Books by Michael Barrier
Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age: Errata, Clarifications, and Amplifications
An asterisk (*) means that an error or omission was corrected in the paperback edition; a pound sign (#) means that an error or omission was corrected in the second paperback printing, in June 2007.
# Page 36: Walt Disney took that cartooning course at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, rather than the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute was originally called the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, but it changed its name in the 1880s. The Academy where Disney studied was an entirely separate school, founded around 1903—as a rival of the Art Institute's school, in fact.
# Page 36: As evidenced by a home-movie glimpse in the DVD Walt: The Man Behind the Myth, Walt Disney's fledgling enterprise was Kaycee—not Kaysee, as Rudy Ising remembered it—Studios.
# Page 36: The correct name is Red Lyon, not Lyons.
# Page 39: Walt Disney didn't send a print of Alice's Wonderland to a New York film-storage company for showing to potential distributors; he sent the print directly to Margaret Winkler instead. This error originated in The Story of Walt Disney, the biography ghost-written by Pete Martin for Diane Disney Miller; that book confuses how Walt tried to sell Alice's Wonderland in 1923 with how he tried to sell Plane Crazy in 1928, when he did in fact entrust a print of the film to a New York storage company called Lloyd's.
# Page 39: The delivery deadline for the first Alice Comedy was January 1, 1924, not December 15, 1923. Margaret Winkler initially asked for delivery on December 15 but agreed to a delay.
# Page 39: At the start of the Disney studio's life, there was a third member of the staff in addition to Walt and Roy: Kathleen Dollard, an inker and painter.
# Page 72: Ben Sharpsteen didn't join the Disney studio's staff in "mid-1929," as I say at the top of this page, but in March, as noted correctly on page 60.
# Page 140: The Disneys spent about six weeks in Europe, not three months, although they were gone from Los Angeles for about two months. Roy and Edna Disney were with them on that trip.
Page 183: As Thad Komorowski has pointed out, Any Rags was not Betty Boop's debut as a human character. She had lost her dog ears in the two preceding cartoons in the series, Mask-a-Raid and Dizzy Red Riding Hood.
*Page 194: As Harry McCracken has pointed out, I misspelled George Bridgman's name, by adding an extraneous "e." This is one of those how-did-that-happen errors, since I have a copy of Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy on my bookshelf.
# Page 266: Pinocchio opened in New York on February 7, 1940, not February 5.
* Page 280: Typo: the word "called" was dropped in the first line, after "studio newsletter."
# Page 283: The better figure for the Disney bargaining unit's size is 601, not 602.
* Page 292: As Harvey Deneroff has pointed out, United American Artists—the union that lost a certification election at the Fleischers' Florida studio—was the new name for the Commercial Artists and Designers Union, the union that organized the Fleischers' New York studio.
Page 329: Tex Avery's memories of how he went to work for Leon Schlesinger, as presented here, differ from Ed Benedict's memories of the same episode. Benedict remembered that Avery was planning to go to work for Schlesinger while he was still at Universal.
Page 330: The correct title of the cartoon, as Chase Pritchard has pointed out, is A Cartoonist's Nightmare, not The Cartoonist's Nightmare.
* Page 349: Keith Scott has pointed out that the camel's screams in Porky in Egypt were provided by Dave Weber, not Mel Blanc.
# Page 395: The reference to Fred Moore's animation for Walter Lantz suggests that he worked for Lantz only as a freelancer. Although Moore worked as a freelancer for Lantz in 1946, he also was on the Lantz staff for most of 1947.
* Page 415: As Keith Scott has pointed out, Lew Marcelle, rather than Robert C. Bruce, was the narrator of Cross Country Detours.
Page 424: As Keith Scott has pointed out, although Droopy wasn't given that name on the screen until 1949, he was identified as "Droopy" on the model sheet for Dumb-hounded, which was released in 1943.
Page 427: As Thad Komorowski has pointed out, the cat in King-Size Canary is not wearing a vest, as I say incorrectly, but the reference would be correct if it were to the cat's hat.
# Page 440: The performer whom Bob Clampett remembered as Zoot Watson was actually named Leo Watson, as Keith Scott has discovered in Warner Bros.' records of the recording sessions for Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.
# Page 456: As John Kricfalusi has pointed out, my statement that Rod Scribner took over from Bob McKimson in the middle of a scene in Bob Clampett's Falling Hare is incorrect; the scene in question, near the beginning of the film, was animated entirely by McKimson.
Page 493: As Chase Pritchard has pointed out, I quote Daffy incorrectly as saying in Duck Amuck "Hey, psst! Up there! The scenery! Where's the scenery?" That is the dialogue as it appears in the typewritten script that Chuck Jones permitted me to copy many years ago, but what Daffy actually says is this: "Hey, psst! Whoever's in charge here! The scenery! Where's the scenery?" There was evidently a change in the dialogue before or during the recording session, but because I relied on the script rather than checking the film itself, I didn't catch it.
* Page 500: Typo: Oxford accidentally dropped a "not" in the second sentence when making a correction; the line should read: "What matters is not that a boulder is falling on the Coyote, but how..." That mistake was corrected in the second printing of the hardcover edition.
Page 535: As Vincent Alexander has pointed out, "The Unicorn in the Garden" appeared in Thurber's book Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, not in The War Between Men and Women. It was published first in The New Yorker.
Page 541: When Maurice Noble left the Warner cartoon studio in 1953, it was not to take a job in Saint Louis but to work in Los Angeles for the John Sutherland studio, where he got screen credit for his work on an animated industrial film, Symphony of Steel. His Saint Louis stint was most likely in the late 1940s.
* Page 546: The cartoon's correct title, as it appears on the screen, is Crazy Mixed up Pup (as it is in the index).
* Page 548: As Jerry Beck has pointed out, I assigned the wrong date to Paramount's dropping the Famous Studios name; the correct date is 1956 (Jerry says that the last cartoon bearing the Famous logo was released early in 1957).
Page 570: As Chase Pritchard has pointed out, the official release date for Disney's Aladdin was 1992, not 1993, as the book has it.
Pagd 571: Christian Svenningsen points out that I made an error of the same sort by assigning a release date of 1992 to Beauty and the Beast; it was actually released in 1991.
Page 591: In endnote 39, I describe a gag that in which a featherless chicken makes "chicken soup" by waggling its rump in a pot of liquid. As Devon Baxter has pointed out, that gag first appeared not, as the book says, in the first Merrie Melodie, Lady, Play Your Mandolin! but in a 1932 Merrie Melodie, Goopy Geer.
# Page 635: There should be an index entry here for Donald W. Graham, the famed Disney art instructor. Graham is mentioned on these pages (and maybe others): 84, 90, 110, 112, 139-40, 199, 207, 209, 210-12, 216, 217-18, 500, 542.
When I fixed errors for the second printing of the paperback, I forgot to make some corresponding corrections in the index, and as a result these errors remain:
Page 631: The index entry for Roy Disney should also list page 140.
Page 639: Red Lyon's name is misspelled "Lyons."
Page 647: Leo Watson's name should be listed that way, and not as "Zoot."
Page 647: The entry for What's Cookin' Doc? should also list page 456.
There's always something...
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