“Mickey’s Magic Hat” artwork for 1935 Good Housekeeping sells privately for $35,125 Hake's has sold the original Tom Wood artwork for Disney’s “Mickey’s Magic Hat,” which appeared in Good Housekeeping in July 1935, for $35,125.
Housekeeping pages essentially became the yardstick by which the quality of other Disney art was to be measured. Today, these pages serve as treasured examples of the visions that artists had for Disney films, sometimes months or even years before the corresponding films were completed.
As Disney continued to achieve a number of successes and even received awards for the cartoons, he also continually increased the standards for both animation and still images featuring his characters. Kamen succeeded in featuring those quality images on products all over the world, frequently in advance of the debut of the cartoons featuring them.
While the printed magazine pages remain actively collected today, it is still rare for one of the originals of these important, historical pieces to go on the market.
“Mickey’s Magic Hat” Good Housekeeping page artwork is unique among the GH series because this July 1935 page was based on a cartoon still in development at the time—that would end up being released as two cartoons. “Mickey’s Vaudeville Show” was to have featured Mickey, Donald, Pluto, and a magic hat, but ended up being divided into Mickey’s Grand Opera (1936), with Pluto as the primary victim of the magic; and Magician Mickey (1937), with Donald and without Pluto. Tom Wood’s “Mickey’s Magic Hat” art not only carries a title that neither finished cartoon ever had, but features all the long-billed Donald images that any Donald Duck collector could ever want.
