Walt Disney’s Good Housekeeping Pages

Categories: Did You Know|Published On: November 1, 2002|Views: 5|

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Did you know that in the spring of 1934, Good Housekeeping magazine
introduced a feature that totally revolutionized both art and marketing – and
later proved significant in the history of both pop culture and comic character
collectibles? That feature was a unique series of Disney story pages and
original Disney watercolor art that ran in the magazine from April 1934 –
September 1944, in 125 installments, with each issue (the sole exception being
August 1939) featuring a single page.

The success of these pieces (and
Disney’s licensing in general) was due primarily to the genius of Herman “Kay”
Kamen (see below and The Main Event for more). Walt Disney, of course,
was just coming into his own as a creative giant at that time, so with his
creative imagination and Kamen’s promotional wizardry, the Disney characters
were able to vault from simple amusements to American icons.

The 1933
launch of the first Mickey Mouse Magazine set the stage for the jump to a
successful national magazine such as Good Housekeeping. Building from his
initial forays with characters like Oswald (See Scoop 9-6-02 for more),
Disney developed increasingly exacting standards for his studio’s artwork, and
the individual component pieces of the Good Housekeeping pages that
resulted are widely acknowledged as superior examples of Disney art from the
’30s and ’40s.

The art featured Disney cartoon characters in a truly
finished look for the first time, finely detailed and in color. Artist Tom Wood
headed up Kamen’s art department, and many of Disney’s best artists worked with
him in producing the Good Housekeeping pieces.

As Disney continued
to achieve a number of successes and even received awards for the cartoons, he
also continually increased the standards for both animation and still images
featuring his characters. Kamen succeeded in featuring those quality images on
products all over the world, frequently in advance of the debut of the cartoons
featuring them.

While the printed magazine pages remain actively
collected today, it is still rare for one of the originals of these important,
historical pieces to go on the market.

Here is a list of the 1934 and
1935 pages, the originals for which have garnered the most attention and brought
the highest results at auction:

1934 – presented in sequence
The
Grasshopper and the Ants
The Big Bad Wolf
The Wise Little Hen
The
Flying Mouse
Peculiar Penguins
The Goddess of Spring
The Tortoise and
the Hare
The Golden Touch
Water Babies

1935 – presented in
sequence
Mickey Mouse in The Band Concert
The Cookie Carnival
Mickey
Mouse – Mickey’s Garden
The Robber Kitten
Mickey Mouse – Mickey’s Fire
Brigade
Who Killed Cock Robin?
Mickey Mouse – Mickey’s Magic Hat
Music
Land
Cock of the Walk
Three Little Wolves
Mickey Mouse in On
Ice
Broken Toys


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