Some of the most beautiful Disney paper collectibles from the Golden Era of Disney animation are the 125 color pages that appeared between 1934 and 1944 in the pages of GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine. These artistic contributions often showcased upcoming Disney animated cartoons.
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine, founded by journalist-businessman Clark W. Bryan, made its debut on May 2, 1885. It was one of several popular women’s magazines founded in the 1880s and 1890s which provided information about running a home as well as a broad range of literary offerings.
Several well-known writers contributed to GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine including Somerset Maugham, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Evelyn Waugh. Beginning in 1900, the magazine sponsored an “Experimental Station” to test consumer goods and make recommendations to readers. This grew into the Good Housekeeping Institute which awarded selected products its “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”.
The magazine has survived into the 21st Century (winning the prestigious National Magazine Award in 1989, 1993 and 1999) and publishes thirteen editions worldwide making it an internationally recognized brand. These modern editions continue to focus on “the modern home and a woman’s quality of life” with health updates, parenting advice, personal stories and investigations into topics and products of interest.
The April 1934 issue of GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine introduced four new features as part of a general revamping of the publication. The cover boldly proclaimed: “Beginning 4 New Features by Faith Baldwin, Walt Disney, Frances Perkins, Countess Larisch”.
The Disney Studio was barely ten years old and Mickey Mouse was just over five years old but the reputation of Walt Disney and his animated alter ego were already strongly branded in the hearts and minds of audiences worldwide.
However, in the days before television and video cassettes, Disney had to come up with ingenious ways to publicize its product. An animated cartoon might only be shown at a movie theater for a week or two before being replaced along with the main feature by another film. Disney cleverly turned to a variety of merchandise as a method of keeping characters highly visible during these times.
Obviously having a full color page each issue with Disney characters excited audiences to look forward to Disney’s newest cartoon especially since that preview appeared in one of the best known and respected magazines of the time. It was a clever combination of entertainment and advertising that would become a hallmark of Disney marketing through the years.
There were 125 installments, beginning in April 1934 and ending with the September 1944 issue, which showcased perhaps the most important decade in the Disney Studio’s history where Walt Disney and his studio redefined animation as not just an entertaining craft but also as a true art form.
With a few exceptions, these installments were single pages that initially publicized upcoming Disney animated offerings in art and text. (The final twelve pages in the series from October 1943 to September 1944 were christened “New Tales of Mother Goose as Told By Walt Disney” and featured the popular Disney characters in rewritten Mother Goose nursery rhymes.)
No installment appeared in the August 1939 issue and no explanation was given. The December 1940 issue substituted for the upcoming cartoon preview an unusual page featuring a three-dimensional drawing of Mickey Mouse, looking very much like a photograph of a doll, which announced the “Good Housekeeping Toy Festival” and a listing of new toys for Christmas 1940.
The August 1942 page about “The Victory March” was obviously inspired by the twelve page book put together by the Disney Studios also entitled THE VICTORY MARCH and encouraged children to buy savings stamps (to use in the purchase of savings bonds) for the war effort. The July 1943 installment resembled more of a Pluto comic strip and was obviously intended to publicize the feature VICTORY THROUGH AIRPOWER although no Disney traditional characters appeared in that film about air superiority.
Of interest to Disney collectors was the March 1942 issue which in addition to the usual one page promoting the newest cartoon (GOOFY-THE ART OF SELF DEFENSE) had a one page article entitled “Rough Sketches by Walt Disney” which had fifteen comical sketches which were “submitted … at the request of the Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Poster designs of this type will be seen in the near future.” Many of the designs depicted Japanese racial stereotypes and all dealt with home front issues.
The first nine installments were devoted to the Silly Symphony series and began with a one page preview of the now classic THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS. Donald Duck made an appearance in the third installment because of his debut in THE WISE LITTLE HEN Silly Symphony. (Mickey Mouse did not appear until the tenth installment which was devoted to Mickey’s first Technicolor cartoon, THE BAND CONCERT.)
The Silly Symphonies which began in 1929 with the release of SKELETON DANCE were a diverse series of animated cartoons without continuing characters. Walt Disney and his staff used the series to experiment with techniques and technology from three-strip Technicolor to the realistic movement of human characters to the multi-plane camera which were later incorporated into the first cel animated feature film, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. A little over a year after the release of that significant film, the Silly Symphony series officially ended in 1939. (The occasional non-series cartoons made after 1939 were designated as “specials”.)
The Silly Symphony series did develop memorable characters like the Three Little Pigs, Little Hiawatha, and Elmer the Elephant that went on to appear in the Disney comic books and on merchandise items. However, since each cartoon was unique, the advance appearance in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING served as effective advertising to help get potential audiences excited to see these non-Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck/Goofy cartoons.
An interesting sidenote is that Dell Comics beginning in 1952 produced a series of nine 100-page comic book giants that contained adaptations of the Silly Symphony cartoons as well as other stories that didn’t comfortably fit into the other Disney titles they were publishing. The first six issues of those giants feature a one page “New Tales From Old Mother Goose” installment. Issues one and two featured reprints from the 1943 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING pages while issues 3, 5, and 6 featured a new installment drawn by Paul Murry and issue 4 featured a new installment drawn by Tony Strobl.
The GOOD HOUSEKEEPING pages were not complete and faithful adaptations of the animated cartoon stories but merely a segment from the cartoon often with a different ending to make it a cohesive story and to have an amusing final gag. For instance, in GOOFY’S GLIDER (April 1941), Goofy converts his ill-fated aeronautical creation into a boat and finally into a submarine which is not an activity mirrored in the popular short cartoon of the same name. The cartoon short ends with Goofy orbiting the earth in his glider.
However, the design of Goofy and his glider mirror those same images from the cartoon which makes these installments a valuable record of character design and development of characters during this time period. For instance, CANINE CADDY (August 1941) has some of the only accurate artistic re-creations of the short-lived experiment of giving Mickey Mouse “two-toned” three-dimensional ears.
Some of the GOOD HOUSEKEEPING installments have no clear direct connection to a Disney animated short. For instance, the March 1938 page has Mickey Mouse with an old-fashioned hand cranked motion picture camera and Donald Duck with a megaphone directing Pluto with typical disastrous results. The July 1940 page has an ethnically caricatured genie appearing from a magic lamp with Mickey Mouse ordering the genie to wash Pluto and build Pluto a brand new dog house. An intriguing possibility is that these pages and others like them may have been inspired by stories in development at the time.
These pages were done in full color until January 1942 when they converted to one or two color pages (usually a blue or a red or an orange in a variety of intensities) until the end of the series.
The November/December 1937 installments were expanded to several pages to recount the entire story of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS which was the first cel-animated feature film and premiered December 21, 1937. The illustrations appear to be pre-production storyboard drawings and the text and art were later adapted into other formats including a 1938 Grosset and Dunlap book entitled SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.
The October/November 1939 installments were also expanded to several pages to recount the entire story of PINOCCHIO even though the film would not premiere until February 7, 1940. The artwork and text in these installments were used in one form or another in several of the PINOCCHIO books which were published in 1939-1940.
By the time of the release of “Bambi” in August 13, 1942, the adaptation only ran as three separate single two-color pages in the September, October and November 1942 issues.
SNOW WHITE, PINOCCHIO and BAMBI were the only features adapted to the Good Housekeeping pages. SALUDOS AMIGOS was showcased as a series of “Good Neighbor”comic strips that utilized characters from the film while other films from this time period like DUMBO or FANTASIA were not adapted at all.