This week's item is A Little Golden Book from 1955, "Disneyland On The Air." I'm pretty sure this was written before much of anything was known about what the park was actually going to be. It's like the writers were told "We need to promote Disneyland, but all we have to go on is what Walt has put on his show every week."
This was obviously a problem.
First, let see what they knew. The cover shows the castle (a bit grander than in real life, but pretty close), a combined Main Street and Frontierland, the Mark Twain, the Opera House, and a very un-Moonlinerish Moonliner. In fact, the rocket looks a lot like the one at the beginning of Walt's show.
Inside, we see a horse drawn streetcar. And that's about it.
On the flypage there is a quote:
"Disneyland, in southern California, is truley the land of childhood's dreams come true. Millions have visited this magic land on TV, and soon will in reality. Here for the first time some of its delights may be sampled in book form."
The book then goes on to feature not one Disneyland delight.
The story is about a show being shot at the Opera House which does NOT include a frustrated Donald. Of course everything is resolved at the end...except that the reader knows no more about Disneyland than they did from the front cover.
As I said though, I'm pretty sure the writers worked with all they had, it just wasn't much. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to go to that park when it finally opens (it's been almost a year, for Pete's sake!)
For your enjoyment here is the book:
And there you have it!
I found this little gem in a antique mall in Denison, Tx., so you never know where Disneyland items will crop up!
Until next time, keep searching for treasure!
Disneyland Out of Thin Air!
ReplyDeleteIndeed!
ReplyDeleteAt least they didn't just try to fake it by putting some ferris wheels or something campy in the book. Of course, I wonder if anyone really thought they did live TV shows from the Opera House?
Of course they did, Stu. And why wouldn't they? At the time, didn't most major studios with a TV presence present major broadcasts from indoor lumber yards? ;-)
ReplyDeleteI actually think I have a copy of this that my wife (or I, both of us together) found in an antique shop in Nebraska. I haven't seen it since our last move 12+ years ago. I hope the termites didn't get it when we had the infestation ion our storage unit (we lost about $2000 worth of books and a lot of other stuff in that disaster).
Yikes! That's terrible! We just got everything out of our storage unit. The cost just got too higb to store "junk." Now we have to figure out what to do with it!
DeleteThe book then goes on to feature not one Disneyland delight.
ReplyDelete:oD
I'm pretty sure this was written before much of anything was known about what the park was actually going to be.
But they already knew the castle would be in bright pinks (and purples). They got that right!
Thanks for sharing this great little book - my first time to see this one.
Very true! Future Imagineers just turned to this little gem for inspiration!
DeleteI have a Mickey Mouse Book Club book that I'll do in a couple of weeks!