Cel and Background of Lady, Tramp, and Puppies under Christmas Tree from Closing Scene of Lady & the Tramp, 1955

The Story of Disney Backgound Paintings, Pt. 2, cont.

Other than my setup, which is one of my most highly prized possessions, over the years, I have owned several sets of Lady and Tramp cels from the scene without tables. Since these cels all register to a table, they have irregularly shaped lower bodies on the dogs. I also owned a great set of medium-view cels [same scene as the third setup, above], with a strand of spagheti hanging between the dogs' mouths, plus a table. The table cel had been cut down so that the celluloid did not cover the entire images of the dogs -- the edge of the table cel ended over the dogs faces. Since the dog cels were registered to the table cel, the dogs could not be re-positioned to work with the table. In short, the table needed to be trimmed to the painted outline and applied to a large cel with the dogs placed behind the new table piece. I held onto the set up for twenty years, even after I obtained the much more impressive , attractive, and important cel and background setup. But, as much as I wanted the cels with spaghetti between their mouths, I never got around to having the table cel trimmed. I finally sold the group of cels for a high price. Within a few years they appeared at auction, table trimmed and set against a fairly appropriate background. It can still be identified as a setup that was not prepared at the studio, since the cels were not sprayed with a matt finish and no extra touches were added to the cels, as is typical with Art Props setups.

The Story of Disney Backgound Paintings, Pt. 3.

When I started collecting animation art in 1978, I never saw any pan/technarama cel and background setups for sale. This changed in late 1980 when one of the San Fernando Valley (LA) dealers turned up several pan setups which had loose cels and wide backgrounds, i.e., they were not Art Props setups. Most were from Sleeping Beauty, although, over time, there were also some from Peter Pan and several from Lady and the Tramp. Most were not great, and I can't recall any that had cels which actually matched the backgrounds. They were priced between $1,200 and $1,500, which was a lot for pieces of animation art at the time -- plain cels then went for around $100 to $200. I didn't buy any, since there really wasn't one that I was that thrilled with. The dealer kept for himself the only Sleeping Beauty forest set up, which was extremely nice and which one of my best friends bought from him about 20 years later. Before this group dried up, I met a collector who had bought a few from a different source, Cherokee Bookstore on Hollywood Blvd., a store I had frequented as early as 1967 when it was one of the major early sellers of Golden Age comic books {the main rival in Southern California to nearby Collectors Book Store]. I went to the store and several setups were still available from Lady and the Tramp and Peter Pan. So, where did all these high-end pieces come from? I found out a couple of years later.

At some point a hallway at the Disney Studio had been decorated with this artwork. The setups were tacked up along the walls, just above wooden wainscoats. Strips of wood were placed along the tops and bottoms of the art, thereby simulating actual frames. One day, one of the setups was gone. It was assumed that it had been stolen, so all of the setups were taken down to be kept in a more secure location. Of course, it didn't take long before they all disappeared, since they were all in a stack somewhere instead of being affixed to a prominent wall. As it turned out, the one which first went missing was not stolen but had fallen and slipped behind the wainscoating! Another example of corporate incompetence which resulted in a lot of art leaving the studio for the Southern California animation art market.