Happy Valentine's Day - Vintage Tri-Fold Valentine with Mad Hatter and Alice

Happy Valentine's Day to all my readers.  Various home improvement projects have been putting a cramp on my blog posting, but didn't want to miss an opportunity for posting a vintage valentine.

This valentine is most likely from the 1960s, but I cannot be certain as there is no date on it.  I have vivid memories of valentines like these from my grade school days, the days when my parents (and probably the school) made me give a valentine to EVERYONE in my class, even those yucky creatures called girls.  Ah, how times change.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #603 from England - December 1st, 1951

Cool cover on the December 1st issue feature Donald the bad tempered toy.  And a better likeness never was.

Chapter 20, where Alice finds the Mad Hatter and the March Hare having quite the mad tea party!

I must say, I really like the Mad Hatter and March Hare name signs, something I've not seen anywhere else.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #602 from England - November 24th, 1951

November 24th's cover features the Seven Dwarfs, sans Snow White.  Should be of interest to my friend over at A Snow White Sanctum.

Chapter 19 features the Cheshire Cat giving Alice all kinds of advice.

Where will Alice go next?  I think we all know the answer to that question.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #601 from England - November 17th, 1951

Making up for lost time now, November 17th's issue features a cover with Mickey and Goofy, with lots of monkeys.  Everything is better with monkeys.

Chapter 18 finds Alice entering the Cheshire Cat's area of the Tulgey Wood, now that she is back to normal after her 'Magic Mushrooms' did their job.

Good thing this wasn't published 15 years later!

MIckey Mouse Weekly #600 from England - November 10th, 1951

Well, I certainly let this series get away from me.  My own fault for trying to be tricky and match up the dates on the posts with the dates on the magazines.  I won't make that mistake again...well, maybe.

Anyway, we now return you to your MMW series already in progress.  Issue #600 features a cover of Donald and Goofy in the Foreign Legion, with a cool image of a mirage palace in the desert.

Chapter 17 of our adaptation features one last appearance of the caterpillar as a butterfly.

Alice grows and shrinks several times, and encounters the nesting bird and is promptly accused of being a serpent!

Let's See, Where Was I . . .

Trying to get back into the swing of things, blog-wise.  Work and illness notwithstanding, am getting back on the cyber-horse and completing the MMW series in due course.  Stay tuned!

This Week Magazine - January 14th, 1951

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had a happy and safe holiday.  To start the new year off right I'm posting one of my all time favorite items, a copy of This Week Magazine with a full color photo of Kathy on the cover. 

This Week was one of several Sunday newspaper supplements of the day, that had lots of little fluffy articles on current events and such.  This particular copy came from the Detroit News.  The cover on this is great, featuring Kathy in her Alice garb meandering through the mockup of the Tulgey Wood on her way to the Mad Tea Party.

Inside is a very typical marketing piece on the upcoming film, titled Alice in Movie Land.  It sports a few more animation reference photos with side-by-side comparisons to the final film, although they do make a couple of mistakes.

I remember the first time I saw one of these supplements, it was at this giant used bookstore in Burbank called Book World (which is no longer there I believe), and it had a pretty amazing price tag on it too.  But time passed and I managed to find a copy that didn't cost me my rent money for the month.  I do think this is the largest full color image of Kathy in costume published domestically, and certainly the most striking. 

David Hall Original Watercolor of Alice and the Caterpillar

Set the wayback machine to 1991. I had recently visited Howard Lowery's auction gallery shop in Burbank for the very first time, and I discovered this amazing book that had been published 5 years previously. The original Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", but with amazing illustrations from the Disney archives by a gentleman named David Hall, and an afterword by Brian Sibley that detailed his history with the studio and the story of this art. I was totally blown away.

Having only been collecting Alice for about two years at this point, I was not familiar with this artist, but I soon discovered that he had made another appearance over the years: The book Surprise Package, published in 1943, was chock full of David Hall art in the Alice story, which I've previously posted about here, here, and here.

It was at this point that I developed a fairly intense obsession with acquiring an original David Hall, and being the compulsive individual that I am, I managed over the course of about 20 years to acquire seven original illustrations, all from the Surprise Package book. But they were all black and white. I had never seen a color David Hall 'in the wild'. In the past few years I have seen one or two color David Hall paintings, but mostly from Peter Pan, although I did see one Alice study in a private collection.

Flash forward to about two months ago. I came across a very brief description of a piece of art in an upcoming auction that piqued my interest. I had never heard of the auction house in question, but I went to their site and discovered that they are a fine art auction house (you know, 'real' art). But this upcoming auction had one lot described as follows:

David G. Hall Jr.
(American, 20th century)
Alice in Wonderland, 1939
watercolor on paper
signed David Hall (upper left)
10 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches.
Property from the Ralph Esmerian Collection, New York, New York

So I emailed requesting images and a condition report. OMFG. This is what they sent me.

This was an original Disney David Hall watercolor, which had been published in both Surprise Package and in the aforementioned 1986 Alice book from the studio. I couldn't believe my eyes! Where did this come from? I thought that all the illustrations in the studio book were a part of the Disney archive. Until I looked more closely at those printed pages.

In Surprise Package, the image is fairly severely cropped, I guess to show more character and less background. Then when I looked at the studio book, I realized that they had merely scanned the Surprise package illustration, as it is the same crop and the quality of the image is nowhere near as crisp as most of the other images. This was indeed the original art sent to Simon and Schuster for inclusion in Surprise Package. This lends more evidence to my long-standing suspicion that all the extant David Hall Alice art (with one or two exceptions) comes from the batch of illustrations supplied for Surprise Package.

So, now I knew this was the real deal, and based on the (ridiculously low) estimate provided in the auction description, it was within my reach. But only if no one else who really understood what it was became aware of the auction. In the past I have publicized upcoming auctions with Alice art, but in this case, I kept my mouth shut. I couldn't risk anyone figuring out what it was, and the auction house is obscure enough in Disney circles that it seemed unlikely that Disney art collectors would stumble across it. So I kept my secret for nearly two months.

Now it is December 11th, and the auction is upon me. I'm sitting at my computer screen, with my wife cheering me on, and the auction begins. It is fairly near the middle of the auction so we've got time to wait, and we talk about limits, and have fun looking at what other people are buying. And then the lot comes up, and my absentee bid is the high bid. Two more people bid, then I bid again, and then a very long pause. My wife is screaming at the computer "Close it! Close it!". And . . .

I WON!!! I couldn't believe my insane luck, and I'm sure my friends in Los Angeles could hear me screaming from here in DC. So, now all I had to do was wait for it to arrive.

Which it did yesterday! Computer Girl is back from grad school in Glasgow for the Christmas holidays, and photo documented the arrival and unveiling, which I now share with you here. Merry Christmas to me!

Doorbell rings, it's FedEx!

I've Been Keeping a Big Secret...

But tomorrow you'll see what I've been so excited about for the past couple of months.  Stay tuned!

Holiday Wonderland Bazaar Now Open!

I've just added the first two items to my Holiday Wonderland Bazaar, in the Ceramics section.  I am going to continue to post new items through New Year's to the Bazaar, get 'em while they're hot!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all! A twisted cover to Disney Newsreel from Thanksgiving, November 27, 1981.

Sorry for the radio silence these past few days, I will resume a more regular schedule beginning the first week in December. See you all then!

LCSNA Fall Meeting This Saturday in NYC

For those of you in the NYC area this weekend, the Lewis Carroll Society will be holding its annual Fall Meeting at the New York Institute of Technology at 16 W. 61st St, beginning at noon.  Meeting is free to the public.  I will be there, with an assortment of Alice goodies for sale, so come on buy [sic!].

Original Storyboard of Alice in the Tulgey Wood

Wow.  Was I ever excited to get my hands on this beautiful piece!  This is an original pastel storyboard on black paper, featuring Alice walking through the Tulgey Wood, presumably with the Cheshire Cat.

While it is not signed, it is attributed to Bill Peet, who did quite a bit of story art for Alice, as seen in this post.  The art is very dark, I did pump up the colors a bit so they would be more visible out here on the web.  Gotta find the perfect place to hang this...

Mickey Mouse Weekly #599 from England - November 3rd, 1951

This week's issue features a cover story with no Disney characters at all, but a slew of anthropomorphic fireworks!

Chapter 16 finds Alice deep in conversation with the Caterpillar, who undergoes a dramatic transformation at the end.

Disneyland Black and White Snapshot of the Mad Hatter, Fantasy Fair Gifts

Admittedly this is a pretty crappy photograph, but I'm a sucker for ole' rubber head. 

Another 1960s or 1970s snapshot, from January apparently, of the Mad Hatter, this time out in front of the Fantasy Fair Gift Shop.  You can see the old style awnings that were a fixture of the old Fantasyland.  My vintage Disneyland geography is pretty much non-existent, I will rely on wiser bloggers to tell me where this was in relation to today's park.

Disneyland or WDW Color Backstage Snapshot of the King of Hearts

From the same photo session as the previously seen Queen, we have her royal consort, the King!

This little guy is RARELY spotted these days, usually only in parades, and even then, I don't think I've personally seen him in the last 15 years at least!

Happy Halloween - Caterpillar Jack'o'Lantern

Happy Halloween everyone!  And Happy Birthday to me!  Today's artwork comes from a few years ago when my family took a Disney Cruise during the week of Halloween, and I got to celebrate my birthday onboard the ship, it was great.

For my birthday, a friend of mine drew this fetching image and stuck it to my stateroom door.  What a nice birthday surprise!

Disneyland or WDW Color Backstage Snapshot of the Queen of Hearts

The person I acquired these from said these were taken backstage at WDW prior to the park opening in 1971.  The snapshot is dated July '71, approximately 2 months prior to the opening. 

I suppose it is possible that they were rehearsing parades and such that much in advance, but I kinda doubt it. I think this was probably taken backstage at Disneyland.

Disneyland Black and White Snapshot of the Mad Hatter - Old Rubber Head Version with a Modification?

A very well behaved Mad Hatter photographed here all by himself.  Again, something that would never happen these days as the characters get mobbed immediately when they appear.  But what's that on his hat?

How bizarre, a San Diego Padres button.  Was Disneyland hosting some sort of Padres event that day?  I can't imaging any other reason that a button like that would be on his hat, unless he didn't know it was there.

Padres memorabilia collectors could probably date this photo based on the button, but I'm guessing 1970s.

Disneyland Color Snapshot of Alice and the White Rabbit

I just got in a batch of vintage photos of the walkaround characters, thought I'd spend a few days posting them.  First up, Alice and the White Rabbit.  I love this photo.  Alice having her apron strings tied (untied?) by the White Rabbit.  You'd never see these kinds of things in the park today, and I for one think that is kinda sad.

Based on the format, costumes, and the way the color has faded, I'd place this somewhere in the mid-late 1960s.