Rocketeer Parkeology

Relating to our recent posts celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the feature film The Rocketeer, our latest theme parkeology expedition unearths a famous helmet and jet pack and spotlights a certain character who traded aviation mechanics for frozen concoctions.

The Rocketeer was well showcased at the then still Disney-MGM Studios when it was released to theaters during the summer of 1991.  Sometime shortly thereafter, Lakeside Newsstand, a small retail venue facing Echo Lake was transformed into Peevy's Polar Pipeline, a refreshment stand specializing in frozen drinks.  Peevy is a prominent character in both the Rocketeer movie and the comics stories that inspired it.  Created by writer-artist Dave Stevens, Peevy is a combination scientist-inventor-airplane mechanic and a faithful friend to Rocketeer alter-ego Cliff Secord.  He was portrayed in the film by actor Alan Arkin.

The decor of Peevy's Polar Pipeline features a number of artifacts from the film, most prominent among them being the iconic Rocketeer helmet and corresponding jet pack.  A sharp eye will also notice a framed newspaper headlining the Rocketeer's first public appearance, a pennant for Bigelow's Air Circus and a replica of the jet pack's schematics that Jenny returns to Peevy near the end of the movie.

Historically, the Rocketeer appeared as part of the nightly Sorcery in the Sky fireworks show at the Studios during the summer of 1991.  In addition, the Bulldog Cafe exterior set piece from the movie resided on the Studio Backlot for a number of years.

I would like to send out a very special acknowledgment and thank you to Jessica from If We Can Dream It . . . who pointed out Peevy's Polar Pipeline to me all the way back in October of 2007.  Jessica was a true online pioneer of theme park details and created one of the first Disney World-related blogs to feature such content. 

Consider the Source: Pulp Fiction, Rocketmen and Betty Paige

In 1991, the Walt Disney Company had very high hopes for The Rocketeer.  It was envisioned as a potential movie trilogy that could in turn spawn a synergistic franchise encompassing merchandising, television and theme park tie-ins.  Sadly, it was not to be.  The movie-going public failed to embrace the concept and thus, the Disney interpretation of the Rocketeer remains limited to the live action feature film that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

Similarly, the Dave Stevens comic book stories that inspired the film are rather slight in actual content.  The entire Rocketeer saga is comprised of just eight chapters totaling 112 pages.  But over the years it has in some ways grown greater than the sum of its parts; it is considered by many to be among the greatest of comic book publications, and Stevens, one of the true masters of the illustrated page.

The Rocketeer stories were born from the then emerging independent comics publishers of the 1980s.  Stevens' very first two Rocketeer chapters debuted in 1982 as backup features in Mike Grell's Starslayer series, published by Pacific Comics.  Chapters three and four migrated to a new anthology title called Pacific Presents which was published in late 1982 and 1983.  Chapter five went to press in 1984 with a wholly different publisher, Eclipse Comics.  Eclipse would later collect all five installments into one over-sized graphic novel collection.  Comico launched a new Rocketeer storyline, Cliff's New York Adventure, in 1988 with the publication of the Rocketeer Adventure Magazine.  Cliff's New York Adventure was continued in a second issue released in 1989, but then the series stalled.  Dark Horse Comics finally published the third issue and concluding chapter of the comic in 1995, some four years after the release of The Rocketeer movie.

Stevens drew inspiration for the Rocketeer primarily from movie serials and pulp magazine characters.  Visually, the Rocketeer outfit and helmet is wholly derivative of designs created for a series of Republic Pictures "Rocket Men" serials released throughout the 1940s and early 1950s.  The two Rocketeer storylines, (The Rocketeer and Cliff's New York Adventure), are very direct homages to 1930s pulp.  The Rocketeer indirectly featured characters from the popular Doc Savage stories, while Cliff's New York Adventure guest starred a thinly disguised version of the Shadow.  Due to potential copyright issues, those elements could not be carried over into Disney's feature film.

Stevens' Rocketeer stories are visually striking, fun and frequently very clever, but the storytelling is at times rushed and occasionally disjointed.  Likely this was due to Stevens falling victim to a run of bad luck in regard to publishers.  In an interview conducted a year prior to his untimely death in 2008, Stevens noted, "The whole experience of jumping from one, two, three, four publishers in a span of a handful of years, it just drummed all the enthusiasm out of me.  I loved the character and I loved creating scenarios in which the cast could play and grow, but it just wasn't meant to be.  If not for the disastrous financial end of it, it might have been a good gig to have for ten years or whatever."

The Rocketeer movie originated when screenwriters Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo contacted Stevens in 1985.  DeMeo remembers. "Dave met with us and saw we were 'kindred souls.'  [He] knew that we understood and respected the pulp genre.  So we really met at the beginning of the road that led to the film--years before pre-production would begin."  Bilson recalls, "We had a story pitch we had developed with Dave that we presented to a number of studios before Disney bought it.  Dave would bring copies of the comic and some of his original art, which was always impressive.  But we didn't write a script until we had a deal.  Then there were several years of revisions and new drafts before the film was finally green-lighted."

Working closely with Stevens, Bilson and DeMeo created a more cohesive storyline from Stevens' first five Rocketeer chapters.  They focused on the central premise of the stolen rocket pack falling into the hands of pilot Cliff Secord and his mechanic friend Peevy, who are then hounded and pursued by a combination of gangsters, Nazis and federal agents.  Forced to jettison the Doc Savage references, they incorporated billionaire and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes into the plot and created a new central antagonist in the form of flamboyant movie star Neville Sinclair.  The Sinclair character, a secret Nazi agent, was inspired by a largely fabricated version of actor Errol Flynn attributed to biographer Charles Higham.  According to Stevens, " . . . from the get-go there was never any great villain.  All there was was the rivalry between Cliff and this--and what do you call it?--a Svengali photographer, and that doesn't make for a big adventure.  So we had to come up with a really suitable villain, and that was where Neville Sinclair came from."

The filmmakers transformed Cliff Secord's Bettie Paige-inspired nude model girlfriend into the more sexually-benign Jenny, in keeping with Disney's more family-friendly sensibilities.  The trio also added the climactic final showdown at the Griffith Observatory, culminating with an intense battle between Cliff and the Nazi agents on board a German zeppelin high in the skies over Hollywood.

Despite objections by some Disney executives, Rockeeter director Joe Johnston insisted on remaining faithful to Stevens' designs, especially in the case of the iconic helmet of the title character.  The Bulldog Cafe, based on an actual 1930s southern California eatery, was also deftly translated from comic to screen.  In an interesting collaborative twist, Stevens, Bilson and De Meo created the film's Lothar character, Sinclair's giant-sized henchman, and then later featured him in the final two chapters of Cliff's New York Adventure.  Bilson and De Meo co-wrote those last two comic installments with Stevens.  Lothar was directly inspired by vintage B-movie actor Rondo Hatton, whose brutish facial features were the result of acromegaly, a pituitary gland disorder.  The persona was recreated for The Rocketeer film by actor Tiny Ron Taylor working with veteran makeup artist Rick Baker.

Stevens was active in the making of the film.  He carried a co-producer credit and worked extensively on production design.  Bilson recalls, "Dave spent a lot of time on the set.  I think most of his energy was in the art of the film."  DeMeo adds, "What I remember was Dave's enthusiasm.  He was really into it, really enjoyed seeing his creation come to life as a film."

While The Rocketeer movie did not live up to Disney's exceptionally high expectations, it was distinctly not the box-office bomb many pundits claim.  And it is fondly remembered by fans and filmmakers alike.  Danny Bilson notes, "The Rocketeer may be the highlight of my long career.  I only wish it had more initial success for all the creative people involved--in particular, Dave Stevens."


Special acknowledgment to interviews with Dave Stevens and Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, published in Back Issue magazine, issue #47. 

Retro Review: Flying High with The Rocketeer

Two decades ago, one of Disney's better live-action films met with a severe case of audience apathy. It has since languished in unfortunate obscurity despite being an exceptionally well crafted period adventure and a loving homage to vintage movie serials and 1930s era pulp heroes.

The Rocketeer deserves to fly much, much higher.

I personally found the film to be very much in the tradition of early Disney live-action movies, though in setting, eras removed from the studio's 19th century adventure stories and swashbucklers.  I am always loathe to in any way channel the ghost of Walt Disney, but I think he would have approved of  The Rocketeer, if not necessarily the slightly edgier Dave Stevens' comic books upon which the movie was based.  Much in the way that Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson provided the boyhood nostalgia for Walt that he then successfully translated into motion pictures, the filmmakers behind The Rocketeer similarly tapped into the nostalgia of classic Hollywood B-movies and serials, and combined that inspiration with the new-found romance with aviation that was prevalent during the 1930s .  The result was an exciting and entertaining romp that was largely ignored by film-goers who, during that summer of 1991, were more enticed by the groundbreaking special effects of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the comedy antics of Billy Crystal in City Slickers.

The Rocketeer was Joe Johnston's sophomore directing effort.  Johnston, a special effects veteran who had cut his teeth with George Lucas on the original Star Wars films, was fresh with success from directing Disney's own Honey I Shrunk the Kids when he was enlisted to helm The Rocketeer.  His special effects background served him well on the assignment and the film's pre-digital-era craftsmanship remains impressive to this day.  Johnston recently directed the excellent The Wolfman remake and is currently wrapping up work on the World Wat II-based Captain America: The First Avenger, set to arrive in theaters this summer.

Beyond its well-executed and fast paced storyline and capable cast, The Rocketeer is a visual cornucopia of 1930s popular culture and Hollywood archetypes.  Aviation pioneer and eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes plays a central role, while Errol Flynn is not so subtly channeled into the villainy of movie star Neville Sinclair, an undercover Nazi agent in pursuit of the jetpack that is the centerpiece of the film.  Also included in the mix is California Crazy architecture in the form of the  Bulldog Cafe; the over-the-top but rather accurate-for-the-era set design of the South Seas Club; the giant German dirigible Luxembourg; the film's climatic showdown at the Griffith Observatory; the true fate of the original and iconic Hollywoodland sign; and a brilliantly realized piece of animated Nazi propaganda showing squadrons of rocket-propelled German soldiers symbolically conquering Europe and North America.

One of the film's most notable components is the perfectly matched score by composer James Horner.  It was an Oscar-worthy effort that went almost entirely unrecognized at the time.  

Disney had intended The Rocketeer to be a trilogy of films, but the lackluster (but not entirely disastrous) box office returns quickly quashed further productions.  The film's troubled production history (screenwriters Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo were fired and rehired several times during the movie's five years of development) and aforementioned box office did not endear it to studio execs, and it has subsequently faded from view.  A bare-bones DVD edition was released in 1999; a restored high definition Blu-Ray would certainly be welcome, but it doesn't appear to be on the company's radar at the moment. 

We will continue to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of The Rocketeer this week at 2719 Hyperion.  Check back tomorrow as we Consider the Source of the movie--the comic book stories of Dave Stevens.