Just as Snow White has finished making Grumpy a Gooseberry pie (in an attempt to win his friendship), this old hag shows up and tells her she should be making apple pies instead. Personally, I would have just shut the window on the meddling old hag.
Collecting Disney Animation Drawings, Part 3
In the 1990s, there was a woman in Southern California who was connected with Don Bluth and opened an animation art gallery. One of the Bluth animators (who had once worked for Disney) had consigned a great drawing of Chernabog to one of Howard Lowery's animation auctions. I really wanted it since the pose was very different than those of the other Devil's which I already owned. It was also an animator's extreme. When it was sold, I got swept away with the bidding and went up to an amount above $4,000, a huge amount for a drawing then, and even now. And I lost out on it! The next week I received a call from the Bluth woman who told me that she had a second, almost identical animator's extreme and that she would sell it to me for the amount I had bid. I didn't think that it was reasonable to ask for an amount bid on the most expensive animation drawing ever sold when it wouldn't sell for anything close on the open market, i.e., only in the heat of competition at an auction could the drawing go that high and, since the other bidder had gotten the drawing that was auctioned and we were the only two bidding above about $1,500 on it, there would be no competition to drive up the price on the second drawing. I attempted to explain that reality and offered $2,500 for the drawing, still a huge price at the time -- she said she would think about it. The next thing I knew, she had sold it to Howard Lowery for about $1,000. Go figure. Several years later I was able to buy a similar drawing that was in better condition than either of the two I was unable to acquire.
The same Bluth animator had also consigned to a Lowery auction the greatest drawing, by far, that I have ever seen of an extremely rare character, Ben Ali Gator from the Dance of the Hours segment of Fantasia. Although I had to pay an absurdly high price, I did suceed in buying that drawing at auction. I had wanted it even more than the Chernabog, so I was very happy, overall, with my indirect dealings with the animator who once had at least three great drawings. Continued...
