Golden Horseshoe, September 1983
Here's a nice selection of Frontierland photos taken by Lou Perry back in 1983, scanned and shared with us by his daughter, Sue B. You all know Sue! All of these feature the Golden Horseshoe Revue to one degree or another.
Outside the attraction, guests could see a few unique posters for the Revue (I believe that you could also see these next to the Global Van Lines lockers in Town Square for a number of years). I have always assumed that the one below was drawn by the legendary Sam McKim, though I admit that I've never seen any written proof of that. There's Slue Foot Sue and her Gorgeous Girls. Alluring! Exhilarating! Dazzling!
This next one had clearly been updated as the Golden Horseshoe Revue changed over the years. Wally Boag was no longer on the bill, though Fulton Burley and Betty Taylor were still there. Dick Hardwick now played the role of the Traveling Salesman/Pecos Bill. Fun fun fun fun! PS: fun.
Say, there's the very golden horseshoe I've been hearing so much about! Inlaid with rubies, if I'm not mistaken. The Revue was presented by Kodak, a company I've never heard of. I think they made fur coats. Notice the sign telling us that we need a reservation card, this was to prevent stampedes of fans like at that Who concert.
Here's the view from out front. "Hey man, let's go see the Revue!". "No way, we don't have reservations, and I can't go to prison again!". Can you blame him?
As we all know, Disneyland opened in 1871, and the Golden Horseshoe Revue was an opening-day attraction, popular with haberdashers, blacksmiths, miners, cattlemen, gunslingers, undertakers, and even overtakers.
Let's take one last look as the sun sets in the west (in about four hours, by the looks of things). The building is still there, of course, but the songs, jokes, and pretty gals are long-gone.
THANK YOU, Lou and Sue!
11 comments:
Major-
I'd almost forgotten with the opening of EPCOT and Disney's exclusive deal with Coca-Cola, forcing Pepsi to be 86'd from both Magic Kingdoms' - so went Pepsi's sponsorship of the Golden Horseshoe Revue (and the availability of BOTH Coke and Pepsi at FAN 1 & 2, and several other libation locations throughout the Park).
Thanks to Lou and Sue.
Another fine example of Mr. Perry's thorough documentation of all things Disney!
"I think they made fur coats". Yes, yes they did. Kodak also made cowboy boots and corndogs. A very diverse company!
We were at Disneyland two years after it opened; 1873. Frontierland was called Main Street USA then. They still had the Mark Twain though, both, the paddle boat and Mr. Twain himself! Always dapper in his white suit. The Jungle Cruise had real animals then. They let us feed live chickens to the crocodiles! Tomorrowland showed us a glimpse of how things would look in the distant year of 1910! They had moving pictures and everything! The outhouse of the future was actually indoors, if you can believe it!
Thanks again to Lou Perry. And to Sue and Major.
You gotta love the alliterations on that first poster....you just gotta!
Seeing the large signs out front in Lou's pics made me go check Google street view. Of course, the word "Revue" has been removed and they now just read "Golden Horseshoe."
Maybe they should have put A.A. Walt in that space, along with an A.A. Lillian. The robots could reenact their 30th wedding anniversary party like they did in real life, four days before DL opened. And A.A. Walt could present A.A. Lillian with a huge boulder, as a present. Even though I'm not sure which year he gave her that. Which anniversary is it that you are suppose to give petrified wood?
Thank you Lou, Sue, and Major!
First saw the show during the Pepsi years. If memory serves, the show was prefaced by a comic slide show (old engravings with captions like, "Mother Will Love Your Maxi Skirt") and odd jokes interrupting the recorded music ("Mrs. Smith, your home is being robbed! The Lone Ranger is in your parlor looking for Silver."). Wally Boag had a mustache by then. Not quite as gymnastic as he was on that "World of Color" episode, but the speed and energy was there.
Fulton Burley -- assume it was him -- performed "The Girl on the Police Gazette", with the dancers stepping out of a magazine cover in period finery. The song is in Gay 90s style but was written by Irving Berlin for a 1937 movie, "On the Avenue". Now wondering why Mr. Burley wasn't in that "World of Color" episode.
Some years later there was a new show with a bit more of a story line. The lead comic was a stagestruck bartender who kept interrupting. At one point he appeared with an Indian headdress.
BARTENDER: "Chance!"
GIRL SINGER: "Don't you mean How?"
BARTENDER: "Me know how. Me want Chance!"
It was actually years before I realized he was (probably) referring to a chance to be in the show.
Last time was a few years back, just before Galaxy's Edge opened. They had a little show several times a day, with a handful of performers who'd recruit volunteers from the audience for a comedy sketch. Since the place was now a busy counter service eatery, it was a nice gesture to have SOMETHING onstage every hour or so.
I remember the lines for the Golden Horseshoe Revue . Early in the morning as soon as the park opened people ran to get reservations for the show. Sometimes you could get a cancellation - but the show was always popular and usually played to a full house. The show remained popular till the end - it didn’t go away because it wasn’t popular, it was closed as a casualty of the Eisner/Pressler entertainment cuts. Florida lost their’s too - Also extremely popular. Today the show is still performed at Tokyo Disneyland’s Diamond Horseshoe Saloon …. The building facade is mostly a duplicate of the Anaheim version.
Lou took some great documentation like photographs!!
These posters are wonderful, I’m glad Lou preserved them for us.
I was fortunate to see Wally Boag on one of my high school trips, and many years later, Billy Hill and the Hillbillies. I can’t say this was a favorite spot, but I had a good time and the interior is worth seeing even if there is no other entertainment.
I’m sad to see the current state of a spot so closely connected to Walt. The current management clown show practically shutting it down while spending millions (undoubtedly) on an android Walt. The irony burns.
Thanks Major, Lou and Sue!
JG
Nanook, I’m just sore that I can’t buy Moxie in Disneyland. Not even at Fan2!
JB, Kodak also famously made wigs, the best darn wigs you ever saw. “Is it REAL?”. “Nope, it’s a Kodak!”. Mark Twain would sometimes sell popcorn at Disneyland when book sales were slow, and he was happy to do so. Of course back then he was known as Samuel Clemenski, which he shortened to “Sam Clemens”. In 1910 we would all go to work in our lighter-than-air craft!
TokyoMagic!, I DO love those alliterations. I’m glad they removed the word “Revue”, no sense in misleading people. Now you can go in and eat in silence, they even got rid of the piano player. Which is good, silence is better for the digestion. If they are going to have an AA Walt, somehow the Golden Horseshoe stage makes more sense to me. I’m sure there are all kinds of reasons why they couldn’t do it there. Walt once gave Lillian the world’s largest ball of string, which brought a tear to her eye. I’m sure it’s at the Walt Disney Family Museum now. Petrified wood is for the 23rd anniversary.
DBenson, the slide show sounds like what you might have seen at Shakey’s Pizza Parlors in the 1960s, they really did do things like that. “Please remove your hat!”. Fu-nny. I have some photos of a mustachioed Wally Boag coming up! I also have a photo of Fulton Burley singing to a cutie walking out of the Police Gazette. That “chance” gag is an odd one, I gotta say. As I said to TokyoMagic!, they used to have a piano player on stage who would play olde-timey songs and sometimes talk to the audience, it was better than nothing.
Mike Cozart, I’m glad to hear that the Golden Horseshoe Revue didn’t die from lack of interest. It still stinks that Eisner and Co. decided that paying all those musicians and performers was not cost-effective, but at least they went out on top, so to speak. I wonder, was the final performance acknowledged, and was it a big deal? Interesting that they still do it in Tokyo, it would be quite a thing to see a western comedy show in Japanese!
JG, you are lucky that you saw Wally in action; he had long-retired, but I regret passing on a chance to go meet him at some event with some other people. I forget exactly why I didn’t go, but I think I had something else to do. Still, the chance never arose again. I heard recordings of Billy Hill and the Hillbillies on some podcasts years ago, they were pretty funny. I’m already picturing the way the Walt AA will move, waving his arm in weird arcs the way those robots do. Arg.
I think it was remarkably prescient to take photos of the "mundane" details of Disneyland that no longer exist, preserving them for posterity. Photos of the Golden Horseshoe are plentiful, but how many people took the time to take photos of small details like the posters? Not to mention the sacrifice it must have been to use up two precious frames of film?
Tokyo!, "Which anniversary is it that you are suppose to give petrified wood?"... The last one! (Don't believe a word Major says!) :-p
Major, I don't suppose you have, in your collection, a popcorn bucket that Mr. Clemens himself actually handled?!?
Tokyo!, "Which anniversary is it that you are suppose to give petrified wood?"... The last one!
JB, LOL!!!
I'm sure I mentioned this before, but I recently (in the past year) asked my dad why he took so many pictures of everything??
His response was that he wanted to remember what things looked like. [And now we all get the benefit of remembering what things looked like.]
Thanks, everyone, for sharing your experiences at the GHR. It was always on our list of 'things to do' at Disneyland.
Thanks, Major.
.......it would be quite a thing to see a western comedy show in Japanese!
Major, I've seen TDL's show several times and filmed it once. I should dig that footage out and upload it to YouTube. They did the traditional show in the evening, and they did a different show in the afternoon, which involved the "fab five" Disney characters.....and maybe Daisy, too. Tokyo does the same thing with the Polynesian Terrace (equivalent of DL's Tahitian Terrace). They do a traditional show with dancers and fire twirlers in the evening, and in the afternoon, it's a similar show, but with more emphasis on the Disney character. Tokyo DL and Tokyo DisneySea are absolutely the BEST, I tell ya! There is no cutting of corners over there, and it shows!
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