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Can’t… wait… can’t…. stand…. the wait…… Related Posts...
Wynn rose through the ranks of vaudeville to star in the Zigfield Follies as early as 1914; he continued to write, act, and produce on Broadway for decades. He was a popular radio show host in the 1930’s and a TV host in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, winning an Emmy in 1949. As Wynn prepared to retire, his son Keenan persuaded him to try serious acting and he made his debut in Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight on the anthology series Playhouse 90. He would continue to work in film and television until his death in 1966.
This long list of Disney credits gets to something I often think about – the fact that for a great portion of the 1950’s and 60’s, Disney had a fairly steady stock company of actors and filmmakers creating a constant stream of live-action films for the company. While the old studio system was dying elsewhere, Walt was running a shop that centered around contract players and in-studio production talent. While such a system has its benefits and its shortcomings, at its best it can result in a consistent supply of familiar faces producing dependably entertaining films. It requires constant quality control and the occasional freshening though; Disney’s own system would return to bite the studio after Walt was gone. When his eye for quality and urge to push the envelope was lost, decay set in and what was comfortable and familiar in the 1950’s became trite and threadbare by the 1970’s.
While I would never suggest that Disney eschew the urge to continually explore new material and bring in new talent, I’ve always rather hoped that they’d make a return to these early roots and establish a small internal production group that could foster new talent and produce a series of films with a similar continuity. Even an anthology television program, produced for ABC or the Disney Channel and centering on the fictional town of Medfield could provide a reliable source of entertainment and a touchstone with Disney’s past. Keep it interesting, avoid cliche and general cheeseballery, and hire talented people with good ideas – actually think about what you’re making and you can avoid the stream of tapioca that most people think of when they think of Disney post-Walt. How else are kids of the future going to know about 121-year-old vaudevillians? Happy Birthday, Ed! Related Posts...
Strategies for promoting these parks became quite different even before WDW became the younger sister to its Aneheim predecessor. Imagineers wanted to make the parks different – vast spaces and soaring spires in the Magic Kingdom versus intimate detail at Disneyland, but also entire new attractions and lands. Fantasyland dark rides based on Peter Pan, Snow White, and The Wind in the Willows (Mr. Toad) were to be replaced by Mary Poppins, Sleeping Beauty, and Sleepy Hollow (Ichabod Crane), respectively. That plan was cut early by Roy O. Disney due to budget concerns. Gone was New Orleans Square, as New Orleans itself was clearly too close to Florida to be seen as exotic, as was its defining attraction, Pirates of the Carribean. In its place went Liberty Square, another detailed land with its own Haunted Mansion and a completly different feel. The Pirates equivalent of course was supposed to be the Western River Expedition, a part of the giant Thunder Mesa complex that made it onto park maps at one time, but never off the drawing board. Brian Martsolf has an interesting site dedicated to Walt Disney World in postcards, and pre-opening the marketers at Disney decided to bet on difference from Disneyland to push their product. There are postcards of watercraft on giant bodies of water (in relation to any at Disneyland), resort hotels, and recreation.
As for the other two postcards, there’s one with the new land Liberty Square (not exactly a blockbuster attraction pictured here).
The other? A view from a Tom Sawyer raft of Thunder Mesa, which made it onto park maps and postcards but never off the drawing board. The folks at Disney must have been pretty sure that this was going to make it, and if you’re interested about why it didn’t, you should read this Jim Hill article about the long process of this attraction’s death.
Regardless, the folks at Disney were not that eager to rely on touchstones for their marketing for WDW. In fact, it appears quite the contrary – that they looked for a different product to promote and new challenges to tackle. Unfortunately, in the post-Walt era, this thinking vanished for the most part. Tokyo Disneyland was in large part a copy of the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, and though the dream of Disney lived long enough to make EPCOT anew as a respectable theme park, and Eisner built Euro Disney with an eye for quality, this form of thinking does not seem to have much legs at Disney anymore. Eisner wanted every property to be a “resort” like WDW, including hotels and second gates. The Disney Studios and California Adventure show the budget cut agenda, cutting corners on quality while taking wholesale attractions from other parks, namely the Disney MGM Studios. Recent popular attractions, such as the Tower of Terror, Buzz Lightyear, Pooh, even the mountains Splash, Space, and Big Thunder have been sent around the world in near identical versions. Now, with the Disney Parks ad campaign, it is clear that the folks at Disney marketing want to consolidate even further, refusing to admit the difference in the Resorts’ drawing power and demographic, and the differences and advantages of each particular resort. Obviously they are trying to establish more “brand essence,” Disneyspeak for a corporate image. But perhaps for once, they should develop more individual resort identities. Related Posts...
That video from 1984 shows an early version of the much-ballyhooed Living Character Initiative Disney corporatespeaks so much about. Early examples that have opened to great fervor from Generation Wii include Turtle Talk with Crush at EPCOT, Stitch Encounter at Hong Kong Disneyland, the Muppet Mobile Lab at DCA, and to a lesser extent the oft-troubled Lucky the Dinosaur and the officially shunned Laugh Floor Comedy Club at MK.
Anyway, Disney’s really on fire for this idea, and I suppose judging by the crowds in the Muppet Labs clip, expect more of this in the future. It’s interesting to see this again frightening Showbiz Pizza alternative from 1984. Also, there’s an interesting Wikipedia article about digital puppetry that’s worth a read, that deals with historical development of the technology that’s popping up around Disney parks worldwide. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SHOWBIZ TRAINING VIDEO Related Posts...Last January, celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz debuted a series of promotional photographs for the multi-year global “Year of a Million Dreams” ad campaign. The ads, featuring David Beckham, Beyonce, and Scarlett Johansson, created worldwide excitement for the “Disney Parks” promotion and now Leibovitz has returned with… exciting… magical… umm… Look. Leibovitz is a legendary photographer but I don’t really care. Ad campaigns are boring, I think the “Disney Parks” cross-branding conceit is really stupid, and I could not conceivably care less about the “Year of a Million Dreams.” Honestly, I just wanted to have an excuse to post this image:  Related Posts... |
 From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats.  |
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On this day in 1886 (!), Isaiah Edwin Leopold was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he would later run away from home to join the vaudeville circuit, he would change his name to 
Wynn’s vaudeville fame no doubt appealed to Walt Disney, who had grown up while Wynn was a big star on Broadway. Disney was obviously a fan of the old vaudeville stage, and Wynn would appear in Disneyland’s own “Golden Horseshoe Revue” for its 10,000th performance in 1962. Wynn would make eight films for Disney, most prominently Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, but also The Absent Minded Professor and Son of Flubber, Babes in Toyland, Those Calloways, That Darn Cat!, and The Gnome-Mobile.
Every film geek knows the thrill of seeing some favorite character actor show up in a bit part, and for me that experience began with watching these films as a kid. A lot of actors from this period in Disney history tend to pop up as character actors in other major studios’ films in this and previous eras. Similarly, as a budding film geek it was fun to spot familiar composers, writers, directors, and even set designers and effects technicians from film to film.
As stated by Tangaroa so eloquently in his 
Looks fun. As for the theme park equivalent of Disneyland, there were only three postcards for the Magic Kingdom. Of course there had to be one with the castle, but this painting by Herb Ryman emphasises the scale difference of this castle to Sleeping Beauty’s. Note the procession in front of the castle, and the distance used as per the standard view of Disneyland’s castle. Disneyland guests are always shocked at the scale of not only the castle itself, but the breadth of the hub in general, and this picture clearly captures it.
The other day I wrote a 
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