One Man's Dream, The Scripts Part 2

This past January I ran a post that discussed the scripts found in the Walt Disney Office scene shown in One Man's Dream.  Here is a link for the first post to get a background, One Man's Dream, the Scripts.  (I don't often link back to myself so that's pretty cool.)  Anyway, I was down in WDW a couple of weeks ago and was able to finally get the fourth script that is shown behind Walt's desk in this scene.  So far we've seen Westward Ho, The Happiest Millionaire and Monkeys go Home.  Well the fourth script is another Fred MacMurray movie, Follow Me Boys. 

I had talked about this movie in even an earlier post about the Arrival/Departure board (and that's a record 2 links to myself) at the Magic Kingdom Railroad Station on Main Street USA.  Fred MacMurray played Lem Siddons a WW I vet travelling with a jazz band. The band passes through the town of Hickory and Lem decides this is the place he wants to settle down. He ends up as the Boy Scout Troop Leader. Kurt Russell is also in this.

With the new camera this picture was easy to get.  With a little research I found that Walt also produced this one.  It was released in 1966 so the date matches two of the other scripts.  Hmmm, why these four movies.  I'll be doing more research into this and will bring you my findings down the road.  One small note of interest, John Larroquette was in this movie also in the un-credited role of a soldier.  Go figure.  Also, not to show my age, but the date of the script is one day after the day I was born.  Very Cool!

One Man's Dream: The Scripts

If you’ve read my posts before you know that I’m really crazy about the amount of details that the Walt Disney Imagineers throw into their attractions. Well, with that in mind, the One Man’s Dream attraction is a veritable gold mine of small details that are just waiting to be found. The one part of that attraction I really like is the view of Walt’s Office. There are plenty of little things in here that point back to Walt’s life and work. Earlier in this blog, I discussed the seemingly innocent pictures on the bottom of the Map on the wall and look what we found.  One Man's Dream Jet Plane

With everything in this office scene, there must be something else we can take away from it. There are a number of statues on the desk and the table behind it. There are a number of pictures and magazines and paperwork on his desk. Over on the table to the right and behind his desk there are a number of scripts. I have often wondered what those scripts are, if there even of real projects. Our last trip down I was able to get some pictures which I was able to enlarge and here’s what I found out.

First off, they are real scripts. I was happy to see that I could read the titles of three out of the four scripts on the table. They are Westward Ho!, Monkey’s Go Home, and The Happiest Millionaire.

Westward Ho's full title is Westward Ho the Wagons Ambush at Wagon Gap! Which was shortened to Westward Ho the Wagons! which was released in 1956. The lead in this live action movie was Fess Parker playing Doc Grayson, a settler with medical know-how. Other names of note in this movie were George Reeves as the Wagon Master. George is better known as the Man of Steel as he played Superman on TV. Another name that stuck out was Cubby Obrien of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Monkey's Go Home! was released in 1967. This live action movie had Dean Jones as an american, running an olive farm in souther France. And to pick the olives? You guessed it, a group of ex-air force astronaut monkeys. At first glance you hve to wonder how this one got approved. Seems a little far-fetched as to the location. But I guess Monkeys were in and Europe needed a film also.

The Happiest Millionaire stars Fred McMurray a long time actor with the Disney Studios. It also stars Tommy Steele. And not to be left out, Lesley Ann Warren in her first movie role. This movie was released in 1967 and was about an ecentric millionaire and his daughter's search for her freedom. This is a musical that was written by the Sherman brothers and it was actually up for an Oscar for Costume and a Golden Globe for Best New Actor in Tommy Steele.

Each of these movies have a couple things in common that might point out as to why they are displayed on the table. Again, i'm going with the premise that with Disney Imagineers, nothing is left to chance. There is a reason that these four movie scripts are displayed. The first they all had in common was Walt was a un-credited co-producer on each of them.  Not Westward Ho!, but the other two where the last movies Walt worked on.  The Happiest Millionaire was released after Walt's death, but shooting had finished before Walt passed away.  I'll check in once I find out what the fourth script is and if I find any more information.

One Man's Dream Jet Pictures

I had just uploaded some pictures of Walt's Office from One Man's Dream for a friend on The Walt Disney Boards. He's going to design an office around it, but I digress. While looking through the pictures I was going to give him I did a small double take at the picture to the left. On the bottom of the board there are a couple pictures, four to be precise. I had never looked closley at them due to the overwhelmingness of the entire room. But since I was taking a look again I used the zoom control and really took a look. I was expecting pictures of the WDW project or maybe some attraction shots form Disneyland. What I found was pictures of the interior of what must have been Walt's private Jet. The one that is on the Backlot Tour and that Walt took back and forth from California to Florida when he was working the WDW deal. The plane now resides on the BackLot tour with it's easy to recognize Mickey on the tail and the Plane ID known by Air Traffic Controlers at the time; N234MM. That would be N-2-3-4-Mickey-Mouse. The interior looks very luxurious for the time. A lot of wood and what seems like a lot of space.

I would throw this into the category of it's all in the details. And the moral of this story? Take a lot of pictures and make sure you look at them later. you never know what you'll find.