Exhibition Hall: Walt Disney's Christmas Carol

Every Christmas season, I still get emails about Walt Disney's Christmas Carol.

In those very early days of 2719 Hyperion, back in the latter months of 2006, I featured what I thought was an interesting, if rather obscure piece of Disney ephemera from the 1950s.  A friend, upon cleaning out the nooks and crannies of his elderly parents' home, presented me with eight torn, water-stained and near crumbling pages that had been removed from a copy of the December 1957 issue of McCalls magazine.  Contained on those pages was an illustrated holiday vignette entitled Walt Disney's Christmas Carol.  It was a perfect match for my fledgling Disney blog and on December 16, 2006, I posted the article Cedric's Christmas Carol that described what I considered a likely long forgotten piece of holiday nostalgia.

Shortly thereafter, the emails started arriving.  I heard from many fellow baby boomers who distinctly remembered this liberal retelling of the Dickens classic from their childhoods.  For many, it was a holiday tradition to read the story on Christmas Eve.  And every correspondence I received included a request for a copy of the story.

With the launch of the 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall, I realized I finally had an ideal forum in which to make available the complete text and illustrations of Walt Disney's Christmas Carol.  You can read the complete story in Exhibit Room 3S.  Enjoy!

Service With Character: Memorial Day Edition

In honor of the Memorial Day holiday, we are presenting a special edition of our very popular 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall series Service with Character: Disney World War II Insignia.  Today we feature twelve emblems collected from 1944 issues of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.

32nd Sqd. Air Training Corps

494th Base Headquarters and Air Base Squadron

Co C 714th Tank Btn. 12th Armored Div.

799th Bombardment Squadron

881st Field Artillery Battalion

Army Nurse Corp

 Bombing Squadron 102

 Hq. Sq. 41 MBDAG-41

 Ships Repair AD-40

 U.S.S. Piedmont

 U.S.S. Sapelo

U.S.S. YMS 329

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall:

Service With Character: Disney World War II Insignia

Service With Character: Whimsical Thought and Serious Intent

Exhibit Hall: Sorry No Win - The Disneyland Dream Machine Tickets

Some pieces of ephemera can have very, very short lifespans.  The perfect example: a Disneyland Dream Machine ticket.  A component of Disneyland's 35th Anniversary celebration in 1990, these non-winning contest tickets were typically discarded within just a few feet of of the main entrance turnstiles where they were distributed.  As near as we can determine, a complete set consisted of twenty-four variations, each with a different character or characters. We have gathered them all together for our newest 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall showcase: Sorry No Win - The Disneyland Dream Machine Tickets.

More than just a memory of the 35th Anniversary celebration, the Dream Machine tickets also provide a snapshot of the popular entertainment that the Disney Company was producing in 1990.  So head on over to the Exhibition Hall and into Exhibit Room 35D and see just who the Disney stars were that graced these now rare mementos of Disneyland history.

Exhibition Hall: Service With Character - Wave II

Our exploration of Disney-designed World War II-era insignia continues in this, our latest 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall exhibit.  Service With Character - Wave II: Whimsical Thought and Serious Intent presents forty more emblem designs culled from the pages of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.  These particular insignia were featured in issues of the comic book published during the early part of 1943.  Included are the corresponding identifications and descriptions that appeared with each design.

Wave II includes a greater representation of established Disney characters.  Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto are all prominently featured, while Jose Carioca, Clara Cluck, the Big Bad Wolf and even a Fantasia broomstick were among other members of the Disney canon drafted into service.

The title of this exhibit is derived from the description for the insigne of the 117th CA GP (AA), affectionately dubbed "Annie Aircraft."  It noted that the design combined "whimsical thought and serious intent."  It seemed an appropriate description for the Disney Studio's overall efforts in providing insignia designs.

Service with Character - Wave II: Whimsical Thought and Serious Intent is currently on display in Exhibit Room 2W2.  Enjoy! 

Exhibition Hall: Service with Character

It is indeed an especially intriguing and engaging category of Disney-produced artwork.  The insignia designs that were created by the studio for military units during World War II remain, remarkably, quite inaccessible.  The book Disney Dons Dogtags by Walton Rawls presented a very extensive collection of Disney insignia-related artwork; it was published in 1992 but unfortunately has been long out of print.

For our newest 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall exhibit, we have collected many of those insignia designs from a somewhat unexpected source--the pages of the comic book series Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.  Frequently during the war years, the comic magazine would typically feature six to twelve insignia designs in a single issue.  For this first installment in the Service with Character exhibit series, we present forty designs that were originally published in that comic during the last few months of 1942.  Included are the corresponding identifications and descriptions that appeared with each design.

Service with Character: Disney World War II Insignia is currently on display in Exhibit Room 2W.  Enjoy!

Exhibiton Hall: Peter Pan's Christmas Story

This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the Walt Disney Company's lesser know holiday traditions.  Beginning in 1960, Disney-produced, holiday-themed comic strips were featured in newspapers across the country.  Each strip was launched in late November and typically ran for approximately four weeks before ending on December 24.  The very first of these annual comic strips was Peter Pan's Christmas Story.

The story, consisting of 24 daily strips, featured Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Captain Hook and Mr. Smee and also included the Seven Dwarfs.  It was written by Frank Reilly with art by Manuel Gonzales.

For many of us baby boomers, these annual "bonus" comic strips were a very big deal indeed.  We would clip and collect them and ultimately put them in a safe place where we would never find them again.  I stumbled upon the strips recently while conducting some wholly unrelated research and it was like magically unlocking an obscure and completely forgotten childhood memory.

So head on over to the Exhibition Hall and into Exhibit Room 2C where, presented in its entirety, is Peter Pan's Christmas Story.  It was originally distributed by Kings Features Syndication and published from November 28 to December 24, 1960.

Visit the 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall!

The 2719 Hyperion Exhibition Hall is officially open.  Our inaugural exhibit is Disney Dali Destino, featuring material related to Destino, an unrealized animated film collaboration between Walt Disney and famed 20th century surrealist artist Salvador Dali.  Walt Disney ultimately shelved the project, but Disney Animation, lead by Roy E. Disney, completed Destino in 2003.

The film is showcased on the recently released Fantasia-Fantasia 2000 Blu-Ray DVD set. Walt Disney Home Entertainment has generously provided  us with production art, correspondence and photographs relating to the original Destino development process that took place during the late 1940s.