Sunday 29 November 2015

Keaton, Eisenstein and Disney

Saw this piece on eBay a while ago. Four Mickey illustrations in a frame.
Seller writes: "Drawn and stamped by the Disney studios vintage 1930's exclusively for Buster Keaton and personally signed by Walt Disney."







I wrote to the seller who said "We took our piece to Disney Corporate in Burbank to the Archive Records Division and they have confirmed that it is a piece that Walt signed for from illustration to have for his personal use as a gift."



Well...
It's simply a bad tracing of the Mickey Mouse daily from 2-21, 1930.
And I've told the seller so.
Do the seller write that information in the description after re-listing it? No.
I wonder why...
And they want $15.000 for it.
Good luck selling it! There are suckers out there. You might just catch one.



1 comment:

DisneyDave said...

The actual original of this piece was owned by Walt Disney's boyhood friend William Rast, and it was personalized and signed to Rast in Walt's own hand. I know because I saw it with my own eyes when I went to Rast's house in Seattle to interview him. The piece was hanging on his wall at the time and it was gorgeous. The two grew up together, and snuck into an amusement park together when they were kids, among other things. Rast had a candy store in Seattle and became a sponsor of the local theater's 1930s Mickey Mouse Club - he also sold the Mickey Mouse chocolate bar in his shop. They maintained their friendship and Rast and his family visited Walt several times at the studio in the 1950s and later Disneyland.