State: Mickey drawing leads man on quest

In 1984, Steven Stein was walking by a New York City junk shop when he saw a dusty Mickey Mouse drawing in a broken frame. He thought it looked like something special.

He bought it for $3.

Stein, now a Clearwater area art dealer, hopes to sell it for millions of dollars.

During the past 16 years, Stein has become convinced that he found a lost treasure, one of the earliest drawings of Mickey from the 1920s, possibly from Walt Disney's own hand.

There's just one problem: The chief archivist at Walt Disney Studios, the man entrusted with cataloging and safeguarding Walt's legacy, thinks Stein's drawing is nothing out of the ordinary.

That's definitely a problem. Stein, 48, doesn't care.

"They're trying to pooh-pooh it with these feeble excuses," Stein says. "This piece can speak for itself."

In his view, the Disney corporation isn't willing to admit that it threw away a treasure. Stein insists on calling the drawing "Mickey's blueprint" or "the Holy Grail of animation art."

Through the years, Stein has had various experts, scientists and cartoonists examine it. Their opinions have bolstered his case -- to a point.

Stein has put together a Web site and a 50-page book of documents to convince potential buyers. His sales pitch: "Own a piece of American heritage."

The drawing itself is about 2 feet by 3 feet, done with India ink on expensive vellum. It shows Mickey Mouse talking on a phone.

Right away, some obvious questions arise.

The Mickey in the drawing has short arms and gloved hands. The Mickey in Steamboat Willie, the character's 1928 cartoon debut, has long pipestem-like arms and bare hands.

Stein's response: The drawing is an early experimental work, when nothing about the character had been decided. And Mickey's gloves appear briefly in Steamboat Willie's opening credits.

Critics have wondered whether phones with cradle receivers even existed in the 1920s. They did, but the coiled phone cord had not been invented yet.

Stein's response: "They didn't have a talking mouse then, either, and Disney invented that. If he embellished his drawing with a curly phone cord, we can surely give him that poetic license."

The drawing's long snout and pear-like body shape resemble the early Mickey. (Mickey has since slimmed down.) The "pie-cut eyes," which look like pies with a slice missing, were sometimes used through 1939 and then later in nostalgia drawings.

Stein keeps his prize in a climate-controlled art vault in New York, an expense he can barely afford.

In 1987, Stein sent a small copy of it to Walt Disney archivist Dave Smith, who doubts that it's even the work of a Disney Studios artist.

"The item in no way dates from the 1920s or 1930s and is more likely from the late 1970s or 1980s," Smith wrote in a recent e-mail to the St. Petersburg Times.

In 1989, Stein showed the sketch to Charles Hamilton, an autograph dealer and handwriting expert known for exposing forgeries like the "Hitler diaries." Hamilton, who died in 1996, had examined numerous sketches said to be by Walt Disney. Many of them weren't.

Hamilton thought Stein's cartoon was drawn about 1930, possibly by Walt Disney, and was worth more than a small Walt Disney sketch that had recently sold for $100,000.

In 1991, Chicago forensic scientist Skip Palenik found that the drawing's ink and paper were from 1900-1950.

"If I wrote that, then I stand by it," said Palenik, who has since tested evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing and the JonBenet Ramsey case.

In 1993, Sacramento art appraiser Rudolph Curiel put the drawing's value at $450,000 to $500,000.

Animation art dealer Peter Adamakos, founder of a cartoon museum, thought the drawing was old but that its purpose would probably always be a mystery; it could just as easily have been part of a sign pointing to the Disney studio washrooms as anything else.

"The piece has had a rocky reception, due, I think, to Steve's high hopes that this is some major breakthrough item," Adamakos said last week. "Steve was nothing if not enthusiastic about the piece, and the art world does not like enthusiasm."

Adamakos doesn't think the drawing was done by Walt Disney because Disney wasn't a skilled artist. Still, he thinks it should be worth more than old animation cels, some of which sell for up to $250,000. But he doesn't think Stein should bill it as "some kind of cartoon Shroud of Turin."

Smith, the Disney archivist, doesn't want to get drawn into an argument with Stein. But when pressed, he can punch several holes in Stein's case:

The Disney Studios are in Burbank, Calif., and this drawing was essentially found in the trash in New York in the 1980s.

Walt Disney himself didn't do finished art, only rough sketches.

Animation drawings weren't done on vellum, and Disney artists familiar with other early Disney art don't recall anything like this drawing.

Stein has his answers ready:

Walt Disney did finished art early in his career.

This wasn't an animation drawing. It was a prototype, an early character study.

Someone at Disney must have thrown the drawing out in the 1970s. It ended up in a box of junk that made its way to a New York thrift shop.

Even if it wasn't drawn by Walt himself, it's valuable because it's from the earliest Disney era.

Stein, who moved to this area three years ago, works out of his small home. He says he is close to selling the piece to a collector for $2-million.

Couldn't this picture have just been drawn by an art student or random artist somewhere?

"It's on an expensive kind of paper," Stein said. "No one would have done this just for fun."

He says he doesn't trust auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's, and that others in the art world tried to swindle him. He put the drawing up for sale eBay, but the high bidder wasn't serious.

"A third of my life is entwined in this," Stein said. "For whatever reason, it was my destiny to see this through."

Back to State news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk