The Mad Hatter Backgrounds

The Mad Hatter (1948) was the second cartoon by the Walter Lantz studio released by United Artists.

Ken O’Brien and Freddie Moore from Disney got their first animation credits for Lantz in this short, but the backgrounds were by veteran workhorse Fred Brunish. His paintings always suit the story for the Lantz cartoons.

A couple of interiors of Woody’s house. The closet door is on an overlay.



Wally’s hat store. The window at the right and the wood exterior below it are on an overlay.



City exteriors. Whoever was doing Dick Lundy's layouts gives us some angles on the scenes. The theatre downtown is playing Andy Panda cartoons.



Exteriors of a field. The first frame is part of a longer background.



Shots of the “B” Pictures studio lot.



Here’s part of a longer background. I can’t add anything else to the right because the colours don’t match when I put the frames together. The fan blades are on a cycle of three drawings, on ones. The garbage can is on an overlay.



Brunish returned to the Lantz studio after it shut down for over a year when the U-A contract expired. He died on June 25, 1952 of cirrhosis of the liver. He was 49.