So, Halloween is now just a few days away.I've made my usual loops through the California and Florida resorts to check on the decorations.
The decorations, in my opinion, are better at DCA than at Disneyland, and the mood of Halloween is best experienced at Mickey's Not-So-Scary at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.
But Halloween, or more specifically trick-or-treating, has a long history inside the Disney Company.So today, as a mid-week extra, I'm going to post up our annual omnibus of Halloween-related stories to get everyone here in the mood for the holiday.
I'm going to drop us down into that episode right now. At this point in the year, we're moving very quickly up to Halloween, which is now the second most popular holiday in America.
Trick-or-treaters, festive parades, candy, scary movies, and costumes.But a little more than a century ago, none of these traditions existed in America.In terms of a historical timeline, these are all recent developments.
In its own way, Disney had a hand in shaping this holiday through its cartoons and TV shows.Also, Halloween had a hand in shaping Disney.Without Halloween, it's unlikely that Disneyland would have been built in Anaheim.
Halloween was the key to make that connection.And so today, we'll take a look at the history of Halloween as it relates to the Disney Company, to all of the connections between that holiday and the studio during the lifetime of Walton Roy.
So if you've got your fun-sized candy bars all set out, if your pumpkins have been carved with care, and if you're ready to explore how the worlds of Disney and Halloween collide, then settle in
as we serve up a strange witch's brew of animation, amusement parks, and, of course, Halloween. Let's start with Halloween itself.
Halloween has long roots in Europe, to Celtic religious celebrations and later to the Catholic tradition of All Souls Day.
But these traditions weren't immediately taken up in America as early Puritan settlers wanted to distance themselves from both pagan traditions and those of the Catholic Church.
Halloween mostly got a foothold in America in the mid-1800s when a new wave of immigrants left Ireland to escape famine and settled in the U.S., bringing with them the traditions of their homeland.
These traditions included stories about the dead and spirits returning at the end of the fall harvest season.But beyond these stories, the Irish had traditions where kids carved up faces in turnips or gourds to scare off travelers.
This would be an early version of what later became the jack-o'-lantern. Other immigrants also had traditions whereby they would play Halloween pranks on neighbors, taking down a gate, painting an image on a fence, or soaping up windows.
One unique prank was to light celery on fire, which produced a lot of smoke, and then holding that lit stalk next to a neighbor's front door so the smoke, entering through a gap or perhaps through the keyhole, filled the front room with haze.
The tradition of pranking or tricking was taken up by American children, mostly boys, who used Halloween as an excuse to cause mischief.
Some of these pranks were minor, but others approached the level of vandalism, with windows broken, gates busted off their hinges, outhouses tipped over, and livestock let out to wander the fields.
In some towns these issues were referred to as boy trouble, as it was mostly gangs of boys who caused the damage.
One typical lark reported in the Pittsburgh press in 1894 reads, among the hollowing pranks here last night was the decoration of the porch of the United Presbyterian Parsonage where Reverend Milligan lives.
Beer kegs and pyramids, beer signs, signs announcing racing and pole selling, and signs of Sunday papers were placed all over it.Boys carried a dummy labeled Reverend Mulligan around and finally hung it on a tree.Church people are indignant.
Though these pranks started mostly in rural areas, by the early 20th century small groups were moving through cities on Halloween.Some of their pranks could no longer be considered mischievous play of any kind.
This is from the October 31st, 1918 edition of the Topeka State Journal, which described a Halloween tragedy that stemmed from one of these pranks. Ms.
Tracy Kloppel, a conductorette on a streetcar, is in a hospital with internal injuries that may cause death, and nine boys are held without bond by the police as a result of an early Halloween prank in Kansas City, Kansas late Wednesday night.
Streetcar tracks on a steep hill were waxed with candles, and a car slipped back, striking one on which Ms.Kloppel was riding and driving it into a third.The conductorette was caught in the wreckage in the rear platform of her car.
The Kansas law makes parents responsible for Halloween pranks of children, and in addition, the streetcar company announced that it would prosecute the boys now held.
In some cities, these pranks led to altercations between those being pranked and those arranging the pranks.
In one such case, a businessman who was tripped with a wire fitted across the sidewalk, after falling, took out a revolver and shot one of the young men who had set the trap.
To better occupy kids on Halloween, cities started to have neighborhood or even citywide parties trying to attract kids with games, treats, and often parades.Some were arranged by the city itself.Others were arranged by civic groups and churches.
Some were simply arranged by parents in neighborhoods where one house might offer musical entertainment, another might help kids make an easy costume, and yet another might provide snacks or treats.
These treats were nothing like those commercially produced packets of candy that are now distributed at Halloween.The treats back then might include apples, nuts, homemade cakes, and donuts.
But in this are the early beginnings of an American holiday. Some easy costumes, such as ghost costumes made from old sheets, or disposable paper costumes that could be purchased cheaply at a store, and party snacks handed out at the house next door.
And in terms of the timeline, this is where Disney starts to engage with some of the materials of Halloween.
The earliest spooky film that the studio produced was in 1929, the Silly Symphony short, The Skeleton Dance, which was a macabre musical presentation in a graveyard.
With bats, owls, black cats, and a full moon, the cartoon, without specifically mentioning Halloween, touched on elements of this holiday, specifically the idea of the dead coming back to visit the living.
This film was released on August 29th to large cities, which meant that as its release expanded across America, it arrived in many theaters in October, where local reporters saw it as an ideal way to get in the mood for the holiday.
This is from an October 1929 newspaper in Wisconsin. If you want to get all spooked in preparation for Halloween, see the sound feature, which is part of the program, at the Owl Ringling Theater again tonight.
It's called the Skeleton Dance, and it's one of the funniest things imaginable, with hooting owls, black cats, and rattling bones.Likewise, the Des Moines Register said, the Skeleton Dance is a fun, spooky Halloween comedy.
So, even though Disney didn't specifically create a Halloween cartoon, some reviewers quickly designated this as an ideal Halloween offering.
From here, in some regions, these community parties where kids moved from one house to the next evolved into trick-or-treating.
But when I searched newspaper databases for the term trick-or-treat in the early 1930s, references to this phrase showed up only in a few states, also in Canada.In fact, Canada was the primary place where this term showed up.
suggesting that its presence there was larger in the 1930s than it was in the States.In the States, the term does show up a little in California and also in the Midwest.
When it does appear, it's often in an article in which the reporter is explaining to readers how this new idea of trick-or-treating actually works.
And again, the civic strategy here is to occupy kids and teenagers on Halloween so they aren't driven to mischief. These articles typically pointed out that this trend was slowly growing among young Americans.
The following is from a 1933 newspaper article published in California explaining that keeping treats on hand is a way to discourage kids from vandalizing your property.
If the threat is hurled at you tonight by a bunch of goblins, you had best be ready with a treat.Otherwise, dire things may happen to you.This particular phase of Halloween may have risen with the new generation.
Time was when we used to admonish the young folks not to damage property or persons on Halloween.Twas just a wasted effort.Experience has taught us to save ourselves in this line.
If adults wish to prevent windows from being soaked or avoid having a miscellaneous assortment of junk heaped up in the yards, they must look to it.
The recommended treats during this era were again homemade cakes, cookies, possibly an apple or nuts.In terms of store-bought items, maybe a small sampling of jelly beans.
But we're still years away from anything that resembles a modern American Halloween.
The evolution of trick-or-treating in America might have expanded from those early outings quickly moving across the country, but one event brought this all to a halt, the Second World War.
The war in the Pacific cut the United States off from regions that traditionally supplied it with sugar, specifically Hawaii, as cargo shipments needed to be curtailed after the Japanese occupied the Philippines.
Shipments of sugar from South America were also reduced as cargo ships now needed to serve the war effort and also as some cargo ships were targeted by German U-boats.The supply of sugar in the U.S.was quickly reduced by 70%.
As a result, sugar was the first food rationed during the war.Each household received ration stamps that they could use every four weeks to receive two pounds of sugar.
But even if you had a stamp, you might not be able to find sugar, as the sugar supply during the war at times was significantly below the number of ration stamps that had been distributed.
As the war continued, the allotment of sugar was reduced per person until it was nearly half what it had been at the beginning of the war.
with a greatly reduced sugar supply, trick-or-treating along with those homemade cakes and cookies that fueled the festivities faded away, at least it did for a little while, until cargo shipments of sugar regularly resumed and the ration was lifted in 1947.
During this period, the mid to late 1940s, the Disney studio had Halloween parties.The social gatherings during these years were arranged around one's work group.The background painters would hold their own celebration, same for the in-betweeners.
Some remember that it was the in-betweeners, typically the youngest artists at the studio, who started dressing up for Halloween. but it was the women of ink and paint who were the most festive.
At the Burbank studio, Disney planned two centers for social gatherings.The men had the penthouse club, which was at the top of the animation building, and the women had the tea room, which was at the top of the ink and paint building.
The tea room by far was the more festive location for almost any holiday.Olive Boucher, who worked there during those years, explained that, we celebrated many special events in that tea room, including costumed Halloween parties.
As many of the women worked in rows or units, it became a tradition for the women in one unit or row to coordinate their costumes together, with awards given to the most original and elaborate group.
In a separate interview, Boucher explained, Halloween was the big event of the year for dressing up and having a lot of fun. One year, my corridor all went as a leper colony.It was pretty gruesome.
We had great fun going into Hollywood to buy burlap, masks, and costume accessories.We entered the tearoom in costume, crawling and limping to the cries of horror from the other girls.
Other women who attended the tearoom parties recalled that Halloween was crazy.Becky Fulberg explained it got more ridiculous and then the bookkeeping, the office people, they wanted to dress up too.
But once Halloween was taken up by the office and business staff at the studio, the artists, at least for a time, became less interested in it. In 1947, once that sugar ration was lifted, trick-or-treating returned in force to America.
But this time, it was different.In the 1930s, kids had trick-or-treated down rural streets, where houses were separated by many acres.
Or the trick-or-treating happened in the city, where people often lived in tall buildings, neither of which location lent themselves to an exciting night of knocking on dozens and dozens of doors.
But in the late 1940s, young American families were moving by the millions to newly created suburbs where houses were built next to each other block after block after block, which was ideal for a night of trick-or-treating.
But America after the war was also a far more prosperous nation, with real wages rising each year.In this, many things that were once made at home were now bought at stores.
For Halloween, this meant that families no longer made costumes at home and no longer baked cakes for trick-or-treaters.Instead, they largely bought costumes at stores.The costumes they now bought
were different than those disposable paper costumes cheaply made and cheaply sold in the 1920s.These now were boxed costumes with hats, masks, accessories, and clothes made from fabric.
Families also bought candy at the store to hand out on Halloween, such as hard candy or loose jelly beans, which was the start of the modern holiday. Disney was one of the first studios to key into this phenomenon.
Even while the new version of this holiday was taking root across the country, Disney considered adding elements of a modern Halloween to one of its animated features.The feature was the adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
In the film, one of those stories, the one about Mr. Toad, was based on a British book.The other, The Adventures of Ichabod Crane, was based on an American short story, famous for the appearance of the Headless Horseman.
On screen, the British story about Toad was narrated by a British actor, Basil Rathbone.The American story was narrated by Bing Crosby, who was likely the most famous American singer of the era.
In the finished film, Crosby narrates the story of Ichabod as an off-camera narrator, but that was not the original plan.The original plan was to feature Bing Crosby and his family as they prepared to go out for a night of trick-or-treating.
and the shooting of this proposed segment would have occurred just one year after sugar rationing ended and just as trick-or-treating was finally gaining traction as a way to celebrate Halloween across the country.
Disney director Jerry Geronimi recalled that originally the story was to have Crosby and his sons in the opening in live action getting ready to go out on a trick-or-treat.
Bing tells them the story of the legend of Sleepy Hollow but that version fell through. If I had to take a guess as to why that version fell through, it would be this.
Though trick-or-treating was familiar in California, due to some regional popularity before the war, it wasn't yet fully a national tradition, though it was starting to move in that direction.
to invest in a trick-or-treat sequence in an animated film.And if this trick-or-treating idea again faded away, would quickly make this film seem dated.But by the early 1950s, neighborhood trick-or-treating was happening on Halloween across America.
By this point, Disney felt comfortable enough to fully theme a cartoon to this relatively new craze. The 1952 cartoon was called Trick or Treat, starring Donald Duck and his nephews.
In ways, this cartoon is a celebration of many Halloween traditions of the 20th century.The cartoon starts with the image of Donald Duck quickly painted with whitewash on a fence.
This is the exact type of Halloween vandalism that had moved across America at the start of the century.
This image then cross-fades to a title card that has the phrase, Walt Disney, Donald Duck, but these words too had been recently painted on a fence, with the paint still dripping down below the bottom of each letter.
After some pre-cartoon credits, the film focuses in on a house window, on which someone has recently painted or soaked the words, Trick or Treat, which is the title of the film.
The story focuses on Donald's nephews out for trick-or-treating in their neighborhood.They are each dressed in what are almost surely sophisticated store-bought costumes, which would have been a relatively new occurrence in 1952.
One as a devil, one as a witch, and one as a ghost.Well, maybe the ghost costume could have been homemade, but the other two have all the components of a store-bought boxed costume package.
On their way to Donald's house, they pass Witch Hazel out for an evening ride on her broom.But the custom of trick-or-treating is so new in this neighborhood that Witch Hazel doesn't initially understand what the three boys are trying to do.
Once she figures it out and then sees how Donald has put exploding fireworks into the nephew's bags instead of candy, she offers to help the boys to get the treats she feels they now deserve.
To do this, she creates a witch's spell that places other objects or other characters under her command.
Before spraying it on Donald, she tries it out on a few inanimate objects, all of which reference the most common types of Halloween vandalism from the early part of the 20th century.
She sprays it on a paintbrush so that it leaves a strip of green on Donald's white house. She then sprays it on fence posts so that the fence entirely comes apart, and she sprays it on a gate so the gate removes itself from its hinges.
She then applies the brew to Donald, which through some musical antics eventually gets the kids their goodies, which are a combination of fruit and individually packaged hard candy such as lollipops.
Though a few companies were making miniature candy bars in the early 1950s, junior or fun-sized candy bars weren't widely produced until Mars Incorporated, that's the company that owned Snickers, M&Ms, Three Musketeers, and many others, started producing them for Halloween in 1961.
But in 1952, Walt was among the first to feature trick-or-treating on screen as though he somehow sensed that this would not be a short-lived fad and that perhaps this Donald Duck cartoon would seem current for many years to come.
The short was released on October 10, 1952, clearly timed as a Halloween offering.
The release was supported with a comic book, which was based on the film, and with a children's record, which included the song also called Trick or Treat from the film.
From there, the cartoon would appear on the Disneyland TV series, often as part of a Halloween episode, and would be included in many Disney Halloween specials, both on TV and on home video.
One interesting takeaway here is that the song, Trick or Treat, which is heard throughout the cartoon, was sung by Thurl Ravenscroft and the Mellow Men, who would later sing a much more famous,
Halloween-esque tune, Grim Grinning Ghost, which was placed in the most Halloween-oriented attraction at Disneyland and Disney World, which is the Haunted Mansion.
But for Disney, the most important Halloween story didn't take place at the studio or on the big screen.It took place in Anaheim in 1953.In fact, without Halloween, there would be no Disneyland in Anaheim.
Halloween was the key to bringing Disneyland to that city as opposed to another location up or down the route of the proposed freeway.And here is how it all worked out.
By the middle of 1953, Walt was actively looking for a place to build his amusement park.
His initial plans to build it across the street from the studio had been foiled when Walt couldn't convince the city of Burbank to lease additional land space to him to create a parking lot.
But after that, and with some help from consultants, Walt tried to option land just outside of Anaheim, but that plan was spoiled when word leaked out that a buyer with deep pockets was buying land near the proposed freeway route.
Speculators purchased this land, believing that the unknown developer would likely later buy it from them at an elevated price.
Even after that deal fell apart, Walt was still eyeing 17 tracts of land in roughly the same area, about a block from the original site just outside of Anaheim.
Also at this point he was starting to realize that he and his team, which was largely made up of artists, didn't have enough information about land rights in this unincorporated section of Orange County to know with absolute surety that they would be able to build an experimental amusement park there.
they needed information on how to rezone the land from agricultural use to land approved for an amusement park before pursuing the Anaheim area as an option for Disneyland.
But Walt didn't want to confide in outsiders about his plan, as this might lead to another round of speculators buying up land that interested Disney in the hopes that they might make a quick buck.
The problem, quite simply, was that Walt needed information, but he had no real means to get this information without revealing his overall plan.Then, Walt and his team had a little bit of luck, or at least what they believed was luck.
A few months earlier, the city of Anaheim had requested help from the Disney Studio to expand its annual Halloween parade, making it the centerpiece of a multi-day festival designed to put Anaheim on the map.
This was the exact type of city-sponsored Halloween party and parade that had become very popular in the U.S.during the 1920s and 30s.
Only as similar events in other cities faded in popularity, as trick-or-treating became the centerpiece activity for the post-war Halloween holiday, the Anaheim event grew in popularity.
In Anaheim, residents enjoyed both a Halloween festival and trick-or-treating.The city was the center of Halloween festivals for all of Orange County.
Disney agreed to contribute floats to the parade, beautifully decorated platforms that would include scenes from Snow White, Pinocchio, and Peter Pan.
This offer quickly expanded though to include an entire parade unit with six floats total as this event would be an excellent way for a Disney representative to talk with city officials without those officials realizing their actual goals.
Animator Roy Williams would draw up plans for the parade unit dubbed Walt Disney's Fairyland.
One float would even feature Cinderella's Storybook Castle, a structure strikingly similar to the one that Walt Disney wanted to place in the center of his amusement park.
The parade would not only be a goodwill gesture, but also a stealthy preview of the type of dimensional entertainment that Walt wanted to permanently bring to the region.
Once Walt was on board with the parade, the city of Anaheim asked that Walt choose one of his employees to be an honorary judge for the parade. Walt chose Nat Weinkauf, an extremely practical decision considering his options.
Weinkauf was by far the most eccentric of the WED employees.In his ridiculous red vest and black suit, Weinkauf looked like a creature from Hollywood, someone entirely consumed with the business of motion pictures.
Each morning, Weinkauf manicured his mustache to a neat pencil line. He wore flamboyant ties and spoke with a slight affectation.No one would ever suspect that he was in Anaheim to secretly gather information about a possible land deal.
Specifically, Weinkauf's mission was to inquire about variances to the zoning code and the expansion of city utilities without revealing Walt's intention to build an amusement park in Orange County.
He could ask about companies in general, or even about other national corporations that had recently opened new offices and factories in Orange County as a way to better understand how or if.
Walt might change zoning ordinances on farm property so that this land could be used for a mass entertainment project.Without a change in zoning, the land that Walt was then looking at would be near worthless to him.
Pending positive reports from Weinkauf, the WED team intended to use a third-party agent, namely John Gilchrist of the Los Angeles office of Caldwell Banker, to option the land so as to not inadvertently inflate real estate prices.
Since the loss of even one of those 17 parcels could destroy the entire deal, They all agreed to tell no one in Anaheim their intentions until the land was secure, not the city, not the county, not even the Chamber of Commerce.
But as the Halloween date approached, Walt's team realized that a strategy of complete secrecy while soliciting information would be near impossible to achieve, even with Weinkauf at the festival as a parade judge.
His questions about zoning procedures would call too much attention to themselves.
After assessing the risks and benefits of confiding in key city officials, they agreed that Weinkauf might be allowed to quietly discuss their project with at least one person in Anaheim.
On Saturday, October 31st, Nat Weinkauf drove to Anaheim most likely with one or two other members of the Disney Public Relations team. He walked through the outdoor festival, passing carnival-style food booths and games of chance.
The day's events included a children's parade, a whiskerino contest to identify the man with the bushiest beard, and a beauty pageant to announce the festival queen.
In the afternoon, Weinkauf joined the other 17 judges to award prizes to the best floats, that is, floats that would later appear in the festival's fabulous evening parade.Included in the group were floats created by Disney.
On one, Cinderella stood before her fairytale castle.In another, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck rode an amusement park coaster called the Tunnel of Spooks. It was as though, through these artistic contributions, Disney was hinting at its larger aims.
The judges fell, by and large, into two groups, members of the Hollywood entertainment community, such as Nat Weinkauf, and members of companies looking to expand their manufacturing business in California, such as two executives from the Ford Motor Company.
Most of the judges were selected for the same reason, to introduce business executives to the town of Anaheim with the hope that they might decide to do business there.
After finishing his duties as judge, Weinkauf quietly sought out a member of Anaheim's Chamber of Commerce, Ernie Moeller, to explain Walt's plan to build an amusement park in Orange County and then to ask questions.
Understanding the importance of this conversation, Moeller asked if it would be alright to include City Manager Keith Murdoch in their discussion. Weinkauf agreed.Now two people would know about the plan.
But Weinkauf figured that either everything was about to come together, or it was all about to fall apart.It was too late to turn back now.But even here, it's unclear exactly who was playing whom.
For months, Weinkauf had made trips to Anaheim, helping to organize Disney's participation in the Halloween festival, while slyly asking officials a question here and a question there about zoning ordinances.
But years later, one Anaheim City official would also confess that Ernie Moeller was playing Disney, in that he had known about the amusement park project for months, most likely from a local realtor.
When Ernie Moeller, who was the Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Keith Murdoch explained, heard about Disney's interest in establishing a park, he invited Walt's personal representative for this expansion, a fellow by the name of Nat Weinkauf, to come to the Halloween parade to be a judge.
So it's possible, in fact likely, that the Chamber of Commerce had been quietly feeding Nat Weinkauf information about Anaheim with the hopes of bringing the semi-secret amusement park project to their city.
Late in the afternoon, as the autumn sun sent long shadows across the town, the three men sat in a parked car, hidden away in an alley behind the chamber's office building.
Once settled, Weinkauf relaxed, his demeanor becoming more casual, his body turned to the driver's seat to face Moeller and Murdoch.
He explained Walt's problems in detail, specifically that sections of the parcel that they had initially tried to buy had been bought out from under them, requiring them to search for a new site.
The new site, Weinkauf explained, needed to be located close to the freeway expansion, It needed to be a relatively flat parcel, as Walt intended to build a lake on it large enough for a steamboat.
It also needed to be free of electrical lines and other tall structures, allowing Walt the clear shot to send television signals from the park to the signal antenna atop Mount Baldy.
Though it's now unclear exactly how much information Ernie Moeller had previously possessed about the Disney park, both men from Anaheim were surprised by the enormity of the plan.
Moeller and Murdoch agreed to search for other possible sites within or near the city limits and report back to Weinkauf in a couple of days.
We outlined two likely sites," Murdoch later wrote, which met Disney's criteria about 160 acres near to and accessible from a freeway.One was along the west side of Euclid, north from Ball Road.
The other was bound by La Palma, Magnolia, Crescent, and Gilbert.Both sites were mainly orange groves with few buildings.
The following Saturday, Walt, along with Dick Irvine and Nat Weinkauf, drove to Anaheim in a family-style station wagon to view the sites with Moeller and Murdoch.
Murdoch took them down Euclid to the first site, though along the way they passed a cemetery owned by the Los Angeles Diocese that had fallen into disrepair.Weeds across that property grew waist-high and nearly covered some grave markers.
Walt viewed the cemetery with disappointment, lowering his eyebrows and shaking his head.Noticing this, Moeller explained that the diocese had already promised to clean up the site, but this did little to mollify Walt.
I wouldn't bring my guests past this for love or money, Walt said, without even stopping to consider the area he asked, do you have another site? Yes, we do," replied Murdoch.The next site, located on La Palma Avenue, pleased Walt.
A large tract of land with orange trees and other produce.The land appeared flat and held few structures.They parked on a strip of bare dirt beside an orange grove.Once outside, they walked down dirt avenues between rows of trees.
Moeller indicated that the owners would most likely be cooperative and willing to sell at a reasonable price.
Excited again, Walt took his men out to a celebratory lunch, though the only restaurant he knew in the entire area was the famous fried chicken diner at Knott's Berry Farm.
Over lunch, Walt spoke in a soft, enthusiastic tone, describing how his park might appear on that piece of property.
At a nearby table, however, sat a local realtor who understood enough of Walt's conversation to discern roughly where this new amusement park would be situated.
The following day, while Walt was developing a strategy to secure this new site, this realtor quietly approached landowners and explained that a large company was interested in their land and obtained listings on some key parcels.
When Disney found out about that action, Keith Murdoch recalled, he was infuriated.
He was already a little touchy because of the loss of the original Ball Road site, and so when the second one was lost in much the same manner, he would have no part of it.He decided not to proceed.In years to come,
Walt would rarely talk about this second site for his amusement park, presumably embarrassed by his mistake and continued naivete.
But once when directly questioned, he explained to a local reporter, we found one track in Anaheim, but when people found out what it was for, the price went up.
With the initial Ball Road and also the La Palma sites now lost, Disney and his research team decided to investigate other locations near Anaheim.
Though a site in Santa Ana had ranked high on an earlier list of possible locations, Nat Weinkauf specifically recalled, we then shifted to Garden Grove, where the team began to consider sites with slightly higher land values.
Back in Anaheim, Keith Murdoch and other city officials, weeks after the Halloween festival had finished, continued to search for an alternate location so as not to lose Disney's amusement park to another city.
The effect of the leakage of the well-kept secret at Knott's, Ernie Moeller later wrote, and the threat of competition for the location of the amusement park elsewhere, acted as a catapult for my office, became more resolved than ever.
to hold on to the most promising prospect of putting Anaheim on the map and establishing a sound economic base for the ascending and inevitable growth and transformation from a small, quiet, agricultural-oriented settlement into a robust, dynamic city.
For the Anaheim team, the big break came a couple weeks later, when after church one Sunday, Keith Murdoch was sitting alone in his office, staring at an area map tacked to his wall, which identified all of the land parcels in northern Orange County, as well as their exact acreage and the names of their owners.
I kept looking at that doggone map, Murdoch remembered, thinking, where can we locate it?By chance, he happened again to study the original Ball Road site, located just outside of city limits.
And as he did, he realized something important about the property. The land speculator had only purchased 20 acres, leaving a great deal of the original site available to Disney.
His eyes followed the property line south, noting again that the original site ended at Cerritos Avenue.But on the other side of Cerritos Avenue, he found more family farms, most of which he thought could be purchased for a fair price.
Then it occurred to him. the county would only need to close Cerritos Avenue to interest Disney in this area again.
Because the land was just outside of the city limits and located in the unincorporated territory, city officials didn't have jurisdiction to close the roads by themselves, but Murdoch was fairly sure that county officials would agree to close that section of the road so long as Disney owned all of the surrounding land.
After consulting a book on municipal law, he read the procedures required to close a section of a county street only to discover that he had been correct.
If Disney owned all of the surrounding land, the county should then agree to abandon a section of street for a purpose beneficial to the region.
Believing his plan had the potential to locate Disney's park on land that most likely would become part of Anaheim through annexation, he called Ernie Moeller, who excitedly agreed to call Nat Weinkauf and Dick Irvine the following morning.
That week, Moeller and Murdoch met with Walt, Dick Irvine, and Nat Weinkauf at the Burbank studio.
Using a map, Murdoch outlined his plan to create a new site for Waltz Amusement Park by using part of the original site combined with additional property south of Cerritos Avenue.
Effectively, this new site would be located one block south of the original Ball Road location. Guarded but interested, Walt asked, Can you do that?
Murdoch then explained the procedure to close a portion of a street located in an unincorporated section of Orange County. Walt studied the map, tilting his head before turning his attention back to Moeller and Murdoch.
If you can close that street, he said, we've got a deal.Walt extended his hand, and with that the men assembled there began to smile.
On the basis of Murdoch's presentation, Walt was drawn back to Anaheim, specifically to 14 family citrus, walnut, and sweet potato farms along the proposed route of the new Interstate Freeway, a site that was very close to the one he had originally pursued.
And with that, the Disney team was now back on track to create a park in Anaheim, but without Halloween and the Anaheim Halloween Festival, Disneyland could have very easily ended up in another city, such as La Mirada or Santa Ana.
But with this, Disneyland would now, after considerable work, be built in the location where it still exists today. And that is our Halloween episode.
How Disney contributed to the story of Halloween and how Halloween contributed to the story of Disney.
So next time you're watching Donald Duck in Trick or Treat, notice those references to early 20th century Halloween vandalism that are placed throughout this musical cartoon.
And the next time that you're wandering through Disneyland, take a moment and consider that without Halloween, you might now be wandering through a slightly different version of Disneyland that was built in a slightly different California city.
As a production note, the story about Nat Weinkauf and the Anaheim Halloween Festival was adapted from my book, Three Years in Wonderland, which tells the story of the creation of Disneyland in the mid-1950s.
I hope the holiday is good to you and your family, and until next Sunday, this is Todd James Pierce.
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