Drawing for a Publicity Still from The Flying Mouse, July 1934, No. 1 of 6

Except in rare instances where 12 publicity stills were released for a Disney theatrical cartoon in the 1930s (which seems to be true for Who Killed Cock Robin), a set of six such still photographs was offered for sale to theater owners to be used in promoting each cartoon. The stills themselves were intended to be displayed in theater windows and lobbies to entice young viewers to encourage their parents to take them to upcoming movies at which the various short cartoons would be shown. The images were also intended to be used in newspaper advertisements by the theaters, either through copies of the still photographs themselves or copies of press sheets which contained the same images and which were distributed by the studio to the press.

The pencil art which I have posted is only one intermediate, albeit very important, step in the creation of Disney publicity stills. From the final pencil images, the publicity department at the studio would create inked versions of the same images on heavier, whiter paper. These inked publicity drawings are exceedingly rare, with only about 50 known by me to exist outside the studio [I suspect that there are even fewer than that number still at the studio, since the inked drawings rarely seem to appear in books on Disney animation art -- less so than pencil publicity drawings still at the studio]. I know of only one inked publicity drawing for The Flying Mouse set, and that is the one which corresponds to this penciled image.

Insofar as publicity art for the use by theaters and newspapers, the only other art which was created by the studio was a single image for a cartoon poster for most of the short cartoons released between about 1932 and 1939. This poster art was created in just the same way as were the publicity stills, i.e., an initial, detailed pencil drawing followed by an inked version of the final image. However, all the inked movie poster drawings I have seen (only about 6 of them) had paste up logos, much like comic Golden and Silver Age comic book covers. I know of only about a dozen of the penciled poster drawings, which I prefer to the inked versions which do exist.

In addition to the art created for theatrical and press promotions, the Disney Studio publicity department created 5 pencil drawings and 5 corresponding watercolors for 12 cartoons per year, beginning in 1934 and continuing in the same format until 1939. The watercolors were published in each issue of Good Housekeeping Magazine during that period. There was a Good Housekeeping page in 1934 for which the watercolor art exists (and still with all 5 pieces together, to my knowledge), but I have never seen any of the five, final pencil drawing for the Good Housekeeping page.

I do not believe that any collector has ever managed to obtain all 6 pencil publicity drawings plus the pencil poster drawing for any Disney short from the 1930s. I am quite certain that no one has ever been able to collect all the pencil, ink, and watercolor publicity art for any Disney short. The best that I have managed to collect, myself, are five of the six drawings for publicity stills plus the one pencil poster drawing for this cartoon, The Flying Mouse.