousel of Progress rotating building. It's where the Virtual Magic Kingdom computers had been until recently. VMK has been terminated. We enter at the same spot where we entered for Innoventions where the video of the Tom Tomorrow robot gave a little intro talk before the audience is let in to see demos of new products and look around the Innoventions building. The Dream House is in the non-rotating center region.

I asked a Cast member if they were still going to have the rotating floor and the sales pitch demos. Her bizarre answer gave me the first indication of the concept for this attraction. She answered, "yes, this is weird. I'm a neighbor of the Elias family and there is this rotating floor."

In other words all the employees there were in character and wouldn't give straight answers about things. They all had to pretend they were either in the Elias family or were friends or neighbors, there for a party for the youngest Elias son, Rob, who had made some sort of spectacular soccer goal for his team, who were about to head off to Beijing China to play a soccer match.

OK.

Here's some shots of the outside of the house.




On this one below you can see silhouettes of people who were walking by inside the house. The story is there's a party going on. One of the silhouettes that would go past was clearly Mickey Mouse.

One of the major new technology used is RFID - Radio Frequency Identification. The initial host who spoke before they opened the front doors above to let us in pointed out how the dog door had the RFID tecgnology to allow the family dog to go in that door -- it would open for him when he and his RFID embedded collar got close.

As I entered the first thought that struck me is the house of the future would be one that has a lot of those digital picture frames that are all ready common. But, I found out the gimmick is that the photos will change with whomever in the family is nearby. This also must be based on the RFID. If Mom is by the pictures her RFID will signal to change the digital images to the ones she likes.

The other thing about the house of the future I guess is that there will be a lot of big screen displays all over the place. Here's the kitchen's dining nook, for example.




The kitchen has a sink with a retractable faucet which was of note because it did have running water. This is the Carousel of Progress building, the revolving building. The hosts for Innoventions have always stressed that there are no bathrooms in the building because of the issues with putting in pipes to a building that rotates. But, there was water that ran from the retractable faucet in the Carousel of Progress building, as you can see.


Outside the kitchen there was a surface computer that acted as a kind of coffee table. It is a touch sensitive big flat screen. There were nice gimmicks as in making it look like a pool of water and touching the screen made the water seem to respond. And there was a kind of finger paint mode to it. The most showed off bit was the moving jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle was a video cut up in to pieces that could be moved around by finger. It is cool, but amounts to a very expensive jigsaw puzzle.



The boy's room had a Peter Pan theme and there was a story time where the Dad, John Elias, read a story to his son and there were special effects and the cannon of his pirate ship bed actually shot and Tinkerbell flew by.

The daughter's room has a "Magic Mirror" where by looking in the mirror she can see how outfits would look on her without actually trying them on. But, there was a strange twist to it while we were there. It was the brother (not the young soccer star but an older one) who was using the mirror and the results were...


what one might call rather strange. I asked if my daughter could try it -- it might look a little better. He said it only worked for family members, such as himself. But it was a real mirror to the degree that it did reflect via some mechanism what was in front of it. When he talked in the mirror his mouth was moving as he talked. And we could see ourselves in the mirror -- it just wouldn't do the clothes bit. Here we are in the Innoventions Dream House Magic Mirror


What else was there? There was another computer coffee table, this one a table that displayed classic books called Turning the Pages. They had it set up with an Alice book, an original by Lewis Carrol.


It also had what is essentially a player piano, hooked in to a computer. Video lessons were available. In the Dad's den was a big screen TV and his work space with a thumb print activated computer system. There was also some sort of plastic mold making box. I asked the Cast member about it, if it smelled. She stayed in character the whole time and said she didn't know. She was a neighbor there for the party and wanted us to watch news clips about the boy and his soccer game. The future will apparently have Rob Fukuzaki of Channel 7 in LA doing news reports on little kid's soccer games.

One of the sponsors is a house design firm called Taylor Morrison.


We can see the house is at 360 Tomorrowland Way.

This brings up the inside references. The address 360 -- a play on the revolving Carousel of Progress building. It rotates 360 degrees.

And the family's name: Elias. Elias Disney was Walt and Roy Disney's father's name. That's obviously where it comes from but there is no mention of that. I wish I'd been bright enough to ask the cast members who were staying in character if they'd ever heard of Disneyland. Or Walt Disney.

There was another reference. The kitchen has a system that projects recipes on to the counter and the name of the system is The Lillian. Named after Mrs. Walt Disney.

So really this is not named the House of the Future and the designers readily admit it is not that. It is the Dream Home. And that's apt. It really is like a nicely furnished and designed house with products available now that are very expensive. It's like a house very wealthy people might live in.

The Turning the Pages is out there and a large number of classic books have been digitized and can be looked at at various web sites on your own computer. A couple examples are at the British Library and the National Library of Medicine.

Here's a short article on the Surface Computer. Here's the official page for the Innoventions Dream Home. Here's an article that probably does a better job than me in describing it, but keep in mind it draws heavy on the press release.

All in all I like that Disneyland is doing something like this. The gimmick of the family where all the people working there live in this house or are neighbors and they keep up the pretense that this is real is a bit disconcerting. But trying to do a technology exhibit in Tomorrowland is basic Walt Disney. I like that they have the Honda robot Asimo shows in Innoventions as well.

It's not as ambitious as the original Walt Disney exhibits, such as the House of the Future, but it is nice enough.
Monsanto House of the Future link at Yesterland and at Wikipedia

Evil Queen with Panther Concept Art

The evil queen of Snow White had a pet panther. This is a piece of concept art from the planning of Snow White. Click on the picture for a large image of it.



The panther never made it in to the picture.

Not sure who the artist is.

The picture was taken through glass at the recently closed Snow White Fairest One of All art exhibit at the Animation building of California Adventure. It was taken through the glass cover and the green-blue light reflection is something that shows up.

Unique Walt Disney Photo

I saw this photo of Walt Disney at a blog called From Mars to Marceline™


It's hard to tell where it was taken or exactly when. It could be in Florida at the beginnings of "The Florida Project" or maybe Anaheim at the time of clearing the orange grove.

Anyone know? It's the sort of thing Michael Barrier or Didier Ghez might know. Seldom does one see a photo of Disney in such a state.

The Mars to Marcelline blog is by Eleonora Duvivier and it contains excerpts from a book she has written called from Mars to Marcelline. She is clearly a huge Disney person and writes poignantly about it. She is from Brazil originally and her first entry on Disney Nationality is intersting.

______

Update: Didier Ghez tells me this picture was taken in Greece during the filming of the 1964 release the Moon-Spinners (review at Ultimate Disney).

Annoying Fly, early gag sketch for Snow White

The Fairest One of All art exhibit at Disney California Adventure's Animation Building will soon be over. I was there last weekend and spoke with one of the "cast members". She said that the exhibit would last only one to two more weeks, then it'd be taken down. She was not sure what would go in after or if this Snow White exhibit would move anywhere else.

So GO SEE IT while you can.

Here is a gag sketch called the Annoying Fly that was an early proposed gag for the dwarfs.

It's done comic strip style, though there are no frames. The dwarf is up on a ladder and tries to slap an annoying fly buzzing around his head, he falls and bounces on to a bellows.

The gag apparently continues on another large piece of paper, but that second part of the gag -- what the bellows blows on and causes to happen, I assume -- is not in the exhibit.

Click on the pic to get a larger image. The quality of these photos are not high, but you can see fairly well all the different sequences (they go right to left, top row, then bottom row).



Anyone know who drew this gag?

Ken O’Conner signed story sketch

Here's a fantastic story sketch for the bathing scene of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that is at the Disney California Adventure art exhibit, The Fairest One of All. This sketch is sgned by Ken O'Conner. The drawing itself is beautiful enough and shows how the Disney artists were working to provide the creative input to Snow White. And interesting as well are the technical notes or directions written on the sheet. It's nice to have it signed so we know who drew it. (Click on it for a larger picture).


Ken O'Conner has a page at The International Animated Film Society (ASIFA) Cartoon Hall of Fame. Here's the link: A. Kendall O'Conner.

He was born in Perth Australia and worked on Snow White and 12 other Disney animated features. He was awarded the Annie Winsor McCay Award in 1987. Take a look at the Cartoon Hall of Fame page linked above. The comments are heartfelt and informative from his loved ones.

Pixar Toy Story Zoetrope at California Adventure

Amazing to See

It really is amazing and it's wonderfulness can't be captured on video. The Zoetrope consists of a number of Toy Story figures in time-sequence poses situated around a circle that acts as a carousel. It begins revolving and gets up to a high speed where the figures all blur together as they whiz past. Then - boom -- at the same time the Toy Story music and a strobe light begin and the figures are moving, jumping, parachuting, hopping and bouncing through the ground and Jesse the Cowgirl swings her lariat. (Click on the images for much larger pictures).




There are many YouTube clips of this but none of them do it justice, or even come close. Some are incomprehensible even. The strobe light makes it very hard for a camera to pick up the action and motion.

The best two are at these links:

A longer one

A two second clip which is the most clear.

Those will give you the idea of what the experience is like.

This is at the Animation Building at California Adventure, where the Snow White exhibit, The Fairest One of All, is. If you've got a chance, go see it.

There is another strobe-light Zoetrope like this in Japan at the the Studio Ghibli Museum. It's said that that Zoetrope of Totoro characters was so impressive to John Lassater that he had the Toy Story Zoetrope made.

The Ghibli zoetrope is at the Ghibli Museum in Japan and this link will take you to a page about the museum, with a photo of their zoetrope.

To see this sort of strobe light zoetrope is quite an experience. If you get a chance, I recommend taking a look at the Pixar Zoetrope at California Adventure.

Jet Pack at Tomorrowland, Disneyland

Once upon a time Tomorrowland did a Jet Pack demonstration. I remember seeing this when I was a little kid. I was very happy to find a short video of the Jet Pack at Disney Frontier who found it at Daily Motion.

One thing I remember is that it was LOUD!!! Look at the video, when the Jet Pack Man takes off, first thing you'll see is a kid plugging his ears. Every crowd shot has people plugging their ears. Seeing the man fly was amazing, spectacular, but it was loud, a loud screeching howling loud.

Here's the embed from Daily Motion, posted by an obvious philanthropist named donaldtheduckie

Rocketman
Uploaded by donaldtheduckie

Tomorrowland's loss

I always wondered why the Jet Pack demonstration didn't last long. Even today it would be a spectacular show. I think it must have been the noise. It was just too loud to keep as an attraction.

Yet, this is the sort of thing that Tomorrowland is for. Today there's not much comparable. The closest I can think of now is the Asimo robot show in Innoventions where the Honda humanoild robot, Asimo, is shown off.

Building a Bed - Evolution of a Gag

Building a Bed Gag Sketches

Below are two sets of gag sketch drawings, three each in sequence, included in the "Fairest One of All" art exhibit at Disney's California Adventure, which illustrate a similar gag that was ultimately not included in the final Snow White released film.

The first set is described at the exhibit as follows:

Painting Ivy on a Post

Story Sketch Gag

Graphite and Colored Pencil on paper

Although artists suggested scores of ideas for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt only selected those gags that revealed a character's personality and moved the story forward. This gag concept was not included in the film.

If you click on the images you'll see a much bigger image where you can see there were captions at the bottom of each drawing explaining the gag. Here's what they say:

1. Swings vine at bed post. It wraps around post.
2. He slacks up and vine springs away from post
3. Leaving a leaf design - repeat.


Next, A More Mature Variation on the Gag

A similar gag sequence has the final Dwarf characterization, Sneezy in this case. The sequence is described as follows:

Carving a Post

Story Sketch Gag

Graphite and Colored Pencil on paper

In this scenario, Sneezy's affliction actually helps him carve a bedpost.

Click to see the larger images and you'll notice the drawings are labeled "Unit G" and are hand numbered sequentially, 28, 29 and 30. They also have sequential stamped numbers, 0072 - 0074 on the right side bottom.

The large amount of organization, planning, detail and coordination over years that went in to making Snow White can be appreciated a bit more with these drawings presented in the exhibit. Gag writing and tweaking clearly went on for years as these two sets of sequences show how the gag was tweaked and evolved with the characters.

Yet, as with the Dwarfs Eating Soup scene, it still did not make it in to the film.

Dopey Chopping a Tree Limb

From the Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho board at the California Adventure Snow White art exhibit, Dopey stands on a tree branch he is chopping off. A scene that did not make it in to the final movie.


This is described as a Story Sketch, it's graphite and colored pencil on paper. Note that it is Dopey. A number of gag sketches I will post later are of dwarfs, but not the final Seven Dwarfs, as this one is.

Notice also the comment written on the illustration, "STICK TONGUE OUT OF CORNER MOUTH".

To me this looks as if this sketch idea might fit in with the "Building a Bed" sequence that did not make it in to the final movie. The exhibit has a board dedicated to that sequence. I'll post pictures from that soon.

Click on the picture to get a larger image and feel free to save it.

Spaceman at Tomorrowland circa 1967

Here's a photo from 1967 or so with the Tomorrowland Spaceman (click on it for a larger view). Tomorrwland used to have this guy walking around as well as jet pack demonstrations. This particular spaceman looks like the same fellow ("cast member") as in a similar picture at the Yesterland site. The spaceman outfit looks a bit different between the two pictures. The one at Yesterland has a lot more ruffles -- in the arms and legs whereas here there are only the ruffles on the neck.

Here one thing to note is the PeopleMover in the background which dates the picture to a time after that ride was put in.

Blond Snow White in Early Concept Sketch

Above is a close up of a blond-haired sleeping Snow White from the Dwarf's Arrive Home panel of the exhibit (Story sketch with blond Snow White: “Why it’s a girl”). I know these photos aren't the best, so I will add another below and then a wider larger image of the entire story sketch showing the dwarfs surrounding her as she sleeps after they've discovered her in their cottage.


Snow White as a curly-headed blond. That's a concept.


Click on the images to see the full sized image and feel free to save it if you wish.