Frontierland in the Fifties
Hooray for Disneyland, 1950s style! I'm happy to report that I've been scanning quite a lot of slides from that decade, you'll probably get sick of them. "What's with all these old photos, Major? Gosh!" (said in Napoleon Dynamite's voice).
It's always nice to find a good view of the old Plantation House (sponsored by Swift), where you could relax, enjoy a meal, and take in the views of the busy river. I'm trying to figure out where our photographer was. On a canoe? Maybe on the bow of the Mark Twain? Walking on water because they are not of this Earth?
Should we eat upstairs, or down on the front patio? Downstairs puts you closer to the action, but upstairs gives you that nice elevated vantage point. I can't decide!
Continuing with the river theme, our camera jockey was up in the branches of Tom's Treehouse, looking toward Rainbow Ridge. We can see all the way into Fantasyland (there are the masts of the Pirate Ship) and can even see a string of Skyway gondolas.
Meanwhile, look at how busy this area was, with the load areas for the Stagecoaches and Conestoga Wagons, and the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train (this was pre-Nature's Wonderland, of course).
Speaking of Stagecoaches, there goes one now. The passengers are all ghosts, which is why we can't see them, but don't worry, it is full!
29 comments:
Major-
So MUCH activity at Rainbow Ridge-! We can't quite see the front of the Mineral Hall building. Certainly looks like a swell place to be these times.
Thanks, Major.
What a great view of Rainbow Ridge with Fantasyland on the horizon. I wish I could hop into that photo and explore 1950's Disneyland. So many different kinds of transportation in view. Thanks, Major.
1) I'm going to guess that this photo is from early 1956, judging by the sparseness of the vegetation. People are wearing coats and long sleeves, so it's probably in the winter months.
That's a nice, comprehensive view of the Plantation House. We haven't seen many of those. And the few we have seen usually have the building partly obscured by shrubs and trees.
I think I see Gilligan on the right edge of the pic.
2) [the close-up] Is that TRASH I see in the dirt below the cement barrier/railing? Say it ain't so!!
3) I like this photo. It has a Grandma Moses, folk art look to it. We can see the Mark Twain's butt. (That's what the rear of a boat is called, right?)
4) This close-up looks even more like folk art. As we've noted before, there are lots of red coats and sweaters to be seen in these mid-fifties photos.
Thanks for these early views of life along the River, Major.
These are great early-years pics, for DL! You should grab a seat on the balcony of the Plantation House. It will give you an elevated view of Fancraptic!® Of course, there will be a VERY long wait for it to start.
JB, you didn't mention the coots in the first pic. I wonder if they were exploding coots, or if the coots did something different than the ducks? Maybe they shot acid out of their mouths? You know, like a Dilophosaurus.
In the Rainbow Ridge pic, we can even see the tip of Cinderella's Castle in Storybook Land.
Thanks, Major. I'm looking forward to seeing more pics of DL in the fifties!
So…much…to…SEE in that second image (and its close-ups). In addition to what’s already been mentioned, note that the tip of Fan 1 also makes a guest appearance to the right of Cindy’s castle. Plus - utility poles!
Did the Stagecoaches and Conestoga Wagons load from the same queue? I only see two load areas by the low “adobe” structure, and I think one of them (the one farthest from the water) is for the Mule Pack. Both the covered wagon and the mud coach next to the water are operating empty. I wonder if they are being taken backstage to exchange horses at the Tri-Circle D.
These are from no earlier than July of 1956, when the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train debuted. As JB noted, lots of coats and sweaters and sparse vegetation, so I’d tend to agree that this is still pretty early on, maybe Fall of ‘56 or Winter of ‘57.
Thank’s for noting the backside of the Twain exiting the shot, JB. With all the action ashore, I would have missed it otherwise. I believe the correct nautical term for the back end of a boat is “rump.” Odd, when you think that the poop deck is up in the front pointy part of a boat, although, to be completely accurate, rumpwheelers didn’t have poop decks. I’m not even sure the Mark Twain has toilets. You can, however, visit Mark Twain’s toilet in Virginia City.
Chuck, it's a good thing that there isn't a poop deck directly over the paddle wheel of the Mark Twain. I'm just saying.
Frontierland was so Frontierland back in the 50's. Looks like a dusty backlot more than a box of Colorforms. I had the "Tricky Mickey Magic Show"...I did like colorforms, I just don't want to paint buildings to look like Colorforms unless it's a theme park based on colorforms. Do they even make colorforms anymore? The smell, probably toxic, was unmistakeable. The Plantation house, (now presented by Zingers), is lovely. I'm wondering when that went down people were "TRE Mourning?" I'm kind of TRE mourning now, as it looks like it would have been a nice place to eat delicious SWIFT products. I had a set of those chairs on the patio. They look like they would be uncomfortable, but they are very bouncy and comfortable. Probably not when you are wearing your hot pants or short shorts though. I'm confused about Craptastic...officially...OK...when it first started it was kind of "another show"...before it had it's name. And even though it was popular, it didn't totally shut down the West Side. So....when it blew out of proportion and became a "thing"...why not shove it somewhere in like the Disneyland Hotel parking lot (still kind of flat) and make it a separate ticket or Lighting Land blah blah blah thing? It seems super weird...to me...that you would take an already impacted area...and plop the Hollywood Bowl in the middle of it. For those who know: the nightly nannigans at the Hollywood Bowl...although it is very organized, it causes quite the malaise every night in a very busy area in again...a already impacted area...soooo...also...I'm not sure I like financing this craptastic thing, when I would have no intention, nor any intention of watching it...UNLESS...it was on the top floor of the Plantation House...and I didn't have to get there 3 hours before, and stake out my spot, and get into fights to defend my territory. All weird to me...very weird. I suppose I'm the weird one. I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the photos this morning Major.
Bu, a friend of mine from elementary school, gave me the Tricky Mickey Magic Show Colorforms set for my birthday. And I still have it!
TM! & Bu, my little sister and I both had our own copies of the Tricky Mickey Magic Show, too, but aside from one or two sticky pieces, they are long gone. I envy your collection, TM! Well, maybe "respect" is a better word; I still do have more artifacts from my childhood than many people do of theirs. Most aren't valuable and are in "very played-with condition" (particularly my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars), but they mean something to me.
Chuck, I don't have everything from my childhood, and what I do have isn't always complete. I have only 4 or 5 pieces from my Snow White Colorforms set, and that is it. I don't know what happened to the rest of it. :-(
TM!, I'll look and see if it ended up over at my house.
Just FYI as my brain "emerges" this morning: there was another Mickey Mouse colorforms set at the time...it was a larger format and impressive from what I remember. These particular colorforms sets were created by an artist that was very talented in re-creating the 30's Mickey. Name escapes me, but someone on here knows...the Disneyana people at the time knew who this guy was...he also designed the Mickey seed collection...the graphics were pretty amazing. I went to a "surplus" store in downtown LA where not only did they have the complete set of seeds in a full display, they had all of the very large cardboard display systems to go with it. I was soooo enamored with it that the guy who owned the place GAVE it to me. Of course, the guy who I was with purchased thousands of dollars of Kobe beef (extremely rare at that time) (there was a lot of "surplus" here...wink wink)...so I guess this was the "GWP". A few years later I sold it at a Howard Lowery auction...not knowing what it would bring...it sold for $350...this was in the mid 1980's, so that was quite a sale. It's appeared since then, selling for just a bit more...I think...I just looked up the artist: Mel Brinkrant.
I’m going with the flow here and taking photo 2 FTW, whIle noting in passing that I would want a second floor seat in the
Plantation House. It’s too bad there’s no upper floor seating in the Blue Bayou. Has anyone seen a PH menu?
Major, I think that photo 1 is taken from a raft mid-river, due to the standee head in the shot. Remember the raft routes were different then.
It looks like another Red Day in Frontierland. The Grandma Moses analogy is a good one. The little white church is clearly visible too.
I love the views of Other Lands slopping over the Rim, something like the views in Dream where we sometimes can see Beyond the Fields We Know, and can scarcely remember them on waking. This one feels like Someone tipped the cup a bit so it sloshed.
JB, ships have sterns, but I think boats can have butts because butts are also a kind of maritime barrel, cask, pipe, hogshead, or barrique, etc.
Thanks Major.
JG
Hard to post a bad 50's era photo. Fourth pic is pretty wonderful, in a slightly blurry kind of a way. Good crowd, as Rodney used to say. Throw me in.
My sister got the Tricky Mickey Magic Show, but I played with it a lot which probably explains why we don't have it anymore.
Thanks Major, good show.
Nanook, whenever these were taken, it would have been an amazing time to be at the park!
K. Martinez, I know, so much activity, I really love that second one especially.
JB, I can’t recall when the Mine Train opened, but that would help with narrowing down a date for these (I’m away from home today). It’s a bummer to see the trash, but it’s possible that wind blew those pieces from the Plantation House dining area. And hey, that does look like a young Gilligan! I see what you mean about the Grandma Moses resemblance, there’s some other artist who paints like that too. At least Grandma Moses was authentic, whereas I think this other artist is just aping that style.
TokyoMagic!, imagine how much money they could make on Fantasmic! if they had a large building with a second story like the Plantation House! $50 per person (plus a Zinger)? $75? Let’s just round it up to $100, that will keep the annoying poor people away. They don’t deserve nice things.
Chuck, it is always sort of fun to see how many landmarks you can spot from Tom’s Treehouse. In the days of scraggly landscaping, you could see a LOT. I believe that the Stagecoaches and Conestoga Wagons did use the same load area, the dirt “corral” next to the where the Pack Mules loaded. Thanks for looking up the date for the Mine Train, that definitely helps. I apologize for not editing out the rump of the Mark Twain, since this is (as you know) a family blog.
TokyoMagic!, the imagination goes wild.
Bu, I owned some Colorforms, but they were the original geometric shapes, which I admit I did not play with much. I’m sure Colorforms are a thing of the distant past. I’ve often wondered if guests from the 1950s were sad when specific landmarks were removed from Disneyland. Sue says he dad was upset that the Viewliner went away, so we know that at least one person was affected. Like many, I am baffled by the sheer popularity of Fantasmic!, though I suspect that the locals who go to the park every week love it because it gives them something to do. I will always miss the peaceful and beautiful Frontierland that was pre-Fantasmic. The thought of waiting 3 hours (which people do!) for that show is beyond belief in my opinion. I remember a podcast talked about a time when the hosts decided to do that, and some ducks flew overhead, and dropped “duck stuff” on them.
TokyoMagic!, I guess I was a bad kid, I never got the Tricky Mickey Colorforms. What made Mickey so tricky?
Chuck, see? Everyone had it but me. I had a lump of dirt and some old string, and sure it was fun, but it wasn’t tricky.
TokyoMagic!, with all of our Navy moves, I have very few toys from my childhood, and all the really good stuff is long-gone.
Chuck, check in TM’s garage!
Bu, I’m wondering is you are referring to Leslie Cabarga, though I think of him more in relation to Betty Boop and the Fleischers than I do “Disney”. Still, he is well known for duplicating that 1930’s style. Wow, amazing that you found (and acquired) that display of Mickey seeds, I know just what you are referring to. Oh, Mel Birnkrant, yes, he’s another guy who does those “vintage” toy designs (along with other stuff).
JG, I never have seen a menu from the Plantation House, which is surprising. I’ve seen plenty of other rare early menus from Disneyland. I’ll have to ask a collector friend (who has some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen) if he is aware of such a thing.
You might be right about the raft, though I did think it was possible it was taken from the bow of the Mark Twain, up where people sit in chairs. “Beyond the Fields We Know”, very poetic!
DrGoat, man, Disney (and Colorforms) must have made a bundle off of that Tricky Mickey set! Years ago somebody on eBay was selling dozens and dozens of different Colorform sets, I’m glad I don’t collect those because I would have spent a ton of money.
Tokyo!, I saw the coots, although I didn't know what they were called. And I wasn't sure if coots exploded like ducks, so I left them out of my comment. "Maybe they shot acid out of their mouths?". Let's not get silly; flames, yes. Acid, no.
Chuck, thanks for setting me straight with all that highly accurate nautical terminology. Rumps and poop... Got it!
Mark Twain's toilet... A little silly. A little icky. A little interesting.
Tokyo! again, Oh gawd. The mental images!
Major, thanks to Chuck's mention of the Mine Train date, I'm adjusting my guesstimate of when this photo was taken to November or December 1956.
I had a Fireball XL5 stick'em-type of set when I was a kid. I don't know if it was Colorform though. I played with that thing a lot; creating scenes by placing the cut-outs onto a waxy black background, which represented the blackness of outer space.
@JB, I had a big toy model Fireball XL5 spaceship that I absolutely wore to pieces. I think I wept when the last pieces broke. I barely remember the TV show from childhood, but it can be found on Amazon Prime, I watched a couple of episodes, just amazing to see all that again.
@Major, I hadn't thought of the bow of the Mark Twain.
Thanks for the compliment on my writing, all my poetry is borrowed, but always from quality sources Over the Hills and Far Away.
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-fields-know-Lord-Dunsany/dp/0345097440
Bought that book in 8th grade, it is a copyrighted collection because of the modern introductions and preface etc. I think all the actual stories are now public domain and available in other collections from Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2685
JG
JB & JG- Your comments on Fireball XL5 brought back a lot of good memories. I also had one of the toy/model XL5 spaceships (long gone now...but I do still have a few of the figures). I always liked hearing the theme song as well. On a trivia side note, the vocalist, Don Spencer, is Russel Crowe's ex father-in-law.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed0jsVgIHu8
Thanks Major for the great pictures from a little before my time.
-DW
JG, Fireball XL5 is also available on the Tubi free streaming service. I haven't watched any of the episodes yet. Zoonie was my favorite character, "Welllcome hoooome".
DW, wow, thanks for the link! I had forgotten all about the theme song, but when I heard it, almost all the lyrics came back to me. Weird. 1962, I think. Same year we went to the Seattle World's Fair; I was only 9. Everything, then, was space oriented.
Major, the Colorforms set was called "Tricky Mickey" because you could pose him on a street corner, leaning against a lamppost.....oops, family blog, right?
He was actually a magician and each of the pieces had two different designs painted on them, using two different colors. You lifted a door and put each piece on a wheel. Then you rotated the wheel so that the piece appeared behind a red window. When you rotated it further to a green wheel, the image would change. One example was a lady with curly hair, would then be bald once you rotated the image to the second window. Think of it as Jesus at Knott's Berry Farm opening his eyes, but without the use of black lighting, and instead, moving him from behind a red window, to a green window to achieve the same effect. None of this probably makes any sense. Here's an example of the Colorforms set:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/364033071892?hash=item54c20fdb14:g:j0sAAOSwj2JjFO2s&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAsNQRhHmcgRaOHc8Ilhdwt9pCyrbiKzg8fytscsM%2B%2BSiVgRnrrDRUcPIEm4ArLFndYgyIgy5SECuKyWgD%2F8xDL5I27CYDKh4zTWJe3uXUVfcfFoY0F%2ByO4iURjb9vQRZDdEAKg2rIK9VSDShRJfSe%2FYmSf3QYe2om99e9VYlVqdqcKVI7CUPHRclmdtZT7V2TWXBK7crp1QKYQ7HVXdQi6BrHEXTpGCPUik17sNrsL4WY%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8CiyM-IYQ
I got my "Tricky Mickey" set in '75 or '76. I see that it was reissued in the late 80s, with "A Colorforms Classic" seal printed on the box.
Fireball XL5 was a must see back then. Zoonie was cool. I also liked Robert the robot co-pilot. I think I actually saw that puppet for sale somewhere on an auction, long time ago. A coveted item.
Loved that spaceship barreling down the guide rail and blasting off for another adventure.
Wow, a Conestoga Wagon and 2 stagecoach! Jackpot!
DW, JB, Dr. Goat, I’m glad we share common interests in those shows and toys! Robert the Robot! Did he predate the Robbie Robot on Forbidden Planet? And Zoonie the Lazoon!
Thank you for the link to the theme, I had a Little Golden Book of XL5 about space dragons spitting gemstones, does that sound familiar to anyone? I’ll look for that and scan it if I find it.
JG
JB, the main thing I know about coots is that they are all over a golf course near my sister’s house, and they leave greasy coot s**t all over the grass. They sometimes have a guy with a dog go out to try to scare them away, but they always come back. And yes, very late 1956 just feels right. What is Fireball XL5? I think the band “Madness” had a song called Fireball X that was pretty cool.
JG, oh man, imagine how much that spaceship would be worth today! Not trying to rub it in, I know I had some toys that would be worth big bucks - if I hadn’t played with them until they were ruined! As I’m sure you have noticed, I rarely attempt much in the way of prose, since I don’t have any talent for it. My grandmother was a fan of poetry and had many very old books of poems by various writers, they all seemed terribly old-fashioned to me, and yet I still loved to flip through them. By the way, thank you for the link to “Two Years Before the Mast”! I knew it would be on Project Gutenberg!
DW, Was Fireball XL5 one of those Jerry Anderson puppet programs from England? I could look it up, but that would require effort, and you know how lazy I am.
JG, I keep hearing about Tubi, but have yet to look at it. Sounds like there is a lot of cool stuff available for free. My probably is that I have a sort of ADHD about watching TV and movies, after about 15 minutes I feel like I have to get up and do something.
TokyoMagic!, ha ha, did Mickey have a big floppy hat made of faux tiger fur? It’s nuts, your description of the Tricky Mickey set sounds SO familiar, now I’m wondering if my sister or younger brother had it. Wow, it can still be had for only $40, seems like a bargain!
DrGoat, I feel so out of the loop.
Sunday Night, I feel the same way!
JG, what the heck is a Lazoon? Why don’t people name their robots “Rupert”? I guess I’m more of a Johnny Sokko guy.
Major, Fireball XL5 was an early Anderson SuperMarionation show, a forerunner of Thunderbirds. Robert the Robot was the cybernetic pilot with a transparent head (inspiration for the Lost in Space Robot?)
I’m glad you found “Two Years”, hope you enjoy it. I’m not a big poetry reader but Dunsany struck a chord with me at an early age.
Tubi is a streaming channel, I can get it through my Roku stick, but there may be other ways too, it’s ad-supported but free, and has a lot of old stuff. Thank you JB for reminding me, I did see XL5 there while recently watching “Earth vs the Flying Saucers”, a Harryhausen film that scared the bejabbers out of 5 y.o. me. Lots of ads, but hey.
Zoony the Lazoon was a kind of alien monkey, a character in XL5, possibly a precursor of Boxie’s daggit (see also original battle star galaxative).
JG
JG, Forbidden Planet predated Fireball XL5 by six years, so Robert is probably an homage to Robbie. And the less said about Muffit II the robot dagget, the better.
Also, the less said about Boxie the annoying kid, the better.
Best look ever at Plantation House “old south” face. Hope your new scans can also show us the elusive adobe facade.
Chuck, JB, I promise never to mention them again. I was just trying to provide context, from Battlestar Galaxative.
JG
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