MichaelBarrier

Toy Story 3

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

I finally got around to seeing it, and you can read what I think about it by clicking on this link.

Milt Gray's Web Comic Strip

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

Milton Gray, a leading Hollywood animator for many years, was also my indispensable collaborator when I was editing Funnyworld and writing Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. He has been an occasional contributor to this Web site and others—the "Flip Book" in the right-hand column is his—and now he has launched a site of his own, a continuing comic strip. "Ms. Viagri Ampleten" is a spy spoof with a spectacularly endowed amazon as its title character. The strip will be updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, starting Wednesday of this week. To start reading with the first installment, click on this link.

In Brief

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

UNHAPPY TRAILS: Six years ago, I wrote about my visit to the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri. I said then that walking through the museum was "a little like having Roy say to you, 'Come into my den and let me show you my collection of autographed baseballs.' I was hoping for a series of exhibits that would embrace the lives and careers of both stars and place them in the context of movie westerns and Hollywood in general, but what the museum offers instead is amiable clutter, much of it better left in the attic." A lot of other people must have agreed, because the museum, suffering from declining attendance, closed late last year. This month, its contents—including Roy's stuffed horse, Trigger, as well as a few animation-related items—went up for auction at Christie's in New York. Many if not most of the auction prices exceeded estimates, sometimes by wide margins; Trigger went for $266,500, Roy's saddle for almost $400,000. Evidence, perhaps, that Roy and Dale still have a lot of fans, even if they didn't want to visit Branson to pay homage to their heroes.

Interviewing John K. in 1997

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

The Mysterious Mouse, Cont'd

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

On September 3, 2009, I posted an item headed "The Curious Case of Mortimer Mouse," which I illustrated with an image from the Walt Disney Family Museum's Facebook page. That image was a sheet of sketches identified as "The Earliest Known Drawings of Mickey Mouse." The oddest of those drawings was of a mouse of the general Johnny Gruelle kind, fussier in clothing and in physical attributes—that is, a little more like a real mouse—than the Mickey who appeared for the first time, in the spring of 1928, in Plane Crazy. This "Little Lord Fauntleroy Mouse," as I called him, never appeared on the screen but turned up repeatedly in print in later years (as evidenced by my September 4 and September 10, 2009, posts) to show what Mickey had supposedly evolved from.

Krazy, Kool, And Kollected

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

Craig Yoe, whose Complete Milt Gross Comic Books and Life Story I recommended here on April 1, has just published another volume of comic-book reprints, The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics, an anthology of comics, mostly from the 1940s and 1950s, aimed at younger children. I can recommend your purchase of the new book, too, but first, some background information may be helpful.

Dave Smith Retires

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:03:21 GMT

Dave Smith, the Disney studio's archivist since he founded the Walt Disney Archives in 1970, wrote yesterday with this announcement: