Characters: Elmer Elephant, Joe Giraffe, Joey Hippo, Tillie Tiger (voice : Bernice Hansen)
Director : Wilfred Jackson
Animation: Ward Kimball, Hamilton Luske, Paul Hopkins, Al Eugster, Gerry Geronomi
Story: Earl Hurd, Bianca Majolie, Roy Williams
Elmer Elephant is a Silly Symphonies cartoon short produced by The Walt Disney Company, directed by Wilfred Jackson and released on March 28, 1936.
The short tells the story of a timid elephant named Elmer. In this story, he is invited to Tillie Tiger's birthday party, bringing her a bouquet of flowers. Tillie loves Elmer, but the other animal kids make fun of his nose and cruelly mock him when Tillie isn't around to defend him. Brokenhearted by their teasing, Elmer leaves the party and cries in front of the nearby pond, but is reassured by a nearby giraffe who admits to him that he used to suffer the same teasing about his neck. Just then, a fire breaks out at Tillie's treehouse with her still in it, and the rescue efforts by the other children prove futile. With the help of the giraffe and some pelicans who resemble Jimmy Durante, Elmer successfully puts out the fire and rescues Tillie.
Elmer would later go on to star in a serial in the Silly Symphonies comic strip, even getting his own strip which unfortunately did not last long. And like the Three Little Pigs before him, he would also become a popular character in merchandising. However, with the exceptions of the crowd shots in the later Silly Symphonies short Toby Tortoise Returns and a cameo appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Elmer was never again featured in animation. (He never even appeared in crowd shots on House of Mouse.)
Today, the Elmer Elephant short can be viewed on the Silly Symphonies DVD set in the first wave of the Walt Disney Treasures line. It has also been included as a bonus feature, alongside fellow Silly Symphony short The Flying Mouse, on both DVD releases for Dumbo. From 1983 through 1997, his short was also the featured subject of DTV's music video of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes.
Drawn to Southern California, spring 1965, by the lure of a career in Comic Art, Mike spent his first 14 years in comic books, comic strips, and TV animation. Beginning as RUSS Manning's assistant on MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER and TARZAN comic books (at the end of their working relationship Mike lettered and inked the last 6 months of Russ's TARZAN syndicated Sunday strip and the first 4 months of the daily and Sunday syndicated STAR WARS, late 1970s) and then inking and pencilling for Western Publishing (Gold Key). Mike inked such West Coast talents as Sparky Moore, Mike Arens, Paul Norris, and Doug Wildley.
His drawing asignments were on TARZAN, SPACE GHOST, coloring books, puzzles, etc. for Western and doing layout on network animation series like SPIDERMAN. At Gold Key he wrote/adapted and drew SPEED BUGGY, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KIDS, TARZAN, MAGNUS, and designed and executed covers for Hanna-Barbera TV ADVENTURE HEROES, etc. Mike contributed to James Warren's CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPERELLA magazines and began drawing the comic panel CRUSIN' record album covers (over 2 dozen to date), many of which he's scripted.
For East coast firms, Mike inked artists Don Heck, Steve Ditko, Ramona Fraden and others, but during this period he is best known to comic fans for his decade as letterer/inker for legendary Jack Kirby at National and then Marvel.
From late Spring 1979, Mike spent the next 14 years on staff with the Walt Disney Company in the creative department of their Consumer Product/Licensing division, addressing the areas of book publishing, comic books and strips, and all forms of themepark and licensed merchandise as a character artist/product designer, performing as idea man, concept and final line artist, and sometime inker.
At Disney, Mike designed and art directed the DICK TRACY and 3-D ROCKETEER comic book Music Company read-alongs. He created the "new look" that launched the massive WINNIE THE POOH licensing program in late 1993. Featured in a 43 minute video "How To Draw Pooh" sent to over 40 licensees, Mike takes no small amount of pride in the fact that POOH soon (and still) outsold Mickey Mouse worldwide.
June 1993 Mike left his staff position to spend the next 7 years full time free lancing for The Disney Store's creative group, becoming their "Main POOH Man" and creating 3-D products utilizing Disney characters.
Since Spring 2000 Mike has functioned as an Art service doing pencil work on a wide variety of projects, including creating character Orthographic Turns and environment "floor plans" for computer game animators, DIGIMON products, on screen icons for FOX FAMILY CHANNEL and FOX KIDS NETWORK, READER RABBIT work books, RESCUE HEROES toy packaging, etc.
Spring 2001 found Mike and Laurie, his lovely wife and concept collaborater, returning to his birth state, Oregon, settling in Medford, and in the process returned to his career roots. And in the last few years he's found time to ink such luminaries as Steve Rude and Eric Larsen, to name a couple. Mike continues to create Disney character art for limited edition collector pin sets and does "recreations". He strongly believes that his passion, attention to detail and accuracy, and his commitment to integrity will keep him at the board for a long time to come.
