One-Stop Vacation For A Nation

Theatres Tout Disneyland USA

Walt did this Cinemascope featurette to further herd his public toward vacationing Mecca that was Disneyland, open one year as of 1956 and already a place everyone must see before they die. To pay admission for what amounted to promotion for something you'd pay admission for again was proof of Disney's grip on a family audience that rivals saw slipping as the picture habit became less of a habit. Success of the park would make movies at Disney less of a do-or-die proposition. His name alone made motorists load up offspring and drive up to 3000 miles for access to the Magic Kingdom. My family made that maximum haul in 1962 (NC to California being truest cross-country), drawn in part by drumbeat of magazines and WD's TV program. Disneyland was less miracle in itself than miracle of marketing to address everyone alive from day the park opened. That event, on ABC, is said to have had 90 million viewers. I wonder if any broadcast will get so large an audience again.

Westward Ho, The Wagons! led for Christmas 1956, but it was Disneyland USA where skill was greater applied. These forty-one minutes had to sell the place, make it worth traversing American frontier to get to. Yes, travel was easier than in old West days, but sections could be rugged, eight or even four lane highways certainly not a given except for approach to biggest towns. Disneyland seemed less amusement park than World's Fair, and folks had not minded long trek to those over a last century. Best of all, they'd settle in for days or even a week of spending once installed. You would need that to take it all in, as evidenced by Disneyland USA being but cursory glimpse of joys to be had. It was an Other World experience Disney offered, one to take us forward or back to times happier than what 1956 could offer. Now, of course, a lot would choose 1956 as retreat from present, but consider fact that Disneyland's "Main Street" was turn of 19th to 20th century, a gap many could close with memory and longed for security that past offered. Walt Disney himself was among these. Had he been born (much) later, would Walt have made Main Street an Eisenhower-era paradise with malt shops and early rock and roll played by roving bands? Probably so.

Disneyland USA was officially part of the "People and Places" series being released parallel to the True-Life nature shorts. One or the other came with most Disney features through the 50's, for audiences had built acceptance, if not embrace, for Walt's ongoing effort to enrich them. Winston Hibler's narrating voice of authority lets us know that Disneyland was more than mere pleasure stop with rides, being distinct place on a world map to equal stature of a National Park, with in fact, values of all these combined. Cinemascope conveys vastness of the place. You wouldn't know how confining Anaheim was from watching Disneyland USA. We don't get snarled approach to the town or parking ordeal, as this tour opens on tram arrival to the park's Hotel, where the pool looks like dream dips all of us took in youth when chlorine-tinted water seemed pure as what baptized believers at the River Jordan. There is no delay or inconvenience at this idealized Disneyland. Was the actual park so smooth a process then? I don't recall our having a problem in 1962, but time has a way of sifting out troubled memories to leave but happy ones, that being of course, the entire mission of Disneyland.

The Main Street was fashioned after small towns Disney knew growing up. Many a 20th century tycoon wished for lost innocence and simpler times. Henry Ford built his Greenfield Village to celebrate the country as it once was, and now Disney would answer a same impulse with this first sight to greet guests at Disneyland. It is what we see at a start of Disneyland USA, music underneath from a gay 90's-set Donald Duck called Crazy Over Daisy (1950). Horses haul streetcar-fulls to and fro, and Disney's beloved trains are omnipresent. He had one in the yard at home that guests could sit on and ride, and maybe elixir from rails was as strong for folks entering Disneyland in 1956, but ... what about now? Are there still trains there, or horses, or the old movie house where silent films show? If not, then I guess the fishing hole where you could sink a hook and keep the game you caught is gone too. Sixty years have changed a lot of things, nowhere I'd suspect, as much as at Disneyland. Among other likely casualties: a staged bank robbery and law catching up to miscreants with six guns at the ready. Gone too? Likely so.

Westward Ho, The Wagons! was a fairly punk feature. You can't see it now except in lousy pan-scan DVD or paid streaming. William Beaudine directed, so no one's time or money got wasted. There was at least Cinemascope to distinguish Wagons from stuff on TV. Fess Parker toplines, but he never really took off as a major star for Disney. He had hoped to be loaned to do The Searchers at Warners, but Walt nixed, and Jeffrey Hunter got the job. Fess did Wagons for his western instead. That had to hurt, considering hit The Searchers was in 1956 and status it attained later. Westward Ho, The Wagons! had campfire singing in search of a next "Ballad Of Davy Crockett," and there were Mouseketeers along for the trail ride. Indians on hand are much more good than bad, so excitement is lessened. Down-the-cast was George Reeves, who, as opined before, would have made a perfect and ongoing live action hero for Disney had he lived into the 60's, but then we'd have had less, or none, of Brian Keith. Disneyland USA was cut up and used for parts as later shorts and TV programs updated the Magic Kingdom pitch. The featurette was put right for inclusion in a Disneyland DVD box that is out of print and goes for blue fortune at Amazon. You can catch Disneyland USA, at least for the moment, on You Tube. It's a glorious time capsule and probably the best evocation of infant Disneyland that there is.