As part of a old naval tradition, Walt personally put a silver dollar under each of Columbia’s three masts before they were set.
The spires atop Sleeping Beauty Castle are covered with 22-karat gold leaf to give off just the right luster in all weather conditions.
Walt insisted on this touch, but Roy, who found the financing to get Disneyland built, balked at the expense.
Walt therefore waited until Roy was in New York on business before ordered the gold leaf to be installed on the castle.
It has been questioned why Walt Disney built the castle relatively small (it only rises 75 feet above the moat), but he actually had a very good reason.
He recalled that the tyrants of Europe built huge, imposing castles in order to intimidate the peasents. Disney wanted his castle to be friendly, so it was built on a smaller scale
Flora in Sleeping Beauty was named after Walt’s mother
Walt Disney with his mother, Flora.
Diane Disney talks about her mother……
February 15, a daughter was born in Spalding, Idaho, to Willard and Jeanette Bounds. Lillian Marie, my mother, was their tenth and last child. She grew up in Lapwai, Idaho, where the headquarters of the Nez Perce Tribal Reservation was located. Her father was at various times during his life an Indian scout for General Crook (this I learned from my Aunt Grace, her oldest sister), a blacksmith, and a Deputy U.S. Marshall, who once drove a wagon from Lewiston to Spalding to deliver a $626,000 payment in twenty dollar gold pieces that the U.S. government paid the Nez Perce Indians to acquire their land. (This last bit I learned from Dick Riggs in an article he wrote for the Nez Perce County Historical Society.)
My mother spoke often, and fondly, of her childhood on the Reservation. Spalding as a town no longer exists, but is marked with a sign, “Site of the former town of Spalding.” She attended grade school there, then high school in Lapwai, where she played basketball. Many years ago my husband’s parents were on a driving trip in that part of the country, and, in conversation with a pleasant couple they’d met, Ron’s mother mentioned that her son was married to Walt Disney’s daughter, whose mother had come from that area. The man volunteered that he’d gone to school with mother and her siblings and shared, “Those Bounds girls were good basketball players!” That was something I hadn’t heard, and I am still impressed.
My grandfather died in 1916 at the age of 62 (again, thanks to Dick Riggs for that information). Mother and her mother went to live with her brother Sid, who was the Fire Chief in Lewiston. She attended Business College in Lewiston, and did some secretarial work (“I was a lousy secretary” she admitted later) before moving to Los Angeles at the urging of her sister Hazel, who was living there with her young daughter, Marjorie. A friend of Hazel’s who was acquainted with Roy and Walt Disney, two brothers down the street who had a small cartoon studio, told her, “I think I can get you a job there, but promise you won’t vamp the boss.” Did she perhaps have designs on him? Evidently her secretarial skills were not as dismal as she thought them to be, for she was hired, and her story from this point is also my dad’s story.
Mother’s childhood, though a happy one, was sometimes not an easy one. She adored her father, but he was not always a good provider. She described him as, “a ‘good-time Charlie’… whenever he had some money he’d buy us all presents, and then the money was gone.” But they did have good times together, and my father was really taken with them. They were a very different family than his own. They loved to laugh, and maybe didn’t appear to take life as seriously as Elias did.
Her mother lived with them in the early years of their marriage, and according to my cousin Marjorie, my dad adored her and, “treated her like a queen.” My grandmother had stories to tell about the early pioneer years, and dad loved to hear them.
Our Aunt Grace, who was widowed, lived with us for many years, giving my parents freedom to travel together, and travel they did. Aunt Hazel was, next to my parents and sister, the closest, dearest person to me.
My mother had a long life, and we are all grateful for that. Like my dad, who eagerly anticipated having grandchildren, she adored hers and wanted to be called “Granny.” All of our children and most of our grandchildren were able to know her, with the exception of the two youngest. Our youngest grandson was born in Aspen, Colorado on December 4, 1997. Mom knew of his birth, and called my son and his wife, “What a lucky baby he is to have you for his parents.” She suffered her fatal stroke the next day and died that evening.
This is interesting!!
“Dancing on a Cloud” is song that didn’t make it to the final film, Walt felt that every Dance scene with a princess should feel like that because that is what she is thinking.
