Dr. Seuss: If I Ran the Circus

The original illustrations for If I Ran the Circus were painted by Dr. Seuss on four layers of acetate in 1956. At the time color separation–the process of breaking down a color image into its constituent colors (in book printing, usually 4-color process printing — C (cyan = blue), M (magenta = red), Y (yellow), and K (black) was the preferred method of picture books. This process maximized the limited capabilities of ­mid–­twentieth century print technology, resulting in colorful images that were relatively cheap and affordable to produce. The artist created a separate layer for each of the color inks used, and when the layers were printed on top of one another, the full image materialized. This was a less expensive way to create a full palette of colors without adding additional ink into the mix.

R. Michelson Galleries has come into possession of this later Seuss acetate, which follows the lines of the original book pieces, but differs in color. Seuss expert Charles Cohen suggests that this cel was drawn up for possible inclusion in The Hoober-Bloob Highway animated special produced by Ted Geisel and Fritz Freling. That film reused cels from Dr. Seuss books, including If I Ran the Circus, but further episodes were never developed.

In 1992 Random House Home Video put out a VHS tape of If I Ran The Circus, narrated by Brett Ambler. It is basically the book illustrations with occasional animations to make the static image move. Below is the cell image used for that video, which also varies in color from the original book. It is possible that our version was proposed and rejected for that project (which you can watch, along with Billy Crystal’s narration of Horton Hatches the Egg, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyMUsegMx08   (the Circus cell is at 18:05)

Lynda Claassen, Director of Special Collections & Archives at UC San Diego suggests that these might have been painted for an animation project, or proposed animation project. “Two of the boards, the sole green wing and the white wing,  include an animation pegbar at the bottom of the image, which are used when animators are lining up cel registration.  We haven’t discovered that there ever was a fully animated version of If I Ran the Circus, but it seems a reasonable possibility that one might have been planned at some point.” In fact, Gerald McBoing-Boing, an animated television adaptation of Ted’s 1951 book, ran for three months in 1956, the same year he published If I Ran the Circus.

If any of our clients has additional information, please let us know. In the meantime we are happy to make this rare artwork available for the first time.

You can see the original drawings and color separations, housed at the Dr. Seuss Collection at the Mandeville Special Collections & Archives, University of California San Diego below: