Many of the drawings by Albert Hurter included in the books He Drew As He Pleased and in the first volume of They Drew As They Pleased remain mysterious even in the eyes of experienced Disney scholars. I am still trying to figure out, for example, why Hurter created a large series of drawings of mechanical jungle animals. I strongly suspect that they were developed for a proposed Silly Symphony that was later abandoned, but I am yet to find any concrete information about that specific project.

Which is why I was glad to finally find out a few days ago, why those scarecrow drawings were created. The answer could be found in an extremely rare list of Disney story ideas, compiled in December 1939, in which we find the following idea, submitted by story man Webb Smith:

[Scarecrows come to life in the twilight of an autumn corn field; they drink from a jug of liquor and go into a dance…with male and female scarecrows. They go to a barn nearby, find trunks of period costumes and some old musical instruments. They put on a barn dance. Next, they go to the old swimming hole, toss their clothes on the bank and jump in. This reveals their bodies as being sacks of straw. When they come out they put on any clothing they find, since it has become mixed up. They go to the deserted darkened village in a truck and break into a bakery. As dawn is breaking they furiously crank the truck which finally starts and go back to their perches.]

This just in from Gunnar Andreassen:

[Recently I bought an issue of Collier's from 1934 with a short story with "Illustrations by Walt Disney Studio". I immediately recognized one of the illustrations, but it was a bit different from the sketch I remembered having seen earlier.

The sketch for this drawing is found in Canemaker's "Before the Animation Begins" It's rather grotesque, and I have thought that this was a drawing that had never been used. See enclosures. The dog sketch by Hurter has a somewhat "Mickey Mouse" looking animal as the lower jaw, and this probably didn't make it through the sensorship. Since Hurter was an inspirational sketch artist, other artists made the finished ones, here probably by someone in the Publicity Department.

I will guess that the other drawings also were based on sketches by Hurter, as all of them really do look Hurteresque.

There's reason to believe that Collier's also published another story where Hurter's sketches were the inspiration for the illustrations.]

This just in from Gunnar Andreassen:

[Enclosed: An item that was sold at an auction some years ago - a memo from Walt to Albert Hurter.

From a very authorative source I have been told that Walt sent similar memos to other key artists on Snow White.]

[And here is a scan of another Hurter drawing that I bought some months ago. In addition to the four drawings of cookies (Must be an inspirational drawing to The Cookie Carnival) - he has drawn 11 of his "signature drawings" that have nothing to do with cookies.]