Pauvre, Pauvre Pussycat

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It’s easy to forget that even though Walt Disney is the individual who won the most Best Animated Short Oscars with 12, the winningest animated characters in that category are Tom & Jerry, with 7 awards.  No other characters come close.  Mickey, Bugs, Daffy, Wallace & Gromit—combined, their totals don’t amount to as many.  Tom & Jerry were huge in the 40s & 50s with over 100 shorts produced by MGM during that time, but today, they don’t have the same iconic or nostalgic status as the stables of Warner Brothers or the Mouse House.  The National Film Registry at the Library of Congress has earmarked 700 American films (shorts, features, docs, cartoons) as national treasures of cultural and historical significance since its inception in 1989, but no Tom & Jerry short is included yet.  And needless to say, they don’t have a postage stamp either, while a host of Disney & Warners characters do.

It’s probably a combination of reasons.  Largely free of dialogue, the films don’t have the sophisticated humor and in-jokes of WB films by Bob Clampett or Chuck Jones.  Since the films always put the leads in violent opposition, they don’t have the warmth and sentimentality of Uncle Walt’s creations.  Certainly, it can be argued that the Tom & Jerry “brand” degraded into the 60s and beyond, as the quality of the humor and the animation went in decline and eventually migrated toward mediocre television.  And now, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, T&J's creators, are probably better known as pioneers of mass-produced TV cartoon sitcoms (The Flinstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo) than as multiple Academy Award-winners.

The Two Mouseketeers (1952) and its three prequels (Touché, Pussy Cat! ’54; Tom and Chérie ’55; Royal Cat Nap ’58) represent the film franchise at its peak popularity, but are also interesting departures from its typical formula.  The films follow the conflict set up in the Dumas books, with Jerry as part of the king’s guards and Tom, the Cardinal’s.  Even the use of the word “Mouseketeer” is interesting since Disney would appropriate the term for his Mickey Mouse Club just a few years after this first short was released.  And all films feature Nibbles, the smaller, grey mouse who appeared in only a handful of other T&J shorts.

There’s one thing that stays consistent with all Tom & Jerry cartoons, a thing which has always been a curious contradiction and that’s that while the anthropomorphized Mickey Mouse is living in an animal-only world, Jerry is a rodent trying to settle in a human domestic environment.  Unlike Sylvester’s preoccupation with Tweetie (a fellow pet) or Wile E. Coyote’s pursuit of the roadrunner (minding its own business in the desert), it’s Tom’s job as the house cat to get Jerry.  The closest cartoon analogue at the time might be Disney’s Chip ‘n’ Dale or WB’s Goofy Gophers (both introduced a few years after T&J’s 1940 debut), but even they are wild animals temporarily clashing with a disgruntled homeowner.  Jerry is an uninvited, comfortably-settled house mouse and in any real world scenario, we’d be rooting for the cat.  Or at least calling pest control.

So in Two Mouseketeers, Tom is tasked with defending a banquet table of food, while Jerry and Nibbles are only interested in crashing the feast.  Along the way, there are plenty of food gags and violent episodes, though their period roles here mean there’s plenty of fun swordplay, too.  Jerry is plucky and resourceful as usual, and Nibbles’s most prominent personality trait is a complete obliviousness to danger, much to Jerry’s chagrin.  And despite Tom often having the upper hand (he was always a formidable foe, rarely incompetent), the mice emerge triumphant in the end.

Touché, Pussycat! is essentially a prequel, focusing on Captain of the Guard Jerry first meeting Nibbles and training him to be a Mouseketeer.  Needless to say, the new recruit is not very good at it and despite him being initially rejected by Jerry, he proves his mettle in facing Tom when Jerry later gets into trouble.  The title comes from the first film, since unlike Jerry, Nibbles does speak in this series: mostly French with a smattering of English, all in an innocent French accent.

Tom and Chérie has Nibbles acting as courier of love notes between Jerry and a mouse mademoiselle, so he’s the one forced to spar with Tom every time a new correspondence is sent.  Royal Cat Nap is just a variation of their Oscar-winning Quiet Please! (1945), with the king trying to sleep but Jerry and Nibbles’s intrusion (again, in search for food) being the source of increasing anxiety for Tom.  Of course, if Jerry is part of the king’s musketeer guard (as the previous films establish), why is Tom the one guarding him against his own loyalists?

 

With this last entry, you can see the writing on the wall with the future of the franchise.  The animation quality isn't as good, there are lazy coloring mistakes, and the humor is really repetitive.  Personally, I'm a fan of the 40s T&J, where Tom is an actual cat, with terrific detailing in his fur and face and he actually moves around on all fours.  By the time of The Two Mouseketeers, Tom is a full-blown biped and while the gags are fine in the next two installments, you can see the set designs and lighting getting flatter and less interesting.

A few other random thoughts on the films: We’re used to seeing Bugs or Daffy in all sorts of historical time periods or geographic locations, but T&J have always battled in contemporary America, sometimes urbanscapes but mostly residential domiciles.  So 17th century France is a real departure.  Another thing unusual is that Nibbles gets drunk in the first two films—France, after all makes the presence of wine ubiquitous.  Both times are due to accidental immersion but the inebriation of a non-adult character is still unusual in a kid’s cartoon.  And take a look at the stills between Two and Touché and you see when Hollywood began adopting a wider aspect ratio from the standard 1.33.

One of the strangest things that happens in Two Mouseketeers is that Tom actually dies.  It’s made clear to him that failing to protect the food will result in his beheading and in the final scene, when Jerry & Nibbles are enjoying their spoils, we see the guillotine fall in the distance.  Hence, the title of this article (Nibbles’s closing tribute)--appropriately, since today is Bastille Day.  Of course, nine lives notwithstanding, Tom was subjected to countless lethal indignities over the decades, rarely succumbing to his injuries.  But we're led to believe he does here, and though I doubt Hanna/Barbera cared much about faithful continuity, making Touché a prequel (with the other two following suit) remains consistent in that sense.  Then again, in Touché, we see a falling axe slice Tom completely in half vertically, and he does recover from that, so maybe his date with The National Razor wasn’t 100% fatal after all.

One other thing worth mentioning is the music scoring, which is uniformly strong.  While Carl Stalling is deservedly venerated for his work with Warner Brothers cartoons, Scott Bradley does an excellent job with the T&J material, too.  And just like Stalling would use themes and motifs from WB musicals (mostly Busby Berkeley's), it’s great fun to see how Bradley takes advantage of the enormous MGM music library to seed the stories with little musical references.  Similarly, when Chuck Jones took over the Tom & Jerry shorts in the 60s, the design elements were reminiscent of some of his 50s work and the gags became more and more outlandish, but what kills those shorts for me is the terrible music that accompanies them.  They’re really hard to bear and the shorts from that era are best viewed on mute.

Of course, the most prominent legacy Tom & Jerry have left for contemporary viewers may perhaps be as inspiration for Itchy and Scratchy on The Simpsons.  While I’ve written previously on how Krazy Kat is a more suitable progenitor of I&S, there’s no denying that the vicious brutality heaped onto cat Scratchy from mouse Itchy owes a lot to the over-the-top physical gags and one-upmanship from T&J.

I mentioned that no other cartoon characters came close to Tom & Jerry’s Oscar tally, but I suppose it’s fitting that a distant second is Sylvester, who appeared in 3 winning shorts—two with Tweetie and one for Speedy Gonzales’s debut.  Of course, Sylvester did get a stamp and while the depiction of postage stamps are few and far between in T&J shorts (even when letters are sent, like in the Chérie still above), a mailbox gag is still a reliable standby, like this from The Flying Cat (1951).

Of course, if you want to count feature film appearances, too, then Mickey Mouse’s Oscar total comes close: Lend a Paw (1941, his sole winning short), Fantasia (2 awards), and his cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (4 awards).  That’s 7, but Tom and Jerry both appear in the Oscar-winning feature Anchors Aweigh (1945, Sidney)--most notably with Jerry performing a dance duet with Gene Kelly--so their total is 8 and still in the lead.  It’s actually interesting that while neither of them appear in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Droopy (another MGM property at the time) does.

And since this post is part of the larger Swashbuckler blogathon going on this weekend, it’s worth noting the one cinema icon best known as a swashbuckler who does have a USPS postage stamp: Douglas Fairbanks, who died in 1939, a year before T&J’s debut.  Be sure to check out the rest of this year’s participants!

The cat and mouse stamps from last year's pets issue are Scott #5122 & 5117.  Douglas Fairbanks is Scott #2088, Frank Sinatra #4265 and Sylvester & Tweetie #3204.  The Year of the Rat is #3895a and Marge & Lisa Simpson are #4400 & 4402 respectively.  The Halloween Jack-o-Lantern is #5137 and the U.S. Navy stamp dates back to 1945 and is Scott #935.

All the World Is Waiting for You

Despite the remarkable ascendancy, critically and commercially, of the Marvel Comics cinematic Universe in the last decade, there is no denying that it has largely been one big sausage party.  Growing up as a Marvel comics fan, this was also true of the publisher itself.  Women heroes, when represented, were usually part of a team (Sue Richards, Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey) and there weren’t any female icons with the heft to carry their own title in any significant way.  When the USPS released a set of Marvel stamps ten years ago, the interests of gender parity meant including marginal characters like Elektra and Spider-Woman over far more famous heroes like Thor and Daredevil.  This was because Marvel simply didn’t have any females as big as their counterparts at DC, Wonder Woman or Supergirl.

And so the films have followed-suit, with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow (incredible ass-kicker but essentially power-free) doing most of the heavy lifting across five appearances to date.  Even when staffed with Oscar-winners like Halle Berry, Jennifer Lawrence and Anna Paquin, the Marvel films have rarely known what to do with them.  In fact, the only female-driven Marvel film so far has been Elektra, Jennifer Garner’s incarnation who got her own movie after first being introduced as a secondary character in a film where Ben Affleck played an urban vigilante.  Sound familiar?

So Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman is far overdue, especially when you consider that her DC colleagues Superman and Batman have had a combined total of 16 appearances in films since Christopher Reeve first began the modern era of superhero movies almost 40 years ago.  That’s one every 2.5 years.  And that’s not even counting The LEGO Batman Movie (2017’s fifth highest money-maker currently).

They say to never let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and Wonder Woman is good.  The business on Exposition Island is clunky (most origin stories are) but rich with Amazon badassery.  There’s not enough of Etta Candy (Lucy Davis) or Antiope (Robin Wright), though there is something delicious about having Princess Buttercup unleash her inner warrior.  The third act reveal of Ares is smart and well-thought out, but what it means is that through most of the film, there really isn’t a truly menacing villain as counterpoint to Gal Gadot’s imposing presence.  Danny Huston was a bigger threat in the Wolverine offshoot movie as a mere mortal, and is definitely no Red Skull.

For of course, Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) is the obvious analogue to Wonder Woman, a pair of noble neophytes waging war in the German (or Belgian) woods via historical flashback.  But the film that Wonder Woman more closely resembles, and a comparison I haven’t seen anywhere yet, is Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year.  For like Diana, Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo is fierce but gentle, naïve but strong-willed, and doesn’t need anyone’s help to take out a room full of assailants.

But more importantly, their arcs are similar because they are their own McGuffin.  Diana thinks she’s carrying the God-Killer (her sword), but she actually *is* the God Killer, just like Leeloo is herself the Fifth Element.  Both have, late in the game, serious bouts of disillusionment with mankind and its propensity for war and violence.  But both overcome this despondency and very explicitly choose to manifest Love—not merely Eros (the stock & trade of comic book fantasy), but Agape, a higher spiritual extension of compassion, generosity and self-sacrifice.

In this sense, I think it resembles Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013), a film I’ll still argue is--while also flawed--underrated and misunderstood.  Both heroes are not mere saviors, but also a means to inspire those around them.  But while that film is cloaked in a brooding melancholy, Wonder Woman has clear-eyed optimism, even in the face of man-made horrors.  After Chris Nolan’s excellent but dark Batman trilogy set the tone for DC’s moody temperament, WW is exactly the shot-in-the-arm this comic series needs.  Which is why I worry about the upcoming Justice League movie, which will depict Diana a hundred years later.  Will she be more jaded and cynical?  She was the best thing about the bad Batman v Superman because she brought warmth and sass and energy.  But as the new movie demonstrates, her real heroic power is Love.  How much of that will survive when she joins this Super Boys Club with a different director at the helm?

The same weekend I saw Wonder Woman, I attended the SF Silent Film Festival.  And it was a welcome reminder of how the movies weren’t afraid of strong women back then, even if the times were far more conservative.  In Filibus (Roncoroni, 1915), the title role is a female mastermind—exceptional thief, daring impostor, and the head of a motley crew of outlaws with gadgets that would make James Bond green with envy.  In Outside the Law (Browning, 1920), Lon Chaney may have two roles (one heroic, one villainous) but it’s Priscilla Dean who calls the shots when she inherits a criminal empire from her father.  She balances being a reformist and a resourceful crook with equal aplomb.

But the real eye-opener for me was The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916), a remarkable collaboration between famous Russian dancer Anna Pavlova and pioneering director Lois Weber.  The first American woman to direct a feature-length film, Weber had dozen of titles under her belt by this time, but she was still known for contemporary dramas and social issue pictures.  This was a film on a completely different level—an epic period piece with a higher budget and bigger scale than she’d ever worked with before.  It reminded me of the talk of giving Patty Jenkins such an expensive tentpole picture after just one feature (the Oscar-winning Monster) and some TV work.

The final result?  Portici is a glorious achievement, with incredible tableaus, jaw-dropping camera movement, and a wonderful sense of drama amidst the herculean (or perhaps, Amazonian?) task of managing so many moving parts within a single frame.  The film isn’t perfect (it still suffers from some stiff dramaturgy typical of the time), but the achievement is impressive: a gorgeous restoration of a film that deserves to be better-known.

Which got me thinking: Why isn’t there a US postage stamp of Weber?  Or of any woman filmmaker for that matter?  Body and Soul (1925) was also featured at the festival, and both Oscar Micheaux and Paul Robeson, the film’s director and star respectively, have well-deserved US postage stamps.  In fact, there’s a wonderful series of stamps commemorating Black Cinema and a handful of film directors have been honored on stamps starting with D.W. Griffith.

 

But the only women who have been honored from the American film industry have been actresses—amazing, powerful, influential actresses, but still ones who never really worked outside the confines of that craft.  No directors or producers, no screenwriters or below-the-line artists.  Douglas Fairbanks has a US stamp, but not his wife Mary Pickford, one of the biggest stars of the silent era and a co-founder of United Artists.

No Lois Weber or Mabel Normand or June Mathis.  No Maya Deren or Dorothy Arzner or Ida Lupino (as important a director as an actress).  Not yet, at least. 

But I’ll keep hoping that one day, I can add a Frances Marion stamp to my Anna Christie card (part of her prolific writing career) or an Edith Head stamp to my Roman Holiday card (one of over 400 films to her credit as costume designer).  Or any number of women who were essential in making the movies magic.  History was often not kind to their placement in the industry or the opportunities afforded them.  Which makes their achievements that much more worth celebrating.  Wonder Women all.

These are the Scott #s for the stamps pictured:  

The Wonder Woman stamp from the DC Comics issue (lower right on Lynda Carter card) is #4084c.  The three stamps from the Wonder Woman issue a decade later are #5149, 5150, & 5151.  The other stamps pictured from the DC Comics issue are Superman (#4084k), Green Lantern (#4084b), the Flash (#4084p), Green Arrow (#4084d) and Hawkman (#4084j).  The Batman stamp was from the issue for that character (#4934).  On the Justice League card, you can see all 3 different types of postmarks.

The two stamps pictured from the Marvel Comics issue are Captain America (#4159o) and Elektra (#4159i).  The movie stars pictured are Paul Robeson (#3834), Greta Garbo (#3943), Audrey Hepburn (#3786) and Gregory Peck (#4526).  Oscar Micheaux is #4464.  Mary Pickford's Canadian stamp was issued in 2006.

The stamp for Charles Demuth's painting "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" is #4748a.  The textile worker (#4801k) is from the Building America series.  The Field Day stamp (#5182) is part of the brand new WPA posters series.

A Force to be Beckoned With

Growing up in San Diego, it was summer’s annual pilgrimage—waking up before dawn and piling in the car so we could arrive in Anaheim by the time the gates opened.  This was back in the time when you literally could do everything in one day, the era of “Mission to Mars”, the People Mover, Bear Country, and the E-ticket ride.  It was the "Happiest Place on Earth" and always represented not just one childhood siren song, but the whole Disney catalog we'd collected on LPs.  By the time I went to Disneyland for Grad Night (a tradition for SoCal high schools), all three Star Wars films had been released and the new ride at the Magic Kingdom was the motion simulator, Star Tours.  Little could I possibly know (or imagine) that 25 years later, I would be a fixture in the park myself, a minuscule part of these two pop culture legacies.

If you Google me, always one of the first things to pop up is my IMDB profile which includes one single acting credit: Rebel Pilot on Star Tours, The Adventures Continue (2011).  I’ve talked about my life on Skywalker Ranch before on this blog, and while many different highlights stand out (some of which I can talk about, some I can’t), that film credit is the one thing about me that the internet will likely remember the longest.  Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, so here are some thoughts on that day I spent on the green screen stages of “Kerner Optical” (ILM) in downtown San Rafael and the first time I saw the final product, many years later.

We were only given the sketchiest of outlines: we were in a hangar and we were welcoming back the patrons of the ride, who miraculously survived their thrilling adventure.  Because there were no corrective lenses “A Long Time Ago”, I had to hide my glasses inside my glove take after take, so I could only barely make out the camera as we all collectively whooped and hollered and applauded.  As is often reported, there’s a lot of down time on the set, so after multiple turns at that scene, we wore Hefty trash bag bibs while eating at the craft service tables (all our costumes were original artifacts from the first SW trilogy—see the Return of the Jedi still below).  Then there was lots of hangar B-roll footage: “I want you to walk from here across to there, but not in this area, because that’s where a big spaceship will be”, etc.  I also remember there was an actor from the prequels there (one of Padme’s guards) who had some lines to intro the ride, which we watched being filmed from the wings.  I asked if I could get a SAG card from my stint that day (I had no lines, so the answer was No) and then went back to my regular job the next day.

Years later, and just a few months after the ride opened, I left Lucasfilm.  And while the ride sounded cool (with its multiple randomizing elements, which made every experience a unique one), it hardly was convenient or practical to travel hundreds of miles to see myself for a whole 15 seconds.  But I’d hear from friends once in a while—none of whom had known I was on the new Star Tours but who could clearly pick me out among my rebel band.  I was intrigued but since the ride was in 3D, all the cel phone renditions that popped up on YouTube relegated me to a blur.  And that was part of my past anyway. Even when my mom asked to be taken to Disneyland one last time before leaving California for good, there were a lot of things I knew she wanted to do more (and with the randomizing element, there was no guarantee the herky-jerky ride which she wouldn’t enjoy would even pay off with an appearance from her son).

But then I heard there was going to be an expansion of Disneyland, which would include a huge new Star Wars section.  Would they move the ride?  It is just a flight simulator, easy to relocate.  Would it be closed for a while?  Would the now-expanding universe of new Star Wars films mean the need for constant revisions and updates?  I couldn’t be sure, but I knew I would feel like an idiot if I never saw myself on this thing.  The idea of going down seemed absurd since I had just been there recently (because a campus that big required me pushing her around in a wheelchair, Mom and I were able to go on everything she wanted).  But just around this time last year, I decided to drive down and go.

It only took two turns standing in line to see the module with me in it.  It’s a fun ride, cleverly done and entertaining.  No sign of any of the B-roll footage they shot; all the hangar footage on view as patrons wait in line is now much more CG-oriented.  No sign of Padme’s aide (C-3PO now took over hosting duties).  But sure enough, I was there in what one might call muted exuberance, welcoming myself home.  And the one module I'm in has my favorite music cue ("The Asteroid Field") from the entire series.  I found a single YouTube that shows all the original variations, so now I’m visible for the idly curious: my module (a hybrid of Eps 2 & 6) starts at timecode 19:51; I appear at 21:15.

And like I suspected, they had added a new module that included scenes from Episode 7: The Force Awakens.  Like George before it, the Mouse has the itch it can’t not scratch, this impulse to update, revise, and rebrand.  That’s particularly true of the park where I had so many childhood memories. I remember Nemo’s submarine ride when it was an homage to Jules Verne, Tarzan’s treehouse when it belonged to the Swiss Family Robinson, the Pirates ride before it was polluted by the movie’s score and uncanny valley Johnny Depp.  The reason I went in the spring was so I could ride the Haunted Mansion when it wasn’t taken over by The Nightmare Before Christmas (much as I love that film).  The one time I was on a ride that broke down and we all had to walk through it to exit outside, it was the now-long-gone miniaturization ride "Adventures thru Inner Space" which was in the same spot where Star Tours is now.

Another ride that’s no longer around is America Sings, this strange musical revue of early traditional American music, all performed by animatronic animal characters.  As it happens, most of those characters are now on Splash Mountain, in some ways an even stranger ride since it references a movie, The Song of the South (1946), that I’d wager few Disney visitors younger than I have ever seen.  There’s a perverse form of denial in the Mouse House about that controversial film since there’s no song you’ll hear more often in Disneyland than "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" (it is everywhere), but you won’t find the movie in their gift shops or the title referenced at all.  But it is a great ride and when I was on it, I had an epiphany: I’ll wager that Splash Mountain will be rebranded as a Zootopia variation at some point, since the rabbit and fox are already principal characters.  Plus, it's a safer, fresher property. Disney has little patience for the forgettable, so the regrettable seems even more likely to be casually swept away.

The one thing that made this Disneyland trip most unusual for me was that there was no urgency about lines or access or getting the most bang for my buck.  I had one mission, which I accomplished early, so the rest was active but oddly relaxing.  Some old favorites I revisited, but there was plenty of new stuff to discover: California Adventure is more serene, less congested.  The truly psychedelic Winnie-the-Pooh ride is audacious and bizarre, and the Monster’s Inc. and Little Mermaid rides are in the spirit of the old school Fantasyland storybook rides.  Cars-land is more entertaining than either of the actual movies.  I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed Toon Town as a kid (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? opened the same year as my grad night), but I did find this extraordinary little tidbit.  This is the mailbox outside Goofy's house.  Do you see the manila envelope?  Here's a close-up, upside down.

 

I love this inside joke.  The postmark date--July 17, 1955--was the date that the original park opened, back when Uncle Walt was alive.  And while we know a stork (voiced by one Sterling Holloway, a Disney regular) delivered the famous baby elephant in Dumbo, Roger Rabbit reminds us that in Toon Town, storks also deliver the mail.

 

Had any visitor even noticed that postmark before?  It’s the most incidental of grace notes.  But that’s what’s always been most amazing about the park: its meticulous attention-to-detail, embedding Easter eggs and hidden references everywhere—things you might never notice but whose cumulative impact is undeniable.  But I’ll admit it: it’s weird to be a childless single adult at the park.  It’s saturated In the cult of family and franchising and nostalgia and while it’s all impressive (almost to the point of overwhelming), I really have a hard time imagining myself ever going back.  I’ve seen everything there is to see, in some cases many times over.  Things will change, of course, but while I’ve been a lot of places across several continents, I hope to see much more out there before it’s all over.  The real world is my Tomorrowland.  And it’s even more true now than it was when I first heard the Sherman Brothers song: It is a Small World after all.  And an inviting one.

The day before I went to Disneyland, I hiked through Griffith Park and to the top of the Hollywood sign, something I’d always wanted to do.  I was in no rush, so it took a few hours of just me surrounded by nature, slowly working my way up to this gorgeous vista, a heavenly view of the City of Angels.  That hike was a bigger deal to me than what came the next day.  That was true magic. 

 

 

First, the Disney stamps.  You'll note the California Adventures card has all 5 different Mickeys (one per issue over 5 years).  Note that those postmarks are all Anaheim or Orlando (home of Disney World, which I've never visited).  To summarize:

Mickey, Donald, Goofy - Scott #3865

Bambi - #3866

Pinocchio - #3868

Mickey, Pluto - #3912

Alice in Wonderland - #3913

Snow White - #3915

Mickey, Minnie - #4025

Cinderella - #4026

Fantasia Mickey - #4192

Peter Pan - #4193

Dumbo - #4194

101 Dalmatians - #4342

Steamboat Willie - #4343

Sleeping Beauty - #4344

The two California statehood stamps are #997 and #3438.  The X-wing fighter is #4143m and the planet Neptune #5076.  Joel Chandler Harris wrote the Uncle Remus stories; his stamp (on the Splash Mountain card) is #980.  The Jack-o-Lantern is #5137.  

And at the time the Muppet stamps were released, they had a 3D show at California Adventure (though it's not there now).  The Scott #s are Jim Henson (#3944k), Kermit (#3944a), Fozzie (#3944b), Statler & Waldorf (#3944e), the Swedish Chef (#3944f), and Dr. Honeydew & Beaker (#3944h).