Toads in a Pond

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Forget about Maleficent and Lady Tremaine, Eleanor Audley's finest moment at Disney came when she made Madame Leota's rather silly incantations (let us admit this) sound both real and magical, even with "wherever they're at" in the mix. By some witchery, they work splendidly coming from her.

We paid some attention to the musical instruments mentioned by Mdm L in our original posts on the Séance circle (HERE and HERE), but otherwise we've said little about the contents of those incantations, mostly because they're self-explanatory, generic, Halloweeny images with no particular background to dig up. Among them, I've always thought that "toads in a pond" sounded uninspired and contrived, obviously concocted in order to find a rhyme for "beyond."

Turns out I may have been wrong.

We've had a couple of posts about Grillot De Givry's Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy (one of several titles the 1929 book has been issued under). It's one of the few books we know for a fact were used by multiple Imagineers who worked on the Mansion, including Marc Davis and Rolly Crump. As it turns out, we should perhaps add X Atencio to that roster.

On pages 76-77 in De Givry is a reproduction of Polish artist Jan Ziarnko's engraving of a Witch's Sabbat, executed for inclusion in Pierre de L'ancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, ou il est amplement traité des sorcierrs et da la sorcellerie ("A Treatise on the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons, wherein the Subject of Sorcerers and Sorcery is Fully Discussed"), published in 1612. L'ancre's text included a scandalously detailed description of the Sabbat, and Ziarnko's lurid engraving left little to the shocked imaginations of 17th century readers.

As usual, De Givry gives us only a blurry black and white reproduction. Here's what it's supposed to look like:

The first thing I noticed is that the group of three witches at the bottom may have been an influence on Marc Davis. We know for a fact he looked through De Givry's book for ideas about witches, and that bellows witch looks suspicious to me.

But I'm more interested in these lines by X Atencio:

"Creepies and Crawlies, Toads in a Pond, Let there be Music, from Regions Beyond."

There are plenty of creepies and crawlies around. The middle witch is only one of four figures in the engraving holding a bunch of snakes in her fist, and other slithery critters are found nearby as well:

But it's "toads in a pond" that really catches our eye. Ziarnko's engraving comes complete with annotations in L'ancre's book. The witches are about to behead and flay the snakes and toads before throwing them in the pot. A good supply of toads is guaranteed because we see at a pond nearby "little children who, with white wands and switches, at a place removed from the ceremonies, watch every one of them over the herds of toads owned by those witches who have custom to bring them to the Sabbath."

Well, there it is, Forgottenistas. Turns out that "toads in a pond" is an appropriate and well-documented image after all, found in a book we know the Imagineers were using. As if that weren't enough, if we look from here directly up to the top, we find a group of musicians, led by a demonic (?) lutist, supplying appropriately hellish tunes for the occasion, or what we might call "music from somewhere beyond."

 

"Free Bird? Sorry, don't know it."

This latter parallel is pretty weak sauce, I freely confess, but all things considered, I'm still inclined to think we are looking here at the image that inspired one of Madame Leota's incantations inside of Atencio's little grey cells. It's not the toads. Those are stock figures in anything witchy. It's the POND. Either X made up "toads in a pond" from scratch in search of a rhyme for "beyond," or he got the idea from Ziarnko's print. It's gotta be one of those two.

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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? *reboot* "It has faded into a magenta haze.")

 

 

 A sunburned relic. 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.

 

 

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 like.

 

 

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

 

Rarely seen earlier stages in the concept sketches, because we care about such things:

 

 

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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Sweet. Long-Forgotten Turns SIXTEEN (plus, the Mansion up against the wall)

If Long Forgotten were a Disney princess, she'd now be old enough to get married. To quote Maleficent: "It's incredible! Sixteen years..." Yes, it's incredible.

Ooooh . . .

Ahhhh . . .

Okay, that'll do. Time for the pivot and introduction of a topic worth talking about but which has never merited a post of its own.

In other words, we're going to do what we always do on these august occasions (even though they're always in April). This one has been sitting in the drawer for a long time, waiting patiently for its moment in the sun.

If there's one piece of traditional Disneyana loved by absolutely everybody, it's those big, souvenir park maps that debuted in 1958 and were regularly updated as time went by. But before we get into those, something you may not know is that in addition to their famous early concept sketches, Harper Goff and Marvin Davis also sketched several maps of the proposed Disney park, then just a twinkle in Walt's eye, and in some of those they included a "Haunted House." Here's Goff's 1951 map. The haunted house is at the very top.

 

And here's Davis's 1953 map. (Middle, far right.)

 

McKim's McKlassics

Our interest, however, is in those colorful wall maps the parks sold. As most of you probably know, the first of these (and the best) were done by Sam McKim, and from the beginning they have always included the Haunted Mansion (or "Haunted House"). We're not going to do a survey of all the changes in the various iterations of the map, only the ones that affected the portrait of the HM in them. McKim's original drawing of the Mansion remained unaltered in the '58, '59, '60, and '61 editions:

We've discussed this one many times, and I haven't anything new to say about it, so we'll move on to the '62, '64, '65 map (none were printed in '63; we'll find that there are numerous such gaps along the way).

  Hands down my favorite. McKim was good at rendering top-down perspective, and his mastery of line weight was amazing. This is the only rendition of the building that even comes close to being accurate, including as it does the peculiar roofline, which reflects the twin stretching rooms. He probably sketched this in 1961 or early 1962, when the building was not up yet, so he must have seen some of the blueprints.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the color. Already by 1958, in McKim's rendition elsewhere of the building inspired by the Shipley-Leydecker house, the exterior was expected to be white.

But we also know that the eventual color scheme was not yet set in stone, and as proof, the rugged brown in the 1962 park map may be added to this well-known "color guide" from 1962 or 63.

McKim's realistic inclusion of the northeastern stretchroom in the roofline evidently confused later mapmakers, who took it as virtually a separate building attached to the Mansion (and thought to be . . . what? a spill area? restaurant? ). The famous National Geographic spread on Disneyland (1963) interpreted it that way in its Disneyland map:

We're years too early for the Museum of the Weird, by the way, in case any of you are getting all excited about that possibility. The park guidebooks for '65, '66, and '67 all included a little wing over there as well.

 

I suspect that this was inspired by a misreading of McKim's sketch, fueled by the false assumption that the house was a simple square. Did they think it was an old-fashioned farmhouse water tower?

 

I'm Callin' Campbell Mmm Mmm Good

In 1966 the map was redone in a painterly style by Collin Campbell (reproduced in '68, '72, '74, '75, '76). I don't like it as well as McKim's, but I must admit its softer, lusher look has a certain appeal.

The house design is far less accurate, but this will remain the basic look for the rest of the souvenir map's existence. There are several curious features here. One is a weird, non-existent entrance gate leading straight to the front door. I've never heard of any plans to incorporate this feature, but once it got on the souvenir map it had remarkable staying power through subsequent editions. 

More interesting is the implication that the front yard cemetery would extend all the way around to the other side, which of course never happened. But the way the front yard portion is walled-off and enclosed is reminiscent of the old Ken Anderson design for an elaborate cemetery. When the attraction was conceived as a walk-thru (which would still have been the case in 1966), we remember that the northern and southern walled areas were to be twin exit areas complete with graveyards. Were there plans to have them connected? The earliest blueprints of the building do not include the attached stairwell entrance that blocks traffic along the back of the building, so I suppose the idea may have been considered feasible at one point, even though it would always have been a bit of a squeeze.

More interesting still is the presence of the show building. Keep in mind that it was not actually built until the early spring of 1969 (yes, really, 1969), even though the basic size and shape of the building were already determined by 1961:

But why include it at all on a souvenir fun map with no pretensions to strict accuracy? Haven't we been told that 'beyond the berm" isn't supposed to exist when you're at Disneyland? Why, then, the big, ugly, gray blob? Well, the answer is not far to seek. Just south on the same map is the big gray blob of the POTC show building:

As we can see, the Pirates building served as a convenient bulletin board for posting the names of exciting scenes in the upcoming attraction, guaranteed to tease and tantalize map owners.

No doubt when Campbell was recruited to redo the map in 1965 or 66 the powers that be (i.e. Walt) were confident that by the time the map was ready for the printer the Mansion's contents would be just as settled as POTC's. Campbell obviously was not responsible for all that superimposed lettering. They knew what the show building was going to look like and they thought they would soon know what was going to be in it.

What this shows is that as long as Walt was alive and at the helm, everybody thought the decision-making process would keep moving along at a sufficient pace to put a Mansion bulletin board on the park map, in confident anticipation that all the major issues about its contents would be settled by 1966. Didn't happen, of course. The '66 and '68 Campbell maps are solid evidence that things really did lapse into a state of uncertainty and flux when Walt died, just like everyone says it did.

An edition of the map with the interior items tacked on the show building eventually did appear in 1972 (no new maps appeared in '69, '70, or '71). Notice that "the graveyard" is not included. The outside graveyard (still labeled there) is supposed to be understood as being in continuity with the one we see on the ride, and you wouldn't label the same graveyard twice, right? This is evidence that what would eventually be the berm graveyard was conceived as merely the extreme edge of the large public cemetery you see in the ride, spilling over the hilltop into view from the front. The crypt complex that makes up the exit area was to be understood the same way. You enter it riding in your doombuggy and eventually make your way out of it on foot. This is also confirmed in the script for the "Story and Song" album.

For 1978, they decided to redo the map entirely once again and go back to the look of the original Sam McKim maps, more sketchy-graphic and linear, but preserving the Campbell design overall, except for deleting the no longer necessary show building (qua bulletin board). Putting a couple of the hitchhikers on the map seemed sufficient.

This edition was reprinted in '79, '82, '83, '84, and '87. I have to admit that I don't know who the artist was. No one else seems to know either. If I ever find out who it was, I'll put it here (hooray for the blog format). According to Tom Morris, the art library at WDI has the artist listed as "unknown." It's not bad, but I think it suffers by comparison with McKim. When it comes to pseudo-Sam, Chris Merritt does it better.

In 1989 some alterations were made to accommodate the inclusion of Splash Mountain. The hitchers were moved into the front yard, but little else was changed. Same artist, it seems.

In 1995 they redid the whole thing again. The artist was Nina Rae Vaughn. It seems like the goal was to bring in a some of the lushness of the Campbell version. The wraparound graveyard is finally gone (or obscured), and the south porch has finally been given its pediment, but the non-existent front entrance still persists. A few more interior characters appear (Mdm L and the Caretaker). It was reprinted in 2000.

For the 2001 edition (reprinted in '05 and '08), FastPass Gardens was included, and the front entrance was finally put where it belongs.

I have not thought it worthwhile to chart all the little depictions of the Mansion in the park guides, other than the mid-sixties items above, but I find it curious that since at least 2013 (and probably earlier), a strange sort of "Winchester Mystery House" architectural sprawl has served as the HM icon.

 

 

I can only imagine that the artist wanted you to think that the parts of the building you can't see are in fact able to accommodate all the stuff you encounter inside. Be that as it may, map artists have let their imaginations run wild.

McKim Returns!

Getting back to the big wall maps, there is a wonderful tale to be told about Paris Disneyland. It seems that they convinced Sam McKim himself to come out of retirement and do their souvenir map, and the depiction of Phantom Manor is a sheer delight, full of Sam's distinctive humor and with his graphic skills undiminished and on full display, as if 1958 was yesterday. What a treat.

 A always, thanks to all you Forgottenistas for making this blog worthwhile! Long Forgotten continues to pick up new readers, so . . . there ya go.

 

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