Inked Publicity Drawing for Donald and Pluto [that's the title, really], September, 1936

The Story of Inked Disney Publicity Drawings Pt.3

I will discuss the sale of part of John Basmajian's collection of Disney art (1984) at length elsewhere. Basmajian's family sold few a pieces of publicity art, but those they did part with were all inked.

The December 8, 1984 auction at Christie's included two inked still photograph drawings by Manuel Gonzales for Wynkin, Blinken & Nod -- the only publicity art from that cartoon which I knew to exist at that time. The drawing which I considered to be the least interesting was illustrated in the catalogue for the sale. I passed on bidding on it and went after the other piece, but I was outbid on it. I'm not certain, but I believe that the buyer was the late Bruce Hamilton. Unlike other pieces of comic art once owned by Bruce, neither of the drawings from the cartoon have turned up since his death. I am more certain that Bruce bought two of the inked drawings for one sheet posters in the Basmajian sale -- the final art for the posters of Sea Scouts and Donald's Cousin Gus. Both had paste-ups for titles, much like most comic book covers, and the paste on titles were not well secured to the paper on which the images were drawn. Neither of these has re-appeared in the past 36 years. There was a third poster drawing, for a slightly later cartoon, Bone Trouble, featuring Pluto. This drawing was fairly badly discolored. It turned up again in a Howard Lowery auction in the 1990s. These three drawings are the only three original inked poster designs that have ever turned up for sale. The final inked drawing was a great image used for a still from Nifty-Nineties which showed Mickey and Minnie Mouse. It had a major problem, in my opinion. The original background for the drawing had been eliminated by covering the entire background lines with white-out, leaving the original background, rendered in opaque white stlll very much visible beneath the new background image rendered in back ink. That was not a problem when it came to the publicity still, since the white-out did not reproduce in the final photographic image, but it was very distracting and unappealing in the original.

Since the Basmajians and Christie's had a falling out over legal expenses incurred in connection with the 1984 auction, a few pieces from what remained with the Basmajians were consigned to Sotheby's in New York when they were sold. I bought the two inked drawings from that sale, the one I still have from Little Hiawatha and one from Donald's Outboard Motor which I later sold to a friend.