Crump and Davis: Lost Artwork and Long-Forgotten Collaborations

There's a dandy piece of unpublished Marc Davis HM artwork that I've had locked in my files forever because I have not been at liberty to show it. However, I got a second copy of it recently with permission from the owner to post it, so AT LAST y'all will see a wonderful changing portrait concept from the master himself.

It's been around since the end of 1964 at least. You can see it in the background of the "Tencenniel" program aired in January of 1965 in anticipation of DL's tenth anniversary.

It's the "Great White Hunter" character. Apparently, Marc wanted to do a lot with this guy. He would have been a prominent denizen of the "Ghost Club Room," where a retired sportsman like the GWH could relax and enjoy his afterlife. We've all seen this artwork a gazillion times...

For the gags that Marc had in mind involving the tiger rug, see the sketches HERE. Anyway, what I want to draw your attention to today is the picture over the mantelpiece.

Before it was going to be a tiger, it was a rhino. Here's another unpublished sketch:

This might have been a concept sketch for a TALKING portrait rather than a changing portrait. Who knows where Marc wanted to take this gag. It's fun, knowing he created a character and had a number of different ideas about how to use him and how much. It turns out that the one well-known concept sketch of the tiger rug chomping on his butt was only the tip of the iceberg.

Notice the picture frame in both of the above sketches. It's composed of slain animals in a sort of Gaston-ish decoration. It reminds me of this concept sketch from the dearly departed Rolly Crump.

This is Museum of the Weird stuff, of course, but I have to wonder if Marc was inspired by Rolly or Rolly was inspired by Marc here, or if the resemblance is purely coincidental. (Note too Marc's water buffalo horns and Rolly's giant wings.) The "living doorframe" concept became a maquette at one point, by the way. See it behind the Coffin Clock maquette?

Rolly and Marc worked together on the Tiki Room, as we all know (scroll down to Point 5), and we've talked before about the strange chemistry between two very dissimilar artists who nevertheless seemed to borrow ideas from each other. I like to think that it was Marc who got ideas for his macabre, pitiless (or PETA-less) picture frame in part from Rolly's surrealistic doorframe.

I like to think so, because it means we can turn around and find an example of Rolly borrowing from Marc, in ANOTHER unpublished artwork. Well, technically not "unpublished," but unnoticed and unexplored. It's a full-sized, grayish-blue tombstone maquette over in Rolly's corner of the workshop and so probably a design of his. You can see it in at least three photos:

Walt and Julie Reihm

Walt, Julie, and Harriet Burns

Walt, Julie, and John Hench

Two of the photos are not too horrible, and they are at slightly different angles, which means you can create a "magic eye" 3-D version if you twiddle and fiddle with the photos until they line up, plus some other adjustments. It's not exactly View-Master quality, folks, but it works.

Is the skull wearing a conical hat? Or no, and is that a handle on the right? (The 3-D helps here. It looks to me like the lighter-colored bar is out a bit from the background.) In other words, perhaps it's not a hat but rather a hatchet. More of a tomahawk design, actually. Is Rolly borrowing an idea from a Marc Davis concept artwork directly across the room? It's fun to think so, even if the evidence is not clear enough to be sure.

In One Year and Out the Other

Brandon Hardy has solved a minor mystery. The so-called "Rolly Chair" that was added to the Séance Circle during the "Enhauntsments" of 2021 turns out to be an off-the-shelf item: A Deangelis Rattan wicker chair. See HERE. But around here if you oust one mystery, another moves in. Why has the chair been removed? At least as of now, it isn't there. Didn't come back after the HMH overlay this last winter. No one knows why. Maybe the owner of the chair's design went harrumph and the Disney lawyers up and panicked?

No such speculations can help us with the Bat Cage mystery, however. It showed up next to the Endless Hallway after the most recent HMH overlay, but just as mysteriously it disappeared after only a brief tenure. You might say it was removed in just the bat of an eye.

Jeff Baham

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Thirteen O'Clock (and RIP to a Friendly Bumpkin)

June 14, 2023. UPDATE on the so-called "Rolly Chair" in the Séance Circle HERE.

It's thirteen of the clock at Long Forgotten. (That's what "o'clock" means, 'case you didn't know.)

This is our thirteenth anniversary.

Lucky you, lucky me.

Thanks once again to all you readers. This anniversary should have been a fun one, but our countenances have fallen, our celebration is subdued, and our pain is still fresh after losing the last of our original A-team Haunted Mansion Imagineers, Rolly Crump, who left us March 12th.

Truly he lived and died a friendly bumpkin.

1971 pic by Lou Perry

His is the only original "family plot" tribute headstone that is still doing service at the Mansion,

as most of you know. Find him at the graveyard jamboree, not far from the opera pair.

A good place to pay your respects as you pass by.

Speaking of, there have been tributes to Rolly all over the web, so I won't bore you by repeating things others have said. As many of you know, Rolly's artwork can be found in places other than Disney or other theme parks. His calligraphic skills were in demand, and he did a lot of posters for events. You can spot them without much difficulty, once you get the knack, since his style was quite distinctive.

But I DO have something extra special. In our last post on Dorothea

Redmond, I mentioned how one of her artworks obviously inspired

something Rolly did, but I wasn't at liberty to show it to you.

Well, it pays to have friends in low places, as I've said before. Sometimes you end up with something otherwise verboten from a second source, which means it's sorta open season since no one can know where you got it once it can be got from more than one place. And sometimes something you thought was photographed only once, wasn't. But I can neither confirm nor deny . . . anything I just said.

So behold, a Rolly concept sketch for a Museum of the Weird sign. It's not the greatest piece of artwork Rolly ever produced, and it lacks his usual spidery calligraphy (although there IS a spider in it), and he painted over a spelling mistake (ha!), and it clearly is derivative from Dorothea's concept for a HM sign, but SO WHAT? It's a Rolly artwork you've never seen! One interesting feature is that it shows that at one time 1966 was an unofficial target date for the opening of the Haunted Mansion, which doesn't coincide with anything Mansion-related in that particular year that I'm aware of, so it's . . . weird. But all the more fascinating because of it.

Long Forgotten delivers the good goods, folks, and don'cha forget.

The Redmond sign concept once again, for comparison:

It seems that Dorothea's concept sketch inspired not one but TWO other designs.

"Here y'go, this is it.

Hmm? What? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you asked me what my Sklar Sign is."

What this shows, really, is that back in the day, everything was everybody's,

and all of it was Walt's anyway, and you checked your ego at the door.

Because teamwork. Nuff said.

(Rare photo of a prop from the '59-'63 days when Rolly and Yale were the team working on the Mansion.)

A personal recollection. We visited the NY World's Fair in '64 or '65, and one thing I distinctly remember was this orchestra with instruments made from actual car parts, a display for the queue or the end-of-ride spill area of the Ford "Magic Skyway" attraction, created by Rolly Crump. Even at the age of 9 or 10, I thought it was neat-o mosquito and tough torpedo. Of course, I had no idea back then who was responsible for it. (The lady on the right has that look that says: "And just what the hell is THAT supposed to be?")

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