A connection to Wonderland

I’m old enough that The Wonderful World of Disney was must-see TV on childhood Sunday nights, but not old enough to remember when Walt Disney hosted the program. He did that from the program’s debut (as Disneyland) in 1954 until he died in 1966, the year before I was born. A little YouTube surfing this morning led me to this 1954 clip in which he introduced a shortened version of his feature film, Alice in Wonderland.

I was surprised and delighted to see the book Walt Disney was holding, because I own a copy, but have never seen another. My copy was my mother’s, and she read it and read it until the pages began to fall out. Her mother taped it back together and that homemade binding repair helped the book survive 55 years. Aren’t the colors stunning?

My mom’s childhood Alice in Wonderland book

Comments

4 responses to “A connection to Wonderland”

  1. Stephen Taylor Avatar
    Stephen Taylor

    You must be about my age. I recall watching Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday evenings; preceded of course by the NBC peacock. It came on right after Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, which was a never-miss for my brother, myself and my father. For some reason, television was more fun back then.

    1. Jim Avatar

      Yeah, I vaguely rememeber Wild Kingdom being on Sundays before Disney, too. I thought Wild Kingdom was syndicated, but it was on my hometown’s NBC station.

  2. Lone Primate Avatar
    Lone Primate

    When I was very young in the early 70s, The Wonderful World of Disney used to have a scene in the opening sequence with Walt in a car, waving joyfully to the crowds. To me, he was the spitting image of my grandfather. For ages, I believed my grandfather was also Walt Disney. :)

    Yeah, there’s nothing quite like that on TV today. You’re right; that was an event, every weekend.

    1. Jim Avatar

      I don’t remember Walt waving! I’ll have to go back and look at old clips to see if I can find that.

      Who knows, maybe your grandfather was Walt! :-)

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