Traveling down Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland we come to the Silent Screen Cinema, with headliners Mabel Normand and Fatty Arbuckle.
The two featured shorts are "The Speed Kings," a 1913 Mack Sennett comedy starring Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand:
and "The Great Train Robbery," the 1903 Edwin S. Porter ten minute short that is considered a milestone in filmmaking for its cross cutting, composite editing, hand tinting, and location shooting.
Today, memories of Normand and Arbuckle are tainted by the scandals that they were involved in. Normand had an addiction to drugs and was also a suspect (later cleared) in the still unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor. Arbuckle was accused of raping a young girl in a San Francisco hotel. Although he was cleared of all charges, his career never recovered from the headlines.
A little further down Main Street, we see a White Wing sweeping up the horse poop. Not an enviable job, but somebody's got to do it.
Zooming in for a closer look at East Center Street, with the Gibson Greeting Card Shop on the corner.
Yesterday, I received this sad email from Daveland reader Peter B.:
Last night I was informed that Disneyland removed the large tree that has been sitting on the Plaza Pavilion/Coke Corner for must be 50 plus years.
You can see the tree in this December 1968 image:
And how it looked recently, providing lots of shade to this little area of the park:
Last bit for today is on yesterday's news of the passing of comedienne Joan Rivers.
I discovered her back in the 80's when my dad took me to see her at the Valley Forge Music Fair. I thought she was one of the funniest people I had ever seen. She was brutal to a number of celebrities (Elizabeth Taylor, the Royal Family,…) but most of all, her humor poked fun at herself. Her timing and delivery were impeccable. I wore out my vinyl version of “What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most” until I could practically recite the whole album myself. She rarely (if ever) apologized for her somewhat offensive jokes which touched on such subjects as weight, religion, and the Holocaust. As she stated herself, "I've learned to have absolutely no regrets about any jokes I've ever done ... You can tune me out, you can click me off, it's OK. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party."
Whether you liked her or not, you could never say the woman was lazy. Even at the age of 81, she worked endlessly, rarely turning down a gig no matter where it was. RIP, Joan. You were a true trailblazer.
See more Daveland Disneyland Main Street, U.S.A. photos at my main website.
That's too bad about the tree, but I'd assume it was removed for legitimate reasons. Some of the trees at Disneyland are getting up there in age and problems are going to come up. If that large tree came down, that's a lot of people at risk for injury in that specific spot, not to mention damage to the buildings. I'd guess there's going to be more of this activity in the near future due to Disneyland's aging landscape.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the silent movie links. I love those.
Didn't catch your Joan Rivers tribute. I absolutely loved this woman! How cool that you got to see her in person. She didn't wait for life to happen. She made it happen.
ReplyDeleteLikewise. Sad to see Joan go but she earned her keep. Also, I hate seeing trees go but since the history of DL is recently rife with trees falling over in ADV and FRT lands, I'd like to *think* there was a good reason.
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