From a private email sent to (amongst others) "A Guidebook"-site:
From: "Gerd Syllwasschy"
To: "Michael"
Cc: [dve, and others]
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2006 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: Alpine Climbers
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> "Alpine Climbers" from 1936 has as far as I can see not been listed among
> the cartoons with a Barks contribution. But he must at least have been one
> of the in-betweeners, perhaps even animator. The two pencil drawings
> depicted on page 28 in CBSV vol I are easily identified by frame-viewing the
> DVD. The signatures on the sheets prove that Barks indeed is the artist.
Thank you for pointing this out. I hadn't noticed it myself yet. There
does not seem to exist any complete record of Barks' contributions as an
in-betweener and Barks himself only ever mentioned "Thru the Mirror" and
"Three Little Wolves", so such findings are always valuable.
> "Alpine Climbers" seems to feature the debut of Bolivar.
> Can any of you verify this?
Well, this is probably a question of where to draw the line. The dog in
the animated cartoon is certainly not *the* Bolivar as we know him
(i.e., Donald Duck's pet dog), though he admittedly has a striking
resemblance to the comic-strip dog, and it is highly possible that Al
Taliaferro based his own design of Bolivar on this film (and/or the
Silly Symphony cartoon "More Kittens" which I haven't seen yet).
There is another St. Bernard dog in the 1932 Silly Symphony "Just Dogs",
see the attached screenshot. Think this is Bolivar? Maybe a younger and
leaner one.
![Wink ;-)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
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(Does Sander have interest to upload the mentioned attached picture of the 1932 Silly Symphony "Just Dogs"?)