Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Hubba Bubba, 1956

The title of this post might be intriguing. It might be infuriating. It might even make you physically ill. But all it means is that today's photos involve some serious hub action. And that sounds dirty, but it's not.


Fun with prepositions: this first photo is taken of the hub. And what a seething mass of humanity there was on this fine sunny day! Soylent Green, anyone? It almost looks as if there is a long queue of some kind, but I believe that it was just an unusually busy day.


Fun with prepositions, part deux: This photo is taken from the hub. And this from angle things don't look nearly so crowded. If you look carefully through Frontierland's entrance gates, you can just see the book-shaped sign that showed guests what wonders awaited them on the Rainbow Desert Mine Train attraction.


12 comments:

TokyoMagic! said...

Major, if you put some music to this post and animated it, you'd almost have a whole School House Rock video.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your profile pic "bluer" than usual? And speaking of animation, didn't it used to "wink" at us every so often?

Jason Schultz said...

That first photo is so funny...they're all so polite and well-dressed! The Guests should have just come back on a rainy day and they wouldn't have had to deal with any crowds at all.

Nancy said...

look out everyone, i'm coming in! what a gorgeous day!

Connie Moreno said...

Ya, what Tokyo said!

I think the Park looks crowded in the first photo because no one is walking in the street except those three bad boys, LOL.

Chuck said...

I think the crowd in the first photo is gathering for the short-lived Mickey Mouse Club Ultimate Cage Fight Show, which was staged Sundays at 2 pm on the castle drawbridge from June 3rd through 17th, 1956. Judging by the size of the crowd, this was probably the legendary Annette vs. Darlene smack-down on June 17th, the only one Walt personally attended.

This was a personal grudge match that left hair, blood and teeth all over the place. Walt was so appalled at the carnage that he, Joe Fowler and Van France had to step into the cage in the middle of the third round and pull the girls apart before they killed each other. Fowler ended up hospitalized for a week.

Fan reaction was intense, and only some quick thinking by the senior security host present prevented the crowd from turning on Walt. Aside from the picket lines on Buena Vista during the 1941 Studio Strike, this was the only recorded incident where Walt was booed to his face during his lifetime.

The show was immediately discontinued, and an an extensive effort was mounted to remove all evidence of the event from Company records. Walt even went so far as to have all 215,000 copies of the just-printed 1956b variant of the Disneyland Souvenir Guide destroyed because they included a two-page spread featuring the June 3rd match between Cubby O'Brien and Karen Pendleton. No remaining copies are known to exist.

Despite the efforts to erase it from memory, a reminder of the event remained on the site for many years - one of Darlene's upper left bicuspids remained embedded in the bridge planking until the 1983 Fantasyland refurb.

Major Pepperidge said...

TM!, for some reason blogger turned my old animated blinking moon from an animated gif into an un-animated png (this happened quite a while ago, actually). So I made a newer and bluer animated gif last night, uploaded it, and blogger still turns it into a png, even if I try to link to my photo host's URL. I just want him to blink again! Stay tuned for further changes as I work on it.

Progressland, speaking of well-dressed, are you going to participate in Friday's "Dapper Day"?

Nancy's flying in on her autogyro!

Connie, it is amazing how few people are in the street.

Chuck, as much as I love Annette, my money would have been on future jailbird Darlene. I have one of those rare souvenir guides. Notice that, because Cubby and Karen were so small, they used two-by-fours with nails sticking out of them for added excitement.

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

"Annette vs. Darlene" were's the lost footage of that!!!!

First pic is just weird, yet I like it...

Orange Co Native said...

Did people back then just not walk on the street? Almost everyone is on the sidewalk.

The reasons could be......

1. It could be that people were more conscious about staying on the sidewalks back then in comparison to today.
2. Some kind of parade is about to begin.

I am trying to think back to the early 1960's at Disneyland from my own experiences. I can't remember if people tended to stay on the sidewalks or not. Not something someone really takes note of and I doubt if my dad would know either. I know today everyone is going every which way on the streets and the sidewalks.

It is neat seeing the castle without the Matterhorn over to the right. Although, I do love the Matterhorn.
The fort looks great as well.

Major Pepperidge said...

VDT, I am assuming that the photo was snapped just as the park opened, and the crowd was heading for the castle.

OC Native, I think it was just a case of Disneyland being a new concept, and a street was not something folks would normally walk in anyway. Nowadays, with the crowds, you almost have to walk in the street.

SundayNight said...

Looks to me like they are all leaving from a parade. Interesting pic.

Chiana_Chat said...

Of course there were reasons people had the habit of walking on side walks, where that luxury was provided. One was that shoes were expensive, hand-care-and-clean by owner items and streets used to be ah, dirty, before the paving and the complete disappearance of the horse. There is a horse, of course, on Main St. so most peeps were going to use that side walk out of good habit... now peeps are used to having both sidewalks and clean streets and used to the idea of using any walking space in amusement parks in their cheap machine-wash shoes.

I like 'em, Maj, esp. the early Frontierland entrance. Is that the mineral hall or Casa del Fritos we can see on the right? Not seen that NW "book."

Jason Schultz said...

Dunno about Dapper Day...I'll just dress nicely for the Park whenever I go, like today.