Monday, July 25, 2016

DISNEYLAND: 'Man In Space' Part 1 - 1955

Our family got our first TV back in 1953, and, when Walt's new DISNEYLAND hit the airwaves we sat down and enjoyed every single episode of that great series! By far, my favorite stuff was from Tomorrow Land. Here's part 1 of Man In Space, part 2 will come on Friday.

This episode explains what it's like to visit space with experts joining in on the discussion.

Walt starts the show surrounded by some awesome models of spaceships and the like!

Here's Ward Kimball, producer, writer and director of the series. This guy is no joke, he joined Disney Studios in 1934 as an animator and became involved in all aspects of animation production, most notably as the designer of Jiminy Cricket for the film "Pinnochio." He was also responsible for the redesign of Mickey Mouse! Walt recognized Kimball's achievements by making him one of the "Nine Old Men", Disney's semi-official group of advisors.

Then, here's Wernher von Braun, the German that helped design Hitler's V-2 missile, quite a score. That's his design for a 4-stage space rocket for the US.

This expert tells everyone how a rocket engine works, interesting as Hell for us kids. I was actually a science major in high school until I took chemistry, I hated it and changed my major to art when I was a sophomore.

Bring in the fifties style artwork! They show some odd rocket designs from the past.

Then they show some footage of old time uses of rocket engines, some worked and some exploded like a powder keg!

Okay, time to bring in our hero, the typical fifties cartoon dude. Here, he's really enjoying his ride until he plows it into a freakin' telephone pole!

One of my very favorite things was the rocket sled, I used to make them out of clay and throw them against the wall to see if the passenger survived the crash! Hey, number 13!!

Time to go into space to understand the effects of weightlessness, things seem fine until he goes beyond the stratosphere!

Not sure what this has to with, but, Disney sure liked to use cigars and booze bottles for props!

When you're in space with no gravity, it's hard to know which way is up, or down, or sideways!!

No matter how bad things get, there's always that certain something to brighten the day!

Beware of radiation in space, and, meteors!!

After our hero gets sucked out through the meteor hole, he bakes on the side facing the sun and freezes on the opposite side, sooo...

He needs a spacesuit with some handy Swiss knife tools, and, a tooth brush!

Then, his hand held rocket gun gets him into a ton of trouble! Tune in Friday for part 2, when we take a trip into space with some of the finest fifties space art you'll ever see!!

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