Happy Birthday Disneyland

The first day of Disneyland's operation was an invitation only event. The idea was to have a light day of 10 to 12 thousand guests to break in all the new rides and attractions. During this light opening, Walt and a few celebrities would host a live 2 hour television show to introduce the American public to Walt's new park. It sounds simple enough, but when Mother Nature, Father Time and Murphy [the guy with the laws] conspire against you, the best laid plans of a man and his mouse will often go awry.

Disneyland's race to completion was as dramatic as it could be. For the last two weeks, temperatures hovered near three digits. Crews working round the clock were being slow roasted as they finished "Walt's Folly". An earlier plumbers strike had forced Disney to choose between finishing all the water fountains or finishing the bathrooms. Walt chose bathrooms saying "Folks can drink a Coke but they can't pee in the streets." [Unless it's in the parking lot as you'll see a little later.] Now with only days to go and with temperatures and temperments soaring, asphalt workers were going on strike as well.

It was nothing personal, the strike was two counties wide. Disney and construction boss Joe Fowler made an impassioned plea and asphalt workers agreed to finish the park. Problem was, the truck drivers who delivered the asphalt refused to cross picket lines to pick it up so Disney had it hauled up from San Diego a hundred miles to the south. Just what every big project needs near the end is a big expensive delay. Legend has it, workers were laying the black stuff the morning of the grand opening. New blacktop and hot weather. You can see where this is going to go, right?

The guests were employees from the studio, the families of those that built the park, sponsors, a thousand reporters and a few hundred celebrity friends. Food & drink was free, compliments of Disney. The new food service department was busy preparing meals for the crowd of 10,000.

What they hadn't anticipated was just how many people wanted to see Disneyland. It seems, the way the tickets were worded, people thought you could bring your whole family with only one ticket. It's also been said that the tickets were easy to forge. I'm sure you can see where this is going as well.

Dateline Disneyland was going to be the largest live telecast ever. TV cameras of the day were massive pieces of machinery that didn't move easily. Twenty nine cameras were placed around the park to cover the event. Where ABC got 29 cameras on the west coast in 1955, I don't know.
To emcee his live show Walt called on his friend Art Linkletter. Art was a radio and television vet with many live broadcasts to his credit. He had been a master of ceremonies for at least two world's fairs and the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. Linkletter picked Bob Cummings and some guy by the name of Ronald Reagan as his co-anchors. Unfortunately history has lost all track of anything Reagan did after the TV special. [Lighten up people, I'm just kidding].

The show wasn't scripted. Where the emcees were going to go was planned in advance, with only a general idea of what they were going to say when they got there. All three hosts were playing it off the cuff, which is part of the reason the show is still fun to watch over 50 years later.

Disneyland's opening was on a Sunday. Even in a Devils playground like Southern California, most people had started their Sunday morning attending church. Dressing up on Sunday was still a national habit. Add to that a live taping where people might be seen by friends and relatives across the country and the crowd dressed to impress. It's going to be over 90 degrees and yet men were in ties and coats and women in high heels and slips. High heels at Disneyland. You gotta love the 50's fashion ethic.

Walt's brother Roy was driving to Disneyland from his Los Angeles home. When he got close to the park, the traffic on Firestone Blvd was pretty bad. Since traffic in So Cal wasn't a big surprise even in 1955, it didn't dawn on Roy that the problem was caused by folks coming to see Disneyland. Traffic to the park was backed up for two miles in every direction, a new phenomenon for Anaheim and it's 43 man police force. The traffic jam was avoided by a few people who had slept in their cars overnight.

Once he parked, Roy was approached by a panicked new parking lot employee who didn't know what to do about kids relieving themselves next to the cars. These kids had been in the traffic jam for hours. Roy's solution to the problem? "God bless 'em, let 'em pee"

Disneyland opened around noon just as the temperature was starting to peak. The "official" main gate numbers set the crowd at over 28,000 guests and that didn't include those that paid a guy 5 bucks to climb over the back fence on his ladder (true story). The hot weather combined with new asphalt meant sticky streets and women in heels walked right out of their shoes

The food & drink that had been planned for 10 thousand begin to dry up and the lack of drinking fountains meant even getting a drink of water had a line. The hot, thirsty and irritable mob began to swarm the rides and overwhelm the fresh faced new ride operators. Ride capacities were set on the spot and some rides were shut down over & over, stretched to their new limits.

The stories of opening day are legend. Fantasyland was closed down for a while when they thought they had a gas leak. Exhausted animator Ken Anderson had had been painting rides all night and fell asleep backstage missing the official opening. Crowds almost flipped the Mark Twain as they swarmed on board and ran from one side of the ship to the other looking for points of interest. Kids used the Autopia like a demolition derby and left a nearly weeping Bob Gurr to fix the automotive mess before the public opening the next day. For a few hours, it was a complete madhouse.

By 5 o'clock the new park had quieted down. Heat, lack of food, long lines for the drinking fountain and rides breaking down had sent most people packing. Charles Ridgeway who was a reporter at the time called his wife back to the park to ride the new rides. She had gone home when she realized what kind of a day it was going to be. Those that stuck it out were able to truly enjoy what Disneyland had to offer. They were able to see the park the way Walt had seen it in his dreamy little skull. The funny part is, Walt had no idea what was happening. He was busy running from place to place to dedicate each of the lands on live television. Getting to each site to make his speeches was his main job.

The Disneyland that 90 million people saw on television thaty day [that's over half of the US population at the time!] was closer to what Walt envisioned than what was actually going on in the park on opening day and while it didn't take very long for the Disney company to get the two images to match, the opening day damage had been done. Many reviewers slammed Disneyland.

After the opening, Walt kept shaping his dream. He wasted no time improving his park and he invited reporters back explaining what had gone wrong and showing them how much had already changed. In spite of the first day reviews, most of the general public believed in what they saw on TV and came in big numbers. Seven weeks into the unseasonably hot summer, Disneyland had topped one million guests, a surprising milestone of success.

Now at the beginning of it's 53rd year of operation, Disneyland has survived critics, political dignitaries, occasional bad management and a love-in. It is the rally point for American celebrations and occasionally, it suffers it's own tragedies. Disneyland's castle is an iconic image eternally burned into the brains of baby boomers and one of the most photographed structures in the world. Disney's little theme park is an American Institution.

We here at the treehouse want to say happy birthday and tip our souvenir Disneyland hard hat in gratitude. We hope 'The Happiest Place on Earth" gets to live up to it's motto for many generations to come




This photo is probably from opening day. It shows a group of local kids who were hand picked to run across the drawbridge into Fantasyland. You know it's a rehearsal because there are kids above the castle looking down, the guys on the right of the photo are caught off guard and my favorite part of the photo is Alice sitting and the construction guy smoking next to her. [close-up below]

If the photo is from opening day, the myth of the drawbridge being opened only twice is malarkey. [It's malarkey anyways. They ran it up & down for local commercials for the "New Fantasyland" in the 80's.] I also wonder how many times they ran the kids through the tunnel. Was it just for a camera test or were they burning the energy off the kids? Did they get to ride the carousel while they waited for their turn on television?





The rehearsal brings up another question I have. You've may have seen the opening day newspaper photos of kids running through those very gates to ride the rides. Were those pictures taken during rehearsals, during the live TV show or were they taken the next day when the park opened to the public? If you were one of those Anaheim kids chosen to run through the castle on opening day, or a newspaper photographer, let me know what you remember.

William Hanna Animation Pioneer

He didn't start out to be an animation pioneer, he was just looking for a job during the depression.

William Hanna was born in Melrose New Mexico July 14, 1910. His father was a construction supervisor for the Santa Fe railroad which meant the family went where Santa Fe needed construction.

The Hanna's finally settled in Los angeles where Bill became active in the boy scouts. In college he majored in Engineering and when the depression hit, he quit school to take a job building the Pantages theater in Hollywood . Through his brother in law, Hanna heard about a job at the Harmon Ising animation studio. He started there painting cels and within a year was head of the tracing and painting department. Soon he was contributing gags to the cartoons and writing music and lyrics.

Hanna moved to MGM when they started their own animation studio and that's where he met Joe Barbera. The two collaboated on a few cartoons before they got the idea for Tom & Jerry. By 1955 the pair were running MGM's animation department but 2 years later, MGM decided they didn't need any more new cartoons and closed up animation.

Not wasting any time, Hanna & Barbera started their own studio and instead of competing in the ever shrinking field of movie theater cartoons, they decided to try their luck with the new medium of television.

You would think that cartoons for TV was a no-brainer but that wasn't the case in 1957. Getting someone from a network to say yes to a cartoon was a hard sell. Hanna & Barbera had come up with the comedy team of Ruff & Reddy and the story of getting the show on air is left for another time, but luck and persistance paid off and the comedy duo aired on NBC. The rest is history.

While the animation and story of Space Ghost doesn't hold up as well as the classic Tom and Jerry cartoons of Hanna's early years, Saturday mornings would not have been as much fun wiithout Hanna Barbera cartoons. The studio constantly created original comedians and heroes I could call my own and that was important. As an adult I wince at the plot holes and endless use of the same animation cycles in Sampson and Goliath or Jonny Quest, but the kid in me still remembers the thrill of the theme songs and the rapt attention I paid to every adventure.

Those slightly smarmy shows [okay, okay, they aren't just slightly smarmy, they're reeeeeeally smarmy] are an indelible part of my childhood and I treasure the memories of many Saturday mornings sitting in front of the idiot box. While there's no telling what kind of things Hanna could have created as an engineer, I'm selfishly thankful he decided to paint a few cels.

Hanna died from throat cancer in 2001.

Safety Card Friday #1 Wilma & Pebbles

What did your teachers hang on the wall in elementary school? Did you have charts with gold stars? Did your teacher hang students art work around the classroom? If Hanna Barbera safety cards had been in any of my classes, I would have remembered them.

I remember lame generic safety cards and I seem to remember a Jiminy Cricket set, but imagine having a set of cool Hanna Barbera cards in your classroom in 1965. It would have elevated the reputation of any teacher who used them.

There's 36 cards in the set I have and most of them have strange color choices like this one does. [I had skin that color one summer when I tried using that indoor tanning goop] . I'll put one up each Friday for a while to remind you that safety should be your number one priority on the weekends. Remember, first the Toro, then the six pack. Please don't drink and mow.

Oh, and Wilma honey? I love you like a sister, but Pebbles is still too young to be going anywhere by herself.

America on Parade & Bob Jani

Don't you just love an internet adventure? I do, at least when they end up with me learning a little something. This one started with a swing by Daveland blog last night. I love lurking at vintage Disney sites on the web and there's a few I surf on a regular basis. Last night I was looking at Daveland's post with pictures from America on Parade.

During the Bicentennial back in 1976, Disney had a huge parade that was a celebration of 200 years of American popular culture. It was one of the larger parades Disney has put together with a lot of floats and extras dancing down Main Street. What's the thing that made the parade unique?

All the performers wore huge heads.

This was one of those love it or hate it type of gimmicks. I thought they were pretty cool at the time, but now they do seem a little silly and yeah, maybe a little creepy, but no more so than the same type of heads in Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans or Carnival in Brasil. Anyway, the post reminded me I had some pix of the concept models. It's still July, what the heck, be a little patriotic. I found the pictures and went to Dave Smith's Disney A to Z to see what he said about the parade. Smith mentioned the name Bob Jani.

I'm one of those Disney fans who knows just enough to be dangerous. On a good day I can name a half dozen animators and another half dozen Imagineers and some of those names would overlap. Who is Bob Jani?

Google. Google. Google. Wow! This guy had a short but amazing career. Someday I might put together a bio but in a half hour I found a few high points.

Outside of Disney, he produced two Super Bowl half times, the current Rockettes Christmas Show which has been playing since 1979 and Jani was responsible for Traveler, the USC mascot that's been charging down field after every touchdown since 1969.

For the Disney company, he produced and directed Disney on Parade, created the Electric Water Pageant down in WDW, America on Parade and the cherry on top? Main Street's Electrical Parade. Not a bad run at all. If he hadn't lost the battle with Lou Gherig's disease, I can only imagine what kind of high tech stuff Jani would have created.



These photos are small 3-d models of the parade floats and costumes. They were probably built using xerox copies of the original concept art. The models are made to understand just what a float is going to look like and to see if there's going to be any problems with the design when it lumbers down Main Street. Cheaper to fix it here than when it's a big ol' parade float



I especially like this giant turkey, because it's just as scary in the model as it is in the parade photos on Daveland's blog. I can only imagine the screams as kids stare up from their strollers into the long cavernous beak of the turkey from hell. Poor people still don't know why Thanksgiving fills them with a sense of fear and dread.

P.S. The web site Walt Dated World has some cool pix and info on AOP here

E.B. White July 11 1899 - Oct. 1 1985

"Are my stories true, you ask? No, they are imaginary tales, containing fantastic characters and events. In real life, a family doesn't have a child who looks like a mouse; in real life, a spider doesn't spin words in her web. In real life, a swan doesn't blow a trumpet. But real life is only one kind of life -- there is also the life of the imagination. And although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too -- truth about the way people and animals feel and think and act." --E.B. White

3rd grade was a miserable year for me. My family had moved from California to Minnesota and as far as I was concerned, it was like moving to the moon. The move started as a cross country summer trip with my mom, my grandmother and our three cats. The idea was for our little family to see the US and then visit relatives, the bulk of our family tree then living in the small town of Cloquet, Minnesota. After the visit with hundreds of people I've never met pinching my cheeks and talking to me like they had always lived next door, we were supposed to return to sunny California.

The return trip didn't happen.

I got my first taste of snow that year. The first flurry was pretty cool and watching my cats adjust was funny but by January, the novelty had worn off. Going outside to play was like preparing for a NASA mission with thermals, boots and bulky gloves. 90 percent of the US lives with this but up to this point, I had never been outside in anything heavier than a sweater
I couldn't seem to find a rhythm. I wasn't the teachers pet or the class wise-ass. I didn't feel close to any kids at school and being from California didn't give me any street cred. To top it all off, My grandmother had a heart attack and my mom had to get a second job and leave me with a baby sitter.

One of the high spots of the year was my teacher reading out loud to the class. The two books I remember her reading were Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, both by E.B. White.

I hadn't been read to in school since Kindergarten. Listening to the story in silence in my classroom was the same experience you get by seeing a good movie in the theater. Sure, you may have surround sound and a plasma screen at home but sitting in the dark and collectively experiencing the surprises with an audience is very different. The experience of first listening to these two books has made them a personal favorite and I think maybe it's time for me to reread them.

In 1945 when Stuart Little came out, E. B. [Elwyn Brooks] White was known as an essayist. He had been a contributing editor for the New Yorker for twenty years. Born in Mount Vernon, NY he graduated from Cornell University, tried his hand at newspaper writing and copy editing before writing essays for the New Yorker. The idea for Stuart came out of a vivid dream while on a train trip.

He wrote Charlotte's Web as a present for a niece. The idea came from his farm where White lived with his wife, ducks, geese, pigs, cows and an occasional rat and spider. Not a quick writer [a trait I can really relate to] White said his niece had outgrown the book when it was released in 1952.

White's last book for kids was the Trumpeter Swan released in 1970. The year of it's release E. B. [Andy to his friends], was given the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal the medal is in recognition of " books that make a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children." Since 60 years after their publication all three books have become media classics spawning, movies, cartoons and merchandise, I'd say the award was an understatement

White died on October 1, 1985 at his farm in Maine.

Fred Gwynne

Fred Gwynne was a modern renaissance man.

With his deep baritone voice, he was an accomplished actor and singer performing in plays and musicals on and off Broadway. He was a sculptor and painter holding a one man exhibition of his art and he also wrote and illustrated nearly a dozen children's books. With all of this talent, it's funny to think he's best remembered as TV's Frankendad.

Frederick Hubbard Gwynne was born on July 10, 1926 in New York City. His father was a stockbroker, his mother a former cartoonist. His father died from complications during routine surgery when Fred was five .

He attended a prep school where he got his first taste of the stage, enlisted in the Navy after graduation and entered Harvard on the G.I.Bill.

Gwynne took full advantage of his years at Harvard. He majored in English, studied art, became a founding member of the Krokodiloes [Harvard's oldest a capella group], wrote and illustrated for the Harvard Lampoon and was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club. It was the wacky Hasty Pudding productions that kindled his interest in theater.

In 1951 he graduated Harvard, married his first wife Jean Reynard and moved to New York to pursue an acting career.

Gwynne got a job at the J Walter Thompson Advertising Agency and worked there for the next five years writing copy by day and acting in theater and television in the evenings. He made his movie debut as an uncredited punk in "On the Waterfront" in 1954.

In 1955, Gwynne made a guest appearance on The Phil Silvers Show as Private Honigan. The character was well liked and Gwynne was called back to guest star in a few more episodes. When Phil Silvers producer Nat Hiken was casting for a new show, he offered Gwynne the role of police officer Francis Muldoon in "Car 54 Where Are You?". The police sitcom ran two seasons.

When Car 54 was cancelled, Six foot five inch Fred Gwynne was cast as Herman Munster, the green tinted head of the Munster clan. A 15 minute color pilot was pitched to the networks and the show got a strong maybe from CBS.

In the pilot episode, Gwynne plays a rather skinny Herman with a different cast. Adjustments were made to the show and it's cast, a second short pilot episode was shot in black & white to show to sponsors and the show was finally put into production.

The Munsters premiered Sept. 24, 1965 and ran for two seasons. For 70 episodes, Fred Gwynne endured hours of daily makeup, four inch lifts and pounds of padding to help transform him into one of the goofiest, dads in sitcom history.

While the all black & white show has become an enduring classic, the role was Hollywood poison for Gwynne who couldn't seem to shake Herman loose. Casting directors said he was married too closely to his Munster persona in the public eye. Fred turned back to the stage and his art and rode out the short sightedness of Hollywood.

In 1981, when he was called to do a reunion show for The Munsters, he asked for a huge amount of cash and surprisingly, the producers said yes. Gwynne played Herman one last time in Revenge of the Munsters.

In the 80's Gwynne delivered some great character performances in Cotton Club [1984], The Boy Who Could Fly [1986], Fatal Attraction [1986], Pet Sematary [1989] and his final role as a southern judge trying Joe Pesci's case in My Cousin Vinny [1992].

After My Cousin Vinny, Gwynne purchased a farm in Maryland and was in semi retirement when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died on July 2, 1993 just a week away from his 67th birthday.

While there was a decade or more where Gwynne wouldn't talk about the Munsters, the silence was more of a career move than an outright hatred of the character. In a 1979 interview after a career of successes in other fields, Gwynne summed up his Munsters experience; "Funny thing, yesterday morning I found my youngest son and daughter watching the rerun of an old [Munsters] episode and I said, 'My God, THAT'S not still on, is it?' Well, even so, I was very lucky and it was great fun to be as much of a household product as something like Rinso. I almost wish I could do it all over again."

There isn't a fan of the Munsters who doesn't feel the same way

40th Anniversary Carousel of Progress - Peoplemover - Rocket Jets

Carousel of Progress, Rocket Jets and the Peoplemover and all opened on July 2, 1967 and outside of premiering on the same day and all being in Tomorrowland, they don't seem to have too much in common. But these three rides do share a common thread. All three attractions started as a sort of round peg in a square hole idea.

Carousel of Progress

When Disneyland opened in 1955 there were hundreds of good ideas that didn't make the final cut. Some were just ahead of their time while others needed more money. One of these ideas waiting for a bigger budget was Edison Square.

Edison Square was originally designed as a separate crossroad adjacent to Main Street that showcased household inventions from the turn of the century to modern times. You know it was an idea Walt truly loved because it appeared on the first Disneyland Souvenir map.

As Edison waited for an influx of cash, the idea kept expanding and Disneyland real estate was shrinking. It wasn't long before the square had outgrown it's intended space and the idea had to be shelved. Fortunately, this was not the kind of idea that goes gently into the night.

The Edison concept was adapted to become General Electrics "Carousel of Progress" introduced at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. The attraction featured three generations of an animatronic American family showing off the "newest" inventions in their homes. The lifelike animatronic figures coupled with the novel idea of a permanent stage and a rotating audience made the ride one of the top 5 at the fair.

When Carousel was through with it's New York run, Disney packed up his electric puppets and rebuilt the round rotating theater in Disneyland. The show ran until 1973 when it was shipped to WDW to make way for America Sings.

By the way, Carousel of Progress wasn't Walt's only World's Fair ride. He built four different rides for four major sponsors. While on a fact finding mission for Ford's ride, Disney accidentally inspires a new transportation system.

Peoplemover

Walt and Imagineer John Hench are visiting the Ford steel plant in Detroit Michigan. They are there to better understand the company and get ideas for Ford's 1964 World's Fair attraction. The huge ingots of steel are being worked, heated and pressed and it's all moving from station to station on a long track of rollers. Walt turns to John and asks, "Do you think we could put a seat on something like this?"

That simple question evolves into the Wedway Peoplemover; a low maintenance continually moving transportation system that uses magnets to propel the cars. The concept is so successful, it's offered to communities and industries outside of Disneyland. Sadly, very few ever take Imagineering up on the offer but the Disney version still lives at WDW and the Orlando Airport.

Rocket Jets

The Astro Jets first opened at Disneyland in 1956. When Walt decides to redesign Tomorrow-land in the 60's, he wants to keep the popular little ride, but finding a place for it in the new expansion is problematic.

In 1965, while four of Walt Disney's new rides are wowing audiences at the World's Fair, Walt and his band of merry men are secretly criss-crossing the United States looking for a site for a bigger better Disneyland. This is giving much of Disney's top staff a lot of air time aboard the company plane. It also means a lot of impromptu strategy sessions are happening in the friendly skies.

In one of these meetings, Walt gets the idea to move the AstroJets to the top of the new Peoplemover. He's so excited he actually gets out pen & paper and sketches the thing himself. If I'm not mistaken [and I usually am; I know just enough to be dangerous], Walt's sketch included the 3 story gantry guests used to board the three story rockets.

The new design now makes the ride even more popular than before with both adults and kids waiting to see a new Tomorrowland from 30 feet up. It also creates a ride loading nightmare and three hour lines but that's a tale for another time.

So what's the moral to the three little stories Kids? [I know nobody asked for a moral to the stories but it's my blog not yours. Sit down and stop complaining.]

The moral here kids is to always remember that the best ideas are made of clay, not chiseled in stone. No. I didn't say stoned, I said stone. You know, like a rock.

Jeez people, stay focused. This is a family blog.