Remember Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees at the movies? Thank K. Gordon Murray. Murray, an entrepreneur as early as his teen years, set up a makeshift bingo game in one of his funeral director father’s cemetery tents. He took his game on the road with a carnival, eventually becoming the traveling show’s manager. In the late …
Elvia Allman had a long and productive career and, most likely, you never heard of her. Elvia made her debut on Bob Hope’s radio show in the late 1930s, portraying the man-crazy character Cobina, a parody of Cobina Wright, a society debutante of the time. Wright sued over the portrayal. The case was settled out …
This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “strong”. “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.” — Ronald Reagan On a recent trip to Walt Disney World, my wife and I witnessed something we found very unsettling. To alleviate the effects of the central Florida humidity, …
The word of inspiration on Inspire Me Thursday is “cupcake”. As mentioned many, many times on this blog, I love going to Disney theme parks. I went to Walt Disney World for the first time when I was nineteen. My wife and I went to Walt Disney World on our honeymoon. We took our son …
This week’s illustrationfriday.com challenge is “impatience”. There was nobody that ever lived that was as impatient as my father. Perhaps it started when he was a child. He and his parents lived at eight different addresses on West 52nd Street in Philadelphia. They kept moving up the block. My father told me it was because each …
Bobby Driscoll was Walt Disney’s Golden Child. He was the typical cute, scrappy All-American boy and Disney Studios milked that image for all they could. Bobby starred in a string of classic live-action pictures for Disney, including Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart and Treasure Island. He was also provided the voice for …
What started out as a black and white sketch of a crooked street leading to a peaceful graveyard, with a run-down manor perched high on a hill that loomed over Main Street evolved into one of the greatest and most beloved attractions in Disneyland — The Haunted Mansion. A short time after the opening of …
In 1919, eighteen year-old Ub Iwerks was working for the Pesman Art Studio in Kansas City, Missouri. It was here he met another eighteen year-old, a fellow artist named Walt Disney, who would become his oldest and best friend. Disney and Iwerks moved on to work as illustrators for The Kansas City Film Ad Company. …
This week, the challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “parade”. It has been made clear that I am a big fan of Disney theme parks. I’ve been to Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California many, many times. I have written about and illustrated many of my adventures in ol’ Walt’s entertainment …
I love breakfast. Growing up, breakfast at my house was usually a bowl of sugared cereal at the kitchen table or on a metal tray-table in front of the TV on Saturday mornings. The heavy marketing of cereal was at its peak in the 1960s. Cool prizes were packed inside boxes to entice children. Popular …
