Thursday 11 July 2024

Walt had an eye on the future 4/5


























If you were a child, teenager, or adult in the fifties and sixties and visited and Disney theme parks, this book is for you. Pure nostalgia to capture the fun times of yesteryear. The book is probably sixty percent images with a huge selection of Disney concept art for the various pavillions and hotels. Mixed in with the colored images I thought there were too many contemporary news PR photos that don't contribute too much but fill up a lot of page space.

The twenty-six chapters cover everything the Disney Corporation got up to in mid-century and not only in the US. Page 129 refers to the Brussels World's Fair of 1958 where the company showed 'America the Beautiful' film on a huge circular screen. Walt was very much looking to the future and Monsanto built a plastic future house in LA Disneyland with a ten-year lease. EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was a future look at the Florida Disneyland. Architect Welton Beckett (he designed the Capitol Tower in Hollywood)  created Progressland, Disney's contribution to the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Author Don Hahn ties all the Disney ideas together with his breezy copy and nicely the book, originally published in 2017, isn't too expensive now. 

US
UK





 

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