EPCOT 1939: Donald Duck Day

Yes indeed, we are passionate enthusiasts here at 2719 Hyperion in regard to the 1939 New York World's Fair.  Our EPCOT 1939 series of posts examined the extensive similarities between the Flushing Meadows exposition and EPCOT Center.  Any opportunity to explore a Disney-related connection to the Fair is one we immediately pursue; thus we came to discover the significance of August 14, 1939.

It was Donald Duck Day.

Donald was flown in from Hollywood for this special event.  (Actually it was a three-foot model of the famous mallard, sent from the Disney Studios and likely the one that was typically used for public appearances and special events during that time period.)  He arrived at the Fair at 12 noon that day, just in time to attend the premiere of his latest cartoon, Donald's Penguin.  The short was shown every half hour from noon to 6pm at the National Biscuit Theatre in the Food Pavilion.  This was also the theater that hosted Mickey's Surprise Party, a cartoon short made especially for the National Biscuit Company as part of their Fair exhibit.  At 12:15, Donald handed out gifts to five hundred lucky children; at 12:30 he was paraded past the Perisphere, accompanied by marching bands and other entertainers, ultimately ending up in Carnivaland where a special luncheon was held at the Children's World Restaurant for the winning children.  Carnivaland was located in the Fair's amusement area that was adjacent to Fountain Lake.

The main event of Donald Duck Day was a special ceremony held in Carnivaland, hosted by a costumed character named Abie the Clown Policeman.  Donald was presented with a honorary degree of Doctor of International Friendship from Dr. Frank Monaghan, a professor of American History at Yale University.  In his speech, Monaghan noted that Donald, "never pretended to be a statesman, nor an ambassador nor even a politician; he has only wanted to be and has only been himself.  But his antics and his quacks are more sensible and inspired than the grave nonsense of many who pretend to higher things."  The professor continued, "He has given the world joy through laughter; he is the ambassador extraordinary of good will to the world." 

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:
Epcot 1939
Museum of Modern Marvels

Windows to the Past: Gasoline Unsurpassed

In a post last week, we opened a window to 1939 that showcased a Standard Gasoline billboard in downtown Los Angeles.  The advertisement featured Mickey Mouse and was part of a Disney-themed campaign for the Standard Oil Company that continued through most of 1940.  Our very good friend and fellow Disney historian Paul F. Anderson very generously forwarded us this photograph that provides a better view of another billboard with the same advertisement.

Our thanks to Paul for making the photograph available to us.  Be sure to check out Paul's excellent site, the Disney History Institute.  It is a true treasure trove of Disney history and resources.

Windows to the Past: A Four-Leaf Clover from 1939

This particular Window to the Past features a timely tie-in to the upcoming Saint Patrick's Day holiday.  The above photograph dates from 1939 and showcases the 800 block of Hill Street in Los Angeles.  Our interest in the image is due to the billboard for Standard Gasoline that prominently features Mickey Mouse.  Mickey is proudly holding a four-leaf clover while the advertisement copy proclaims, "Good Picking!"

The billboard was part of an ad campaign by Standard Oil that featured Disney characters.  Walt Disney produced a commercial short entitled The Standard Parade that was shown to station operators to highlight components of the campaign.  We have previously featured a number of the campaign's Travel Tykes newspaper ads here at 2719 Hyperion.

The photograph more prominently features the RKO Hillstreet Theatre.  That venue opened as a vaudeville house in 1922 as part of the Orpheum circuit and was originally called the Hillstreet Theatre.  It became the RKO Theatre in 1929 and was eventually renamed the RKO Hillstreet.  No doubt many Disney cartoons graced its screen as RKO was the Disney Studio's distributor from 1937 to 1956.  The theatre was demolished in 1965 and replaced with a parking garage.

The image is part of the USC Digital Archive and credited to the Dick Whittington Studio.

What the Mickey Mouse Club Is

Here's a Mickey Mouse pop culture time capsule that dates all the way back to July of 1930.  The Fox Theater chain launched the original Mickey Mouse Clubs as special Saturday matinees all across the country and many local chapters were inaugurated throughout the spring and summer of 1930.  This particular newspaper advertisement featured the club from Hutchinson, Kansas.  Their meetings were held at that town's Fox Midland Theatre.

The ad copy provided this rather lengthy explanation of what the club was all about:

THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB is an organization for boys and girls with its own officers, creed and ritual (ceremonies,) etc. Regular weekly meetings will be held at 11:30 o'clock noon every Saturday in the form of matinee-meetings at the FOX MIDLAND Theatre, which is launching and will sponsor the Club. In addition to the special, all-different programs to be held each Saturday in the FOX MIDLAND Theatre, stunts, try-outs and contests will be staged and numerous other events, outings, etc., arranged for members. In short, there will be something doing all the time for Mickey and Minnie Mice as boys and girls who are members of the Mickey Mouse Club are known. Officers to be appointed temporarily at next Saturday's matinee-meeting are: Junior Chief Mickey Mouse; Chief Minnie Mouse; Junior Master of Ceremonies; Song Leader; Cheer Leader; Courier; Color Bearer and Two Sergeants-at-Arms. Regular elections will be held the first Saturday of each month thereafter. All boys and girls who secure membership application blanks (they are available now at any of the Official Mickey Mouse Stores listed below) and present same properly filled out at the FOX MIDLAND Theatre will, through the courtesy of the co-operating merchants or Official Mickey Mouse Stores, be admitted FREE to the first or opening Mickey Mouse Club matinee-meeting at the FOX MIDLAND at 11:30 next Saturday. So, boys and girls, you can see that filling out and filing a membership application blank right away, are important. Those who do will not only enjoy next Saturday 11:30 Mickey Mouse Club matinee free but will at the following matinee, a week from next Saturday, be given their Official Mickey Mouse Club membership cards and buttons. That's all—except to once more urge you to lose no time boys and girls, in calling at one of the Official Mickey Mouse Stores for your Mickey Mouse Club membership application blank! These are free and will be furnished you gladly. Then be sure to fill yours out and bring it with you to the FOX MIDLAND next Saturday at 11:30 so you can enjoy the First or Opening Mickey Mouse Club matinee FREE!

An advertisement for another local chapter featured the Mickey Mouse creed:

"I will be a square-shooter in my home, in school, on the playground, wherever I may be. I will be truthful and honorable and strive always to make myself a better and more useful little citizen. I will respect my elders and help the aged, the helpless and children smaller than myself. IN SHORT, I WILL BE A GOOD AMERICAN."

Walt Disney's Los Angeles 1923-1931: Pedaling Past History

Editors Note: When we last left Buddy Robinson, he had just rode his bicycle past the home of Robert Disney on Kingswell Avenue.

Buddy suddenly remembers that he wants to check what's playing at the Vista Theatre, so he points his bicycle south off Kingswell onto Hillhurst Avenue.  He travels the four blocks to the corner of Hillhurst and Hollywood Boulevard where the Vista is located.

He decides that the double bill of Tailspin and The Three Musketeers is to his liking and quickly exchanges a dime for a ticket and a few hours of vintage Hollywood escapism.

It is important to remember that at this time, the movie industry was a growing and pervasive presence in the Los Feliz and Silver Lake neighborhoods, and of course in Hollywood just to the west.  Data from the 1930 U.S. Census indicates that a large number of individuals then living in these areas were associated with work within the motion picture industry.

Across the street from the Vista Theatre was one of Hollywood's then well known poverty row studios.  Monogram Studios produced such B-movie fare as Boris Karloff's Mr. Wong series, The East End Kids and The Bowery Boys and was home to numerous western matinee idols such as a young John Wayne, Tex Ritter, Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones and Johnny Mack Brown.

Walt and Lillian Disney lived for a brief time very near to this location.  The couple rented an apartment at 1307 North Commonwealth Avenue sometime during the mid-1920s.  There is no trace left of the house or building they resided in and in fact the entire 1300 and 1400 blocks of North Commonwealth Avenue no longer exist.  North Commonwealth would have intersected Sunset Drive very close to where the Monogram Studios came into being in 1931.

Today, the entire area, including the original Monogram Studio building, is part of the KCET Studios complex.  KCET is the PBS affiliate for the Los Angeles area.

After watching  movies and filling up on popcorn and Coca-Cola, Buddy pedals his bicycle north on Talmadge Street and eventually passes the former Vitagraph Studios that was sold to Warner Bros. in 1925.

Built in 1912, Vitagraph was one of the earliest of the Hollywood studios and enjoyed the presence of such film pioneers as Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith.  ABC Television acquired the property in 1949.  Disney assumed ownership of the complex when it acquired ABC in 1996.  During the time Walt was active in the Los Feliz/Silver Lake area, the studio would have been referred to as the Warner Bros. Vitagraph or the Warner Bros. Annex.  It was located just a block away from Robert Disney's home.

A few blocks north, Buddy turns right on Franklin Avenue and pedals across the Shakespeare Bridge, a well known Los Feliz landmark.

 Just after crossing the bridge, he turns left on St. George Street.  At the intersection of St. George and Lyric Avenue, he passes two small adjacent houses that were once the homes of the Disney brothers.

Walt and Lillian resided at 2495 Lyric Avenue while Roy and his wife Edna lived next door at 2491.  Both couples moved into the small homes in 1927.

The houses were built from modified prefabricated kits manufactured by the Pacific Ready Cut Homes company.  Michael Barrier noted in his book The Animated Man, construction on the two homes began in August of 1926 and was completed by the following December.  The cost of the land and the two kit houses was estimated by Roy Disney to be approximately $16,000.

In the summer of 1932, Walt and Lillian moved into their second home, a house they had built at 4053 Woking Way in the Los Feliz Hills.  Though not on Buddy's bicycle route, the house was approximately one mile from the Hyperion Avenue studios.

Walt and Lillian lived at this location until their move to Holmby Hills in the late 1940s.  This was the home where the Disney's raised daughters Diane and Sharon.  It was also well known for its swimming pool that was perched precariously on a high hillside.  Roy O. Disney once said, "He hung this swimming pool up on the corner of this darn thing.  It's a granite hill and we were taking bets to see if it would stand."

In 1939, Walt appeared in magazine advertisements for DeSota that featured photographs taken at the Woking Way estate.

Roy and Edna Disney moved out of their Lyric Avenue home in 1934 and relocated to 4365 Forman Avenue in North Hollywood, not far from where he and Walt would build the Burbank studio at the end of that decade.  Roy would ultimately live in two other homes in that same North Hollywood/Burbank area prior to his death in 1971.

Buddy rides his bike a short distance further down St. George where he passes John Marshall High School.

John Marshall High School was opened in 1930 and its tall central tower can often be seen looming in the distance in photos of the Hyperion studio.  It has long been a favorite location of Hollywood filmmakers.  Movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Grease and more recently, Transformers have used the school as a backdrop.

Studio veteran Jack Kinney noted in his biography that he and number of other studio employees lived in apartments on Griffith Park Boulevard just a few blocks away from John Marshall.  He also remembered that he and other members of the story department would sneak out of the studio to watch football games at the high school.  Kinney remembered, "We were too cheap to pay twenty-five cents for a ticket in the grandstands, and we soon discovered that by climbing up an ivy-covered bank we had a first-class, close-up view of the action on the field through a chain-link fence."  According to Kinney, the school's disgruntled principal ultimately turned on sprinklers to discourage the freeloading Disney employees.

Directly across from John Marshall, Buddy turns down Evans Street where after one very long extended block he arrives at Hyperion Avenue.  He turns left on Hyperion Avenue.  He quickly drops off some overdue books at the Hyperion Branch Station of the Los Angeles Public Library, located at 2619 Hyperion Avenue.

After leaving the library, he continues one block up Hyperion Avenue to where it intersects with Griffith Park Boulevard.  He has reached the location of the Walt Disney Studios.

We have arrived at 2719 Hyperion Avenue.

During the studios' earliest of years, the area surrounding 2719 Hyperion was a generally quiet, empty place.  Animation director Ben Sharpsteen remembered visiting for the first time in 1929:

"I walked through what was mainly a residential development, a section of town which had been laid out with streets and curbs, but which had very few homes at the time.  It was late March and the grass and weeds were very tall and they were growing up through the sidewalk in places.  It was not a street that was very much used at the time.  I thought this was a very strange neighborhood for a cartoon studio, but I finally came to a main intersection as directed and I found the number on a small building next to a service station on the corner.  Sure enough, the sign over the door read 'Walt Disney Studios.'"

In the decade that followed, the Hyperion studio grew, in what many observers described as an almost "organic" expansion.  Existing buildings were expanded and extended; nearby buildings were absorbed and additional facilities emerged on the opposite side of Hyperion Avenue.

The Disney Annex was added to the studio sometime around 1936. During the late 1930s, it was in this place that aspiring artists were typically given tryout periods to prove their talent and skills, working mainly as in-betweeners under the watchful and often harsh supervision of studio manager George Drake. Part of the training process also involved art classes taught by Don Graham.

In less than one year following Buddy's travels on that Saturday afternoon in May 1939, the Hyperion studio would be gone.  By early 1940, Walt Disney and his entire operation relocated to a sprawling new studio complex in Burbank.  Buddy's Aunt Connie did not follow the company to Burbank but instead was married later in 1940 and moved to Pasadena with her new husband.  Decades later, a supermarket would occupy the location, and the address, 2719 Hyperion, would cease to exist.

Buddy turns his bike around.  It is getting late and he needs to get home for dinner.  He pauses for a moment and looks up at the large sign on the top one of the studio buildings.  He fondly remembers his birthday in 1933 when his father brought him to this place.  He scans the surrounding street and confirms that he is alone except for the occasional passing cars.  He shyly lifts his hand and waves.  And from the sign that rises high above the address that is 2719 Hyperion Avenue, Mickey Mouse waves back.

Walt Disney's Los Angeles: 1923-1931 is adapted from a presentation made April 10, 2010 at the first 2719 Hyperion Sweatbox. 

Our acknowledgments and thanks to the following individuals who provided assistance and resources that made the Sweatbox presentation and the subsequent site posts possible:  Bob Cowan, Phil Sears, Dave Smith, Jeff Kurtti, Donnie O'Neal, Scott Otis and Diane Disney Miller.

It is impossible to overstate the value and importance of Michael Barrier and his near-definitive Walt Disney biography The Animated Man.

The photo archive at the Los Angeles Public Library was invaluable in our efforts.

Walt Disney's Los Angeles 1923-1931: A Bicycle Ride to Kingswell

At roughly the same time Mickey Mouse premiered at the Colony Theatre on November 18, 1928, Elsie Robinson gave birth to William Arthur Robinson in Los Angeles, California.  He wasn't even a day old when his father, newspaperman Chester Robinson, bestowed upon him the nickname "Buddy."  Buddy and his parents lived in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, just east of Hollywood.

On his fifth birthday in 1933, Buddy and his father rode the Red Car over to Glendale where the Alexander Theatre was located.  It was there that Buddy saw his first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
 
On the way home, they got off the Red Car early and walked down a street past a few vacant lots and turned a corner onto Hyperion Avenue.  At the corner was a gas station, and next to it on the left was a series of large buildings.

Buddy remembers, "My Dad lifted me up to sit on his shoulders and then he pointed to a large sign perched on top of one of the buildings.  There on the sign was Mickey Mouse, happily waving down to my father and me as we stood looking up from the sidewalk.  It was silly, but we both happily waved back."  Buddy and his father were standing in front of the Walt Disney Studios, located at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles.

2719 Hyperion.  It is a simple address that has evolved into a near-iconic term for Disney historians, journalists and enthusiasts.  And we would like to as modestly as possible think that we have contributed to that evolution over the course of the last four years of 2719 Hyperion.com.  The history of the Hyperion Avenue studios is generally well-documented; in fact, two well-known Disney historians are each currently writing books that focus on that very subject.  So in discussing 2719 Hyperion, we thought we would approach it more in a geographical context.  This is because the area immediately surrounding the Hyperion Avenue location is nearly as rich in Disney history as the studio itself.  These neighborhoods  encompass an area of approximately two square miles just east of Hollywood.

We are going to navigate this geography by means of young Buddy Robinson, who we just introduced a few moments ago.  In the interests of full disclosure, Buddy Robinson is a wholly fictional entity.  We have created Buddy as a way to lift this exploration above the level of a dry dissertation and hopefully create a more entertaining, but still informative presentation.

As we explore the area surrounding 2719 Hyperion, as a point of reference, we are going to use this 1939 street map of Los Angeles, that was produced and distributed by the Standard Oil Company of California.  The Walt Disney Studios was closely affiliated with Standard Oil during this time period.  In 1939, Disney produced a series of four-page Travel Tykes comic book premiums available at Standard Service Stations.  The studio also produced a commercial cartoon short entitled The Standard Parade that tied into this promotion.  Just to note, within the 2719 Hyperion Archives there is a series of posts that feature Travel Tykes newspaper ads that were featured in the Los Angeles Times during the spring of 1939.

We are going to follow Buddy Robinson as he spends a Saturday afternoon during the spring of 1939 traversing his neighborhood.  But before we do that, we are going to briefly jump back in time to that day in 1933 when Buddy and his father visited the Alexander Theatre in Glendale.

The Alexander Theatre is especially significant to early Disney history.  As it was located just a few miles from 2719 Hyperion Avenue, Walt Disney used the Alexander Theatre numerous times throughout the years to run preview screenings of many of his cartoon short subjects. In their book Silly Symphonies, authors Russell Merit and J.B. Kaufman document preview screenings of Disney cartoons there as early as 1931 with the shorts Egyptian Melodies and The Clock Store.  Studio veteran Jack Kinney noted, "When a picture was finished, it was usually previewed at the Alexander Theater in Glendale to get audience reaction. After the show, the boys and girls would gather in the lobby and discuss the various scenes with Walt."

But now let us return to the spring of 1939.  Buddy Robinson is leaving his house located at 4410 Clarissa Avenue in Los Feliz.  Buddy's home was located about ¾ of a mile from the Hyperion studio as the crow flies; traveling by street routes added an additional ¼ mile to the journey.  Buddy's Aunt Connie (his mother's sister) who lived with his family would frequently walk that distance on a daily basis; she was employed as an ink and paint girl at the Disney Studio.

 

Buddy travels a couple of blocks west of his home to Hillhurst Avenue where he turns south; a block later he turns west onto Franklin Avenue where he travels two more blocks to Vermont Avenue and a business district that includes stores, restaurants, and the Los Feliz Theatre.

He might stop in and pick up some candy at either the Los Feliz Mart or the Holly Mont Market; and he'll probably run into the Owl Drug Company and buy a comic book or two if he has enough money.  He checks to see what's playing at the Los Feliz Theatre and decides that the double bill of St. Louis Blues and Girl Downstairs is not to his liking. 

Shortly after they were married in 1925, Walt and Lillian Disney lived briefly in an apartment located a half block away from these shops at 4637 Melbourne Avenue.

Les Clark, one of Disney's legendary "Nine Old Men" met Walt Disney for the first time at a small restaurant near the intersection of Vermont and Kingswell.  Clark told Disney historian Don Peri, "It was a malt shop, confectionary store, and they served lunch and other meals."  He remembered, "I met Walt in the summer of 1925.  He used to come in and have lunch almost every day.  When I graduated from high school, I got in touch with him and asked him for a job."

Veteran Warner Bros. animator Friz Freleng remembered renting a room in a house on Vermont Avenue when he briefly worked for Disney in 1927.  Freleng noted that Roy Disney would pick him up and drive him to the studio every morning, but added, "But after work we had to walk home, because he didn't care when we got home, but he did care when we got to work!" 

Buddy rides his bike one block south of Melbourne Avenue and turns east onto Kingswell Avenue.  Here he will pass one of the most significant places in Disney history.

Near the corner of Vermont and Kingswell is the location where Roy Disney and Walt Disney established the Disney Brothers Studio on October 8, 1923.  The fledgling studio shared space with a real estate office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue.

The initial rent for the location was $10/month.  The studio opened for business on October 16, 1923, the day after Walt accepted New York distributor Margaret Winkler's offer to distribute the new Alice Comedies series.  Walt and Roy, and newly hired ink and paint girl Kathleen Dollard comprised the entire staff of the operation.  On January 14, 1924, the future Mrs. Walt Disney, Lillian Bounds was added to the staff as a cel painter.  Walt and Lillian's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, remembered her mother speaking of the couple's first kiss, that likely happened at Kingswell Avenue.  ". . . it was very sweet . . . she was taking dictation from him, and he leaned across the desk and kissed her.  I find that very romantic.  I don't think I've ever told anyone other than family about that, simply because no one seemed interested."

In February of 1924, the studio moved into larger quarters directly next door at 4649 Kingswell where they were able to display the Disney Brothers name on a storefront window. 

Here is a view of how this area looks today.

A copy store now occupies the location that was once briefly, the Disney Brothers Studio.

As Buddy heads further east on Kingswell, he comes to the home of Robert Disney, uncle to the Disney brothers. 

It was here, at 4406 Kingswell Avenue, where Walt first lived upon arriving in southern California in late summer of 1923.  Robert Disney had moved to Los Angeles the prior year and earned a living working in real estate.  For a brief time, Walt worked out of his uncle's garage.

It was from this location that October 16, 1923 that Walt wrote the family of Virginia Davis in Kansas City, requesting that they come to Hollywood so Virginia could star in the new series of Alice Comedies.

Walt also had printed stationary that used the 4406 Kingswell address.  He used a piece of that stationary for a subsequent letter to Mrs. Davis on October 24, 1923.

For a little over a year, Walt and Roy lived together in a rented room across the street at 4409 Kingswell, the residence of Charles and Nettie Schneider, and then later at an apartment at an unknown address.  As roommates, the two proved quite incompatible; so much so that a frustrated Roy sent for his Kansas City sweetheart, Edna Francis.  The two were married at Uncle Robert's home on April 11, 1925.

End of Part One

Walt Disney's Los Angeles: 1923-1931 is adapted from a presentation made April 10, 2010 at the first 2719 Hyperion Sweatbox.

Buddy Robinson's bicycle ride through Los Feliz and Silver Lake continues tomorrow here at 2719 Hyperion. 

The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air

Special to 2719 Hyperion by Jim Korkis

Old time radio shows are a delight, but just like shows on television today, some were great and not to be missed, some were mediocre, and others just did not capture the potential of their concept. Unfortunately, the Disney Studios attempt at a radio show fell into the last category.

In the 1930s, radio was king and people would often change their entire lives around so that they could hear the latest episode of their favorite show. Many popular comic strip and animated characters had already made the transition to the airwaves and there were shows like “Betty Boop Fables” and “Popeye the Sailor” that entertained young audiences. Advertisers desperately wanted to sponsor a show with the Walt Disney characters and both Lever Brothers (makers of Lifebuoy among other products) and Lucky Strike cigarettes had almost convinced Walt Disney to take a chance. However, it was Pepsodent toothpaste and their commitment to a weekly budget of $10,000 to $12,000 that finally brought the Disney characters to the air in more than just occasional guest appearances on other programs.

“The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air” premiered on radio on January 2, 1938 in the NBC Sunday afternoon slot previously reserved for the antics of “Amos and Andy”. That show changed sponsors from Peposdent to Campbell Soup as well as time slots, and Pepsodent desperately wanted something as popular as those famous comedians to take up the slack.

During the half hour show, Mickey and the gang would travel through time and space thanks to the Magic Mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to have adventures with everyone from Robin Hood to Cinderella to Old MacDonald. The half hour was also filled by music not just from the Felix Mills Orchestra but from Donald Duck’s Webfoot Sextet, that like the later Spike Jones Band, played a variety of odd instruments from cowbells to bottles to an auto horn for comic effect.

Here is the list of all twenty episodes of “The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air”:

January 2, 1938: Robin Hood
January 9, 1938: Snow White Day
January 16, 1938: Donald Duck’s Band
January 23, 1938: The River Boat
January 30, 1938: Ali Baba
February 6, 1938: South of the Border
February 13, 1938: Mother Goose and Old King Cole
February 20, 1938: The Gypsy Band
February 27, 1938: Cinderella
March 6, 1938: King Neptune
March 13, 1938: The Pied Piper
March 20, 1938: Sleeping Beauty
March 27, 1938: Ancient China (with a guest appearance by Snow White!)
April 3, 1938: Mother Goose and the Old Woman in a Shoe
April 10, 1938: Long John Silver
April 17, 1938: King Arthur
April 24, 1938: Who Killed Cock Robin?
May 1, 1938: Cowboy Show
May 8, 1938: William Tell
May 15, 1938: Old MacDonald

You can listen to seven of these shows at this link.

Walt himself was busy with the promotion of the just released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and in fact, supposedly only agreed to letting his characters on the air so that it could help promote that animated feature. The reason Walt hadn’t explored radio earlier was that he felt that his characters would not translate well to the medium, that audiences needed to see as well as hear the animated stars.. Unfortunately, Walt was only able to supply the voice of Mickey Mouse for the first three episodes. From the fourth show on, the voice of Mickey was comedian Joe Twerp (yes, that was his real name) whose comedy relied on being an excitable, stuttering person who confused words. He had been considered for the role of Doc, a similar personality, from Snow White, but Roy Atwell was chosen to supply that voice instead.

In fact, Walt got so busy that he couldn’t attend some of the recordings and that when the script called for Walt himself to make an appearance, he was sometimes impersonated by the announcer for the show, John Hiestand!

Minnie Mouse was performed by Thelma Boardman who would later supply Minnie’s voice in the some of the Disney cartoons of the 1940s. Pinto Colvig had left the Disney Studio by the time the show started so the role of Goofy was performed by Stuart Buchanan, who was the official “casting director” at the Disney Studios and had supplied the voice of the huntsman in Snow White. Donald Duck, of course, was voiced by the one and only Clarence Nash and Clara Cluck was Florence Gill. Both of them had performed the same roles in the Disney cartoons.

There were other voices on the show as well supplied by popular performers including Billy Bletcher (the voice of Pete in the cartoons who popped up as Old King Cole in the show), Hans Conreid (still many years from voicing Captain Hook who did a comical turn as the Pied Piper), Bea Benaderet (portraying Miriam the Mermaid in the kingdom of King Neptune), Cliff Arquette (“Charley Weaver” who voiced Old MacDonald), Walter Tetley, and many others including Mel Blanc. In fact, Blanc was a regular on the show but never voiced any of the Disney characters. He did do a character in several shows that got so excited that he couldn’t stop hiccuping whenever he talked. Perhaps this performance inspired Walt to use Blanc as Gideon the cat in the upcoming production of Pinocchio. The famous story that Blanc told over the years was that he recorded a voice for the cat but Walt cut everything but a hiccup from the final performance.

The show was not memorable and suffered from the fact that Walt could not give it his full attention so it quietly disappeared after only twenty episodes but it is still an interesting footnote in Disney history. Thankfully, the estate of the musical director of the “Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air,” Felix Mills, donated all his original transcription discs of the show to the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters in California.

See Donald, I Told You Something Would Happen

Kite-flying season is upon us, so what better time to enjoy this small piece of pop culture nostalgia from 1939. Mickey and Donald demonstrate why caution is needed when flying kites near utility poles and electric wires. It was likely that the poster was made available nationally and local power companies put their own brands in the bottom margin. The Duquesne Light Company is based out of Pittsburgh and continues to serve the southwestern Pennsylvania area to this day. As a Pittsburgh native, I have to wonder if my parents and their siblings may have at some point seen this poster and taken its advice to heart.

Number 17 of 50

So, what exactly did the general public know of Walt Disney in say, 1935? This cigarette card premium, distributed by Mitchell's Cigarettes provided a brief but interesting biography, with a special emphasis on the cartoon-maker's estimated annual income. Here is the full text of the card:

Walt Disney, the famous inventor of "Mickey Mouse" and "Silly Symphonies" and one of the most original geniuses of the screen, is a slender, athletic yound man of 34. In 1935, when he paid his first visit to Europe since he drove an ambulance with the American Expeditionary Force in the Great War, the League of Nations International Film Committee awarded him a special medal for his original and distinctive work. In 1920, he was working as a hack artist at £5 a week; today his income, thanks to"Mickey Mouse" and the Symphonies, is reputed to be £80,000 a year. It is estimated that these famous films have already earned the hugh sum of £28,000,000.

The financial translation: $7 a week; $113, 600 a year and the huge sum of $39,760,000.

Cigarette cards were a favorite collectible throughout the early decades of the 20th century. According to the NYPL Online Collections:

Cigarette or tobacco cards began in the mid-19th century as premiums, enclosed in product packaging. They were usually issued in numbered series of twenty-five, fifty, or larger runs to be collected, spurring subsequent purchases of the same brand. Typically, these small cards feature illustrations on one side with related information and advertising text on the other. The height of cigarette card popularity occurred in the early decades of the 20th century, when tobacco companies around the world issued card sets in an encyclopedic range of subjects. After a slump during the First World War, popularity resumed, with new emphasis on film stars, sports, and military topics. Plants, animals, and monuments of the world remained perennially favorite themes. The appeal of contemporary cigarette cards fell by the 1950s, ceasing their production and distribution.

Walt and Mickey Mouse were together featured in an earlier cigarette card distributed by Wills's Cigarettes in 1931.

Disney's Hollywood: The Alexander Theatre

The city of Glendale, California has numerous contemporary connections to the Walt Disney Company. Disney Consumer Products, the Disney Stores and most famously, Walt Disney Imagineering, all have operations based out of this Los Angeles suburb. But in the Hyperion years of the Walt Disney Studios, Glendale often played host to the efforts of those early animation pioneers. It happened by way of a movie theater that has become well known as one of southern California's more legendary picture palaces: the Alexander Theatre as it was called prior to 1940, the Alex Theatre as it exists since then and still today.

The Alexander Theatre in 1940.

The Alexander Theatre regularly hosted preview screenings of major studio films during Hollywood's golden age. Throughout the 1930s, newspaper listings for the Alexander would frequently feature the notation, "Major Studio Preview Tonight." Famous Hollywood stars and studio executives were often sighted in or around the Alexander, and on the nights of advertised previews, the theater would become a magnet for movie fans and autograph hounds.

As it was located just a few miles from 2719 Hyperion Avenue, Walt Disney used the Alexander Theatre numerous times throughout the years to run preview screenings of many of his cartoon short subjects. In their book Silly Symphonies, authors Russell Merit and J.B. Kaufman document preview screenings of Disney cartoons there as early as 1931 with the shorts Egyptian Melodies and The Clock Store.

Disney Legend and veteran animator Ward Kimball once observed, "We always previewed our pictures in Glendale at the Alexander, and they let us know when they'd run The Wise Little Hen or Orphans' Benefit and we'd all go out. We had passes and we would sit in the audience and listen, and Walt would walk outside and have an impromptu discussion."

In his book Walt Disney and Other Assorted Characters, studio veteran Jack Kinney noted,"When a picture was finished, it was usually previewed at the Alexander Theater in Glendale to get audience reaction. After the show, the boys and girls would gather in the lobby and discuss the various scenes with Walt." According to Kinney, the Alexander even played a part in Walt Disney's swan song as a director:

"Walt moved into his own music room and started making The Golden Touch, the King Midas story. This was a very hush-hush operation, with just two animators, who were sworn to secrecy. The entire studio awaited this epic, and finally it was finished and previewed at the Alexander Theater in Glendale. All personnel turned out to see what Walt had wrought. He had wrought a bomb! The Golden Touch laid a great big golden egg. That picture was the last Walt ever directed. We knew better than to discuss it, ever."

Clarence Nash, the legendary voice artist of Donald Duck, remembered a nervous trip to the Alexander in 1934 to preview the Mickey Mouse cartoon Orphans' Benefit. "We drove over to the Alexander Theater, here in Glendale, for the preview. I was more nervous about that picture than I was about The Wise Little Hen," Nash recalled. "I was with a group of Disney people, and my wife was with me, too. I was just like an average audience; I got a big kick out of it and completely forgot that I had anything to do with it."

The Alex Theater shortly after refurbishment with new marquee.

The Alexander Theatre opened in 1925 and in its early years showcased both motion pictures and vaudeville shows. It was designed in a Greco-Egyptian style by architects Charles R. Selkirk and Arthur G. Lindley, and was similar in many ways to Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in nearby Hollywood. In 1940, noted theatre architect S. Charles Lee created a new and elaborate exterior marquee, distinguished by a 100 foot tall art deco neon spire crowned with a large starburst. In its newly refurbished state it was rechristened as the Alex Theatre. The theater was purchased by the City of Glendale in the early 1990s and underwent a $6 million restoration. Since 1994, it has served as one of southern California's premiere performing arts venues.

Going Hollywood with Mother Goose

Similar to efforts made for the 1933 cartoon Mickey's Gala Premier and the 1939 Donald Duck short The Autograph Hound, the Disney Studios transformed Hollywood celebrities onto celluloid in what became the most expensive of all Silly Symphonies, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood. Immensely popular and critically lauded when released in late 1938, it would, in unedited form, go on to languish for decades in the Disney vaults due to perceived offensive content related to its caricatures of African American personalities Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Stepin Fetchit, and a brief blackface gag involving the animated incarnation of actress Katherine Hepburn. The Walt Disney Company finally made it available in uncut form in 2006 on the Walt Disney Treasures More Silly SymphoniesDVD.

The celebrity caricatures in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood are credited to Disney Legend Tee Hee, and they proved to be his baptism of fire into the Walt Disney Studios. Hee began working in Hollywood in the mid-1930s, drawing caricatures of contract stars for MGM's publicity department. He moved to Warner Bros. in 1936 where he would provide similar designs for the cartoon The Coo Coo Nut Grove. Despite a earlier failed interview with Disney Studio boss George Drake and art instructor Don Graham, Hee later allowed a neighbor's brother, who was an animator at the studio, to hand deliver to Walt a collection of his caricature drawings.

In an interview with Richard Hubler, Hee described how he manged to get in the door of the studio: "This was through these caricatures again. Thank goodness they were the entree because my drawings were not good enough and Walt liked the caricatures. He thought they were great and he said, 'I think we can use him on Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood,' the film that they had not been progressing very far with."

He was paired with Ed Penner to create a storyboard for the short. He described to Hubler the story meeting where he and Penner presented their ideas to Walt Disney:

"When we started going through it, I had enough ham in me that when it came to the parts of the characters, I would enact them, standing up in front of the people--there were about twelve or thirteen people there, including Walt. I did Katherine Hepburn saying, 'I've lost my sheep, really I have," . . . I was flitting around you know, like they would do. And I think Walt was entranced. He laughed, and all the other guys laughed too . . . Ed Penner and I, we had the conviction that Walt would like it, and while I'd never met him, I just felt this was what he would like. So when it was all over with he said,'Well, I think it's great. What do you guys think?' And they all said it was great. So I knew I had a friend."

The other creative powerhouse behind Mother Goose Goes Hollywood was Ward Kimball. Kimball animated more characters than anyone else on the crew, most notably the characters representing Hugh Herbert, the Marx Brothers and Cab Calloway.

As Hee observed, the project had been long in development when he was brought on board. According to authors Russell Merit and J.B.Kaufman, Hee combined the ideas from two previously unrealized Silly Symphonies--The Hollywoods and Mother Goose Land. Bill Cottrell, along with Joe Grant, (Grant had previously designed the star caricatures for Mickey's Gala Premier), conceived for The Hollywoods a forest setting filled with birds and animals based on Hollywood personalities. It was shelved primarily due to Warner Brother's release of The Coo Coo Nut Grove, which Hee, as mentioned, was instrumental in helping to create. Hee ultimately married this idea to the concept of Mother Goose Land, a short that was developed in the mid-1930s, but also later abandoned. A Walt Disney memo from 1935 summarized the idea for the short: "Jazz has taken the place of the old jingles, so Mother Goose takes them and puts them to a modern tempo with modern thoughts." This concept clearly evolved into the lively jazz-based finale led by the Cab Calloway and Fats Waller characters in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

Merit and Kaufman also noted " . . . so much story material was suggested for Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood that at one point, in the spring of 1937, Disney considered releasing it in two reels. Ultimately it was released as a standard one-reeler, but remained the most expensive of all the Silly Symphonies."

Mother Goose Goes Hollywood was certainly appreciated by the very show business community it both satirized and celebrated; it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject. It competed that year with three other Disney shorts, The Brave Little Tailor, The Good Scouts and Ferdinand the Bull. The popular and similarly acclaimed Ferdinand ultimately took the top prize.

Don't miss the companion piece to this post:

Who's Who in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood