Another outstanding photo-essay on the Long Forgotten Haunted Mansion blog shows how many of the original Rolly Crump concepts for a walk-through Haunted Mansion at Disneyland eventually made their way into the Enchanted Tiki Room, with effects based on Cocteau's 1946 movie La Belle et la Bête.
Rolly likes to talk about how the Cocteau busts blow smoke out of their noses and mouths, and they do that once or twice, but for the most part all they do is (1) turn their heads to watch Belle or her father as they walk by, and (2) change their expressions. The "follow-you" busts do the first and the singing busts do the second. Both of these effects are Yale inventions and would certainly have been used in the Crump-Gracey HM. Is there anything to indicate how the Imagineers might have employed this gag further? Perhaps. Some concept art seems to reflect the wilder, weirder Mansion that Rolly and Yale had in mind, and in one sketch you see faces that may well have been planned as animatronic, presumably doing the sorts of things you see in the two Beauties (i.e. and the Beast and Sleeping). We've looked at this stretching gallery artwork several times before . . .
Walt Disney's Enchanted Creepy Room [Long Forgotten]
