CE -- A lifetime of collecting comic related material :: Disney Studio Pt. 4 - Animation Drawings for Features/Featurettes *

Animation Drawing of Five Dwarfs Hiding Their Dirty Hands from Snow White, 1937

Artist: Walt Disney Studio (All)

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Animation Drawing of Five Dwarfs Hiding Their Dirty Hands from Snow White, 1937 Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	Animation Drawing of Five Dwarfs Hiding Their Dirty Hands from Snow White, 1937
Artist:	Walt Disney Studio (All)
Media Type:	Pencil
Art Type:	Animation
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	1,622
Likes on CAF:	2 3
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	3/8/2007
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Collecting Disney Animation Drawings, Part 5

All that I have written about so far is of somewhat insignificant importance to animation drawing collecting compared to the story of how the vast majority of animation drawings sold over the past 35+ years came onto the market. Before about 1984, few would have expected that one, not terribly prominent comic art dealer could have had such an impact on animation collecting.

That man was Stu Reisbord, a dealer from Pennsylvania who just happened to be one of any number of retailers who were members of the Disney Art Program -- dealers who had licenses to make wholesale purchases from Disney of relatively inexpensive cels from contemporary features, such as Oliver & Co., The Great Mouse Detective, and such. I knew of Stu and had been receiving his "Cartoon Carnival" sales lists for some time, but I had never bought anything from him....until I came upon his table at the 1984 San Diego Comic Book Convention. He had a number of nice drawings from scenes which I had never before seen any examples offered by any other animation art dealer -- drawings from Mickey's Circus, The Big Bad Wolf, and other shorts. I bought a handful and chatted with Stu about his new inventory. He told me that he had more at home and that he would send me some on approval. I didn't think too much more about it, not knowing what to expect. But when I received a package in the mail, I was much more impressed. He had sent me two sets of drawings of the Marx Brothers from different scenes of Mother Goes Goes Hollywood, and several other great and not-so-great drawings for which he wanted at total of $11,000. At the time I already knew what was coming up at the Basmajian auction in December, 1984, and I knew that I had to save up for several pieces that I just had to have from that sale. So I chose a few drawings from what Stu had sent, paid him for those, and told him that I would return the others to him when we both went to the auction at Christie's. I still remember his tone of near disbelief when I told him that I really didn't want to buy all of the drawings he had sent. Although he had never said anything about any obligation to buy anything he mailed to me, he acted as if it was simply understood that I had to take all that were sent, sight unseen. That was the last time he sent me drawings, and I initially didn't really care too much. But I had no idea of the magnitude of his newly obtained hoard of fabulous Disney drawings.

I learned over time that Stu had obtained hundreds, if not thousands, of complete Disney scenes, from a woman who worked in the morgue -- the storage area for animation drawings at Disney. While all the other studios who had animation departments had taken their stored drawings to the dump in the early 1970s, due to changes in tax law, Disney had opted to pay the taxes and keep all their drawings. Almost all were still at the studio...until 1984. Stu, unlike most dealers, had been making trips to the studio to personally select the cels he wanted to buy as a licensed seller of new Disney cels -- Disney allowed any dealer in the program to come onto the Disney lot. He met the aforementioned keeper of the keys to the morgue, they struck a deal, and scenes of drawings from the most iconic Disney shorts and features began to roll out of the studio, unbeknownst to most of Disney's management. We're talking about almost every scene from the Sorcerer's Apprentice and Night on Bald Mountain segments of Fantasia, multiple scenes of Pinocchio and Stromboli from Pinocchio, Dwarfs and Snow White drawings galore, along with more scenes from Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony shorts than anyone had ever seen on the market up until then.. The woman responsible received some small amount of money in return for millions of dollars worth of art. Almost no one knew what was going on until after the morgue had been decimated. When the losses were finally discovered, Disney fired the woman, but, to my knowledge, absolutely nothing was done against Stu and no attempt was made to recover the drawings. I later heard the reason: someone high up in management was involved in the scheme and the studio was unwilling to lose that person by pressing criminal charges. So, in not much more than a blink of an eye, all the Disney animation drawings that any collector could want, and was willing to pay the price for, could be had with little effort. Continued...

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