I've got about eight separate and yet loosely-related mini-topics that I'm going to present in a couple of posts. I suppose they're analogous to Disney "package" films, more like, say, The Three Caballeros than Pinocchio. The collections are not random: all of these topics have to do with things seen in the front yard of the Disneyland Mansion. Today there are three mini-posts, and the common theme among them is color.
Oooooooo Color -r-r-r-r
The Imagineers who built Disneyland came out of the animation studios, and that means they were sensitive colorists, among other things. People who admire the end product have noted again and again how subtle and suitable is the use of color throughout the park. It's all quite deliberate and meticulously maintained (for the most part). (Hit that button again, would you? Thanks.) The last time I was at Disneyland I noticed for the first time that the stone "blocks" of Sleeping Beauty castle come in six different colors. When you look at older photos, you find that they've been multicolored like that for a long time, maybe from the beginning. Some of the variations are so subtle that it's hard to pick up on them with the camera. Why so many? especially since some are so similar? Because it looks right. (Hit it one more time? Thanks, you're awesome.)
Off White
Nobody at Disney was more sensitive to the use of color in the parks than John Hench. He worked at Disney for 65 years, up until a few weeks before he died in 2004. My friends, whatever John Hench tells you about Disney design you can take to the bank.
"Because I said so."
According to Hench, the Disneyland Haunted Mansion is painted "off white." Strange name for a color, isn't it? I mean, aren't red and blue "off white" too? Well, nobody asked me. As Hench explains it, the colors for the house are more psychologically complex than people realize.
Sometime between 1976 and 1987.
“For Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, we wanted to create an
imposing Southern-style house that would look old, but not in ruins. So we painted it a cool off-white with
dark, cold blue-gray accents in shadowed areas such as the porch ceilings and
wrought-iron details. To
accentuate the eerie, deserted feeling, I had the underside of exterior details
painted the same dark color, creating exaggerated, unnaturally deep cast
shadows. Since we associate dark
shadows with things hidden, or half hidden, the shadow treatment enhanced the
structure’s otherworldliness. The
park maintenance painters like the haunted effect. I even received calls from guests who wanted to know the
brand and swatch number of the paints so that they could use them on their own
homes.”
. —John Hench, Designing Disney (NY: Disney Editions, 2003) 116.
These painting tricks are an example of signals sent from the Imagineers that are received unaware. It's extremely unlikely that guests consciously notice the artificial shadowing, but very likely that it affects them psychologically, be it ever so slightly. It's an interesting sort of interaction between artist and audience: An expression fully intentional, very carefully thought out, and yet by design much too subtle for the conscious mind to engage. I don't know. Sounds illegal to me.
What Hench does not mention is that a radically different color scheme for the Mansion exterior was being contemplated practically from the moment it was first built. You never hear about it, and were it not for the fact that a mysterious and unique document from those days survived and surfaced, it truly would be long forgotten.
That the house would be white (or off-white) seems clear enough from Sam McKim's iconic concept painting in 1958, which you will recall was a paint-over of a Ken Anderson sketch which was based in turn on the Shipley-Leydecker house in Baltimore.
For what it's worth, the Shipley house itself was white:
1945 (The house had been remodeled by then, and the side porches are gone.)
McKim's painting was put to immediate use in brochures and souvenir guides published over the next several
years, so public expectations about the house, long before it was even built, were that it would be a white building.
years, so public expectations about the house, long before it was even built, were that it would be a white building.
Sure enough, when the building went up in 1962, it was white. Here it is in mid-1963, just
months after the last major landscaping around the brand-new building had been completed.
months after the last major landscaping around the brand-new building had been completed.
Everything indicates a straight, uninterrupted line from start to finish, a line that is painted off-white. So where in the
grand scheme of things does this oft-published artifact belong? It's a 1962 or 63 color guide for the Haunted Mansion.
grand scheme of things does this oft-published artifact belong? It's a 1962 or 63 color guide for the Haunted Mansion.
Huh? No one seems to know anything about this rival color scheme. Strange. But we had better not lag behind
and puzzle over it today; we've got two more mini-topics to cover. Mustn't dawdle. Scroll on, scroll on.
and puzzle over it today; we've got two more mini-topics to cover. Mustn't dawdle. Scroll on, scroll on.
Garden Variety Imagineering
Applied color theory doesn't end with the building itself. Let's turn around and look at the front yard. What a pleasant place it is! Other, newer rides may have more exciting and entertaining queues (Star Tours, Indiana Jones, Tower of Terror), but for my money the Anaheim Mansion still takes the prize for most beautiful queue.
This is still true even though it used to be even more lovely. Originally there were flower beds around the light posts.
For most of their history, they were warm, bright patches of yellow. They were taken out in 1991, give or take a year.
(pic by Robert Clavarro)
1980
1973 Today
1976
It's a pity they're gone, but even without the
flower beds, it's still beautiful out there.
While I miss the flowers, I can't get too worked up about their absence. Perhaps they were a little too
cheery. It does seem a wee bit more serious and somber without them, and I can't complain about that.
And now, a question: What are Halloween colors? Black and Orange, right?
Are there any other good color schemes for Halloween? How about Green and Purple
(or Magenta)? Just google "green purple Halloween," and brother, it's all you can eat.
Okay, fine. Now what are the differences between the orange-black strategy and the green-purple one? I can think of two: (1) orange-black is inescapably juvenile, and (2) it's joined at the hip to Halloween. It's difficult to use orange-black anywhere else, because it "looks Halloweeny" no matter what you do, and it's never adult-scary. It's for kids. Green-Purple, on the other hand, is not so tightly constrained. Oh sure, it can go as cute and tricks-or-treatsy as anything orange-and-black (witness the above), but it can also be used for more adult scares, although it always seems to do so with tongue-in-cheek, never too far away from the campy side of horror. I mean, no one uses the purple-green palette if the intent is to truly scare the crap out of you, but it can certainly be used for the gruesome and grim. And green-purple is not tied down to Halloween. It can be used to evoke spooks and spirits and ugly old creeps far beyond the October horizon.
No clearer example of putting this color combination to gleefully ghoulish use can be found
than Collin Campbell's artwork for the "Story and Song" Haunted Mansion souvenir album.
Just flip through those familiar eleven pages. Sometimes it's green and purple,
but at other times it's purple and green. For variety's sake, one supposes.
(The only exception is the Hat Box Ghost illustration: blue and purple.)
Here's another good example: a background painting from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad:
Is this a recent development, this perception of purple (or magenta) and green as a creepy combo? No.
Do Disney artists use this palette elsewhere, for the same purposes? Yes.
We've already cited Madame Mim, but that's barely the tip of the iceberg.
The "Hatchet Man" portrait in the Corridor of Doors at WDW
From The Princess and the Frog, a tribute to the animated "Leota" headstone at WDW
You see how it works. Purple (or magenta) and green conjure up goblins and ghoulies, but not necessarily from last Halloween, and even though it's not a seriously horrific palette, it isn't particularly kid-friendly either (witness the Grand Guignol posters above). All and all, it feels like a perfect fit for the Haunted Mansion, does it not?
1979 paper bag design
They used purple-green for the silver anniversary celebration in 1994:
Left to right that's John Hench, Bill Justice, Sam McKim, X Atencio, Disney archivist
Dave Smith, Disney historians David Mumford and Bruce Gordon, and Russell Brower.
No wonder Campbell went straight there and stayed there, and no
wonder everyone agrees that he hit the nail right on the head.
But you know, he wasn't the only one.
It remains only to show you some random pictures from the front yard gardens, taken during
the last 15 years or so. The evidence is undeniable, the case is closed, 'nuff said, and Q.E.D.
(pic by PirateTinkerbell)
The plants get changed and moved around. One year they may have a green-purple thing around the sundial,
and the next year it may be yellow there. Green-purple coloration is always prominent somewhere, however.
Not surprisingly, they make good use of hardy plants
that give you both colors, like this Wandering Jew.
P.S. Lonesome Ghost points out that I've overlooked an obvious example of the green-purple palate at the Mansions: The Butler's uniform.
Plaque Build-up
There's another item out here in front of the Mansion where color more or less tells the story, but it doesn't redound to anyone's credit quite so much. In fact, it may be more an example of blundering to a happy conclusion than brilliant theory expertly applied.
Those handsome plaques that grace the posts of the entrance gate tell an amusing tale. They're made of brass, which means they're an alloy of mostly copper and some zinc. If you think of them as big pennies, their metallurgical metamorphoses may seem a bit less mysterious, for copper pennies also contain zinc (but also enough tin to classify them as bronze, not brass). You will recall that copper oxidizes to green. (As many of you know, that's why the Statue of Liberty is green: her "skin" is copper.)
The plaques didn't go up until the Mansion opened, and they began as beautiful, brilliant, golden shields. I remember
them when they were like that, and there are enough photos around to give you an idea of how impressive they were.
them when they were like that, and there are enough photos around to give you an idea of how impressive they were.
The golden age didn't last even one full year. They quickly turned brown. Like a penny.
(bottom pic: Gorillas Don't Blog)
By 1975, the brown was already beginning to oxidize to green.
Here we are in December of 1977:
Here it is in 1978:
The bronze coloration lasted into the early 80's...
But by the end of that decade, they were nearly as green as today.
Now here's the really dumb part. In 1989 or 1990, someone was apparently horrified that the plaques had been so badly neglected, and so it was decreed that they should be restored to their original glory. Down they came for a good polishing. However, it seems that the best they could achieve was a nice caramel color. (I am reminded by my readers that I could be wrong about all of this, and every step we see may have been consciously engineered. Nevertheless, it's hard to see why someone would be so dissatisfied with the green that they went to this kind of trouble to change the color.)
Afterwards, someone must have realized how stupid it was to try to make what was supposed to be an old house look like it was still bright and shiny new. Why not rejoice over the natural greening, the fact that the house really was beginning to show its age so authentically? Here was Nature freely supplying something they normally have to fake, and they were trying to fight it! True, the house is supposed to be kept up, not dilapidated, but this is different. Even in carefully manicured environments, outdoor brass and bronze fixtures are often allowed to oxidize.
Anyway, they wised up and let them go back to green, and green they remain today. I don't know if they gave them any chemical help to speed the process. I would like to think they did not, but I must admit that the lettering and evenness point to some degree of artificial guidance, lending Nature a hand. You can see them darkening up and starting to oxidize again in that 1994 25th anniversary shot earlier.
Several posts back we discussed how the authentic age and the checkered history of the building serve to enhance the pleasant
impression of an old and mysterious place. In their own way, those sombre green plaques contribute to this phenomenon, I think.
This is the history of the plaques at Anaheim, but with a little effort you can find
plenty of photography documenting a similar story with the plaques at the WDW Mansion,
although in Orlando they seem to have resisted the green and clung to the brown more stubbornly.
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There are many more curiosities waiting for us in the front yard,
some that you know about and some that you don't. Next time.
