Howsabout some nice vintage Fantasyland pix? Nothing that will blow your socks off, but they're still exceptional.
I love the color ins this first shot of the Mad Tea Party, with that blue, blue sky. All of the families are exiting their teacups, probably a little woozy from the extreme G-forces. Notice the stylish mom right in front of us!
One of the things that I noticed is the colors on things like the façade of the Mr. Toad attraction, or of the "Fan 2" eatery with the stripes on the tent alternating between a very muted yellow-ochre and gray. One might expect something more "in your face", like red and white. "Toad" has a variety of mossy greens, not "straight out of the tube" colors. even the red and yellow swirls on the spinning turntable are muted to a degree.
(Notice a bit of the tent where you would find Professor Keller and his Jungle Killers, to our left).
Next we have another view with the Teacups, and the Mickey Mouse Club Theater (which would not become the "Fantasyland Theater" until 1964). The little girl to the right got a balloon with one deflated ear - take it back and exchange it for another one!
You can see posters for the Mickey Mouse Club "3D Jamboree" which consisted of several 3D short subjects bookended with color footage of Jimmy Dodd and the Mouseketeers. You can also see the mom from photo #1, with her red hat!
EXTRA! EXTRA! Here is a closeup of that earring... not sure it is very helpful, as the resolution just turns to Legos.
The colors are all muted here, because a "certain somebody" wasn't working there yet and insisting that the colors be so bright, that they hurt people's eyeballs!
ReplyDeleteI might have asked this before, but does anyone know when they switched the main tournament tents over the Fantasyland dark rides and the Fantasyland Theater, from material to metal?
Major-
ReplyDeleteOh, I noticed 'stylish Mom', and even that bit of the 'good 'ol Professor's tent' - but my eyes kept getting drawn to the young gal in that blue "frock", and those wild sunglasses. Très chic-! That Mickey Mouse balloon isn't defective - that ear is merely resting.
Thanks, Major, for these beauties.
I love these pics!!! Wonderful color palette.
ReplyDeleteI like the simple cyclone fencing around the Mad Tea Party. I assume the top of the railings were designed that way to prevent guests from sitting on the fencing? I know they added that type of railing to the Submarine Voyage later to prevent guests from sitting on the railings. Thanks, Major.
Beautiful colors in these fun pictures! Wow! These colors have a classy look - not a "cheap-circus" look. And you're right, TokyoMagic! - they don't hurt people's eyeballs.
ReplyDeleteI love the flowered dress on the gal in the first picture, to the left. How pretty (and beautifully dressed)!
Nanook, it looks like the wild-sunglass gal is also in the last picture. I think that's her, up against the fence. She looks 15 years older in the first picture - compared to the last picture. Maybe the teacup spinning did that to her?!?!.
The red-hat gal in the first picture is wearing the strangest earring?? - wad of paper in her ear?? - especially for the mid-50's. (I don't mean that gals later commonly wore wads of paper in their ears in the 60's and 70's.) When you see the other side of her head in the last picture, there isn't one of those earrings on the other ear. Maybe the teacup spinning did that to her!?!?.
Thanks, Major!
Sue
I can happily say that my dad saved a sticker from 1956 Disneyland that looks like the hanging sign (in the last picture) of the red-circled Mickey Mouse face that says "Mouseketeers" - and IT WASN'T RUBBER-CEMENTED into a scrapbook!
ReplyDeleteSue, ha, ha! Maybe that isn't an earring! Maybe that lady had a cauliflower ear! By the way, there was plenty of cauliflower at my local grocery store, the last time I checked. But yes, they had no bananas.
ReplyDeleteTM! Your mentioning the grocery store reminded me that I noticed - on all of my recent grocery store trips/hunts - that there was always shelves fully-stacked with disposable diapers. It looks like no one thought to buy an extra supply for their babies??? (I think babies poop, too.)
ReplyDeleteMy bananas are still very, very green.
TOKYOMAGIC: I can’t find specific information on the first changes to the Tournament Tent Facades , but it appears sometime around 1960-1961. I’m pretty sure they were sheet metal by the 70’s but some blueprints from the 60’s have call outs on the facades that say HARBOREX - Harborex was a marine plywood used for boat and Yaht fabrication it appears to have been soaked in a resin material to weatherproof it. Disneyland used to also make park signs from the material. I think advancements in fiberglass made Harborex obsolete.
ReplyDeleteAlso under the art direction of Rolly Crump the Fantasyland Tournament Tents facades got all new color schemes. This was from 1976-1978.
Man, I love that color pallette! Didn't Eyvind Earle have something to do with the original color scheme?
ReplyDeleteYou can see there's already some fading of the darker stripe on the center section of the Toad facade. This Daveland photo shows it was much darker the previous summer. By 1959 it had been replaced or repainted, and the top of Fan 2 would receive a brighter blue-and-white scheme.
I'm going to guess that these were posted in reverse order, as the second slide shows the Mad Tea Party line queue and several people in line are in both photos.
The other girl in the teacup in today's first image with Stylish Red Hat Cauliflower Ear Mom and Cat Eye Girl is standing in line next to Mom wearing a pair of very short shorts and standing next to a girl with a bare midriff outfit. Both seem rather daring for 1956 to me, but I didn't live through that period; if Disneyland let them in the gate, they were probably socially acceptable for the time.
Dark Hair Blue Slacks Woman in the right foreground is standing next to Stylish Mom in the second image, Pink-and-White Striped Shirt and White Pants Guy (I wore a nearly identical outfit to WDW on a family trip to WDW in 1987) to her left is just to the right of the Welch's Grape Juice Bar sign in Photo 2, and Keppy Cap Boy to her right is just to the left of the theater attraction poster as he waits patiently to have his inner ear scrambled.
Thanks for a bright start to the day, Major!
Mmmmmmmmmm...Welches......
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it was regular grape juice, but on a hot day...Wow! Keep your Dole Whip, gimme a Welches!
Chuck, it's very possible that Major did post these in correct order, and that these are pictures of some "self-infliction type-of-torture" group - going on this ride for the umpteenth time-in-a-row. You never know.
ReplyDeleteIt's the most detailed of details, but some trivia I learned recently on the Passport to Dreams blog is that DL's new Fantasyland paint scheme in the mid 1970s took several cues from the newly-opened WDW land. (Compare to this example.) Slices of life today, thanks!
ReplyDeleteI will have to agree with the crowd on this one, that ear is odd. At first I might guess it was a Doc Emmitt Brown 50's prototype Bluetooth ear piece but "the brick" cell phone was still a couple decades away from the market yet so it would have no use.
ReplyDeleteIt is big when compared to blue slacks lady with the standard issue white coat button/Necco wafer sized ear ring.
Those cat eye sunglasses are epic and belong in the eyeglasses museum!
All in all some super swell pics today Major. Thanks Major and stay safe to all the GDBr's and their families.
On more careful observation, that earring appears to have a face on it. (Is it just me-?)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Major, for the pair of pictures we can scrutinize like a Where's Waldo book. The earring does look like it has eyes; is it a robot head, or the Tin Man? And does the blue Mickey balloon in the background also have a deflated ear?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a skull earring, on my cellphone
ReplyDelete@Sue-
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a skull earring - period-!
White Glasses Lady looks suspiciously like Princess Margaret.
ReplyDeleteI think everyone has these pics covered. As far as those earrings, Mom had a bunch of those gaudy things in her jewelry box. My sister, cousins and I split them up after she was gone. Can't quite tell, but those Cat eye sunglasses might have little duckies on the upper part of the frame. I kind of remember something of the sort.
ReplyDeleteSue, Safeway and a few other stores here just started senior hours every Tuesday and Thursday. Think I'll take advantage of that. Not sure what age you have to be to be considered a senior, but I think I have it covered.
Thanks for these great pics Major. They are indeed beauties.
Take it easy everyone.
Sue, that's odd about there being plenty of diapers available. But then, maybe it's just a matter of there being fewer babies in the population, in comparison to everyone else (adults, teenagers and children), who need and use toilet paper. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteMike, thanks for that information about the tournament tent facades!
Andrew, that's interesting about DL eventually duplicating some of the patterns and colors that WDW's Fantasyland had opened with!
Sorry folks, I have been battling computer/internet issues today, I think I finally have them licked.
ReplyDeleteTokyoMagic!, it really is interesting to see how different the colors are in these old photos. It’s colorful but tasteful and nuanced. I’ll be interested to see if anyone knows the answer to your question about the tents changing from fabric to metal.
Nanook, yeah, those cat’s eye glasses are an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10!
K. Martinez, why is it called cyclone fencing?? Did they have tornados back then? ;-) They shut put razor wire on everything they want guests to stay away from. And armed guards.
Lou and Sue, Fantasyland was classy as hell! It had class up the wazoo, as Mark Twain probably said. I’m not sure I’m recognizing “glasses girl” in the second photo. I assumed that the lady with the red hat was wearing some sort of flower earrings, but it’s too hard to tell. They’re certainly large and showy, whatever they are.
Lou and Sue, do you know if he got that sticker at Disneyland?
TokyoMagic!, that lady does look like a boxer. Our stores seem to generally have lots of produce, I bought a couple bags of delicious tangerines. So good.
Lou and Sue, wow, I figured diapers and wipes would be some of the things that people would hoard.
Mike Cozart, I wonder if they used Harborex on some things, and sheet metal on others? The curved roof of the Carousel seems like something more suited to sheet metal that could easily be bent into shape. But what do I know! Thank you as always for your great comments.
Chuck, I have seen color guides painted by Eyvind Earle, those must have been among the last things he did before leaving the studio. I can’t say I’m surprised that those old painted façades faded, but I sure never observed them that closely before. Maybe they had to be repainted every two or three years? I didn’t try to post today’s photos in chronological order, rather I posted what I considered the best photo first, with the other one as a followup. It seems that shorter shorts and bare midriffs were acceptable for children. We’ve seen photos of boys with their shirts off at the park, which always seemed weird to me. “Go ahead honey, take off your shirt, I’ll carry it in my purse!”. Huh? Man, these pants are awfully itchy too, guess I’ll jettison them as well. Come to think of it, let’s just go naked!
stu29573, I went through a grape juice phase when I was a kid, there was nothing better than a glass of ice-cold grape juice on a hot day. Now I want some!
Lou and Sue, see my comment to Chuck!
Andrew, it’s funny, I don’t think I saw that article on the excellent “Passport to Dreams” blog, but all you have to do is look at the two and you can see that Disneyland’s paint scheme suddenly looked a lot like the Magic Kingdom’s. It took me a while to notice it though!
Alonzo, that poor lady never imagined that her earring choice would be so scrutinized 60 years later! Maybe she had a slightly kooky fashion sense; if it was 20 years later she would be a punk or a goth! Glad you enjoyed today’s pix.
Nanook, I thought it was a flower. Maybe it’s Howdy Doody!
Kathy!, OK, I need to look at the original high-res scan to see if there is a face on that earring. If so it would be too cool! I’ll post a closeup if it looks to be the case.
Lou and Sue, skull earrings in 1956?!?
Nanook, that’s it, I have to look, but first I have to reply to all these comments.
Melissa, IT’S HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, incognito!
DrGoat, there is some crazy costume jewelry out there, that’s for sure. I suppose there are people who collect it today. I hope there are duckies on those glasses. I just went to two stores today, picked over, but managed to get some stuff. If I went earlier I probably would have had more success.
TokyoMagic!, maybe Sue was at the store JUST as they had restocked. I agree, you’d think that parents with babies would be stockpiling diapers, that is a necessity.
Major, no! Don't lick anything right now.
ReplyDeleteMajor, thank you for the closeup of that earring. It's popcorn popping out her ear. That clearly settled that.
ReplyDeleteIt's a clown's head, with a ruffly collar around it's neck!
ReplyDeleteI think it looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
ReplyDeleteMy Grandma had an old set of plastic earrings shaped like doughnuts.
ReplyDeleteMelissa, you reminded me of the prize I won for being the "right number caller" on a big Chicago radio station, on St. Patrick's Day in 1975, when I was in high school (and had lots of time to call in on radio contests). I won a necklace. It was a full-sized green donut - hanging from a shoelace string - that had a happy face painted on it, and it was covered in a high-gloss clear shellac. I never wore it.
ReplyDelete