But decades before Harley was drawn into its existence, her forebear character, Harlequin, appeared on the cover of LIFE, as part of a photo story on Broadway actors donning costumes for their dream roles. The character of Harlequin had been a particular fascination for actress Gwen Verdon, a musical comedy legend and the winner of four Tony Awards.
In the April 14, 1958 issue of LIFE, Verdon explained the appeal of playing Harlequin, which included the character’s infatuation with another character from the commedia dell’arte, the mischievous maid Columbine:
“Harlequin is a well-rounded, sensitive person,” says Gwen. “His love for Columbine—especially when she breaks his heart—makes a man of him. He’s transformed by suffering. The twirl of blue paper in his eye represents tears. The flower on his nose is a symbol of unattainable beauty—like Columbine. He hunts for it everywhere, not realizing it is right in front of him. Whenever I get a new part, I always stop and ask myself how Harlequin would do it. It’s helped me a lot.”
The concept of actors playing their dream roles was one LIFE would revisit. Five years later LIFE asked film actors to dress up for their dream roles, and the resulting story featured Paul Newman as a swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cary Grant as Charlie Chaplin, Rock Hudson as Dr. Jekyll and more.
Gwen Verdon as Harlequin on the April 14, 1958 cover of LIFE.
Photo by Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Gwen Verdon in her dream role of Harlequin, 1958.
Photo by Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Gwen Verdon in her dream role of Harlequin, 1958.
Photo by Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Gwen Verdon in her dream role of Harlequin, 1958.
Photo by Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Gwen Verdon in her dream role of Harlequin, 1958.
Photo by Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
John Olson was not much of a baseball fan. The LIFE photographer was better known for images of the Vietnam War and the American counterculture, so when he ended up in the middle of another piece of history, the Miracle Mets’ 1969 season, on an assignment to cover the MLB playoffs, he didn’t particularly appreciate the magic of the moment, to put it mildly. “I was bored,” he said recently about shooting the National League Championship Series in which Tom Seaver’s New York Mets swept the Atlanta Braves and Hank Aaron to advance to the World Series. “The most memorable thing about that assignment was that I was hit by a foul ball. I was in the press box.”
But the thing about it is, Olson’s lack of interest in the game itself produced a set of photos with its own kind of value a half-century removed from the moment. In the search for something that interested him, his eye ranged widely, and as a result his 494 images that reside in LIFE archives give a broad sense of what it was actually like to be in attendance at these historic games.
LIFE ran the story in its Oct. 17, 1969 issue, and Olson’s photos were paired with drawings by cartoonist Mort Gerberg in a feature titled “What Really Happened When a Very Nice Team From Atlanta Encountered a Force Known as the New York Mets.” While Olson doesn’t remember much about the terms of the original assignment, the result suggests that editors from the outset wanted more than straightforward game reportage. That’s how you end up with pictures like the ones Olson took of the boy outfitted for the game in his jacket, tie and baseball glove, yawning as he waits for a foul ball. Or of the man who played Chief Noc-a-Homa, the Braves’ long-since phased-out mascot, sitting in the dugout in glasses while waiting for a chance to set aside his spectacles and take to the field for a celebratory home run dance. Or shots of the funny signs that were on display at Shea Stadium in New York.
Baseball fans would give their eyeteeth to have been at these games; Olson’s images put viewers inside the stadium, head on a swivel.
A fan waited for a foul ball to come his way during the National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Atlanta’s Sonny Jackson took batting practice before a playoff game against the New York Mets, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Casey Stengel, the first manager in franchise history, was on hand to watch the Mets in the playoffs, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Hank Aaron was welcomed home by his Braves teammates during the National League playoffs against the New York Mets, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The Braves’ mascot, Chief Noc-a-Homa, in the dugout during a playoff game against the New York Mets, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Chief Noc-A-Homa, the Atlanta mascot, performed a celebratory dance during a playoff game against the New York Mets, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A successful pickoff during the National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A successful pickoff during the National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Second baseman Ken Boswell of the New York Mets tried to tag out Orlando Cepeda of the Atlanta Braves during a playoff game in Atlanta, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Tommie Agee of the New York Mets greeted his teammate Cleon Jones at home plate after they both scored during a playoff game against the Atlanta Braves at Fulton County Stadium, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The National League playoffs between New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, 1969.
John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A view of the Braves dugout after losing a playoff game against the New York Mets, 1969.
Headed off to college is a life adventure like no other. In 1951 LIFE chronicled that experience through the eyes of Mary Lloyd-Rees, a first-year student at Wellesley College, an all-girls school in Massachusetts. Photographer Lisa Larsen followed Lloyd-Rees as she said goodbye to her father, decorated her room, met new people, and learned to manage life on her own. “I felt fluttery in the stomach,” said Lloyd-Rees of those first days. “It was like going to the doctor’s.”
LIFE’s story, titled “Mary Goes to College,” appeared in the October 15, 1951 issue, which featured actress Zsa Zsa Gabor on the cover. If Lloyd-Rees felt comfortable sharing those first college days with a nation of LIFE readers, it may have been because she had some experience living away from home. Her father had the unusual occupation of managing a sugar plantation in Cuba, and Ms. Lloyd-Rees spent her high school years at a boarding school in Virginia.
Still, that didn’t mean she was immune to the shock of going off to college. One of Larsen’s photos shows Lloyd-Rees alone in her bedroom, hugging her pillow for comfort. Lloyd-Rees assured LIFE readers that the lonely moment, from her first night at school, passed quickly: “I put on my Mario Lanza records and felt better.”
Soon the fun began. Larsen’s photos show Lloyd-Rees biking around campus, posing with friends, going out for ice cream, picking out songs on a juke box, and even going on her first date, with a friend of her brother’s who was a law student at nearby Harvard. LIFE reported that Lloyd-Rees and her friends had fun educating each other on the latest slang expressions, such as “in the valise” (drunk) and “does he have a message?” (which LIFE translated as does he really send you?).
While much of the story focussed on Lloyd-Rees’ life transition, it also noted that after two weeks of school, with homework starting to pile up, “Mary opened up her library books, and, knitting her brow, took stock of the hard work that lay ahead of her in the next four years.”
Lloyd-Rees did go on to graduate from Wellesley with a degree in history. Her 2008 obituary described an active life that included becoming a mother of four, running her church’s Christmas pageant and serving on the national board of the Girl Scouts, and it featured a photo of the mature Lloyd-Rees with a smile much like the one she showed in LIFE, when she was just starting out.
Freshman Mary Lloyd-Rees said goodbye to her father on her dormitory porch at Wellesley, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Freshman Mary Lloyd-Rees examined her room after arriving at Wellesley in 1951.
.Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Freshman Mary Lloyd-Rees hung college banners in her room at Wellesley, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Mary Lloyd-Rees had a moment of loneliness after arriving at Wellesley for her freshman year, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Freshman Mary Lloyd-Rees and her new friends posed on the Wellesley campus, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A Wellesley freshman arrived with a stuffed friend, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Mary Lloyd-Rees, standing, got to know fellow Wellesley first-year student Hsio-Yen Shih of Formosa, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Mary Lloyd-Rees and friends strolled the Wellesley campus, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Harvard students examined a Wellesley student directory to determine which girl to ask out, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ice cream time for Wellesley first year students, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ice cream time for Wellesley first-year students, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Wellesley freshmen in their first days at school, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Freshman Mary Lloyd-Rees imitated her French teacher by pronouncing vowel sounds.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Mary Lloyd-Rees spoke with a teacher in her first days at Wellesley, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Wellesley freshman Mary Rees-Lloyd studied in a university library.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Wellesley freshmen, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Freshman Mary Lloyd-Rees stopped to put her books in a basket as she bicycled around the Wellesley campus, 1951.
Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Mary Rees-Lloyd’s first date as a Wellesley student was with Ted Buck, a Harvard law student and a former roommate of her brother; they mostly spent the date walking around campus.
The photographs of Bob Gomel put you in a diner with Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, poolside with the Beatles, and high above the U.S. Capitol rotunda as John F. Kennedy lay in state.
Gomel plied his craft in the middle of history—not that he knew it at the time. “I had no idea the 60s would be so iconic,” Gomel, 88, said recently in a phone interview. “It seemed quite ordinary at the time, but looking back on it now, I realize how fortunate I was.”
Gomel grew up in the Bronx, N.Y. and became fascinated with photography in grade school. One of his teachers was a photographer who kept in his classroom a sepia-toned print of a pigeon standing on a manhole cover on a cobblestone street. That image beguiled Gomel, and he saved money from his job delivering groceries to buy his first camera at Willoughby’s in Manhattan. Gomel shot pictures for his high school paper and then in college at NYU, where he made connections with senior members of the New York press while shooting games at Madison Square Garden.
After a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy as an aviator, he came back to the U.S. and actually turned down a plum job offer from the Associated Press, so focussed was he on creating magazine-style narrative journalism. His initial breakthrough with LIFE came during a tough time for his family; Gomel’s brother was in a serious car accident, and Gomel shot pictures of his family as they managed this crisis, including photos of his brother’s operation during which a lung was removed. Gomel showed those pictures to LIFE editors, who were impressed and began to give him work. (His brother recovered and went on to live a full life, Gomel says.)
While obviously possessed of a great eye, Gomel says that his best attribute as a photographer was his ability to earn the trust of his subjects. It shows in his photos with Ali, who Gomel shot many times over the years. When Ali and Malcolm X celebrated Ali’s winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, the only two photographers present were Gomel and the boxer’s personal photographer.
Gomel enjoyed great rapport with John F. Kennedy, and they bonded in humorous circumstances. After Kennedy was elected in 1960, Gomel was one of the pack of photographers who camped outside the president-elect’s Georgetown home in those wintry days, capturing photos of the people who came to consult and interview for cabinet positions. One day a Kennedy press staffer informed the assembled media that Kennedy was not seeing any visitors that day, so they could all go home. Everyone left, except for Gomel and one other photographer. After a while Kennedy opened the window and invited the photographers to come in from the cold, and he fed them a sumptuous steak meal—after which Gomel fell asleep on Kennedy’s sofa. “He never let me forget that embarrassing moment,” Gomel says.
Gomel would go on to capture stunning images from Kennedy’s funeral after the president’s assassination. While Kennedy’s casket was on display in the Capitol rotunda, Gomel broke away from the pack to climb the stairs and find an overhead view. It had been a cloudy day, but when Gomel was on high, the clouds parted and sunlight shone through, a moment so photographically propitious that Gomel refers to it as “divine intervention.”
When Eisenhower’s casket was on display in the same rotunda years later, Gomel became the first photographer to gain permission to set up a rig directly overhead, for what became a LIFE cover.
Gomel is aware that his career is inevitably defined by the photos he took of the famous and the powerful, and while he understands that, he also regrets it. Talking from his Houston home, Gomel spoke of how he looks at the New York Times obituaries each day, and thinks of how he will be recorded as a photographer of Ali and JFK and the like, and his pictures of ordinary people—including those he enjoys shooting to this day when he and his wife travel—will fade into the background.
One more “everyday” image from his years at LIFE he speaks passionately of: in 1960 he shot a story about the return of the Triton submarine after circumnavigating the globe—the first submarine ever to do so while remaining submerged for its entire journey. The trip was a Cold War display of might. Among the crowd was a little girl waiting for the return of her father, who was a crew member on the ship. As she readied to welcome him home safe after two months underwater, tears fell from both eyes.
“Those tears—it’s my favorite image of all time,” he says.
Gomel tells many more stories about his LIFE work in the 2020 documentary Bob Gomel: Eyewitness. Enjoy this gallery, which includes many of Gomel’s images of the famous and the everyday.
Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X celebrated after Ali won the heavyweight title, 1964.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Gomel actually took this photo before Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston, so LIFE would have a cover prepped for deadline in case Ali scored the upset.
Photo by Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Muhammad Ali viewed a photo of Sonny Liston before their rematch in 1965.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Muhammad Ali in 1968, at the Broadway play The Great White Hope, about the life of boxer Jack Johnson.
Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
John Lennon did cannonballs, Paul McCartney splashed and Ringo Starr turned away during a photo shoot in Miami, 1964; LIFE chose not to run the pictures, and they remained unpublished until 2015.
President John Kennedy emerged from inside a model of the Apollo space capsule during his tour of the Manned Space Center, on the day he had announced his intention to put a man on the moon.
President John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin, Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C.; photographer Bob Gomel described the parting of the clouds that sent the beam of light shining down as “divine intervention.”
A horse-drawn caisson bearing the flag-draped casket of John F, Kennedy led the funeral cortege and was followed by a riderless horse, Washington, D.C., November 25, 1963.
General Charles De Gaulle of France and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (center, saluting), along with German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, Philippine President Macapagal, South Korean President Chung Hee Park and many other dignitaries, attended at the burial of John F. Kennedy, Arlington National Cemetery, Va.
Actor Dustin Hoffman visited the unemployment office in New York City to discusses his case two months before the opening of the movie The Graduate, which would make him a star; Gomel, who was shadowing Hoffman, recalls that they rode to the unemployment office in a movie studio limousine.
Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
Dustin Hoffman did chin-ups in doorway of his NYC apartment, 1968.
Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
Humorist and former Marine Art Buchwald (left) went back to boot camp in service of a light-hearted story for LIFE, 1965.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
This image of a basset hound illustrated a story about what dogs go through when the kids in their home return to school in the fall.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Warren Beatty at the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures in 1967.
Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
For a story on airplane traffic backups due to a work action by air traffic controllers, photographer Bob Gomel arranged to have planes lined up on the run way to illustrate the congestion (and create a vertical image for the LIFE cover).
Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock
To illustrate the exuberance of youth hockey, LIFE photographer Bob Gomel placed a five-dollar bill under a hockey puck and had the players go after it, capturing the joy and mayhem of the ensuing dogpile.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Running back Eugene “Merucry” Morris of West Texas State; photographer Bob Gomel had an art student at the school design wings for the helmet.
Al Hirschfeld with his daughter Nina, whose name he famously worked into his drawings, 1961.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Lisa Fisher, the daughter of a US Navy officer on submarine Triton, which had circumnavigated the globe while submerged—a historic first—wept as she welcomed her father back from his two months underwater, 1960.
(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel
Life Magazine’s cover of April 11, 1969, featured an overhead view of the coffin of former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower lying in state under the US Capitol Rotunda; this was the first time a camera rig had been suspended above the rotunda in that manner.
Twenty-three years ago, at the 70th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Sean Connery stood in his tuxedo before a microphone, the evening’s final note card in his hand, and read the news: The award for Best Picture “goes to Titanic.” That it was the movie’s record-tying 11th Oscar win—after a record-tying 14 nominations—and that it came before a television audience of 57.3 million, still the largest to watch an Academy Awards, seemed apt. From start to finish, this movie didn’t simply go big. It went huge. Colossal. Titanic all the way.
Director James Cameron (Best Director James Cameron, that is) spent $200 million to make Titanic, almost twice the original budget and the most expensive movie of the 20th century. He dressed 1,000 extras in period costume. He oversaw 90,000 gallons of water being flooded into the set during the film’s climactic scene, and he delivered Titanic at a longest-movie-of-the-year running time of three hours and 15 minutes.
And after those extravagances came these: Titanic spent 15 straight weeks as the number one movie in the country (another record), and it was still showing in first-run theaters nearly 10 months after it opened. Paramount had to send theaters replacement reels because the originals wore out. Throw in the take from the movie’s occasional rereleases, among them a 2017 limited run celebrating its 20th anniversary, and Titanic has brought in box-office receipts of $2.2 billion.
It’s a stunningly beautiful film, with startling effects. Cinematography, Production Design and Visual Effects were among its Oscar haul. More germane is that Titanic has at its heart an exquisitely drawn love story that’s as Hollywood and as Shakespearean as can be, one that slips bounds of class and circumstance as defiantly and heroically as a Capulet and a Montague trysting at the balcony by moonlight. Jack the penniless, romantic third-class passenger. Rose the betrothed-to-an-ogre aristocrat in diamonds. They spit together. They dance. He sketches her in the nude. Together, they rise. Who among us does not cherish the rare moments—lit by love or accomplishment—when we feel as if we are standing on the bow of our own ship, going somewhere, a king of the world?
Titanic touches on a fundamental question: How would you act and what would you do if you had just a short time to live? The boat takes a while to sink, and as it does the violinists famously play on, the bridge officer puts a gun to his head, Rose’s odious fiancé weasels onto a lifeboat meant for women and children, and an old couple spoons in their cabin bed. Then there’s Rose herself who, while being lowered to safety by lifeboat leaps back onto the sinking ship. Anything for a few more minutes with Jack. She’s nuts. She met the guy three days before. But we believe her. It’s a moment even the greatest storytellers might wait a lifetime to achieve.
There’s another crucial slant to Titanic: the fact that the audience, godlike, knows from the start that disaster is nigh. This puts all the actions and reactions of the characters into a kind of final, judgmental light, and it ties straight to the movie’s real power. From the opening sepia montage at the departing dock, to the genuine shots of the real, rusted hull 12,500 feet deep in the Atlantic, to the appropriation of language from post-wreck inquiry transcripts into movie dialogue, lies the understanding that the story is, at essence, true. Whatever license was taken to form Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet’s Rose Dewitt Bukater and Billy Zane’s Caledon Hockley, such characters and others like them surely existed and were on that boat.
At the Oscars ceremony in 1998, Cameron, who also wrote, coedited and coproduced the film, asked for a moment of silence for the 1,503 people who went down with the ship—acknowledging his debt to the human stories that were set against the audacity of the 52,000-ton luxury liner itself. Man in his hubris, flying too close to the sun. More than a century later, the voyage of the RMS Titanic remains one of history’s most astounding events, filled with intrigue, moxie and false steps, with majesty, with tragedy and with life. It’s this true story that spurred Titanic to such success, and this true story that unfolds so poignantly and dramatically in our remembrance of a moment that continues to captivate.
The Olympic and the Titanic, both vessels of the White Star Line, under construction in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1909-1911.
Universal History Archive/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The first class lounge of the Titanic.
Universal Images Group/Getty Images
The Titanic only had enough lifeboats to hold a third of the ship’s passengers and crew.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The Titanic sailed away from her final landfall in Ireland on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic to New York in April 1912.
Walt Disney spent his life dreaming impossible dreams—and usually realizing them. In 1928, he created the first animated short with synchronized sound (Steamboat Willie), which turned Mickey Mouse into an international superstar. Less than a decade later, Disney released the first full-length animated feature (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), which became the most successful American film up to that point. And in the early 1950s, Walt dreamed the most impossible dream of them all: an amusement park to end all amusement parks. He would call it Disneyland.
Though it’s hard to believe now, the park’s success was anything but certain. In fact, Roy Disney—Walt’s brother and financial partner—thought it was yet another one of “Walt’s screwy ideas,” and bankers refused to lend the company a dime. “When he started Disneyland, he didn’t have a friend in the world,” one colleague said. But Walt persevered, as always. “Sometimes I wonder if ‘common sense’ isn’t another way of saying ‘fear,’” he said. “And fear too often spells failure.”
In the face of enormous obstacles (record rainfall, labor strikes), a ballooning budget (total price tag: $17 million), and a disastrous opening day (women’s high heels sunk in Main Street’s still-drying asphalt), Disney prevailed. His “screwy idea” quickly became an enormous hit—and eventually changed popular culture forever.
Of course, he kept dreaming, making plans for an even more ambitious park (Walt Disney World) that would include a place that he felt would transform the country’s future (EPCOT). Sadly, he didn’t live to see these become a reality, but the spread of Disney parks throughout the world (Tokyo, Paris, and Shanghai among them) and the astronomical ongoing success of the company he founded prove beyond a doubt that Disney’s “impossible” dream endures.
Walt Disney crossed the drawbridge that serves as the entrance to Sleeping Beauty Castle in the heart of Disneyland, circa 1955. The original site of the castle proved to be overrun with feral cats, which Disney took pains to save.
David F. Smith/AP/REX/Shutterstock
Disney in his Burbank office with one of his most important artists, John Hench, discussing the map of Disneyland that Walt called “the $5 million layout.” The most important element was the castle, Walt told artist Herb Ryman, who made the first maps of Disneyland. “Make it tall enough to be seen from all around the park,” he said.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE/The Picture Collection
Disney discussed his new park with some imagineers in Los Angeles in 1954. “Imagineers” is the term Disney used to refer to the film studio creatives who brought their cinematic sensibility to the theme park, which was the first park to tell a story, like a movie.
Earl Theisen/Archive Photos/Getty
Artist William J. Koch touched up a model of the Los Angeles basin, part of “The World Beneath Us,” a show featured in Disneyland.
Bettmann/Getty
Children running through the gate of Sleeping Beauty Castle, the centerpiece of Disneyland. “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the park,” Disney said. “I want them to fee they’re in another world.”
Allan Grant/LIFE/The Picture Collection
A family visited the park during opening week, 1955.
Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives
Disneyland’s opening day parade, 1955.
USC Libraries/Corbis/Getty
Walt Disney during a telecast of the official opening of the playground. The premiere was televised nationally.
Bettmann/Getty
Disney employees climbed the Matterhorn, a 1:100-scale model of the Swiss mountain, which opened as an attraction in 1959.
Ralph Crane/LIFE/The Picture Collection
In 1971 the entire Walt Disney World staff posed for a group portrait in front of Cinderella’s castle prior to the grand opening of the amusement park.
