Here's a re-post from the old WordPress CBO that never made it here!
I have tried every toy or comic merchandise auction house/collector I can -nothing. I even tried BBC TVs Antiques Roadshow -nothing.
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There
is,for some of us,a fascination for early British comics and the
characters/creators. Ally Sloper and Steve The Horse I have tried to
deal with on my Yahoo British Comic Books Archives group.
And,about
five years ago I used pages of art sent to me by the late comic
historian Denis Gifford to produce an A5 tribute publication to Roland
Davies creation,Steve The Horse –“Come On Steve”.
above:Roland Davies Studio. Davies is in the cardigan and Steve statue to right
I
knew Davies had been involved in animation and had produced features.
However,I guessed that I’d never see these as buying 9.5mm 1930s film
seemed like a fantasy.
Until,quite
by accident,I was looking for more Davies info when I came across a
site run by Grahame L. Newnham and well worth checking out if you have
an interest in Pathe or other old films:
I
couldn’t believe my eyes when I was an advertisement of Newnham’s for
“Come On Steve!”—a complete collection of the character’s animated
features on a DVD. And the price was perfect!
Sadly,ill
health put all idea of buying a DVD out of my mind. However,when I
recovered and realised that I hadn’t ordered it -I did!
The disc includes:
Steve’s Treasure Hunt [1936]
Steve Steps Out [1936]
Steve Of The River [1937]
Cinderella Steve [1937]
Steve In
Bohemia [1937]
Steve’s Cannon Crackers [1937]
Bal Costume [French Silent version] 1937.
With
a wonderfully vintage sound track it might be that some would find, in
these somewhat ridiculously over the top politically correct times,Steve
Of The River a little “racist” in its depiction of African natives.
But I am totally opposed to retro censorship of historical images [such
as using computers to remove the cigar from the mouth of engineer
Isambard Kingdom Brunel!]. This was the 1930s and the truth is that not
everyone was racist! This was the easiest way for a cartoonist to
depict natives in a comical film.
So be warned!
The quality for 70+ year old films is great. I loved some of the wacky scenes featuring things such as a police gyrocopter!
If
you don’t like black and white animation then it’s not for you. But if
you have any interesting the history of British comics,the creators and
animation you’ll LOVE this! And Grahame included some nice info fact
sheets with background and all for £9.95 + 75p p&p!
Check
out the website and contact Grahame for current price in case it’s
altered. You won’t be sorry in adding this to your DVD animation
collection!
But
there is an up-date to this. After reading the above article,Patti
Brown contacted me to see whether I could help her identify a Steve The
Horse statuette? I thought that it must be the studio piece [see photo
above].
That
idea was quickly shot down. This was much smaller -you can see it
below next to a 50 pence piece. There is no makers stamp or any other
information. Only one thing is certain,though,the quality and glaze
means it was a professional piece rather than a one-off a fan made.
And,there is absolutely no doubt that this is Steve The Horse!
I have tried every toy or comic merchandise auction house/collector I can -nothing. I even tried BBC TVs Antiques Roadshow -nothing.
Anyone out there have any ideas -I’d like to know details. Grahame Newnham would like to know details -Patti would
definitely
like to know more!
There,thrown open for you comickers.
above:Roland Davies a few months before his death.
Denis
Gifford wrote a wonderful obituary for Davieswhich I include below for
those interested in the greats of the British Golden Age of comics:
DENIS GIFFORD
The Independent,Thursday, 16 December 1993
Roland Oxford Davies, cartoonist and animator: born Stourport, Worcestershire 23 July 1904; died 10 December 1993.
ROLAND
DAVIES was the epitome of the commercial artist, never happy unless he
was drawing or painting. His long career covered sports cartoons,
topical cartoons, strip cartoons, animated cartoons, children’s books
and boys’ weeklies, and towards the end superb paintings which were sold
in art galleries to collectors who never knew of his once famous comic
horse, ‘Steve’.
Davies
was born at Stourport, Worcestershire, in 1904. His father, a Welsh
musician, was a conductor of theatre orchestras with an eye for art. ‘He
always encouraged me as a boy,’ recalled Roland, ‘by ruling in the
horizon line, which taught me perspective.’ Settling in Ipswich, the boy
studied at the Art School there during the evenings, then at 16 spent
two years as a full-time student before becoming apprenticed to a
lithographer. Here he designed cinema posters and one for the
Metropolitan Railway of which he was particularly proud. His obsession
with speed, whether by aeroplane, train, racing car or motor-cycle, led
him to freelance cartoons to Autocar and Motor Cycle magazines, and when
a new weekly, Modern Boy, was launched in 1928 he found a regular home
illustrating action stories and supplying wonderful two- colour covers
depicting roaring motors and zooming planes.
Curiously,
his greatest success came with the very antithesis of all this speed: a
lumbering, genial old cart-horse in a weekly strip cartoon called ‘Come
On, Steve]’ – the inspired title was the cry that sprang from a
thousand racegoers’ throats as the jockey Steve Donoghue galloped to yet
another win. Davies took his sample strips – devised over a weekend –
down Fleet Street, trying first the Evening News, then the Evening
Standard, then the Daily Express. Arthur Christiansen, showing the
editorial acumen for which he became famous, took the strip to his
editor on the Sunday Express, and the following week, on 6 March 1932,
Steve made his top-of-the-page debut. Davies was pounds 4 a week richer,
a fee that was shortly doubled.
‘Come
On, Steve’ was soon so popular that Davies conceived the idea of
animating the old carthorse. Buying a stop-frame cine camera for 18
shillings, he set up a studio in his kitchen and spent seven months
making a short animated cartoon. Although full of faults, the film when
projected gave him the thrill of his lifetime. ‘The biggest thrill in
the world was to see my drawings move, even if I had got the speed all
wrong, and Steve looked as though he was floating,’ Davies remembered.
In his ignorance he had placed his cel-pegs at the top of his camera
rostrum instead of the bottom, causing all kinds of odd distortions.
‘Well, I learnt animation from a three-page chapter in an old book,’ he
said.
However,
he had the nerve to show his film to John Woolf of General Film
Distributors. Woolf would not give a decision until a soundtrack was
added. Davies hired a studio, improvised a track – and was turned down
yet again. He lowered his sights and showed his film to Butcher’s, a
minor distributor of B-pictures. They promptly gave him a contract for
six eight-minute cartoons at pounds 800 each. With finance from his
father-in-law, Davies set up an animation studio in Ipswich, staffed by
students from the Art School and headed by one professional animator,
the young Carl Giles. One by one the six cartoons were made, this time
complete with a signature tune composed by John Reynders, whose
orchestra supplied the music track and sound effects. Steve Steps Out
was the first, released in December 1936, and a children’s
book-of-the-film was published by Collins. Best was Steve of The River
(1937), a burlesque of Edgar Wallace’s recent film, Sanders of the
River.
When
the Sunday Express dropped Steve in 1939 Davies, who had wisely
retained the copyright, took the strip over to the Sunday Dispatch. They
snapped up Steve with glee, and soon gave Davies the added post of
cartoonist. He supplied topical comment in a large weekly drawing, using
the pen-name of ‘Rod’. After 10 years in the Dispatch, Steve moved into
children’s books, and Davies wrote and drew a full-colour series for
Perry’s Colourprints, plus a run of the Come On Steve Annual.
Davies’s
work for children’s comics began in 1933 when he drew the cover for the
Daily Express Children’s Own, a Saturday supplement starring ‘Larry
Leopard’. When DC Thomson’s new comic Beano began in July 1938, Davies
drew a tough-guy sheriff, ‘Whoopee Hank’, and ‘Contrary Mary the Moke’, a
long-eared donkey who was clearly a close relation to Steve. But his
mainline comic work started in 1949 with the weekly serial of ‘Sexton
Blake’, the famous boys’ paper detective, in Knockout. For TV Comic he
depicted the children’s hour detectives ‘Norman and Henry Bones’, and
created the sci-fi superhero ‘Red Ray the Space Ray-nger’ complete with
club and badge.
He
drew ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ in Swift, ‘Wyatt Earp’, the western
television series, and a string of Walt Disney characters (Jungle Book,
Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh) in Disneyland. He even drew the adventures
of ‘Woppit’, Donald Campbell’s mascot, in Robin. This linked back to his
old speed-mania, and he wrote and illustrated several books such as The
Daily Mail Speedway Book (1949) and The Ace Book of Speed (1952).
The
continuing pressure of strip art finally grew too much for him, and in
his seventies Davies turned to painting. Under the guidance of a
publisher turned art dealer, Alan Class, he began producing dramatic
seascapes and colourful Parisian street scenes, which found their way
into several good galleries.
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