Disney &Frame Grabs 06 Sep 2011 07:04 am
Dognapper
- Time to move on from the Mondays at the Multiplane Camera by putting up an enormously large number of frame grabs from this Mickey/Donald short film, The Dognapper. It’s only the third Donald Duck cartoon, (following The Wise Little Hen and Orphan’s Benefit) and already he’s co-starring with Mickey. (Although he doesn’t get billing, yet.) The short was done in 1934, and the Disney animation was just starting to get a bit more sophisticated than the rubber hose characters they’d done in the silent era. I find this a very attractive short; the Backgrounds really help. This is the Disney period that I love. I can’t get enough of the animation of Johnny Cannon and Hardie Gramatky. I’m not so keen on the non-stop action of the short, but I like the look and the imagination within the format. The film was directed by David Hand.
I’ve added animator credits to each frame. This comes from the film’s drafts as posted by Hans Perk on his site, A Film LA, a treasure of a site. (IMDB has Ham Luske and Les Clark as animators on it. I’m not sure where they got their information.)
Here are a bunch of frame grabs:
Title Card
1
2
Marvin Woodward
3
Marvin Woodward – Hardie Gramatky
4
Hardie Gramatky
5
Hardie Gramatky – Dick Lundy
6
Dick Lundy
7
Dick Lundy – Hardie Gramatky
8
Hardie Gramatky
9
Hardie Gramatky
10
Hardie Gramatky
11
Hardie Gramatky
12
Hardie Gramatky
13
Hardie Gramatky
Hardie Gramatky
Hardie Gramatky
15
Hardie Gramatky
16
Hardie Gramatky
17
Hardie Gramatky
18
Hardie Gramatky
19
Hardie Gramatky
20
Hardie Gramatky
Johnny Cannon
Johnny Cannon
23
Johnny Cannon
24
Johnny Cannon
25
Johnny Cannon
26
Johnny Cannon
27
Johnny Cannon
28
Johnny Cannon
29
Johnny Cannon
30
Gerry Geronomi
31
Gerry Geronomi
32
Gerry Geronomi
33
Gerry Geronomi
34
Bob Wickersham
35
Bob Wickersham
36
Bob Wickersham – Gerry Geronomi
37
Gerry Geronomi
38
Gerry Geronomi
39
Gerry Geronomi
40
Gerry Geronomi
41
Gerry Geronomi
42
Gerry Geronomi
43
Gerry Geronomi
44
Gerry Geronomi
45
Gerry Geronomi
46
Gerry Geronomi
47
Gerry Geronomi – Bill Roberts
48
Bill Roberts
49
Bill Roberts
50
Bill Roberts
51
Bill Roberts
52
Bill Roberts
53
Bill Roberts
54
Bill Roberts
55
Bill Roberts
56
Bill Roberts
57
Bill Roberts
58
Bill Roberts
59
Bill Roberts
60
Bill Roberts
61
Bill Roberts
62
Bill Roberts
63
Bill Roberts
64
Bill Roberts
65
Hardie Gramatky
66
Hardie Gramatky
67
Hardie Gramatky – Bob Wickersham
68
Bob Wickersham
69
Bob Wickersham
70
Bob Wickersham
71
Bob Wickersham
72
Here’s the movie.
on 06 Sep 2011 at 9:15 am 1.David Nethery said …
Interesting you should mention Hardie Gramatky; I was just thinking about him, having come across an article about his later well-deserved fame as one of the top watercolor painters. He is another animator who seems to have fallen into animation during that exciting time of experimentation and growth in the early to mid 30′s and took to it almost immediately, but his interest in painting was greater than animation so after a few years he left the Disney studio and struck out on his own as an illustrator and painter. (In light of his later career it is interesting that as far as I know he was never tapped to paint Backgrounds at the studio).
On the family’s website ‘The Life and Works of Hardie Gramatky’ there is a biographical article that mentions “The years with Walt Disney”:
http://www.gramatky.com/story.asp?n=5
“He went to Chouinard art school at night and to the Studio during the day. His first job was to do a Disney comic book, but he finished six months of drawings in three days when Walt asked him, “Gee, Hardie, what would you like to do now?” Dad told Walt that he’d like to try animation. There were only fourteen animators there when he arrived in 1929 (and 250 when he left for New York in 1936).”
Gramatky recalled in a 1972 interview:
“I think that the movement and action in my watercolors stem primarily from that early work with animation.”
on 06 Sep 2011 at 9:29 am 2.David Nethery said …
The quote from his daughter: “There were only fourteen animators there when he arrived in 1929 (and 250 when he left for New York in 1936).â€
makes the common gloss of non-animation people by referring to everyone who works at an animation studio as an “animator”. There were of course not “250 animators” at Disney in 1936 , but her point being that the studio had grown considerably since her father started there in 1929.
If he had stayed at Disney’s it is interesting to think about whether he would have emerged as one of the “stars” on the features or one of the many talented animators who never quite made it into that inner circle. In retrospect he made the right decision to follow his dream of being a painter although I believe he probably did have a promising future at Disney if he had decided to stay with animation. Searching the internet I found an article about Gramatky on Jeffrey Pepper’s 2719 Hyperion blog which had this quote from Walt Disney about Hardie Gramatky:
“There was a boy working for us who had a great future in our Studio. But his heart wasn’t in his work and he decided to chuck it all and paint what he wanted to paint. We gave him a great send-off because we admired his spirit. He had a struggle, but he arrived. Even when he was struggling he was happy for he was doing what he wanted to do.”
on 06 Sep 2011 at 7:56 pm 3.Pierre said …
Hi David,
Thank you so much for pointing out Mr. Gramatky’s website. His watercolors are just lovely and I’m ashamed to say that I really didn’t know anything about him before reading your post. I’m much in debt!
Pierre
on 07 Sep 2011 at 12:41 pm 4.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Nice post, and David’s comments were fascinating! I was so inspired by this that I put up a post of my own concentrating on Hardie’s watercolors.
When I was almost finished I realized that what I did was bad form, since you might have intended a follow-up of your own. Sorry. I should have waited.
on 08 Sep 2011 at 3:10 pm 5.Steve Segal said …
I like the non-stop action. The first time I saw this (on the Mickey Mouse Club, I think) once the chase started I started laughing I didn’t stop until the cartoon was over. Thanks for the post.
on 08 Sep 2011 at 10:23 pm 6.The Gee said …
I’ll second the non-stop action as being a good thing.
A while ago, someone posted a rationalization of why the pacing on the Family Guy show might be a good thing. It had to do with how silent comedies were slightly sped up. And, don’t quote me on this as I’m going from memory and don’t feel like searching for it.
It certainly makes this short seem very ambitious from an animation standpoint. There’s a lot there.
on 08 Sep 2011 at 10:38 pm 7.Linda Gramatky Smith said …
I am definitely a bit chagrined, David, because you’re right that the essence of what I was saying is that there were a lot of “animators” at Disney by the time Dad left, but I have no idea where I got that number. Excuse my sloppy research, and I definitely am a “non-animation person”, I’m sorry to say!
Loved reading Michael’s blog and being able to SEE “The Dognapper” for the first time and knowing which cels Dad (Hardie Gramatky) drew! Wow. This is exciting. Thanks a lot, and I have loved the comments people have made. Incredible that 32 years after Dad’s death, people still are interested in his work.
FYI, someone researched this for an exhibit on Dad for the Eric Carle Museum in MA and found out that out of all the animators who left Disney, only two (Dad and one other) maintained strong relationships with Walt until his death. I’m proud of the way Dad talked about Walt’s genius.
On Eddie Fitzgerald’s blog, I mentioned something exciting: this month in Watercolor magazine’s 25th anniversary issue, there will be a 10-page article by Naomi Ekperigin describing her reaction to Dad’s art. She feels that he has been overlooked by the art world (and notes that Andrew Wyeth put Dad on his list of the 20 all-time great American watercolorists). Her article is terrific. (I got an advance copy.)
Best to all of you, Linda (Gramatky Smith)
on 11 Sep 2011 at 4:58 pm 8.David Nethery said …
Linda,
I’m looking forward to getting that issue of Watercolor magazine ! Love your Dad’s paintings and it would be wonderful to see a whole book on his work as Eddie Fitzgerald suggested over on his blog.
So glad to have found your website about your Dad’s work.
-DN
P.S. I hope my earlier remarks didn’t come off as too critical … I certainly got the gist of what you meant by there being “250 animators” at Disney’s by the time Hardie Gramatky left the studio , but it’s just been an observation of mine over the years that people will often refer to anyone who works at an animation studio as an “animator” , but there are a lot of different categories of artisans who work on animated films. (I’m sure there were 250 people , or more, working at Disney’s by 1936, just not all of them animators) But your original remark did make the point that the Disney studio experienced explosive growth in the years that your Dad was there. He was in on the ground level and probably knew Walt better than a lot of the people who got there later when the studio had grown even larger. That was a very special time.