Let's start today's blog post by wishing GDB friend Nanook a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Sue B. is always on top of everything, and she sent this vintage photo just for fun (Thanks Sue). A tiny child holds a big cake! This almost looks like a Dorothea Lange image. Hey Nanook, what's that car?
BUT WAIT! Sue sent two later additions for Nanook. A veritable cornucopia. First up is this fun photo of a celebration of some kind at a place called The Blue Banjo, which was in Los Angeles. So many Mickey Mouse sweatshirts! What does it mean??
And Sue also sent along this scan, from a photo taken by her dad, Lou Perry. It shows some sort of high-tech "command center". Banks of computers with magnetic tape data reels! A typewriter! Swivel chairs! Plenty of buttons to push! Sue knows of Nanook's love of technology, this is probably what his dream home looks like.
AND NOW, here's a trio of scans from a lot of slides date-stamped "January, 1977". They aren't the greatest, but fun can still be had.
Oh boy, look at that palm tree, and those pennants and flags - the winds were fierce on that day. Yuck! But you take what you get, and just have to deal with your funny-looking mess of a hairdo. Why, I'm chucking just thinking about it! Besides the Jolly Roger, we can see that flag that has come up in conversation before.
A small crowd enjoys a lunchtime musical performance over at the Carnation Plaza Gardens; there's a banner against the wall to the left, and it took me a while to decipher it, but I believe that it says "The Strawhatters". Those guys used to perform at the old riverfront bandstand in Frontierland, but they've moved to Main Street.
You can make fun of It's a Small World all you want, I still like it! It's colorful, playful, and charmingly mid-century in its designs, thanks to the artistry of Mary Blair and Rolly Crump. The song doesn't bug me, either.
There are more scans from this batch, coming up!
Happy Birthday Nanook, I'm sure you'll get the car right!
ReplyDeleteI like Small World too Major, if only for those big AC fans that are on in the summer when you enter the building...
HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS NANOOK!
ReplyDeleteLooks like the BLUE BANJO is the FARRELS ICE CREAM PARLOR for adults - but instead of ice cream they serve up booze!
Major-
ReplyDeleteSue certainly knows how to pick 'em-! I'm afraid I can't recognize that car. It certainly has a unique rear bumper, but I can't place it. As for that "computer center", my eyes were instantly drawn towards the floor-standing ashtray that probably weighs as much as a small child-! Also weighing as much as a small child are those 'lovely' office chairs - though not ergonomic in any way - but could easily survive [several] nuclear blasts-! I paid no attention to the fact the ashtray and chairs were in-service to an IBM 705 Mainframe Computer Data Processing System - in vogue from late 1954 thru about 1960.
Thanks to Sue and the Major.
Oh, Major....I hope you can stop chucking. Maybe you need an antiemetic?
ReplyDeleteThose people at the center table in the Carnation Gardens pic, look like their focus isn't directed at the stage. It almost looks like they are all staring at that one trash can.
In that last pic, I think we can see the back of the Small World Stage. Unless that's a construction wall, and they were removing the stage. That's possible since the Space Stage would be opening along with Space Mountain in just 4 months.
Happy birthday, Nanook! I hope you have a swell day!
Thanks for the bonus images, Sue. I really like that first one. I wonder what year that was taken? I'm going to guess sometime in the 1930s, but I suppose it could even be from the 20s.
Thanks to the Major, too!
Happy birthday, Nanook! Don't catch cold up there in the frozen north. ;-) If I remember correctly, there are a couple of other June birthdays coming up (mine's a week from now). Pretty sure there's at least one other.
ReplyDelete1) They're taking a pretty big risk having Junior hold onto that cake! If this were "Funniest Home Videos" that cake would end up top-side-down in the dust. Dad has a cake as well (I think, hard to tell). Two cakes?! Maybe it's his birthday, too. I can't quite read the license plate but this looks like sometime in the 1940s, maybe late '40s (TM! says '20s or '30s). Anyone have an idea what those two poles/tree branches (or trunks) are up against the house (barn?)? They seem to be held in place by that dark something-or-other at the top.
2) Could these be Disneyland CMs celebrating at the nearby Blue Banjo? (I say "nearby" because Major says this is in L.A.). It looks to be sometime in the '70s.
3) Like Nanook, I noticed that ash can beside the workstation. They allowed smoking in this room with all the delicate (and expensive) machines? It reminds me of the computer room in the movie "Hidden Figures".
4) Not sure what the photographer was aiming at here. A little bit of everything, I guess. Seems strange to see guests wearing heavy winter coats in Disneyland. But it IS January after all. Still, a nice colorful picture.
5) This has a cozy, intimate feel to it; under the 'tent'. I wonder what the folks at the table in front of us are looking at?
6) Again, not sure what the focus of this picture is. Someone in the boat? Someone on the steps? Nothing, and everything, in particular? It has a nice "you are there" aspect to it.
I see that Tokyo! made a "chucking" joke... so I don't have to. ;-) I thought those people at the Carnation table were looking at the trashcan as well.
Thanks to Sue, Lou, and Major too.
In the DATA PROCESS CENTER image : there’s a giant glass ashtray on the desk … and that big cylindrical thing next to the desk is a “fire less office waste can” it was really a thing : I recognize it from the advertisements in my mom’s early 60’s “executive secretary magazines …. It helped contain possible fires in the office in the case of hot cigarette ashes being dumped into the can . Office trash can fires were a common occurrence at one time …
ReplyDeleteJB, you might be right about the pic being from the 40s. I didn't take the car into consideration. I don't think that car is from the 1920s, so now think the photo was taken in either the 30s or 40s!
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Nanook! Hope the North is serving you well today! These photos today have a LOT in them...it's deserving of an entire Podcast series! Photo one: oh dear: this photo tells a story, I saved it as it's just that good. The forlorn tree. The serious dad wearing a crisp white shirt amongst the grassless/unpaved "parking lot". The guy in the back. The kids scrubbed for the day, but the kid holding the cake has outgrown his sandals with his toes hanging over the tops. The odd "lean to" kind of ladder, but kind of not: made with two tree limbs, the various pieces of siding...it's quite a lot to take in. Moving onto Banjos: looks like Farrells and Friday's had a lovechild...I did a search and found a little blurb about a Banjo's in Simi (Valley..LA)...and it looks like it could be...don't think they are Disneyland Employees...sideburns way too long. Mickey shirts were big at that time..who doesn't like Mickey? The DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM....WOW! That looks so good it looks like a set. I don't know who designed it or works there: but they are definitely Virgos...everything in place and in order...so serious...Cold War feeling...the swivel chairs are absolutely epic...I had one of those big metal "Army Type" desks and a swivel chair at one point. It was really cool...and must have weighed OVER 300 pounds. Built to last: like this room. It's a windy day in Anaheim: watch out for flying palm pieces...and don't put up the umbrellas...close the Skyway...I think I've told the story of my flying ODV Umbrella that was jettisoned to space from the Hub amongst the screaming of the people around me: it flew up at least 50 feet before descending toward earth. They put little pins in the them after that. I really like and miss Plaza Gardens...but am noticing in this photo that the light wasn't particularly great...it's fanciful...and perhaps it was built for the night and the rollicking times wit swing music and Annette Funicello...cut to it's a small world...all good things...lots of history...and an incredible design ethos. Don't know why "exit through the gift shop" had to happen...it seems that since "exit through the gift shop" is such a joke...that it would be the most amateur attempt at getting guests cash...and they fall for it...doesn't Pirates in WDW also exit into a giant shop too: I think I remember asking someone "how do you get out of here?!"....Happy Birthday Nanook. A very historic day for a birthday: and sent me down a rabbit hole to the Eisenhower Presidential Library...which is fascinating place to get lost in on this June 6th. Thanks Major.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday, Nanook!
ReplyDeleteThe car in the first photo is sporting a 1946 or 1948 Texas license plate.
TM!, I concur that that panel is the side of the Small World Stage. Compare with this August 1976 photo. Amazing that such a poorly-documented footnote in Disneyland entertainment history keeps coming up here.
For those unfamiliar with the Small World Stage, it was a temporary location used between the demolition of the Tomorrowland Stage for Space Mountain construction in the latter half of 1976 and the opening of the Space Stage in may of 1977. To see it from the other side, here it was in June of 1977 after the chairs had been removed.
Happy Birthday, Nanook! Hope you enjoy your special day.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday Nanook!!
ReplyDeleteThe men in our Mickey grouping definitely were not up to the grooming standards of the time. And it's doubtful that those who were on vacation could have grown so much facial hair in such a short time. Some employees could and would let themselves 'go' while enjoying their paid time off. Sometimes, they'd even sign themselves into the Park just to proudly display it to us jealous CMs.
We definitely had periods of cold Santa Ana winds in December and January. It was time to bundle up! I really enjoyed when it would be cold in the morning but heat up into the low 90s for a just few hours in the afternoon. The air was so fresh! I can feel the heat and sweat while loading guests on the JC right now. KS
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NANOOK! I hope you're having lots of fun, at least as much fun as you can have outside of Disneyland, that is. That group in the MM shirt was taken in Seattle (per the photo back)...your neck of the woods??
ReplyDeleteThanks, Major, for hosting the party.
Major-
ReplyDeleteTHIS JUST IN... That's a 1940 Chevrolet [perhaps] a Special Deluxe 2-Door Town Sedan.
@ Sue-
There was a a Blue Banjo Tavern in downtown Yakima, Washington, which stuck around until 2001 - their logo incorporated a backwards 'N'. From what I can see, I can't determine if the 'N' in the hatband is backwards, or no.
Thanks all, for the birthday wishes.
walterworld, ha ha, those poor Imagineers… “Yeah, your ride is great, but what I REALLY like is the air conditioning!”.
ReplyDeleteMike Cozart, that place definitely gives off a “Farrell’s” vibe. Imagine what they did for somebody’s birthday.
Nanook, I guess that car is from a little before your expertise. Ya gotta have heavy floor-standing ashtrays, otherwise they’ll be knocked over by the guys who’ve had three martinis for lunch! I swear those chairs look like something you could still buy today.
TokyoMagic!, no, I happen to like chucking, thank you very much. No antiemetic necessary. It really DOES look like those people are looking at the trashcan at the Plaza Gardens - I admit that it is a pretty nice trashcan. I’m sure you’re right about the Small World Stage, the timing seems about right. Or, as you suggested, maybe it was coming down. I was thinking that the first image was from thee 1930s, but I could be wrong.
JB, there are a lot of June birthdays, and Sue is ready for them! I agree, giving a small child the cake seems like a big risk. Kids are clumsy. They also smell funny, but that’s another story. The photo could be from the 1940s I suppose, it just has an earlier vibe to me, but that’s based on “not much”. Those could be CMs at the restaurant, we will never know! Smoking in the computer room does seem like a bad idea; I used to work at an office that had a big Kray computer and they kept that room COLD. I’ll bet a modern laptop could do more calculations than that big old Kray. Maybe the photographer was trying to show just how darn windy it was that day? For the Plaza Gardens picture, maybe the people at the table were looking at somebody they knew who was just walking in? And I think the last photo was just trying to capture the boats and that queue that passed over them.
Mike Cozart, ugh, just thinking about working in an office where everyone smoked makes my lungs hurt! The same place that I mentioned that had the Kray computer had plenty of smokers, but they had to go downstairs to take their once an hour 15 minutes smoke breaks. So by the end of the day they’d been paid for 2 hours of smoking!
Major-
ReplyDelete"I used to have one of those metal “Army desks”, it was painted with that odd metallic paint that had sort of a hammered look, it was greenish, and as you said, it weighed a ton".
It's Hammertone paint. A very popular paint 'finish' back in-the-day. (And then there's Wrinkle finish - that was sort of phased-out in favor of a smooth finish, with an overspray of small, random-sized 'dots' or blistering. (I bet MIKE knows the correct name for that finish).
I too had one of those desks for all of my time at UCLA. It was battleship grey, weighed a ton, and was manufactured by none other than McDowell-Craig - a name that should be familiar to most Disneyland fans who travelled south on the Santa Ana Freeway, as one would pass by its main office, just steps-away from the edge of the freeway in Santa Fe Springs. A 'going concern' since 1946-!
Happy birthday Nanook! sorry to be late to the party. Many happy returns of the day!
ReplyDeleteJG
That car has a “humpback” trunk …. Those were mega popular from about 1935 till about 1938. 1939 was sort of the last hurray and the 1939/40 car models no longer offered the “humpback” as the single slope rear was in. So the picture could be a much later photo with older cars. I can’t read the date of the license plate. Today car collectors covet the 1930’s humpback sedans and business coupes as very few survived the metal scrap drives of WORLD WAR 2.
ReplyDeleteMajor : it’s funny you say that about the extra cigarette breaks!! Lol. I too worked at company years ago for a short time that seemed to have lots of smokers - they were all young … but they expected their regular breaks by law AND smoking breaks too! Several years ago I heard about a study on the radio regarding people who smoke . The study showed they tended to be less efficient workers and output was lower … no doubt! I remember how much extra time the smokers spent not just taking the extra smoking breaks but the time they all spent rounding “their kind” up so they could all go smoke together . The. When they’d come back they all acted like nobody knew where they had all been. Yeah we all knew because they all smelled like the walking corpses of the Marboro Man and Virginia Slim..
ReplyDeleteNanook, I think you can still buy that “Hammertone” paint in spray cans. There’s something I like about it! Maybe because it reminds me of old stuff. The “wrinkle finish” paint was on some of my early slide storage boxes, but those were so heavy that I finally replaced them with something lighter. It kind of messed up my “organization” or my slides, so I wish I hadn’t done it! My dad, being ex-Navy, had access to a lot of surplus stuff from the base, in fact we even briefly lived in a Quonset hut!
ReplyDeleteJG, welcome!
MIke Cozart, based on what other’s have said, I think you are right, this is likely a photo from the 1940s with an older car.
Mike Cozart, I liked many of the people who took their smoke breaks, but I admit that I did rankle at the fact that they took so much time off while I worked straight through. So many of them were ex-military, and I guess that smoking was extremely prevalent in the services back then. I remember that the back door (down the stairs) where they all went was littered with lots of butts, they just dropped them as if they were invisible.
@ MIKE-
ReplyDeleteCheck my previous, previous comment - it's a 1940 Chevrolet.