The Rest is History Episode 614: Walt Disney: The Great American Storyteller. So there I was, on my evening walk through the suburban streets of Rosanna, laughing my head off at the start of this episode where Tom Holland regales us through a truly terrible rendition of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’, while Dominic intones the words. But the reality is that this song is burned into my memory as the theme song of Disneyland, which I rarely got to hear as I was usually bundled straight into bed (at 7.30!) unless we were visiting family friends all the way out in Croydon- miles away! It took awhile to all pile into the car, and so I got to hear the song. Mum and Dad would put the back seat down, and we would lie down in the back, watching the orange sodium street lights until we were asleep.
Enough reminiscing. After murdering the song Tom and Dominic redeem themselves by really capturing just how new Walt Disney’s early animations were, starting with Steam Boat Willy in 1928. The sound was fully synchronised to the action, and the cartoon characters actually had their own personalities. The Three Little Pigs in 1933 introduced brilliant colour, and Snow White (1937) was seen as the supreme achievement in animation with thousands upon thousands of drawings. Pinocchio won an Oscar in 1940, and it was followed by Fantasia and Bambi, which presented a particular challenge in depicting animals realistically and yet with human features. They draw a parallel between Walt Disney and Steve Jobs (Apple) in that they both worked in a field where technology was in its infancy, they are linked to California, and moving on from their own ‘tinkering’ from interest, they became the public face of a wealthy corporation. But Walt Disney and his brother Roy were not wealthy at first, and the company nearly went broke during WW2. Losing the licensing rights for his first creation ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’ spurred Walt Disney to ensure that he always maintained tight control of licensing- something that exists to this day. Politically, Disney became increasingly conservative, especially after a strike in 1941 over unionization, which was a PR disaster for them, and he publicly aligned himself with Joseph McCarthy. He continued to make films (Cinderella etc) but they were not of the same quality as his earlier films. By the 1950s he embraced television and produced the hugely popular Disneyland. He died in 1966, by which time opinion had turned against many of his films, which were accused of being infantalizing, commercial and sentimental. This criticism was strongly voiced by P. L. Travers, who resented Disney’s treatment of her Mary Poppins character. Really interesting – and a good recovery from that terrible opening song.
Episode 615 Disneyland: The Modern American Utopia This episode looks at the construction and place of Disneyland within Walt Disney’s imagination and American life. It was conceived during the 1940s, after the success of Snow White, when Disney was looking for something new. He was obsessed with train sets, and even had a life size train built in his house. He at first conceptualized Disneyland as a miniature travelling village, and in 1951 he sent out a team to investigate museum displays and historical recreation parks (which US is into in a big way). At this point Tom and Dominic become more historical as they trace though the development of pleasure gardens and entertainment parks, starting with the oldest park in Copenhagen in 1580 that was built beside the tourist attraction of a spring. The Vauxhall Gardens were established in London during the Restoration era. They kept the riff-raff out by charging 1 shilling, which is about $150 in today’s currency- similar to the price of a ticket to Disneyland. But by the mid-19th century it had gone downmarket, and it closed in 1859. The first carousel was built in 1790s France, and by 1861 a steam-driven carousel was opened in Boulton UK. Fred Savage was the Father of 1860s rides, developing the switchback ride by 1888. Disneyland was conceptualized as a theme park, rather than a park with rides. To cover the huge expense, Disney entered into an arrangement with ABC Television to present 26 television episodes, which became hugely popular. At the end of the 1950s he bought a huge parcel of land in Florida, where he planned to build Disney World as a housing village for his workers, but he died before this eventuated. On reflecting on Disneyland Tom and Dominic observe that it’s a reflection of one man’s biography and vision. It is a total immersion experience, with ‘cast members’ rather than workers, and the rides are stories, rather than thrills. There is an emphasis on order, just as there was in Vauxhall Gardens, and although it has the past and the future, there is no present.
There’s then a Bonus Episode with an interview with Bob Iger, the head of Disney today. It’s a bit boring, so don’t bother. But it is interesting that Disney is now a corporation that needs to provide shareholder value, and that it has now purchased the stories from other franchises.
Journey Through Time I’ve only just started listening to this podcast, hosted by historians David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell, I started listening to the episodes about the Paris Commune, without really knowing quite what it was, or when it occurred. The Paris Commune: France’s Bloodiest Revolution Episode 1 looks at the 1871 Paris Commune where a combination of soldiers, students, women and artists governed Paris of 72 days, independent of the government. It is not as well known as the French Revolution of 1789, but it was more violent. Paris had been modernized since the French Revolution with Haussman’s massive public works program between 1853 and 1870. The Commune began with France’s humiliation at the hands of Bismarck’s Prussia, who had deliberately fomented war to forge German nationalism. Napoleon III took the bait, but ended up captured, with the Second Empire in ruins. The Third Empire was soon established outside Paris, but it just replicated the status quo. Bismarck surrounded the still-walled city of Paris, thinking that it would soon fall, and when it didn’t, he decided to starve them out. A large government delegation escaped Paris and set up outside. Meanwhile the Parisians were starving, and when they heard rumours that the government was about to surrender, a country-wide uprising occurred on the 31 October. However, the uprising quickly collapsed in the provinces, and so Paris now felt that it was fighting on alone.
The Documentary (BBC) The Shiralee: D’Arcy Niland’s 1955 Australian western. A western? I don’t remember it that way. The BBC blurb mentions the 1957 movie starring Peter Finch, but Bryan Brown also made a version in 1987. Anyway, Kate Mulvaney is doing a stage version with the Sydney Theatre Company (the run finished at the end of November 2025) and this is an audio diary account of her writing the screen play and watching the performance come together in rehearsal.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 