Background Layout Drawing of Wedding Cake, as it finally appears in The Cookie Carnival Background Painting, 1935

It didn't buy this drawing along with the background painting. It actually turned up in a minor auction more than a decade after I had purchased the background through a Russ Cochran auction.

About Fake Disney Cels, Cont.

Many years ago, I did come across two groups of fake Disney Cels, some that were not passed off as originals and were so obviously not up to Disney studio standards and a few others that were not only intended to deceive but so close to originals by Disney artists that they undoubtedly were sold as real and found their way into collections of Disney animation art.

The obvious fake cels were being sold at a Fantasy Fan Club convention in Anaheim, CA in about 2003. They were based on cels from some of the most popular Disney scenes, such as the Bella Notte sequence of Lady and the Tramp, and were set against non-studio display backgrounds. The quality wasn't terrible, but would clearly be seen as inferior to real Disney cels by anyone who was familiar with authentic cels. I asked the seller about his wares, and he genuinely seened to think that he was fulfilling some sort of public need for such images. I informed him that it was illegal to produce unauthorized art based on images protected by copyright laws. Before the end of the day, representatives of either Disney or the convention shut down the seller.

The other cels would probably not be detected as fakes by many collectors. The first one that I saw was a very nice image of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland which my animation dealer friend had for sale. All cels used by studio animation departments have a natural curl to them. When placed flat on a table, authentic cels will curve to some degree either upward or downward, depending on which side of the celluloid an image is painted. MGM used very lightweight cels in the 1950s, so much so that I once watched one that I owned with an image of Jerry Mouse swinging on a rope or vine curl so much before my eyes that it ended up looking like a paper towel roll. In the process the paint used for the rope literally popped off in places. But the Cheshire Cat had the opposite problem; the celluloid was too thick and wighed too much, causing it to lie perfectly flat, wthout any curling at all. Moreover, the outlines on the front of the cel were shiny, when they should have had a matte appearance. Normally cel paint only appeared to be shiny when seen from the opposite side from the painted surface. When the back side of a figure is looked at from the other side, i.e., from the side of the cel that was not photographed and where the overlapping painted areas would be directly seen, the paint would also have a matte appearance. But the figure of the Cheshire Cat had paint that was shiny regardless of he side that was being viewed, i.e., the paint itself was glossy, which wasn't true of Disney paint. A few days later, I was at the movie memorabilia store at the Century City Mall in West Los Angeles, where I saw a perfectly posed cel of Mickey Mouse from one of the daily opening sequences of the Mickey Mouse Club. I bought the cel, but I had some doubts, if for no other reason that it looked too perfect. I drove straight to Collectors Book Store, where my friend, Howard Lowery, worked, and we took the cel out of its frame. As I feared, the cel laid flat on a counter top and the paint was shiny when viewed from the back. I returned to the store where I had purchased it, and was able to get my money back. But, if I hadn't already encountered the other example of a cel painted on celluloid that was too thick and heavy and if I hadn't removed the cel of Mickey Mouse from the frame to look at the back, I might never have discovered that the cel was a fake. Fortunately, I never came across other such cels after finding the two fakes. But others might exist and remain undiscovered over the past 25+ years.