Folio: Bruce Bushman’s Disney designs

Disney artist Bruce Bushman started work in the late 1930s, while the studio was working on Fantasia and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Bushman subsequently became responsible for designing almost every element of the Mickey Mouse Club, from sets and props to logos. The show, which aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996, was Disney’s second foray  into television, primarily a means  of promoting and funding the building of Disneyland theme park. As the show’s first art director, Bushman  was responsible for shaping its characteristic look. Shown here  are eight technical sketches from an incredible range of around 300 drawings produced by Bushman for sets and props. These drawings would be passed on to studio carpenters who allegedly had to change very little to successfully construct Bushman’s designs. The original design for the Club House itself (first column, second from top), was home to ‘Anything Can Happen Day’,  in which skits from the ‘Mouseketeers’ would promote the theme park. Bushman would later go  on to contribute greatly to the design  of these theme park projects, before leaving Disney to work for both Ivan Tors Studios and Hanna-Barbera.  His impressive oeuvre tracks a movement from the shack-like Old West architecture of Mickey Mouse Club to the googie heights of the Jetsons’ aerocars.