Medusa Joins the Club

 .Updated 8-1-26

 In the fall of 2015 (yep, it's been that long), batches of glass slides intended for use in the changing-portrait cameras in the Portrait Hall at Disneyland showed up in Van Eaton auctions. At least by Long-Forgotten standards, these slides were a sensation. See HERE and HERE. Three more posts followed those two, representing a complete rewriting of the history of that part of the ride. Not only that, but the newly discovered April-December six-slide series was incorporated into the new version when she debuted in the Limbo load area in 2021 (yep, it's been that long).

One thing I noticed and remarked about when these slides first appeared was that Medusa was missing. All of the other four originals (April, Flying Dutch, Black Knight, and Cat Lady) were represented by full (or nearly full) sets, plus slides of a lot of other unused concepts, but there was nary a slide of our favorite Gorgon in the entire horde. At the time I speculated that maybe all of those slides had escaped the collector's market and were tucked away in the archives, or maybe some collector who had them had a thing for Medusa and no-siree-Bub was he going to part with her.

Well, thanks to a tip from VicariousCorpse over at The Thread™ (at Mice Chat), we can now add Medusa to the club. A single slide from what was undoubtedly a six-slide set is currently up at Heritage auctions. Like so many of these slides, it is badly magentafied (badly magentaed? has become magentacized? has gone magenta? has faded magentaward? -wards?).

 

 

 But with some judicious knob-twiddling, we can approximate the original look: 

  

I thank an anonymous commenter for pointing out to me that this slide was #4 in the six-slide set.

We can compare it with the first slide, which of course was in actual use for decades. (#6 appears further down.)

 

 

That same commenter kindly alerted me that #5 in the series has also hit the collector's market. It's currently up at eekbay. Unfortunately, none of the photos show the slide outside of its protective wrap, which is semi-opaque! Plus it too has gone off to magenta land. I did what I could, but don't expect much. At least you can still get some idea of what #5 looked.

 

 

We've got #1, #4, #5, and #6, but always in these six-slide sets, #2 is only a teensy-weensy bit different from #1, so really, we're not far from being able to visualize the complete set. Only #3 is still a genuine mystery at this point.

 

Unraveling an Unveiling

 

With these slides, there's now enough there for us to unravel some of the intended story-telling for the first time. We see a lovely Grecian gal or goddess gradually turning sour, and something funny is happening with her hair. What I find interesting is that the only obvious difference between #4 and #5 is that the ends of her locks have turned into snake heads. That means that it is only at stage five that you're supposed to realize that—oh no—"this gal is a . . . a . . . a  GORGON!" And now that you know that, they hurry up and turn her into stone. No doubt that's why all the pitting and pock-marking is saved for #6. You're two-thirds of the way through the slide show before you know what you're looking at.

 

Those were painted all by Ed Kohn, of course. We can compare them with Davis's three-part concept sketch:

 

 

The Del Toro Medusa Mystery

It's no secret that filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is a huge fan of Marc Davis and the Haunted Mansion, and he has in his collection what is supposedly a Davis original of the final Medusa panel in his three-part concept sketch set. What is intriguing is that it is not an exact match of (1) the sketch, nor of (2) the Ed Kohn painting used in the ride, nor of (3) the "eyes follow you" version used for many decades at WDW. Either Davis executed a full-sized, finished painting of the final panel in his set (for whatever reason), or the painting owned by Del Toro is . . . of questionable authenticity. I can't understand why Davis would have done such a thing, but on the other hand, neither can I prove he did not. You decide:

Kohn, as it appeared in the Portrait Hall at Disneyland:

Del Toro's painting (courtesy Daveland):

The WDW "eyes follow you" version:

Side-by-side, the Davis sketch (left) and the Del Toro painting (right)

Whoever painted this obviously wanted to execute a pretty slavish reproduction of Davis's artwork.

Was it Marc himself? I don't know, and neither do you, and that's all I intend to say about it.

 

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