Monday, September 2, 2013

Mickey Mouse Mystery Solved

Over on my grundoon.com site, I created a webpage devoted to trying to solve a mystery. The mystery was, essentially, who animated a classic sequence of Mickey Mouse dancing, and when, and why? I own a drawing from the sequence, so I had a vested interest. Rather than recount the whole story, I will just link to my original webpage here, which I had a good time putting together.

In April of 2011, I found out the answer to the mystery. Amid Amidi contacted me, asking for a scan of my drawing so that he could include it in his upcoming biography of Ward Kimball. At that time, Amid told me he had discovered that Ward Kimball did indeed animate the sequence, for 1941's The Reluctant Dragon. In John Canemaker's book Nine Old Men, on page 104, there are some storyboards that show how the sequence was going to be integrated into the film.

Disney cut the sequence from the film...and about 70 years later, they suppressed Amid's book. But I'm glad at least to know that I was correct about both the animator and the year. And, that I own a Kimball original!

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