Three Beauties from April 1963
I have a trio of photos for you taken by Lou Perry, and (as always) generously shared with us by Sue B., who scanned 'em. These are all from April of 1964, and are from some sort of smaller-format slide film. But they look great!
First up is this shot of the Disneyland parking lot, looking toward the Hotel, when it was just the Garden Apartments, and the still-relatively-new Sierra Tower to the right (completed the previous year). Hey, Nanook, what's that car? Cool tail fins! Let's go for a swim in the Olympic-sized pool.
Speaking of the Sierra Tower, Lou either somehow got to the roof, or he probably had a room pretty high up, affording him this bird's eye view of the parking lot, with the Monorail beamway running right through. No Monorail though, oh well. Where are all the cars?? Was the park closed this day? Perhaps the most interesting detail is seeing the "Melodyland" theater under construction in the top right corner.
And lastly, here's a wonderful shot of an L.A. Airways helicopter. While this air service ultimately had a sad history, it sounds like the coolest thing ever; land at LAX, and fly directly to the Disneyland Hotel! No clogged freeways to deal with, and you'd almost surely get amazing aerial views of the park, so have your cameras at the ready.
MANY THANKS to Lou and Sue!
29 comments:
Major-
That would be a 1957 Dodge, possibly in 'Ice Blue' & 'Velvet Blue'. It was "totally-restyled" for '57 - with a Swept-Wing - where the 'rear fins "overlap" the fender'. With all those "aerodynamics" it seems a miracle these vehicles never became 'airborne'-!!
I'm sorry to always be the bearer of 'flopped image news', but it appears the 2nd image is flopped.
Thanks to Lou & Sue.
Major-
I should've also mentioned the car [very-closely] following that Hotel Tram is a 1961 Chrysler.
In the first pic, I like how part of the parking lot is in shade while part is in sun. Like you said, Major, where are all the cars? Funny how there's this huge parking lot, and it says NO PARKING. I guess that explains the absence of cars.
A lot of puddles in the second photo. Must have been a "Little April Shower" recently. Judging by all the ductwork, vents, and blowers in the lower part of the picture, Lou was probably on the 4th or 5th floor of the Sierra Tower overlooking the roof of the Garden Apartments.
Best photo of the L.A. Airways helicopter we've seen! Thanks Lou. And thank you once again, Sue for sharing your dad's photos with us. And Major for this Blog.
By golly, you're right, Nanook... flopped!
Thank goodness the italics are gone! (It was distracting.)
@ JB-
That section of roof would be above the Gourmet Restaurant, Bar and some of the meeting rooms. The Garden Rooms aren't visible in this image.
I could also tell that the second image was flipped. There were several clues, but the most obvious is that the "H" sign in the parking lot is reversed. ;-)
Thank you Lou, Sue and the Major, too!
Don’t be silly, Major. That may be a big car, but there’s no way it has its own Olympic-sized swimming pool.
!ɘϱɒmi bnoɔɘƨ ɘʜt ɘvol I
The third photo shows the third and last location of the Disneyland Heliport, located north across W. Cerritos from the Disneyland Hotel. The Sikorsky S-61L shown, N303Y, was the mishap aircraft that crashed on May 22nd, 1968, killing everyone aboard, the first of the two fatal crashes that year.
Thanks, Lou & Sue!
Chuck, thanks for that helicopter info. The crazy thing is that the second fatal crash was August 14, 1968, and yet my silly dad took a helicopter on September 12, that same year, to Disneyland. I found his receipt, but am still looking for any pictures he may have taken from the helicopter.
These were from April 1963, as the post title states. Not 1964, as Major mentioned in his narrative. And I'm the one who flipped the slide.
Side note to Major: We make a good team, don't we? ;oP
Side note to Mike C.: Major confirmed that one of the post cards rubber-cemented to one of my parents' scrapbooks IS the one you mentioned yesterday. *churning stomach*
Looking at pictures like these it’s weird to think The Enchanted Tiki Room was all new. I always have a feeling when I see vintage photos that had I been alive then ( …. At least this lifetime around) would it feel different? Now that I’m on my early 50’s I don’t think that way anymore because enough time has passed that I know that living say in 1974 didn’t feel “different” than 1978 …. Or 1980 …. 1987…..1992….etc etc. yes the styles and cars and the people around you might have been different… but the feelings of “living” felt the same ( if that makes any sense) so now , while I would still love to time - travel to the past …. I have a feeling had I lived in 1928 or 1890 ….. the feeling of “existing” would be the same I think … despite my surroundings …… I’m not sure if I make sense.
Sue: even with that card being damaged on the back …. It’s still a valuable postcard. It’s interesting Disneyland chose to reproduce just that billboard artwork ….. or it’s possible the others were done , but nobody has ever seen a surging one …..
First, these are wonderful pics of the parking lot. Also wondered if the park was closed or it was a really early California morning.
Mike, I'm in my early 70s and you make perfect sense. Your conclusion that living feels the same in any age must be true. The environment that one inhabits during his or her life certainly molds and dictates how you "act" and go about your life, but that feeling of existing has to be the same. It's a bit hard to wrap my head around living in ancient Egypt or any other distant time, but one's consciousness about the world as it is in your time has to be the same as mine or yours in this age we live in. Laughing, talking, interacting with others, pain, grief, well, everything. I'm not too sure if that makes sense but I'm sure someone pondered these same issues in whatever time they lived in.
Thanks Major, love Lou's photos. Thank you Lou and Sue.
A quintessential GDB thread.
Come for the pictures, stay for the comments.
Thanks Lou, Sue and Major, and the Junior Gorillas, Mike and Dr Goat, Nanook. Chuck & Tokyo.
JG
Nanook, coincidentally, I am entirely dressed in “Ice Blue” and “Velvet Blue” (a crushed velvet suit, of course). That second image might be flopped - or is it YOU who is flopped?!? Sorry, I get rattled.
Nanook, based on that tiny image, I love that ’61 Chrysler!
JB, if you want to park your car, you have to go to the hardware store four blocks away. The Disneyland parking lot is only for emergencies. This isn’t an emergency, is it?? i wondered about those puddles, either it rained a little, or did they actually scrub the entire parking lot on occasion? If so, WOW. Are those the Garden Apartments down below? I didn’t know that they faced out toward the parking lot at all, but i sure don’t have a good idea of the old Hotel layout. And yeah, they fixed the italics issue, hooray.
Nanook, that’s what I was thinking, the Gourmet Restaurant, or maybe some of the Hotel shops too.
TokyoMagic!, Plus that crosswalk sign says KLAW, a dead giveaway.
Chuck, in those days Detroit tried everything, including Olympic-sized swimming pools in their cars. It’s what made those automobiles so great. Getting one of those ’61 Chryslers with the built-in Slurpee machine is sort of a “holy grail” for collectors.
Lou and Sue, if I was a photographer like Lou, I’d probably want to take a picture of a landing (or taking off) helicopter too, it’s just not something one sees every day. Do you think your dad was aware of the crash in August? I think the “1964 is a typo, I still have issues with numbers when I don’t look.
Mike Cozart, my guess is that the park would have felt quite different, for one thing it was generally not super crowded, and there was always so much going on, new stuff added by Walt and his boys, etc. Or maybe it’s as you suggested, in the moment it just “felt like Disneyland”. Only in retrospect would we appreciate the way things were. I feel as if “existing” now feels different from 40 years ago, but of course a lot of that is probably due to my age. I told Sue that her card is probably still worth a chunk of money, even if glued into an album. That one is so rare!
DrGoat, I think (but am not sure) that these were sort of the outer reaches of the parking lot, so maybe that explains the lack of automobiles. Or, by September, the kids were all back in school, and the park reverted to those sleepy days when only a few thousand people showed up. It sounds amazing! I think your ideas about the similarities of life for people, no matter where or when, has a lot of merit. It’s amazing to sometimes see artifacts from prehistory and realize that those people, with all of their differences, were probably a lot like us too.
JG, you’re welcome!!
Nice going Sue. You're so lucky your parents did what they did. I'd love to see some of those postcards, including that one you speak of. We bought lots of postcards way back when, but didn't have the forethought to keep them. My parents mailed almost everyone of them because, well, that's what you do with postcards according to my parents.
Major, I think you're right about feeling different now. If I could time travel back to 1968, Main Street would feel so much different to me than the original 18 year old me. Age and life experiences since then changed my sensorium as only age and experiences can. I do like the word sensorium. It takes in just about everything.
Yes … correcting the image orientation places that roof as part of the Gourmet Restaurant Kitchen ….. in later years there was a hotel cast only dining area after the kitchens were enlarged. Seeing the south end of the Disneyland parking lot beyond that section of the monorail beam reminds me the feeling of “dread” I’d feel if we had to park that far back ….. it meant we got there late and now we were farther away from Disneyland and other guests were already in the park experiencing everything before us!!
I remember in the 1980’s getting to Knott’s Berry Farm pretty early and they were anticipating a very busy day and we had to park in a Knott’s section set up over near the Sears of the Buena Park Mall !!!! I would get so mad! Lol! And I’d think “ let the people who get here LATE have to park at Sears!!!”
DRGOAT : that’s EXACTLY what I was trying to get at …… regarding the feeling or or the experience of “existing” during various decades … centuries…. Etc…. Oh yes - experiencing places during different times would feel different , and people may behave differently….. but from 50 years I can look back and know that living in the early 70’s our emotions …. Feelings …. Interactions with people …. Feeling tired, awake …. Wanting , relaxing …. The sensation of “existing” doesn’t change …. It was the same looking back in the 1980’s through today etc. So that feeling of experiencing existence must be the same 50 years ago …. 100 years I ago …. 5,000 years ago for humans.
DrGoat, Lou is a gosh-darned miracle! My dad would have never bought a single Disneyland postcard, and yet… Lou bought a bunch of ‘em. It’s surprising how many unused cards survived, clearly a lot of people got them just to hold onto. Good for us collectors! And yes, if I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would appreciate so many things that people from the era wouldn’t even think twice about. But I’m sure there would be other things that would not be so great - I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
Mike Cozart, huh, I did not know that the hotel had a cast-only dining area where the old Gourmet restaurant used to be. I know what you mean about that “dread” feeling, and yet… once you were in the park, it seemed OK. And your story about Knott’s making you park far away is so familiar, Disney did that to me too. “We think it’s going to be busy, so you get to park in the Pinocchio lot.” Hey, why not let ME, an early bird, park in the shaded parking structure, and make the latecomers park in the Pinocchio lot!
Major, I think the Pinocchio parking section is NOW over 400 miles away from the Disneyland entrance. Doesn’t DrGoat now have that parking lot sign?
—Sue
I love seeing pictures of the heliport, I took the helicopter to the DL Hotel with my dad when I was 5 or 6 years old. I vividly remember sitting on the tarmac at the airport and showing my dad oil running down the window. He pointed it out to a crew member, and we switched helicopters!
Dr. Goat, your comments are spot on with me. It's one reason I enjoy seeing original artworks in museums so much. That little painting is a direct connection to the living artist, he or she touched that same canvas that I am now close to. It's as close as you can get to those people. I remember the creepy chill I had climbing the famous stair in the Laurentian Library in Florence and realizing that Michelangelo had passed exactly that same way. There's a church in Rome with a marble sculpture by Michelangelo that you are permitted to touch, unlike all the rest that are kept safely out of reach. You can touch the living stone carved by the master. Amazing.
JG
@ Sue-
That oil is merely a 'tiny trickle'. Nothing to be concerned over-!
Major-
"... if I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would appreciate so many things that people from the era wouldn’t even think twice about." That's true for all of us. Unfortunately we only have control over the 'present'. Take advantage of it and the good things it has to offer... 'fer instance - for many of us, that would be Gorilla's Don't Blog-!
Nanook, I wasn’t the lucky one who got to ride in the helicopter...it looks like Matt was. Lucky duck!
Nanook, I couldn’t agree more with your last comment!!!
—Sue
I've ridden the helicopter from LAX to Disneyland and back - twice!
The experience was very much like getting into a bus with a large turbine engine strapped to the top. The flight was brief - only about 15 minutes as I recall.
It was a "commuter" airline, really, with a stopover at Disneyland, and most of the passengers on the morning flight were business people who stayed on the aircraft to continue on into Orange County.
I can remember being a little frightened as we flew - I had had some experience with single engine aircraft, and I knew that helicopters weren't anywhere near survivable if anything happened.
But we made it, obviously, and I was horrified when the two crashes happened a couple years later.
Still, it was a wonderful way to get to and from the park while it lasted - it was like one more attraction.
I do Sue. Pinocchio 11E. Bought on Ebay Disney back in 2002 I think.
That sign is one of the pics on this page.
https://drgoat.tumblr.com/page/10
Hogarth, just curious as to how old you were when you took the helicopter. Thanks for sharing.
DrGoat, do you provide tram service back and forth?
I enjoyed all the comments and stories - thank you, everyone.
My dad will appreciate all the nice comments. Major, I'll have to ask him if he knew about the crashes, when he took the helicopter. I'm pretty sure I already asked him, but I can't remember his answer. Old age.
As for the orientation of that first pic. It wasn't taken from the DL parking lot. It was taken from the parking lot that was located across Cerritos Ave. If you look closely, you can see that there is a street between the edge of the parking lot and the DL Hotel buildings. That's Cerritos Ave. The Heliport would be just to Lou's right (out of view) and the DL Hotel's miniature golf course would have been behind him. Some of the pictures in that link which Chuck provided, will confirm the location. And one of the pictures (the 1962 aerial shot) in that link is amazing, because it shows how most of Adventureland and part of Frontierland were all dirt. Even a portion of the Jungle Cruise is dug up. There is an aerial photo out there somewhere, that better shows this major construction project going on in that section of the park.
Sue, so the Pinocchio lot is now a physically different place? Poor cast members (I think they have to park there too?).
Matt, very neat! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard from anybody who actually experienced the helicopter! That oil trickle, YIKES. Good thing your dad pointed it out, it clearly meant something, since you switched to a different ‘copter.
JG, I agree with you, an object touched by a great artist seems to have a certain “magic”; as you say, a connection to the person. In a way I guess autographs are that way too, I sort of felt that when I finally acquired a Walt Disney autograph. I suppose it’s silly, but hey, that’s how it feels to ME. Gosh, I didn’t know there was a Michelangelo statue that they actually allow you to touch! That seems crazy. Maybe it was his sculpture of Sonic the Hedgehog?
Nanook, that is good advice, and sometimes (not nearly enough), I try to stop and think about what I am experiencing in the bigger scheme of things. I usually do that during a hike out in nature, but I find that it’s easy for me to just “zone out” and not really consider the surroundings. Thanks for the kind words about GDB!
Sue, at least you had a dad who took a photo of the helicopter! ;-)
Hogarth, wow neat! Two people in one comments section. Amazing. I always wondered how long it took to commute from LAX to Disneyland… 15 minutes is wonderful! Considering how long it would take to drive. Do you remember if the helicopter purposely circled the park to give guests some sweet aerial views? I’ve always wondered if they did that, or if the aerial photos that we sometimes see were just snapped by an attentive passenger! I’ve only been on a helicopter once, and it was neat, but a little freaky.
DrGoat, such a great artifact!!
DrGoat, you’ve sent me at photo or two of your great sign, what a wonderful thing to look at. I would get nice warm feelings from it, even on a bad day.
Lou and Sue, when you talk to your dad, please tell him how much we all love his photos!!
TokyoMagic!, thanks for the correction; something about the layout of that lot, the lighting, and the “no parking” markings made me think for sure that it was a part of the actual lot.
Unfortunately, tram service was taken out of the budget. Only works for me now. Family and friends occasionally.
Lou and Sue - I was 15 and 16 the two times I took the helicopter.
Thanks, Hogarth! You were so fortunate to ride it. Were you sitting in good seats to be able to see all or part of Disneyland?
—Sue
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