Books &Comic Art &Disney &Illustration 09 Oct 2008 08:23 am
Wise Little Hen – Book
- Another gem from the collection of John Canemaker is this early book published by Whitman in 1935. The Silly Symphony short, The Wise Little Hen, introduced Donald Duck to the world on release of the film in 1934.
The book is a good example of some early merchandising by the Disney brothers. These books started out as Premium give-aways: for example Mickey Mouse, Mail Pilot was given away by the American Oil Company and Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island was a premium for Kolynos Dental Cream.
The success of the books continued for many years, even after Whitman grew into the Western Publishing who released the Little Golden Books and many many comic books featuring Disney characters. _____________________________An early ad for the books.
Here are the illustrations for this book:
(Click any image to enlarge.)
These two images greet you when you open the book.
They’re the inner cover for both the front and back of the book.
I wish Donald had continued to look like this. I love the way he looks in the film.
What a GREAT picture !
Another beauty.
on 09 Oct 2008 at 1:26 pm 1.Tim Rauch said …
beautiful stuff, thanks for sharing!
on 09 Oct 2008 at 4:53 pm 2.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Holy Mackerel! These are beautiful! The drawings are classically staged and yet still manage to look demented, and I always like to see well-done, “dirty” watercolors. I mean dirty in the sense that the colors look like they were greyed down by mixing powdered graphite in. I’m sure this isn’t what happened, but it looks that way.
on 10 Oct 2008 at 12:59 pm 3.Stephen Worth said …
Those drawings look like the work of Howard Wookey. Here is a movie poster design by him from my collection…
http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/archivemanfriday-big.jpg
See ya
Steve
on 23 Aug 2018 at 7:20 pm 4.Chris Wookey said …
Howard Wookey was a great storyboard artist with Disney in 1932. I hear he created the first twelve characters for Snow White. Soon after that he was fired. Disney took the art and made the movie.