The Art of the Title Card: How to Be a Detective

We are introducing a new series here at 2719 Hyperion that celebrates a largely overlooked and little appreciated component of classic animated shorts - the title card.  While largely generic and plain during the Disney Studio's early years, full canvas illustrations became the standard for title cards from the late 1930s onward.  Examples ranged from the minimal to the elaborate, but were almost always striking in design, composition and execution.  Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the artist behind any given card.  Conventional wisdom suggests either the Layout or Background credited individual was responsible so that is the attribution we will make here.

Our inaugural entry is from the 1952 Goofy short How to Be a Detective.  The design employs a clever mashup of magnifying glass and disguise elements to create a noir inspired vignette.  Al Zinnen was the credited layout artist; Dick Anthony did the backgrounds.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:
How to Be a Detective - December 12, 1952

Happy Anniversary, Mr. Saunders

This month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Disney incarnation of A. A. Milne's beloved character, Winnie the Pooh.  The animated short subject Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree premiered in theaters on February 4, 1966.  From humble beginnings, an IP empire was born.  It was the only Disney-produced Winnie the Pooh film released in Walt's lifetime.

Surprisingly, unless you have an old school VHS machine or a laserdisc player, you cannot view Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in its original form.  In 1977, it was absorbed with Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too into the feature length The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  After VHS and laserdisc releases, those short subjects were essentially retired in favor of the longer compilation.

Professional Disney Adult Driven to Begging!

This week's best clickbait.  And trust me, I don't search for this stuff.  

"I’m a Professional Disney Adult. Here Are 9 Things I’m Begging You to Bring to Your Disney World Hotel in 2026"

Okay, what is a Professional Disney Adult?  I recognize that influencers have strategically spun the term Disney Adult from a negative into a perceived positive, but I thought Disney Adult-ism related more to extreme and potentially dysfunctional fandom.  The author here seems to be defining it as a respected vocation and clearly not a non-profit one.  I get it, from an editorial standpoint, Disney Adult is likely more palatable in a clickbait headline than the more honest "influencer."  But "professional?"  Where does one get their Disney Adult degree?  Or their influencer degree for that matter?

The premise of the post is that you spend so much time in your Disney hotel room that you absolutely need among other things, a humidifier ($28), white noise machine ($15), portable hanging shelves ($33) and a laundry hamper ($8).  Who spends that much time in their hotel room??? I mean it's Disney World, not a remote cabin in the backwoods.

The supposed subtle pitch (I'm Begging You to Bring . . . ) translated means "I'm begging you to buy any or all of these 9 things so we can earn a nice commission.  Why would you be begging otherwise?  Sure, all the necessary disclaimers are there, but it all seems just so . . . insincere.  The trend in clickbait headlines is to personalize, but if your best friend talked to you this way, you'd probably cock an eyebrow and quickly change the subject.

Sadly, this type of click-driven, revenue generating online journalism has become a shameful standard.  And too many once reputable news and information sites have tragically adopted these editorial practices and replaced journalists, historians and travel writers with self serving influencers selling you anything and everything you don't need.

Snapshot: Alligator Swamp R.I.P.

The Rivers of America was sadly on its deathbed when I visited Walt Disney World this past June.  The barricades were mere weeks away when Alane and I took one last trip on the Liberty Belle riverboat.  It was a bittersweet voyage as it brought back memories of my first visit to the Magic Kingdom in 1973 when I would have circled the waterway in either the Admiral Joe Fowler or the then recently christened Richard R. Levine.  The mostly static vignettes viewed from the decks remained every bit as charming as they did five decades ago.  Alligator Swamp is now but a Snapshot and a happy memory.

The Life and Times of the . . . Hyperion Kid?

About ten years ago, I began a writing project that was largely inspired by Bill Bryson's very entertaining memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.  Bryson chronicled his growing up in the Midwest and in doing so, created both a vivid portrait and historical encapsulation of post-war Baby Boom America.  I wanted to do the same, albeit frame my early life's journey as a very personal reflection of Disney entertainment in the popular culture.  I knocked out a few chapters, but as it always seems to happen, family and work soon pushed it to the back burner, and I declared that frequently repeated mantra, "I'll get back to it eventually."

Well, hopefully, eventually is now here.  Retirement has arrived, creating the opportunity for me to return to 2719 Hyperion on a more consistent basis.  It's a very different world from when I launched this site close to twenty years ago.  Finding readers in the current online environment will be a challenge.  Social media and influencers  have, in my opinion, soured and trivialized what was once a healthy community of Disney journalists and historians.  It may be tilting at windmills, but I want to give it a go.

My intention is to publish my aforementioned memoir in installments here on 2719 Hyperion.  I also intend a return to Addressing the Many Worlds of Disney Entertainment when possible.  If you are new to my endeavors here, welcome!  If you were a regular visitor in past, welcome back!  Comments are always welcome.  Talk to you soon!

Sally's Question

Certainly even more relevant today than it was on October 5, 1963.  A now sentimental moment when one cultural icon acknowledged another.  Memories of their creators continue to diminish, but Mickey Mouse and Snoopy will live forever.  Perhaps that is what Walt and Sparky would have wanted. 

Knock, Knock - Anyone There?

 Probably not.  But what the heck.  Retirement beckons and it's time to visit some old haunts.  More to come, if only for my own self-satisfaction.

Let's Get Together for a Perfect "Summer" Movie

Ah, what is the perfect summer movie? Jurassic World? Incredibles?

Solid arguments could be made for these and countless others as well. Since Jaws and Star Wars were released in the mid-1970s, summer has become the season for high energy, popcorn-filled, franchise-driven trips to the local multiplexes. But my candidate for a perfect summer movie predates those two films by nearly a decade and a half, and while it was certainly a special effects powerhouse in its day, it is best remembered for its undeniable charm and the engaging performances of its cast.

The Parent Trap makes me wish I had been a kid back in the summer of 1961. Released ever so appropriately in June of that year, the film remains timeless on many levels despite being so firmly grounded in the post-war, early baby boom popular culture. From the very funny shenanigans and heartwarming discoveries at Camp Inch to the fateful camping trip where gold digger Vickie gets “submarined,” The Parent Trap just oozes summer in nearly every frame of film.

There are so many points of merit to this wonderful movie, it’s hard to know just where to start.

Well, how about the opening credits? This captivating sequence of stop-motion animation was created by T. Hee, Bill Justice and X. Atencio and echoed their earlier efforts on Noah’s Ark and foreshadowed 1962’s Symposium of Popular Songs. Accompanied by Annette Funicello’s and Tommy Sands’ bubblegum rendition of the title song, the clever vignette immediately sets a tone of fun and romance that the entire movie ultimately embodies.

The screenplay and direction of David Swift mix equal parts melodrama, romance and comedy for very satisfying results. Some reviewers, including Disney scholar Leonard Maltin, felt the film uneven in its comedy and ultimately average, a criticism I personally have to disagree with. However, nearly all critics of the time were universal in their praise of the film’s cast. Accolades were deservedly given to romantic leads Brian Keith and the always beautiful Maureen O’Hara, but the film is also notable for its equaling engaging supporting players; among them Nancy Kulp, Frank DeVol, Una Merkel, Joanna Barnes, Charlie Ruggles, Ruth McDevitt and Leo G. Carroll.

But let’s face it; from beginning to end, The Parent Trap belongs to Hayley Mills. Her remarkable performances as both Sharon and Susan are every bit as convincing as the special effects that allow her two characters to share the screen. Studio veteran Ub Iwerks supervised the processes that brought together the two distinctly different twins; it proved an amazing marriage of technical achievement with the exceptional acting of the very talented Mills.

My favorite detail from the film? When Sharon and Susan are placed in isolation at Camp Inch, their discovery of sisterhood appropriately happens within the walls of a cabin named Serendipity. But you’ve got to squint to see the sign by the cabin’s front door.

As I said near the beginning, The Parent Trap is pure summer, in atmosphere as well as setting. Filled with summer camp antics, poolside pratfalls and treks through the wilderness, it is a shining example of family entertainment made the old fashioned way. While I’ll likely be visiting places such as Isla Nubar and Metroville in the coming weeks, I will also be doing some R&R at Camp Inch and Mitch Ever’s southern California ranch. 

One minor postscript: While the 1998 Lindsay Lohan remake was not a bad movie, it was certainly unnecessary. It was one of the less than remarkable results of Walt Disney Pictures “recycling” phase of the late 1990s that begat the likes of Flubber, and the live action 101 Dalmatians among others.

Mickey Mouse in the Dieselpunk Age

Here’s an interesting quote from Walt Disney:

“The robot angle is popular now. There have been several robots made that really do perform things, and the public is aware of the possibility of the thing.”

Is he referencing the now-famous Buddy Ebsen “little man” experiment? Or discussing the advent of audio animatronics as ultimately realized by such milestones as Great Moments with Mister Lincoln or Pirates of the Caribbean?

No, these words predate even those events by quite a number of years. They were written in January of 1933 as Walt put to paper his ideas for a cartoon short that would ultimately take the form of Mickey’s Mechanical Man, released on June 17 of that same year.

The cartoon was an odd and decidedly offbeat entry in the still clearly evolving Mickey Mouse series. As Walt noted, a fascination with robots and mechanical men was gradually emerging in Depression-era popular culture and it would reach a crescendo of sorts with Westinghouse’s introduction of Elektro the Robot at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. But while Mickey’s automaton marvel is certainly inspired by representations of robots in the science fiction pulp magazines of the era, the cartoon’s story and setting are much more pedestrian and decidedly non-“fantastic” in nature.For Sam, as Mickey named his mechanical wonder, is not destined for the amazing adventures experienced by his magazine and Hollywood counterparts, but was created in fact for a slightly less inspired function: boxing.

Sam’s adversary in the ring took its cue from another popular archetype of the period, a savage and menacing gorilla. Likely the short’s creative talent were aware of the impending April 1933 release of Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong, as the story’s boxing simian just happened to be named The Kongo Killer.

The story’s action and humor center on the literally one-note gag of Minnie’s car horn that sends Sam into a frenzied, out-of-control rage. It is ultimately that gimmick that empowers Sam to defeat his rival. In a fast paced sequence, boxing glove-donned arms and apertures rapidly and successively emerge from all over Sam’s body and pummel Kongo into submission.

While Walt’s original notes detailed scenes of Mickey actually building Sam and subsequently operating him by remote control, the finished short provides no apparent explanation of the robot’s origin, and he acts relatively autonomous from his mentor. Without this background, the cartoon takes on an almost matter-of-fact attitude towards its somewhat wacky premise, as if robot-gorilla matchups were common events during those early years of the Great Depression. But as in many of Mickey’s early black and white efforts, it’s the occasionally off the wall and weird ideas such as those realized in Mickey’s Mechanical Man that became many of the mouse’s more memorable moments.

In the end what I enjoy the most about this particular short is the simple tin can-style design of Sam and how it epitomized those early steam-powered, gear-filled representations of mechanical men. Cartoons are very often snapshots of popular culture, and Mickey’s Mechanical Man presented us with an early rendition of what would become a major icon of science fiction-themed entertainment.

Special thanks to Hans Perk who made available Walt’s original notes for Mickey’s Mechanical Man on his website A. Film L.A.

It's the Simple Things . . .

The 1953 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Simple Things is an average and in almost all ways unremarkable production. But what it has come to represent, at least to me personally, resonates on an emotional and sentimental level that goes beyond anything the actual short itself conveys.

The Simple Things certainly lives up to its title. Mickey and Pluto take a fishing trip to the beach where their primary antagonists are a persistent clam and overly annoying seagull. It follows the typical pattern of multi-character shorts, where each character has a separate vignette (Pluto with the clam; Mickey with the gull) and then reunite for an overall climax.

But what distinguishes The Simple Things, was that for all intents and purposes, it was essentially the last Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Granted, Mickey’s Christmas Carol would be produced in 1983, and would be followed seven years later by the Prince and the Pauper. But they were both special productions-- adaptations of literary works with more extended running times, and were not really akin to the typical 7-8 minute shorts produced during the studio’s first three decades. And while both Runaway Brain (1995) and Get a Horse! (2013) certainly match the just described criteria for classification as cartoon shorts, both stand more as happy and refreshing anomalies rather than a return to regularly produced theatrical short subjects.

No, despite these films and even the television-produced Mickey’s MouseWorks, House of Mouse and the current Mickey Mouse Disney Channel/Youtube shorts, The Simple Things represented Mickey’s retirement from the very art form that he as a character certainly defined and revolutionized. It would also foreshadow Walt Disney’s own shuttering of the studio’s shorts department two years later in 1955.

Mickey’s retirement from film did not relegate him to the life of leisure embodied in the carefree fishing trip of The Simple Things. He quickly transitioned into a television personality via the Mickey Mouse Club and appearances on the Disney anthology program, and later into the roles of theme park ambassador and corporate icon. But he would with his costars--Donald, Pluto, and Goofy among others--leave behind the very form of entertainment that in fact had given birth to the Walt Disney Company.

I can’t imagine that director Charles Nichols and his crew ever intended for the title of The Simple Things to imply anything beyond the cartoon’s theme and content. But in my studies and research of the short, it has always been identified as Mickey’s last cartoon and in that context the title has always taken on an additional meaning for me. The song "The Simple Things" that opens and closes the film, provides more than a moment of bittersweet sentimentality when considered in the context of the then declining animated short subject, not just at Disney but across the rest of Hollywood as well.

The theatrical cartoons of 1930s, 1940s and 1950s are in many ways the simple things referenced by that song’s lyrics. As Mickey and Pluto no doubt journeyed to a rocky beach to escape their worries and troubles in The Simple Things, I and countless others still escape in a similar fashion to that simpler, yet always endearing animated entertainment of those bygone days.

What a Character! - Spike

One of Disney's lesser known characters recently resurfaced at the 2018 Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival. So what better occasion than this to revisit that certain cartoon insect who was the bane of a famous duck's existence during the heyday of classic Disney animation.

Alternately referred to as either Spike or Buzz-Buzz, the little fellow proved to be a worthy adversary to Donald Duck. Of the name confusion, author and Disney historian John Grant noted "It is certain that the bee who appeared in Bee on Guard was called Buzz-Buzz; a bee antagonized Donald in six other shorts, and this bee was often called Spike. The two bees are, to this eye at least, hard to tell apart; it is possible that any perceived differences may simply be the result of different artists working at difference times."

Spike made his debut in the 1948 cartoon Inferior Decorator. Fooled initially by Donald's flower print wallpaper, he quickly falls victim to the duck's trademark bullying. While Donald tends to maintain the upper hand throughout the short, the plucky Spike perseveres and comeuppance is ultimately delivered in the end.

Spike switched headliners in his second appearance, trading pratfalls with Pluto in the 1949 cartoon Bubble Bee. The short plays off of two totally oddball premises. First, that Pluto finds himself coveting bubble gum balls from a gumball machine. Second, that for some bizarre reason, Spike is pilfering said gumballs and hiding them in the nearby hive. A succession of bubble gum-based gags quickly follows and similar to Donald's previous fate in Inferior Decorator, Pluto also gets it in the end.

Spike returned to Donald Duck cartoons that same year in Honey Harvester, and remained the malicious mallard's co-star for his remaining five appearances. Slide, Donald, Slide, Bee at the Beach and Bee on Guard all featured similar bee-duck craziness. But Spike's final appearance in 1952's Let's Stick Together turned out to be an unintentionally appropriate swan song. An older version of Spike is seen reminiscing about an earlier, and often contentious partnership with Donald. Most notable about the short was that the older Spike was given a normal voice, distinctly different from prior appearances where he had always communicated via high pitched buzzes and squeaks. This is especially ironic in that longtime Donald Duck director Jack Hannah once noted the benefit of this particular attribute, saying "You can get a funny sound effect out of a bee. They can cuss you out with that little bee noise." This older Spike was also similar in personality to another insect supporting player, Bootle Beetle, who co-starred a few times with Donald during roughly the same time period.

Of the end of Spike's career, John Grant observed, " . . . it is very interesting that this retrospective [Let's Stick Together] should appear so abruptly, and at a time when the bee's career looked to be highly successful -- as if, indeed, he was all set to become a regular fixture in Duck movies in perpetuity. One can only assume that Disney overestimated his popularity."