On the morning of August 8, 1953, Walt reviewed the site map for the proposed Disneyland park that Imagineer Marvin Davis was currently working on, picked up a No. 1 carbon pencil, and drew a triangle around the plot of land to indicate where he wanted his railroad to run.
“I just want it to look like nothing else in the world,” Walt said. “And it should be surrounded by a train.”
That historic drawing still exists today with Walt's addition.
For two years, Davis worked on more than a hundred different versions of the master plan for Disneyland to try to achieve that goal.
However, having something that was like nothing else in the world needed explaining to people because they didn't understand it.
People were familiar with amusement parks, carnivals, state and county fairs, world fairs, roadside attractions, historical venues like Williamsburg in Virginia, national parks and kiddie parks. Disneyland certainly incorporated some of those same elements and more but its differences were more significant.
“Almost everyone warned us that Disneyland would be a Hollywood spectacular—a spectacular failure. But they were thinking about an amusement park, and we believed in our idea—a family Park where parents and children could have fun—together,” Walt told the media.
“There had never been anything like Disneyland before,” recalled artist Ken Anderson, who found himself involved with this new project from the beginning. “We were trembling for Walt. We thought, 'Walt had really lost it this time'. We wanted to believe that it would all turn out to be right.”
Famously, Walt's concerned wife, Lillian, asked him according to a story Walt told the press, “Why would you want to get involved with an amusement park? They're so dirty and not fun at all for grown-ups. Why would you want to get involved in a business like that?”
“That's exactly my point,” Walt replied. “Mine isn't going to be that way. Mine's going to be a place that's clean, where the whole family can do things together.”
C.V. Wood and Buzz Price, along with WED executives Dick Irvine, Nat Winecoff and Bill Cottrell went to an amusement industry convention held by the National Association of Parks, Pools, and Beaches (later to become IAAPA, International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, that still holds an annual convention) at the Sherman House Hotel in Chicago in 1953. They went to talk with companies that manufactured amusement park rides.
In particular, they met one evening with owners of successful amusement parks, plying them with expensive Chivas Regal and caviar in a private suite, to show them the proposal for Disneyland.
The group included Harry Batt (New Orleans' Pontchartrain Beach Park), William Schmitt (Chicago's Riverview Park), Ed Schott (Cincinnati's Coney Island Park) and George Whitney Sr. (Whitney's Playland at the Beach in San Francisco). They had all become millionaires running these venues and they were all unanimous in their opinion:
Disneyland was destined to fail and Walt was crazy and should save his money. Walt was investing too much money in things like maintenance and landscaping (and even a castle that didn't include a ride) that were unimportant to people. One entrance was insane. There needed to be multiple entrances to attract the largest amount of people and admission should not be charged so that people had more money to spend on the rides and concessions. The rides did not have enough capacity and should be bought “off the shelf.” The list went on and on and on.
Bill Cottrell, who worked for WED Enterprises (later Walt Disney Imagineering) at the time said, “The professional advice that we had was that you've got to have two things if you want to succeed and make any money. You've got to have a roller coaster. And you've got to have a Ferris wheel. And Walt said, “I don't want to have either one of those.”
Walt had a vision for something new, a park that would immerse people into a film experience and that would be friendly, safe and clean. He cleverly educated people about this concept with shows on his weekly ABC television show that explained the concepts of Disneyland and got audiences invested in the project by showing them how it was being built. By doing so, he also established that this was not just a local tourist attraction but a national one.
The iconic ABC television special Dateline: Disneyland that aired on July 17, 1955, officially decreed the opening of the new entertainment venue and gave viewers (that consisted of more than half the population of the United States at the time) a glimpse of the actual park, rather than concept drawings and construction photos. However, Disneyland was not quite ready for its debut and was only seen in black-and-white. It took another year for things to be put in place and landscaping to become more mature.
“In its second year of operation, Disneyland saw the opening of more than a dozen new attractions—the most to be added in a single year in the Park's entire history,” wrote Disney Archivist Dave Smith in 1999. “When the park opened, Walt famously said, 'Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow, to add new things, as long as there is imagination left in the world' and 1956 certainly demonstrates how much Walt meant those words.”
The 42-minute Disneyland U.S.A. featurette took viewers on a tour of the park and explained Disneyland to those who had no idea what it was and how it had changed since opening day a year earlier.
In an expansion program that cost more than $1.5 million, new attractions were opened and existing ones renovated, including the Disneyland Skyway, the Astrojets, the Rainbow Caverns area that included a Mine Train ride, the new Indian Village and War Canoes, Storybook Land, Junior Autopia, Mike Fink Keel Boats and Tom Sawyer's Island among others.
So Walt wanted to show people how much Disneyland had grown in a year and give people a full color look at the park. So he produced a theatrical featurette titled Disneyland U.S.A (1956). The film is included on Walt Disney Treasures: Disneyland Secrets, Stories and Magic (2007) and is a wonderful and valuable documentation of what Disneyland looked like in a more innocent and leisurely time that no longer exists.
“Now you can visit Disneyland! For the first time on the Screen…All the wonders of Walt Disney's fabulous new Magic Kingdom. A trip to…DISNEYLAND U.S.A. In CinemaScope and Technicolor! A People and Places Featurette!”
That's what the movie advertisements proclaimed when that featurette premiered in theaters across the country on December 20, 1956.
“The first motion picture ever made about the Magic Kingdom.”
“This film is one in a series presenting interesting People and Places. Here is a newly created land—a living, growing place for all people of all ages.”
People and Places was a series of live-action documentary short subjects similar to Disney's popular True-Life Adventures series, but instead of focusing on animals, just as the title suggested, it focused on different cultures, beginning with the February 1953 release, The Alaskan Eskimo.
There were seventeen installments in the series covering Japan, Portugal, Samoa, Switzerland and other areas until the final installment covering Wales in June 1958.
Many of these travelogues were filmed in Cinemascope with “behind the scenes” clips, as well, since they were sometimes featured on the weekly Disney television show. Tiburon, a People and Places short that took William Smith four years to complete, was never released theatrically, but popped up on an episode of the weekly Disney television show.
It is amusing to realize today that the concept of a “Disneyland” was so foreign that it earned a place in a theatrical documentary series devoted to other cultures that seemed exotic and strange to audiences.
As the opening narration states:
“Reaching down from the northern tip of Alaska to the isthmus of Panama, a vast and varied sweep of coastline forms the western threshold of North America. Almost in the center of this coastal region and inland a few miles from the sea lies the place of our story. Here in Southern California, a new land has come into being. Its purpose is enlightenment. Its product: happiness. This place is Disneyland, U.S.A.”
This 42-minute featurette was directed by Hamilton Luske, who began his career at Disney in the 1930s as an animator. He soon became a supervising director on the animated features, and eventually directed and was associate producer on some of the Disney television programs.
The fact that the film is 42 minutes is significant, because all the other entries in the series were only about a half hour, sometimes shorter.
Disneyland U.S.A. was written and narrated by Winston Hibler, a task he also performed on the True-Life Adventures film series, which gave the production an added sense of gravitas.
In fact, it is because of the People and Places series that Disneyland cast members were called Disneylanders at first. The term “cast member” did not come into use until the late 1960s.
As Hibler saw when he was preparing material for the series, people from Iceland were called Icelanders and people from Lapland were called Laplanders so since Disneyland was its own land, it was only logical that the people who lived and worked there were Disneylanders.
Assisting Hibler on the script was Larry Clemmons, who started in the Animation department and would later go on to script The Jungle Book, The Rescuers and Robin Hood.
Music was by Oliver Wallace, whose work at the Disney Studio encompassed everything from songs for the animated feature Dumbo to the theme song for Donald Duck to the popular hit song Der Fuehrer's Face.
The film was photographed in CinemaScope by Charles P. Boyle of the American Society of Cinematographers, who had worked on other Disney productions from Johnny Tremain to Davy Crockett to Old Yeller. Cinemascope was a new photographic technique first introduced three years earlier in 1953 and made the park look larger than it actually was.
The lens had some optical challenges and sharp-eyed viewers can see that at the end of the film, the nighttime scenes were shot “Day for Night” with the amazing Ub Iwerks taking film footage shot during the daylight (notice the shadows in these scenes are daytime shadows) and processing it so it looked like night.
“Disneyland U.S.A., the newest offering in Walt Disney's famous People and Places series was produced in CinemaScope and color by Technicolor. This picture is designed to give moviegoers a dazzling tour of Disneyland, with exciting closeup views of its myriad marvels. This Technicolored featurette begins with a helicopter flight over all of Disneyland,” proclaims the pressbook.
After a colorful and unusual aerial view of Disneyland (and the realization that it is still pretty barren since the landscaping hadn't fully grown in and that we can see worker's vehicles behind Main Street and the mundane tops of buildings), the viewer begins his tour at the Disneyland Hotel with its distinctive blue and orange trams and men in ties and hats and women with long dresses and high heels.
Then it is a quick trip to the park and down Main Street U.S.A. for a look at shops that no longer exist, including the Gibson Card shop, Puffin Bakery and even two young ladies on the porch of the “Intimate Apparel” shop, among other nostalgic delights. If you look closely, you'll even spot the White Wing Trinidad, the most photographed character in early Disneyland on Main Street sweeping up.
Frontierland is next and, from the Mark Twain, you can catch a glimpse of the recently opened Tom Sawyer's Island and all the guests fishing for catfish. They could keep all they caught, but the practice soon ended when it quickly stopped being a fun day at Disneyland lugging around foul-smelling fish that were too often just deposited in trash cans throughout the park.
In the film, you not only catch a glimpse of the pack mules, but also the stagecoach and the long-forgotten Conestoga covered wagon. Another view of Frontierland is provided from the E.P. Ripley railroad train circling the Park.
Adventureland is a chance to catch the “serious” Jungle Cruise (except for the gag about the name of the waterfall) and see some of the early “electro-mechanical animals” that fascinated early guests.
Tomorrowland showcases the Autopia without a center rail that is enjoyed by guests of all ages and ethnicities. It also includes a glimpse of the Hobbyland Flight Circle and the Phantom Boats.
Fantasyland features the old “festival facades” but, unfortunately, the only glimpse of the interior of an attraction is Storybook Land by both boat (with a middle-aged male host) and by Casey Jr. Circus Train. The narration claims that that moat in front of the castle is the “Lake of Swans” and that the castle is “a composite of many castles real and legendary.” Yes, that is Will Scarlett from Robin Hood's merry men sitting on the bridge greeting guests.
Filming inside the dark ride attractions would have been difficult and expensive with the bulky Cinemascope cameras, cramped spaces, and the the need to adjust to all the black-light effects inside the show buildings so the only images are of the outside facades.
The film finishes with a selection of special events at Disneyland, including the very first Disneyland Easter parade with horseless carriages, and the Mickey Mouse Club Circus Parade led by Walt Disney and Fess Parker.
The film ends with the flag-lowering ceremony on Main Street and the reading of the plaque at its base featuring the words of dedication Walt said on July 17, 1955. By the way, those words were written by Hibler.
“At the base of the flagpole, there is a plaque which sets forth in letters of bronze, the purpose for which Disneyland was created and dedicated.”
This image is followed by some night shots of the Mark Twain, Main Street and the illuminated Sleeping Beauty Castle to remind people that Disneyland stayed open at night.
That's the reason Entertainment Director Tommy Walker came up with the idea of a night-time fireworks show, to help keep people in the park, since early visitors left before 5 p.m. to beat the traffic home on the Santa Ana Freeway.
It is understandable why this charming time capsule was never re-released, because Disneyland was constantly changing with things disappearing and new things being added every year, so it quickly became outdated.
The film was translated into seven different languages and released around the world, prompting a flood of correspondence to Disneyland amounting to hundreds of letters a day asking questions about the new entertainment venue, as well as increased local attendance.
The benefit world premiere of the film was held at 8:30 p.m. at the Fox Anaheim Theater on December 22, 1956, with Walt Disney in attendance. While all costs for the premiere were underwritten by Disneyland, Inc., proceeds from the event were donated to the Building Fund of the St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County.
The sponsors were the Doctors Committee of the hospital, in conjunction with the administrators of the hospital, the Sisters of the Congregation of St. Joseph.
Local television personality Bill Lundigan was master of ceremonies of a program that included an hour-long stage show featuring the entire cast of the Golden Horseshoe Revue; Cliff Edwards (the voice of Jiminy Cricket); and, from The Mickey Mouse Club television show, Jimmie Dodd, Roy Williams and some of the Mouseketeers. In addition, Vesey Walker led the Disneyland Band in some musical moments.
Dr. Mile K. Tedstrom, chairman of the Doctor's Division Building Fund for St. Joseph Hospital said at the time, “It is most fitting that this benefit premiere takes place right here in Orange County, the home of Disneyland, and it is even more wonderful that the proceeds will go toward the extension of St. Joseph Hospital which has served all of Orange County so well for all these years.”
The movie was so effective that when Walt Disney World opened in 1971, the Disney Company produced a similar film, The Magic of Walt Disney World (1972) to define the new venue as a “vacation kingdom” and not just another theme park.
Released December 20, 1972, this 30-minute featurette was written and directed by Tom Leetch (with writing assistance from Bill Bosche) and narrated by actor Steve Forrest.
Like Disneyland U.S.A., the narration tried to create the idea of a whole new world:
“The first contingents of adventurous men sailed across the ocean to open up a new world. One of the first places they set foot upon was a bit of land that is now the state of Florida, U.S.A. Of course, there've been quite a few changes since then, and the New World has come a long way.
“But now, squarely in the middle of the very same bit of land, another new world has been opened up: Walt Disney World. The foundations of Walt Disney World were the dreams of one man. The sharing of those dreams with others has truly created a new world, and its reality is living proof that dreams really do come true.”
Once again, it is a wonderful full-color document of a Disney theme park in its opening year. It was originally released to theaters with the feature film Snowball Express (1972).
Today, both Disneyland and Walt Disney World have become familiar experiences and a part of the life of just about every American born in the last four decades. However, I still wish that the Disney Company would consider making these type of featurettes every year, especially as film technology has improved so much that so much more can get recorded.
