Disney turns 100, via its semi-eternal TV show

A century ago, a young artist was in deep money trouble. He would be there often.
Walt Disney was 21 when his Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt. He moved to Los Angeles, where his brother Roy – older (30) and wiser in the ways of money – lived. On Oct. 16, 1923, they officially created what was then called the Disney Brothers Studio. Now that’s being noted twice:
— On Sunday (Oct. 15), Kelly Ripa hosts a “Wonderful World of Disney” celebration, at 8 p.m. on Disney-owned ABC. It includes the 2021 film “Encanto” and a new cartoon, “Once Upon a Studio.”
— On Monday (the studio’s 100th anniversary), Disney+ debuts a restored version of the 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (shown here), the first feature-length, animated movie in full sound and color.
Sunday’s event also points to another piece of TV history: “Wonderful World of Disney” has been around (off and on, with varying titles) for almost 69 years.
That came despite financial crises. “Walt was always hard up for money,” David Wallerstein, a theater-owner, recalled in “Beating the Odds” (1991, Scribner), an ABC history.
Disney had his first big success with a Mickey Mouse short in 1927, but wanted more. He proposed a feature-length cartoon, budgeted at a then-outrageous $500,000.
Actually, “Snow White” ending up costing $1.5 million and taking four years. But it became the top box-office film of the year, won an honorary Academy Award and led to “Pinocchio,” “Fantasia” and (post-war) “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Peter Pan” and the interest of TV networks.
Disney rejected CBS because he didn’t like its color-TV system, Bill Cotter wrote in “The Wonderful World of Disney Television” (1997, Hyperion). He chose NBC and insisted it help finance his Disneyland park. Early in 1954, Roy flew to New York to close the deal.
“RCA asked for yet more time to think things over,” Cotter wrote. “A disgusted Roy … picked up the first phone he saw and called Leonard Goldenson, the head of ABC.”
That was a relatively new and struggling network, but there was no alternative. “ABC was really Disney’s last home,” Goldenson wrote in the “Odds” book. “He’d gone to the banks and when he tried to explain what he wanted to build, they just couldn’t grasp the concept.”
Disney soon gave ABC “The Mickey Mouse Club” in 1955 and “Zorro” in ‘57. But the key was that first show; then called “Disneyland,” it was a full-scale anthology.
The opener (Oct. 27, 1954) talked about the amusement park, the TV show and the upcoming movie, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” The second episode was the “Alice in Wonderland” movie. It “had fared poorly at the box office,” Cotter wrote, “and would not be released again for quite some time.”
But the big hit was the five-part “Davy Crockett.” Soon, fake coonskin caps were everywhere; the theme song was No. 1 on the Cashbox survey for seven weeks.
Ratings soared. “Disneyland” was No. 6 in the Nielsen ratings its first year, No. 4 its second, No. 13 its third. ABC only had two other shows (“Rin Tin Tin” and “Wyatt Earp”) in the top 30.
Then the cowboy surge arrived and Disney receded … but remained a part of network TV. It was on ABC for seven years, NBC for 20, CBS for two, then began a two-plus-year gap in 1983.
Walt had died in 1966 and Roy in ‘71; the company had drifted into mediocrity. “The Magic Kingdom was a debt-ridden giant, drifting aimlessly,” Goldenson wrote.
Michael Eisner was put in charge in 1984 and declared the TV show to be his top priority. It returned to ABC in 1986, moved to NBC two years later, but sank to No. 72 in the Nielsen ratings. NBC canceled it in 1990; “The Wonderful World of Disney” title was sooon confined to cable or specials.
But Disney bought ABC in 1996 and returned the show for another dozen years. That ended in 2008, but the “Wonderful World” title persists — on Disney+ … for occasional movies or specials … and as an emergency patch-up: During the pandemic, it became a five-week series of movies on ABC; as strikes froze Hollywood this year, ABC revived it again, giving it a prime spot at 8 p.m. Sundays.
That’s where it shows Disney movies – “Jungle Cruise,” Oct. 1; “Cruella,” Oct. 8; “Encanto,” Oct. 15; then Halloween-time with “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Oct. 22; and “Hocus Pocus,” Oct. 29.
With that last one, the show will pass another birthday: The title, format and network have changed, there have been gaps, but on Oct. 27, the eternal “Wonderful World of Disney” will be 69 years old.