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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 Imagineer999 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?).
Those were painted by Ed Kohn, of course. We can compare them with Davis's three-part concept sketch:
You can't help but wonder where the newly discovered slide sat in the six-part line up. Obviously it is neither the first nor the last, and with the six-slide sets, one constant was that the second slide was barely changed from the first. The new slide must be either #3 or #4, but I won't commit to either.
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)
One thing the Del Toro painting is NOT is the sixth panel in the Kohn set, which would make the one used in the ride only stage five. Someone might be tempted to argue that on the basis that it looks even MORE horrible than the one actually used, but . . . meh, the difference is not that great, and if it really were part of the same sequence I think the snakes would have lined up better. Besides, none of the Kohn paintings were slavish reproductions of the Davis artwork, but the Del Toro painting certainly is.
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