A Path Through the Past

In moving our home, I've been going through more boxes of my mom's and dad's. It's a perilous journey, finding a path through the past, with sadness, anger, bewilderment . . . boredom. But once in a while something bright and cheerful pops up. Such as it is with this artifact from my past—a landscape on a masonite board with a thick cut-out (with applied felt) of ol' Pinocchio struttin' down the road, finding his own path.

The very earliest memories of my life include seeing this panel, framed on the wall above my bed (crib?). And here it is, just a little worse for wear.

And here I am, around the age that I first laid eyes on that cheerful Disney icon — me, these days, just a little worse for wear.

Thomas Haller Buchanan . . . age 2 (?) GPOY?

Yes, it's a hand-tinted photo—that's how old I am

Inspiration

Let's do one more go-round with Disney Pinocchio pre-production art, with all of these being Gustaf Tenggren's fantastic creations. Tenggren had been hired solely to create watercolor art for the purpose of inspiring the animators and background artists.

Geez.

As great as the final film is, imagine if Tenggren's art was strictly adhered to for characterization, composition, color, mood and atmosphere. Perhaps in some parallel universe . . .

And mayhaps we see some primary inspiration for Peter DeSeve (?).

Fabulous Coats

Disney's Pinocchio was magnificent in its achievement of art, both in pre-production and final production. Of tremendous benefit to the film was the atmospheric background art of Claude Coats, a long-time Disney studio man. Much of the time he specialized in interiors and still-lifes. Here is some of his fabulous work for Pinocchio:

Yumpin' Yiminy

Speaking of books — yumpin' Yiminy Crickets, I'd love to own an edition of Pinocchio that looked like this:

Meanwhile, the Disney version of the story had some of the best production and pre-production art ever created for a film.