Snapshot! - Haunted Punnery

What is truly wonderful about the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom is that the show continues well after you leave your Doom Buggy. The exterior crypts continue the tongue-in-cheek humor that underscores the classic attraction.

Magic Highway USA - May 14, 1958

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of one of my favorite pieces of Disney entertainment. This occasion will likely go unnoticed by most; its subject is not a high profile animated feature nor a celebrated character. It was a simple one hour program that was broadcast on the Disneyland television show on May 14, 1958, yet it spoke to the idealism and optimism of a generation now five decades removed. Magic Highway USA is a happy reminder of a Disney dynamic of edu-tainment that in fact predated the likes of EPCOT Center by nearly twenty five years and was rooted in Walt Disney's then symbiotic television and theme park endeavors.

I have lauded and celebrated this Ward Kimball-created presentation in prior posts and was very happy to later be able to present the program's final and visually arresting "Road Ahead" segment.

If you haven't already, check out those earlier articles for some fun and informative rides on the Magic Highway.

Souvenirs: Pennant Magic and Adventure

Five years separated these pennants that celebrated Disneyland anniversaries. I was a big fan of the Disneyland 35 Years of Magic motif from 1990 with its bright colors and non-traditional castle design logo. The Fab Five plus Daisy appeared on the pennant design that was equally colorful and attractive.

Five years later, the 40 Years of Adventures theme took a more spartan design approach. Tying into the debut of the Indiana Jones Adventure, the logo borrowed both font and pose from Indy-based materials.

What's It Really Worth?

I frequently receive emails from readers that request my services as an appraiser of sorts. Many equate my knowledge and experience in matters Disney with an expertise in the valuation of Mouse-based memorabilia and collectibles. When I confess to being generally clueless in these dollars and cents determinations, I am usually met with reactions of surprise and astonishment. Similarly, when guests visit my home with its many rooms that literally overflow with Disney related items of every size, shape and description, inevitably the same question seems to always be raised at some point--"Wow, what is all of this worth?"

It is a question that has never really concerned me.

I can honestly say that I have never purchased or obtained a Disney-related item strictly on the basis of its investment potential. I certainly enjoy collecting numerous types of Disneyana--theme park souvenirs are a personal favorite, especially license plates--but never with a future monetary return in mind. My motivation for obtaining such things was and is the simple joy of possessing items I personally find fun and interesting. But also, these items represent my many passions, and even more importantly, many happy memories associated with those passions.

Wise, wise words on the subject can be found in one of my all-time favorite comic book stories, The Money Pit, released in 1990. It is an Uncle Scrooge story, and interestingly enough, it is Scrooge who dispenses said wisdom to a more greedy minded Donald Duck. When Donald attempts to negotiate payment of his meager wages in the form of rare coins buried within Scrooge's Money Bin, he invites a passionate response from Scrooge that reveals a somewhat unexpected dynamic of his uncle's perceived greediness--

Donald pointedly notes:

"Those coins aren't doing you any good, and some coin collector will appreciate them!"

To which Scrooge replies:

"That's precisely where you're wrong, nephew!"

"Coin collectors make me sick! They collect their coins only because other people put a value on them! They look their old coins up in price guides that the tell them the fool things are worth more than face value! But why?! They don't enjoy their coins! They don't dive in them like porpoises! . . . or burrow through them like gophers! . . . or toss 'em up and let 'em hit them on the head! They don't even build model forts out of 'em!

"They put their coins in plastic sleeves and are even afraid to touch them for fear they'll be worth less to somebody else! Hee hee! They spend their lives building a meaningless collection they only plan to someday sell . . . to a buyer who only plans to resell it! It's all so silly!"

Donald retorts:

"I suppose your three-acre coin collection is sane?"

To which Scrooge responds:

"The difference is that I value each and every coin as a personal memento! Nephew, I've learned to treasure that which has value to me, not to somebody else! That's what life's all about!"

Scrooge's pointed message came via well known Disney comic book scribe and artist Don Rosa. Though the story specifically targeted coin collectors, it was but a thinly veiled reference to comic book collecting (putting them in plastic sleeves and afraid to touch them) where enjoyment of a comic book's content became secondary to its collectible status and value. But the message could certainly be applied to any such medium, including Disneyana.

The Toontown Field Guide: Horace Horsecollar

Horace Horsecollar is certainly one of the better known of Disney's secondary cartoon players. Like his female counterpart of sorts Clarabelle Cow, Horace predated even Goofy, Donald Duck and Pluto. Significantly, his debut was in the Mickey Mouse short The Plow Boy, which was released on this date in 1929.

In Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland, Horace is a fitness entrepreneur, being the proprietor of the Horace Horsecollar Gym. The image that appears on a punching bag sign is drawn from the 1941 color version of Orphan's Benefit.

In the book Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters, author John Grant noted:

" . . . it must have been galling for Horace and Clarabelle to take part in so many of the early Disney "greats" and then watch Johnny-come-latelies like Goofy and Donald Duck ascend to the heights while they remained forever struggling to reach the first rung of the ladder of stardom."

Snapshot! - Collecting Hollywood Dust

Playing to the darker and more sinister atmosphere of the Villains in Vogue store in Disney's Hollywood Studio is a decor that could be best described as "Hollywood Attic." Dusty props evoke an era yet to experience sound and Technicolor.

Tender and Tasty POPPED CORN - Oh Boy but it's Good!

Roadside Disney: Trailer Tales

It is an icon of roadside popular culture. A home on the road for tin can tourists. Over the years, Disney cartoon makers incorporated the American travel trailer into a number of short subjects, but perhaps never more famously than in the Technicolor classic Mickey's Trailer, released on May 6, 1938.

Mickey's Trailer was not born out of happenstance. A mere decade earlier, everyman Arthur Sherman, a modest bacteriologist, turned the then fledging auto camping movement on its ear when he introduced a solid-walled trailer that was devoid of the more traditional canvas and tent based designs that had been popular up to that point. Jokingly dubbed the "Covered Wagon" by Sherman's children, it would launch both a successful new industry and a popular culture phenomenon. In their book Ready to Roll: A Celebration of the Classic American Travel Trailer, authors Arrol Gellner and Douglas Keister elaborated on Sherman's unique achievement:

"Sherman's Covered Wagon Company was a rare success story in the bleakest years of the Depression, and naturally, it attracted notice—both from competitors and from the American press, who were desperate for stories containing some glimmer of economic hope. For their part, Sherman's competitors—including those who had specialized in all manner of sophisticated, fold-out gadgetry—were eventually obliged to adopt the Covered Wagon's hard-walled construction."

This Depression-era trailer boom reached a peak in 1936, followed quickly by an unpredicted and near devastating decline shortly thereafter. Manufacturers dramatically over predicted growth and demand and the bubble quickly burst. This was coupled with a sudden public disenchantment with many aspects of trailer culture. Gellner and Keister noted:

"The media's giddy, rose-colored accounts were gradually supplanted by more hostile examinations of the trailering phenomenon. Trailer parks were pilloried as a new kind of American slum-on-wheels and were even accused of being a breeding ground for epidemics, while trailerites were increasingly portrayed as freeloaders helping themselves to public roads and facilities without paying taxes for their support."

When it was released in 1938, Mickey's Trailer encapsulated many of these both positive and negative associations. Via Walt's well known "Probable Impossible," the canned-ham style trailer featured in the short embodied with extreme exaggeration the trailer manufacturers much hyped claims of style, luxury and countless conveniences. Its interior featured a series of ingenious if not impossible transforming set pieces; a bunk room dramatically morphs into a bathroom (complete with sink and already filled bathtub) and then into its final incarnation as a dinette upon which Mickey serves up breakfast.

Yet the cartoon's creators, in a subtle yet still noticeable manner, poked fun at the various negative associations to trailer culture that began to emerge in the late 1930s. The short's opening reveal of the trio's city dump campsite is indicative of what Gellner and Keister described as local government fears of trailerite slums taking root on city outskirts. The perception of trailer campers as freeloaders is distinctly portrayed when Mickey, without conscience, absconds corn from a nearby farmer's field and similarly draws milk from a passing cow. The background music for that particular scene featured the song "The World Owes Me a Living."
A post-World War II boom returned the travel trailer to a more than receptive American public. The industry itself experienced a distinct split as larger residence-based mobile homes became as equally popular as their recreational-centric counterparts. The smaller travel trailers became linked with then very popular outdoor sportsmen dynamics that included camping, hunting and fishing. This pop culture phenomenon was not lost on Disney animators; they used it to great effect in the 1950 Donald Duck cartoon Trailer Horn. A canned ham-style trailer is the focal point of Chip and Dale's inspired antagonism and Donald's resulting frustration.

In the 1952 cartoon Two Weeks Vacation, Goofy falls victim to a well known highway convention--getting stuck behind a lumbering, slow-moving car and trailer combination. Mixed in the short with the Goof's other road trip pratfalls is a recurring encounter with an oversize and impassable trailer. Similar gags would be revisited quite famously a couple of years later in the classic Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz comedy The Long, Long Trailer.

Disney Imagineers have similarly drawn inspiration from the travel trailer and have peppered Disney theme parks with numerous trailer-inspired set pieces. Trading on mid 20th century nostalgia are trailers that appear in Animal Kingdom's Dinoland, at Disney's Pop Century Resort and in Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland. Trailers were also a featured part of a character greeting area at Disney's Hollywood Studios prior to that particular location's current Pixar Studios redesign. But likely the most prominent use of travel trailers and their connection to roadside culture are the "Elfstream" designs found at Winter Summerland Miniature Golf at Walt Disney World. The theming mixes roadside campground nostalgia with retro Christmas trappings for a truly entertaining and often hilarious experience.

Congratulations . . . Again!

I am very happy and excited to announce that Amanda Chin, Victoria Gatarz, Emily Jarosiewicz, and Valentina Pannullo have been awarded First Place in the New Jersey History Day competition held this past Saturday. I had previously reported the girls' successful performance in the regional competition last month under the guidance of their teacher Christy Viszoki. As I noted then, for their subject they chose to focus on the controversy that surrounded Disney's America, the unrealized theme park that had been conceptualized for an area in northern Virginia just outside of the nation's capital. Their project, an exhibit entitled "Disney's America Exposed," will now be entered in the National History competition to be held next month in Washington D.C.

I continue to be very proud to have been a part of the girls research efforts and I wish them the very best of luck in the national competition!

Snapshot: Disneyland! - Hey Goofy!

There is a much more casual dynamic to the characters at Disneyland. It was a refreshing change of pace from the long lines and general mob scenes that accompany character appearances at the Florida parks. A fun and spontaneous picture such as this is well nigh impossible most of the time at Walt Disney World.

Freeze Frame! - Lucky Number 13

Disney cartoon makers loved to associate Donald Duck with the unlucky number 13 whenever they could. One entire cartoon revolved around the Friday the 13th premise (Donald's Lucky Day) and and his fictional birthday was celebrated in the film The Three Caballeros on Friday the 13th as well. The short Donald's Happy Birthday identified his birthday as March 13.

The "13" gag was employed twice in the cartoon Donald Gets Drafted, released on this day in 1942. Donald's draft notice cites order number 13, and he subsequently reports to Draft Board No. 13.

Also of note in the short--the draft notice reveals Donald's middle name to be Fauntleroy. And some of the sidewalk posters outside the Draft Board are significantly similar in style to designs produced by Walt Disney himself while with the Red Cross in France at the end of World War I.