Walt and Salvador

My mother was quite the artist when she was a teenager, growing up in NYC. So talented, in fact, that—according to family lore—she was offered a scholarship to study with Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, when she graduated from high school. Instead, she came to California, where she met my father and, at age 19, became a housewife and mother, like everyone else. Nevertheless, as a kid I was smitten by the romantic notion of what-might-have-been and became fascinated by the works of Salvador Dalí.

Two of Mom's best paintings (click on image to enlarge)

The Disney Family Museum is currently featuring an exhibit on Dalí and his relationship with Walt Disney. An odd pair, to be sure, but the museum does an excellent job of paralleling the subversive art of both men, until 1937 when Dalí proclaims, in a letter, that he’s going to California to meet one of his favorite “fellow surrealists,” Walt Disney! They eventually decide to work on a film together, Destino, animated by Dalí, but you can no doubt figure out how that particular story ends (think: Mickey Mouse vs. dripping clocks).

Dalí painting

Despite their differences, the two cultural giants remained friends and, in the late 1950s, visited each other’s homes. My favorite photo in the entire exhibit shows a very regal and straight-backed Dalí riding the narrow-gauge train, Lilly Belle, in Walt’s Brentwood backyard.

Dalí

 

The exhibit runs till January 3, 2016. Highly recommended!

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P.S. In addition to the Dalí, there is also a small but wonderful exhibit, about Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, in the basement of the main museum. Quotations, photos and footage from the old Disney TV shows capture Walt’s vision of the future.

Hip couple of the future

 

Drawing of my beloved Monsanto House

 

And, of course, me

Walt Disney's Trains

Exhibit poster

Many people believe Disneyland would not exist if not for Walt Disney’s passion for trains. Some cite the influence of animator Ward Kimball, who owned and ran a full-sized locomotive in his backyard, and Ollie Johnston, one of Disney’s “nine old men,” who introduced Walt to narrow gauge model trains. Walt himself said he always loved trains and insisted, from its earliest conception, that whatever shape Disneyland ultimately took, it had to have a train running around its perimeter.

The Walt Disney FamilyMuseum is currently featuring a temporary exhibit--“All Aboard: A Celebration of Walt’s Trains”--that chronicles Disney’s lifelong interest in all things locomotive. Special programs are also occasionally presented at the museum in conjunction with the exhibit. Yesterday, for instance, was “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad:Building and Running Walt’s Trains,” a highly anticipated program about the trains at Disneyland. This was such a big deal that the Carolwood Foundation, the organization dedicated to preserving Walt’s railroad legacy, offered members the opportunity to take a 12-hour vintage railcar ride, Friday, from L.A. to the Bay, to see the exhibit and attend the presentation. We joined 20 other people, including folks from St. Louis and Orlando, on the trip.

Our train car, the Silver Splendor

Tim and I boarded the train at Union Station well before departure. Our car, the Silver Splendor, was built in 1956 and has a lounge, dining area, and galley downstairs. Upstairs is the glass-enclosed Vista Dome and table seating for about 24 people. We were early enough to claim one of the prime tables at the front of the dome, where, except for meals, we rode the entire trip. Fellow passengers cycled in and out of the dome area, depending on the view. As one member of the group pointed out, everyone was either a Disney employee, a former Disney employee, and/or a Disney fan, so our ears were constantly perked for insider Disney stories being shared around the tables.

Luggage and dining area downstairs

Downstairs hallway

Looking up the stairs to the Vista Dome

Looking down the stairs. Silent auction on the left.

I won a cup full of brass Disneyland conductor buttons!

View north of Santa Barbara. Note the Channel Islands

in the background.

Our car was attached to Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, the rail that apparently travels the longest stretch of coastline in the U.S. The weather was absolutely perfect: I don’t remember the last time the Channel Islands were so clear off the Santa Barbara coast. But for me, the best part was getting a rare glimpse of the Vandenberg airbase, the site of countless westcoast rocket launches. Tim and I still remember seeing mysterious contrails streaking across the skies when we were kids. “They must be launching rockets again out of Vandenberg,” my dad would always say, as if this was the most natural thing on earth. What a thrill to actually see one of the base’s still-in-use launch pads.

Launch pad, Vanderberg airbase

California coast

Rounding a bend: looking toward the front of the train

Standing on the back "porch," watching the world

speed by. Yee haw!

We spent the night in Oakland’s Jack London Square and so took BART the next morning to get to San Francisco and the museum. En route, we stopped at the old Ferry Building, which was renovated into a public marketplace over 10 years ago. Lots of tasty temptations—a real destination spot the next time we’re in town. 

Looking up at the Ferry Building roof

At the museum, we went through the special train exhibit, which was wonderful, then waited on line for the program. I kept looking for Disney “legends," who might also be there for the event, but didn’t see anyone other than Carolwood and D23 members. We then entered the theater.

Walt and his narrow-gauge train

Walt's actual train

Three speakers were introduced: Bill Colley and Craig Ludwick, both of whom worked on the Disneyland railroad, and Sean Bautista, president of Hillcrest Shops that rebuild and maintain many Disney-related trains. I, of course, know nothing about the mechanical workings of locomotives, but even I was fascinated by all the talk of preserving steam engines and stripping cars down to the frames. Ludwick’s story about saving the Lilly Belle, the presidential train car Walt named after his wife Lillian, was an especially heart-tugging high point of the program. That is, until a surprise speaker was announced: none other than John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar and huge train buff! He told a moving story about buying and refurbishing his mentor Ollie Johnston’s former Porter steam locomotive, the Marie E., as a way to help celebrate Disneyland’s 50^th anniversary in 2005. He then showed a short, but highly emotional film of 92-year-old Ollie driving the train around Disneyland—to this day, the only privately-owned train to ever ride around the park. (You can see the film at http://frankanollie.com/Movies/MarieE.mov.) By the time Lasseter finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. What a wonderful day for Disney and railroad fans alike.

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P.S. It’s now Sunday and Tim is aboard the Silver Splendor, heading back to L.A., while I spend the night in Sacramento. I have an early meeting here tomorrow morning, so took Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor line directly to Sac, instead of going home. The ride was scenic enough, but Amtrak is certainly nothing like traveling in a restored 1956 domed Pullman. I miss the Silver Splendor. . .

Silver Splendor, heading home

Tim, bidding me adieu

Sun setting over the California coast

Orlando: Destination D

The 1964 New York World’s Fair has always loomed large in my family’s lore. My uncle Manuel and aunt Eva stopped there on their way to Spain in 1965—a trip almost too exotic to imagine, especially since I had never traveled farther east than Palm Springs. My family, wearing our Sunday best, took them to LAX, where, in those days, we could wave good-bye at the gate. It was the first time I had ever been to an airport. I was 11 years old and completely fascinated by the idea of a World’s Fair that I would never see.

Since then, I’ve learned that Walt Disney had a big hand in contributing to the success of the Fair, designing no less than four major, and wildly popular, attractions—Ford’s Magic Skyway; Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln; the Carousel of Progress  for GE; and Pepsi’s It’s a Small World—all of which became part of Disneyland once the Fair ended. No surprise, then, that I was one of the first members to buy a ticket when D23 announced that it was going to commemorate the Fair’s 50^th anniversary at the third Destination D convention, held last weekend in Orlando, FL. It was a wonderful event. Plus, as you can see below, Tim and I got to spend some quality time at two of the Walt Disney World parks.

Souvenir guide to "It's a Small World"

Compared to D23’s every-other-year Expo, which draws thousands and thousands of members and non-members alike, Destination D tends to be an intimate nostalgia-fest for several hundred dedicated Disney fans. The theme of the two-day gathering always relates—subtly or not so—to an historic event and/or new Disney product. Not only did we celebrate the NY Fair’s golden anniversary, we also soon learned that the Fair plays a key role in the upcoming movie Tomorrowland, which was teased in a 10-minute filmclip. Historians, archivists, and long-time employees, such as “Disney legends” Marty Sklar and Bob Gurr, shared memories, photos and artifacts of Disney’s influence on the Fair. And, of course, we saw lots of footage of Walt describing "Mr. Lincoln," etc., on his Wonderful World of Color TV show. Walt was nothing if not brilliant at self-promotion.

Disneyland Goes to the World's Fair video

So here’s some of the more interesting stuff I learned at the convention:

• Walt was all about getting other people to pay for the development of new technology that he then incorporated into Disneyland. He first pitched “Mr. Lincoln” to Coca-Cola, who declined because they couldn’t see how the president related to their product. So Walt eventually connected with Illinois state officials, who loved the idea for their pavilion. Disney’s life-like animatronic Lincoln was quickly acknowledged as the most technologically-advanced marvel at the Fair.

• Pepsi, too, declined Walt’s initial pitch to make “it’s a small world” the centerpiece of its pavilion—that is, until PepsiCo board member Joan Crawford stepped in, leading to the creation of one of the most popular rides in theme park history. Although “small world” was originally designed as a walk-through attraction, Disney’s engineers knew they wouldn’t be able to handle the anticipated 3800 visitors an hour and so decided to transport folks via boat. And that’s how “it’s a small world” became Disneyland’s first flume ride. By the way, it took 48 Global Vanline trucks to transport "small world" to Anaheim once the Fair ended—not so small, after all!

An entire LP of "small world" music (yikes!)

• For the “Magic Skyway” ride, visitors rode actual Ford convertibles through dioramas depicting scenes from world history, starting with the Stone Age. When Ford execs asked Walt what prehistoric creatures had to do with automobiles, he insisted that people would long remember his life-sized dinosaurs, and when they did, they’d remember they saw them while riding in a Ford! Today the dinosaurs are part of Disneyland’s Santa Fe railroad train ride.

Ford video of the Magic Skyway

• Although Walt Disney was already famous as an entertainer and theme park creator, he didn’t gain worldwide renown as a visionary and technological innovator until the 1964 World’s Fair.

In addition to Fair history, the convention also included a segment on Disneyland attractions of yesteryear. Did you know that:

• An exhibit from the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was installed in Tomorrowland in 1955. (Does anyone remember this?) Captain Nemo’s peddle-organ is now part of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride.

• Walt originally intended the Main Street opera house, where “Mr. Lincoln” currently resides, to be a TV studio. However, the only broadcasting done there was when the building served as the international HQ of the Mickey Mouse Club in 1963-65. Two years earlier, the opera house briefly hosted the Mother Goose Storyland set from Babes in Toyland, which park visitors could see for an extra 25 cents. (Does anyone remember this?)

• Captain Hook’s long-lamented pirate ship, which was dismantled when Fantasyland was renovated in the early ‘80s, has been recreated at Disneyland Paris. I wonder if they serve Chicken-of-the-Sea tuna. . .

Memories of Disneyland days past: a car from the old

Skyway ride—or as my sister and I used to call them,

the "Barf Buckets"

Miniature of one of my all-time favorite rides:

Monsanto's "Adventure Thru Inner Space"

Walt Disney Family Museum

The Museum, located in San Francisco's Presidio

Despite my love for all things Disney, I still hadn’t visited the Walt Disney Family Museum, though highly recommended by friends as well as other Disney fans. So I finally went this past weekend, while in San Francisco on other business.

Now I’m not one for what I call “the cult of Walt Disney,” but my friends were right: I had a wonderful time reading about his early life and listening to oral histories about the ups—and, interestingly—the many downs of his career. Arranged chronologically, the exhibits feature sketches, storyboards, film clips, sound recording technology, and fascinating historical context, along with “Family Story” transcripts of interviews with Walt’s daughter Diane and brother Roy. Everything is here: Walt’s early childhood drawings, his first Hollywood studio, Oswald the rabbit (who pre-dates Mickey), Steamboat Willie (Mickey’s first major cartoon), the Silly Symphonies, Disney's first full-length motion picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the brilliant but unpopular Fantasia, the little-known “good will” trip to South America in 1941, Smoke Tree Ranch, the real-life nature documentaries we watched when we were kids, the Mickey Mouse Club and The Wonderful World of Color, the 1964 World’s Fair (where Walt premiered audio-animatronics), and the beginnings of EPCOT. 

Sprinkled throughout were touching Disney family home movies, showing how much Walt loved his wife Lillian and two daughters. But the real highlight for me happened about three hours into my visit: 1955 and the opening of Disneyland. There, in a dark room, surrounded by copies of the original ride posters, is an enormous—and quite glorious—diorama of the park in all its various incarnations (see below). I would fly to San Francisco just to see it again and marvel at all the miniature representations of my favorite attractions.

Sadly, [spoiler alert!] Walt dies by the end of the exhibits, leaving behind a room filled with tributes and tearful depictions of a grieving Mickey. After spending almost five hours following the great man’s story, I didn’t have the heart to stop and read the eulogies, so instead ran for the exit before I started sobbing. Walt’s legacy obviously still lives on, but what a shame that he died so young (only 65 years old).

Here’s just a fraction of the fascinating artifacts I saw (click on images to enlarge):

  

 When Walt was a teenager, he drew

cartoons for his hometown newspaper in Kansas

Early self-promotion

Quote about his first real job

Early Mickey merchandise:

watches and clocks

And tricycles: Mickey's feet are the pedals

(I want one!)

Paints used to make color cartoons

Snow White, the first feature-length

cartoon—a major risk, but Walt

prevailed, permanently launching Disney

studios into animation history

Disneyland grand opening

 The fabulous Disneyland diorama

Matterhorn/submarines/Monsanto house of the Future

detail

Tomorrowland detail

In addition to the museum, I also visited the annex, which was showing an exhibit on Mary Blair, the artist who famously designed the characters for and bright palette of the “It’s a Small World” attraction. Mary and her husband accompanied Walt on the 1941 South American tour, where she developed her flair for color. She also designed the concept art for Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South, and Cinderella movies.

Post-South America

The view from the museum: Golden Gate Bridge