Previously Skipped, and MORE
Today felt like some sort of scary milestone - I finished scanning all of the slides in a storage box. I thought that meant that I only had one box of slides left! But I was mistaken, I have two full boxes, plus another one that is about 1/3 full. That's probably around 1,500 slides, give or take a few. No need to panic yet!
My folder containing new scans of "previously skipped" slides is running low, but what can you do? Not much, I'm afraid. These were omitted from "prime time" for various reasons that made sense at the time. But they are worth a look!
Here's a shot of the Alice in Wonderland attraction as seen from the Skyway. from and undated slide (but it must be from 1958 or later, or course). The image was quite faded, and as you can see there are a number of areas of damage that now look like magical flames. I love the Caterpillar vehicles as they wind their way down the circuitous leafy track. At this point the ride was run by young women in blue dresses and white pinafores, as well as by men who look like they should be working at NASA's Mission Control.
Next is this photo from December of 1960, it's actually quite pretty, with the late-afternoon light casting a warm glow over everything. I assume that I originally skipped this one because I thought it was a bit dull, but my opinion has changed. The Matterhorn was not even two years old, and not yet infested with yetis. Two orange trees, covered in fruit, are near the Monsanto House of the Future. Who can ID those two posters?
Here's a neat image that was created in Photoshop by archivist and historian Jason Schultz (he gave me permission to share it with you), using a January 1960 scan from GDB, and inserting a frame from the "Building Walt's Dream" DVD featurette. It shows camera-shy Roy Disney standing in the dirt field that would eventually become Disneyland. Behind Roy is the same orange tree that (for a while) continued to stand right near the Monsanto House of the Future! Imagineer Tom Morris is researching certain original landmarks from the park ("Disneyland archaeology"), including notable trees (palm trees, etc) and even some rocks (!), attempting to track them as the park evolved.
Many thanks to Jason Schultz for sharing this cool image.
22 comments:
Major-
"At this point the ride was run by young women in blue dresses and white pinafores, as well as by men who look like they should be working at NASA's Mission Control". (Do you suppose on 'Casual Fridays' the gents at NASA sport "blue dresses and white pinafores"-??) Just a thought.
That second image really is a nice one, with the orange tree in 'full flower', along with the Kodak Picture Spot. The AP's are easy ones: America the Beautiful and an early (1956) Astrojet.
Jason's 'overlay' image is a real beauty: from orange grove to Theme Park.
Shout-out to Jason and thanks, Major.
The first pic looks like a hand-tinted B&W photo, plus the "magical flames", which actually look quite nice here. They're the only truly yellow things in the photo. ;-)
Aside from the wonky color, which I find curiously appealing, this is one of the best Alice outdoor track views we've seen here on GDB. I'm glad you dusted it off and decided to share it with us.
The Matterhorn photo looks great! So clear and sharp with rich colors and perfect exposure.
Surely you already know what those two posters are and are just testing us, right? They are America The Beautiful and the Rocket Jets (or whatever they were called at this time). Did I win something?!?! EDIT- Dang! Nanook beat me to it! Oh well... Do I still win something?!?!
The Photoshopped image is sort of amazing and eerie at the same time.
Behind Roy, we can see Baby Matterhorn; just a small mound when this photo was taken. The tectonic plates haven't smashed into each other enough yet to thrust the Mountain upward to its current impressive height.
Thanks for the un-rejects, Major. And thanks to Jason Schultz.
I think the male employees working the Alice attraction should have been forced to wear "Dinah" costumes. They could have worn cat ears, along with a big bow around their necks. That way, as guest traveled down the rabbit hole, they could have turned around and said, "Goooooodbyeeeeee Dinaaaaaah!"
I always like seeing pics of the Matterhorn, with the open holes still present behind that waterfall. Oh, and the posters are for "America The Beautiful and the Astro-Jets" ;-)
I love the Roy Disney/orange tree mash-up pic!
Thank you, Jason and Major!
The Swiss cheese Matterhorn pic with a side of HOF is wonderful. The Jason mash-up pic is nice too. Thanks Jason and Major.
TokyoMagic!, At first when you said you thought the male employees of Alice in Wonderland should have been forced to wear "Dinah" costumes, I was thinking Dinah Shore. That would've been quite something. Anyway, in regard to saying "Goooooodbyeeeeee Dinaaaaaah" that was a good one.
I have panic attacks when I hear things like "I found TWO boxes instead of zero...and have an additional 1500 slides to scan..." I find a tiny shoebox few a few pieces of paper and I melt down. Good luck with the scanning- you are a better man than I. I also thought Dinah Shore...but was unclear what that costume would be? Golfing togs? I don't mind NASA 1960, but it seems all the girls wore frilly girly things...and the boys...suit and tie. Seems kind of "How to succeed in business without really trying"...but perhaps it was the same costume designer. The film shares some Disney folks: Ms. Love Bug: Michelle Lee, Mr. Boatniks: Robert Morse (RIP) and Mr. Pollyanna/Parent Trap/Candleshoe David Swift. Perhaps there should be a Six degrees of Separation from Disneyland USA? The orange tree pic is awesome, and that tree was soooo full of oranges. Wow. I wonder if Bo Foster was down there picking them when they were ripe. I wonder what people would pay for an official glass of orange juice from a pre-Disneyland orange tree? Do we know if there are any orange trees left in the vicinity from other farms? They can certainly last a long time...but perhaps only under perfect circumstances. I knew of a guy in China that would only feed his Orange Trees fresh milk from cows on a perfect pasture next to the orange grove. I didn't get the review on the orange. Anaheim water seems just as good. Thanks for the slides, 1500 to go.
I love the plantings at the base of the giant plants and the fact that we can see the control stand in the lower right corner. That’s where a young lady with nerves of steel stood monitoring mission status, her finger pointed to hit the Command Destruct button if a caterpillar went off-course and threatened population centers. Fortunately for the young men that worked with them, when Alice staffing transitioned exclusively to young women, NASA was hiring during the Gemini and Apollo boom, so those fellas didn’t miss a single day of work. They should have hired the young women with nerves of steel.
I never noticed how Fan 2 is attached to the corner of the Alice/Toad building. I also puzzled for a minute or so on the , grayish-blue construction wall marked with the number 37 to the left of the pirate ship until I zoomed out slightly and realized it was part of a Skyway bucket. Time to drink my orange juice.
Those attraction posters in the second photo are a bit blurry, but I think I have enough poster expertise to ID them. From left to right they are for Canada the Beautiful and the Rocket Rods.
That last photo is really amazing. Truly magnificent detective work by Jason Schultz and Tom Morris. You can see just how beautiful Anaheim was before they started ripping out all of the orange groves. TRE!
Only 1500 more slides to go…and that doesn’t count Lou’s archive and other guest posts, plus whatever new acquisitions you acquire. My heart sings.
Love the inside-outside Alice, and the gravel garden at the bottom. Truly innovative dark ride design with a bit of Wild Mouse mixed in. Dinah costumes would be fun, but I’m holding out for the pinafores.
The Horn That Matters must still have that “New Mountain” smell. I love that.
The mashup photo is the bomb, I wonder who noticed that it was possible. Looking forward to more of this.
Thank you Major!
JG
Nanook, you can find footage of Mission Control during the Mercury program, and a few of the technicians and scientists are wearing blue dresses and pinafores. They were really pushing the envelope. Not everybody could ID those posters, but the Junior Gorillas are not “everybody”!
JB, it’s true, the first one does look like a tinted photo. Some of those non-Kodak film stocks really did not age well, unfortunately. Even slides with the venerable name of “Technicolor” on them are often less than great. I thought that those posters were for the Jungle Book Rockets and Oxnard the Beautiful, but I am no expert. Thanks to Jason who was nice enough to share his great Photoshop piece with me (and all of us)!
TokyoMagic!, I like the way you think. Men with horn-rimmed glasses dressed as cats would have been great. The balloon vendors in their Pinocchio-themed costumes wouldn’t feel so bad! They would whisper “Goodbye, Dinah!” every time one of them walked past, and chuckle as the cat employee cried.
K. Martinez, it’s funny how tastes change, I really did think that the second pic was just not worth scanning or sharing, and now I like it a lot. Dinah Shore! I used to watch her talk show when I was a kid. I always think of her as wearing sweaters and pastel-colored pants. No idea if she really dressed that way!
Bu, by now the scanning process is just a thing that I do. I usually have to pick a day to just scan and scan, and then another day to clean up and adjust those scans to get them ready for sharing. It can take a lot of time, but I don’t really mind most of the time. Some of the men wore costumes, but it was rare. Jungle Cruise skippers, for instance. In Tomorrowland, the “white shirt and navy pants” was pretty much the costume for guys. Maybe it was considered undignified to men to have to wear a costume? Was Robert Morse in a Disney movie? I don’t remember. Who is Bo foster? Did he have a bubblegum card? My understanding is that there are no longer any original orange trees from Disneyland. They could have made cuttings and grafted them onto hearty root stock and sold the trees to interested homeowners, but that might have been too much work for too little return.
Chuck, I assume that those plantings are succulents? Hard to tell from here. I would love to hear from a ride operator who worked one of those boards, how much work was it? Was it just a matter of “stop” and “go”, and then the ride did the rest automatically? Ha ha, see my comment to Nanook about the Mercury program! I was genuinely puzzled when you mentioned the “grayish-blue construction wall marked with the number 37”, but now I am hip to the jive. As for orange juice, I just made a glass of fresh-squeezed juice from a big bag of blood oranges given to me by my friend. Beautiful color, and so delicious. It puts store-bought orange juice to shame. Hey, maybe I can make it to a nice even 20 years, at which point I will (possibly) be ready to hang up my blogging hat.
JG, the “gravel garden” feels very “mid-century”, doesn’t it? I could see that in the forecourt of an Eichler house, perhaps. I do love that Alice ride, what a fine addition to those other classic dark rides that had already been there for a few years. I believe that the photo mashup was Jason’s idea, but I might be mistaken.
Major, it's funny that you mention the Jungle Book Rockets. I rode those right after getting off the monorail to Tom Sawyers Island.
I'm still amazed at how someone recognized that tree to make the combined photo. It's too bad that all the original orange trees are gone. Leaving one couldn't have been that hard, and what a great story it would make. People would pay extra now for a selfie with it. The viewpoint of that photo is the classic view of the Matterhorn, people come around the corner from Main Street and are stunned by the sight of the artificial mountain, have to have a photo of that!
The Alice aerial has a good clear view of the track switching mechanism that we were talking about some time back on an earlier post, including the handles to connect the siding to the main run. Shows how the siding track pivots back and also the little bump that sets the safety bar. I'm also enjoying the view of the Castle roof with all the ventilators and the little utility yard behind Fan 2. I remember how that sight seemed so illicit, to see the backstage view of the mundane. I used to look for scorched spots on the roof which my 9 y.o. mind thought must have been left by launching the fireworks, but of course, never saw any since there were none.
JG
Chuck, I'm reading your comment about NASA and I'm envisioning all the Mission Control engineering team sitting at their consoles in blue skirts and pinafores...
JG
If they remake "Third Man on the Mountain", will they include a Yeti in the Alps?
JG, Chris Kraft would have rocked that look.
Major P. is definitely going through an "Oxnard" phase these last couple of weeks. Maybe the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce is paying him a tidy sum for every mention of that fair town. ;-)
From what I hear, a lot of folks' first stop when arriving at the Park is going to the Main Street Skyway station and getting off at New Orleans Square to feed the Yeti.
The image created by Jason Schultz is fantastic! Plus, I love that there's a baby Matterhorn in the background, behind Roy. Thank you, Mr. Schultz.
Of all the many meals we ate at Disneyland (DL Hotel included) when I was a kid, I have zero memory of any of the food items I consumed. But I remember always getting fresh-squeezed orange juice every morning at the Disneyland Hotel. It was delicious. (I do remember bringing home large suckers from the Main Street candy store, on a couple occasions - but I/we ate those when we got back home.)
Add me to the list of Jr. Gorillas who initially pictured Dinah Shore. My mom watched all the TV talk shows and I sometimes watched them with her...does anyone remember The Virginia Graham Show? (That's going waaaaay back.)
I just realized that the snow line comes down to where the waterfall starts. That makes sense. Winter snow runoff.
"Hey, maybe I can make it to a nice even 20 years, at which point I will (possibly) be ready to hang up my blogging hat.
Fat chance, Major. I probably do still have enough for you to hit your 25th. What would you do with your free time, anyway??
Thanks, Major.
I know they were desperate to economize on trees and plantings during the construction of Disneyland, but it's amazing that a tree right in the middle of the worksite could avoid accidental destruction.
Major, your comment on the remaining slide boxes made me think of the Simpsons episode where Barney worries about the remaining beer supply
Re: Bo Foster- he ran Sunkist for Sam Perricone who had the orchards that supplied the Citrus House, I Presume, et.al. He was a Disneyland staple and character. I don't remember ever seeing Sam, and don't know if they originally sold land to Walt to build Disneyland with the Dominquez's etc....something that I'm sure is out there on the interspace. Perhaps there are Disneyland Citrus Orchard babies somewhere (?)
Wish they did sell cuttings from the original Disneyland orange trees. A living piece of Disneyland in your own yard. I'd put it next to my Snow White waterfall and wishing well, if I had one.
Sunkist was always a part of my Disneyland visits. Usually a frozen orange juice bar in the afternoon, and as we walked down Main Street at the end of the day, a glass of fresh orange juice - one for the road. Like Carnation, it's a brand I always associate with Disneyland.
JG, you are lucky to have experienced both of those rides, most people have forgotten that they ever existed. Like you, I am amazed that that particular orange tree is somehow recognizable - I don’t think of most orange trees as being very distinctive! But I trust Tom Morris’ research and knowledge. Thanks for pointing out the details of the Alice track and the switching mechanism. Seeing the backstage areas from the Skyway was fascinating to me, but I have the feeling that a lot of people’s brains “self-edited”, if that makes any sense - they mostly had eyes only for the rides and the things that they were *supposed* to see.
JG, don’t you remember that scene in “Apollo 13”??
DBenson, that would be amazing!
Chuck, it’s surprising how well a buzzcut works with a dress.
JB, I just love to poke fun at Oxnard, I don’t have anything against the city! Meanwhile, my check from the chamber of commerce is late. AGAIN. What do you feed a yeti, anyway?
Lou and Sue, yes I agree, that particular bit of Photoshop wizardry is pretty cool. And it’s nice to see Roy Disney, who was generally so camera shy. Man, those were the days, I’ll bet you don’t get fresh-squeezed OJ at the hotel anymore. I can barely drink the stuff from the store, I was so spoiled to have grandparents who had an actual citrus orchard! I never did warm up to grapefruit though. Acidic, unpleasant things. I don’t remember the Virginia Graham Show, but there is a possibility that I saw it and just forgot. MY BRAIN. Interesting observation about the waterfalls and the snow line! As for continuing for another nine years, I can guarantee nothing!
Dean Finder, there are stories (apocryphal?) about how some trees that were meant to be saved were torn out by a colorblind bulldozer operator. Who knows. I love that Simpsons scene!
Bu, “Sam Perricone” sounds like a character from Goodfellas. I’m sure he was a nice fellow though! I’ve never heard that Sunkist had anything to do with selling land to Disney for the park, but anything is possible.
Sunday Night, wouldn’t that be neat? I really do think that there would be a lot of people who would love to have some genuine Disneyland oranges. And with cuttings and grafting, the fruit would be genetically identical to what was growing in Anaheim back in the ‘50s. I used to drive past the Sunkist corporate headquarters in Sherman Oaks often; the building is undergoing some sort of massive rehab, not sure what it will become when it’s done.
Major, "What do you feed a yeti, anyway?" Why, orange sherpa popsicles of course!
Re: Grapefruit juice - I had a Scoutmaster when I was growing up who called grapefruit juice “eye opener,” as in at breakfast “Could you please pass the eye opener?” Whatever brand we would get for camp outs, it was better than coffee for a morning jolt. That was when I first understood why my great grandmother and grandmother taught me to sprinkle sugar on sliced grapefruit before eating it.
One of the things I loved about the Norton AFB housing area where we lived when we first got married was all of the fruit trees randomly interspersed in the plantings throughout the base. We had a peach tree, the neighbors had an olive tree, there was a huge mulberry with low-hanging branches a block over, and a block the other way featured a good-sized grapefruit tree. Whatever variety that was, it wasn’t producing tart fruit. Maybe it was just because we were able to pick it fresh.
Not sure what you feed a yeti, but I know they are experts at making lemon snowcones.
Bu, the night before Robert Morse passed away I was watching The Loved One, which we now provided inspiration for some aspects of The Haunted Mansion. He will be greatly missed.
That's a great angle on the Alice Ride, and gives me a much better idea that I had before of how it fits into the castle complex.
Astonishing last picture! KS
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