October 27, 1954…’Disneyland’ Debuts On ABC
October 27, 1954…’Disneyland’ Debuts On ABC
The video included here is the first segment of the debut broadcast on Wednesday night, October 27, 1954. The history presented here may reverse some of your lingering impressions…it did with me too. Specifically, ‘Disneyland’, the show, was on the air before Disneyland, the park opened. I always thought it was the other way around.
When this debuted, the Disneyland theme park was not open. The land was bought and some construction on Main Street had been done, but Walt Disney was running short of money and that was the reason he went to television. NBC and CBS had passed on the project but ABC not only took it, they invested in Disneyland.
In 1953, lead by Leonard Goldenson, United Paramount Theaters bought ABC from Edward J. Nobles and gave the nearly bankrupt network at $25 million dollar infusion. Being flush with cash, Goldenson had the foresight to partner with Disney on the theme park. The park opened July 17, 1955 and was broadcast live on ABC.
Shortly after the debut of the ‘Disneyland’ television show, which was hosted by Disney each week, ‘Davy Crockett’ came to ABC. At first, these were three one hour, fully contained episodes that ran monthly, but were so successful, that they went into production as half hour weekly episodes. At the end of this video, we’ll visit the Crockett set and hear the long version of the theme song many of us can still sing.
On October 3, 1955, ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ debuted on ABC and was a weekday smash. ABC got their money’s worth…so did Walt, but money was what eventually caused Disney to move to NBC. ABC wanted two more minutes of commercials in all the Disney product and Walt didn’t…that, and their reluctance to sell their share of the theme park back to Disney caused the split.
Even though ABC had no color ability till the mid 60s, Disney had filmed all of his shows in color, including the one we see here. This was a huge advantage when he moved to NBC in 1961 with ‘Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color’. All of the ABC episodes were replayed there with some freshening inserts.
In this video, we’ll also see a very young Kirk Douglas working on ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’ and some other interesting sights around The Walt Disney Studios.
Why the teaser, “The history presented here may reverse some of your lingering impressions…it did with me too” with no payoff? What misconceptions did you have?
Ad for the premiere
As a 9 year old I remember watching this with the family in’54.