Walt in Old Hollywood
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 10:14PM By: Nate
Documentary films about old Hollywood are usually pretty stiff. They were made to showcase a particular studio or production, but sometimes recycle publicity reels and other times are not even accuate when talking about the scenes they are describing. Despite all of this I am a huge fan of these publicity reels and if you listen tot he podcast it probably won't surprise you that I am a fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Tonight when I noticed a film I hadn't seen before about Old Hollywood I decided to tune in and expectd to see some of the same footage that is usually thrown together in a narrated montage style documentary. One thing these old documentaries is that Disney is rarely mentioned or seen in any of these Old Hollywood doc's. One reason is that most of these were created by the sudios themselves and they didn't really feature the works of others. Another is that Disney is more relevant today and as well know they arent willing to showcase their old properties, even if it means taking Vault Disney off the air at 2 AM to show reruns of Thats So Raven.
But.......I was surprised tonight to see Fred MacMurray, Walt, The Disney Studio and even a few elephants from The Jungle Cruise in this film. Ken Murray, an entertainer, pitchman and MC during Hollywoods Golden Age released a film that encapsulated years film that he himself shot, and released it under the title Hollywood Without Makeup. If you are a fan of Old Hollywood you will like this film.
Here is a section of with Walt. Its amazing to see him playing with Ken Murray's daughters and driving them around the backlot pretending to lock them up the Zorro stage and showing off the mechanical elephant.
Move ahead to the 9:15 mark to see the Disney stuff. It starts with Fred MacMurray.
Reader Comments (2)
What a great find! Thanks for sharing!
Cool stuff! I forgot how hot Marilyn Monroe was!