I love magazines, their covers, the information inside, the interviews with Walt (all of this, in case you didn’t know yet). In honor of the huge foreign following the Institute has picked up, I selected this particular periodical from England. Dated November 1951, it really is a remarkable and unique caricature of Walt Disney (although I am not the best judge of that, I should ask Peter Emslie who himself is absolutely the best in the world at his art…now that Al Hirschfeld [The Line King] and T. Hee are both gone). Speaking of Hirschfeld, he did at least one image of Walt in the 1930s. I just did a quick look at the Internet, and could not find it, so watch for another Walt Birthday Celebration post later today, which some rather, well, odd words by Mr. Hirschfeld for … (well, tune in and see!). Men Only is indeed just that, a publication for men, but not in the sense of what we think of today (my first lecture to my class, before even starting on the Disney legacy, is about “Historical Context”). It is full of cocktail and mixed drink ideas (lots of liquor ads), short fiction, a Vargas-like pin-up girl (can not read the signature, but looks like “AHE”), cartoons, dressing hints, and so forth. Mostly erudite, with one small stop for a black and white photo of a scantily-clad young English lady. A short article inside, features a bit of the aforementioned “short fiction,” but still entertaining. I present the Coverman:
“Smartly uniformed, young Walt hung non-chalantly on the steps of the train as it pulled into Chicago. He was selling peanuts, magazines, candy, and apples. Yessir, he was a real live ‘news butcher’–till he ate up his profits.
“He could impersonate Charlie Chaplin, and draw too. His vaudeville act got the bird, so with his buddy Ubbe Iwerks he began making animated cartoons in a garage. They sold seven, and the buyer went bankrupt. A teeny-weeny mouse that jumped on Disney’s distracted drawing-board that night squeaked: ‘Say, couldn’t you cartoon me?’ “Good idea, Mortimer,’ said Walt. ‘Mickey’s the name,’ said the mouse. Disney gave him his own voice, falsetto; it changed a bit with tonsillectomy. Colour came, and out of his fabulously mushrooming fairy-tale factory issued Pluto, Dopey, Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio, Bambi, the Reluctant Dragon, and the rest. And Donald Duck himself.
“And now, to round off the catalogue, we have Alice in Walt’s own especial Wonderland. This December he reaches his personal half-century. He’s the man who found the crock of fairy gold at the end of the cinema queue. ‘What’s Mickey Mouse made over a quarter-century?’ somebody asked. Said Walt Disney: ‘Me.’ “
-by John May, Men Only, November 1951
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