Who doesn't love a Little Golden Book? The little board books with the bright illustrations and the foil binding were a big part of Mom & Dad's childhood and we have shared that love of these books with our boys.
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| Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle usually looks enormous in vintage illustrations |
Recently we found two old "Disneyland" Little Golden Books from 1955 at a Toy Show and thought it would be fun to look at some of the Disneyland Artwork inside.
The first book is called "Walt Disney's Little Man of Disneyland". Apparently a Leprechaun lived on the Anaheim orange grove that would become Disneyland. Mickey, Donald & Goofy run into him during the demolition of the site. They take him to Imagineering and show him all of the plans for the park. He is so impressed by what they plan to do that he agrees to relocate to another location of his choosing in the park. Rumor has it he lives there to this day in the roots of an old tree in Adventureland. The book has wonderful illustrations of Imagineering and of Disneyland under construction. There is also a great drawing of the finished Jungle Cruise.
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| Not sure what they are building behind Main Street Station |
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| Mickey and Goofy with all the great plans for Disneyland at Imagineering in 1954. One of those sketches even looks like California Adventure's California Screamin' (soon to be Incredicoaster) and the Funwheel! |
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| Jungle Cruise |
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| Enormous castle at the end of Main Street USA, from a 1955 storybook |
The second book is "Walt Disney's Disneyland on the Air". It tells the story of a grand premiere television special filmed live from the Main Street USA Opera House. We have included a very striking image from the book of the Main Street USA Opera House being used as a premiere venue for the live television special. Sleeping Beauty Castle looms over Main Street in a fashion that is not particularly realistic and that frankly feels more like Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom than the original Disneyland. Its been written that Walt Disney wanted the Disneyland Castle to be scaled in a way that was "less intimidating" than a real medieval castle. When they started planning the Florida park it was pretty much established that the castle would be much larger. The first concept sketch for Magic Kingdom Cinderella Castle is dated January 1967...just a few weeks after Walt Disney's death in December of 1966. But there are lots of fanciful illustrations that portray Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle at a scale that is much closer to what Walt Disney World ended up with. While it would be a travesty to remodel or replace the original Disneyland Castle...Dad often wonders if its size was more a factor of budget and schedule than what was really desired given how often it was depicted in illustrations at the heroic scale in which the Florida Castle was ultimately built. Just an observation really.
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| The scale of Disneyland's Castle looming over Main Street in this 1955 illustration looks more like what Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom would achieve in reality |
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