A new documentary film focused on the yearlong creation of Disneyland offers a behind-the-scenes look at the transformation of an Anaheim orange grove into a revolutionary theme park using rarely seen footage discovered in the vaults of the Walt Disney Archives.
The new “Disneyland Handcrafted” documentary by filmmaker Leslie Iwerks on the one-year blitz to build Walt Disney’s first theme park will debut Jan. 22 on YouTube and the Disney+ streaming service.
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The Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker is the granddaughter and daughter of two Disney Legends.
Her grandfather Ub Iwerks was Walt Disney’s first business partner and helped create Mickey Mouse in 1927. Her father Don Iwerks was a Disney animator and Imagineer who worked on the first Circle-Vision 360 film at Disneyland.
Leslie Iwerks previous project — “The Imagineering Story” — offered a rare behind-the-scenes look at Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s secretive creative studio responsible for building Disney theme parks around the world.
“Disneyland Handcrafted” relies heavily on 100 hours of raw and rarely seen footage from the Walt Disney Archives shot by a team of cameramen tasked by Walt Disney to capture the construction of Disneyland.
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Iwerks and her team discovered film reels of never-used 16 mm footage in the Disney vaults and produced high-resolution digital scans of the once-forgotten shots from the early days of Disneyland.
The documentary film will frame the building of Disneyland as the greatest gamble of Walt Disney’s life “to build a place the world had never dared to imagine.” His critics mocked the impossible opening day deadline and predicted a spectacular failure.
A two-minute trailer for “Disneyland Handcrafted” offers glimpses of what viewers can expect from the upcoming documentary film.
Archival film footage shows a helicopter swooping over 160 acres of orange groves in Anaheim.
Earth movers strip bare fields, leaving behind only dirt with a few spare shade trees and the occasional farm house.
Walt Disney climbs the scaffolding of an observation tower erected in the middle of the property to watch the progress of construction and plot next steps.
Men hammer rails on the Disneyland Railroad train track. A dozen workers use ropes to pull the Mark Twain Riverboat into position on the Rivers of America. A crane raises a turret to the top of Sleeping Beauty Castle.
A daredevil workman installs the nose cone atop the Moonliner rocket in Tomorrowland. Crews thatch roofs in Adventureland. Workers guide an animatronic hippopotamus into the drained Jungle Cruise river.
Craftsmen mount a hand-carved mermaid onto the bow of the Sailing Ship Columbia. A team of carpenters build Captain Hook’s pirate ship in Fantasyland. An aerial view captures Main Street U.S.A. taking shape.
Mad Tea Party teacups are unloaded from a flatbed truck. Hand-painted horses are lifted into place on King Arthur Carrousel. A handheld file carves the teeth on Monstro the Whale in Storybook Land.
After a year of tremendous pressure, Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955 in front of a live TV audience of 90 million viewers, the largest in television history.
“It’s a miracle that Disneyland ever got opened,” according to the film’s narration.