Snapshots from Cinecon

As mentioned previously, I’m spending my Labor Day at the annual classic movie convention in Hollywood, Cinecon. Inbetween screenings I’m rummaging the dealers room, looking for animation material, and luckily every year I seem to find something to add to my research.

I’ve been collecting animation still photos since my days working on Of Mice And Magic. Back then, the only way to illustrate a book or article on animation was with physical still photos (mainly in black and white). These days, those materials are no longer needed for illustrations. Most books prefer color, and either scanned animation cels or frame grabs from DVDs are superior to most old publicity photos created back-in-the-day.

Regardless, I still maintain a pretty large collection of animation publicity photos, presskits, posters, slides and lobby cards from animated features, shorts, commercials, TV shows and specials. I enjoy having them even though I don’t need them as much as I used to for my work. Now I collect purely for the fun of it. This year I picked up 15 more unique cartoon stills, and I thought I’d share a few favorites.

The one above is an original ABC press photo for Rocky and His Friends. According to the info on the reverse, it dates from December 17th 1959, and the show aired at 5:30pm on Thursdays. I’d never seen this image before – I love the way Rocky looks and I suspect it’s from some early pitch boards.

Below, from left to right: a nice publicity set up for Cruise Cat (MGM, 1952); Burl Ives appears with the puppets from Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (1964) in this NBC publicity photo – one which I’ve not seen before, nor appears in any of Rick Goldschmidt’s excellent books; and one of two publicity stills I have from the only 3D Woody Woodpecker short, Hypnotic Hick (1953). I hope you enjoy these as much as I do… Click the thumbnails below to see larger versions of each: