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."

What a Character! - The Mountain Lion

The twilight of animation's golden age is littered with potential cartoon stars that sadly faded with their medium.  Numerous new characters were born out of the 1950s-era Disney shorts, but most were simply not granted enough time to establish themselves.  One such case study involves a character who, despite starring in five different cartoon shorts, did not even earn a name for himself--literally.  In historical texts, he is simply the "the Mountain Lion," although he has unofficially been identified by some scholars as Louie.  For practical reasons, we will apply that monicker for the purposes of our discussion here.

Louie was introduced in the 1950 Donald Duck cartoon Lion Around.  He is an undomesticated creature, an inarticulate denizen of the forest, but certainly not in the benign and harmless fashion of Humphrey Bear, who was also a product of the same time period.  In Lion Around, the nephews attempt to fool Donald with a mountain lion disguise, which of course leads inevitably to an encounter with the real McCoy.  In Hook, Lion and Sinker, Louie gains more of a  comical edge and a personality bordering on buffoonery.  He and his young cub attempt to steal fresh fish from Donald, and their antics bring to mind Disney's coyote characters, Bent-Tail and Bent-Tail, Junior.

The Mountain Lion's finest moments would however be achieved with a different co-star.  He shared the screen with Goofy in both with 1950's Lion Down and its 1952 followup, Father's Lion.  Lion Down brings the lion to the city where he has to deal with a blissfully ignorant Goofy.  In Father's Lion, a true Goof classic, Louie again falls victim to Goofy's exaggerated and wholly unintentional bravado, and Goofy Junior's always dead-on aim with his pop gun.

Louie's final appearance was in the Cinemascope cartoon Grand Canyonscope, where he reunites with Donald Duck and encounters J. Audubon Woodlore, who has been displaced from his usual patrols at Brownstone National Park.  It is a widescreen tour de force of sight gags and pratfall comedy, of which Louie is a prominent player.

Disney historian John Grant described the Mountain Lion as, "a rather anonymous character," and noted that, "this indeed was his strength, for it was as a mysterious lurking presence that he had his greatest effect."  And it was through such anonymity that he has at least happily gained some degree of historical notoriety.

What a Character! - Scamp

He was the result of a gag rooted in Walt Disney's own theory of the plausible impossible.  In this case, it is the apparent notion that the mating of Lady and Tramp would produce female cocker spaniel puppies and male mixes, perfect matches to their respective parents.  Thus was Scamp born into the Disney canon of characters in the final moments of the 1955 animated feature Lady and the Tramp.  Though not identified by name in the film, Scamp's brief screen time was enough to inspire a decades-long career in comics and the starring role in a direct-to-video sequel to Lady and the Tramp, released in 2001.

The primary creative force behind Scamp was a gentleman named Ward Greene.  Walt Disney recruited Greene to work on the stalled "Lady" project that had been in development since the late 1930s.  Walt had liked elements of a short story by Greene featuring a character known as Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog, and asked Greene to fashion a story that would build upon the studio's Lady materials.  Greene then wrote the story of Lady and the Tramp, that was actually published two years prior to the release of the film.

Greene was a prolific writer and journalist and was also the general editor of Kings Feature Syndicate which distributed comic strips to newspapers.  Less than five months after the release of Lady and the Tramp in theaters, Greene introduced the Scamp comic strip in newspapers across the country.  Greene himself wrote the scripts with art by Dick Moores.  The series launched on October 31, 1955 and continued for over three decades until being retired in 1988.  Greene portrayed Scamp as an adventure seeker and a mischievous foil to his more prim and proper sisters.

The success of the comic strip ultimately led to comic books, beginning with appearances in Dell Four Color Comics in 1956 and 1957.  Twelve issues of a regular Scamp series followed.  Gold Key brought the title back in 1967 and produced an additional 43 issues through January of 1979.

Scamp was the star of the 2001 film Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure, one of the better direct-to-video sequels produced by Disney during its now infamous and controversial "cheap-quel" period.  It returned the pup to his animated origins some four and a half decades after his nameless debut in the original Lady and the Tramp.

What a Character! - The Beechcraft Busy Bee

Unlike most of the insignia-related characters created by Disney artists during World War II, the Beechcraft Busy Bee was very much a homefront hero.  Beechcraft was founded in 1932 by husband and wife partners Walter H. Beech and Olive Ann Mellor Beech.  With designer Ted Wells, they created the Model 17 Staggerwing, a civilian plane that was manufactured in their Wichita, Kansas factory.

Walter and Olive Ann Beech in the Wichita factory, 1942.

 In 1942, the U.S. Army Air Forces ordered the first of 270 modified Staggerwings for service in World War II.  It was at the same time that Beech commissioned Walt Disney to create a company mascot that would encourage productivity and improve morale among his employees.  The result was the Beechcraft Busy Bee.  A company publication provided the following background:

Created by Walt Disney especially for Beechcraft as a badge of merit and honor to be awarded to employees of any rank or station. To qualify for the award an employee must have demonstrated, by performance, the qualities of high efficiency, interest in his work and in training for further advancement, cheerful cooperation with others, and the constant determination to "Kill 'em with Production."

The Beechcraft Busy Bee, rampant on a field of blueprint paper shaped in the form of a Beech leaf, embodies these qualities. Although this Beechcraft Busy Bee is busy as can be, he's not too busy to look aside to see, if instead of two jobs, he can't do three. His flaunted Beechcraft wing insigne and his cheerful grin are indicative of his high morale, but his determination is written all over his face.

Most Beechcrafters will qualify for this Award. With willing spirit and determination they are pushing production rates ever upward.

Beechcraft would be awarded the coveted Army-Navy E Award in 1942 and subsequent followup awards through the end of the war.  The E Award was given to companies as a reward for excellence in the production of war materials.  The spirit and determination of the Busy Bee was certainly reflected in the Beechcraft workforce.

 

The Bee was featured in numerous company publications, and employees were awarded patches, pins and certificates of merit that all showcased the Disney-created design.

What a Character! - Bucky Beaver

His flame burned bright for a number of years, but then quickly faded.  An undisputed icon of late 1950s popular culture, Bucky Beaver starred in television commercials for Ipana toothpaste, and for necessary relevance here, has quite a noteworthy Disney pedigree.

Similar to 7-Up spokesbird Fresh Up Freddie, Bucky was created by the largely forgotten Disney Studios commercials production unit that was active throughout the 1950s.  Disney artist Tom Oreb has been credited with the design of the character.  Oreb has emerged in recent years as one of the leading talents behind the stylized "cartoon modern" look that was prevalent during much of the 1950s and 1960s.  While his resume includes films such as Sleeping, Beauty, 101 Dalmatians and Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom, he worked extensively in the commercials unit, spending much of his time restyling many of Disney's own characters into more abstract designs, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Jiminy Cricket.  Bucky Beaver is an excellent example of that particular approach and easily one of the better designs born out of Disney's commercial efforts.

Bucky's trademark "Brusha, brusha, brusha" jingle was written and composed by adult Mouseketeer Jimmie Dodd, who also provided Bucky's voice, albeit in an altered, sped-up form.  Bucky's arch-nemesis was DK Germ, a Snidely Whiplash type villain who would always turn tail at the sight of a tube of Ipana, which Bucky was always quick to brandish.  Each commercial would have Bucky playing a different role--train engineer, circus star, white knight, and my personal favorite, Bucky Beaver-Space Guard.  That commercial in particular showcases the era's infatuation with space age-themed marketing.

Though largely unknown today, Ipana toothpaste was probably the most popular brand of toothpaste in United States from from the 1920s through the mid-1960s.  Its success began to wane in the 1970s when its parent company, Bristol-Meyers began to focus more on pharmaceuticals.  Bucky quickly faded from public memory as well.  The appearance of a Bucky Beaver Ipana commercial in the 1978 film Grease seems to be the character's only substantial claim to fame to subsequent generations.

What a Character! - Fresh Up Freddie

You will not find him in any comprehensive listing of Disney animated characters, but Fresh Up Freddie was indeed born within the walls of the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California.  Specifically, he was created in the H-wing of the animation building by a unit of the company whose history has been largely swept under the rug.  Freddie was never destined for big-screen greatness; his sole purpose was to be a cartoon pitchman for 7-Up.

The Disney Studio produced hundreds of television commercials during the 1950s, primarily ones associated with their own television programs: Disneyland, Zorro and the Mickey Mouse Club.  Commercial production was not anything that Walt Disney himself was particularly proud of, and hence it remains largely undocumented in most Disney historical texts.  Fresh Up Freddie was born out of the 7-Up company's sponsorship of the weekly Zorro television show that premiered in 1957.

Of the numerous animated characters created by the commercials unit, Freddie is of particular note due to his similarities in design and personality to two other Disney birds, Panchito and the Aracuan, both of whom originated in the 1944 feature film The Three Caballeros.  In appearance he was a rooster much like Panchito; in mannerisms he was dodge-about hyperactive in a way that often directly mimicked the Aracuan bird.  Freddie was created and designed by Paul Carlson and Dave Detiege, who were both very active with the commercials unit.  According to Carlson, 7-Up bought 26 commercials at $100,000 apiece.  The actual animation was farmed out to freelancers.  Though initially without a name, the bird was ultimately given the moniker "Freddie," a likely tribute to 7-Up bottler Fred Lutz, Jr.  Freddie was voiced by Disney vocal veteran Paul Frees, best known for his zany renditions of Ludwig Von Drake.

Freddie was used as part of a larger advertising campaign that extended to radio, print and even premium items and merchandise.  The consistent buzz-line for the campaign had Freddie saying, "Right now, you're probably asking yourself--" followed by a query relating to the subject of the ad, i.e., "What does a ghost hunter drink to quench his thirst?" or "What does a hot test pilot drink for a quick, refreshing lift?"  Magazine and comic books ads featured full page Freddie adventures.  Freddie would interview fictional celebrities on radio spots, and Freddie was often incorporated into newspaper grocery store ads thanks to 7-Up co-op advertising programs.

Freddie even got into a little hot water with the FBI in 1959.  According to a newspaper account:

"7-Up ran an amusing radio commercial that had "Fresh Up Freddie" Interviewing a make-believe film personality, Kim Schullz. Freddie uttered the following words at the end at the interview, "Thank you, Kim, we'll be seeing you in your latest picture 'I Was a Wonderfully, Terrific Teenager for the FBI'. The FBI wasted little time pulling out the law books and showing Seven-Up that you can't use the word FBI without  written permission. They killed the commercial."

What a Character! - Hiawatha (Little and Otherwise)

Should you ask me,

whence these stories?

It began as a simple eight-minute cartoon and then quietly blossomed into a low key four-color franchise that lasted close to two decades.  The concept would also feature prominently in an ambitious 1950s era slate of proposed animated features, only to fade back into obscurity almost as quickly as it emerged.  This is the legacy of the Disney version of Hiawatha, hero of verse as originated by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Longfellow penned The Song of Hiawatha in the mid-19th century.  He was inspired by Native American legends, mostly from the Ojibwe peoples in and around the upper Great Lakes region.  Ironically, the name Hiawatha was not in fact Ojibwe in origin; it referred to a historical personage associated with the Iroquois.  It was a mistake first made by early 19th century historian and ethnologist Henry Schoolcroft, and then subsequently perpetuated by Longfellow's epic poem.

The Song of Hiawatha has long been the object of parody, almost since its inception in 1855.  Walt Disney brought such parody to the movie screen, but in a more gentle manner with the 1937 Silly Symphony Little Hiawatha.  Disney employed typical Silly Symphony cherub-inspired design to its rendition of a very young Hiawatha, and the cartoon's narrator employed trochaic tetrameter, the same meter used by Longfellow in the original poem.  The cartoon is largely derived from just a few lines of The Song of Hiawatha:

Forth into the forest straightway
All alone walked Hiawatha
Proudly, with his bow and arrows;
And the birds sang round him, o'er him,
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
 
Up the oak-tree, close beside him,
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches,
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!" 

And the rabbit from his pathway
Leaped aside, and at a distance
Sat erect upon his haunches,
Half in fear and half in frolic,
Saying to the little hunter,
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"

It is essentially here where Disney departed from Longfellow.  The more adolescent Hiawatha from the poem goes on to kill the red deer; the cartoon Hiawatha mixes it up with an angry bear and must be rescued by the small forest creatures that his literary counterpart largely ignores.  Longfellow's Hiawatha proudly bears home the fallen red dear with its impressive rack of antlers.  Little Hiawatha, prone to his pants dropping at inopportune moments, beats a hasty retreat from his overly ambitious hunting expedition.

Simultaneous to the development of the original Little Hiawatha cartoon, Walt Kelly and Grace Hunnington prepared an additional Hiawatha Silly Symphony entitled "Minnehaha," whose title character was an innocent and sweet young girl.  An adult Minnehaha was the lover of Hiawatha in the original Longfellow poem.  According to author Charles Solomon, "Kelly and Hunnington considered various adventures for their child characters.  Minnehaha might befriend small animals, spoiling Hiawatha's attempts to hunt them; she might fall into a river trying to rescue a doll and be saved by Hiawatha in a canoe.  Hiawatha might get caught in one of his own animal traps and escape injury by falling into a pile of blankets that Minnehaha had folded."  The proposed short went unrealized.

Although Little Hiawatha would never reappear again on the big screen after 1937, his tenure as an active Disney character was far from over. Beginning on November 10, 1940, Little Hiawatha became the star of the Silly Symphonies Sunday comic strip, distributed by Kings Features Syndicate.  The series was written by Hubie Karp and drawn by Bob Grant.  The strip introduced the character of Minnehaha, which was reportedly based on Walt Kelly's original designs.  The newspaper strips lasted until July 12, 1942 and were later reprinted in the Walt Disney's Comics and Stories comic book in issues #28-35.  In 1944, Minnehaha was the star of her own, albeit brief, series of stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.  The series was entitled Little Minnehaha and consisted of three stories by writer-artist Roger Armstrong.  Little Hiawatha was a very prominent costar.

Little Hiawatha then took a seven year comic book hiatus before reemerging in a new series of stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, beginning in 1952.  These six-page stories were created by a variety of writers and artists and remain somewhat controversial due to some obvious ethnic stereotyping.  Gone was the pantomime and poetry of the earlier comic strips, replaced with language brimming with "me" pronouns and -um suffixes ("me want-um," "it look-um pretty awful").  The stories also featured Hiawatha's sister Sunflower and his father Big Chief, who was portrayed in a quite unflattering manner as an overweight and exceptionally lazy buffoon. The series was terminated in 1954 when the page count of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories was reduced from 52 to 36 pages.  Little Hiawatha was then showcased in four issues of Dell Four Color Comics through 1959, but beyond reprints and some one-page gags for Gold Key in the early 1970s, his comic book career essentially came to an end.

But Walt Disney did not in fact completely abandon Longfellow's character in regard to a big screen treatment beyond the original Silly Symphony and its unrealized sequel.  According to Charles Solomon, "The push to develop Hiawatha [as an animated feature] took place shortly after World War II.  A crew of artists led by Dick Kelsey sought to trim and reorganize Longfellow's sprawling 'Indian Edda' into a straight-forward story that could be told in a single film."

An Associated Press newspaper account from  September 12, 1948 discussed a proposed research trip by Kelsey to the Great Lakes Region:

Dick Kelsey, one of Disney chief staff artists will spend six weeks (starting Sept 25) touring the Great Lakes Region sketching and documenting the settings of Longfellow s famous narrative poem. His Itinerary includes Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, the shores of Lake Superior and Michigan, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Detroit across Lake Erie to Buffalo then through Rochester the Finger Lakes district the Mohawk Valley down the Hudson to New York and on to Washington for museum data.  Color camera records will supplement his sketches The finished cartoon likewise will be in color. Kelsey's will be no easy task in this modern era since he insists he will try to recapture both the spirit and the look of Hiawatha's land.  Every remaining forest, prairie, lake and river associated with the Indian legend will be visited by boat, automobile, train, horse or on foot, he declared.  He has arranged to study museum material in Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis, and Rochester the American Museum of Natural History and the Heye Foundation in New York and the Smithsonian Institute and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.  At Naples, NY he will confer with Dr. Arthur C. Parker, director emeritus of the Rochester Museum, an authority on American Indian life and lore.

Hiawatha production art by Dick Kelsey.

The project was developed as a very serious interpretation of the story, and it was potentially akin to Fantasia in terms of being somewhat high-brow.  Numerous individuals within the studio expressed strong concerns about the various treatments that were put forward, and according to Solomon, the project was abandoned sometime late in 1949.  However, newspaper accounts from as late as 1951 reported the project was still active.  The New York Times noted on August 26 of that year that:

. . . the animated 'Hiawatha' is coming right along, too.  It was learned that story and camera crews are back from scouring the Great Lakes country.  The hero of Longfellow's poem is to be an Indian superman, "a sort of God-man, very much like Persia's Zoraster," our informant explained.  "There'll be some romance, though, with what's-her-name--Minniehaha."

Had the feature version of Hiawatha come to fruition, it would have certainly marked a stark contrast to that cherubic little character that had emerged from the Silly Symphonies more than a decade before.  "Mighty little Hiawatha" would have finally had the opportunity to grow up.

Special acknowledgments to Charles Solomon and his book The Disney That Never Was as a resource for this article.

What a Character! - Moby Duck

Well remembered? Hardly.  Significant?  Not really.  Creatively dynamic?  No.  But Moby Duck is enough of a Disney curiosity to warrant at least a few paragraphs here at 2719 Hyperion.

Moby Duck is not altogether dissimilar to Uncle Scrooge.  He was born out of comic books and was featured in one animated vignette in the 1960s.  But where Scrooge McDuck went on to become a major player in the Disney character canon, Moby quickly returned to relative obscurity where he has largely remained for the past five decades.  One could almost imagine him sitting in a seedy dockside tavern, crying into a pint of grog and lamenting opportunities missed and paths not taken.

Moby Duck first appeared in the comic book Donald Duck #112, published by Gold Key in March of 1967.  In the 14-page story, A Whale of an Adventure, written by Vic Lockman and drawn by Tony Strobl, Donald accidentally drifts out to sea on a rubber raft where he is rescued by Moby Duck and his pet porpoise Porpy.  In exchange for the rescue, Donald agrees to be the first mate on Moby's boat, the Miss Ambergris.  Moby returned to Donald Duck two issues later in the story The Jewels of Skull Rock, and then Gold Key launched him in his own title in October of 1967.

The producers of The Wonderful World of Disney wasted no time drafting Moby Duck for a television appearance.  Pacifically Peeking was first broadcast on October 6, 1968.  Directed by Ward Kimball and Ham Luske, the show was a series of South Pacific travelogues sewn together with animation featuring Moby. It was almost as if Ludwig Von Drake took an unexpected sabbatical and Moby was asked to fill in at the last minute.  Disney veteran Paul Frees provided the voice of Moby for the program. 

While his tenure in animation was distinctly brief and unremarkable, Moby Duck did live on, albeit again in unremarkable fashion, for another decade.  His own Gold Key Comic lasted thirty issues before ending in 1978.  Well known cartoon writer and comics scribe Mark Evanier scripted a number of Moby Duck stories early in his career.  The character appeared in a series of the Donald Duck daily comic strips at around the same time.  He was also exported to Disney comics overseas but with no real lasting impact in any market.

What a Character! - Willie the Giant

Willie the Giant has become a somewhat iconic Disney character, despite a resume that only includes two films and a number of television show cameos.  He made his debut in the 1947 animated feature Fun and Fancy Free, and then returned to the big screen thirty-six years later as the Ghost of Christmas Present in Mickey's Christmas Carol.  He has appeared in recent years on the House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse television shows.

Though initially introduced as a villain in the Mickey and the Beanstalk segment of Fun and Fancy Free, he quickly evolved into a more benign, comedic character.  He threatened Mickey, Donald and Goofy quite effectively throughout their adventures at the top of the beanstalk, but his was certainly a more child-like villainy as demonstrated by his frequent juvenile frolicking and quick to ignite temper.  Willie's directing animator John Lounsbery masterfully injected both menace and silliness into the giant's split personality.  Willie appears to meet a tragic end as most beanstalk giants do, falling from the sky to his implied off-screen death.  But he is quickly resurrected for the film's epilogue in which he lifts the roof off Edgar Bergen's home and politely asks if anyone has seen a mouse.  He then lumbers through Hollywood on his search, pausing momentarily to appropriate the California Crazy architecture of the famous Brown Derby restaurant and use it as head wear.

Willie was voiced in Fun and Fancy Free by then veteran comic actor Billy Gilbert, who had played the part of Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a decade prior.  As with Sneezy, Gilbert again used his trademark exaggerated sneeze gag with Willie in Mickey and the Beanstalk.

Willie essentially won his second film role, the Ghost of Christmas Present in the 1983 extended short Mickey's Christmas Carol, more or less by default.  The part called for a giant and Willie was pretty much the only such entity in the Disney canon.  Though in the film he generally maintained his lumbering, oafish personality, he acquired out of necessity an underlying quality of wisdom needed to stay true to the Dickens character.  It was an interesting contrast that ultimately proved heartfelt and well realized.  Prolific voice actor Will Ryan replaced Billy Gilbert in the role, as Gilbert had passed away in 1971.

Willie remained generally under the radar following Mickey's Christmas Carol. His image appeared on the marquee of a Toontown movie theater in Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988.  As previously noted, he has cameo-ed  on television in episodes of House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

But Willie does have the distinction of being featured in a subtle but very clever theme park detail within the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.  The Sir Mickey's store located just behind Cinderella Castle in Fantsyland presents a theme that is an odd amalgamation of Mickey and the Beanstalk and the classic 1938 cartoon The Brave Little Tailor.  The most elaborate of the store’s interior design elements involves Willie, but ironically seems to go mostly unnoticed. Directly opposite the shop’s primary entrance, Willie can be seen lifting up the roof in an attempt to peek inside.

 

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

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The Brave Little Tailor and the Beanstalk

The Legacy of the Little Ranger

In interviews, director Jack Hannah referred to him as the “Little Ranger.” Introduced primarily as a supporting player, he comically traded pratfalls with the more cantankerous Donald Duck and the ever goofy Humphrey Bear. A relatively small fish in the then shrinking small pond of 1950s animated short features, Ranger J. Audubon Woodlore would prove to be a survivor, and ultimately crossover into other Disney entertainment venues throughout the 1960s and even beyond.

Hannah remembered the origin of the character. "For the sake of something new, we tried the Duck with a bear in Rugged Bear and it seemed like an immediate success for them to play against each other," the director recalled in an interview with Disney historian Jim Korkis. "Later, when we started thinking of another picture for the bear, it seemed natural to be in a National Forest and that's how the Little Ranger came into being."

While not specifically named until his later television appearances, “The Ranger” made his debut in the 1954 cartoon Grin and Bear It. The pear-shaped and overly fastidious character became a counterpoint to the antics of Donald and Humphrey who had already established a relationship of conflict the previous year in Rugged Bear. Grin and Bear It established the setting of Brownstone National Park and clearly tapped into the postwar popularity of the great outdoors as represented by the country’s national parks. In the short, the Ranger tries desperately to contain the chaos perpetrated by the duck and the bear, but very pointedly falls victim to the short’s final gag.

Still without a moniker, the Ranger would find himself relocated to points south later in 1954 in the terrific Cinemascope short Grand Canyonscope. Again, he is caught between tourist Donald and various elements within the famous national landmark. This time it’s the duck’s encounter with a mountain lion that literally brings destruction down upon the Ranger’s otherwise neat and orderly existence.

The Ranger returned to Brownstone in 1955 for the Donald Duck short Beezy Bear, and did not venture beyond its borders in his remaining two appearances in Hooked Bear and In the Bag, both Humphrey Bear cartoons. His penultimate and likely most famous moment came in In the Bag where he cunningly cons the park bears into litter cleanup via a hilarious, and at the same time, catchy dance number. So popular was this song, it inspired a Mickey Mouse Club recording entitled the "Humphrey Hop."

Unfortunately, the Ranger would fall victim to the decline of cartoon shorts that marked the final years of the 1950s. As John Grant noted in his Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters, “Had he come on the scene in 1944 or 1934 rather than 1954 there is little doubt he would have become a major Disney character.”

The novelty of the Ranger and Humphrey was likely not lost on fellow cartoon moguls Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they would reinvent the pair for television, albeit with distinctly different personalities, in the incarnations of Yogi Bear and Ranger Smith.

Ten years after his last cartoon short appearance, J. Audubon Woodlore was resurrected and finally given his name when Walt Disney introduced him to audiences on the 1966 episode of the Wonderful World of Disney entitled Ranger’s Guide to Nature. Director Ham Luske combined animation and live action footage to put a slightly different spin on the studio’s traditional nature documentaries. Ranger Woodlore effectively became an environmental counterpart to the show's other frequent animated host, Ludwig Von Drake. He would go on to host two additional nature programs, Nature’s Better Built Homes and Nature’s Charter Tours. He also took center stage in the 1968 episode The Ranger of Brownstone, where director Luske seamlessly blended new animation with the existing Donald Duck and Humphrey Bear shorts. Three new musical sequences specifically showcased Brownstone’s fussy caretaker.

The character of the Ranger is most especially distinguished by the terrific voice work provided by Bill Thompson. More famously known as the original voice of Droopy, Thompson voiced numerous other Disney characters including the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, King Hubert from Sleeping Beauty, and Mister Smee from Peter Pan, and later provided the vocals for Hanna Barbera’s Touche Turtle. Jack Hannah fondly remembered working with Thompson. "One of the sequences I remember having having a lot of fun with was when the Duck had a honey farm [in the cartoon Beezy Bear] next to the Ranger's station. The Duck complained that the bears were stealing his honey, so the Little Ranger had them stand up in a police-line fashion. The Little Ranger always treated his bears like family pets. Sometimes I would fill in and do some of Humphrey's grunts."

When Ranger Woodlore returned in episodes of Mickey’s House of Mouse in 2001, Thompson’s original and distinct interpretation of the character was sorely missed.

Ranger Woodlore also successfully moonlighted in the publishing world. Similar to his television shows, he was featured in nature-themed articles in numerous Disney books and publications. If you ever purchased a Disney grocery store encyclopedia or magazine premium back in the day, there was a strong possibility that Ranger Woodlore would appear somewhere within its pages.

Uniquely different from just about all other animated characters of the same era, Ranger Woodlore stands distinctly apart from the rest of the stable of Disney cartoon personalities. His resume may not be terribly extensive, but he has always been a fun and entertaining player in Disney entertainment.

What a Character! - Johnnie Plug-Chek

The November 1945 issue of Popular Science provided this rare glimpse of the Disney-created cartoon character Johnnie Plug-Chek. This pint-sized mechanic appeared in the film The Right Spark Plug in the Right Place, commissioned by the Electric Auto-Lite Company and produced by the Disney Studios.

The Electric Auto-Lite Company has since evolved into Autolite. The company began in 1911 as a producer of buggy lamps. It started manufacturing spark plugs in the mid-1930s.

What a Character! - Professor Owl

His career was brief, but oh so significant.

Professor Owl has quite the pedigree. Imbued with the creative energies of Disney Studio veterans such as Ward Kimball and Bill Thompson, he found his way into two Disney cartoons, both of which remain critically celebrated and historically significant: Adventures in Music: Melody and Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom.

The two cartoons, both released in 1953, are largely credited with infusing the then emerging cartoon modern style into Disney animation. In addition, each short represented an animation first; Melody was the first cartoon presented in 3D, while Toot was the first cartoon to stretch across the widescreen Cinemascope format. Toot would also be honored with that year's Academy Award for Animated Short Subject.

In many ways Professor Owl became a stylized incarnation of a similar character that was featured four years earlier in the film So Dear to My Heart. The Wise Old Owl of that movie delivered morality tales via animated vignettes to film's young protagonist played by Bobby Driscoll. In Melody and Toot, Professor Owl replaced morality with music education and taught his lessons within a birdhouse schoolhouse, populated with the likes of Bertie Birdbrain, Penelope Pinfeather, Suzy Sparrow and the Canary Sisters.

Kimball provided Professor Owl with his more minimalist but still dynamic aesthetic design while Bill Thompson supplied the character's personality rich voice. Thompson's resume at Disney had also notably included the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and Ranger J. Audubon Woodlore from both Donald Duck and Humphrey Bear cartoons.

Professor Owl was certainly a non-traditional design and a clear departure for animators such as Kimball. Colored in shades of blue with large oversize spectacles, he was a stark contrast to the studio's prior canon of animal characters, and his two star outings ushered in Disney's 1950s era of cartoon modern-influenced productions.

Image © Walt Disney Company

What a Character! - Gyro's Little Helper

As an always important but still subtle presence in comic book stories featuring the madcap but well-intentioned Gyro Gearloose, the Little Helper literally shines as both a loyal companion and resourceful assistant to the eccentric and often absent-minded inventor. So intentionally nondescript in nature was this character that it never was given a name in any official capacity. In its lifetime of just over five decades, it has been alternately referred to as Helper, Little Helper, Gyro's Helper and Little Bulb.

The little micro-robot sprang from the pencil of legendary comics creator Carl Barks in 1956. Introduced as a pint-sized sidekick to Gyro Gearloose in the story The Cat Box, Barks provided no explanation or background for the character. It was a simple comic device that acted as the inventor's common sense counterpart. In a 1991 article, Barks scholar Geoffrey Blum shed light on Little Helper's origins:

No sooner had Barks created a Four-page slot for Gyro stories at the back of his Uncle Scrooge comic, than he began to realize how empty the panels were. "I invented the little lightbulb character one time to take the bareness out of the Gyro stories," he explained, "It looked a little thin, just one character sitting there, talking to himself all the time." Barks attacked the problem graphically, filling in the background with sight gags involving a little wire man, but his language suggests that he was filling an emotional hole, providing a distraction for Gyro as much as for the reader. The inventor needed a companion.

As Barks' Gyro Gearloose stories evolved, Little Helper became a surprisingly well-defined supporting character with a very distinct and engaging personality. Often, its comic vignettes ran parallel to Gyro's panel by panel actions; it was particularly adept at interacting with small animals, often using the creatures for sport and amusement, though never in a mean-spirited nor malicious manner. And in some ways, Little Helper became much, much more. As Blum further noted:

With this naming, the bulb acquires a new role, that of rescuer. He is still mischievous, but now the mischief is incidental, and plots turn increasingly on his ability to assist his master. Gyro remains the hero of the four-page parables, and Barks' message remains the same: man is incapable of total control, and the greatest attempt to master life often leads to the greatest disaster? But now a moral slips in: steady effort, however small, can succeed where grandiose plans have failed. Cynical comments on man's fallibility give way to covert lessons in love, and the little wire man is increasingly depicted being emotionally attached to Gyro. The perfect companion, it seems, is one who pursues an independent course (or plotline) but is there when you need him. Loneliness, attractive and necessary as it may be to the creative artist, is in its own way an attempt at mastery. Don't benefit the world by dominating it with your brain; give by helping in small ways.

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first appearance of Gyro Gearloose, modern four color duck scribe Don Rosa in 2002 penned an origin story of sorts that detailed the creation of Little Helper. Tying into 1950s era comic book continuity, Rosa related how Gyro helped Scrooge McDuck retrieve his vast fortune that was lost underground in events chronicled in the classic holiday tale A Christmas for Shacktown. In the process, Little Helper is created from a table lamp accidentally imbued with the inventor's intelligence. Gyro then retrofitted the newly sentient appliance with mechanical arms and legs, and doll shoes that acted as miniature shock absorbers. It becomes, as the story's title indicates, Gyro's First Invention. At the story's end, ever wise nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie indicate that not only was the little guy Gyro's first invention, he was also his best invention--" Part helper . . . and part best friend!"

A recent issue of the magazine Advanced Photoshop Magazine featured a cover illustration that certainly owed its design to Little Helper. But much in the spirit of the character's unobtrusive history, neither the magazine nor the digital artist made any acknowledgment of the rendering's comic book inspiration.

What a Character! - The Aracuan Bird

A 1940s era Disney cartoon star that breaks the fourth wall and circumnavigates the borders of the movie screen, engaging in inspired insanity that ranges from mischievous pranks to over-the-top attempts at suicide.

Wow . . . . what a character!

Born out of the 1945 animated feature The Three Caballeros, the Aracuan is that rare bird that at times was more akin to his Warner Brothers or Walter Lantz counterparts than to his slightly more benign Disney cartoon costars. His antics bears strong associations with avian cartoon cousins Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker, but with a South of the Border sensibility owing to his origins in the Disney Latin American film canon.

The Aracuan Bird debuted in the Rare Birds segment of The Three Caballeros, memorably emerging from a home movie screen and crawling up the projector beam to shake hands with a befuddled Donald Duck. He reappears later in the film to derail the train taking Donald and Jose Carioca to Baia. As the train travels through a stunning chalk drawing-inspired landscape, the Aracuan cleverly uses his own piece of chalk to draw new rails that split apart the engine, its cars and the caboose.

Studio veteran and Disney Legend Eric Larson created and animated the Aracuan Bird for The Three Caballeros. Despite the character's relatively brief appearances, Larson infused the Aracuan with a frantic, mischievous personality, yet combined it with an innocent, endearing nature that ultimately made him both entertaining and very memorable. In his book Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, author John Canemaker observed:

"Larson animated the the mad bird like a mechanical doll, puttering along, turning an occasional cartwheel as it goes on its giddy way. The Aracuan is a spirit of the film medium itself and its elements . . . he toys with the substance of film itself and its mechanics, literally running off the film frames as they race by--thus affecting the audience's perception of what they are watching."

So great was the character's impact that he was brought back in two subsequent productions. He returned first in the 1947 Donald Duck cartoon Clown of the Jungle, and appeared again with Donald and Jose Caricoa in the Blame It On the Samba segment of 1948 package film Melody Time. He would also bear a distinct physical resemblance to another Larson-created character: Sasha, the little bird with a similar red tuft of hair from the Peter and the Wolf segment of Make Mine Music.

Clown of the Jungle extended the premise first visited in The Three Caballeros, as the Aracuan disrupts another South American birdwatching vignette. But the cartoon quickly spins away from the prior film's generally benign trappings into a fast paced outing very reminiscent of earlier Elmer Fudd-Daffy Duck confrontations. Director Jack Hannah recreated the bird's trademark song and the here-there-and-everywhere popping in and out of frame innovated by Larson. But suddenly, and hilariously, the short exhibits somewhat darker humor. Responding to Donald's rebuff, the Aracuan becomes the centerpiece of a suicide gag where the bird engages in the plausible impossible act of hanging himself from his own arm. The gags continue fast and furious, culminating in an uber-violent machine gun attack by Donald that the Aracuan naturally, and quite casually dodges. The escape results in Donald losing hold of his own sanity, and the cartoon ends with him mimicking the Aracuan's now very familiar song and dance.

While his crazy nature remains intact in Melody Time, the Aracuan's malicious mischievousness is replaced with the more noble purpose of cheering up forlorn friends Donald and Jose. As Disney character scholar John Grant notes, ". . . they are in this feature really less like characters and more like 'experiencing objects,' battered around by the whims of the turbulent, pulsing music." The sequence is clearly a return to the style and presentation of The Three Caballeros, but this time making the Aracuan Bird the catalyst for the eye-popping visuals and stunning mixes of live action and animation. The climactic exploding organ sequence featuring Ethel Smith remains one of the most amazing moments in a Disney film, and it was the Aracuan Bird who planted the dynamite stick under the foot pedal.

While Melody Time would be the Aracuan's last big screen appearance, he would return in a 2002 episode of the television show "House of Mouse." But more significantly, like his Samba costar Jose Carioca, the Aracuan would go on to enjoy a successful incarnation in comic books produced in Brazil. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he would be a featured character in a series entitled Os Adolescentes (translated Disney Teens).

Images © Walt Disney Company

What a Character! - Bootle Beetle

Have you ever heard of . . . a bootle beetle? Well, confidentially, neither have we. But it seems that long ago, these little creatures were plentiful. But because of an in-born love for travel and adventure, the bootle beetle is now a rare little bug.

So begins the off-screen narration to the 1947 Donald Duck cartoon Bootle Beetle. But in a 1978 interview, Disney Studio veteran and cartoon director Jack Hannah revealed the actual origin of one of Donald Duck's lesser known, but still very charming and memorable co-stars:

"There was a series with a beetle named Bootle Beetle. My wife knew a race horse in Pomona named Beetle Bootle and I just switched it around."

Bootle Beetle went on to star in two more Donald Duck cartoons, Sea Salts and The Greener Yard, both released in 1949. Hannah directed all three of these cartoons. They were included in the recently released Walt Disney Treasures DVD The Chronological Donald Volume Three.

The three shorts marked a departure from the standard Donald Duck fare of that particular time period, especially when comparing Bootle to the Duck's other mischievous and often times much more malicious but equally pint-sized adversaries. In all three films, Bootle is very much the star and Donald falls back to an almost secondary status. In fact, in Bootle Beetle, three full minutes pass before Donald makes his first appearance. Unlike Chip 'n' Dale or Spike, Bootle is kind, gentle spirited, articulate and well spoken. In many ways he is a reborn Jiminy Cricket and the physical resemblance to that much more famous character is likely not coincidental. His encounters with Donald are told through a series of reminiscences, related by an older, wiser, and whiskered and bespectacled version of the character.

In Bootle Beetle, Bootle cautions the younger Ezra Beetle to not go running off so quickly to a life of adventure. He relates the story of his first encounter with Donald, who is portrayed as an obsessed entomologist attempting to find the Bootle species of beetle, which is revealed to be rare and endangered. The younger Bootle's innocence and naivety stands in stark contrast to the duck's high strung personality and bad temper, and the usual comic antics and pratfalls ensue. In the end, the younger incarnation of Bootle races back to the security of his original toadstool domicile, and Ezra acknowledges to his elder the Dorothy Gale-esque "there's no place like home" moral of the story.

Ezra does not appear in the next Bootle cartoon, Sea Salts, and instead, an elderly Bootle Beetle reminisces directly to the audience of a tale of his younger days with the Duck, specifically aboard the S.S. Quack back in April of '26. Brought together as fellow castaways on a desert island, the always well meaning Bootle again falls victim to Donald's selfish and self-serving ways. Similar to the end of Bootle Beetle, an older version of Donald appears in the opening and closing framing sequences of Sea Salts. Bootle affectionately refers to him throughout the short as "the Captain."

Ezra does return in the final Donald Duck Bootle cartoon, The Greener Yard. Similar in theme and story to Bootle Beetle, the elder beetle again must counsel gentle lessons to his younger counterpart. Via flashback, Bootle demonstrates that Donald's lush and inviting garden landscape is not quite the paradise it appears to be. The short includes a quick homage to director Hannah by way of a "Jack's Real Estate" sign that appears within the trash filled vacant lot that the beetles call home.

As noted, the flashback-narration storytelling used was unique, and provided the Bootle cartoons with a gentler charm and genuineness that was certainly a contrast to the more frantic nature of other Donald Duck cartoons. In The Greener Yard, as the camera settles in on the vacant lot, Bootle invites the viewer to ". . . come on in and sit a spell, and let me tell you a story." Much of that charm was conveyed through the endearing voice work of Dink Trout, who also voiced the King of Hearts in Disney's animated version of Alice in Wonderland. Interestingly enough, the flashback format of the Bootle cartoons was later employed quite directly in 1952's Let's Stick Together, which featured the final appearance of the Duck's other insect foil, Spike the bee.

Another wonderful aspect of the Bootle shorts were the beautiful and often very clever layouts and backgrounds produced by Yale Gracey and Thelma Witmer. They very effectively gave a bug's eye perspective to each cartoon, from the lush forest setting of Bootle Beetle, to the deserted island of Sea Salts, to the bootles' junkyard-furnished dwelling in The Greener Yard. Captain Duck's nautical-themed home in Sea Salts was equally impressive and well realized.

Bootle Beetle would return sans-Donald in Morris the Midget Moose, released in 1953. His resume of storytelling acumen apparently won him the role of narrator for this particular stand-alone short subject, in which he related the story of Morris to not one, but two younger bootles, one of which was presumably Ezra.