This recently acquired vintage Disneyland image shows a cast member straddling the Jungle Cruise dock and the Ganges Gal boat. Very dapper looking, especially that watch! The back had “1955” handwritten on it. Not one to just trust handwriting vs. a slide date stamp, I looked at my Jungle Cruise collection to see if the cast member uniform matched the time period.
Not only did the uniform match another 1955 image in my collection, it matched the cast member!
It appears that the striped shirt only lasted the first year of this attraction’s operation, replaced by a floral/Hawaiian motif, as seen in the August 1956 shot below:
See more Disneyland Jungle Cruise photos at my main website.
4 comments:
Well that is just crazy. In all the years you've been acquiring pics like this, have you ever had any from two different batches that just happened to correspond like that? Yes, I do realize based on the sunlight that these were taken at different times, and probably different days but still, the match... Wow. I'd love to see you do a run on pics from different batches that just happen to line up. That dude's expression... Today's CMs are forced into artificial happiness, always smiling and waving. Back then a guy could throw you a look that said "One more picture and I swear I'll clobber you." For me the bigger takeaway is the attire. I read a couple of books by a friend of mine who writes strictly about the Jungle Cruise. One day I asked him why he had a preference to the old straw hat getup over the felt hats that came after. He said it just looked light and breezy like you're on vacation or something. The felt hats and uniform were heavier and more serious. ( I prefer those ones. ) I wonder what the straw hat attire was supposed to emulate? Not Bogart in African Queen, so what then?
Looking back on my days as a CM in the 70s, I was struck by the mix of us 'young kids' and those who had years of experience, a number of whom were WWII and Korean vets. Wages back in the 50s may seem meager by today's standards, but there were many who were entering 'middle-age' making a career piloting the Jungle Boat around at a 'living wage' in the beginning. This first fellow fits that image. Not exactly a freckled-faced young whippersnapper. More of one who might had seen action in the real jungles. I treasured my straw hat, it was comfortable and 'air cooled'. And it could be shaped many ways while also being folded into a back pocket. We bounced around with several costumes over those years. I preferred the khaki look but also on hot summer days the 'leisure' Hawaiian shirt wearing sandals on that splintery dock as also shown in that last picture. Sadly, my hat eventually disintegrated after many years sitting on a closet shelf having survived many moves. KS
Thank you KS, wow, what a great insight. It sounds like there was a time you could choose which option ( straw/khaki ) when coming to work? Yeah, I wondered about sandals and surrounding debris. I never thought about splinters. Wow. I wished you'd been interviewed for that book. ...come to think of it, were you? Skipper Marley's? Man, I'd love to hear more of your memories of that time.
KS - Like Bryan, this is the first I'd heard about being able to choose costumes! How cool.
Bryan - The inspiration for the striped outfit seems more Calypso to me than Jungle.
Post a Comment