Leslie Iwerks’ new film “Disneyland Handcrafted” is on the big screen this week and coming to Disney+ January 22
Nearly one billion people have visited Disneyland since it opened more than seventy years ago. In the new film Disneyland Handcrafted, it is revealed that 900 million visitors have passed through the gates since 1955. Imagine how young your parents – or your grandparents – were the first time they saw Walt Disney’s dream come to life. For most of us, Disneyland feels like it has always been there, a mighty ancient sequoia in the urban forest of Southern California.
Disneyland under construction in 1955 as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”Credit: Photo © Disney
In her new documentary, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Leslie Iwerks brings us back to a time before the park existed and shows us the remarkable struggle Walt Disney and his team went through to transform agricultural land, located “forty-five miles from where anyone lived,” as Walt’s pal Art Linkletter liked to say, “I thought he was out of his mind.”
Walt Disney at Disneyland as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”Credit: Photo © Disney
In stunningly beautiful and rich color that looks like it was recorded yesterday, workers are seen building all the details and landmarks we still revere, and in record time. Artists and craftsmen speed along finishing all the fine details by hand just in time to debut on July 17, 1955.
Disneyland under construction in 1955 as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”
Credit: Photo © Disney
Combining mostly unseen footage of the park’s construction with vintage audio commentary from the people who were there, the director brings us straight into the high-pressure year of the park’s creation.
Disneyland under construction in 1955 as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”Credit: Photo © Disney
Scroll to continue reading
“You really feel the tension and stress of being there ten months before opening, seven months before opening, one month before opening,” says Nicole Dicken of Disney Experiences. “I knew the ending and I was still stressed. It’s really inspiring and humanizing to see and hear Walt, who had so many successful films, and people were very candid about him being worried. Not everybody believed in him.” Iwerks dubs the project “The greatest gamble of his life.”
“The way she’s sequenced it, it’s all adding up very dramatically up to the conclusion – the opening,” Disney legend Tony Baxter, former senior vice president of creative development in Walt Disney Imagineering, who oversaw projects including Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours and the Indiana Jones Adventure tells Los Angeles. “The new score gives it this pulse,” Baxter says. “This quickening beat in the drive towards the home run.”
Walt Disney at Disneyland as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”Credit: Photo © Disney
In addition to a new score, the original clips were restored, and sound effects were added at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. Much of the footage, which was initially captured for internal films, ABC’s Disneyland TV show and company documentation of the massive construction project, had been secretly circulating among Disney superfans within the company for years.
Baxter and others pored over the silent footage while adding their own commentary at viewing parties filled with company bigwigs. “It was all uncontexted Disneyland history,” Baxter says of the footage he and Imagineer Bruce Gordon stumbled on decades ago. “Who’s that guy on the bicycle? He gets closer and closer and that’s Walt riding through Tomorrowland! Leslie has a real talent for transforming all these discordant things.”
Disneyland under construction in 1955 as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”Credit: Photo © Disney
“The biggest fans of this are Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera, head of production at Pixar,” Baxter says. “They are Disneyland fanatics of the first order. They’re not into drugs or alcohol so when they would need a fix to get high on Disney again, they would call me and say ‘We need another Disneyland movie night.’ They would book the theater at Pixar, bring in churros and Dole Whip and we would go from 7 at night to 5 in the morning. Those were incredible parties.”
You can have your own watch party at home when Disneyland Handcrafted starts streaming on Disney+ on January 22 or catch it on the big screen only at AMC Burbank Town Center 6 through January 21.
Disneyland under construction in 1955 as seen in “Disneyland Handcrafted”Credit: Photo © Disney