July 17 - Disneyland

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On this day, in 1955, Disneyland welcomed its first official guests in Anaheim, California. To be fair, the first people to walk through the front gates on that July morning were not the first guests to visit Disneyland. Some press had already been given a tour and Walt and Lilian had celebrated their wedding anniversary at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon a couple of days before. They weren't even the first paying guests as everyone who came that first day were supposed to be invited. I say supposed to be, because about half of the 28,000 people in the park for the opening ceremonies either had fake tickets or no tickets at all, they just hopped the fence. Needless to say, the park that had once been declared by potential investors to be just as much a folly as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was initially called caused quite a stir right from the get go.

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Everyone has probably heard the story of how Walt was standing around watching his daughters, Dianne and Sharon, riding the merry-go-round at an amusement park and got the idea of building a place where adults and kids could have fun together. It's a cute story but only part of the reason the idea of Disneyland wormed its way into Walt's brain. The other part was the letters. Every year, the Walt Disney Studio got hundreds, if not thousands, of letters from people who wanted to come visit the studio, see how movies are made and see their favorite characters. Walt knew that if the average person actually showed up at the studio, they'd be bored out of their minds within ten minutes. Not only was there nothing for people to do there but the reality of making animation (and even live action) is a long, slow, tedious process. And everyone's favorite characters were nothing more than drawings, not the walking, talking beings that people believed they saw in the theaters. Walt began to envision a place that tourists could come visit.

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The first actual mention of his idea in memo form came in 1948. He talked about turning an eight acre plot of land across the street from the studio into a Mickey Mouse Park. Except Walt's idea kept growing and quickly outgrew the spot he had in mind. He hired a consultant, the Legendary Harrison Price of the Stanford Research Institute, to help him figure out how much land he would need. Harrison did his best, trying to anticipate future expansions, and came up with 160 acres. Walt thought it sounded good, looked around and bought some orange groves in the city of Anaheim. That original eight acre plot didn't go to waste however. It's still part of the company and currently houses Walt Disney Animation and the ABC Studios.

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Now that he had a site, Walt just needed some money to build his dream. Naturally he turned to his financial guru of a brother, Roy, who immediately tried to talk him out of the whole thing. That pep talk, as usual, yielded no results so, Roy rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Asking current Disney employees to support the boss's craziness raised a few dollars but nowhere near the $17 million it was going to take to build Disneyland. One of the more genius ideas was a partnership between the fledgling ABC television network and Disney. ABC needed content to broadcast, Walt needed money and thus the Disneyland television series was born. ABC a top quality show to boost their ratings, Walt got ABC to invest in his park and Walt got something even better: advertising. Not only did he name the show after the new venture but he came into people's homes every week and told them all about the wonderful things they would experience when they came to visit. He was able to build anticipation to a frenzy.

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Construction on Disneyland actually began on July 16, 1954. Walt had all sorts of Legendary people in place to make his dream come true. Old timers like Marc Davis, who helped design the place, and new hires like retired Rear Admiral Joe Fowler, who oversaw the construction process. One year and one day later, Disneyland was ready to open. Sort of. Like most major projects with deadlines, things got a little crazy near the end. There are plenty of famous stories about people's shoes getting stuck in asphalt that wasn't quite set yet and all sorts of other mishaps that first day. But none of that matters. People were enchanted by what they saw and have kept coming back for more. There are now a dozen Disney parks scattered around the world, but Disneyland boasts the most visits of any of them (mainly because it was the only one for sixteen years, but still). History was made on July 17, 1955 and theme parks have never been the same since.

March 7 - Michael Eisner

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On this day, in 1942, Michael Dammann Eisner was born Mount Kisco, New York. Michael came from money. His mother was an heir to the American Safety Razor Company. His great-grandpa Eisner owned a successful clothing company. Becoming a businessman was his destiny. But first, of course, he had to suffer through living on Park Avenue in Manhattan and attending private boys' schools (which can actually be a living form of hell at times). Michael graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio in 1964 with a degree in English. Wait, what? In English? That's right. Michael is more of a liberal arts creative type than a traditional business man (which makes some of what's to come even more painful, but I get ahead of myself).

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Michael began his career in television programming. He spent a little time at NBC, did a brief stint at CBS and then, just to round out his resume, became Assistant to the National Programming Director at ABC, where he settled in for a while. By 1976, he'd risen to the rank of Senior Vice President in charge of Programming and Development. At this point, Barry Diller, who'd first hired Michael into ABC before leaving for Paramount Pictures, lured Michael away from the television network. His new title was now President and CEO. Paramount flourished under Michael. You may have heard of some of the things they produced during the Eisner years: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ordinary People, Star Trek films, Grease and Beverly Hills Cop. Paramount was no stranger to the small screen either, bringing us Happy Days, Lavern and Shirley, Cheers and Family Ties. As marvelous a time as it was at Paramount in the late Seventies and early Eighties, across town, another studio was having a much different experience.

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Since the deaths of its founding pair of brothers, the Walt Disney Studio had not been doing well. By 1984, the company was on the verge of being taken over, split into pieces and sold to the highest bidder. If that had happened, Disney would have ceased to exist. Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, had cobbled together a coalition of investors to stave that scenario off and brought in Michael from Paramount (who was actually looking for a new job, having just been passed over for promotion) and Frank Wells from Warner Brothers to be CEO and President, respectively. The move literally saved the company from extinction.

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The coming of Michael and Frank was like the second coming of Walt and Roy. Michael took control of the creative side of Disney while Frank concentrated more on the financial side. Michael even became the public face of Disney by hosting a new version of the long running anthology series, The Wonderful World of Disney, just like the founder did. He hired Jeffrey Katzenberg as head of the film division which helped jump start the Disney Renaissance. He created Touchstone Pictures to broaden the types of movies the company produced. And, as profits began to rise, he began buying up other entities, including ESPN and his old employer, ABC. Moving into the Nineties, everything looked so rosy for Disney under Michael that he formulated a ten year vision he called the Disney Decade, with ambitious plans in every sector. That is, naturally, when things began to unravel.

In 1994, Frank was killed in a helicopter crash. Around that time, Michael suffered a massive heart attack. Katzenberg lobbied for Frank's position, but Roy Disney threatened a shareholder fight if he got it, so Katzenberg left to start his own studio, Dreamworks, poaching as much talent as he could on the way out. Michael brought in Mike Ovitz as President, but Mike only lasted 14 months before getting a massive payout to leave, sparking lawsuits that dragged on for a decade. And to top it all off, EuroDisneyland, which had opened in 1992, was hemorrhaging money and threatening to drag the whole company into the pit of despair.

In the midst of all this turmoil, Michael began making serious missteps. He added the role of President to his duties for a time, which meant that he was in charge of creativity and finances, never a good plan. He failed (and some would say refused is actually the word we're looking for) to create a succession plan. Without great people in charge of individual business units, he began trying to micromanage everything himself, slowly squeezing every ounce of creativity out of the company. Television efforts on ABC began to fail. The film division put out a string of flops. In animation, not only was the renaissance over, but Home on the Range failed to turn a profit. Disney's California Adventure opened to terrible reviews and would take years to become something worth seeing. And eventually, Roy, the man who'd hired Michael in the first place, had had enough.

A very public, very ugly battle between Michael and Roy (who was utilizing a website for his side called savedisney.com) began in 2004. Roy managed to get a whopping 43% of shareholders to vote against keeping Michael on the board of directors. The fight would continue for another year until a beleaguered Michael reluctantly agreed to resign a full year before his contract expired. Although he says that having Bob Iger, the company's current leader, in place convinced him to tender that resignation, there's evidence that the board made Bob his replacement whether he liked it or not. On September 2005, Michael severed all formal ties with the Walt Disney Company after more than two decades of both magnificent high points and devastating low points.

Since leaving Disney, Michael has done all right for himself (helped in no small part by the stock he took with him). From 2006-2009, he hosted his own talk show on CNBC, Conversations with Michael Eisner. He's created an investment firm, The Tornante Company (it's the Italian word for hair-pin turn), that owns an English soccer team, half interest in the Topps Company (the baseball card folks) and produces a hit show on Netflix, Bojack Horseman, among other ventures. In 2010, he published a book, Working Together, describing the great partnerships he (and others) has had over his lifetime and why partnerships succeed (too bad he couldn't remember that advice in the late Nineties). And it's not like his relationship with Disney has remained completely sour. In 2006, the Team Disney building in Burbank was renamed the Michael D. Eisner Building.

October 27 - Walt Disney's Disneyland

On this day, in 1954, the first Disney television production, Walt Disney's Disneyland, debuted on ABC. As the plans for his theme park proceeded, Walt had his brother, Roy, explore any and every avenue for funding. One way Roy came up with was to provide programming for a television network. The idea almost didn't take hold, CBS and NBC both passed, but finally Roy convinced ABC that it would work. The result was an anthology series that would give Disney some much needed money and advertising and the fledgling network something for people to watch for decades to come.

The original premise of the show was that Walt would come into people's homes each week and give them a taste of what was being built in Anaheim, then present some sort of story for their enjoyment. The opening of the show not only mentioned Disneyland as a whole but named four of the lands that guests would be able to experience once they got there: Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and Frontierland. One of the lands would be highlighted each week. For instance, when the Davy Crockett episodes aired, Frontierland was the theme. If a behind the scenes look at Lady and the Tramp was on, the theme was Fantasyland. Tomorrowland night might be a look at the future of cars and a showing of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would mean it was an Adventureland show. This format would define the show until the early Eighties, even though the name would change on a semi-regular basis.

In 1958, the name of the show changed to Walt Disney Presents and went from Wednesday nights to Friday nights (for two years) before settling on Sunday nights, a time slot it would occupy for the next 21 years. During this period, Walt promoted anything that needed it, from Sleeping Beauty to any additions to Disneyland. Westerns were popular at this time and Disney obliged with series like "Texas John Slaughter." Some episodes even featured a mix of animation and live action, with Walt having conversations with everyone from Mickey Mouse to Jiminy Cricket.

Big changes came to both television and the show in 1961. While the format stayed the same, the show began airing on NBC, who was the first network to broadcast in color. As a result the show's name was changed to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. The first show featured the first Disney character ever created specifically for television, Ludwig Von Drake, singing a song about all the colors that could now be seen on the screen. It's said that song alone sold more color television sets than anything else that year. Because Walt had the foresight to film everything from the earlier versions of the show in color, saving money and showing reruns wasn't a problem. When Walt died in 1965, he had already filmed the openings for the remainder of the season so the studio went ahead and used them. Following that season, however, everyone realized that to try to replace Walt with a different host would be a mistake and the openings were cut.

By 1969, all three networks broadcast in color, which naturally meant it was time to change the shows name once again. Now called The Wonderful World of Disney, the show would continue to gain in popularity and was ranked in the top 20 shows well into the mid Seventies. A big change to the show during this era was the airing of popular Disney films, edited into special two hour blocks. Unfortunately, as NBC began losing viewership as a whole, the show itself slipped in the ratings. As America's tastes changed throughout the second half of the Seventies, the CBS news show Sixty Minutes began to regularly clobber The Wonderful World.

In 1979, in an effort to save the show, the name was shortened to Disney's Wonderful World. A new disco themed opening was added over a computer created logo. None of that helped. Sixty Minutes remained the new king of Sunday night and by 1981, NBC called it quits. CBS picked the show up, changed the name to Walt Disney and moved it to Saturday nights. By this time there was little new content to air and the show couldn't compete with Diff'rent Strokes and Silver Spoons on NBC. On September 24, 1983, the 29 year run of Disney's anthology show came to an end on network television.

Which didn't mean the show was never seen again. At the time of its ending, The Disney Channel was launched and reruns would appear there for the next two decades. Disney would sort of revive the show in 1986, with the company's new CEO Michael Eisner as host, as The Disney Sunday Movie. My personal favorites from this era were the two Mr. Boogedy halloween films. In 1988, the format would change from a two hour block to just one hour and be called The Magical World of Disney. Both of these versions suffered from lackluster ratings however and the plug was pulled in 1990.

Since 1991, a show called The Wonderful World of Disney (not to be confused with the earlier version of the same name) has aired with less and less frequency on various networks, until Disney purchased ABC where it now resides exclusively. Now mostly used as a format to showcase special events, it is still technically on the air. This gives it the distinction of being the second longest-running prime time television series. The first is another anthology series, Hallmark Hall of Fame.

Also on this day, in American history: The Federalist Papers