The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life

20. The Happiest Place on Earth

20 The Happiest Place on Earth ON THE AFTERNOON of July 17, 1955, the grand opening of Disneyland held the rapt attention ofmillions ofAmericans. The construction of this fantastic amusement park had been the subject of feverish press speculation for over a year, and when the gates swung open, the event was broadcast live on ABC in a two-hour spectacle hosted by Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald Reagan. Entitled Dateline Disneyland , the show offered a series of striking images: a jovial Walt running his beloved steam-powered locomotive around the edge of the park, a host of political dignitaries and Hollywood celebrities proclaiming their impressions , Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen dashing in on horseback. These scenes and many more were captured by television cameras whose jerking and occasional malfunctioning only enhanced the sense of drama. Meanwhile, media reports from Los Angeles detailed the huge crowds descending on Anaheim and the monstrous traffic jams resulting from thousands of cars on the freeways. Amid such fanfare, Disneyland burst onto the postwar American scene. This outpouring of public enthusiasm may have seemed outlandish, but it was not misplaced, because the significance of the park was genuine. As a creative amusement center, its likes had never been seen before. Moreover, from its very inception, Disneyland functioned as a kind ofcommand center linking together (and publicizing) the studio's myriad projects in television, 384 I Disney and the American Century movies, music, and merchandising. But in a larger sense, Disneyland was a unique embodiment of prosperous, middle-class, postwar America. As nothing else quite did, it stood, literally, as a monument to the American way of life. Millions of citizens journeyed there to pay homage to the idealized image of themselves created by a master cultural mediator.! 1. Disneyland: Consolidating the Disney Enterprise Disneyland's origins had deep, tangled roots in Walt's own past. He always told inquirers that he had the idea when he took his two young daughters out for fun on weekends and found that existing kids' parks and fairs were often dirty, sleazy, money-grubbing places. Actually, the notion seems to have been percolating in his mind from a much earlier date. His sister, Ruth Disney Beecher, remembered his utter fascination when, as children, they peered through the fence at Fairmont Park in Kansas City, a "fairyland" they couldn't afford to enter. Wilfred Jackson noted that at the 1937 premiere of Snow White, as he and Walt strolled by a small-scale replica of the dwarfs' cottage built outside Cathay Circle Theater, Walt observed that someday he would "make a park for kids, a place scaled down to kids' size:' On a 1940 trip to New York, Walt told Ben Sharpsteen at some length about his plan to display "Disney characters in their fantasy surroundings" at a park near his Burbank headquarters, a scheme that would give studio visitors a place to experience something more than "just seeing people at work."2 In the late 1940s, Walt began tinkering with a traveling, small-scale exhibit of scenes from American history that featured miniature mechanical people moved by tiny pulleys and gears, which he envisioned presenting in department stores around the country. He assigned artist Harper Goff to work on this project, which he called Disneylandia or Walt Disney's America. He also began toying with the idea of presenting steam-powered trains to the public. In 1948, he outlined a modest amusement park that incorporated these ideas and added more expansive elements. This blueprint began with a Main Village containing a small park, town hall, railroad station, opera house, movie theater, post office, and drugstore. A variety of "little stores" around the park would offer toys, old-fashioned candy, music and books, hobby materials, and artwork by studio artists. A "horse car" would transport visitors around the park, while a livery stable would rent ponies and buckboards . A carnival area would offer "roller coaster, merry-go-rounds, and typical midway stuff:' A special Western Village would present a general store, a cowboy museum, a corral full of horses for riding, a stagecoach, and a donkey pack train. Over the next few years, this plan gradually expanded to include spaceship and submarine rides, a Mississippi steamboat, a zoo of miniature animals, and various exhibit halls. In 1952, Walt actually peti- The Happiest Place on Earth I 385 tioned the Burbank city government to begin developing this...