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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