The Muppets have been everywhere lately due to a mercifully concerted and well-orchestrated advertising campaign for their new film, The Muppets, which opened yesterday. It’s been twelve years since our felt friends last graced theaters in 1999, and the time in between has been a period of great uncertainty for the characters. At [...]]]>

The Muppets have been everywhere lately due to a mercifully concerted and well-orchestrated advertising campaign for their new film, The Muppets, which opened yesterday. It’s been twelve years since our felt friends last graced theaters in 1999, and the time in between has been a period of great uncertainty for the characters. At times, it seemed uncertain if they would ever make the big return that fans had long been promised.

It’s been a long road since Disney’s first close-call with Muppet ownership, right before Muppet impresario Jim Henson’s tragic and untimely death in 1990. The Disney deal fell apart in the wake of Henson’s death, and the property began a period of bouncing around among different owners and production partners – none of whom were able to properly develop new Muppet projects. Although the Henson company and Disney were able to eventually reconcile, and the Mouse finally purchased the Frog in 2004, it remained to be see what – if anything – Disney would do with the Muppets beyond licensing.

In 2009 Disney finally announced that they were moving forward with a new Muppet film, and now that it has finally reached theaters I can mercifully – and with a great deal of relief – report that it is, in fact, a whole lot of fun. I’ll save the detailed review for later – I don’t want to delve into spoilers, after all – but while it’s very different from previous Muppet adventures its still full of laughs and sentiment and manages to be “meta” without being ironic.

I even liked the attached Toy Story short, which is perhaps the single most surprising thing that’s happened to me in the last five years at least.

So congrats to the Muppet Studio and Disney for finally making it happen, and delivering a Muppet film that feels fresh and old-school at the same time. I sincerely hope it does blockbuster business and results in new films and shows, and here I would like to remind every Disney executive, park official, and Imagineer that there are plans for a Muppet Movie ride already drawn up. And there is a Studios park in Orlando that has a big, gaping hole intended for that ride, and the desperate need for something new. So, you know, that.

I encourage you all to check it out ASAP. Prove to Disney the message that the film itself espouses in hilarious fashion, and which fans have been saying for years – Muppets are still awesome, and the only reason they’re not “relevant” is because they’re being withheld from us. Hopefully this is the beginning of big, furry things.

But that’s the future – let’s look at the past for a moment.

One of my favorite Muppet things came in 1990, just as Disney and the Muppets were preparing to finalize their merger. To promote this union, NBC aired a primetime television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World. At the time, given my youthful love of both the Muppets and Walt Disney World, this was possibly the coolest thing that could ever happen. I must have watched this dozens of times.

And what’s best is that it’s actually good. It’s the same old-fashioned Muppet mayhem and music, just set in Walt Disney World. The same old anarchic Muppet humor from the Henson era is there – the show aired just ten short days before Henson’s death in May of 1990.

Thankfully, the special can be found online. You can watch below, followed by some other Muppety Disney tidbits. First, the special:

And now… outtakes!

Attendant to the planned Disney purchase of the Muppets, there were plans to bring the characters into the parks. An entire “Muppet Studios” was to be set up at the Disney-MGM Studios in Florida; the first attraction based on this deal was a show, Here Come the Muppets, which opened at the Studios soon after this special aired. A live stage show, it ran until September of 1991. After its closure, its theater was used for the still-running Voyage of the Little Mermaid show.

Muppet*Vision 3-D opened at the Studios on May 16th, 1991 – one year to the day after Henson’s death. On September 16th, 1991, three weeks after Here Come the Muppets closed, another stage show called Muppets on Location opened on a stage near the Muppet*Vision 3-D theater. It ran until 1994. The shows didn’t feature the familiar Muppet puppets, but rather human-sized walkaround versions of the characters. In an innovation for the time, the characters’ mouths moved to synch with the show’s vocals, which made them seem at least slightly more Muppetesque. Some (rather cynical) cast members captured the final performance of this show on video; it can be seen below.

And that was the last new bit of Muppet mayhem to reach the Disney parks before their alliance went south. They haven’t returned since, although Muppet*Vision 3-D was eventually cloned in other parks. Hopefully, if the fun new film is a hit, maybe we’ll get those attractions after all. Better later than never – even if it’s 25 years late!

Today, the Walt Disney Company is a multi-billion dollar hype machine cranking out a stream of press releases on a daily basis. But long ago, the Disney studio was literally a garage-based organization and hardly the talk of the town. Still, the 22-year-old aspiring mogul managed to get his name in print – [...]]]>

Today, the Walt Disney Company is a multi-billion dollar hype machine cranking out a stream of press releases on a daily basis. But long ago, the Disney studio was literally a garage-based organization and hardly the talk of the town. Still, the 22-year-old aspiring mogul managed to get his name in print – no small feat, even in 1924.

Hollywood bigshots with enough time on their hands to browse the back pages of the Los Angeles Times might have come across this blurb at the bottom of a long column of movieland news on July 6th, 1924. I’m curious as to how this story came about; perhaps it was the work of Disney’s distributor in New York. In any case, one could hardly have guessed at the time the magnitude of events which would result from this simple announcement.

ACTORS MIX WITH CARTOONS

In Hollywood a young cartoonist by the name of Walt Disney is making a series of twelve animated cartoon productions. Real people are seen acting with pen-and-ink actors. They are known as the “Alice” series and 5-year-old Virginia Davis, de luxe child dancer, has the big part. M.J. Winkler of New York is releasing the comedies.

So last week I headed over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a neat 100th birthday tribute to artist Mary Blair. It was a fun show, hosted by the always-delightful Alice Davis, and featured a panel of artists who discussed Blair’s work.

A rather surprising fact-drop occurred when [...]]]> Funny story…

So last week I headed over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a neat 100th birthday tribute to artist Mary Blair. It was a fun show, hosted by the always-delightful Alice Davis, and featured a panel of artists who discussed Blair’s work.

A rather surprising fact-drop occurred when moderator Charles Solomon introduced panelist Mike Giaimo as “art director of the upcoming Snow Queen.”

So… we’re on again with that?

This isn’t even the first time I’ve been startled by a casual re-announcement of Snow Queen during a presentation of something else. At the 2009 D23 Expo, veteran animation producer Don Hahn included artwork from the film in one of his presentations. You can trace back the rather bizarre history of this project through random stories we’ve posted over the years; the film has been re-incarnated so many times and in so many formats that it must be trying to wrest the title of “most tortured development” from Rapunzel/Tangled.

The last we’d heard was early last year, when the film was allegedly shelved again. But now, apparently, it’s back. Of course when I tweeted about this I was greeted with “Duh, you didn’t know that?” So maybe everyone else knows. Maybe you know. But I’m telling you anyway.

This is pretty exciting news. Hopefully it’ll be traditionally animated. That hopper is kind of empty now that Pooh has passed. Of course the way projects are constantly popping in and out of existence, I can’t keep track of this merry-go-round anymore.

I’m glad Giaimo is on board. A fan of Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle, he served as art director for Pocahontas and created that film’s unique look. Hopefully we’ll get a hand-drawn film with a unique and stylish visual flair.

Maybe they’ll stick to their guns this time. After the highly enjoyable Princess and the Frog and Tangled, I look forward to what they can come up with.

Earlier this month I had the privilege of writing a piece for Storyboard, the official blog of the Walt Disney Family Museum. As readers will know, I’m a big fan of the museum so I was very glad to be able to help out. My story concerns the making of The Great Locomotive [...]]]>

Earlier this month I had the privilege of writing a piece for Storyboard, the official blog of the Walt Disney Family Museum. As readers will know, I’m a big fan of the museum so I was very glad to be able to help out. My story concerns the making of The Great Locomotive Chase, a 1956 Walt Disney production starring Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter. The Museum’s focus this month has been on Walt’s love of trains, and few of his projects better show this than Great Locomotive Chase; the “true-life” adventure tells the story of Union spies hijacking a Confederate supply train in 1862. It’s an incredible tale that makes for a fun film and it’s easy to see why Walt was interested – it gave him the chance to play around with trains!

I was especially pleased to be able to write about this particular movie as it was filmed in and around some familiar stomping grounds of mine – an area in the Appalachian Mountains between Franklin, North Carolina and Cornelia, Georgia. Both my paternal grandparents were from Franklin – my grandfather’s family has been living up there, in the same valley, for more than two hundred years. It’s still one of my favorite places to “get away from it all.” Furthermore my grandmother’s brother-in-law worked on the now-defunct Tallulah Falls Railroad, where Locomotive was filmed, and her family grew up in the wide valley overlooking where the railway passed from Otto, NC to Franklin. She had moved by 1955 when filming was underway, but her family was still there and I have always had these weird visions of them sitting on their porch while Walt Disney maniacally drove his train back and forth on the other side of the Little Tennessee River.

Local businesses still recall Walt’s visit. At the (truly fantastic, by the way) Dillard House restaurant in Dillard, Georgia, pictures on the wall chronicle the time Walt stopped there for some home cooking. In local histories, people recall seeing Walt come in to local diners and cafes and have lunch alone – just a regular guy, hanging out.

As I say in my piece, you can tell how important this project must have been for Walt – after all, Disneyland had just opened and it would take something remarkable to tear him away from his new sandbox in Anaheim.

For some more info, check out my article and others from this month at the Museum’s blog, and if you haven’t seen it I recommend you check out The Great Locomotive Chase itself. It’s nothing profound but it’s a really fun film with some great actors facing off and that really fantastic art direction you see in Disney productions from that era. You can buy it cheap from Amazon or rent it via Netflix.

As Ned Brainard sang in his hit pop standard The Flubber Song, “Flubber – it’s a boon to man.”

Or was it?

Walt Disney was no stranger to promotional tie-in merchandise, going back all the way to his early Hollywood successes. A constant stream of Mickey Mouse tchotchkes had provided a much-needed financial [...]]]>

As Ned Brainard sang in his hit pop standard The Flubber Song, “Flubber – it’s a boon to man.”

Or was it?

Walt Disney was no stranger to promotional tie-in merchandise, going back all the way to his early Hollywood successes. A constant stream of Mickey Mouse tchotchkes had provided a much-needed financial boost in those days, and clever cross-promotion continued to be one of the key foundations of Walt’s fortune.

When Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor debuted in 1961, there was naturally a resultant demand among film-going youth for the movies’s gravity-defying substance “flubber”. In the fall of 1962, and in anticipation of the film’s 1963 sequel Son of Flubber, toy shelves across the nation were stocked with Flubber courtesy of Disney licensee Hassenfeld Bros., Inc. of Rhode Island. The silvery, glittery substance came in a ball, but could be stretched or bounced. Made of butadiane, a synthetic rubber, and mineral oil, it was very similar to the more familiar product Silly Putty.

All went well until the following spring, when news services began to report of rashes that were attributed to Flubber. In the February 28th, 1963 edition of the Los Angeles Times, it was said that health officials on both the local and state level were investigating an “outbreak” of rashes in school children. Officials were unsure of the source of the rashes, saying that they could be due to contact dermatitis caused by Flubber or even a simple viral outbreak.

Apparently the “outbreak” was none too serious; Dr. George M. Uhl, Los Angeles city health officer, was quoted as describing the rash as “so faint it is hard to see.”

Hassenfeld Bros. claimed that the problem couldn’t be due to their product; Flubber had been tested commercially in several markets before it was introduced nationwide and none of its customers had reported any rash during that time. Nevertheless, they referred the claims to their testing laboratories which embarked on trials to see if the product could be responsible. (Some modern sources say that these trials were conducted on volunteer convicts!)

An answer seemed to come quickly; by March 1st the Los Angeles Times declared that Flubber had been cleared in the mystery. The City Health Department’s director of communicable disease, one Dr. Herbert Cowper, opined that the affected children did not have dermatitis, but were rather the victim of a virus. This interpretation was backed up by a team of virologists from the USC School of Medicine who had been consulted; apparently the USC team had examined stricken students at a local school and discovered that not all of those affected had played with Flubber.

Flubber seemed to be in the clear – or was it?

By March 17th the Washington Post reported that a series of outbreaks reported in Los Angeles, Kansas City, St. Louis, New York City and Phoenix had led the Food and Drug Administration to open its own Flubber fact-finding foray. “A number of cases of mouth rash have been reported by health authorities,” said an agency spokesman. “The reaction appears to be associated with a novelty toy called Flubber.” Despite the fact that the FDA pointed out that “no cause and effect relationship between flubber and a rash has been demonstrated to date,” Merrill L. Hassenfeld, president of Hassenfeld Bros., issued a statement proclaiming the FDA comments to be “somewhat ridiculous.”

The complaints continued to spread. In April the Baltimore City Health Department issued a warning about Flubber, and encouraged stores to pull the product from their shelves. It also “strongly recommended” that any Flubber already purchased “be discarded in the trash.” The Baltimore Sun cited local dermatologist Dr. Harry M. Robinson, Jr., president of the Baltimore City Medical Society, as having referred several cases of Flubber-related contact dermatitis to local health officials. According to Robinson, the Flubber caused “considerable inconvenience and discomfort” to those affected. Health department investigations in local elementary schools revealed several outbreaks; in one class sixteen of twenty-seven students who had Flubber exposure developed “redness and eruptions” while seven out of sixteen students in another class were so afflicted.

Flubber was on the ropes. On the first of May, 1963, Hassenfeld Bros. pulled the plug for good. The FDA, speaking to the Associated Press, said that a survey provided compelling data that Flubber had indeed caused the outbreak of rashes. According to the agency, they had received around 1,600 reports overall of skin irritation related to Flubber. Flubber was pulled from shelves, along with two knock-off imitators, “Robly Rubber,” manufactured by the Old Fox Toy Company, and “Plubber,” a product of Deca Plastics Material Co. Inc. According to Hassenfeld Bros., over four million units of Flubber had been sold since September 1962; it’s unknown how many of the complains involved Flubber or were instead the result of the imitation products.

Still, Hassenfeld Bros. maintained its innocence. Merrill Hassenfeld told the Associated Press that tests both preceding and following Flubber’s release all showed that “it was not the product that caused rashes.” According to Hassenfeld, the FDA had informed him that laboratory tests on animals found no causal relation between Flubber and skin rash.

Nevertheless, Hassenfeld Bros. has pulled Flubber from shelves and was now stuck with millions of balls of Flubber that needed disposal. Since this took place in the “good ol’ days” before “onerous” government regulation ruined all the fun by preventing businesses from doing whatever the heck they wanted to do, the disposal of Flubber proved a colorful tale that has been occasionally (and somewhat flamboyantly) recounted over the years.

Hassenfeld tried dumping the Flubber at the landfill, but local authorities weren’t having it. Attempts to burn the Flubber resulted in clouds of acrid black smoke that was equally frowned upon by locals. Eventually Hassenfeld found a lake and simply tried to dump the Flubber there; unfortunately for them, Flubber floats and they had to hire boats to skim the water for several days to recover the bobbing blobs.

According to reports, the final resting place of all the Flubber was rather prosaic – Hassenfeld dug a big hole near their offices, dumped the Flubber into it, ran it all over with a steamroller, and paved it over for a new parking lot. Thus Flubber met an untimely, Hoffa-esque fate that ensured it a place in urban legend beside all those E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Atari cartridges in the New Mexico desert.

And yet, the Flubber endured. Son of Flubber proved a huge success and The Absent-Minded Professor received remakes for television in 1988 and (unfortunately) at the cinemas in 1997.

Weep not for the Hassenfeld Brothers, either. The company, which began in 1923 as a textile remnant company in New Jersey, found continued success in the toy industry until it adopted a shorter, snappier name in 1968 – Hasbro.

If there’s one thing this summer has proved, it’s that I control the universe.

We’ve previously cited the events at The Enchanted Tiki Room as proof of this, but for further evidence we should examine the case of The Rocketeer.

It all began a few months ago when I was whinging on Twitter [...]]]>

If there’s one thing this summer has proved, it’s that I control the universe.

We’ve previously cited the events at The Enchanted Tiki Room as proof of this, but for further evidence we should examine the case of The Rocketeer.

It all began a few months ago when I was whinging on Twitter about how overlooked the film is. The new trailer for Captain America had just come out, strongly challenging the Rocketeer vibe, and considering that director Joe Johnston was responsible for both films I felt that now was the time for a Rocketeer revival. After all, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the film’s release (a distressing fact, believe you me) and what better way to promote a restored re-release of the film for home video than by piggybacking on the new Marvel superhero tentpole. “From the director of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER!!!” Marketeers love those kinds of stickers, and at least it would get us a decent DVD or Blu-ray of The Rocketeer.

A long online chat led to a guest spot on a Metro-Retro Historical Society podcast with the WEDway Radio guys, where we talked about our mutual love for the film. Soon after, we were surprised – and pleased! – to see that D23 had announced its own celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary. And, you west-coasters, the event is tomorrow night.

So make note, you lucky so-and-sos. The celebration and screening is tomorrow, June 21st, at 7:30 p.m. at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood. Tickets are available through the El Capitan at 818-845-3110 or by visiting ElCapitanTickets.com. The event will include a screening of a newly-remastered digital print of the film, previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage, as well as a panel including director Joe Johnston, the Rocketeer himself, Bill Campbell, legendary makeup artist Rick Baker, writers Danny Bilson and Paul De Mio, and illustrator William Stout – himself a friend of deceased Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens. The panel will be moderated by director Kevin Smith.

In addition, there will be a museum of memorabilia and production artifacts from the film, as well as a remarkable selection of merchandise that you should totally, totally buy for me.

Honestly, people, if you live in the Hollywood area or even anywhere near, you have to go to this. Do it for me, because I can’t. And hopefully – hopefully! – this newly-remastered print will show up on a feature-loaded Blu-ray sometime soon.

Find out more information about the event, and see a trailer, at D23′s site.

Disney animation stalwart Andreas Deja has set up his own blog with which to share his vast collection of vintage artwork and stories of working with the legends of Disney animation. I’ve no doubt it will be a project to follow with great [...]]]>

Andreas Deja with Eric Larson, 1980

Disney animation stalwart Andreas Deja has set up his own blog with which to share his vast collection of vintage artwork and stories of working with the legends of Disney animation. I’ve no doubt it will be a project to follow with great interest…