THE DENT
There are a number of famous dents in the US. The dent on the Statue of Liberty from that UFO (you all saw the footage). The dent in Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater", from when Frank hit it with his yo-yo. And the dent in the Queen Mary, from a collision with a megalodon. But the most famous and beloved dent of all is on one of the spires of Sleeping Beauty Castle.
Sue B. has a Doctorate in Dentology, and she wanted to explore the phenomenon of THE DENT in more detail. Here's what she said: When The Dent was first brought to our attention on GDB (by Jr. Gorilla Stefano in the GDB post comments on 8/24/21), it caused quite a stir….we wanted to know WHO, WHEN, WHY, WHERE AND HOW? HOW did it get there?? DrGoat was certain that Tinker Bell slammed into the turret on one of her fly-overs, and we officially accepted that answer as the truth, but, in the meantime, I was asking Mike Cozart some questions, curious as to his thoughts. I do believe he solved the mystery. Here’s our conversation, in part:
Question to Mike: What were the turrets made of?
Mike: The originals were Douglas fir and fiberglass.
(I found a few interesting early photos of SBC as it was being built, with some spires still on the ground)
Question to Mike: Were the turrets shingled with individual fiberglass shingles?
Mike: Each whole roof turret of ‘shingles’ was one piece. A master was fabricated and the old style cloth and liquid glass was coated on. Then the casting was pulled. A dent could have easily been made during construction or a rehab. Fiberglass is done slightly different, today, but there are so many other kinds of plastic composites being used in construction now. I don’t know exactly ‘the event’ — but you can see how that roof (turret) damage can easily be caused.
(I admit that I can't see The Dent here, but I think it might just be the angle of the sun)
Question to Mike: Were the defects/dents possibly due to poorly made molds?
Mike: Not poorly made…but quickly made. Fiberglass in building construction was very, very new in 1955 and almost non-existent. And they probably didn’t have the time or money to fix something so minor that guests were just not going to notice….until 60+ years later. And, what might be visible — scouring eagle-eyed over a photograph — probably was not something ever seen by actual guests. And do you spend the money and time on a small ‘dip’ (it’s not really a dent) or do ‘we’ have Main Street and the Mark Twain running on opening day?? Kind of important.
This next one was sent to me by both Sue, and by GDB friend MS, so they both get credit! A mysterious young buckaroo stands nest to one of the spires, and I'll be danged if I don't see a dent on the one closest to us! As MS said, it must be the kid's fault!
Mike: I have a feeling that because of the rush in construction and probably the lack of workers trained in fiberglass fabrication on that scale, the turret roof was probably pulled off the mold before it was completely cured and a slight sag formed without any major support under it while it dried. I’m sure it was also minor enough that there would be no water leaking, etc., and they decided to ‘let it go'.
Mike added: ...regarding the turret photo, as you can see, the back turret is cradled (for transporting), plus the turrets have inner supports.
(Here's a press photo from opening day - it's hard to see, but I do see a dent on that spire).
Question to Mike: Could the cradles cause the denting?
Mike: The cradles couldn’t do the denting — the turrets were from fiberglass molds.
Mike: I would have had the dip facing towards the castle, away from the guests…but I suspect that the molded clips used to attach the roof turret to the actual wall tower was already oriented that way so the dip or ‘sag' had to face outwards…or maybe it wasn’t even noticeable to the workers. I know in model work, sometimes, a damaged part isn’t noticeable until it’s painted.
Back in 2021, I shared some photos from MS, with many showing The Dent about as clearly as I've ever seen in any images! That post got 37 comments (as Sue pointed out), rivaling Beatlemania in its cultural impact. MS is in the photo below, he's the guy to the left - as he mentioned, he might be the only Junior Gorilla who has a photo posing with The Dent! Click on THIS LINK to see more of MS's photos.
Here's another one of MS's pix really showing off that Dent.
SO... how do YOU think The Dent happened? Is it like Mike suggested, that it just happened while the spire was on the ground? Did a drunk pelican fly into the spire? THANKS to Sue, Mike Cozart, and MS for their contributions to today's blog post.
27 comments:
Major-
YES - thanks to all for the incredible sleuthing and info. I know I'll be 'sleeping well' tonight.
Thanks, Major.
Next week : the Matterhorn Scar …… the Mark Twain Scrape …. The Small World Smudge ….. The Jungle Cruise Gouge ….
I think I had meant to say YES …. The delivery support cradles could have allowed the dent to form had the casting not been completely cured … and a soft sag ( “the dent”
Formed … it’s also possible that the glassing process didn’t get enough catalyst when that turret was being molded and it just took extra time to cure … but the hectic construction process prevented waiting longer .
If anything DEFINITELY had to be ready on opening day it certainly was The Castle!!
What a fun, and informative post! With construction photos! I thought that might've been The Dent in the bottom right corner of the first photo. But it's too close to the bottom of the turret, isn't it? Probably just a darkening in the corner of the photo.
Haha, I agree... THE KID DID IT! Or maybe Walt himself did it, flicking chili beans at it.
In the photo with MS, Wow! The Dent really IS visible here!... Why, even Bu should be able to see this one! :-D
Maybe the turrets were made of ABC gum, like Chicago's Wrigley Building.
Was The Dent a 'thing' discussed amongst Disney fans before Stefano brought it up here? Or did GDB make a considerable addition to Disney lore? I gotta think somebody has known about it since 1955.
We should just go with DrGoat's theory: Tinker Bell (the real one) smashed into it on one of her fly-overs.
Mike, Haha, I look forward to reading the explanations of all those imperfections!
Thanks so much to our resident Dentologist, Sue, for making today's post possible. And thanks to Major, Mike C. and MS.
Oops, I forgot to thank Major for posting my comment on yesterday's 'publication': Thank you!
Looks like today's comment isn't disappearing like yesterday's. [OMG, I just jinxed it!... Time will tell.]
I've seen that color photo of the kids running across the drawbridge before. But I've never noticed the man standing on the roof of the Castle! Is it a "lurking" Walt Disney? Giving it a second look, I see there is also a man on a ladder, just to the right of the Castle entrance. I'm assuming this was just a publicity photo and not actually taken on opening day? Otherwise, why would the kids be running away from Fantasyland?
This was fascinating info. Thanks for all your efforts, Sue, Mike, MS, and Major!
......and Stefano, too!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It’s good to see you all this morning! We were without electricity from late Friday until late yesterday and I had to restrict nonessential power usage to conserve batteries. There are downsides to being a cyborg.
The Dent! Possibly my favorite Disneyland detail that nobody has ever heard of!
The color photo of kids running screaming from Fantasyland as Monstro tries to gobble them up is so early in Disneyland’s history that the Stain (the Yarnell to the Dent’s Shields) hasn’t had time to form. And the ivy is so aggressive in MS’ picture that it’s not even visible.
Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to the sleuthification and theoriziming on how the Dent became the Dent. These dedicated dentists didn’t just give us a little bite of knowledge - they gave us something we can really sink our teeth into and ruminate on all day. I appreciate how they really got to the root of the matter, brushing up our knowledge, filling us in and capping it all off with this crowning achievement. I’m all smiles.
I will be ruminating all day on these. YES! Even I can see the dent today...but only in the MS photo...the rest: more forensics are needed. Whippersnapper IS VERY close to that construction site...something that would NEVER happen today...however, when I was this age and I'd go to work with my dad...we'd be around saws and hammers and all sorts of crazy things: it was a playground, and whippersnapper probably thought the same: not realizing that he was amongst a cultural turning point. That being said: I don't see the dent in that photo. In "females walking into castle" photos: I see no dent, (1 and 3)...but look like they were shot on the same day, or close to it. I'm not sure its WD in the photo: but one of those guys looks like John Hench. And WHO were these people? Photo 1 I see a big dent on the bottom right...but it also could be a shadow. Do I see a coat of arms on the castle? Looks like it...but in later years: it's blank (?). Some of these I can see the "shadow" of the wood forms used when pouring concrete...or is it? Kids running: looks like they are running in a field of debris...and these kids could be around today. Who are they: from Central Casting? Do they have a story to tell? And why are they running to "The Hub"....and yes...the hub is a technical term, and now after contemplating it: I did use this in my TG spiel. Strangely last night, after watching a TV show about a "wheelwright": one who makes wheels...the word "hub" came up a few times- which I thought was kind of freaky. I remember saying that Central Plaza "was like the hub of a wheel: with the lands around it like the spokes"....something like that...this was to give the guests a visual, that no matter where they were in the Park, they could come back to the hub, or officially Central Plaza...and find themselves again. Back to "running kids"....this could have been a rehearsal for the Opening Day TV show....because "lighting guy" is over there to the right working on one of those cool fixtures. They may have had these kids running towards the cameras for publicity shots pre-opening: and this was a rehearsal...only to have them go the opposite way when Fantasyland was open "in the name of the children" perhaps the day after. In "kid photo" the coat of arms is now blank (?). There is a lot going on in these photos: I may be back several times today. Thanks Major, Mike, Lou and Sue, MS, and the Children of the World!
Now we're going to have to discuss the fact that the "crenellations" on the first two towers on either side of the drawbridge aren't symmetrical.
Bu, the coat of arms was blank until sometime in the mid-1960s.
Re: Major's dialouge: The Queen Mary had a really big dent from 1942 when she basically cut a ship into two off the coast of Ireland. Even when I was there there in the 80's there was some "hush hush" about this event: 40+ years prior. Doing some exploration into unchartered areas in the bow of the ship: which honestly, was incredibly creepy and an OSHA nightmare: there did not seem to be any evidence of being "fixed"...although photographs tell the story of quite a large dent, with 300 lives lost.
https://www.commsmuseum.co.uk/publications/rmsqueenmary.pdf
Wow, this is the kind of deep research and hard-hitting journalaismings that should be behind a paywall on Patreon! I can’t believe that GDB is free. (Oops, should I not have said that? Maybe some readers are being charged?).
Seriously though, this is The Good Stuff. Thank you, Sue, Mike, MS and Major for assembling this stunning array of photos and back story. I had no idea that fiberglass was used so long ago. Now we have all kinds of plastic composites to mimic these kinds of fanciful shapes, but that was real science fiction back then.
Speaking of famous dents, we visited the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor earlier this year. Not far from the spot on deck where the Japanese surrender was signed is a big dent in the railing. A kamikaze plane crashed into the bow and slid off in the sea. The Missouri crew rescued the pilots remains and gave him a military funeral. The damage was slight enough that Mighty Mo fought through multiple deployments up to the Gulf War with this long dent in the armor and now it is a featured part of the tour.
Thanks Major!
JG
Fiberglass wasn’t really used at all in the building industry …. But it was already something movie studios were using . This kind of exposure the Walt Disney Studios would have had was a serious boon to the building of Disneyland. Interestingly the TOMORROWLAND PHANTOM BOATS were fiberglass and many guests were afraid to ride in them for fear they would dissolve in the water . The jungle cruise boat hulls were fiberglass too but there didn’t seem to be the same fear from guests. By the late 1940’s fiberglass was starting to be used in boats replacing heavier aluminum and marine plywoods like harborex. Lots of early Disneyland signs were made with harborex marine plywood … a product I don’t think is manufactured any longer .
So interesting! I noticed the price tag is still on the turret in the first pic, ala Minnie Pearl. Has anyone noticed if it's still there? If anyone can it's this group.
Thanks all for an interesting post. As someone said, come for the photos, stay for the comments.
Zach
Nanook, I was merely a leaf on the wind!
Mike Cozart, I’ve seen the Small World Smudge! The sooty deposit left by the smoke stacks of the DLRR. I think that Walt should have left the spires off the castle for opening day, and put “coming soon” signs.
JB, I believe that there were many smaller and less significant dents, when you see those spires in a certain light, they are pretty uneven. MS and I had a brief discussion about whether that kid could have been Walt’s grandson Christopher, but then MS found out that Christopher would have been too young when Disneyland opened. I’m not aware of The Dent being discussed anywhere else, and am trying to figure out how to turn this exciting fact into millions of dollars.
JB, no problemo!
TokyoMagic!, oh my gosh, I never noticed that guy up there until now! How odd! I’m wondering if he isn’t a photographer, though you’d think he would have a camera up to his face when kids are running across the bridge. I did see the guy next to the arch, I wonder if he had anything to do with raising the portcullis or whatever? I have no idea if that is a mere publicity photo.
TokyoMagic!, what about Toto?
Chuck, oh boy, I’ve been there (re: no power for days) - during the winds earlier in the year, our power went out for three days. Bye bye, food in the fridge. We saw so many neighbors purchasing generators, presumably to at least keep their refrigerators running, if nothing else. “Yarnell”, wow, you have to be a certain age! Thank you for more Chuck puns, even though they cause pain.
Bu, I think you need to develop your dent-viewing eye muscles, sort of like becoming a Shaolin Master. I suppose that if there was no active construction going on the day the kid was there, and he just happened to be there with his parents, there would be no harm. Lighting makes a huge difference in whether you can see the Dent, and in many photos, the sunlight is at such an angle that it won’t show up. I am SURE that it was there from the very beginning, and yet in many of my own blog photos, it’s impossible to see. Those kids would be around 80 years old, so some could certainly be around, though they probably aren’t doing much running. I do wonder where the kids came from, obviously it made for a great press photo to have them all in a big group. Maybe they were from a local school? I’ve seen videos of people making old-fashioned wagon wheels, the part that always interests me most is when they make the metal “tire” that is place around the wooden part, and it then shrinks as it cools for a tight fit. I do believe that they did a rehearsal for the Opening Day, possibly even earlier in the same day before the cameras were there. It could have been a LONG day for those kids.
Steve DeGaetano, they aren’t??
Steve DeGaetano, yes that is true.
Bu, I’m sure that (sadly), big ships hitting smaller boats was not uncommon, especially in a heavy pea-soup fog. It seems weird that there would be any sort of coverup. It happened, it’s sad, but why the secrecy?
JG, I already have low readership, just imagine how low it would be if I had a paywall. I’m not sure I would pay to read this blog! In fact I know I wouldn’t. There was some sort of fiberglass bookmark souvenir from the 1939 World’s Fair, so it was around at least that early, though probably a “new miracle technology” at that point. The crew of the Missouri “rescued” the remains of a kamikaze pilot? That seems surprising. You’d think they wouldn’t be quite so respectful in the moment.
Mike Cozart, even now I don’t know how much fiberglass is used in the “regular” building industry. Movie studios probably have all kinds of uses for the lightweight, relatively cheap material, and of course it only needs to last weeks or months at the most. I’d never heard that people were afraid that the Phantom Boats might dissolve, that’s sort of a funny visual. With all of the Phantom Boat’s problems, dissolving was not one of them!
zach, if you squint you can see that the price tag reveals that the spire was purchased at Woolworths!
Major-
"if you squint you can see that the price tag reveals that the spire was purchased at Woolworths!"
YES - and in a fortuitous moment for Walt, Woolworth's was having a "Buy One - Get One FREE" sale on spires-!
One free, as is, no returns.
Major, re the towers, you can see this best in the picture with the kids running out. The stone “supports” jut out under the larger diameter circular top portions and form dark arches (shadows). On the left tower, the first arch actually ends at the castle wall; there is no support. The tower on the right, the support itself is attached to the wall. I'll try to send you something visual.
I actually noticed this years ago when I was in the Park. When you can see it up close, it's very clear.
Oh fiberglass has been around way longer than Disneyland but it wasn’t a flourishing industry till the 1960’s. ( Television was around in 1928 but it wasn’t a common thing till the 50’s) I know of several
Companies that made fiberglass at architectural details for use on department stores and office and bank buildings. In 1971 Walt Disney World’s Main Street facades were FRP ( fiberglass reinforced plastic) and plastic coated foam. Gearing up for Disneyland’s 1985 anniversary the severely rotted Main Street USA had a massive refurbishment and replace lots of wood and plaster details with fiberglass. In 1995 the Disneyland haunted mansion was overhauled and all the plaster composition details (and later Fiberglas replacements) like corbels and capitals were replaced with new foam filled plastic details .
Studying architecture at San Diego State we always got invited to the big buildings and construction shows and I remember that foam filled plastic was a BIG thing in the building industry during the late 80’s especially here in Southern CA with popularity of post modern design featuring Spanish and Tuscan architectural details …and still in use today with All kinds of foams, plastics and vinyls being used to represent “wood” ,”stone”, “plaster” etc. plastics didn’t arrive in the future the way it was predicted at the Monsanto House of the Future … but it DID arrive.
I kinda remember the first time I noticed the Dent. It was big celebration morning for something, where there was supposed to have been a huge curtain across the front of the castle. But a wind storm the night before was said to have blown it away and caused the dent damage. That story didn’t seem likely even then, and research clearly proves otherwise (including the cover of several Disneyland publications), but I have not been able to un-see it ever since, in photos anyway, as the real deal seems to have finally been fixed with the referb a few years ago.
FUN today Major, thanks All
MS
Chuck, who you callin' a ruminant?!?! I've only got one stomach, thank you very much? Haha, I lost count of all the puns in that paragraph. That's another downside to being a cyborg: your super-efficient positronic brain didn't leave any puns for the rest of us!
Yay! Bu has been cured of his Dent Blindness!.... At least, for one brief shining moment. (A line from Dentalot.)
MS, R.I.P. The Dent.
The theory that the dent or “sag” really being caused shortly after the de-molding or being too soft is because if it was an actual dent the fiberglass would have mostly likely cracked and would have been repaired or replaced early on.
MS, so now the Castle is eDENTulous. :-(
Steve DeGaetano, my dog's better than your dog......'cause he eats crenellations! ♪ ♫ ♪
Knowing that the turrets were made of fiberglass over a wooden frame makes the most plausible explanation of the dent "sagging while it was curing." I assumed they was made of genuine Alcoa aluminum since they insisted on using it elsewhere, which would have made a dent during installation (or shrapnel from an detonating waterfowl more plausible.
I still say Tink did it.
;o)
Thanks, Major, Mike and all.
Nanook, you might have gotten a better deal at Zody’s, but it’s doubtful.
zach, why would you ever return a spire??
Steve DeGaetano, well, I can truthfully say that I never noticed the asymmetry of that part of the Castle before! I wonder if this detail was lifted from Neuschwanstein? I’d look it up but am too lazy.
Mike Cozart, I always thought that the mere idea of GLASS fibers being added to epoxy resin is such a trip. Brilliant of course, but I’d love to know who first came up with the concept. I have no problem with replacing old, presumably damaged/rotting old woodwork and plaster with fiberglass, especially since one can’t tell the difference. I’m sure a true expert could, but the average schmo has no idea. Making one casting and duplicating that feature over and over is a big time (and money) saver.
MS, I’m not sure I would have ever noticed the Dent without the folks on this blog. On the other hand, I’ve scrutinized old photos very closely, maybe I did notice it and just forgot about it. That would pretty much be my M.O. I’ve never heard anything about a huge curtain in front of the Castle, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
JB, if you only have one stomach, how do you process all that alfalfa?? You must have to chew your cud for HOURS. Helping Bu see the Dent is a good feeling, like helping orphans (not that I ever do that).
Mike Cozart, it’s too bad we don’t have photos of the spires being created, so we’d have a better idea of exactly what processes were used. Were they formed upright? Or on their sides??
TokyoMagic!, I think Michael Jackson had an album called “eDENTulous”.
TokyoMagic!, now I’m hungry for Ken-L-Ration dog food!
Dean Finder, aluminum would have been a pretty cool thing to use for those spires, but probably way too expensive compared to humble fiberglass.
Lou and Sue, the interest in The Dent is as hot as always!
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