Thanks a Million! (Plus, Changing the Changing Portrait Hall, Part Four)

.
Long-Forgotten has now been visited one million times. So I owe all of you out there in the blogosphere a million thanks. It's humbling and ego-inflating at the same time. Just plain mind-boggling.

With these victory-lap type posts, I always try to include some bona-fide Mansionology as well. Around here lately, it's all been about the New View of the changing portrait hall. It's clear now that it was a circumscribed show scene, like the stretching room before it and the foyer before that. Well, here are still more observations on the subject.


The Enchanted Foyer Room

I should have pointed out last time that we already had evidence that the foyer was originally going to be a carefully circumscribed little show unto itself, because we know that for a long time there was going to be an animated bust in the corner, springing to life and talking at us (probably as the Ghost Host himself).

For a short time, the bust was changed out for the raven before the whole idea was scratched. 

We talked about all of that before. The only new point here is to acknowledge how perfectly all of this fits into the New View. With the

raven in there, perched up in the corner and engaged in conversation, the foyer would have been reminiscent of the Enchanted Tiki Room.

"A Tour of My Home"

Many of you will recognize that as a quote from the "Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion" souvenir album. Foxxfur, mistress of the Passport to Dreams Old and New blog, informs us that "in the old days at DL and MK, very often Disney would not schedule a cast member dedicated to the position at the head of the load belt, instead allowing the Stretch CM to walk guests to the load belt, load them, then go back for the next group. At MK this often involved opening the doors to the Foyer as well."  We see in this that the tour guide mentality of the original walk-thru concept persisted into the finished attraction, more evidence that nicely fits the new revelations about how the changing portrait hall was going to be shown to the guests. We're talking about a show concept going all the way back to 1957. Somewhere Ken Anderson is smiling.


Caws and Effect

I remarked last time that (1) we have no recorded traces of any Ghost Host monologue to go with the six-panel changing portrait show, as well as the fact that (2) the narration to the "Story & Song" album refers to the portraits as changing with the lightning flashes, both facts indicating that the six-panel idea was scotched by spring of 1969 at the latest. What I failed to note is that there ARE remnants of a missing show in exactly this location. While the narration for the S & S album is late (spring 1969), the basic script being followed throughout is older, going back to a 1968 X Atencio show script. (That's what explains the numerous discrepancies between the album and the actual ride.)

In the ride as it is, the raven doesn't put in an appearance until the Conservatory scene, but in earlier versions, the bird was ubiquitous. As we have seen, for a time it was going to be right there in the foyer. What it would have said, we don't know, but it was also slated to appear in the next scene, the stretching gallery. As many of you know, after the hanging corpse was revealed, the raven would have squawked and mocked the Ghost Host for choosing the coward's way out.

Most likely the raven would have been up there in the rafters, opposite the corpse. This is a reasonable enough guess in itself, and the illustration used for the children's souvenir record seems to support it.

According to the S & S album, however, the raven sits on a bookcase. I've tried to visualize a bookcase down on the floor of the room . . . 

. . . but more likely they had in mind furniture up in the attic, in some such manner as we see in Anderson's old concept artwork for the scene.

"Did Someone Scream?"

Let's pick up the narrative from the Story & Song album at this point.

Narrator: Lightning flashed from above the room, illuminating the attic area. There seemed to be no roof. From the rafters a corpse swayed, dangling from a taut rope. < Fluttering wings > A black raven flew into the room and perched on the bookcase.

Raven: Caw! Caw! Coward's way out! He chose the coward's way out! Caw! Caw! Caw!

Narrator: The candles Mike held went out mysteriously. Karen clutched his hand during what seemed to be an endless darkness. In a few seconds, the candles re-lit. < Wall panel sliding open > A panel opened exposing a dimly lit hall. On the left side were windows revealing a grotesque landscape, frequently illuminated by the lightning flashes. On the opposite side of the corridor were large portraits. When the lightning flashed, these paintings turned into decaying corpses.

Karen: We should never have come in here! < Fluttering wings, then Karen screams > What's that?!?

Mike: It's okay . . . it's just that raven.

Ghost Host: Did someone scream? Ah . . . we didn't mean to frighten you prematurely. Apparently, the restless spirit of an old nag has taken possession of that poor, wretched raven's mortal being. Be on your guard . . . it may want to better itself! < Evil chuckle > Come along, now . . . 

Narrator: Mike and Karen walked down the long tapering corridor. There seemed to be a light at the far end, pitch blackness behind them. The hallway made a sharp turn into an eerily-lit limbo of boundless mist and decay.

And it's on to the next scene. A story element here that may have been part of the 1968 plans for the changing portrait hall is the business about the raven. By now the audience is really beginning to wonder what's up with that bird. Something like an explanation is needed, and something like an explanation is supplied. The scream that kicks off the conversation could have been part of the soundtrack. The lack of explicit reference to the changing portraits may reflect the Imagineers' intent to change them out from time to time (and why not?), since we know that they had many more than just five ready to go. If they were going to vary, the GH would hardly be expected to comment on them too closely.

Where would the raven have been located? Several possibilities suggest themselves. One possibility is the far end of the hallway, to our left of the male follow-you bust. That's quite a roomy corner, actually.

pic by Scourge 999

pic by Nenya

However, there's nothing in the scale model of the ride to suggest such a location.

A better possibility is on a corbel or cornice above and between the two elevator doors—exactly as the raven would have been placed in the foyer, actually. With a nice, deep corbel, the bird wouldn't be visible until guests were well into the room and looked back.

However, the only location that has even a thin scrap of visual evidence in its favor is right outside one of the windows. That's where Ken Anderson imagined it, and that's where the artwork for the children's record puts it also.

If the usual patter about the Mansion as a retirement community were used either before or after the little conversation about the raven, there would perhaps be enough time for the changing portrait show to silently proceed without comment. I don't like the way the animated gif from the last post looks, with all five cycling simultaneously. People wouldn't follow any of the stories through, being distracted by the changes taking place in all the other pictures. I'm more inclined to think they would change one by one in a soft, domino effect, until all five were finished.

And there you have it.

Four Years? Owl Be Darned

.
Is it bloggiversary time already?  Wow, hard to believe, but this month marks four years of ruminations and revelations.  I have no idea how long this thing can continue. Blog frequency must needs grow more erratic, and more and more it will be a matter of new material coming to light or unexpected visitations by the Haunted Mansion Muse that determine when a new post will appear.  Yes, I know I said something like that last time, and the time before that, and still we have had about one post per month, but let's face it, a slowdown is inevitably inevitable.

Bloggiversaries are appropriate occasions to pause, to reflect.

.   Pause.

.   Reflect.

They're a time for sharing, for being with family. No, wait, that's Christmas.
Okay, enough with the pausing and reflecting.  Don't want to overdo it.

As always, I hate to disappoint readers who came here for some actual Mansionological content rather than narcissistic calendar waving, so I attach a lightweight mini-post on these occasions.  I figure the owls will do just fine.


The Owlallueia Chorus

Most of you are aware that there is a pair of owls perched overhead above the graveyard band.  Their history?  Well, there isn't really any "history" to report.  They went straight from Marc Davis's brain down through his pencil and eventually to the AA figures in the ride with little alteration. And they've always been there. And they've never changed in any way.  The only thing of note is the usual thing: Marc's creations were a little cartoony, but the final figures are realistic.

That's a fairly recent pic above.  These below are from 1969, but you'd never know it just by looking.

A gorgeous recent pic:

(pic by Loren Javier)

WDW, about 1973:

The 1990's:

You can compare those with Marc's concept artwork:

The scale model maquettes follow Davis closely, as usual:

They hoot like real owls, "in spooky harmony," according to the "Story and Song" souvenir record.

That's a Stretch

Something you may not have ever noticed is that the owls are animated in accordance with Marc's drawings.  They stretch out their necks when they hoot.  You never see this in the professional pictures officially published, because the figures have all been turned off for the photo shoots.

This Daddy B shot caught one of them in mid-stretch:

(pic by Brett Garrett)

Owls are Spooky

Duh.

It's not hard to see why people find owls a little creepy.  They have a more human-like face than other birds, they're active at night, and their familiar "whoo-oo" call sounds like a human vocalization.  They're ubiquitous in Halloween decor, of course, and the classic Silly Symphony, "The Skeleton Dance" (1929), begins with the scowl of an owl that looks a lot like our Mansion examples:

That's probably as deep as we need to go to account for the owls in the Haunted Mansion, so we could quit right here, but it might be fun to look back a little further, so why not?  If you have something more important to do and leave now, I understand.

Weird to the Wise

Both of the qualities we traditionally associate with the owl have impressive pedigrees.  The owl was the sacred bird of the Greek goddess Athena, associated with wisdom and learning, so apparently people have thought owls look intelligent for a long time.  The Romans, on the other hand, regarded the owl as a bad omen, so apparently people have also thought owls are eerie for a long time.

With regard to the brighter side, something you may not know is that the association with Athena made the owl a common figure on Greek coins minted in Athens.  These were widely disseminated over a lengthy period of time, and they were so popular that even non-Greek cultures copied the owl designs on their coins.

Here's a nice Athenian silver tetradrachm.

  The Athenian owl yet lives. This classic design is still

used on Greek coins and is also popular in jewelry.

Then there's the more sinister side.  According to our old friend Émile Grillot de Givry, the owl is one of three animals associated with witches since Medieval times (the others are cats and toads), and the Harry Potter series has ensured that knowledge of this triumvirate continues into our own day.  Demons take the form of these animals ("familiar spirits"), and you find artwork showing owls operating in this capacity, like this 19th century print by Ernst Seigneurgens.

"No no no! Stupid bird! That way, THAT way!"

But owls are also associated with the occult in more general ways. The twin associations (wise + spooky)

make the owl a natural mascot for people fascinated with the idea of esoteric knowledge.

1890's card game

Cosmopolitan Magazine, 1893 (hat tip Craig Conley)

The Raven and the Owl

There is a second variety of animatronic bird in the Mansion, of course, and at one point in the process Marc Davis was thinking about

presenting them together:

I guess Collin Campbell thought that there was only room for one bird species in this scene, and

he picked the raven.  In his rendition, Marc's owls have been banished, a rare departure by Mr.

Campbell from Davis's artwork.  In Collin's graveyard, the raven shares the arborial spotlight with no one.

But the end result was just the opposite, of course.  It was the raven who

was evicted, and the owls have the treetop stage all to themselves.

I'm sure this never crossed the Imagineers' minds, but ironically, to imagine a sort of rivalry between the raven and the owl would actually be appropriate. The raven is a relative newcomer to the pantheon of spooky, Halloween-y animals.  His inclusion is due to Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem, and if there is any doubt that this includes its appearance in the Haunted Mansion, recall that the raven escort was originally going to croak "Nevermore" all over the place.  What many people don't realize is that Poe ousted the owl to make room for his raven.  As we know, the owl is the sacred bird and constant companion of Athena.  She's also known as Pallas Athena (meaning "Athena of the city," i.e. Athens. Pallas = Greek polis, "city").  In Poe's poem, the raven perches on a "bust of Pallas" (i.e. Athena) and remains there throughout the poem, thus usurping the seat normally reserved for the owl.

In other words, the raven isn't just there, he's there instead of another bird.  Hm.  What means it that the venerable owl has been displaced in the poem by an insolent newcomer?  I don't want to get all English 101 on you, but I can think of two possible interpretations:

First, the poem makes much of the raven's shadow. The darkness of sorrow and uncertainty have blotted out the light of reason and knowledge. Athena stands for "wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill."  With regard to all of that, the speaker in the poem is told in a single word, "nevermore."  Mournful reverie displaces rational thought, night extinguishes day, death has defeated life, et cetera.  For the speaker in the poem, the raven has indeed replaced the owl.

Second, we expect people to 'owl when they're ravin', but in the poem we've got a raven when we expect an owl.  See?  Ironic reversal.

Shut up, did I say the two interpretations were equally possible?  No.  Did I say they were equally profound?  No, madam, I did not.

from a sketch by Édouard Manet

Never more shameless a pun has been spun.

Mercifully, thankfully, now we are done.  

Ravens and One-Eyed Black Cats, Oh My!

.
The unseen Ghost Host acts as a sort of ambassador, a go-between, someone equally able to speak to us in the mortal realm as well as to his fellow spirits (presumably).  Other than a few directives from the Cast Member Butlers and Maids, telling us to get to the center of the stretching gallery, the GH is our only narrator and guide.  He never really tells us what his motivation is in taking us on this little tour.  Right up until the end of the ride, you don't know if he's good or evil.

We're so used to this arrangement by now that we forget that doing it this way was a choice.  As it turns out, it was a choice made only a few months before the Haunted Mansion opened.  Some of the rejected alternatives would have made for a very different ride experience if they had been implemented.  One of these is fairly well known and has left traces behind in the ride.  There is another one, far less well-known, which has left nothing behind.  One thing they have in common is that both of them add an additional character who interacts with both the Ghost Host and with you, the rider.

Very different chemistry.  This was not a trivial decision, as we'll see.

The Raven

Died in the wool Mansionites know a lot about this character, so if you're one of those, and you're impatient, you might scroll down to the Cat section, which includes stuff you've never seen, I promise.

Riders can hardly help noticing that there is a raven which accompanies them throughout the ride, starting with the Conservatory scene and ending at the entrance to the crypt at the end of the graveyard scene.  There are five all together, but they are all supposed to be the same character.  All it does is caw at us.  Especially at DL, particular attention is drawn to it as we descend into the graveyard.  Despite having our focus obviously directed at it at that point, we're gettin' bird noises and that's it.

Originally, the WDW raven sat on the branch right above you too, as you tilted back, but due to "guest abuse" it was moved back and put on a branch well off to the side.  Ketchup packets, I imagine.

Caw-caw.  At least the bird sounds real.  According to Stacia Martin (The Sounds of Disneyland [Disney, 2005] 31), he was voiced by "Candy" Candido, best known as the go-to guy for basso profundo in cases where even Thurl Ravenscroft couldn't get low enough.  (Candy must have had freakin' bridge cables for vocal cords.)  What is less well-known is that Candy was extraordinarily versatile and could do very high voices as well.  The same source says that Candy did the raven in Sleeping Beauty and simply hauled out his raven cry again ten years later for the Mansion.

Be that as it may, originally there were going to be several more ravens, including one in the stretching room, one in the foyer, and one at the up ramp at the end.  (You can read about the foyer one HERE).  This was still going to be the case going into the spring of 1969.  The raven was going to talk to you, along with the unseen Ghost Host.  The 1968 show script which provided the basis for the "Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion" album preserves a lot of the raven's dialogue.  The bird criticizes the stretchroom advice given by the GH ("He chose the coward's way! Caw-caw").  I guess the GH is a little miffed, because shortly afterwards he responds by warning you that the raven is a possessed creature, and its "restless spirit" may be looking for an opportunity to "better itself."  This bickering leaves you wondering which (if either) of these voices from regions beyond should be trusted.  But the raven is also the one who warns you about the ghostly hitchhikers at the end, so by that point you have probably come to trust the little guy.  He even calls you "my friends," so you see?  He cares.  I guess there was no caws for concern.  (Oh shut up; it's my blog.)

In 2009 an interesting subplot involving the raven came to light. As told by Jeff Baham:

"This raven, or 'jabbering jay' as it was called in the script, was intended to create a mystery to be solved as guests rode through the attraction. As the raven, adorned with a mysterious medallion around its neck, spouted bits of Poe and nonsensical whimsy throughout the attraction, the Ghost Host would make clear that the bird was looking for a mortal body to inhabit. At the end of the attraction, one of the hitchhiking ghosts glimpsed in the mirror that is supposed to follow you home would be seen to be wearing the same medallion, as the Ghost Host revealed that HE was actually the raven's wretched soul, and he was following you home to better himself."

(Baham, The Unauthorized Story of Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion [Theme Park Press; 2016] 63-64.)

The eerie raven first appears in a Ken Anderson (Duane Alt) concept sketch.  Marc Davis liked it and kept it, and it seems that there was never a time when it wasn't going to be part of the show.

Is the talking raven taken from the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem?  If we're speaking of an indirect influence, the answer is an easy yes.  Poe is indeed responsible for adding the raven to the short list of recognized Halloween critters (bats, spiders, black cats, owls).  But even in a direct sense, the answer is yes.  In an early script, the raven warns us about itself (huh?) and the hitchhikers, with "nevermore's" and "evermore's" sprinkled everywhere.  The lines were recorded at one point by the incomparable Eleanor Audley (Lady Tremaine, Maleficent, Madame Leota).  Warning!  If you're an admirer of Ms. Audley's work (yes, yes, I see those hands), this excerpt is painful to listen to.  But we historians cannot afford the luxury of pity.

Beware of Eleanor's Raven, Forevermore


Oh geesh, that was bad.  Anyway, it proves that X. Atencio was directly influenced by "The Raven" when he tried to script the character.  One problem with the raven—besides being annoying—was that it was too small to command your attention in some of the larger scenes.  Maybe a bigger animal would work.  Let's see...no, you can't have an elephant in a haunted house.  How about a black cat?  More specifically, how about an Edgar Allan Poe-inspired black cat?

The One-Eyed Black Cat

"The Black Cat" is one of Poe's better known tales, often anthologized, and read in many a high school English class.  If you've forgotten how it goes, here's a severely abbreviated summary:

The narrator had a beloved black cat for a pet, but one day in a fit of alcoholic rage he gouges out its eye with a knife.  Later on, guilt at the sight of the one-eyed black cat turns to resentment and he kills the animal.  Later he finds (or is found by) another one-eyed black cat and takes it as a pet.  In yet another one of his fits of rage he murders his wife and walls her up in the cellar.  When the police investigate, however, the narrator is betrayed by the howling of the cat inside the wall, where it had been walled up with the corpse.

A much creepier Poe animal than the raven, certainly.  Most Mansion fans know about the existence of the one-eyed black cat only from a couple of Paul Frees outtakes, in which he tries out his note-perfect Bela Legosi and Peter Lorre voices while using a revised HM script.  Dude, when Count Dracula sees fit to warn you about a kitty, it must be one bad motorscooter.

Ghost Host Bela warns you about a nasty cat


Ghost Host Peter warns you about it too


As you can gather from those, X's cat was much scarier and more demonic than his raven.  None of the cat's dialogue has survived, but X did a series of concept sketches.  The notion that the cat would be co-narrator may even predate the notion of putting the earlier raven character into that specific role.  It looks as if the black cat might manifest itself at first as nothing more than an eye:

Apparently, the eye would morph into a shiny point of laser-like light...

...and a cat face would appear with only one eye.

 

 Judianne Atencio

The first eye you saw turns out to be the missing eye of a black cat.

The next time you see it, the cat's face has changed for the worse.

From the looks of it, this loud and angry feline is looking for more than just a Little Friskies num-num.

The morphing continues, and the face rots into a more human form.
Not surprisingly, this does nothing to improve its mood.

Good Lord.  And how was this thing going to be presented?  A projection?  That isn't clear.  It's possible that the "cat" was going to just pop out unexpectedly along the way in its various stages of demonic materialization.  The face above looks a lot like a blast-up head in another X concept sketch.  A quick look at some actual blast-up heads (inset) confirms that this is what the artwork is about.

The fact that another sketch of the "screaming skull" is based on an actual mummified-skull prop supports the idea that X envisioned something like a blast-up skull flying around.

So yeah, maybe the "cat" was going to jump out and surprise us throughout the ride.  Good Lord.

When neither the demonic one-eyed black cat nor the "nevermore"-squawking raven ended up being used, the HM lost its only clear Edgar Allan Poe allusions (although you could make a case for a Tell-Tale Heart allusion in the bride's beating heart).  It would have been nice if someone had told the composer of this WDW pre-opening publicity poster that the Haunted Mansion could no longer be accurately described as "Edgar Allan Poe-styled."

The black cat was a short-lived idea, with good reason.  By having the Ghost Host warn you about a clearly malicious and dangerous creature like this one, he cast himself into the role of protector.  He was there to help you.  Similarly, in the 1968 script, the GH graciously informs you at the outset that you will not be harmed.  That's very decent of him.

Too decent.  Who wants Santa Claus for a Ghost Host?  A haunted house is an allegory of life itself.  You enter here and you exit there, and in between is a dark twisted corridor filled with frightening sights.  You may get advice along the way, but you never have quite enough evidence to be sure that those voices have your best interest at heart.  Do you really want to go into that haunted house that the neighbor kid put up in his garage for Halloween—the one who's a minor league juvenile delinquent the rest of the year?

Enter if you dare.

The Haunted Mansion is no different than any thirteen-year-old's spook house, and it's no different from life.  Once you're in, you don't know if the Host is benign or malicious, so you have no choice but to go ahead, even with insufficient data.  When you're stuck in a haunted house, the secret is to not panic and to keep your wits about you and to just keep going.  If you do that, you're likely to make it.

Kinda like life.

So the trouble with the villainous black cat is that it made the Ghost Host much too unambiguously a good guy.  It's important that he make you a little nervous, a little unsure.

What was the trouble with the raven, then, aside from being a tad too small?  With the cat, we had a bad guy co-narrator and a good guy main narrator.  With the talking raven, we had a morally ambiguous co-narrator along with a morally ambiguous Ghost Host.  At first, you don't really know if either of them can be trusted.  But in that case, why do you need two narrators?  The real problem with the raven was that it was redundant.  Turn off its dialogue and give its few substantive comments to the GH, and ta da, nothing is changed.  Just make sure the GH never really tells you what he's up to.
.