Read Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) Online
Authors: Martin Sklar
Tags: #Disney Editions Deluxe
That opening day will forever live in infamy in Disney lore. It’s known as “Black Sunday,” with many events that time has memorialized as urban legends:
The result of all this was huge queues for the attractions, and many pinch points—areas where openings in passageways narrowed, resulting in jams very much like rush hour on the California freeways. One of the worst was the entrance to Fantasyland. Crossing the drawbridge was nearly impossible—there were stories about the choice language some celebrities used in trying to reach the Peter Pan or Dumbo attractions while parked with their children on the castle’s drawbridge.
The black-and-white kinescope recording of the Disneyland Grand Opening is quite a sight to see. It was the most ambitious live television show ever attempted at that time, with ABC Television positioning seventeen cameras to catch the action—and the bloopers. Walt had asked television and radio star Art Linkletter to be one of the hosts, and he in turn enticed two of his friends into being cohosts: actors Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan. Walt was everywhere, dedicating the whole park in Town Square with California governor Goodwin Knight, and introducing each of the various lands at their entrances. The frequent “Am I on?”—and seeming surprise on the hosts’ faces when the red light must have signaled “Yes!”—made the show look like amateur hour. But the audience was huge for its day, and by the end of that very first summer, Disneyland had welcomed its one-millionth guest.
I have vivid memories of Black Sunday. As the junior member of the Public Relations team, I had started the workday exactly where I ended the previous one: in the PR office, located in the old homestead that had been purchased with the land, and converted to the park’s Administration Building. However, our offices had been totally transformed for the occasion, taken over for a local television segment that took place during the last five minutes of each hour, anchored by Los Angeles television personality Hank Weaver. I was a runner for anything they needed—coffee, water, and, of course, paper and carbon paper for their typewriters.
My assignment for the second half of the day was simple: wander the park and offer support to any reporter or photographer who saw my badge and sought my help. No matter where I roamed, it was a “people zoo,” summed up for me when Davy Crockett himself rode up to me on his horse, noted my I.D., and pleaded: “Marty, help me get out of here before this horse kills somebody!” I did manage to help Fess Parker (and his horse) reach a backstage area.
The rest of the day was a blur. By nighttime, I was headed back to Long Beach, where I was still living with my parents. I believe I stopped at every one of the friendly bars along that seventeen-mile stretch!
Media reaction to Black Sunday immediately influenced everything all of us at Disneyland in Anaheim and at WED Enterprises in Glendale did that first summer.
“CROWDS GRIPE OVER LONG WAITING LINES EVERYWHERE—DISNEYLAND, ORANGE COUNTY’S NEW $17 MILLION PLAYGROUND, WAS A LAND OF GRIPES AND COMPLAINTS AGAIN TODAY, AS A HUGE, MILLING THRONG OF 48,000 [SIC] PEOPLE HAD THE PLACE BULGING AT THE SEAMS.”
Sheila Graham was correct. In fact, Walt was focused on fixing the challenges that caused many of these negative media reviews even before he left the park on Black Sunday.
For the PR staff, the plan was simple: get every one of the media outlets to come back to Disneyland without the mobs of people, so they could actually
see
the park—and experience the attractions that were so unique in the amusement world: Adventureland’s Jungle Cruise, Tomorrowland’s Flight to the Moon, Fantasyland’s Peter Pan’s Flight, etc. To accomplish this, Public Relations Director Ed Ettinger and Publicity Manager Eddie Meck devised a strategy to invite each news organization to an early dinner at the Red Wagon Inn on Main Street, or the Plantation House restaurant on Frontierland’s Rivers of America—followed by a sampling of the park’s adventures and entertainment. After working all day, those evenings made for a full summer for all of us. We hosted four Los Angeles newspapers (
Times
,
Mirror News
,
Examiner
,
Herald-Express
); the wire services (Associated Press and United Press); the Hollywood trades (
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
); the local staffs of key national newspapers, like
The New York Times
; and even international media. Radio and television also received attention, although the local influence of television news was not significant in 1955.
The plan started working almost immediately. Witness this column by Dick Williams, entertainment editor of the
Mirror News
:
If you’re planning a trip to Disneyland, go out in the late afternoon, arriving anytime between 5 and 6
P.M
.…
I paid the amusement park another visit… We had dinner at Swift’s Red Wagon Inn… Lines everywhere moved swiftly, with only brief waits… In my opinion, the entire park looks much more captivating by night than day.
These evenings proved to be a heady experience for a twenty-one-year-old neophyte. It brought me introductions and contacts with the top news media personalities and staffs of the day: editors, city editors, and reporters local and national, including Bob Thomas of the AP and Vernon Scott of UPI. What an on-the-job education!
* * * * * * * * * *
In September, I returned to my formal education as a senior at UCLA. The following year before I graduated and resumed working at the company in September 1956 was a true learning experience for everyone associated with Disneyland. The park was a huge success overall, with 3.6 million in attendance in its first year—but there were many ups and downs. The gates were closed Mondays and Tuesdays (until going to a seven-day operation on February 6, 1985), and weekday attendance was sparse, because the vital national and international tourism that would reach a steady 40 percent of total attendance in future years had not yet materialized.
The guests taught Walt and his staff many key lessons. For instance, the live Mickey Mouse Club Circus, so popular on the television show, was a flop the first Christmas season; visitors came to ride Dumbo the Flying Elephant—but not to see elephants in a live circus.
Walt Disney also was quick to correct the few mistakes he did make. Noting the popularity of Autopia, where young drivers, usually accompanied by a parent, steered real gasoline-powered, scaled-down sports cars along ribbons of highway, Walt added a Midget Autopia in Fantasyland. But it actually violated his own intent that Disneyland would be a place “where parents and children could have fun—together!” Midget Autopia was accessible to only young children, and after a year it was gone.
The failure of the Mickey Mouse Club Circus did not in any way slow Walt and his entertainment and marketing teams from launching a whole array of special events: Date Night at Disneyland on Saturday summer nights; Big Band Nights featuring the great names of the day (Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Bob Crosby and the Bobcats, and more); New Year’s Eve parties; and themed parades by the bushel, topped in the early years by the 1959 celebration featuring Meredith Willson leading seventy-six trombones—all playing in unison that famous tune from
The Music Man
.
Two of the most popular were Grad Nite and Dixieland at Disneyland. Grad Nite began as a request from local parent groups for a safe and sane way for their high school graduates to spend the most important night in their young lives. The event was launched in 1961, with 8,000 attending from twenty-eight Los Angeles area schools. The rules were very strict: obviously, no alcohol, tobacco, or drugs; no attendee could drive (only group transportation was allowed, in order to prevent attendees from getting behind the wheel of a car after too much celebrating); a strict dress code (no “revealing” clothes or school-related jackets); and one chaperone for every twenty students from each school. The program has been so popular that the number of graduates attending passed the five million mark in 2009. When Grad Nite celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2011, there were seven separate nights from May 12 through June 16, with 1,052 schools participating, and an attendance of 133,000 graduates!
That first year, 1961, is etched strongly in my memory not just because it began an important tradition, but because we convinced
Life
magazine to cover it. Ten of their finest photographers, including legends such as Ralph Crane and Lawrence Schiller, were given the assignment. Altogether
Life
shot 10,000 photos that night, and planned a cover and multiple pages inside for a mid-August edition. Then, on August 13, in one night, the Russians began building the Berlin Wall. The wall won; Grad Nite lost. In fact, many years later, long after
Life
ceased to be published weekly, we tried to buy the photographs for Disneyland’s historical records. Time, Inc. refused to sell them, even though they had no plans to ever use any of those 10,000 photos.
Another of my favorite events took place on the Rivers of America in Frontierland from 1960 to 1970. Called Dixieland at Disneyland, it featured some of the greatest jazz musicians in the country: trumpet legends Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Al Hirt, and Teddy Buckner, plus New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain, banjo player Johnny St. Cyr, and The Young Men from New Orleans (who were all in their eighties or nineties), The Firehouse Five Plus Two, and many more. It began with each group of musicians—six bands in all—floating down the river on separate Frontierland rafts, each playing their special brand of jazz. Then for the finale, all the musicians gathered aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat, performing the classic “When the Saints Go Marching In” while dozens of Disneyland cast members waved sparklers and fireworks exploded overhead. It was a spectacle not even New Orleans and the muddy Mississippi have ever equaled.
My good friend and associate Jack Lindquist, longtime marketing head and later president of Disneyland, described the celebration of the 1962 Dixieland at Disneyland in his book,
In Service to the Mouse
:
We invited the mayor of Anaheim, the city manager, the city council, various department heads, and some prominent business and social leaders to meet the bands and to celebrate [at the Disneyland Hotel].
The party started at about midnight but remained quiet and staid until one in the morning, when a few musicians started jamming. Then a few more joined in and by two in the morning, the joint was jumping. Everybody knew that at two, the bar would have to shut down and the party would end. But Mark Stephenson, the Anaheim chief of police, proclaimed the event a private party and ruled that as such the bar could remain open. With this last-minute reprieve, the party found new vigor. More musicians, including Nellie Lutcher and Sweet Emma, loaned their voices to what I consider one of the greatest jam sessions ever held outside New Orleans.
At about five in the morning, the curtain fell on the event with Louis Armstrong playing a soft, almost religious rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” as the sun rose over the park. I don’t think anybody who was there ever forgot that night. I know I haven’t.
And neither have I. It was a thrill to be there—even though we had to be at work at 9
A.M.
sharp.
* * * * * * * * * *
My boss in those early days of Disneyland was a true icon of the publicity business in Hollywood. Eddie Meck had promoted everything from Frank Capra comedies to Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart films in the 1930s and 1940s. He could tell you about promotions like the one for
You Can’t Take It with You
: “We painted dozens of bricks gold, and set them out on the sidewalks along Hollywood Boulevard. When someone picked up a ‘gold brick’ and turned it over, they read the copy—‘You can’t take it with you’!”