thereflectionsmisc

LFC7/1942 Pluto Saves the Ship * 'Pluto Saves the Ship' was written by Jack Hannah, Nick George, and I in 1942 in our evening hours. It was not an adaptation of a cartoon story. Eleanor Packer of Whitman Publishing may have dreamed up the basic plot. It was only a one-shot special designed to take advantage of the wartime jitters. Anyway, we three did the final draft in rough sketch form in my den room in North Hollywood. The post-Pearl Harbor blackouts were in effect, and we had all window blinds closed and taped shut. It was hot and stuffy, and we consumed many beers. The story shows the effects. One of Disney's layout men with a flair for drawing panel after panel of shipyard scaffolding did the artwork. I can't recall his name. Because of the fact that we were only writing action gags to flesh out someone else's story line, none of us felt we deserved any claim to fame. I certainly forgot the whole business very quickly. As for payment, I doubt that we received more than a dollar a page.	OG8/1943 'The Beaver Dam Story' The Barney Bear stories were assigned to me for no particular reason that I know of (artists were in short supply, perhaps). I had never heard of Barney Bear or Benny Burro until the office sent me a model sheet of 'Benny, the Lonesome Burro' and asked me to do a finished 8-page story for the MGM Our Gang No. 8. They must have liked the yarn, for they asked me to do another for Our Gang No. 9. Then I was asked for another Benny for Our Gang No. 10.	OG9/1944 'The Escapee Story 1' The office wrote me to ask if I would do a story for Droopy. They also sent a model sheet of a nameless dog whom I called Happy Hound. I did an 8-pager of him for Our Gang No. 9. Later I saw him in an MGM movie short as Droopy.
OG11/1944 'The Escapee Story 2' The reason I happened to do the Droopy scripts in 1952 and 53 (Clearly, Barks is mistaken about the years - Editor's remark) is that the office wrote me a note or phoned and asked me to try to write them. I never went out of my way to ask for those sorts of jobs.	OG11/1944 'The Ghost Town Story' Next, I was asked to combine Benny with Barney Bear into an 8-page, 8-panel format as a regular feature, starting in Our Gang No. 11.	CP1 Letter to Santa In 1926, Liberty magazine ran a cartoon by James Flagg showing a battle of steam shovels on a construction site in New York. When shown this drawing, Barks said: I had no idea Flagg ever stooped to such slapstick. No, I had never seen his cartoon, nor had I ever read Liberty magazine except in dentists' waiting rooms. The idea of steam shovels fighting is another of those 'naturals' that anybody should be able to think up.
DD45 'The Dogcatcher Story' Written and drawn as an 8 page story but the editors whittled it down to fit a special hole in a rush. In the process they got some panels reversed on the bottom half of page 5, leaving the story a bad jumbled mess.	DD68 Master Glasser The Master Glasser story was from a script sent to me from the office. As usual, I did lots of rewriting to pull the gags together.	WDCD Dainty Daredevil The Daisy Duck story in W.D.C. Digest must be one I drew for Chase (Craig - Editor's remark) last June. 8 pages. He was desperate for someone to do the art. All the current ink slingers having been busy or away on vacation.