As any regular reader would know, I am a fan of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco at the Presidio. Within that treasure, one of my favorite spaces is Gallery Nine. I have spent a lot of time in this room. Let’s savor some of the details.
As you know from your visits to Samland, my passion is for Disneyland and the other theme parks. This gallery features the many influences for Disneyland and provides insight into the process that Walt must have went through as he developed his park.
We start with Walt’s personal castle, his home on Carolwood Avenue in Holmby Hills. This became the home of Carolwood Pacific Railroad. Walt grew up with trains and they were always an interest. It was after World War II when his doctors suggested that he find a hobby. He also had a thing for miniatures. Combine trains and miniatures and you have yourself a model train enthusiast.
On one wall is a topographic model of the property that shows the complete course of Walt’s miniature railroad. For the first time, you can really appreciate just how complex the layout was and the variety of experiences due to the number and placement of the switches.
There is the famous tunnel under his wife Lillian’s garden. Lilly was willing to let her husband build a railroad but she really wanted a garden in one particular spot. Walt needed access so he made her a deal and drew up a contract that allowed him to tunnel underneath the garden. The tunnel had a slight jog in the middle so you could not see the other side until you were well on your way through.
Every fan of Disneyland must bow down to the real Lilly Belle locomotive. I have seen the reproduction in the Disneyland Main Street station for years but to see the actual train is very special. I can imagine Walt tooling around the backyard working through some ideas. The rolling stock includes hopper cars, boxcars as well as the caboose that Walt hand built. He became famous for his train and even made the cover of a popular hobbyist magazine in 1952.
Another pivotal moment in the genesis of Disneyland was Walt’s trip to the 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair with Ward Kimball. Ward was one of the great animators at the Disney Studios, trombone player for the Firehouse Five plus Two, and a railroad enthusiast.
Ward was such a train fan; he had a narrow gauge steam locomotive and 800 feet of track in his backyard in San Gabriel and called it the Grizzly Flats Railroad. The train is now located in Perris.
So Walt and Ward went off to the fair. Walt was able to take advantage of his fame and got himself into all sorts of places that would make any rail fan drool. Right after the fair, the two paid a visit to Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Michigan. Through these displays, you can start to see how the ingredients of a train and immersive physical environments were starting to come together.
With Walt’s love for trains and miniatures starting to blend together, he came up with Disneylandia. The idea was a traveling road show housed in rail cars. Each car would feature little motorized miniatures of famous American scenes and people would drop coins to activate the show. They would travel around the country, park at the rail depot, and guests would pour in. The feasibility study showed it could never make money but the possibilities of creating a family-friendly; three-dimensional form of entertainment was now cemented into Walt’s brain. He would figure out another solution.
Walt knew he was going somewhere and started his own private little lab that he called WED Enterprises. One of the most important artifacts in the gallery is the 1953 Disneyland feasibility study. There is also the often-told story of the “lost weekend” with Walt and artist Herb Ryman as the drafted the first complete image of Disneyland for Roy and the bankers. This is the stuff of legends. With these tools, Roy was able to get the funding to start the project.
The history of Disneyland is intertwined with Walt’s interest in television. He was a very brave soul venturing into this medium when most of his peers thought it was going to destroy the movie business. There are two displays. The first one is on the ramp and features the original Disneyland show on four monitors. Down the ramp and on the main floor, is a wall of televisions that have a terrific loop of the various Disney shows. Just grab a seat on the bench and watch one of the four classic television sets playing highlights from Davy Crockett, Elfego Baca, Zorro, and The Mickey Mouse Club.
The ramp lets you get close to an original Circarama camera developed by Ub Iwerks, Walt’s long-time collaborator. A display with artifacts from Walt and Lillian’s anniversary party a couple of days before Disneyland opened to the public reminded me of a story told by Diane Disney Miller, Walt’s daughter.
At one point during the party, Diane went looking for her Dad. She could not spot him in the crowd but she found her Mother. On stage was the incredible Wally Boag doing his thing with his six-shooters. Her Mom pointed up to second level box above the stage and saw her father using air guns to fire down at the crowd. Walt decided he needed to be down on the stage and went right over the railing and started scaling the wall. Once he safely landed on the stage, Lilly was called up to the stage and they took their bows.
On the way home, Diane decided to drive and Walt and Lillian sat in the back seat. Looking back into the rear view mirror, she could see that he had a rolled up set of papers and was playing it like a horn. She continues a short way and looks back and sees that he is passed out, sleeping like a baby.
The real highlight (for me) in Gallery Nine is the model. For Disneyland fans, this exhibit alone is worth the price of admission. Plan on spending a long time savoring all of the details. The Museum has created a scale model of the Disneyland that never was and always will be in Walt’s imagination. The model is stuffed with details of rides past, present, and those that only exist in Walt and his Imagineers dreams. Many parts are animated and the scale is stretched and squashed to present a richer past. Stand around long enough and you will hear Walt introducing many of the parks features with spotlights guiding you along.
You view the model by circling around it on the ramp. Artwork and little video monitors are embedded into the displays surrounding the model with additional information and showing bits of the Disneyland series. At the bottom of the ramp is ample room for a closer look. I suggest you bend down and try to get a “peoples” eye view.
I will be brief about the rest of the gallery. My head is still thinking about the model. As you continue you see Walt’s personal Autopia car, artwork from Sleeping Beauty, a clever display with Dick Van Dyke talking about the film process that made Mary Poppins so magical, and a lot more.
For me, I tend to linger around the displays for the 1964 New York World’s Fair and EPCOT. As you exit the gallery, you will come across some very personal items that Diane has collected from her father. The last display outlines Walt’s dream for CalArts and Mineral King. But that is another story for a different time.
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