London, Sep 9 (ANI): Original Walt Disney drawings have been recovered from an attic office in Blackpool, which could be worth up to 12,000 pounds each.
The 15 mint condition black and white and colour drawings were in the middle of hundreds of files gathered in over a century of Blackpool Illuminations.
Altogether the files have been valued at 500,000 pounds for insurance purposes, but it is thought the original Disney drawings alone could fetch up to 180,000 pounds altogether should they be auctioned off.
The material is being catalogued, and will be archived for future public viewing for the first time.
The Disney drawings had been sent from Hollywood to Blackpool by Walt Disney himself.
His studio was first approached in 1953 by Blackpool Council’s Illuminations staff, when they wanted to include characters, including Mickey Mouse, in their tableaux.
One of the drawings featuring Mickey shows how they wanted to animate him for the Golden Mile, but Disney demanded the characters be totally accurate to the original cinema blockbusters, and so sent off artists’ work to the English resort.
“The attic room is actually part of one of Blackpool’s original farmhouses built long before the town became a seaside resort,” the Telegraph quoted Colette Halstead, Illuminations’ creative development coordinator, as saying.
“The Illuminations department has just grown round it over the decades and old files and equipment like the ex Army field telephones used to co-ordinate the seven mile switch on were stored there.
“We are slowly moving to new premises and we were asked to catalogue the room’s contents when we came across the Disney material,” she added. (ANI)