The Forgotten Headless Horseman Scene

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Long-Forgotten had a series of five (count 'em, five) posts devoted to the "Father of the Haunted Mansion," Ken Anderson, back in October of 2010.  And just last month (Nov 2012), the last of the five received a major addition, thanks to the discovery of a new blueprint.  Today's post will be our sixth look at Ken's contributions.

In the course of those earlier discussions, we went through Anderson's "Ghost House" room by room.

However, there was one item we passed by rather quickly: the large cyclorama.  I thought it might be interesting to

take a good look at that unseen scene seen in the upper left corner.  This is how it appears on the original blueprint:

I like how the cyclorama was to be partially visible through the windows in the hallway leading to the Salon.
That hallway was going to have an unfinished appearance, and with the two windows on the left side actually
overlooking the graveyard scene below, we have something eerily similar to the actual Haunted Mansion attic.

The new blueprint reproduces the original faithfully.  The only real change is that an "outside" balcony has been added to

the Salon, and consequently the path of the Headless Horseman figure (toward the lower right) has been relocated slightly.

In addition to these blueprints, Anderson left behind at least three different descriptions of
the scene, plus at least two pieces of artwork, both of which have been posted previously.

That concept painting on the left (done by Duane Alt) is not some sort of free composition but a careful rendering of the cyclorama in the Ghost House as seen by guests through the windows of the Salon.  The correspondance between it and the blueprints is exact and detailed.

With a little cunning photoshoppery, and following Anderson's written texts, the original artwork can be expanded into a sort of "storyboard" for the scene.  Since there is more than one version, each of them securely dated, the exercise is pleasantly similar to participating in the creative process as Anderson first devises and then revises his storyboard.  You can almost hear the wheels turning as he improves the show script.

Someone like David Witt could do much more with this than I can.  On the other hand, there's something to be said for the storyboard format when you're comparing two different ways to block out a basic script.  Then again, I did add some sound effects, so . . . whatever.


The Headless Horseman

Surveys of the Mansion's history routinely mention the early idea of basing the attraction on the Headless Horseman character from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, but in truth he never amounted to very much.  As far as I can tell, this cyclorama in Anderson's Ghost House was virtually the only place where the HH was definitely incorporated into any known Mansion plans.  But dang, it was an impressive scene.

Two of the descriptions Anderson wrote are fairly detailed.  The first version presented here is storyboarded from his earliest script, using artwork I have adapted from his two actual sketches.  Take it away, Ken.

September 9, 1957

"At the centerpiece of our tour, we find ourselves in the ruins of a grand salon."

"The once-ornate domed ceiling is high above us, and the rotting planked floor slopes down towards the shattered ruins of a grand bay window looking out over a moonlit scene of wind-swept, moss-filled trees and bayous beyond.  A broken wall in the middle distance fences in an abandoned family graveyard of above-ground vaults typical of the marshy New Orleans area."

"Far off, a werewolf howls, and the scene outside darkens as clouds obscure the moon."

"Lightning flashes on the horizon and a distant rumble warns of the approaching storm..." 

"...but our attention is closer as ghostly skeletons rise from the tombs..." 

"...growing larger as they approach the window then seem to enter the room above us."

"These are the guests arriving for the wedding, and the sound of galloping hoofs

approaching heralds the arrival of a guest of honor:  the Headless Horseman."

"We don't glimpse him until he thunders past just outside the window, his dark

cape billowing behind, but eerily fastened to shoulders that hold no head above."

End.

In another description, also dating from September, Ken wrote: "The distant sound of pounding hoofs signal the approach of the Headless Horseman, who finally crosses the scene outside the windows as his horse gallops through the tops of the trees."  In that last line, I take it he means that you are looking over the tops of some trees in front of the Salon's windows, and only part of the Horseman is visible.

One month later, Anderson revised the script.  It storyboards quite differently, and I think it's a definite improvement.

October 16, 1957

"Commence with a windy moonlit night, with the reflection of the moon in the bayou beyond the graveyard."

"The clouds will obscure the moon..."

"...and distant flashes of lightning and sounds of thunder will next be heard."

"While the sky is darkening, the ghostly apparition of the Headless Horseman will fade into view or

appear from behind a distant tree and gallop toward the graveyard and house from right to left foreground."

"He will disappear behind some trees to the left, but the sound of

his horse's approaching hoofbeats will continue to grow louder."

"Suddenly, he bursts into view in the courtyard just outside the windows and gallops across from left to right...reining

to a noisy halt just out of view below the balcony on our right.  His cape is the only part of him we need to see at this last

crossing, since the shrubs will obscure the horse.  His cape must match in color and value with the previous projected mirage."

"Next, a bolt of lightning against the sky and a werewolf's howl..."

"...signal the appearance of the ghosts rising from the tombs, first one, and then two, and more,

until ghosts are materializing from the earth around the tombs as well as the tombs themselves."

"Finally, a blinding flash of lightning fills the room and dazzles the spectators, while a tremendous thunder clap ends the

scene.  The room illumination will increase at this point for the benefit of the spectators so they may see to exit."

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In this October treatment, there follows a lot of technical instructions, which includes some interesting notes about special effects:

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

1. HEADLESS HORSEMAN

a. 1st part is projection with Ub's special loop projector using Kronar based film.  b. 2nd part is fluorescent jap silk cape on a wire frame and moved by an aluminum arm from above past the windows.  Match the color to the projected image.

2. GHOSTS

a. Projection by slides on scrims.  1. Experiments to be made by Wathel for Ub on panning projectors and placement of projectors in relation to scrims and cyclorama.  Also try arc hanging on scrims to give effect of ghosts getting closer to viewers.

It should hardly be necessary to remind you Forgottenistas that ghosts done by "projection by slides on scrims" is exactly what we got in the graveyard scene of the actual attraction, twelve years later.

(pic by Jeff Fillmore)

Note the involvement of Wathel Rogers already at this early date in special effects for the Ghost House project.  A mechanical genius, Rogers was the audio-animatronics go-to guy in those early years.  He eventually merited a tribute tombstone at the Haunted Mansion for his abundant contributions to its success.  Many of you knew that already, but did you know he was sporatically involved as early as 1957?

Anderson also mentions "Ub." Of course that's Ub Iwerks, the great Disney legend, the first animator-turned-special-effects-whiz in a long line of such geniuses at Disney.  His name is not usually associated with the Haunted Mansion, but did you know that according to legendary Studio cameraman Bob Broughton, it was Iwerks who discovered the "Leota effect," more or less by accident, using a wig stand?  Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump have always been credited with making the same discovery, and perhaps they did so independently (see Jeff Kurtti, Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends [NY: Disney Editions, 2008] 123-24).

3. CYCLORAMA

Starts with a stormy moonlit sky...the moon reflected in the bayou is to be accomplished by the actual reflection in a water pan below the cyc.  The stormy clouds will be by slide projection on the neutral sky background and will obscure the moon.  The flash lightning and the lightning bolt will also be by slide projector.  Test for diorama as well as Haunted House.

Clouds and lightning flashes by slide projector, you say?  Dude, that effect goes back to the 18th century:

Actual 18th century magic lantern slide

The "diorama" may be a reference to the Sleeping Beauty walk-thru diorama, which Ken was working on during this exact same time period.

4. WIND EFFECTS

Use multiple fans to blow moss and tree branches and to ripple the water and reflections.  Try letting scrims blow a little to see if ghosts are improved by it.

Blowing on the scrims didn't work, apparently, but as we've pointed out before the Mansion does use a fan blowing on a ghost painted on silk in the graveyard crypt.  Not the easiest thing to photograph, but the indefatigable Dave DeCaro has managed to get a nice shot:

The Blue Bayou: An Influence?

There are some striking visual similarities between Anderson's concept painting and the Blue Bayou lagoon in Pirates of the Caribbean.

What we may have here are two different works of art using the same source of inspiration, in this case the Disney short, "Blue Bayou: A Tone Poem," included in the 1946 film, Make Mine Music.  "Blue Bayou" was originally "Claire de Lune" and created for Fantasia but cut because of length considerations.  There can be little doubt that it was a major source of inspiration for the look of the Blue Bayou lagoon in POTC.  I mean, come on, the name alone . . .

Compare those with any typical section of the POTC cyclorama:

The bayou in the background of Anderson's painting is similar in appearance, and for the cyclorama he suggests having the moon reflected in real water and rippled with a fan.  As it happens, a lengthy section of "Blue Bayou" is devoted to the play of the moon's reflection in rippling water.

So if the POTC masterpiece and Ken Anderson's concept art for his Headless

Horseman cyclorama have a similar look, there may be a simple reason for it.

From Creepy Old Flicks All Over the World

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Be sure to check out the updates to this post HERE.
More material was added to this post Nov 1, 2012 and Feb 20, 2014.

When discussing the influences that stimulated this or that element in the Mansion, it would be a mistake to overlook the movies.  By their own testimony, the Imagineers watched spooky films as part of their research, looking for useable ideas.  Whenever this topic is raised, there are two cases that are routinely trotted out to illustrate the point, but rarely does the discussion go much further.  As usual, Long-Forgottenistas demand more.  We shall cast a wider net, and hopefully it will catch us some strange and interesting fish.

The two well-known examples are the bulging doors in the Corridor of Doors, a gag taken from Robert Wise's 1963 horror film, The Haunting, and the human-arm sconces in the crypt, inspired by Jean Cocteau's 1946 interpretation of the Beauty and the Beast story, La Belle et la Bête.  The latter film in particular was (I should say "is") a favorite of Rolly Crump.

Concerning each of these two there are a few more things to be said.  Fear not.  Your blog

administrator is willing to break down any door if it will provide further illumination.

With regard to The Haunting, we know exactly when the Imagineers had a private screening and who was invited.

So they had plenty of opportunity to examine the film frame by frame, if they so wished.  As it turns out, the bulging door gag is only one of several elements in The Haunting that left their marks in the Corridor of Doors.  Wise doesn't provide very many full-length views of the door, but if you've got a sharp eye you'll notice that the overall design is clearly similar to the Haunted Mansion design.  It's not just the bulging; the entire door is inspired by The Haunting.

Also, it's possible that the HM door jambs, with their fluting and their stylized skulls at the top, were inspired by door jambs that appear all over the place in the main hallway in The Haunting.

It has also been suggested that the COD demon-eye wallpaper owes something to the

creepy wallpaper in The Haunting that provides one of the film's best scenes.

So when you're looking at a bulging door in the HM, including its frame and the wallpaper

around it, you're probably looking at multiple borrowings from various places in The Haunting.

As if all of that weren't enough, the sound of heavy footfalls begins immediately after the door stops

bulging in The Haunting.  An almost identical sound effect was originally planned for the Corridor of Doors.

Similarly, there's a deeper debt to Cocteau's film than the sconce.  First of all, it isn't just the sconce

design itself but the way it is frequently presented in the film: several of them, lined up in a row:

The whole house is alive in La Belle et la Bête.  The fireplace has built-in busts on either side

of the hearth.  Like other statuary in the house, the faces turn and follow Belle as she passes by.

Actually, I sometimes wonder whether the fireplace guy provided a little bit of inspiration

for the animated Leota tombstone at the Orlando Mansion.  Maybe, maybe not.

More interesting, perhaps, is the very idea of statues that silently turn and

watch you as you pass.  Of course, the Mansion has some of those:

The tendency when discussing the follow-you busts is to focus on how the effect is done

and how Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump came up with it.  Here's a Gracey sketch:

By its very nature the effect is going to produce a face that appears to follow you, so I want to be careful not to claim too much.  But La Belle et la Bête was a favorite of Rolly's, as already mentioned, and you can reasonably suspect that he was struck by the way this effect duplicated the eerie statuary in the Cocteau film.  It brought some of the atmosphere of La Belle into the Haunted Mansion, something that must have pleased Mr. Crump.

There are other films known to have influenced the Imagineers.  In a previous post, we discussed an early proposed backstory for the Ghost Host, dubbed "Mr. Meaker," who had a mechanized canopy bed that smothered people with something other than affection.

Ed Squair argues in Disney twenty-three magazine (Fall 2009, pp 28-29), this gag

is taken from William Castle's 1960 schlockfest 13 Ghosts.  Filmed in Illusion-O!!!

The Imagineers watched this film with Walt himself.  I guess it proves that they were unabashed

omnivores when it came to cinematic research.  I wonder if Walt sprang for the popcorn?

Squair could be correct, but it should be noted that this same gag can

be found in other, older movies.  Here it is in The Ghost Walks (1934):

Not only that, but this gag had already been suggested by Ken Anderson in one of his 1957 show outlines. In a bedroom scene, guests see a four-poster bed and are told: "It was in this room that countless people died in their sleep, quite consistently. The method...by the canopy lowering to the bed, smothered the victims. Very ingenious." It's more likely that Irvine got the idea from Ken than from some movie.

For a much fuller appreciation of 13 Ghosts, see now HERE.

One area generally missed in these surveys is the Imagineers' apparent penchant for 1920's era horror films, films from different parts of the world.  Lest we overlook the obvious, the Mansion organist, like any phantom organist, probably owes his very existence to Lon Chaney in the classic Phantom of the Opera (1925).

From Hollywood we go to Germany, and F. W. Murnau's 1922 classic, Nosferatu.  A favorite gimmick throughout this first film adaptation of Dracula is to treat Nosferatu's shadow as something dangerous and substantial, emphasizing, I suppose, his unreal existence between the lands of the dead and the living.  In particular, the shadow of his hands is used a number of times to good effect.

Here's a justly famous shot:

And the door opens.  Compare that shot to this Yale Gracey sketch for an unused effect in the Mansion:

I have argued previously that the claw-like shadow of a descending hand, in the Clock Hall, is really the climax of Act One in the three-act play of the Mansion.  It's the closest thing to an actual attack on you in the whole ride.  I suspect that this thematically important gag was inspired at least in part by a scene in Nosferatu, proving, I guess, that shadows can be more dangerous than they look.

From Germany, let us go north to Sweden.  In that same year, 1922, a remarkable documentary film premiered, Benjamin Christensen's Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages.  One scene depicting the departure of witches for the Sabbat is very obviously a major inspiration for the similar scene in the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence of Disney's Fantasia.

If Häxan helped populate the skies of "Bald Mountain" with witches and fiendish spirits,

some of those in turn eventually made their way intact from Fantasia into the world of the

Mansions, as you can see from concept art for Phantom Manor.

There were also simpler, more neutral ghosts floating through the skies of the "Bald Mountain" sequence,

and these seem to have migrated through Ken Anderson's imagination and into the final ride.  

So you could argue that the scrim wraiths in the graveyard scene have a cinematic

pedigree, winding their way through Fantasia in 1940 to Häxan in 1922.

"Bald Mountain" was one of three in-house, Disney films that were heavily referenced as the various Imagineers brainstormed the future Haunted Mansion during the 50's and early 60's.  The other two were  The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, with its famous Headless Horseman sequence, and a 1937 Mickey Mouse short, Lonesome Ghosts.  Ken Anderson, of course, had a whole script worked out that would incorporate the Headless Horseman directly into the HM, as many of you already know.  That came to nothing, but that doesn't mean that incidental details from Ichabod didn't find their way into the finished Mansion.  The style of wraith found below is pretty generic, but the detailed correspondence to Collin Campbell's artwork and to the bikers in the attraction is certainly suggestive.

Lonesome Ghosts also gave Ken Anderson ideas.  He was going to incorporate a friendly ghost with that very name, "Lonesome Ghost," as a sort of host alongside the human tour guide during the walk-thru.  Didn't happen, of course, but a more substantial contribution from LG is the very idea of prankish, fun-loving ghosts turning a haunted house into their personal playground, scaring human interlopers just for amusement, and no harm done.  If you look at it that way, this little cartoon foreshadows the Mansion more fully than any other film.  Gorsh.

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