I've been trying to avoid reading this thread, because I figured it was a lot of mumbo jumbo and lot of opionions, and I figured that there would be a lot of the things I don't agree with. I don't want to say they are wrong, but I just don't believe they are right. Like when the first post that said that DL was geared towards So.Cal., when they put the grand opening all over national TV, had, what two or three national tv shows previewing it during its construction, heck the whole "Disneyland" show was based around it. hey sure made sure to talk about and show the hotels that were being built. Also, the part that it was for kids, well, you all have mostly debunked that. The quote I'd add was from Walt's dedication at the opening of Disneyland:
To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past...and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts which have created America...with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world."
To ALL who come to this happy place. He specifically talks about old folks and kids. You could take that to mean that he thought that adults would have fun their like they were kids.
I don't think though that people have a very realistic view of Disneyland; it doesn't make it bad or take anything away from the accomplishment that it was to admit that it was less than perfect when it opened. It was a human endevour, and grand as it was, it still had flaws. I mean, I hate to put this in writing, and you don't have to believe it, but really there isn't or wasn't actual "magic," it was just a human creation. The magic is in what we perceive. That 1955 park with its one attraction in adventureland, three in frontierland, and two in tomorrowland sure seemed like pure magic back then. Go back and watch dateline:disneyland again. We'd all cry about the lack of theming. Gosh, autopia looks so bare and sparse. There was hardly a tree growing anywhere. The place looks so barren. The prefab empty buildings in tommorowland looked good on TV, but in real life they didn't add anything to do. Yes, over the course of the first year they added several sponsored attractions, and in teh subsequent 48 years they have added quite a bit!
Walt promoted the hell out of that park. He invented "synergy." He had that thing on TV, he had in the theaters. He had every bit of press there he could drum up. He got the governor of California to make a speech, and the governor of Tennessee to ride in a wagon. He got every celebrity he could get to be in the attendance, and frankly, without the massively popular Fess Parker and Buddy Edson singing and dancing around frontierland wouldn't have had much going, besides the Mark Twain river boat, the wagon ride, and the golden horeshoe. Look at that pres-show to rocket to the moon (the tomorrowland attraction open in addition to autopia) - here is an attraction depicting the wonders of space flight, and the pre-show is a video. Could have done so much more, correct?
You get my point here, I hope. It doesn't have to be bi-polor, orthogonal extremees. You don't have to embelish its memory and make it something that it wasn't for it to still be wonderful. You don't have to make Walt into something he wasn't to still love him and thing that he did incredible amazing things. They were still human things and governed by the rules of the world.
Disney in the mid fifties was doing tremendously well. The company was recovering from WWII and the revenue from Europe (which was also recovering) was pouring into the company. The post-war economic boom - and especially the massive baby-boom that occurred when millions of G.I.'s came home - created a surge in demand for Disney products and re-releases.
Producing 20,000 leagues under the sea almost bankrupted the studio. During the next couple of years the studios edited together Davy Crocket shows into two motion pictures for release. They didn't make another really huge budget live action release until 1960's swiss family robinson. Shaggy Dog, Darby O'Gill, Kidnapped, Old Yeller, and Pollyana came between 20K and swiss family, along with some true life adventures.
During the 1950s feature animation released Alice in Wonderland in 1951, Peter Pan in 1953, Lady and the Tramp in 1955, and Sleeping Beauty in 1959. Yes, feature animation was back in the swing after the war, and the films of shorts that were made during the war. They were also out of some fairly steady income that had helped sustain them during the war from producing military training films. Let's get into some detail with the features, but first I want to say quickly to remember that the format of the animated short during the 1950s was declining in the theaters, Mickey Mouse had starred in his last short for decades, and even my beloved Humphrey Bear was not enough to save the genre.
OK. Alice In Wonderland went in to production in 1946. It took five yers to produce, and cost ~3 million - this was the first time the studio went back to the feature format since the shorter films, and they went back to things like producing a live action version to base the animatioon on, those sort of quality things. Alice was pretty much panned by the critics. The New Yorker wrote:
In Mr. Disney's Alice there is blind incapacity to understand that a literary masterwork cannot be improved by the introduction of shiney little tunes, and touches more suited to a flea circus than to a major imaginative event.
It wasn't very successsful with the public, either. In the coming years, Alice was one of the few animated features that he showed on the disneyland tv show, and it wasn't reissued theatrically until 1974 - with psychodelic stuff was in pop culture!
Peter Pan began production in 1949, released in 1953, at an estimated cost of $4 million. It proved to be one of the studios biggest hits. This was the cash that was in the studio right before the construction of disneyland. (There were also the four British produced live action stories, that ended with both Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy in 1953, neither of which was particularly profitable, and ended the live action production in England).
1954 was 20K leagues release, again its production almost bankrupted the studio. I think this film is a good source of thinking about the topic here. Walt insisted that the squid scene be shot again, because the first version was so bad. This was a big cost to the studio, and shows that Walt was willing to risk $ for better quality (and we know that from other examples). However, the film did have a budget reality. This film was a big box office success, and another source of cash RIGHT before/as disneyland opened.
Do you get the feel for the ups and downs of box office? This is why Walt wanted a more steady source of income to compliment the motion picture studio.
In 1955, they edited together three of the Davy Crocket TV shows into a motion picture release to capitalize on the unexpected PHENOMENTAL success of the TV shows. It was too good a thing to pass up, and so they edited two more TV shows and released a sequal motion picture in 1956. Now, take this lesson in tune with the 20K lessons, because they happened about the same time. Disney was concerned with quality, yes, but he also did not mind making a buck. You might not be able to top pigs with pigs, but you can make some money from them.
Also in 1955 Lady and the Tramp was released. Walt picked Lady and the Tramp because it wasn't a classic story like Alice or Peter, and they would have more freedom with the story. It took 3 years to produce, and cost ~4 million. It was a hit.
The next animated feature was 1959's Sleeping Beauty. You all probably know that Walt considered this to be his masterpiece. He envisioned it as the ultimate in animated film making. It began production in 1950, two two years off in 54-55 for disneyland park opening, resumed in 56 to be released in 1959, costing ~6 million. Now, this is one of Walt Disney's most amazing animated features, and that cost really shows through. This was a wide-screen release (Lady and the Tramp was, too), with streophonic sound. The film made 5.3 million dollars, money that the studios needed, but not a financial success by any means. The question became, is it worth it to invest the money to make an animated feature this elaborate. If you put your mind to it, you will see this was the most elaborate production until the Little Mermaid - as much as we may love Jungle Book, 101 Dalmations, et al., they weren't on so grand, and expensive, a scale. They began to use xerox to save some time and money. Compare the animation in Sleeping Beauty to Junble Book and 101 Dalmations - not in terms of how fond you are of them, or of the style, but in the amount of time and work that you believe would have went in to them and you will see my point here. I'll quote Leonard Maltin here, I trust him as a student of Disney film as much as anyone:
That same year (1959) a modest comedy called The Shaggy Dog, produced for less than $1 million, earned back an astounding $9 million...it proved to Disney that times indeed had changed since Snow White, that the fairy tale was no longer a viable format (except in the case of reissues, where he was bringing back films with established reputations (DR ADDS: AND WERE PAID FOR)), especially at his studio, where the well had apparently run dry for new varations on old themes. Animated cartoons were still feasible, but obviously, they would have to rely on the same formulas that were making his live-action movies so successful - stories involving boys, dogs, and other animals. As always, Disney took ihs cue from public response. Sleeping Beauty marked the end of an era at the Walt Disney studio.
But anyway, we were talking about the financial shape of the studio during the early 1950s. I think the reason Walt had to cash in his life insurance when Roy wouldn't give him any money was because they didn't have any. To say that "Disney was a tremendous financial success in the mid-fifties" is, at best, over simplified. The capital need in 54-55 didn't come in really until Peter Pan, and 20K was costing a fortune when they started building disneyland, and the revenues from that weren't coming in till construction was well underway. Yes, also things were getting better about the same time the park was opened; I'm not sure what that has to do with Disney deciding to build the park a few years before? Foresight isn't as clear as hindsight.
Walt Disney was not some sort of hippy communist. He was a capitalist pure and simple. He insisted on quality, yes, because that would be the best return on the investment - of course he didn't have Roy's more conservative business sense, but he had a lot of showmanship and promotion-ship. He was absoutely not above making a buck. And not everything that came out of that company during his lifetime was the best possible quality. And that park opened with things limited by budget realities (I mean, remember, Roy wouldn't give hiim any money because he was afraid of losing it, right).
So yes, it is better to go overbudget and produce something that is successful (e.g., 20K leagues under the sea) than it is to save money and produce a flop (e.g., Treasure Island, Rob Roy). However, it is better to save money and produce something that makes a whole lot of it (e.g., The Davy Crocket tv shows made into movies, the Shaggy Dog) than it was to make great quality with a high investment that lost money (e.g., Sleeping Beauty).
That is demonstrated by Walt himself by movies like Lt Robinson Crusoe USN, The Ugly Dachsund, That Darn Cat, The Parent Trap, and many others that were very successful at the BO). Not to say that Walt didn't invest good money in to Mary Poppins, Swiss Family Robinson, and get good return. There were also movies that were critical success and box office flops (Those Calloways) those that lost money (Babes in Toyland, Moonspinners) and those that weren't particularly successful with either critics or BO (remember Moon Pilot? Emil and the Detectives? ). Animated features were more trimmed down like 1963's sword in the stone. There were also sequals Merlin Jones - The Monkey's Uncle, Absent Minded Professor - Son of Flubber, The Computer who wore Tennis Shoes - Strongest Man in the World, Old Yellar - Savage Sam.
Now personally, I love some of those lower budget movies to death. And I love some of those big budgets one. The Disney Studios released 86 movies during Walt's lifetime; they were not all top shelf quality, just the ones you remember were. Just like the Disneyland Park didn't open without some rough edges and empty holes, rather than popping straight out of Walt's head fully grown like Athena from Zeuss. You can convince yourself otherwise, if you like, and state things as if they are absolutely correct if you wish, but that doesn't make them any more true.
"Completely wrong. "Disneyland" was a division of Walt Disney Productions. Until very recently, it was never a subsidiary company to anything."
I think this is purely semantics, I don't think Melissa meant to imply anything with "subsidiary" other than a disnelyand was a part of the company. Feels good to write "completely wrong" though, doesn't it? Let me do it -
"And it wasn't started to make money. Far from it actually."
Completely wrong. But you know what? That doesn't make it bad, or any less remarkable. Again, I'm not sure why it has to be black and white. Walt Disney was a human. You don't have to put Walt on a pedestal and believe he never made a compromise to respect him. And admitting that he was a capitalist doesn't make him any less remarkable. Walt Disney would not have risked his life insurance policy, and the security of his wife and family, on it if he didn't think he would make money on it. Think about it. He wouldn't have made the disneyland TV show if he didn't think he would make money on it. He wouldn't have done any of it. Yes, quality was important to him, the show was important to him, what the public saw was important to him - those are the things that he was smart enough to know would bring success.
