I had the same exact feeling about the D.C. Heath Walt Disney Story Books.

The first four were published in 1939: Donald Duck and His Friends, Little Pig’s Picnic and Other Stories, School Days ]]> Carl Barks didn’t get to sign his comics, and his readers referred to his stories as the ones “drawn by the good artist.”

I had the same exact feeling about the D.C. Heath Walt Disney Story Books.

The first four were published in 1939: Donald Duck and His Friends, Little Pig’s Picnic and Other Stories, School Days in Disneyville, and Mickey Never Fails. By the time I got my hands on these books, they had been in and out of the school library hundreds of times and were a bit worse for the wear. But there was something about these books, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

(That’s D.C. Heath on the right, by the way. I never knew what he looked like until this evening).

The drawings in the Heath books seemed to “pop.” Something about them seemed so real… and so right. Being perhaps 5 or 6 at the time, I understood little about animation. But I sensed, and I’m betting hundreds of other kids did as well, that these were real Walt Disney drawings that made all the other books look like crude knock-offs… in the much the same way Carl Barks Duck stories made the non-Barks stories pale and uninteresting by comparison.

There was a simple explanation, of course: the art in the D.C. Heath books was not only prepared by the Walt Disney studio, but prepared on cels that were inked and painted just the way they were in the cartoons. (Most of them, anyway. D. C. Heath’s Bambi doesn’t use cels at all. And remind me to come back to Bambi some time.)

They weren’t cels used in the features and shorts; they were cels made especially for the books. For once, the characters looked exactly right, exactly the way they did on the screen. For once, the color was nearly as vivid as an IB Tech print, something else I didn’t know about back then. Some color films were just better than others.

And at a dollar a piece (Donald Duck And His Friends, the first in the series was 68 cents) and 100+ pages, these things must have flown off the shelves. Schools bought them because they were carefully sequenced in reading difficulty. Here They Are might have had a much more interesting title if its vocabulary had not been so severely limited. Donald Duck Sees South America, the most challenging title, is still just a bit beyond me.

My favorite was, and is, Mickey Sees The USA, which used the trailer last seen in the cartoon Mickey’s Trailer (looks like a ‘36 Drayer and Hansen to me). Yes, a bit didactic at times, but when Mickey stops in Washington D.C., the President himself helps find the lost Pluto. After the President scolds Pluto, he asks something of Mickey, Minnie and Donald in return: “I want you to be my good-will messengers and carry my greetings to everybody in the United States. We have a wonderful country. But it’s up to every one of us to make it still finer and better.” Say, that guy could get elected today.

Every once in a while, a cel created for a D. C. Heath book goes up for auction somewhere. The last one I spotted was this one, the opening spread for Chapter 1 of Pinocchio.

This wasn’t some book pretending to be Pinocchio, this book was Pinocchio. It still punches through 67 years of yellowing in my copy.

If you said “a lion,” you agree with Per Karsten, himself a head, though not of bronze, but rather of the Historical Museum in Lund, Sweden, which owns the inch-long fibula-fastener that was dug up at Uppakra, an iron ]]> What does it remind you of, that bronze head seen at left, made around the year 900?

If you said “a lion,” you agree with Per Karsten, himself a head, though not of bronze, but rather of the Historical Museum in Lund, Sweden, which owns the inch-long fibula-fastener that was dug up at Uppakra, an iron age settlement just south of the museum.

If you said “Mickey Mouse,” you agree with me and a probably everyone else who’s seen this thing. Karsten does call this “the first Mickey Mouse,” but he believes that this ‘Borre-head,’ as they’re known, was not meant to represent any mouse, let alone the mouse. Whoever created this piece was trying to create a lion. The artist left no forwarding address, so we can only speculate as to his or her intent.

Karsten knows a good thing when he sees it, though. He wants to sell copies of this thing to museum visitors. He sent The Walt Disney Company a photo of the object and offered Disney the opportunity to underwrite further digs at Uppakra. I would bet dollars to donuts that Disney wrote back to allege copyright infringement, unfair competition and violation of the anti-dilution law, which protects the value of a trademark. In other words, something along the lines of “if you try to sell copies of that thing, we’ll sue you back into the iron age.” I’m pretty sure that’s what they did when they heard about the 700-year old church wall in Southern Austria (right) which either proves that Mickey has been around for a lot longer than we think, or that Disney took a long weekend off and did some traveling during the period he was driving that ambulance in France.

I happen to think it is not just The Walt Disney Company that should be concerned about this object. There’s another company that should consider legal action.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck was the first book to feature ]]> This gorgeous, large-format, full-color hardcover book reprints three “classic stories from the 1930s, Walt Disney’s Donald Duck (1935), Walt Disney’s Clock Cleaners (1938), and The Mickey Mouse Fire Brigade (1936).” All three stories are based on cartoons, but some strange liberties and notable revisions are made.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck was the first book to feature the Duck, who thus appears here in his long-billed incarnation. The original (Whitman #978) was printed on linen, which would seem to indicate it was intended for the youngest possible audience. Inexplicable, then is the one-joke premise: Mickey’s nephews “show Donald the difference between soft and HARD water” by tricking him into diving into a shallow spot.

Walt Disney’s Clock Cleaners was another “linen-like” book designed for kids who could be counted upon to treat it badly. “Scarce in Near Mint, common in lower grades” is Ted Hake’s comment on the linen-like books in The Official Price Guide to Disney Collectibles. Having even less linen-like pages to work with than Walt Disney’s Donald Duck (12 rather than 16), the original story is literally scaled down from the cartoon’s giant clock atop a skyscraper… to a cuckoo clock in an attic.

The third story, The Mickey Mouse Fire Brigade, is very faithful to the Mickey’s Fire Brigade cartoon, and the illustrations are excellent. Just one thing – Mickey’s fire helmet. Designed for a British audience that might not recognize the “backwards-baseball-hat” helmet design usually seen in the U.S., Mickey wears a Merryweather pattern brass fire helmet throughout.

If you read this one to your kids, I suggest giving Mickey a Yorkshire accent. If you need practice, the BBC is willing to help. I was going to give an Amazon link, but they don’t carry the book, show the the wrong cover picture, and spell Mickey “Micky.” Try Barnes and Noble.

Listen to the first few seconds ]]> The famous march that opened TV’s “Mickey Mouse Club” had a great ‘hook’… “Mic-key-Mouse-Club, Mic-Key-Mouse-Club…” as identifiable as it is unforgettable. Written by Jimmie Dodd especially for the TV show, one would hardly expect to hear that very same ‘hook’ in a recording from 1933. But here it is.

Listen to the first few seconds of “Silly Symphony Selection,” and you will hear “Mic-key-Mouse-Club, Mic-Key-Mouse-Club…” I guess we will have to call this sheer musical coincidence. Or maybe that little musical ‘hook’ is somehow inherent in the Mickey Mouse theme song, “Minnie’s Yoo-Hoo.”

Walt Disney had always refused to allow permission for records to be made from songs featured in his cartoons, but in 1933, he gave permission for a recording to be made by George Scott Wood, a British arranger and orchestra leader whose work Disney had heard and admired. Wood did an admirable job of capturing not only the Mickey Mouse theme but also a “Silly Symphony Selection” featuring music from “Funny Little Bunnies,” “Peculiar Penguins,” “The Pied Piper,” “The Grasshopper and the Ants,” “Lullabye Land,” and “The Wise Little Hen,” all “Symphonies” released in 1933 and 1934.

These British Dance Orchestras were mostly “sweet” bands, and listening to these tracks, you can easily imagine couples gliding across the polished floors of English hotels. Exceptions: the Dixieland-style treatment of “Turn on the Old Music Box,” from Pinocchio… and the jazzy treatment given to “When I See An Elephant Fly,” from Dumbo.

For your listening and downloading pleasure (All tracks 3-4m except for “Silly Symphony Selection,” 8m):

Download All

Silly Symphony Selection – Silly Symphonic Orchestra
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf – The BBC Dance Orchestra
Ferdinand The Bull – Joe Loss and his Band
Heigh-Ho – Henry Hall and his Orchestra
With A Smile and a Song – Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans (not a typo)
I’m Wishing – Henry Hall and his Orchestra
One Song – Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans
Whistle While You Work – Harry Roy and his Orchestra
Some Day My Prince Will Come – Jack Harris and his Orchestra
Give A Little Whistle – Joe Loss and his Band
Little Wooden Head – Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans
When You Wish Upon A Star – Joe Loss and his Band
Turn On The Old Music Box – George Scott Wood and the Six Swingers
When I See An Elephant Fly – Joe Loss and his Band
Love Is A Song – The RAOC Blue Rockets

There is a 1935 Mickey Mouse cartoon entitled “Mickey’s Fire Brigade” where flames get control of a fire hose… but embers?

Have you ever seen a man who consists mostly of cement and a slate roof?

And would you think a man made of slate and ]]> Have you ever seen embers man a fire hose?

There is a 1935 Mickey Mouse cartoon entitled “Mickey’s Fire Brigade” where flames get control of a fire hose… but embers?

Have you ever seen a man who consists mostly of cement and a slate roof?

And would you think a man made of slate and cement would express his great debt of gratitude to firefighters by saying “They didn’t do nothing wrong?”

You haven’t been reading The Long Islander.

The Long Islander is a local newspaper based in Huntington, Long Island, New York. The newspaper was founded in the 19^th century by poet Walt Whitman. Despite having been run out of town rather unceremoniously due to his romantic interest in people who shared his gender… Walt Whitman has triumphed. Forget those poems… this guy now has a shopping mall named in his honor.

We’ve forgiven Whitman – the town has a pride parade each year in which Whitman would most happily have marched. I doubt if we’ll ever forgive the writer of the article above left, though.