Greetings family, friends, and Disney buddies! Today's Theme Park Vignette is a little known backstory of the early days when the Disney brothers were scrambling to finance the completion of Disneyland.....Bill
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Theme Park Vignettes
DISNEYLAND’S MOST “UNIQUE” SHOP
C.W. Wood had an assignment and a deadline. Roy Disney hired
“Woody” as General Manager and Vice President of Disneyland after
he and his team had developed a feasibility study for the Disney
brothers. As the parks first employee one of Woody’s first
assignments was to generate needed cash to help complete the
parks construction and offset ballooning costs by securing corporate
sponsors and concession contracts. Failing to sign up very many
heavy hitters, Woody convinced Walt that in order lease all of the
remaining vacant shops and stalls by the upcoming July 18 th 1955
opening day that he be allowed to seek out second and third tier
companies like Yale and Town Locks,Grandma’s Baby Shop, Sunny
View Farms, and National Lead Company. Woody moved quickly to
sign up his personal friend Hendron Norris for a prime store front. Not
widely known however, was that Norris was the owner of Hollywood
Maxwell Brassier Company, and to the surprise of many, on opening
day his “Intimate Apparel Shop” was displaying and selling women’s
lingerie on Disneyland’s Main Street USA! Norris’s shop featured a
historical look at intimate fashions from the 1890’s to the present day
on a revolving stage and described in detail by a robotic mascot, The
Wizard of Bras. With the parks success Disney was able to take over
many of the Main Street shops as the original leases expired and the
Glass and China Shop expanded to take over Norris’s former space.
Woody’s tenure with Disney was brief and is mostly erased and
ignored in official Disneyland history. He went on to create Marco
Engineering, a theme park design company, even though a Disney
lawsuit stopped him from marketing himself as “The Master Planner
of Disneyland ”, he help create theme parks in Colorado,
Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Australia (mostly all now
defunct). Needless to say, in Disneylands wholesome family friendly
environment, The Intimate Apparel Shop went bust in just a matter of
months........
-Bill 2/23
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