...once.
In high school, our concert choir was a part of the Singing Christmas Tree at Disneyland. Every year, they had a celebrity join the festivities and read the Christmas story.
That year, the celebrity was John Wayne. It was '72, so it may have been a political choice, seeing as how D-Land is in Orange County and the Disney family is very conservative.
On the other hand, he was also an icon at the time.
Anyway, High Schools around the state were invited and learned some Christmas carols and were bused in one foggy December morning to Disneyland, where they were herded into a rehearsal area to go over the songs as one huge, angelic choir. I think we all wore green robes. I don't know how they worked that out. It could be they only invited schools with green robes. It could be that green is the official choir color.
Rehearsal was interrupted twice. Once, by some Disney "carolers" that wandered the park singing polished renditions of seasonal tunes. They were very showbiz, Disney style.
Which, by the way, is what has always bothered me about music at D-Land. Always sanitized. Vegas without the sin. I remember once sitting around the New Orleans section, eating a fritter, sipping a julep, when a jazz band, four elderly black men with real chops, came out and played a few songs. They were really good-probably the gutsiest music you would hear at the Magic Kingdom. Then, they played "When You Wish Upon a Star." Not badly, either. But I couldn't help resenting the fact that my brief aural departure from things Disney was cut short by a Disney thing.
The second interruption was the Duke himself. He came out of nowhere and walked up to the microphone, shouting "Hi, kids!" Of course, we all shouted "hi" back. But his greeting was also returned by a canned, pre-taped chorus of "Hi, John!" I guess the Disney people were afraid that not everyone would respond.
Later on, as the Singing Christmas Tree paraded solemnly across Main Street, as we passed through the audience and towards the tree-shaped choir loft, I noticed a man sitting on one of the end-seats, watching the procession. It was dark and I at first thought it was my Uncle Bill-he had the same thinning hair, the same high forehead, the same bulbous nose. Then, he winked at me-a paternal kind of wink. It was John Wayne, who did indeed look like my uncle.
I think I winked back. Or at least nodded.
1 comment:
I did a coupla of those Disney gigs. The famous person at one of mine was Jimmy Stewart. I don't remember who the other was (Moms Mabley maybe?). We were told to lip synch as we processed from the castle to our positions at the back of the train station because 2000 kids marching down the street singing the same song are never going to sing the same song at the same time. So Walt had speakers in each of the lamposts that lined Main Street so that if you were standing, say, at the lampost in front of the arcade, as we approached from Sleeping Beauty's house you would hear the sound of the singing softly at first and as we got closer it would increase in volume as if we were ACTUALLLY SINGING!!! And as we passed (pardon me) the sound would diminish. Pretty high tech for 1970. And sooo Disney. 2000 fake teenage singers.
I also once had a double Goofy sighting in Toon Town, but that was too truamatic to talk about now.
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