Auction fails to aid scrambling Cartoon Museum
By Erika Gimenes, Hollywood.com Staff
New York, May 20, 2001 -- A 1928 six-page, 36-panel storyboard for the animated Mickey Mouse short "Plane Crazy" failed to sell at auction on Saturday, leaving the Museum of Cartoon Art in Boca Raton, Fla., scrambling in debt. The drawing was estimated to be worth more than $3 million.
The auction, held by the auction house Guernsey's at the New York Historical Society, was held to raise money to pay off a $2 million debt and set up an endowment for the museum.
In addition to Disney favorites, the auction contained original comic strips from the New York Daily News and the last "Cathy" comic strip of the 20th century, the paper reported.
The idea for the auction came from the museum's officials, who found themselves unable to pay about $1 million in mortgage payments. More than 600 items, some donated and some coming from the museum's collection of 200,000 drawings, were put on the block.
But the Walt Disney drawing failed to bring in a minimum bid of $800,000 and other cartoons were sold for less than the asking price.
Bidding for the storyboard started at $400,000 and reached $800,000, but the sale was put on hold because the of the online bidder could not be established, Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's, told the Associated Press.
Ettinger also said Guernsey's was trying to contact the person who made the second-highest bid, $700,000. He lamented the fact that despite heavy promotion of the event, the bids were very low.
"I can't imagine having worked harder," he told the Sun-Sentinel. "But we can't stick a pin under someone's elbow and make them bid on it," he said.
Museum founder Mort Walker, who created the "Beetle Bailey" comic strip, told the AP that museum would find a way to pay its debts, such as planning fund-raisers or even sell the building that houses the museum.
