DISNEY’S MOST PRICELESS PROP! The Artistry of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland

[00:00:10]You know, Josh, we do have an interesting uh Sleeping Beauty Castle piece over here in the hallway at the office. This is just a merchandise item, but uh for the 50th anniversary of Disneyland, they sold this collectible pin with this picture of Walt, and there's a model of the Matter Horn, but also there's a model of Simidi Castle.

[00:00:29]You're right. I never noticed that's a really early model of the castle, too.

[00:00:33]That's not a 1959 sort of asbuilt Sleeping Beauty castle.

[00:00:38]>> I wonder what ever happened to that.

[00:00:41]>> Uhoh.

[00:01:13]Welcome to the very first episode of Materially Disney. I'm Tom. This is Josh.

[00:01:19]>> Hey, Tom.

[00:01:19]>> And Josh, this is something we've talked about for a long, long time. I know if you're a longtime viewer, you probably heard us mention the name of this show over the last six or seven years, but here we finally are.

[00:01:29]>> Six or seven years later.

[00:01:31]>> Yeah.

[00:01:31]>> Yeah. Disneyland got built faster than this show did.

[00:01:34]>> It did. If you watch Disneyland Handcrafted, you know that.

[00:01:37]>> This has been I mean, we're both collectors.

[00:01:39]>> We're stuff guys.

[00:01:41]>> Yeah. And and I think what we figured out and I think that the journey that we're going to take you on today is telling stories about Disney history and about Disney present through stuff because it turns out that stuff sticks around and it has a lot to share with us. Speaking of those stories, we're going to tell those stories through Materially Disney. Um over the course of this episodic series, we'll talk about whether it be an attraction, a person, a park, uh something. there'll be some topic uh that we focus on and tell the story of that topic through the stuff >> and this is a great place to invite you to leave comments, write into us, get in touch with us, contact us and share your stuff. Share your stuff and the stories behind it so that we can talk about those sorts of things as well.

[00:02:31]>> Yeah. And I want to make it clear that it's not just about the profound amazing historic stuff. Just important is your stuff. the stuff that has a story that's personal to you, like the parent that bought you um a particular souvenir from your first trip to Walt Disney World or something you have from a certain resort stay that's memorable. Things like that are just as important. Um that that memory of yours and that emotional connection are just as important as the big historical things we'll talk about on this show.

[00:03:00]>> So for all you stuff people out there, welcome to Materially Disney.

[00:03:05]>> You've brought stuff >> today. Well, this is the first episode of what I assume to be a thousand episodes.

[00:03:17]And how do you you got to start something off the right way.

[00:03:20]>> We have to start at the beginning.

[00:03:22]>> Yeah.

[00:03:22]>> Or before the beginning in some cases.

[00:03:24]>> Well, I think that's a good place to start usually. Yeah. And I think you got to start big and well or 70 feet worth of big.

[00:03:33]>> Big for that time.

[00:03:34]>> That's right. Sleeping Beauty Castle. It is Disneyland. It is the visual cue for Disneyland and frankly the visual cue for a lot of the Disney company. Where did it come from? Because we take it for granted. I think we just there's always been a castle in the middle of the park.

[00:03:56]You walk down Main Street and there it is. You walk down any Main Street and there it is.

[00:04:01]>> Well, what's funny is the Walt Disney Company obviously exists before Disneyland opens. Um, and the ca castles are a part of that legacy, but they're not necessarily the focal point before Disneyland.

[00:04:12]>> I think that's right. I think that the castle was was a destination as part of storytelling.

[00:04:19]>> And here, the castle becomes a character. And certainly in the last 70 years, we've made the castle into a character by decorating it for the holidays, by using it as a focal point for nighttime spectaculars and fireworks and things like that.

[00:04:36]It's taken on a life of its own. There's not a person who visits Disneyland and doesn't get a photo that iconic family photo in front of where the castle. Let's think about before there was a Disneyland being constructed before we, you know, all that beautiful footage in Leslie's Disneyland handcrafted. Before we watched that castle that looks like stone come up out of mostly wood.

[00:05:04]>> How did it come about? And I think um what we have here is is sort of the cool stuff that tells that story. I went to my archive and and pulled a selection of things that had to do with Sleeping Beauty Castle. And so on the table just to give you kind of a survey of what we're going to talk about and uh the the history that's going to come alive is we've got some brown line plans of Sleeping Beauty Castle. Now, these are uh these are copies, but they're copies that were made as working copies in the 1950s, 1953,54 during the earliest days of Wed, which was the precursor to Walt Disney Imagineering. Uh these are both drawn by Marvin Davis. And Marvin Davis is sort of one of those unsung lesserk known heroes. He >> It's a name enough people don't know.

[00:05:55]>> There's a lot of Davises, too. I mean, Mark Davis is a great Davis. Marvin Davis, an equally great Davis, I would argue. He designs the hub concept. He does the master planning for Walt Disney World eventually. Uh, and one of the things that I don't think is well known is that in the earliest days of Disneyland's development, 1953, he's doing elevations and designs for Fantasy Land primarily, some Main Street as well, but Fantasy Land and specifically Sleeping Beauty Castle. So, that's those.

[00:06:33]What else we have is um, well, two other things. These both come from the prospectus. So there's a there's meetings with bankers and financers and potential lees.

[00:06:48]>> All things that get brought up a lot when you listen to the story of how Disneyland happens. Um because the Walt Disney Company didn't have the money on their own to do this, >> right? And so those had to be supported by um by some words >> and some visuals that gave a sense of what Disneyland was going to be because it was a firstofits-kind venture. It was a theme park. No one knew what a theme park was.

[00:07:13]>> Amusement parks were what existed and all the people that ran those told these people that what they were doing was wrong.

[00:07:20]>> That's right.

[00:07:20]>> Yeah.

[00:07:21]>> Um all the people that ran those told these people that what they were doing was wrong. um anyone who could get Walt aside for five minutes told him that this was a terrible idea. I mean that is the the legendary story is uh why shouldn't you do this and this was that this was the sort of dream that brought the Disney company I think home if if Mickey started down that road. I think there's a there's actually a rather famous quote. It was uh a Walt quote that said you know it it was all started by a mouse but it was it was the it was Disneyland. It was the castle that brought us home. And um and so there's a just to give you an idea, there's a rendering um that we're going to talk about of of Sleeping Beauty Castle printed on photographic paper. And these were these were handed out, you know, think New York boardroom, packet of photos being passed around the table of of what Walt envisioned this to be. And then um one of my sort of favorite things to sort of look at and read and if you want to grab it and hand it to me. This is um this is the Disneyland story. So the Disneyland story comes about in 1953. It goes through a couple revisions. This one happens to be from 1954.

[00:08:36]And uh it it explains what Disneyland is uh to people who don't know what we're talking about. They don't have 70 years of theme park heritage behind them. They uh they're sitting and trying to figure out whether or not they should give money to this project. Um my favorite part about this is this line. The theme of Disneyland is that when you park your car in the auto park, you leave the present day behind. And when you enter Disneyland, you will find yourself in the land of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy. Nothing of the present exists at Disneyland. Now, there's a pencil notation on here that I really love. It says, "C, accept money," which means that this was in a banker's file.

[00:09:21]>> Yep.

[00:09:21]>> Yep. So, let's talk about Let's turn the page and let's get into Fantasy Land because Fantasy Land talks about what Sleeping Beauty Castle is. You enter Fantasy Land through the Sleeping Beauty Castle. This castle will stand 70 ft high. As you go through the archway, you find yourself in the courtyard of the castle. In the center of the courtyard will be the King Arthur carousel. This being in keeping with the Sleeping Beauty Castle. You can also go through the castle and by looking through the various windows, you will see Sleeping Beauty, the dungeon with the rack and the wheel and the torture chambers, the large dining hall of the knights, and all the things you would expect to find in a castle will be there.

[00:10:03]That's a pretty cool description because I think we know that not a lot of that actually happened in Sleeping Beauty Castle.

[00:10:10]>> A Sleeping Beauty Castle walkthrough eventually happens which tells you the story of Sleeping Beauty. But uh no, the other things you would find in a castle are not present.

[00:10:18]>> But and that opens in 1957.

[00:10:20]>> Yep.

[00:10:20]>> Right. So that's 2 years before the film, which is ultimately released in 1959. In 1953, we're thinking about that film, but we have no idea what it's really going to entail from a visual storytelling perspective. Uh it it's not until 57 where the Ivan Durl sort of designed walkthrough gives the public a hint at what was about to come in theaters in 1959.

[00:10:44]Should we dig into this though? I'd love to sort of talk about this stuff.

[00:10:49]>> What good is is artwork if we're not going to heavily examine the concept art? That's right. That's right. So, if you notice that this front elevation, this front elevation extends way further out than the Sleeping Beauty Castle that ultimately gets built. And it's because these castle walls were going to encircle and Fantasy Land was going to effectively be inside the castle walls.

[00:11:14]>> And you see that from a side elevation, which is this one up here. So, you're looking at the castle from the side. And what you're seeing is not just the castle, but the entryway to the Snow White ride, which >> is a continuation of the castle. And we know that like eventually this isn't what Fantasy Land ever looked like. I mean, in 1983, Tony Baxter comes and redo Fantasy Land and turns it into something that's far closer to this.

[00:11:43]>> The idea is to do what Walt could not do in the 1950s, >> right? But in the 1950s, 1955, opening day Disneyland, Fantasy Land was sort of this medieval tent, medieval fair theme because it turned out that that was the most budget friendly way to get it across the finish line from a time perspective, from a money perspective, from a um this is what we could do perspective because the focus was largely on the inside and getting those attractions built, which opening day was, you know, the carousel obviously, Sleepy uh Snow White, Mr. Toad and famously the Peter Pan fly through attraction. Um all of which were sort of originally planned to be affiliated in and around the castle structure itself.

[00:12:27]>> Yeah. And so um this Snow White facade is quite again somewhat similar to what Tony Baxter would do with his team in the 1980s, but that is way beyond what was there in 1955. It was absolutely the interesting thing and the thing I wanted to draw your attention to today is when we say objects tell stories.

[00:12:49]>> Well, this is great, right? We see a castle, we see the renderings, we see concept, we see a lot of concept art of things that that were uh that end up different because of budget, because of you know, concept art is the dream, right? and and then it takes a lot of steps to get to the reality and the manifestation of an attraction or something. But the details in this concept art are not the details in the drawings, they're the details in the bottom corners. And what I love about this is concept art, it's very infrequently signed. Disney was never really a a company that um it was a collective endeavor and the art was for sort of storytelling and communicating and it it wasn't really sort of but but Marvin Davis who was a a draftsman by trade um signed these and ma Davis in the bottom corner and the interesting thing about them is he also dated them.

[00:13:47]M >> so then with that date we have a sense of what the project was what was happening on the project and how it was developing and what the timeline the creative timeline was because it's pretty vague when you think about it.

[00:14:01]Imagineering gets founded in 1952 as Wed Enterprises. It's wholly owned by Walt Disney. It's not affiliated with the studio and Walt >> keeping it a secret. Walt's dividing his time between Wed and the studio and there's some friction and tension with with Roy which famous sort of a famous sort of um period of not really talking to one another actually and then it ends in the exchange of a peace pipe physical peace pipe and um things kind of come back together and and Wed gets acquired by uh the entity the Walt Disney Productions entity >> but we don't really No, beyond that as a starting point and the opening day, there's there's very few dates in that in that timeline that are that are that are uh known that are sort of landmarks for us.

[00:14:54]>> Yeah. Not all of concrete between 52 and 55, >> right? There is one date though, right?

[00:15:00]There's that one date and that's that's the sort of famous origin story of Disneyland as a as a project to be pitched and as a thing to be worked through and that's September 26th, 1953.

[00:15:13]>> The Lost Weekend, >> right?

[00:15:15]>> Yeah.

[00:15:16]>> Tell the story. Well, the story that I've been told, and I'm sure you know the same, is that Walt Disney called Herby Ryman, tremendous artist, and asked Herby, I I've got I've got this on Monday, I've got to go to the bank and pitch them this idea of Disneyland, and I need to show them what it is. I need a piece of art to show them what my idea, what my concept is. Herby, will you do it? And Herby went back and forth with him. He was like, it's it's not enough time. I don't know what this is. And Walt said, well, if I stand over your shoulder, will you do it? And Herby reluctantly finally, as the story goes, said yes. And and that over that weekend there was very little sleep supposedly.

[00:15:54]And then uh by the time the weekend was over, Herby created the first full rendering of Disneyland Park.

[00:15:59]>> That's right.

[00:15:59]>> Yeah.

[00:16:00]>> That's That's a good story, isn't it?

[00:16:02]>> It It's the one we've been told.

[00:16:03]>> It comes out of It just comes out of Herby's head. All of these things that eventually carry forward and become Disneyland, the castle and Main Street and True Life Adventureland and Tomorrowland and all of these things are just sort of manifested in this bird's eye view that goes back east with Roy to sell to the bankers to get the financing and the rest, as they say, is history.

[00:16:27]And that drawing on Vellum, which is cleaned up a little bit over uh that weekend, becomes the origin story for all of those things, for Disneyland and its constituent elements. But that's September 26th, 1953.

[00:16:46]Here's the fun thing. These are dated August 4th, 1953 for this one. And this one, which is the castle, it's Sleeping Beauty Castle. You show this to anybody and they recognize it as the castle kind of is dated July 21st, 1953.

[00:17:07]>> Wow. So, what you're telling me is Herby's story that he had a blank sheet of paper and drew Disneyland. It's the first rendering is is not correct.

[00:17:16]>> Herby had a blank sheet of paper.

[00:17:18]>> That that the blank sheet of paper existed.

[00:17:20]>> That's absolutely true.

[00:17:21]>> But he had Are you saying he had reference to work off of? and Herby certainly fit these constituent elements together to create this bird's eye view that communicated through visual storytelling as only Herby Ryman could >> the feeling of a place but it Herby was also equipped with a couple years worth of work that were done by people like Dick Irvine and Marvin Davis the two sort of earliest creative employees at WED and I think like that's a really interesting thing to unpack is that there was a park that was being designed before September 26th, 1953.

[00:18:05]So much so that the castle as we know it, Sleeping Beauty Castle, exists in plan and concept form before Herby Ryman sits and puts pencil to paper, pencil to vellum. So, Walt Disney knew what the heart of his park was and already had people well at work designing it.

[00:18:27]>> That's right. And that's a really interesting thing. It's a wrinkle to that sort of the myth and the legend of the Lost Weekend. There's a park before there's a park, it turns out, as it were. And um and I think that's that's a that's the way that objects can tell us stories.

[00:18:44]>> These are all really cool, Tom, aren't they?

[00:18:46]>> I I would I would say so.

[00:18:47]>> Yeah. I mean, I love this early Disneyland stuff. So, we're going to stay and look at these for another half hour, right?

[00:18:53]>> I have another thing that I brought today, though. And I think this thing uh might help complete the castle story, let's say.

[00:19:04]>> Well, let's look at it.

[00:19:05]>> All right, let's get it.

[00:19:07]>> Josh, I I think I know what this is. And if it's what I think it is, why is it here?

[00:19:15]You said that we should start Materially Disney with a bang, something really oomphy, right? And so I thought maybe this was the thing that we should focus on.

[00:19:31]>> I don't even want to breathe this close to it.

[00:19:34]>> This is the original model of Sleeping Beauty Castle. This is the first one.

[00:19:39]This is the thing that started it all.

[00:19:42]This is this was this was Marvin Davis's concept, right? He as we talked about and we looked at the plans and we looked at the drawings and we looked at the documentation, a lot of what Sleeping Beauty Castle is started with Marvin Davis. And this is it. This is the three-dimensional realization of that. And back when Wed was a couple guys, one of those couple guys was a model builder named Fred Jurgger. Fred Jurgger, Wayel Rogers, Harriet Burns were sort of the three people who founded the Walt Disney Imaginary Model Shop. And you needed to have models.

[00:20:19]Models are visual storytelling. Concept art is great. Story treatments are wonderful, but to build something physical, you need to build something physical and miniature first.

[00:20:31]>> In a world precomputers, this was an absolute necessity.

[00:20:34]>> Yeah. And so this is the thing that started it all. I don't know that there are enough sort of ways to lavish praise on what this is in the context of Disneyland, in the context of Disney parks, in the context of the Disney company. It's balsa wood and paint and glue and uh I mean it's survived the ages pretty well actually.

[00:20:59]>> I think it's I think it's easily more than the sum of its parts.

[00:21:02]>> I think that's probably true.

[00:21:05]But to to go back to my original question, why is it here?

[00:21:11]>> Well, it's it's here because it's it's part of my archive of material. It's part of my collection. That's why >> you have this.

[00:21:18]>> Well, I really like Disneyland.

[00:21:22]>> That's it. Bye everybody.

[00:21:25]How How does this leave?

[00:21:27]>> But what how is it in the wild? I think that's the question, right?

[00:21:31]>> Yeah. Well, so the story goes that this lived for the longest time on Walt's desk in his working office. It was his model of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

[00:21:46]It's the first one. It's not when they built the park, there's a larger working model that uh has a really interesting story in and of itself. It it sort of gets tucked away at Imagineering. uh it gets discovered or rediscovered by an imagineer named John Stone who is a brilliant model builder and I'm going to guarantee that we talk about him in a future episode >> or many future episodes >> quite possibly >> but as a labor of love John Stone painstakingly restored that model and it lived for a period of time in the Disney gallery which was up above Pirates of the Caribbean and New Orleans Square.

[00:22:23]That was in 1987 when they when they opened the Disney gallery. The model was on display there and now it lives at One Man's Dream.

[00:22:37]But that model is Sleeping Beauty Castle as it was built, not necessarily as it was imagined. And this is Sleeping Beauty Castle as it was imagined in 1953. So this model is before the Lost Weekend. It's the model that's based on Marvin Davis's plans and it's handbuilt by Fred Jurgger. It lives on Walt's desk. It's his momento, as it were, of Disneyland, although he had a few momentos of Disneyland. It was his park uh had his name on it. It ends up getting gifted to Marvin Davis after Walt's death by Roy. Uh who knew >> was still sitting in the office at that time.

[00:23:16]>> Yeah. It came out of the office in 1966 and it went to Marvin Davis and it went down the Davis family after Marvin passed. There's a there's a great ET magazine article where they interview Marvin and he's posing like a guy who had just caught like the biggest fish in the world with this model. It's a fantastic photo. Um, great little bit of provenance, right? When you start talking about rare Disney collectibles, provenance and where it came from is a huge part of that. It's a huge part of the story. Uh, and then eventually this comes to auction and it comes to auction in kind of a strange way. Uh, it ends up being in an entertainment memorability auction full of movie props and costumes and things like that. Um, it's the only Disneyland item in the auction.

[00:24:04]>> Um, and it it it it sells and >> to you.

[00:24:10]>> I ended up being the high bidder on it.

[00:24:12]Yeah. I mean, so that's not like a a great story of discovery necessarily, but it's it's a story of sort of uh something that's very near and dear to me coming home, I think.

[00:24:24]>> Well, as we chug along through Materially Disney, I think we're going to find there are a number of different stories as to how these things end up outside the Walt Disney Company. Um, some more interesting than others, but I think there's a lot like your story.

[00:24:37]>> I think that's right. I think that's very true. And I think like just what this symbolizes, Tom, to me is the genesis of Disneyland. It is it's before the Lost Weekend. It's when Wed was Walt and a couple guys working together to get this thing called a theme park, to get this thing called Disneyland into reality finally, right? This decadesl long dream that Walt has of building a theme park. It's the next step in his vision of what entertainment should be as a master of animation and a master of liveaction.

[00:25:15]It's how do we revolutionize storytelling?

[00:25:19]>> What is that next horizon?

[00:25:21]>> Yeah. And it's it's a horizon that I mean you and I both know as we look at Disney parks presently we continue to push. But it's I don't think there there are a handful of things in this world that distill the everything of the Walt Disney Company down to its simplest sort of most fundamental forms. Walt the man, the talents, the handcrafted talents of imagineers and designers.

[00:25:48]Disneyland the place and the symbolism of Sleeping Beauty Castle. It is the symbol of Disneyland. It's the symbol of every Disney theme park around the world.

[00:26:00]>> It's the symbol in many ways of the company. Um I know we're of a younger age, but people who grew up, you know, pre- Disneyland, Disney films did not open with a castle at the beginning of them. That is something that comes about later because of how iconic Disneyland and this castle are.

[00:26:16]>> That's right. It is truly the gateway to a land of fantasy and storytelling. And I think it's a really fitting way for us to kick off materially Disney to say that these are the things that exist in the world and they tell stories and this is I don't know how we're going to tell a better story than this.

[00:26:38]>> I think we're going to try.

[00:26:41]>> Uh well, this is I mean this is an incredible piece. What what amazes me is how uh it's not that far off from what happened. It's really for for being an early vision of this thing. It is it is Sleep Beauty Castle. They they knew what they kind of knew what they were getting into.

[00:26:56]>> What I love about it too is that I mean you showed me that photograph that you have in the hallway earlier. Um >> that's from 59 and that's about sort of designing the Matterhorn, right? So Matterhorn Arms in 59. That's a developmental photo. It's probably from a couple years earlier than that. uh and it's playing around with scale like this was still kicking around the studio and just being used for things like that like well let's put the castle next to the mountain so that we can see what that looks like.

[00:27:24]>> It story continues well beyond that opening day on 19 of 1955. Yeah.

[00:27:30]>> Yeah. No, and just the idea that like of being with something that's so close to Walt the person and Walt's dream of Disneyland. I think that that's the romance of this and to have it be guarded over and cherished by Marvin Davis, one of the legendary first the very first Imagineers. Um >> there's a there's something there that you just can't put to words. And there's something there that you really can't put a price tag on either. Absolutely not. I think in some of our later episodes we're going to talk about sort of values and prices and things like that, but >> this one doesn't I don't think there is a price.

[00:28:08]>> How about we call this one we'll call this one price?

[00:28:11]>> I I think that's fair. I think it has to be priceless because when I look at this um the world we're sitting in right now washes away and I could just imagine this with Walt Disney and him realizing I'm going to make my big dream come true.

[00:28:25]>> That's what makes this so special.

[00:28:27]>> Yeah. No, I mean it's you get a little emotional.

[00:28:29]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, there it is.

[00:28:32]>> Thank you for sharing the most incredible thing I've ever seen. Thank you.

[00:28:37]>> Good stuff.

[00:28:38]>> Yeah, I'd say.

[00:28:39]>> All right.

[00:28:42]>> We've shared our Disney stuff and now it's time for you to share yours.

[00:28:47]>> If you have a great collection, a great object, a thing that means a lot to you that uh if you're a stuff person, we want to know. You should email us. reach out at stuffwent.com and share your stuff story.

[00:29:02]>> Absolutely. And some of those stories will make it in to these episodes.