SF, CA - Walt and the Lyon Steps

Today we visited a museum which we would ordinarily skip given its name but we stopped in several weeks ago to use the bathroom and did some exploring. We decided that this musuem is definitely not a museum for kids but a very sophisticated museum devoted to Walt Didney, his life and his.art. Of course, Gary and I grew up with Walt Disney: we watched the Mickey Mouse Club with Jimmy, Sharon, Cubby, Annette, Bobby and others.

We put on our mouse ears,

and sang the song,

Who's the leader of the club

That's made for you and me

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there

You're as welcome as can be

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse!

Forever let us hold our banner

High! High! High! High!

Come along and sing a song

And join the jamboree!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

How many of you still have your mouse ears? Mine were consigned to the trash heap long ago but I still see them in antique stores.

It was only on for 4 years, from 1955 to 1959, but, my, I probably watched every episode. I watched Spin and Marty, The Hardy Boys, Zorro and all the other series they had. Then they went off the air, I had grown and American Bandstand took its place in the after school hour.

However, back to the gist of the museum, the genius and life of Walt Disney. I couldn’t take any pictures in the museum but I’ll just tell you it was fascinating and I recommend that you visit when you’re in San Francisco. It has hundreds of original drawings, historical artifacts, pictures, films of people who worked for him, several hands on exhibits (one where you got to add the percussion to a cartoon following the bouncing ball, and one where you got to choose the appropriate music for a cartoon with explanation about why it is appropriate) a movie running the whole time, and much more. In fact, it is 10 large galleries full of items used to tell the Disney story.

In the end I had a much greater appreciation of Disney and his genius. He was not only an animator but he was an innovator, TV star, manager of a huge operation and developer. He was both the creative genius behind the operation and the manager of the operation.

He began in the 20’s with some simple shorts films using a young girl named Alice in a cartoon background. Pretty simple and then he began to develope it all.

First he added music with a small group of short animated films he called the Silly Symphonies. Even Gary and I, growing up in the 60’s remember these films. We both remember the Dance of the Skeletons and how one skeleton uses another to make a xylophone. They were still showing the 1930’s Silly Symphonies in the 1960’s and we still enjoyed them.

Throughout the 30’s he and his animators did short cartoons but he wanted to go someplace else: he wanted to do feature films. And, in 1939, he bet it all on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs even though everyone told him not to. He also added character to his animation, another innovation. When he got done he had a classic which is watched and loved by new generations every day. Each of the 7 dwarfs has his own character with name to match. Interestingly, Snow White had several animators and the Snow White in the end looks younger than the Snow White in the beginning. Oops.

During the next five years, Walt Disney Studios completed other full-length animated classics such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.

He also added music to his animations. Snow White had a score but probably his most famous use of music with animation is in Fantasia. The film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Here the animation supplements the music rather than the music supplementing the animation.

Disney also added color to his animations using a new technique called Technicolor. He then negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of this and held this until 1935, meaning that other animation companies could not use this process. What a head start he had.

Note all of the innovations he has added to what used to be called cartoons:

        Feature length films

        Character

        Music

        Technicolor.

But he wasn’t done yet. He still had more innovation ahead. In the 1950’s he moved into TV and filmed all of his programs in color even though TV’s at the time only were black and white. He had seen how color took over movies and knew it was coming in TV also. When it did come, his shows, which had been filmed in color, looked so much more realistic than those filmed in black and white with color painted in.

He also invented the multi-plane camera which used up to 6 different screens all at once, each moving independently. Here’s a picture of a multi-plane camera with 5 planes.

And here is a drawing with an explanation of how the camera works with 4 planes:

        sun, sky and clouds in one plane

        green hills and house in the second

        fence in the third

        tree in the fourth

With this camera, they could zoom in and zoom out and it looks as if you are moving into or out of the scene. It made animations take on the depth of real movies. The cameraman could move the camera on top and it would give a realistic motion to what would otherwise be a static scene.

Pretty cool, huh?

But not all was smooth sailing for Disney. He met and faced down many troubles in his life. He went bankrupt several times, had one of his businesses somewhat taken out from under him, had financial troubles coming out of WWII and faced an animators’ strike in the 1950’s. After the great success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he and his brother, Roy bought their parents, Elias and Flora Disney, a home close to the studios. Less than a month later Flora died of asphyxiation caused by a faulty furnace in the new home. It is said that he never forgave himself.

The museum presented not only his work but also his family, which was as important to him as his work. Throughout the museum were pictures of his family as it grew.

He loved to collect miniatures and had quite a collection of very realistic ones. Out of this grew his idea for Disneyland.

In early 1966 he planned to have an operation on his hip and went into the hospital for a routine pre-op lung exam prior to the operation. A walnut sized spot was found on one lung and he died in October of that same year. And, the final room in the museum was a wall of editorial cartoons expressing disbelief and sadness at his death.

Did we enjoy this museum? Absolutely. Of course, Gary and I grew up with Disney and relived many old memories as we walked through all the various rooms. It’s not just a museum but a thoughtful explanation of all that Disney accomplished in his lifetime and the legacy that he left ot all of us.

However, our day is not done. Also on the Presidio grounds where the Disney Museum is are two homes that were hurriedly put together in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire for all of the homeless in San Francisco. The first picture is in 1906 but the second picture is of the 2 that still exist on the Presidio grounds.

One other spot on out list is the Lyon steps, which we have read are pretty cool. They are a 2-block long series of steps with a beautiful garden in the middlle and surrounded by bushes and trees. Oof-da.

We left out car where it was, put in another $3.00 for 3 hours and took off through the Presidio where the museum is, eastward to the Lyon steps are on the border between the Presidio and Pacific Heights, one of the neighborhoods of SF. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, when Nob Hill, where the elite lived in pre-earthquake times, was destroyed, the elite moved to Pacific Heights, further out of rhe city. Here’s part of the first flight of this 2 block stairway. After two more flights like this is a street called Billionaires row with a beautiful flower garden with one of the hearts from the Hearts In San Francisco project.

We found that we might be the only walkers on these steps since most of the others were in running togs and were going faster than we were. We did overhear one young woman is black tights remark to the other young woman in black tights, “This sucks.’ And, then why are you doing it? But we plodded on. At the top of the first block, we took a moment to admire the garden with its SF heart. (Actually, we were huffing and puffing but the photo op covered this.)

And, beyond the garden, you can see more of the stairway. At the top of the second block, we noticed several dogs patiently waiting for their masters. No fools, they. We could hear them saying:

        ‘Let my master beat her/his brains out on those steps, I’m going to relax here.’

We stopped for a chance to view the harbor, turned left and walked a block to Baker Street where there was a 2-block set of steps down the hill. Wheee.

At the bottom, we turned right, walked a block to Broderick Street where there was a third 2-block set of steps up the same hill we had just oof-daed up and wheeed down. And, look, what we found: look at this driveway. Beautiful view of the bay, curvy driveway and a Smart Car at the bottom near the garage (that black thing in the center left of the picture). Those cars must be stronger than I thought. Wowsa, wowsa.

We walked around the area a bit more, finding some other stairs and a beautiful park and then headed back to the Presidio where we had left the car. We found some lovely large roses

and some magnificent mansions on Billionaires’ Row. Note the RV in front of the first home. There are lots of people living in RV’s on the streets of SF and they can park anywhere they can fit in, even on Billionaires’ Row.

For more on the stories of Billionaires’ Row, please read the next blog about Larry Ellison of Oracle fame. Not all is a bed of roses on Billionaires’ Row.

Finally we headed back to the Presidio where our car was parked and found this old beautifully decorated cannon. It was in bronze in France in 1754 and used by the Spanish. It was captured by the Americans during the Spanish American War at the turn of the century.

And, now, we’ve paid our homage to Disney and we’ve walked the steps, it’s time to go home.

5.2 1678’