The King's Breakfast

In 1963 Searle & Toye collaborated again on a short live-action film The King's Breakfast "a dramatisation in dance and mime, of the A.A. Milne poem about a king who had no butter for the royal slice of bread" (imdb)

 

The kitchen

The King's gym

 Maurice Denham as the King (thanks to Brian Sibley)

Yak El-Droubie sent in some wonderful shots taken by Douglas Webb on the set of The King's Breakfast. The sets, seemingly painted by Searle's hand, match his designs perfectly.  Like the 1954 Chelsea Arts Ball it's always a thrill to see Searle's work transferred into 'three dimensions'-imagine being on set in a 'walk-in' Searle painting!

Songbooks & Record Covers

Reader and contributor Stephen Nadler reminded me that an edition of Flanders & Swann's songs was published with cover illustrations by Searle.

Original artwork in the Searle Archive, Karikatur Museum, Hannover. 

Program cover-Canmore Opera House, Vancouver, BC: November 1980

Searle also illustrated a collection of Tomfoolery composer Tom Lehrer's work called 'Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer and not enough drawings by Ronald Searle'.

'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park'

'We Will All Go Together When We Go'

Searle contributed this image to an illustrated collection of Beatles lyrics portraying John Lennon.

Lennon (a published cartoonist himself) famously remarked-

". . . I started trying to draw like Ronald Searle when I was about eight. So there was Jabberwocky and Ronald Searle I was turning into by the time I was thirteen. You know, I was determined to be Lewis Carroll with a hint of Ronald Searle."

CD cover for Ricet Barrier's 'La Mythologie'

 

 

See also the 'Theater Design' section here