Be Right Back

Sorry for the long break, was on vacation and returned to a fairly substantial work crisis. I hope to resume posting this weekend.

Golden Catalog - Fall 1951

I thought I'd add this post as an extension of my Sandpiper post, to illustrate all the other Alice related items that were in the Fall catalog from 1951.

First up is the page describing the Golden Story Coloring Book (see posts here and here for more details).

Second is third of the Little Golden Books from Alice, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party. This is other LGB from Alice to get a single (A) printing, along with the Live Flowers book.

Next is another one of those items that for years I couldn't confirm even existed. Just like the Sandpiper book I had seen references to the DBR-1 and DBR-2 Big Golden Records (or Disney Big Record - DBR), but had never actually seen them, nor had anyone else. But I did finally acquire them about 5 years ago, and I will be posting them in the not too distant future. Too bad the covers are so boring...

Lastly the Big Golden Book; a small entry for the Alice book amongst the other BGBs of the day. Oddly, of the catalogs that I have, this is the last time the Alice books are ever mentioned, even though the BGB and the LGB White Rabbit remained in print for more than 30 years.

Films in Review May 1951

An interesting article in a magazine with a scary cover (JUMP!), about how Walt Disney 'cartooned' Alice.


In it Walt (or his ghost write) discuss the difficulties they had bringing Alice to the screen. It is a fairly succinct description of why most Alice film adaptations are less than satisfying from a purely literary point of view - it is damn near impossible to faithfully adapt Alice as a film, it just doesn't lend itself that well.

Of particular interest is the descriptions of why specific characters were left out or combined, and both the consolidation and abridgment of the two books.

In general a pretty high-brow article, definitely meant for a different audience than would read Screen Stories or Movie Life. And so far in advance of the film's release too.

One More Child's Wallet

I know even less about this wallet than I do the other previously posted, but still pretty cool nonetheless.


It is marked Walt Disney Productions, but the art is a little sketchy, makes me think it is foreign.

1st Anniversary of the Blog

Hard to believe its been a whole year of blogging. Where does the time go? Looking back over the past 231 post, there have been some pretty good ones, and some not so good ones (you can tell when I was particularly tired). Some of my favorites have been the series on the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, the Goebels, and the Weeki Wachee record post.

For today's anniversary post I thought I break out one of my favorite pieces of concept art, this very cool pencil, ink and paint drawing of the Mad Hatter.

This drawing is on a piece of trimmed animation paper, and is a little worse for wear, but the image itself is fantastic. The stylized rendering is very reminiscent of the UPA stuff that was going on at the same time, and while I don't know who exactly executed this drawing, it has a zany quality that I usually attribute to Ward Kimball. One of my faves.

Mouseketeer Alice in Wonderland Child's Wallet

From slightly later, probably from the mid to late 1950s, during the height of the Mickey Mouse Club TV show, comes this Mouseketeer wallet featuring Alice in Wonderland.

I have seen this in both this off-white color and a bluish color as well. Again I don't know the manufacturer.

Alice in Wonderland & White Rabbit Child's Wallets

These are pretty fun. Children's wallets featuring wraparound character art from Alice in Wonderland. They are made from a vinyl or vinyl-like material, and are most likely from the original release or pretty close to it based on the logo type used on the Alice wallet.

These have a blue base color with the picture encased in a clear top layer - there are also variants with a red base color (of course I had to have both variants for both images dontcha know).

The inside has a change pocket with a snap closure, couple of smaller storage flaps, and of course the main wallet compartment.

One still had a couple of wallet-sized school photos inside. I call these two kids Bobby and Susie.


While I don't know which company made these, I believe these were made by a company called Salient, Inc. of Holyoke, MA. They made a child's vinyl purse for the original release as well, and I've seen reference material that states they also made wallets.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 40

Last of the original pages from the Golden Coloring Book, page 40, Alice flees the trial through the hedge maze pursued by card soldiers.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 38

My favorite of the five pages, page 38 with Alice being brought to trial by two soldier cards.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 26

Next in the Golden Coloring Book art series is page 26 - Alice in the garden of live flowers.

This is the page that made me realize what this batch of art was from. If you look at the rendering of Alice's face - especially the eyes - you'll see that it is very distinctive. I had always noticed the way her eye's were drawn in that coloring book, and the page of art triggered that memory enough for me to pull out the book and compare.

Another interesting thing is that this page of art - along with all the others in this series - is art from the pre-colored pages of this book. You may recall from my original post that this coloring book is a little different from most, it has a bunch of pages that come pre-colored, acting as a sort of reference.

The Golden Catalog from the fall of 1951 describes these special books as Golden Story Coloring Books, and the pre-colored pages as offering 'a general guide to the young artist'.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 20

Continuing with the original art from the Golden Coloring Book, this is page 20, Alice in the White Rabbit's house opening the Eat Me box.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 14

A while back I had a post on a very hard to find item, the Alice in Wonderland Golden Coloring Book.

The next few posts feature original art for this coloring book. First up is page 14, the Walrus preparing to 'begin the feed'.


Art for these is credited to Bob Grant, an artist who did a number of comic strips and comic books for Disney from the 1930s through the late 1960s at least.

Goebel DIS 106 - Walrus Ashtray Discovered!

At long last I have acquired one of the Goebel ashtrays! DIS 106 is the Walrus ashtray based on figure DIS 63.

This completes my set of five walrus figures made by Goebel in the Alice in Wonderland series. See my previous post on this figure for more details.

Yay!

Alice in Wonderland Sandpiper Book - Fact or Fantasy?

When I first began collecting Disneyana in the late 1980s, I purchased the fantastic set of TOMART reference books. When I made the decision to collect only Alice in Wonderland items, I scoured the entire 4 volume set, and the condensed edition.

This is when I first encountered mention of the Alice in Wonderland Sandpiper book. TOMART volume 4 lists it as B5547 - Alice in Wonderland (1951) Sandpiper. But, even though TOMART illustrates the Donald Duck Sandpiper book (B5546), it does not illustrate the Alice one. Thus began my quest for the Sandpiper book.

Over the years I gathered more reference material, including the original Campaign Book, which has a small section on Simon and Schuster books, but does not list the Sandpiper Book. Yet I was not deterred.

I eventually found the Donald Duck book, but without its dust jacket, which is understandably harder to find, as it was a children's book. Then I encountered this Lone Ranger book with dust jacket, and I discovered that there were 10 Sandpiper books, of which Alice was number S10.

Now I had fairly substantial evidence that the book did exist. After all, I reasoned, they would not have printed up all these dust jackets advertising books that did not exist. Plus the book that I found was number S9, surely they would not have stopped the series one book from the end.

As the years rolled by, I encountered 6 of the 10 books, and at least one dealer who claimed he had an entire set of 10. I pestered that guy literally for years to at least give me a photo of the book, to no avail. And there the trail ended, nearly 20 years ago. Until last week.

Last week I acquired a large lot of original Simon and Schuster Golden Book catalogs, including the Spring and Fall 1951 issues. I had seen a copy of the Spring '51 catalog previously on ebay, but failed to win it. But last week, the group of catalogs arrived and imagine my surprise when I opened the Spring '51 to pages 6 and 7 and saw a double page spread all about the new series of Sandpiper books.

Now we're talking. The cover of the Alice book, at last! I must admit, I was feeling pretty good about it, since I recognized 6 of the 10 covers pictured.

And yet, the previous 20 years of looking for this book tempered my elation. I started perusing the remaining catalogs, starting with the Fall '51 issue.

And on page 14 is another full page featuring the Sandpiper books . But wait, something's different.

There are now only 6 Sandpiper books listed, the same 6 books that I have seen over the past 20 years of searching. And no mention whatsoever of the other 4 books pictured in the Spring catalog, a mere 6 months prior. They didn't even renumber the remaining books, just removed them leaving holes in the sequence.

The back cover, as on the Spring '51 catalog, contains a checklist, and there is Sandpiper book section, with only 6 books listed.

So, I must conclude, after years of searching, that the Alice Sandpiper book probably does not exist. I cannot be sure of course, but all the evidence now seems to point this way. It is hard to believe that after 20 years I would not have at least SEEN a copy of a mass-produced book by the publishers of Little Golden Books.

If anyone does have a copy, I would of course be MOST anxious to see it.

UPDATE: I have just received additional anecdotal evidence to support my theory on the non-existence of the Alice Sandpiper book. I just received a copy of Steve Santi's excellent Golden Book reference guide, 5th edition.

In it he pictures the same six books that are in the Fall '51 catalog. In the text he states that S6 and S8 were probably never printed, lists a author and illustrator for S5, but only lists Walt Disney Studios as illustrator/author of Alice (S10).

While this could be taken either way, I'm still inclined to interpret this as further evidence Alice not being published.

Simon and Schuster Golden Catalog - Spring 1951

Another recent acquisition is this excessively cool catalog for Golden Books and Golden Records for the spring season of 1951. The cover is taken from the Al Dempster art for the Big Golden Book cover.

Lots of great stuff in here, S&S was pulling out all the stops with their support of Alice in 1951, and there are no less than 12 separate Alice items advertised in this catalog.

The inside front cover is a full page notice for the Big Golden Book, again utilizing Al Dempster art from the book itself.

Pages 4 and 5 list the new titles in the Little Golden Book line for 1951. Notice that the release dates of the various books are spread throughout the year, and at this point there are only 2 Alice titles - the Live Flowers and White Rabbit - the Mad Hatter book apparently had not been put on the schedule yet. Notice also the Mary Blair title I Can Fly. Based on the dates here, it appears that this catalog was released late in 1950 in anticipation of the spring season.

Pages 8 and 9 promote the relatively new Little Golden Records, of which they produced 8 different titles for Alice. And as Brian pointed out in his comment, some of the titles vary from what was actually produced, notably the Jabberwock title, and the Christmas Title (which I think is just a typo by an overeager editor, should be Unbirthday instead of Christmas).

The back cover is basically a check list for all the current titles available; none of the Alice titles appear yet.

There is one more item in this catalog, but I'm saving that for my next post. Stay tuned for when I explore one of the most elusive items in the world of Disney's Alice in Wonderland, with a shocking conclusion (well, perhaps a bit melodramatic, but still, should be worth a read).

Icelandic Movie Program

Quite possibly the most esoteric piece of movie paper in the collection is this program from Iceland.

I have no idea what any of this says, but I love it just the same!