Once upon a time, I shared photos of my own personal Disneyland attraction posters. Photos taken nearly 10 years ago, with a camera that would be considered laughably sub-par by today's standards. Look up "Posterama" installments in the "search" bar, if you are so inclined. The last Posterama was way back in 2014!
Anyhoo, while going through my folder of poster pix, I realized that there were two posters that I never got around to sharing. By now, repros of the posters are a cottage industry, you can buy them in any size on eBay for cheap. And you've seen them in books, on calendars, on cards, mugs, and pretty much anyplace that an image can be stuck. But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to share the two remaining images with you!
Here's the wonderful Jungle Cruise poster. "For true life adventure, ride the JUNGLE RIVER". I love the bull elephant (or is it his mother in-law?) towering above the jungle. It would eat us in one gulp if it could! There's nothing worse than being eaten by an elephant. The skipper needs a shave, and he probably smells like BO. A kid with a cowboy hat will dispatch that rampaging hippo. I've tried to represent the colors as accurately as possible, often repros show the sky as just yellow, when it is in fact a greenish hue.
I was very happy the day I managed to acquire this Autopia poster, after several failed attempts (I rejected one due to condition issues). This one is so delightfully "1950s", but also timeless in its appeal. Dad is amused to see his son experience road rage for the first time. "Let me show you a hand gesture that will serve you well for years to come, Pete!". Behind them, another father rides with his daughter, but she doesn't get to drive. Not cool, dad.
And as an extra added bonus, I am including this 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea poster - one of my absolute favorites in all of posterdom.
Years ago I stated that the artists used 11 ink colors, nearly double what most posters used. And then I discovered that I was wrong. Yes, ME!
Wrong! I know you can't believe it (and that I am your personal hero) but it's true. I even saw this erroneous fact quoted on another website, much to my shame.
As you can see by the color swatches on the right, there are in fact TWELVE separate inks. I can't even imagine how much time it took to pull 12 screens, including drying time. Look at the four different shades of purple. Two of them are so close in hue and value that I think this is where I made my initial erroneous count. Early on, I'd only seen black and white images of this poster in auction catalogs, and assumed that it was mostly in shades of blues and greens. I was surprised to find out that it was a combination of steampunk browns, greens, and violets (with that amazing hot pink lettering) when I finally saw one in person! Don't forget that there are even small areas with the white paper showing through, for a total of 13 colors (if you want to get technical).
I hope you have enjoyed what is probably the last POSTERAMA!
22 comments:
Major-
A mini tribute to Bjorn Aronson-! Such striking artwork that always pleases. (Perhaps not to the tune of $287,500.00-!! for the Autopia poster, as sold in the Richard Kraft auction from four years ago); it clearly was a sellers market - but I digress.
Thanks Major, for sharing all the posters. Good things DO come to those who wait.
Major I don’t have to tell you that you are preaching to the choir! I have sone mega early memories of my earliest visit to Disneyland …. And one of them is looking a a Disneyland SKYWAY attraction poster …. I had to be 3 or 4 years old…. But I remember that moment. Growing up I was well aware of the attraction posters throughout the park ….. but one trip in 1985 with a Kodak 110 camera I took photos of as many attraction posters around the park …. Over at Carnation Gardens a custodial cast member even wiped clean some plexi covers before o photographed posters on display. But when I git those pictures back from the developers I was HOOKED!! I remember being stunned at the detail of the Disneyland Railroad 1977 poster …. And the bold crispness of the Haunted Mansion poster …. And being able to really examine the posters at home without people walking in front etc .. and then when I bought my first poster … a HAUNTED MANSION …. The musty old smell and the slightly dry feel of the ink …. And the massive size - I was totally hooked!
I love the "Jungle River" poster. (Why isn't it called Jungle Cruise?) That tusker is HUGE! Must be at least 30 ft. tall! And the hippo is overly large, too. One could argue that the hippo is in front of the boat, closer to us. And that's why it looks twice as big. BUT! The kid in the cowboy hat is aiming off to the side; ergo, that's a BIG hippo! Who gave the kid a gun, anyway? The skipper is supposed to handle charging hippos. I guess the skipper is too busy displaying his manly physique to bother with trifles like charging hippos. I like the little bird perched atop the hippos tooth.
Autopia. You've got "auto" and "utopia" in the same word. Sorta like CirCARrama. Evidently, the Disney folks were heavily into portmanteaus. I like how the drivers hair, in the car going over the overpass, is flowing straight back in the gale-force wind caused by the terrific speed of the car.
Major Pepperidge made a mistake? NOOOO!!!! Say it ain't so, Joe!
I have to agree, Major. The 20k Leagues poster is beautiful and exciting. There's so much going on to hold our attention. And I love the title font. Why are there color swatches on the side of the poster?
Sooo, Mike. Yer into Disney posters, are you? ;-)
Thanks for another Posterama, Major. I can see how someone could get 'poster crazy' looking at these. The colorful images and the simplified graphic style pull you in and make you notice the details. They're like children's book illustrations. Some of which have stuck in my memory, even though I haven't seen them for sixty years!
Is the person driving over the Autopia overpass, steering with their hands AND their feet?
Is that little bird in the hippos mouth a trochilus?
JB, the Jungle Cruise was originally called "Jungle River Cruise." I'm not sure when the name changed, but someone here will know.
Thanks for sharing more of your posters with us, Major!
Very impressive print work! I'm not sure mere mortals know what went into producing art like this when now people push a button and something comes out of a printer across the room. Well...it's supposed to come out...but most times...somethings up with the connection, or out of ink, or something. We should go back to silk screening, ditto paper, Xerox, photostatting, and microfilm...or was it microfiche? Add carbon paper, NCR paper...and some others. The 20,000 Leagues poster is quite extraordinary. That they created this for a walkthrough of a bunch of dusty (but super cool) sets is amazing in itself. When you first were explaining 20,000 I thought "A Walt Disney World Poster?!....whaaattttt!?" I had so many opportunities to get things like these back in the 80's, and I would have loved to have them...I chose animation art over posters. The thing with these posters is that they are truly OF SCALE. They are really massive. At the time I thought..."I'll never put these on a wall...it will sit in a tube forever..." I don't regret it as they would still be in a tube. I'm glad people are seeing the value and art in them now and that they are commanding a price and a willing audience. Sitting in a tube in my closet doesn't do them justice. My animation art made it to the walls...in some cases. I had quite the collection- from the 20's to the 70's. I had some Gustav T. pencil sketches from Pinocchio that I was even too afraid to put in a frame...I remember they were really expensive (at the time.) I sold 99.9% of my collection in the early 90's...most to Howard Lowery who I met in the early '80's and then stayed connected through his Disney people, as his wife Paula was clearly connected. Even if I had those posters, I would have sold them for a song. I started collecting other non-Disney movie posters in the 2000's...and there they sit in my closet. I honestly don't even know what is in there any more. I had hundreds of Lobby cards at one point..then I got onto fine art...not in tubes...but still not on the wall. I had plans for an art gallery as an out building on my property, perhaps it's time to rethink that. These posters bring emotional response. Thanks for posting this morning.
My first poster memory is the one for Primeval World, featuring the stegosaurus fighting the allosaurus rex as the train chugs by in the background. The dinosaurs were an instant draw for me at that age (6 or 7). I remember telling my parents we needed to see the dinosaurs on the train, to which they replied “What dinosaurs? There are no dinosaurs on the train.” I told them I had seen it on a poster and they assured me that I must have misunderstood. And then we took the Grand Circle Tour and I was vindicated. Graphics that bold don’t lie.
Crossing my fingers that maybe somebody will recognize themself in one of the posters today. After yesterday, anything can happen (and it usually does). And…today is Tuesday. You know what that means...
JB, the skipper is practicing the art of delegation. He’s destined for upper management for sure
My two favorites for attraction posters are 'Jungle River' and 'The Skyway'. but who am I kidding? All the attraction posters are great!
There's something about the graphics of the 50's and 60's posters that can't be beat. The style reminds me of travel posters from that era.
At Hong Kong Disneyland the attraction is named "Jungle River Cruise".
Thanks for sharing these, Major. Always enjoy looking at these posters.
Major, this is wonderful. I’ve seen all these before, but there’s always something new.
I think the kid in the JC boat has a bottle of gin in his other hand.
20K has them all beat, I think. This is the one from my earliest memory, loving the kids hair on the left. Is he the same kid from the Autopia poster?
I have some posters in similar style from Golden Gate Recreation Area (GG bridge & presidio) and Morro Rock (Morro Bay) but the Attraction Posters set the tone.
JG
Great poster post Major. I remember all of these and they all have that certain appeal that only an early park poster can have. I do love the 20,000 Leagues poster but the Adventureland poster seems to be the one that really resonates within my early memories of park artwork.
Thanks Major. Glad you got the Autopia poster...great treasure to have the real thing.
Yes, the posters have been reproduced on everything! Years ago I bought my wife a Jungle River poster t-shirt at WDW. It's her favorite attraction and we always ride it first. Unfortunately, it has some smudges on it now. A sad day at Casa Stu.
Nanook, I’m kind of regretting buying that poster for $287,500, but you know how auctions are. You get caught up in the excitement! ;-)
Mike Cozart, I definitely remember seeing the posters in the tunnels at Disneyland, and it never occurred to me that I could actually own one until I got a Howard Lowery auction catalog, probably around 1989 (I probably still have the catalog). If memory serves, he had a Jungle Cruise poster - represented by a tiny black and white image. I was immediately intrigued! But it was a few years until I actually managed to get one. Two actually, I went to one of his big auctions in Burbank (near the airport) and won a Matterhorn poster and a Primeval World. And I was on my way!
JB, it’s fun to see the way the artists portrayed the attractions, exaggerating the features that would catch the viewer’s interest. Make the elephant twice as large! Make the giant squid four times larger! As for “Autopia”, my grandmother (along with many other people) called it the “Auto-topia”. I did make a mistake, but I figure it’s a good experience, it will keep me humble and lovable. “So THIS is what that feels like!”. So interesting. Even though I paid a lot more for my posters than early-birds like Mike, I’m still thrilled to have the ones that I have. The color swatches were put there by Roy Disney.
TokyoMagic!, in Driver’s Ed, I learned to use my hands and feet. “Hands at 2 and 10, feet at 4 and 8”. The old saying. That bird is a Tookie Tookie bird. I will be truly impressed if somebody knows when the Jungle Cruise changed names!
Bu, silkscreening is definitely an art, and the results are so bold and graphic. I love the smooth areas of color, no halftone nonsense! For some later versions of the same basic designs, they couldn’t resist adding gradients here and there, and it makes the designs mushy and weaker. The posters ARE large, and unwieldy, but they make a big impression. I used to go over to Howard and Paula’s home to consign things (mostly belonging to a friend), I think he had a single piece of Bambi art on one wall, otherwise you’d never know that he’d been a major force in Disney art collectibles for many years. I know somebody who has sold his entire poster collection, then reacquired more posters, then sold those, etc. Wow, lobby cards, I saw a Heritage Auctions event, that person got a fortune for some of those. Granted, he had incredible rarities. Maybe those were yours!
Chuck, I love the Primeval World poster, but for some reason it never gets the high prices that I think it deserves. I bought mine for $450, and I was thrilled. Today it might fetch 10 times that amount, but the design is so amazing, with those big dinos dominating the composition. Maybe folks don’t like the bright yellow sky? No idea. Funny that your parents didn’t remember the dinosaurs on the DLRR, or had they not been on the train since the Primeval World scene had been added? So weird to see the later version of the MMC, I wonder who animated the Mickey stuff? It’s a little stiff.
K. Martinez, I really would have a hard time choosing two or three favorites. I could pick a few, and then I’d look at the others and think, “Well, those are pretty great too!”. The Storybook Land poster always appealed to me in a big way, it seemed to represent Fantasyland so vividly. Gosh, imagine what a Hong Kong Jungle Cruise would be like (I’m sure there are YouTube videos out there), the jungle must be incredible.
JG, when you live in the tropics, you have to start drinking at a young age, preferably around 4. Any leeches that attempt to latch on will die immediately. That huge squid definitely makes the 20K poster one of my faves… I remember trying and trying to get one for a long time, and finally getting two! Are the Golden Gate Recreation Area posters that you mentioned based on vintage designs? Or are they fairly contemporary?
DrGoat, the various poster designers really hit it out of the park in those early days. Many later posters got more elaborate, but (in my opinion) became less eye-catching. There are exceptions of course! The 1977 Disneyland Railroad poster that Mike mentioned is a real beauty. And any of the posters that evoke the early days of the park have a special appeal, such as the Peter Pan, Jungle Cruise, and Storybook Land examples.
Stu29573, these days I would think that you could find another t-shirt with that design, but I’ve never looked, to be honest. That’s the trouble with t-shirts, you wear them and they just don’t last!
I've got a pair of socks with the Jungle River Adventure poster design. It's redesigned to go across both socks, but that the "True-Life Adventure" slogan and the major graphics. They really do put the JC poster on anything.
@ JB & TM!-
'The Jungle Cruise' was also referred to as 'The Jungle River Boat Ride' in early, in-park announcements.
Dean Finder, ha ha, socks! I never even thought of attraction poster socks. My sister gave me a bunch of attraction poster stickers years ago, though I'm sure they were just printed out on somebody's inlet printer at home. They're still neat! It's also funny how I only buy boring "normal" socks, but have at least half a dozen novelty pairs; Cap'n Crunch, a map of the New York subway system, Shag... all given to me.
Nanook, yeah, I think in those earliest publications, they were still nailing down the names of some attractions. Which I love.
Ken, (Now a famous celebrity! "Don't get cocky, kid."), I agree about the '50s and '60s graphics style. Simple and to the point. A glimpse of exciting things to see and do. They let your imagination fill in the details.
Major, yay, a George of the Jungle reference! I also like the fact that early Disneyland nomenclature wasn't set in stone yet. The park was sort of making it up as they go, in those early days.
I suspect by referencing the Disneyland gate guides and park signage you might be able to come up with a approximate date to when JUNGLE RIVER CRUISE became JUNGLE CRUISE. The 1971 Walt Disney World attraction poster using identical core screens at the 1956 Disneyland version but has been screen corrected to JUNGLE CRUISE. Some smaller alterations have been made for Florida specifics like the boat name.
Major : Disneyland began using the Hong Kong Poster art for JUNGLE RIVER CRUISE in 2009…… it was recently booted out and replaced with a new poster for the new Snow White attraction .
When Hong Kong Disneyland was being designed it had a overall theme of “Disneyland California 1955” …. Any of you who visited HK DL in its early years will have remembered parts of that park looked more like ORIGINAL Disneyland than the REAL ANAHEIM Disneyland …. Especially Main Street USA with about 99% of the facades replicated to the 1955 original as well as all done in the original 1955 Main Street color scheme!! Even Sleeping Beauty Castle and the courtyard shops looked like the 1955 opening day california buildings. Even the original jungle River Cruise boat house Disneyland lost in 1960 was rebuilt ( with a longer passenger shelter! All of this has since been changed.
I remember guests running into the Disney Gallery when original attraction posters were being sold and guests coming in “I want a Dumbo attraction poster!” Then a cast member would bring one out for them to inspect …. And the guests would see what a Dumbo 1956 attraction poster looked like and go “what!?? That’s so ugly !! “ Same with others posters too. In the 1980’s 1950’s stuff was having a Renaissance …. but only to a certain extent. The graphic styles of the 50’s and 60’s were very much out of date in the 70’s and 80’s …… so you can image how greatly attraction posters changed. To mist of us it’s hard to imagine but at one time those great early attraction posters were considered gaudy and tacky. And that’s why WED stopped making attraction posters in 1972. But some imagineers showed management the posters could be done with the current poster making techniques and Aesthetics
… and in 1976 you get the second generation attraction posters. Now many collectors think the posters of 70’s and 80’s are tacky and gaudy ….. but now they are sone of the most desirable posters and reaching sales numbers that leave the 50’s and 60’s prices in the dust . But then the 60’s graphics are very popular in modern culture again now …. But the 70’s and 80’s retro are creeping back in too. Same with furniture : 10 years ago the big furniture companies offered MID CENTURY MODERN replicas very accurately done of 50’s and 60’s styles. Some still do but you’ll notice their catalogs and showrooms( like JOYBIRD , SCANDANAVIAN MODERN , CB2…etc) of MID CENTURY MODERN is almost no 50’s … some 60’s but lots of early to mid 70’s style reproductions now.
I love that the posters all show kids and adults having fun together. The Jungle Cruise Skipper has kind of an androgynous look for that period in time.
@ MIKE-
"There's no accounting for taste". Even more so nowadays, as folks seem completely incapable of 'knowing what style(s) they prefer', etc., as heaven forbid a [so-called] 'influencer' or 'taste maker' tells them otherwise. I was watching a panel discussion just this morning and one of the folks was mentioning how 'she was trying to find her style'. Really-?? You're in your 20's and you haven't figured it out yet-?? What are you waiting for: an influencer to grant you permission...
JB, I wondered if anybody would get the George of the Jungle reference! You win a stinky cigar!
Mike Cozart, I have no doubt that we could figure out when the name of the Jungle Cruise was officially changed, but… who has the time to go through all that stuff! Not me. It seems like for most of my life it’s been the “World-famous Jungle Cruise”, but it’s hard to know for sure. As for that Hong Kong, do you mean that the actual Jungle River Cruise ride has been booted out for a Snow White attraction?!? Outrageous, if so! I remember seeing photos of HKD, and it was so strange to see a park that looked like Anaheim’s original Disneyland, only with those nearby mountains. I’m surprised that the Chinese went for that idea, since they seem to have had a change of heart and want “bigger” and “grander” for everything, including that ugly castle (based on the artwork I’ve seen).
Mike Cozart, while I wish I had a Dumbo attraction poster now, I never got one because I wasn’t crazy about it. I think it was those clowny people on board! Of course tastes constantly change, and old styles come and go, but it does seem hard to believe that those wonderful original poster designs were unloved (at least by the majority). I believe it though. I do like some of the posters from the ‘70s, like the Bicentennial DLRR poster (which I have), and the Jungle Cruise poster from the same series. But there are others, like the Splash Mountain poster, or a particular Snow White’s Scary Adventure’s poster… they leave me cold. Some 1970s furniture is pretty neat, much more daring and space-agey; it doesn’t work in all houses, but it definitely has style.
Melissa, the park made a revised version of the poster that is largely the same, but the Skipper was given a new outfit and slimmed down. Interesting!
Nanook, I can’t fault someone for still searching for a unique style - in this day and age, it’s hard to stand out! And I think that, unfortunately, there are some people who have a style, but it just isn’t good, whether due to poor taste or lack of skill.
Major : lol: no : Disneyland CALIFORNIA has used the attraction same poster Artwork created for the JUNGKE RIVER CRUISE poster for Hong Kong Disneyland . Until recently that newer poster was on display until recently when the new attraction poster for Snow White’s Amway sale attraction poster replaced the jungle river poster . A new sine white poster replaced the new jungle river poster at Disneyland . The 1976 Jim Michelson Jungle Cruise poster has not been in use since about 2010.
And I’m sorry …. I forgot that a NEW Jungle Cruise poster has now gone on display based on the 1956 version since all the changes recently took place on the actual attraction.
So Disneyland has had 4 regular Jungle River/cruise posters and 1 holiday Jungle Cruise posters .
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