This episode of "The Magical World of Disney" was just posted on Disney+ and I was eager to see it show how much of Disneyland was planned and built. In fact, many early episodes of the series were devoted to the upcoming opening of Disneyland and the series was originally envisioned as a giant commercial to prep America want to come to this exciting new park.
According to Wikipedia, all the 1950s installments of "Disney" (the original title for this series) were filmed in color but were shown in black & white. This was because Disney folks knew that color film would allow them to reshow the program later if they'd like, as soon the networks would switch to color programming. Oddly, however, this and other early episodes posted to Disney+ all all in black & white!
The first portion of the show was an update about progress on the Disney park, about half finished so far. They also showed many portions along with music from various full-length Disney cartoons as well as had appearances by Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen in order to advertise the upcoming "Davy Crockett" films. Again, the show was really intended less to entertain and more as a giant commercial.
Later, the show switches gears completely and Walt introduces some clips from various Mickey Mouse cartoons (including his first Mickey cartoon, "Plane Crazy") as well as the entire "Lonesome Ghosts" cartoon--one of the studio's best cartoon shorts. "The Socerer's Apprentice" portion of "Fantasia" was also shown. Finally, they show a few clips from "Alice in Wonderland"...yet another ad.
Overall, this is an interesting glimpse into the Disney company circa 1955. Parts, such as "Lonesome Ghosts" are fun...other parts are just ads that kids of the era ate up and wanted more!
