Calamity Boag - The Golden Horseshoe Saloon

After Sleeping Beauty Castle, there may be no more important icon of the first few decades of Disneyland than The Golden Horseshoe Saloon.
Wally Boag, Betty Taylor and Fulton Burley held court, every day, in Frontierland's grandest meetin' place, for thirty years.
But what exactly was it?
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I would like to play. I've got to. I think you like it. You see, it was my father they operated on when they opened mother's mail, and you don't really care, do you? Father cared. You see the nurse. No, my very name.

Kelly 0:42

Hello and welcome to The Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic. And then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California. So, Pete. Yeah. What are we talking about today?

Pete 1:22

Well, today we're gonna venture into another land in the Magic Kingdom in Anaheim at the park. What we're talking about today is an icon in Frontierland. Um and it was there at the inception of the park, and it is the Golden Horseshoe Saloon. The Golden Horseshoe Saloon. That's right, folks. Welcome to the Golden Horseshoe Saloon.

Kelly 1:45

Now, before we move too far forward, um I told Pete we were gonna I was gonna do this beforehand. Disney history is a a living, breathing beast. Yeah. It's really interesting and and it's it's unique because for a good half century the Disney company kept it so tightly under wraps that nobody could get anywhere. And it wasn't until really the late well, like the late 60s we had a little bit of influx, but it really wasn't until the late 80s or 90s that people really started talking about this stuff. Right. So it's a strange thing that we unearth. So in in the very first episode, Strutting Like a Peacock, I walked into the studio and said, the man who invented audio animatronics was a man named Lee Adams. And I read this again and again and again. Yeah. And I started kind of looking into it more because there's nothing uh out there about Lee Adams. Right. And and I started to realize that the thing that we were seeing over and over and over again that says audio animatronics was created by Lee Adams, one of Walt Disney's earliest imagineers, and that's the exact quote. You'll see it everywhere, you'll see it on Wikipedia. Right. Might be sketchy. Okay. So I reached out to uh this guy, Ken Bruce, who just wrote a book about the enchanted tiki room. A book called uh Before the Birds Sang Words. Oh, cool. I just got a copy from him, he signed it for me. Nice guy.

Pete 3:15

Uh I'm definitely looking at this after the show. Yeah.

Kelly 3:19

And I asked him about it.

Pete 3:20

Yeah.

Kelly 3:21

And I said, Hey Ken, what do you know about this Lee Adams guy? Mm-hmm. And he said, I think that this might be overstated. Now, Ken is an animator, he's worked for Disney, he's written this book. I'm assuming he knows more than I do. Okay. So I go, okay. And we chat about it a little bit. Yeah. And he says, Lee Adams is in my book, but not in any prominent way. I think that the people that we're really interested in as far as audio animatronics are Wathell Rogers and Roger Brogy. And I said, okay, that sounds good. Um and you know, he's me he said Lee Adams was probably there, he was probably involved, but maybe someone has gone in and just tweaked the internet a little bit. And so I got real interested and started kind of looking more and more and more. And I started finding other references to Lee Adams that were strange. Um Bob Gerr talks about him in his book on design, uh, about how the monorail was designed based on the Westinghouse components that Lee Adams brought to him. Uh there is some stuff in some of Didier Getz's uh Waltz People book where Roger Brogy mentions him kind of in passing. At one point he calls him Lee Adamson, uh, which is interesting, but we we know that he's actually referring to Lee Adams because he's talking about a specific plane trip, and they have an image of the uh docket of people on the trip, and it says Lee Adams. Oh, okay. It's interesting. It's yeah, it's a strange, it's a strange thing. And I was about to come back and say, I may have been wrong about stating this until I ran I ran into a snippet of a book from a professor at the University of California, Davis. Okay. So like 45 minutes from where we're sitting right now. Okay. And it said this. The book is called The Exhibition and Experience Design Handbook. It's it's it's really more of a textbook for people who are trying to design visual spaces. Right. And it says this Imagineer Lee Adams had been fiddling with audio animatronics for several years using frequencies and switches developed by NASA space program to control faces and hands operated by pneumatic and hydraulic actuators. Now when he says several years, he means several years before 1963.

Pete 6:02

Huh.

Kelly 6:03

Okay. Hmm. So I don't want to waste a whole lot more time on this. Um, but uh I it it is an ongoing mystery, the story of Lee Adams. Who he is, what was his actual involvement. I've reached out to the professor at UC Davis to see if he could tell me what his source is. More to come.

unknown 6:26

Oh.

Kelly 6:26

Anyway, not to distract too much, but I wanted to take a second and say, hey, I'm still tracking this thing down. Any of you who are cursing my name saying this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, that's probably fair. But there is still something to this story. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 6:42

And we will do this periodically throughout the show. We have no delusions of grandeur that if we're wrong on something or we misquote something or if we mispronounce an Austrian castle's name again, uh, we're totally fine with being called on that. Um just be kind about it, please. But we're totally we're totally up for it because we want to make sure that everybody gets the best experience through this possible and also the best information. And sometimes we have to go with what we can find. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, meanwhile, back on the ranch. Back back at the golden horseshoe. That's right. And over in Rainbow Ridge. There's the good old soul.

Kelly 7:21

Would you would you call the golden horseshoe the centerpiece of Frontierland?

Pete 7:27

I would call it the centerpiece of Frontierland probably before Big Thunder. I think most people think of Frontierland, they think of Big Thunder if they are of a certain age. Yeah. Um however, when you really talk about the architecture and you talk about the significance of a central theme of the whole portion of Disneyland, I I would actually argue that thematically it is the centerpiece. But it's like there's there's the reaction of how audience members feel about it and the reality of it, of the whole you know, every every town needs a hub or a hearth to build themselves around. And I think the golden Yeah, it's the weenie. I think it's the weenie. Yeah. Well, that's the weenie if you're leaving Big Thunder. So let's put it that way. If you're leaving Big Thunder and you're heading towards New Orleans, the first thing you see is Golden Horseshoe. And if you're going the opposite direction, you turn and you got Mark Twain, you turn, and then you've got Big Thunder, you turn, you've got the fort, you know, and the shooting gallery, you've got the gateway that leads you out to Main Street. Yeah. So they're actually in Frontierland, there are actually four very distinct weenies. Which for those who do not know.

Kelly 8:44

For those who do not know, we're clearly twelve because every time we say the word weenie, we giggle.

Pete 8:50

Um so the weenie is a term that is used in Walt Disney Imagineering that Walt actually generated. And what it is, it's a landmark that helps you navigate in a space. Walt kind of introduced it to his imagineers to say it's something that catches the audience's eye that lets them know, A, where they are and B, where they can go. So if you are in Main Street and you stand next to the statue of Walt and Mickey, known as partners, you can look at every direction of the compass and you know exactly where to go. Not just because there's a big sign out front saying, Welcome to Frontierland, welcome to Fantasyland. Sure. There is a very definite landmark that you see. So if you are facing Fantasyland and you're from Main Street, you see the castle. Right. But there's another weenie, if you look right through the portcullis, you see the carousel. That motion is a weenie. The minute you pass through that, there's another weenie, which is the Dumbo ride. And then you just keep going and going, and there's always something leading going, oh, look at that, let's go there. Oh, look at that, go that, let's go there. So when it comes to the golden horseshoe, if you're standing in the center uh part of Frontierland, which is pretty much in front of the little Latin American pavilion that during the Day of the Dead, they put up a lot of Dia de las Muentes all over the place. Right. Um, if you look one direction, you see the kind of hacienda style building and the fort entrance that leads you into Fantasyland or Main Street, and uh, or you see Big Thunder in the other direction, Mark Twain, and then finally the Golden Horseshoe.

Kelly 10:22

There's there's a sort of visual weenie, and there's a uh a psychological weenie. And all right.

Pete 10:31

Umdy folks, welcome to the Big Thunder Ranch. We're serving up weenies and beans. Let's just get it out of our system. Yeah.

Kelly 10:38

But I think I think I might, you know, so so the visual weenie for Frontierland was supposed to be the Mark Twain, but I'm I'm not sure that you could actually see it very well from the hub. And I think maybe psychologically, the thing we're talking about today really was the heart of Frontierland for a long while. Yeah. And maybe isn't anymore.

Pete 11:08

I agree. And this is a perfect this which is it makes this a perfect subject actually for this very show because tonight we're actually going to try and plus this thing up to make it significant again.

Kelly 11:20

That's right.

Pete 11:20

I remember, see, I have a love for the golden horseshoe, and we'll get into uh this at a on a deeper level, but I have I have a performer streak in me, and I can actually blame the golden horseshoe for that.

Kelly 11:34

Uh you you are not the only one. There's some very famous people who have built careers out of things that happened at the golden horseshoe.

Pete 11:43

Absolutely.

Kelly 11:43

Uh most notably Steve Martin. Aaron Ross Powell Steve Martin, yeah, who uh c claims that uh Wally Bogue, the star of the Golden Horseshoe Review, one of one of the three main stars of the Golden Horseshoe Review, is why he did comedy.

Pete 11:59

I I can see why. Wally was a was, I mean, uh I hesitate to use the word genius so liberally, but actually Wally really was. He was a very, very fascinating individual, very kind and generous individual from all accounts. Yeah. And just uh a workhorse. He's one of these people that some people would actually say in today's comedy world, oh, you always gotta come up with new material, new material all the time.

Kelly 12:28

Yeah, no, he did the same eight minutes for like 30 years.

Pete 12:33

For 30 years and and and succeeded and still managed to entertain and and uh really get people to laugh. And and laugh genuinely, not just ha ha, you know, not just tee hee, that's cute, dad. That show, uh, the Golden Horseshoe Review, I think, still holds the world's record for the longest-running theatrical performance ever.

Kelly 12:55

Yeah, I think it does too. Just when Wally did it, and it ran for a few more years even after he retired, but just when Wally did it, there was some 40,000 performances. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. 39,522. Just shy. Here's an interesting thing about that. I saw Wally's son, Lawrence Bogue, speak a couple of months back at the Walt Disney Family Museum. And Lawrence pointed out, it was a lovely talk. It was really, really beautiful. Uh, and Lawrence pointed out, you know, thirty-nine thousand performances, and they didn't ever film it once. Not the actual show. Not the actual show. Now, there is a special for for a wonderful world of Disney special that celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Golden Horseshoe Review.

Pete 13:45

A good old tennial.

Kelly 13:47

Um, but it wasn't particularly representative of what the show actually was. It did have most of Wally's performance in total. Yeah, like they that that was fairly accurate. But uh I believe Fulton Burley's cut out entirely. Yep. There's a weird thing with Annette singing Mr. Piano Man and bizarrely skimpy clothes. Uh there's I think Wall was really tired of the mousketeer shirt, you know. Like it's like a thing with Ed Wynne with a piano on a bicycle.

Pete 14:22

It's yeah, it's and there's a bar fight, which never happens in the in the actual show.

Kelly 14:27

Right, because you could never reset a bar fight three to five times a day.

Pete 14:30

But uh but in a book that is called Wally Bogue, Clown Prince of Disneyland, and it's written by Wally Bogue and Gene Sands, given to me by Kelly as a birthday present. That's right. And it's and he uh there's a few other things that we'll share about this in a minute, this delightful gift. It was really touching that Kelly that you gave me this because it's such a good if you get a chance, get your hands on a copy of this book if you are any sort of Disney fan, because it is such a great piece here. But uh Wally actually mentions the uh world of color performance, and he said, you know, actually I really loved it because we got to do the bar fight. Right. And it was something I always wanted to do, but again, because we couldn't reset it, we could never actually do it. But I enjoyed the heck out of it. Wow, that was fun.

Kelly 15:15

And that book, you know, I've I've read through it as well now. Yeah, boy, that's a funny book.

Pete 15:20

It's delightful. It's Wally, you know, it's really a WALL-E kind of story.

Kelly 15:25

And what what an incredible career this guy had. Um let's let's back up before we get deep deep deep into the bogue.

Pete 15:34

Wonder through the quagmire of the bogue. Let's back up.

Kelly 15:38

Can you describe what the show so that this is the show that that opened Disneyland? In fact, yeah, it predates the opening of Disneyland because it was performed before the actual opening. Yes. But this is the show that was originally in the Golden Horseshoe Saloon and lasted up until 2013. Yeah, right. Roughly 2013, yeah.

Pete 16:03

Can you describe what this show is? The show is the best way to describe it to a modern audience is that it is like a variety show in which uh you have musical numbers, comedy bits, uh, and other performers kind of doing uh a small set of different acts. Uh it is not quite vaudeville, it is not quite an English musical, and it is certainly not an actual saloon performance. Right. It is, I mean, Kelly and I kind of started off talking about this before we started recording this episode, but actually this show is a interesting pastiche of all of those things, and yet none of them.

Kelly 16:51

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. When I looked up, um, and and you are by far more of an expert on this kind of performing than I am. You know a lot more about it than I do. But when I looked up, I was like, well, what is sort of Western vaudeville? What what kind of variety acts would have happened in the old west around this time? Um what I saw was was some some pretty saucy and rough stuff. Oh, yeah. These were the performances that were never going to happen in in the more urban area of vaudeville.

Pete 17:23

Oh, yeah.

Kelly 17:24

They're pretty filthy, very fairly raw.

Pete 17:27

Well, okay, so let's talk about vaudeville for just a quick second here uh and why I know about this. And actually, I will go back to Bogue for just a second. Uh in our previous episode one of our previous episodes, actually, our first episode, Kelly and I talked about going to Disneyland uh when the park was still celebrating the bicentennial of the United States of America, and everything had that delightful, patriotic red, white, and blue bunting everywhere, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Um during that visit, my parents took me to see the Golden Horseshoe Review, and I remember sitting in the front row at one of the tables right by the orchestra pit with my grandpa Garnet. That was his name, Garnet Clancy, and we're sitting up in front. Garnet Howard Clancy. Oh, that's awesome. And his wife was Grace Elizabeth Clancy. So Garnet and Grace. So I want to talk about a great couple, raised in Oakland, and then they moved down to Southern California where my mom was born. Anyhow, I'm sitting in the front row, and I'm like, okay, there's this lady singing, that's kind of boring, whatever. There's piano, okay. I'm not sure I understand this. Like, when is the Wild West stuff gonna kind of happen? And then out comes Wally Bogue with his carpet bag, the traveling salesman. Yeah. And his goofy grin and those buggy eyes where he could like bulge him out with that delightful grin. I was just captivated right away. And then when the ballad of Pecos Bill was performed and he started spitting out his teeth, I thought that was the funniest damn thing in the universe. And I got called up on the stage to be the kid that he twisted the balloon for during that performance. Oh, that's so great. And I was I was absolutely bitten by the performance bug. Yeah. And so I, you know, my parents had a copy of the soundtrack of the Golden Horseshoe Review, and I would lip sync to Wally Boak. Yeah. Up until recently, I was never able to tie up an animal balloon. Um Have you learned? Uh well, I'll do a demonstration a little bit later on in the show. Actually, I'll do a demonstration for you right now. So I've got my balloon here. So the first thing you have to do is you've got to stretch out your your uh balloon. That's that so in in this book that uh Kelly gave me, there's actually an artifact that he slipped in here, which just made my heart sing, which was it's Wally Bogue's Bogaloon Animals. And it's this little box, it has this great picture of Wally on the box, and he's you know, it's he's in his Pecos Bill outfit, he's delightful. And it comes with it, it came with little balloons, and it came with instructions on how to tie up a little wiener dog.

Kelly 20:11

Yeah, sadly, these are these are so old that they the balloons would have been no good anymore.

Pete 20:15

Yeah, but the instructions are here, the box is here, and and it turns out Wally had signed it. So I have an autographed bogalloon thing, so that was so thoughtful. And I have Kelly to thank for that moment of nostalgia, but also Wally for this trick, uh, in which um I need to wet my whistle here for a minute. So that way, um so you have to stretch out your balloon, but the first thing you have to do is blow it out. And then what you do is you have to stretch, you know, you have to pull it out and twist it around a little bit here, and then wait, okay, we have to do that part, and then you have to twist, you know, make this happen. And then this little entire state building piece? No, no, no, no, no. If you turn it like this, see right here, it's we gotta wait. It's the Statue of Liberty. Okay. Oh my god, I can see the torch and everything. I know. It could be a flower or it could be a tortilla. We're not quite sure. Um, okay, wait a second. We have a little part right there. Okay, pop it out and tie it up, and I have nothing. Then there we go.

Kelly 21:24

It reminds me of that moment in Raising Arizona. Hey, these balloons come in funny shape. No, just circular. Depends if you think it's rounds funny.

Pete 21:38

Okay, so but so with that, I always had a love for this older form of performing. And my dad then introduced me to vaudevillions like Abbott and Costello, like W. C. Fields, like um even Henny Youngman. So I had a real strong affinity towards this style of variety. Performance, not knowing where it was, until I became a young college student and looking for some extra work, not wanting to work in retail. Right. And I found my way. See, I was going to college in San Jose, and at the time there were three, count them, three vaudeville and melodrama houses running in the area. There was the Opry House, which operated out of Almaden Canyon, which is in the southernmost tip of San Jose, outrig where there are mercury there were mercury mines out there. Wow. And they put it was in it was a small theater put in a basement. You can YouTube these and and find some of these performances. Then there was Big Lil's Cabaret, which was in downtown San Jose. But the one where I really started and cut my teeth in was at the gas lighter in Campbell, California. It was in an old movie theater, had a balcony, and it had the giant banner up in front that had all the advertisements on the on the backdrop. The backstage, I kid you not, was only six feet deep. That's how tiny this thing was. But it was a rough, that was a rough house to perform. Yeah. Because the audience was encouraged to yell insults at you by the management. They were encouraged to do that. Yeah. So you had to learn how to fire back. So if somebody, you know, somebody would heckle you and heckle you, heckle you, they were warned if you're going to do it, these guys will pull no punches. And so I kind of pulled it from Wally Bogue's kind of take on it. He just had a sly way with dealing with hecklers, which was pretty great. Yeah. And so I kind of used his delivery a little bit. I kind of ripped him off a little bit with my delivery. And one of my favorites was somebody heckling me from the front row. And after the third or fourth time, I just stopped the performance. I looked right at her and I said, Madam, you remind me of AM radio. Loud, annoying, and hard to easy to pick up at night.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

You know, it's like, yeah.

Pete 23:51

But they were also encouraged to throw popcorn at you. I mean, it was one of those types of, you know, and sometimes they would throw bottle caps and other things at you, you know. So uh, but I learned so much. But the how I auditioned was doing Wally Bogue's traveling salesman routine that I had memorized from the record and the all the times that I ever seen it on World of Color. And that world is very, very bizarre. Vaudeville started off as a performance um venue for performers just after the Civil War. Because before that it was straight up, it was either opera or straight up plays, and musical theater was not really a thing. You had you had light opera like uh Gilbert and Solomon. Yeah. But you never really had anything, it was a variety act. Right. And what had happened was is that predating the Civil War, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, you had music hall. British Music Hall started up about 30 years earlier than vaudeville. And the reason why it started up is because by British law, you could not sell alcohol or have live performing music in the exact same room. Oh, interesting. It was verboten. You could not hire you, people might sing, you know, everybody's at the bar singing some sort of rousing, you know, song together. That's fine. But you could not actually have live performers and then say, hey, come and see these performers and then buy beer or champagne or whatever. It wasn't until a rather industrious pub owner said, Well, I have a warehouse on one side of the block behind my pub, and in between the pub and this warehouse is an alleyway that is wide enough that if I buy up that one parcel of land, I could close it off and put something in between. Yeah. And so he did. And it's literally a hall between where he kept all the barrels of beer and all the champagne and the pub, and therefore he built a stage, he built a little balcony, and there's no seating. It was open seating, or if you wanted to drag a chair from the pub, you could. You went into the pub and you bought your beer, and then you walked into the music hall to go get your performance. Thus, he found a loophole. Interesting. And that loophole continued until the 1890s, I believe, when finally the British government's like, these things are so popular, we might as well just give in. It became more and more sophisticated. Some of these music halls actually were huge, elaborate music halls that actually featured great works of art on the walls and huge chandeliers. But it started off as kind of a seedy entertainment. As I mentioned earlier, one of the other live performances, besides the usual magician, uh musicians, yeah, were minstrel shows. Yeah. The minstrel show uh crossed over out of the United States and into Europe as an entertainment.

Kelly 26:50

Yeah, and in fact, I know that the sort of legacy of minstrelcy actually lasted a lot longer in in a sort of strict form in England. I know you you could still see episodes on television of the the black and white minstrel show up through the 80s. Yes, absolutely. In England.

Pete 27:11

Meanwhile, all these other performers that had cut their teeth in the UK in music hall crossed over to America. It was almost like this great cultural exchange where we got rid of something that we were not too proud of. Right. And we got in a bunch of performers. And a lot of these other performers were following suit because a lot of these other performers were not necessarily British. They were Hungarian Jews and they were um French magicians and dancers and opera singers, and they were all developing these short acts that they could do, and they would go on tour from place to place and wind up in different companies. And so uh that was the birth of the Variety Act, and the vaudeville show was then born.

Kelly 27:53

As I understand it, the uh Golden Horseshoe show is supposed to be set sometime around 1870.

Pete 28:01

And that's about appropriate.

Kelly 28:02

Okay.

Pete 28:03

That's about appropriate because that's roughly about when vaudeville really kind of gets its first incarnation.

Kelly 28:10

Okay.

Pete 28:10

Uh is about the 1870s. Yeah. Uh and the reason why it's so rough and ready is because a lot of these shows they were performed in saloons. And saloons were not just a place that you could go get a beer. You could get a beer and uh get a prostitute. And it was very, very rough. And so the audience was willing to accept the filthier humor. Right. And in some cases, the filthier the better, because you get the guys riled up. Yeah. Because you also have to think about who these towns are really performing for. Right. Whether they are the cattle ranchers who are going for long stretches at a time, very lonely, hard work, or mining operators, even farmers, working tradespeople who are uh coming to into towns like Dodge City and Tombstone, and they're going to places like the Birdcage and they're trying to find some sort of new enter something to entertain them. Fortunately for the business people back then, but unfortunately for today's mores, it's it's all about the base aspects of humanity. Yeah sex, drugs, and rock and roll, old West style. Yeah. You know, it doesn't really clean up its act really until the turn of the century. Okay. And then the temperance unions, as they're rising, as we're getting closer and closer to prohibition. Right. You have organizations like the Salvation Army and the Temperance Union really started cracking down on entertainments like this because it promoted negative stereotypes of women. Uh it it promoted drinking, it promoted promiscuity, et cetera, et cetera. So the acts actually started cleaning up. And I would actually argue they got better because they were forced to have this limitation.

Kelly 29:46

Yeah.

Pete 29:47

You couldn't just get up and do a poop joke. You could actually you actually had to think your way through of how to really be clever.

Kelly 29:52

Oh, and can I let me interject a quick thing that I just learned? I never knew this before. I am almost positive you already know it. But I I I just learned the origin of the term working blue. And it comes from this particular area uh era of vaudeville. For those of you who don't know the term, working blue is uh term to describe comics that come out and talk and do dirty jokes. You know, the the Buddy Hackett, the king of the blue comics. Oh yeah. Yeah, real genius. Um and the the term comes from when vaudeville theaters started cleaning up their acts. If you went on stage and told a dirty joke, because people would try to slip it in anyway, because it would get a rise and the audience and they'd get an audience reaction. If you did it, you would get a note from the management put in a blue envelope that would be left for you. Oh, that's so cool. And in that envelope would often be a fine. You'd be fined for the joke. But that's where the term came from. Working blue was because you got these blue envelopes if you told a dirty joke. That's interesting.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net.

Pete 31:39

Speaking of Wally, Wally actually started as a burlesque performer. Wally Bogue? Wally Bogue. Now, this wasn't a bad thing at the time.

Kelly 31:49

No, no, no. But I'm just saying, I certainly am casting Noah Spursions.

Pete 31:54

I mean he kind of worked the because vaudeville in burlesque by the time he was performing had been toned down significantly.

Kelly 32:01

Yeah.

Pete 32:02

Um, and there were some local legislations that had actually gotten rid of the striptease element, in which people who are running burlesque shows, it was more about girls in pasties and g strings. And for many people who are into burlesque now, that's kind of the modern format of it is to have some comedy routines, etc. But Wally actually performed in both vaudeville and burlesque, but he got his, he kind of cut his teeth working those circuits because he was the funny guy. He was the dancer and the funny guy. Well, when Walt approached Wally to do the Golden Horse show, Wally kind of had to say, uh, you know the kind of acts I've been doing, right, Walt? I'm gonna have to tone it down a little bit.

Kelly 32:42

I think what he said was, I've been doing a nightclub act, but I can clean it up.

Pete 32:47

Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah. And no doubt Wally may have had a little bit of rye ball, and I don't really see him do anything utterly filthy. And by the time he was doing this kind of stuff, we're talking 30s and 40s. Right. You know, I don't think that that's really, you know, by the 20s, burlesque had become pretty much just a semi-dirtier version of vaudeville, and vaudeville was very cleaned up.

Kelly 33:08

Yeah.

Pete 33:09

And the strip joints had basically become strip joints.

Kelly 33:12

Right. And Boak's career, when when you look at it, yeah, it's unbelievable. Oh, yeah. Like it is it is jaw-dropping. We could do a whole episode just on Wally. Just following him. Yeah. Like his career and and he's on the tail end of vaudeville.

Pete 33:29

Yes, he is.

Kelly 33:29

Um, but he got started so young that he he is in it.

Pete 33:34

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And he kind of got by twelve. Yeah, he got handed all these marvelous routines and I mean it's being a kind of uh, you know, there with every big moment or every big um art form that crops up, there are ripples in the water. I would like to say that yes, I am consider myself a vaudevillion because I had these experiences between these three theaters in San Jose, which I worked at all three of them. One time I was working at one that was doing melodramas, and I would play the hero, and then I would drive 45 minutes to the other theater to do the late night show, changing in my pickup truck into my villain's outfit and spear gumming them the twirling mustache just in time. And one time I was late and they used that in the show. Oh, wow. Where they made everybody wait for me. And so I and they locked the back door. So I had to I had to break into the theater to make my queue. And I was 10 minutes late, and they made a routine of it, and it was the funniest thing the audience had ever seen is me finally getting into this place by literally bashing the door down with a uh fire extinguisher to get in. And it was perfect because I just used it as my character. And like the director just kind of looked at me at one point and went, I hope you've learned your lesson. But that's the kind of attitude, you know. Like I thrived in that. And Wally did too. And um I think Wally, I don't want to get too bogged down with Wally too much more because, like I said, he's his own show in a way.

Kelly 35:12

Yeah, he's it's it's an incredible career.

Pete 35:15

Because I do want to kind of keep us moving a little bit forward on this.

Kelly 35:18

Okay.

Pete 35:18

I want to do another simulation.

Kelly 35:20

Okay.

Pete 35:21

And in order to simulate what it was like to be in the golden horseshoe during its heyday, is I've brought some um some goodies here. I've brought a pair of retro style Pepsi Cola bottles here that Kelly and I are gonna share. So let me pop this open here.

Kelly 35:42

Um, this is this is how Pete and I party. We drink drink Pepsi's a little too late at night for men of our age.

Pete 35:51

Well, yeah, there's that. So here's here's that one for you. Thank you, sir. And one for me. Here we go. Cheers. Cheers. Okay, wow. And also, um I've also bought uh brought a bag of Fritos. Um the best corn chips made. Um, or so the Frito Kid has always told us. Yeah. And for those who don't know, the Frito Kid used to be the um the mascot for the Frito's brand for some time. And there used to be a vending machine in Frontierland of a figure of the Frito Kid next to this little chute that led out of this golden gold mine. Uh there would be a little light inside the mine, and the voice would call out. So if you put in your nickel, all of a sudden the music would start up and this little animatronic figure of the Frito kid, hey Klondike, send out another Frito. Sure thing, Frito Kid, the best corn chips made. And your bag would come out to shoot, and you'd have your bag of Fritos. So I brought us to simulate what it was like for the culinary delights of the golden horseshoe in its earliest days. I have brought some PepsiCo. And um, so Pepsi, you owe me five bucks for the advertisement. Um but anyway, um, and at the time Hey, these Fritos are delicious. These are these, so these are Fritos chili cheese flavored corn chips. This is not the original Fritos. I couldn't find a bag of original Fritos for some reason, but I still love these things. I thought we'd have some culinary snacks as we talk about the actual building itself.

Kelly 37:22

Yeah. And its origins. So, yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about the building itself. The interior of the building was designed by Harper Goth. Uh Harper Goth, fundamental at the beginning of Disneyland. If you watch uh like the imaginary story or or um Behind the Attraction, you will see him all the time. He pops up. Uh usually he's walking around with the great big stick pointing at things. When they built the Jungle Cruise, uh Harper Goth just basically walked in a pattern with a stick and said, dig it there. I mean, no plan. Just but Harper Goth was a well-respected movie designer. Yes. He had designed a film called Calamity Jane.

Pete 38:10

Yeah.

Kelly 38:11

Calamity Jane was basically a ripoff of Annie Get Your Gun. It's not a bad little film. Yeah. But in the film, there is a saloon that Harper Goth had designed. So supposedly, when they were designing the golden horseshoe, which was very early on in the uh Disneyland plans, Walt walked up to Harper Gough and said, Can you design the interior of the golden horseshoe? And Goth didn't actually bother to draw anything new. He just handed him the exact same design he had used for Calamity Chain.

Pete 38:43

I was about to say, he grabbed his big stick.

Kelly 38:44

Yeah, he grabbed the big stick and said, It's there. No, no, no. You have to put counters and things. But no, he supposedly he just handed the design for the Calamity Jane saloon, and that's what they did.

Pete 38:56

That's so Harper. Yeah. Okay, so I have some Harper Goff stuff. Okay. Okay, so first off, that same saloon, if you ever want to see it in other pictures, is not just in Calamity Jane. It's in just about any Warner Brothers Western that you can get your hands on after the 50s. Uh most notably, it's the uh it's used as the uh town of the town hall of Barracho in The Great Race, uh in which Larry Storch comes in as Texas Jack and tries to attack the great Leslie, played by uh uh Tony Curtis. But also it can be seen in Blazing Saddles with uh Madeline Kahn singing, I'm tired with you know, making fun of Mawina Dietwick.

Kelly 39:43

Well, and and this actually ties into the thing that I kind of wanted to ask you about. Yeah. The the show, the Golden Horse You Review, it seems to me that it is basically a variant of Marlena Dietrich and Destiny Rides Again. It's a variant of the the performance she does in there.

Pete 40:03

Yes, very much. Uh because it made such an impression on Walt and certainly the collective consciousness of 1950s America. Yeah. Because we have to keep in mind when we talk about the Golden Horseshoe, and you watch the 1962 version on The Wonderful World of Color. Mm-hmm. Westerns were only just then, at that point, about to die. Yeah. Yeah. Because the following year you've got the birth of the space race. Yeah. And and we were and us going to the moon, etc. You know, it's you know, where were you in 62? Like this is the last great year of the 50s that most people like a lot of boomers consider 1962 to be the final year of the golden age of the 50s. Right. And that's that's arguably true in a nostalgia level. But the fi the 50s, Westerns, for some reason, just clicked and everybody loved Westerns. Yeah. To the point where uh there was a celebrities would show up and they would go not to Main Street, not to Fantasyland, they would go straight to Frontierland. Westerns were so big that everybody made a beeline for Frontierland.

Kelly 41:21

So are when we're watching the Golden Horseshoe Review, are we watching something that would have ex would have happened in the Old West, you know, around 1870, or are we watching Walt's version of say uh I don't know who made Destri Rides again, but whatever. Walt's version of say MGM's version of what they thought might have happened in a variety show in the old west in 1870.

Pete 41:55

I would I would argue that it's the latter. Yeah. I really, I really do. And and Walt I mean, we talked about this during our first episode with Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. Yeah. In which Walt had a well-intentioned and kind of naive view of what was good about America.

Kelly 42:15

Yeah. And what was good about the past. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I I love Westerns and Warts and all. And and I know when I watch a Western that often there are things going on in this movie that are wrong. Like there are attitudes that are difficult and hurtful, and filmmakers that have r really done some unkind things. John Ford.

unknown 42:44

But here's the thing.

Kelly 42:45

I was actually it's funny you you mentioned that because I was going to bring up John Ford. Yeah. Because John Ford later in his career tr flipped it on its head.

Pete 42:56

With the searchers, wasn't it?

Kelly 42:57

With the searchers. Yep. Um and I would also uh argue Men Who Shot Liberty Valence. Oh, yeah. Um where in the searchers, and and it's interesting because if you show someone who's not really familiar with Westerns, the searchers, my experience is that they will still see the negative side of it and not kind of notice that the trope's been flipped on his head.

Pete 43:20

Yeah.

Kelly 43:21

Yeah. The searchers turns the cowboy into the villain. It turns John Wayne insane. I'm convinced that John Wayne didn't know what the film was that he was making. Because I don't think he would have stood for it.

Pete 43:34

No. I don't think so either. Especially knowing his uh political inclinations at the time.

Kelly 43:39

You know. But I mean that's that's a film that's trying to uh almost make reparations for the Western.

Pete 43:44

It is in in some very interesting ways.

Kelly 43:46

Yeah. And then the the man who shot Liberty Valence also m makes this comment when when you choose between history and the legend, you choose the legend. Right.

Pete 43:56

And that's a great way to sum up the golden horseshoe, actually. Because when you think of the saloon today, a lot of us are actually thinking about the golden horseshoe because it has left such an indelible mark. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Kelly 44:10

That's right. And you know, I think there's an interesting parallel, and I don't I won't go too far off on this.

Pete 44:16

But you know, is it well I'll forgive you because I'm about to go way off the mark on you in just a minute here. I'm just going to bring it all the way back. This is going to be one of Pete's tangents here, but go ahead.

Kelly 44:24

But you know, when I was in uh Florida recently, I um went to see the country of Bear Gambare because it's going away.

Pete 44:31

What in Florida?

Kelly 44:32

Yeah. Well, so they're they're redoing it. Oh, okay. Um they're going to do it as a more Nashville thing where it's it's more like country versions of kind of Disney songs. Take that how you will.

Pete 44:46

But I'm making a very sour face over here, but go ahead. It's okay.

Kelly 44:51

But I I will I will argue I I love that old show, and I went to see it one last time. And um because it's closing, the audience was very full, which was nice, and people laughed, and it was it was great fun. Yeah. But I think people have the same vision of that show that that people do of the golden horseshoe. They think that what we're seeing is an interpretation of like the grand old opery from the 30s. Yeah. And it's not. No. It is an interpretation of Hee-Haw doing the grand old Opry in the 30s.

Pete 45:29

Yes. It is it is a layer upon, it's a recreation of a recreation of a recreation.

Kelly 45:33

Right. It's it's a modern view. Yeah. And it's done through a modern filter.

Pete 45:38

I'm gonna stop us here for just a minute because I want to share something, because I actually this builds off of what I want to go into, which is the notion of a themed eatery with entertainment is not a Disney invention. The earliest and most interesting that I can think of is certainly the Moulin Rouge in Paris. But that is mostly the same thing of just a big lavish show. Yeah. It's more akin to like something like Cirque du Soleil in today, you know, like take Vegas, Cirque du Soleil, you know, add some nudity, and you've got the Moulin Rouge. Just down the street on the Montmartre, there's a place, the Cabaret L'Enfer. When you walked up to it, there was this giant mouth of a devil. And when you stepped into it, you would walk down under the building because you were descending into hell. And all the waiters were dressed as little devils with the Mephistophily and uh curly mustaches and pointy beards, and they would serve up hot drinks in a room that had double boilers, literally filling the uh environment with lots of heat, and they would burn little brasiers with sulfur kind of tinged in there. Yeah. And there's these marvelous sculptures. Google it, guys, it's amazing. That's the earliest version, the most significant one that I want to bring up. There's two of them that are in Los Angeles, predate Disneyland by at least 10 years, and I think I'm going to make the argument actually wildly influenced Walt's uh approach to the Golden Horseshoe. The first is a cafeteria started by a man named uh Clifford Clinton. Clifford Clinton was born uh with some missionary parents uh who these Christian missionaries who actually went over to China in 1905 and from what I understand, they actually started a restaurant over there to support themselves. They were apparently forced to escape from different warlords in China and had to escape by uh way of the Yangtze River. Okay. Uh they were saved by a Buddhist monk who smuggled them into safety, literally hiding them in barrels, and they were gifted a Buddha that still rests in the family's possession to this date. Wow. When he got back, because of his restaurateur upbringing, he started a whole chain of cafeterias all over Southern California. The most notable was right in downtown Los Angeles. It's a four-story building called Clifford's uh uh Clifton's Cafeteria. Okay. Clifton's uh was also known as the cafe of the golden rule because he would never turn anybody down whether they could pay for their meal or not. He wanted to make sure that nobody went without food. It started off as a simple cafeteria, and his staff would usually be people who would come to him looking for a job, especially during the depression, and he would help them out and say, Sure, I need a bus boy, get in there. In its heyday, at its absolute peak, that cafeteria would serve 15,000 people a day. Holy cow. And with that came a certain amount of fortune because he also wanted to expand people's cultural notions. So he started putting stuff into his cafeteria to decorate it. Okay. Like huge sculptural rocks. So you were like dining in a little Swiss villa. And that's on one level. The next level is filled with all this African taxidermy. Then the next level up, it has like all these beautiful works of art. So it eventually became kind of a weird cabinet of curiosities where you could go get uh a platter of food. Some of the most notable people to eat there uh would be Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Forrest J. Ackerman. And I mentioned those three names because that is where they initially met at the world's first science fiction convention. Oh my god. Started by Forrest J. Ackerman, who was also the world's first cosplayer as he dressed up as a character from H. G. Wells uh What Things May Come. Things to come. Things to come.

Kelly 50:08

Things to come.

Pete 50:09

Things to come. And uh just delightful. And those three guys became friends for life, but they would meet regularly at Clifton's. Wow, that's and another visitor would be Walter Elias Disney, where he would go there with some of his executives to just kind of get this. This would be Walt during the 30s when he's working on Snow White and he's the grand auteur. Yeah. Um but I would argue that that is one one notion of okay, a themed place where I can escape. Yeah. It was certainly an influence on him. Let's talk about a little bit about the show itself.

Kelly 50:43

Yeah, let's talk about the show. I found this interesting thing in in Wally Bogue's book, uh, where he mentions the piano player in the show. And he's uh his his name's uh Charlie LeVay, and he s he talks about that Charlie comes in and sometimes he would just come in and lay his head down between his hands, looking just depressed as anything, and Wally would try and cheer him up. And that this is like two sentences in in Wally's book, but I was like, who is this guy? Like, what's this all about? Yeah. Well, Charlie LeVere. Okay. Um so this guy was around forever. He was a major jazz pianist. He worked with, you know, he came up with Billy May. He came up with Jack Teesdale. He was with a lot of these really like big acts. He came out of this Texas, Oklahoma jazz circuit. Oh, okay. He were he was uh on Bing Crosby's show for a long time. He was teamed up with uh Gordon Jenkins, who did arrangements for Sinatra. Oh wow. He recorded with Billy Holliday. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I mean it's what a pedigree. Yeah, it's it's crazy. When they were about to make the Red to Morocco, yeah. The Crosby uh Hope movie, yeah. They had all these great new songs. It's arguably the best songs of any of the Red movies. And uh Bing Crosby refused to rehearse with the orchestra. He would only rehearse with Charlie LeVere. Wow. He was like, uh here's the piano guy that's been working on my show. We're gonna rehearse these off on our own. And two- All right, Bob, go ahead and practice your swing. I'm gonna be over here playing with Charlie. Oh, and there's a reason I probably should have opened with this. I've buried the lead. Charlie LeVere was not only the piano player for the Golden Horseshoe Review for the first five years. Charlie LeVere wrote all the songs. Oh, wow. I wondered who wrote all this stuff. He was the composer of the Golden Horseshoe Review. Okay. So he had this extensive jazz career. Yeah. He was up and down being fairly famous uh with with a lot of big stars.

Pete 53:17

Yeah.

Kelly 53:18

And then he sort of pauses for about five years and is the piano player for the Golden Horseshoe Review. He also had some alcohol issues to the extent that he knows that he recorded with Billy Holiday, but he does not recall it. Oh dear. Yeah. And I just I have this great list of bands that Charles LeVere wa either formed or was in.

Pete 53:46

Okay.

Kelly 53:47

Uh he starts off with Charles LeVere and his Chicago Loopers, Charles LeVere and his Chicagoans, the Harlem Hotshots, Jack and Charlie Teagarden in Tea Garden, LeVere and Tea Garden, the swing wing trio. Wow. Ben Pollock's Pick a Rib Boys. John Scott Trotter and his orchestra. Uh, which was the band for Bing's radio show. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Four hits and a miss. Rico Marcelli and his orchestra. Okay. And the Gordon Jenkins Orchestra. Wow. So I mean, the the guy was around a lot. He played with Count Basie.

unknown 54:33

Wow.

Kelly 54:33

He uh he sang, he actually had a million-cellar song, uh, the song called uh Maybe You'll Be There that Gordon Jenkins had arranged. Oh my gosh. An interesting little book into his career. He seemed to be someone that people felt comfortable with, vocalists felt comfortable with, which is why Crosby was like, I I just want to work with my piano player. I don't want to work with big orchestra.

Pete 54:56

So wow.

Kelly 54:58

Towards later, later in his life, one of the last things Gordon Jenkins did was work on one of Harry Nielsen's last album, an album called A Little Touch of Schmielson in the Night. Do you know this record? I do not. It's a it's all standards. Right. And Gordon Jenkins puts a giant, like 29-piece orchestra together for Harry Nielsen. Wow. Um they find some kind of common ground. They turn it turns out they kind of like the same things. And Jenkins understands that Nielsen can be a loose canon. Sure. But what he also recognizes is that Nielsen desperately wants to get this right. And so he he he commits to him. He says, okay, this guy's gonna hold it together enough to do this. He's gonna work hard. There's a great quote I wanted to read from it's a this is a book about Gordon Jenkins' life. It's called Goodbye in Search of Gordon Jenkins. Uh it was written by his son.

Pete 56:02

Oh wow.

Kelly 56:03

So Gordon says, Gordon Jenkins says technically he didn't have much of a voice talking about Harry Nielsen. But he had good pitch and feeling and he was willing to work. This is a guy who was terrified of performing live and never did it once. Never stood in front of a conductor either, but he was passionately interested in the thing.

Pete 56:24

Huh.

Kelly 56:24

He spent many hours rehearsing with my old piano player, Charlie LeVere, just to get the intervals and f and phrasing down. Harry did that very quietly on his own. The thing is, your basic Harry, without any of the stimulants or whatever, is a very diligent, hardworking mathematical man from the bank, his former job, working on elaborate computer type schemes that will all fit together. The madness part makes him exotic and exciting. But what got him to Charlie LeVere was his desire to make the books balance so that when he stood in front of Gordon, he wouldn't look like a fool. So I just I love this bookend where you you've got like Crosby early on trusting Charlie LeVere as the guy that he can work with to get it right. And then way, way later, someone as strange and wonderful as Harry Nielsen trusting Charlie the Vere to be the guy that he works with to get it right.

Pete 57:22

And probably Wally doing this exact same thing of trusting this person because he also is kind of Wally is kind of a was an improvisational loose canon at times.

Kelly 57:32

Yeah.

Pete 57:33

More akin to like a Robin Williams type performer.

Kelly 57:35

Yeah, totally. So I just I That is wild.

Pete 57:39

I never even heard of these people. This is so cool.

Kelly 57:41

I didn't either. And I looked up um and and I'll I'll post them on the Facebook group later. Charlie LeVere wrote a number of songs. Yeah. Uh some of them are a lot of fun. Uh he wrote a thing called the Cuban Boogie Woogie that's wonderful. Oh I'm gonna have to check that one out. Yeah. But super interesting guy. He stuck with the the review for about five years after he'd written it. Um he, you know, obviously his songs, I think there's like five of them total.

Pete 58:09

Yeah.

Kelly 58:09

Lasted the the entire run, then disappeared when they shut down. But then later the Golden Horseshoe review was brought back in a kind of abbreviated highlight show. Yeah. So his songs were back in again.

Pete 58:22

So they were considered classics at that point.

Kelly 58:25

Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, Charlie LeVere, his spirit inhabited that building for a very long time.

Pete 58:32

Yes, indeed. Uh what else do we know about the show itself?

Kelly 58:38

I mean we know uh that there's obvious ties to the Pecos Bill cartoon. Yeah. The the Pecos Bill short, uh, which is ostensibly the character that Wally Bogue's supposed to be playing during it, though uh it seems like he's pretty much just playing Wally Bogue. He shows up as a traveling salesman and then later shows up as Pecos Bill, but sort of it's just the traveling salesman dressed up as a cowboy.

Pete 59:04

Only willing to, you know. Those who don't know, Wally Bogue was bald as an egg. He was. And he was, you know, he would wear, he would wear a hair piece. Uh, but what I like about Wally is that he was unafraid to just let it go. Yeah.

Kelly 59:18

Like it off every show. Every single show people. Yeah. Here it is. Like, and there was a great story of he takes a friend, a friend comes to the park, he takes the friend onto the jungle cruise, the jungle cruise breaks down. Now, Bogue's doing like three to five shows a day. It breaks down, he's sitting there for about 20 minutes, he realizes he's not going to make it. Oh no. So he takes off his hairpiece, holds it above his head, leaps out of the boat, evidently swims to shore. I mean, it's not that deep, so there's not that much swimming. Swims to shore, kisses a hippopotamus on the head, and takes off to the horseshoe.

Pete 1:00:03

Well, and this brings us to an interesting thing about Wally and the horseshoe itself architecturally. Yeah. Because uh Wally had to perform so many performances, he had his own green room.

Kelly 1:00:19

It's more than a green room.

Pete 1:00:20

Yeah, it's practically on the grounds.

Kelly 1:00:25

Yeah, it's it it was above the old Ann Jemima shop, An Jemima restaurant. Wow. And it's it's large. Yeah. Uh I've I've seen some pictures. Well, there's some pictures in the book.

Pete 1:00:35

Yeah.

Kelly 1:00:36

And uh this supposedly, like talking uh listening to his son talk at the lecture I saw recently. This was one of the reasons that things kind of fell apart for Wally later in his career. After Walt loved him. Of course. Walt absolutely adored Wally. Yeah. Walt trusted him. You know, this is why, you know, Wally stars and wrote part of the Tiki Room show. Yeah. That's why he wrote most of the Golden Horseshoe show. He's why Wally appears in Absentminded Professor, Wally appears in the love bug. He shows up a lot. Wally is the original voice of Tigger. Is he really? Yeah. Wow. But but he Walt dies and there is a lot of resentment about how nicely Wally has been treated all this time. I mean, Wally has a ton of real estate in Frontierland that is just his to live in. Yeah. You know, he's being given these roles. Uh after Walt dies, they take the Tigger roll away from him and recast it. He gets sent over to Florida to run the Diamond Horseshoe for a little while. By the time he comes back to Disneyland after he's got that launch, they've taken his apartment area away. Yeah. And it become it starts to become very clear that the new regime is not a fan of Wally, or at least they're resentful of how well he'd been treated. Right. And he leaves. And and he he eventually leaves. And it doesn't seem like it's particularly bitter, but I did find this quote. Later after he had left Disneyland, he comes back to visit at one point and says, I went back to the park after having not been there for about 25 years. Things have changed so much. I don't think I'll do it again.

Pete 1:02:37

I mean, that really does speak to how it really was Walt's dream. Yeah. What's interesting is that in that show, the Bob Ger show, watch it, it's on YouTube, in which he speaks with uh Tony Baxter. They talk about this marvelous moment where Walt would drive around the park before opening hours in some one of you know one of the various cars that are available on Main Street. Yeah. But he would drive all over the park. It wasn't just Main Street. It's like, I'm going to Frontierland on this car. You know, I'll be back in a little bit. And that is that is my worst Walt Disney I've ever done. But anyway, he um they make a point, both Tony and Bob, talk about how that was the only time that Walt could really enjoy the part because usually he was beholden to all the fans, going, Mr. Disney, can you sign this? Hey, Walt, I need you to make this decision. And he couldn't really enjoy it because he had built it for himself. And then that's when they kind of realized, like, oh yeah, he built this for himself. Yeah. Because he still had that touch of innocence.

Kelly 1:03:56

This month on Boardwalk Times, we're writing about The Planet of the Apes, New End Classic, the 20 Best Star Wars television episodes, a wrap-up of the Run Disney race season with the look towards next year and Disney's second quarter financials report. Come check it all out at BoardwalkTimes.net. Oh yeah. Sometimes they would have concerts. The Firehouse Five Plus 2 performed there several times. They pr they recorded an album there and performed their last ever concert in the Golden Horseshoe Saloon. Wow. You know, a lot of stuff kind of went on. There was sometimes like solo magicians, stuff like that. Yeah. But none of it was the same. Yeah. None of it was the Golden Horseshoe Review.

Pete 1:05:11

No. I d and I think it's kind of lightning in a bottle, frankly. I don't think you could ever really revive it. Uh and have it be exactly the same. Right. You know, it it it will not really have the and it because it's also the audience brings something to it, an energy, a reaction to it that I think makes it just as important as what's going on the stage. Right. You know, the audience is also receptive to what's being done on the stage. Yeah. And if you were to try and start a vaudeville melodrama house the way that I remember them from the eighties and nineties. We're talking nineteen eighties and nineties. Not 1880s and 1890s. But even then, you you really would not. Get the audience. The audience will not understand what it what it is you're doing.

Kelly 1:06:03

Yeah.

Pete 1:06:04

The times have changed so much that that level of nostalgia has now transmitted into the 1920s up until the 1940s or 50s. And that's perfectly natural. Yeah. But that means that they're kind of missing out on some very amazing stuff. Yeah. Um, because I have, you know, performed as a vaudevillion, but I've also performed as a music hall performer at the Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco as a chairman of the music hall known as Mad Sal's Dockside Alehouse. It's a much older form of entertainment, but I think the main reason why uh I enjoyed working it so well is it was kind of going to an older version of what I already understood and knew. Right. Um But even then, the audience today would not actually fathom the show. I it's not even that they wouldn't fathom it. I don't think they would enjoy it. As a matter of fact, there was some backlash recently uh in which the Dickens Fair actually came under heat because of performing stuff that was a little too old-fashioned and therefore wasn't very acceptable to modern social uh acceptance levels.

Kelly 1:07:14

Yeah.

Pete 1:07:15

And so they've had to modify it. They've done uh, from all accounts a very good job at it. But uh there are some songs you probably shouldn't be singing these days if you don't want to offend people. If you're okay with offending people, go for it. Yeah. But if you're really trying to be nice to everybody, yeah, there are some things you just can't sing that are actually like fairly common songs. Right. You can't do that anymore. Same can be said actually for some of the stuff in the Golden Horseshoe Review.

Kelly 1:07:40

Yeah. And I I think for for shows like that, you can do a show like that, but you you have to be able to kind of pick your audience. And something like the Golden Horseshoe Saloon or the the the Cow Palace at the Dickens Fair, you ha you have no control over it at all. I mean, people are just going to wander through who have no context for what they're seeing. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. Right. So you can set up small uh vaudeville theaters, and there still are some, and do this kind of stuff and and really you know do it uh to a certain level of historical accuracy and it's okay. But you have to have an audience that has the context. Absolutely. It doesn't it doesn't work otherwise.

Pete 1:08:26

So with that in mind, since we're talking about what we can't do now, what can we do in the future? So I think now we're at the point of the show where we're going to do our plus up part of the show. Yeah. And I'm gonna throw the ball this time at Kelly and go, uh, my friend, how how would you do a plus up on the golden horseshoe?

Kelly 1:08:50

So I think you know it's interesting. My first thought was this is so obvious, you just put the show back. But I think you're right that the show doesn't quite work anymore. Um I think it's partially the problem that they're having with the country bear jamboree. And and you know, it's been filling up lately, but only because people knew it was going. Um people don't have that experience of hee-haw anymore, which is basically what it was.

Pete 1:09:20

Yeah.

Kelly 1:09:21

And people don't have that experience of Destry Rides Again or Calamity Jane or even Blazing Saddles anymore. We're losing that. And it's okay, times change, that happens. But I think you could do something like the Adventurers Club. Like a Western version of the Adventurers Club. So um I'm I'm seeing unbridled joy on Pete's face right now. Uh if if you haven't experienced it or haven't heard of it, the Adventurers Club was the greatest thing in the Walt Disney World complex.

Pete 1:10:06

It really was. It really was. It was amazing.

Kelly 1:10:09

And it was um a like 1930s Explorers Club where everyone was an eccentric character. The people behind the bar were eccentric characters, the barmaids were eccentric characters, there were just people that wandered through and did strange things. Occasionally the walls came alive. Uh there would be like giant, much like the uh the ending portions of the Enchanted Tiki room, like gods would come and turn everything alive on the walls. You could get invited into the back room for secret shows with a ghost piano player. Um, it was marvelous.

Pete 1:10:53

And it started off as a late-night entertainment between Imagineers.

Kelly 1:10:57

Yeah.

Pete 1:10:58

Just goofing around, and then it just clicked, and they decided, let's do this for an audience.

Kelly 1:11:03

Yeah, and you know when and and people are so devoted to it. It hasn't been there. I mean, Pleasure Island isn't really there anymore, but people are so devoted. When I ran the marathon in January, yeah, there were adventurers club people like like Disney had set up an old Jeep and two characters from the Adventurers Club on the course.

Pete 1:11:25

Tongaloosh, baby. Kungaloosh.

Kelly 1:11:30

So you could do something like that with the golden horseshoe. You put bartenders in character, because even though they don't actually serve booze there, there is a bar.

Pete 1:11:41

And serving Pepsi, I'm telling you.

Kelly 1:11:44

Serving Pepsi. And I I suspect, and I I this is a whole other conversation. I suspect booze is not that far away, but um, which I think's a shame. But you could do that, you could put eccentric Western characters that come through. Uh you could do the thing that some that you would get in the private shows at private. It sounds awful, but the the secret shows, let's say, in in the adventures club where people would come up on stage and very shyly like do a song for mother. And and you know, have have like, you know, some some interesting kind of western special effects. I think I think you could do an immersive western thing that wouldn't lean too heavily into things that that are difficult without context, and you can make it super fun, and man, would it make me happy. So that that's my plus up. I the you adventurers club, the golden horseshoe saloon.

Pete 1:12:52

Okay. Now, Kelly's been smiling as he's been talking about this because he's watching me kind of hold my tongue and with this big poop-eaten grin on my face, because I'm just like on and I'm nodding furiously, going, yes. But I'm gonna plus it up even more. All right. I agree with you. I I think my plus up would actually be to kind of get in there, get into the skin of the theater itself. Not destroy it, but get into the skin of it a little bit. Kind of plus up the environment just a little bit, and here's how I would do it. I would not necessarily being a Western town does not mean it has to be the old West. Okay. I'm gonna make that argument right away that you do not have to be the wild, the wild, wild west, folks. You don't have to be the wild, wild west in order to do that. You can actually get away with exactly what I was kind of hinting at. Because I was kind of leading into something here when I was talking about how things have changed and how people react differently to like the wild west. Yeah. I've been saying that over and over again throughout this episode for this very reason. You said it in the 20s. Okay. The 1920s? 1920s. Not the 1820s. Yeah. That's I I think the collars are too big back then. Um yeah, no, no Bridgerton at Disneyland, thank you. Um the Gatsby Saloon, is that what we're no, no, no, no, no. You make it so that way the golden horseshoe is on its way out. Okay. And it's that transition uh where it's real 20s vaudeville in this old Western legendary golden horseshoe where the old review used to be, and they acknowledge it. They acknowledge the review. They say, We're a new troop that has moved in, we're revitalizing the place. It's a little haunted mansion-y run down. Yeah. It's during bootlegging era, so that's why there's no booze served here. Lots of Pepsi. Um but and that way you can actually have some jazz numbers. And it's more attune, it's more of akin to a juke joint than a Wild West show. But because it's a Wild West town, they still have a couple of Wild West acts thrown in as pepper. Not necessarily as the backbone of it. But, like you said, with and I agree with you, the crazy eccentric characters, the environment gets a little bit more eccentric. Yeah. All of that is there. That's why I was nodding furiously. I went, yes, this, this, this, this, and this. Yeah. But the show itself is actually acknowledging the history of the Golden Horseshoe. We have literally just moved the audience forward in time by about 40 years. Interesting. And so the the the it's no longer white, it's everything's slightly aged. Yeah. And and they're trying to get it back because what they're doing is acknowledging that for 40 years it hasn't been actually there. Right. So let's acknowledge that. And then you actually make it the spirits of the West show. So you actually have Pecos Bill return as some sort of spirit. It's an uns so like we gotta start making the spirits happy. So it's actually a slightly haunted saloon. Not over the top hat box ghost stuff, not scary, but that kind of tongue-in-cheek, like maybe that chandelier's moving on its own kind of thing. Maybe, you know, not over the top super scary, just kind of tongue-in-cheek, kind of wally bogue Pecos Bill kind of fun. But because it's this vaudeville troupe from the 20s that is settled in, you could do these jazz numbers, you could do the Wild West numbers, you could do some of that kind of stuff, and you can kind of have the same level of comedy and the same level of and the energy that was there without having to make an audience, a modern audience with different contextual precepts. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to force them in a go, you gotta like the old west in order to like the show. No, no, no. Come in and watch some jazz. And also, that allows you to get a little multicultural with your show as well. It does. Yeah. Right. Which is a really good idea. Big, you know, big it kind of ties in a little and you can tie it in a little bit with Tiana, with Princess and the Frog, that kind of which you're right down the road from at this point. Right. And but this is a lot more like a dry western town that has become a bootlegger central. So you're talking about 1920s bootleggers.

Kelly 1:17:49

We're almost we're almost at like last picture show.

Pete 1:17:54

Right.

Kelly 1:17:54

Yeah.

Pete 1:17:55

Yeah. So it's yeah, it's like the golden horseshoe meets the last picture show with a little little taste of the adventurers club and a little taste of the haunted mansion mixed in. And it's the Spirits of the West show.

Kelly 1:18:06

Oh, can can I throw in a little taste also of the Frontierland shooting gallery? Yes, please. Yeah. Just a little bit of like if you do this thing, something over there is gonna happen.

Pete 1:18:17

Trevor Burrus, Jr. That that that flavor, that flavor of the supernatural, of the ghost train or the riders in the sky. Like they actually do riders in the sky, you know, and actually throw in a little bit of the country bear jamboree by moving Melvin into the thing. So the moose talks.

Kelly 1:18:32

Yeah.

Pete 1:18:32

It's like let's have Melvin back. Let's let's let's just move them into the golden horseshoe. So you actually have Melvin.

Kelly 1:18:37

Yeah.

Pete 1:18:38

And you just and and again, it's an acknowledgement of these older entertainments, this one central area for people who really want this.

Kelly 1:18:43

Yeah.

Pete 1:18:44

And so you have this adventurous club feel that you want to go to the golden horseshoe. You want to be a member of the Golden Horseshoe Club. Yeah. Or you want to, you know, be the deputy of the Golden Horseshoe and Rainbow Ridge. You know so Rainbow Ridge was, you know, became a bootlegger town.

unknown 1:19:00

Yeah.

Pete 1:19:01

And that's and that's the entertainment that has settled. But it's no longer pristine white. I know Walt would kill us. But the show would no longer be totally pristine white. There'd be some staining to it. There would be it was definitely nice in its day, and it could be great again, but it's the performers that make it great. Yeah. And it's that feeling of what's gonna happen. Oh, this is fun. This is whoa, there was some sort of interactive event that happened at the end of that show. It's kind of it's like the how the tiki room, the gods start performing, and we've we've we've angered the gods, and all of a sudden there's a rainstorm outside. You know. With all the celebrating. With all of the celebrating.

unknown 1:19:42

Yeah.

Kelly 1:19:43

That would be Fulton Burley, by the way.

Pete 1:19:45

Yes, indeed. And Wally Bogus Jose. Yeah. But um, but that would be the flavor of it, and be able to recycle it, you know, re-re-re-re-re-recycle it. But breathe some new life or unlife into it, as it were. With a combination of our so I think this is our first plus up where it's a plus up, but it's actually a dual plus up. We're almost pretty much on the same page. Yeah. Just a different, you know, where you went more west, I went more 20s, but at the same time, it's like that works. I think element.

Kelly 1:20:15

I think your idea spins it to a point where it's like, oh, this is a whole new conceptual thing that still fits. Yeah. You know, it still belongs in Frontierland. Yes. But it does something new.

Pete 1:20:30

And it actually serves. If you did this, and imagineering, you can steal this from me. Yeah. Um, just send me a free ticket. Um if they did this, it would make a fabulous, smoother transition into New Orleans Square. Yeah, it would. Of going over from the hard old West with like Big Thunder Mountain and the shooting gallery and so forth, being hardcore Wild West, Rahu, shoot 'em up, Yaga to Yaga. But if that's actually a thing. And then you would have the Golden Horseshoe, which is kind of on this edge of it's kind of Wild West. It's it's like a fade between one and another rather than this hard-edged change. Yeah. So if you're if you're literally going from one entertainment to another, you're going from Big Thunder and straight over New Orleans Square and Pirates, it's kind of like that's a little jarring. But if you make it 1920s, then it's it's still Old West, but it's still got that jazz, kind of juke joint jazz approach to it. Half and half, okay, suddenly there's a story going on here. I'm traveling from one land to another. Right. Which they kind of do in Florida with Liberty Square. You know, you go from the 1800s actually more into the 1810s. The 1700s to the 1810s. Yeah. By the time you get to the this beautiful mm mansion with the haunted mansion. Right. So anyway, that's my plus up.

Kelly 1:21:56

I love it.

Pete 1:21:56

I mean, I think it's so great. I'm ready to do it now. I mean, I'm like uh let's call like You could build it. I I'd be happy to. Yeah. So uh so Imagineering, my name is Peter Overstreet. Uh anyway. Yeah, you can see. Some of my friends who are Magineers are going, are rolling their eyes, going, oh, shut up. Anyhow. So uh I I think this is a marvelous place for us to move on to our next episode. Yes, I want to thank everybody again for coming.

Kelly 1:22:27

Yes, thank you. And I have, as always, been not Professor Peter Overstreet, and I am not Kelly McCubbin. And you have been enjoying the lowdown on the plus up. Thanks for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at commons at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.