Dateline Disney: 1959

06.23.09 - By today's standards of new products released in a single year by divisions of The Walt Disney Company, 1959 might not register on the Disney Archives trophy cabinet scale. But as a watershed year in transitioning from the little Company that could, to the entertainment and media giant it would become, 1959 was like a launching pad into the future of Disney.

Looking back half a century, it's easy to see that in Disney mission control, Walt had started the countdown to the 1960s and beyond. Some of the key products launched that year included:

• In theatres were the Company's first live-action comedy, The Shaggy Dog… the Company's 16th animated feature, Sleeping Beauty… and Grand Canyon, winner of Walt's 29th Academy Award, this one for Best Live Action Short Subject.
  
• In Consumer Products, the debut of the Buena Vista Records label.
  
• In Educational Media, one of the most exciting and successful teaching tools ever created for the school market, the educational short Donald in Mathmagic Land.
  
• In Disneyland, arguably the single most important expansion in the Park's history. It changed the face of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, and included such icons and trend-setters as the Submarine Voyage (complete with live mermaids!), Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Disneyland-Alweg Monorail System, Fantasyland Autopia and the Motor Boat Cruise.
  
• And in television, the sixth season of the Company show, then called Walt Disney Presents, on the ABC network, became the laboratory for something that went unnamed for another quarter century: Synergy.

Walt practiced his form of synergy with enthusiasm in 1959. Anticipating the release of Sleeping Beauty the movie, the Disneyland Castle had featured the name of the film from opening day in 1955. The theatrical release of Third Man on the Mountain, filmed in Switzerland at the real Matterhorn, corresponded with the opening of Disneyland's Matterhorn Bobsleds run. The Grand Canyon film had been preceded by the Diorama of the same name viewed from the trains of the Disneyland Railroad. And although The Mickey Mouse Club ended its original four-year run on TV in 1959, appearances at Disneyland by stars Annette, Cubby, Bobby and the gang were as wild and frenetic for their time as today's generation thrills to appearances by Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

Beginning in 1959, the dazzling sight of the Skyway Thru Glacier Grotto soaring above the Submarine Voyage and the Disney-Alweg Monoraril System made for an exciting tableau of movement and color.

Behind the scenes, with Disneyland running smoothly, Walt and Roy quietly gave Economics Research Associates and its president, Harrison Price (who had done the site study to locate Disneyland), a new assignment: Prepare "A Study of the Market for an Eastern Disneyland." And in 1959, they also made a little acquisition so far out in the San Fernando Valley that future filming would never be bothered by encroaching civilization, freeways, traffic, etc.: the Golden Oaks Ranch.

Sleeping Beauty, the Company's most lavish and costly animated feature to date (six years and $6 million in the making) was somewhat disappointing at the box office. The Hollywood Reporter's review reviewed it this way: "A new generation of youngsters may find the fairy tale as enthralling as their predecessors found Snow White… But those with long memories will find Sleeping Beauty very repetitious of the story of Snow White."

But The Shaggy Dog not only was a big hit, it also ushered in a live-action comedy genre that would become the Company's motion picture staple throughout the 1960s. Writing in the New York Post column, "Hollywood is My Beat," Sidney Skolsky commented: "Walt Disney and Fred MacMurray are talking over a deal for another picture because of the success of Shaggy Dog. (Walt is also talking to the dog.)"

Walt's journey to Zermatt, Switzerland during the filming of Third Man on the Mountain no doubt sparked his interest in making his own Matterhorn at Disneyland.

And those live-action comedies poured out of the Studio in the '60s: The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Moon Pilot and Bon Voyage (1962), Son of Flubber (1963), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), The Monkey's Uncle and That Darn Cat! (1965), The Ugly Dachshund and Lt. Robin Crusoe (1966), Monkeys, Go Home! (1967), Never a Dull Moment and The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit (1968), The Love Bug and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969).

(Lest anyone think these films were the total focus of the 1960s at Walt Disney Productions, the Studio also produced a few other tent poles: Mary Poppins, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh. And with Imagineering's creative energy running at full speed, Walt created four hit shows for the New York World's Fair 1964-65… and Disneyland opened Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, it's a small world, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.)

Donald in Mathmagic Land, featuring the talents of such Disney luminaries as John Hench, Art Riley and voice talent Paul Frees, became one of the most popular educational films ever made.

The spectacular opening of "Disneyland '59" included Music Man composer-conductor Meredith Willson, leading 76 trombones playing his signature song on Main Street, USA, and vice-president Richard Nixon and his family joining Walt to cut the ribbon starting the Monorail's journeys. Media coverage almost universally sounded this enthusiastic note from The Bakersfield Californian: "At Disneyland's opening four years ago, Walt Disney said his Magic Kingdom would never be completed, that there would always be something new and different for visitors to enjoy. The latest chapters in this continuing growth have now been unveiled — in "Disneyland '59." Six spectacular new attractions, built at a cost of $6 million, are now in full operation at Walt Disney's wonderland, encompassing the greatest enlargement of the park since its opening on July 13, 1955."

Walt was especially proud of his Disneyland expansion. He enjoyed pointing out that the new submarine fleet (now Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage) was the eighth-largest "submersible" armada in the world. And when King Baudouin of Belgium visited Disneyland and asked Walt why his Matterhorn had holes in it (for passage through by the Skyway), Walt replied, "Because it's a Swiss mountain."

And oh yes: 1959 also saw the debut, in Disneyland's ticket books of the day, of the quintessential "E" Ticket. Years later, long after it had earned its place as an American slang phrase, Astronaut Sally Ride immortalized the phrase when she called her first journey into space "a real 'E Ticket' ride!"

Half a century ago, that ride accelerated into the next 50 years with the speed of a monorail, the beauty of a princess and the tale of a Shaggy Dog. Today we look back at 1959 not as the end of a decade, but as an explosion of creativity that blazed the trail into a new wonderland of Disney Magic.



By Marty Sklar, Walt Disney Imagineering Executive Vice President, Imagineering Ambassador and Disney Legend Class of 2001.