The Walt Disney Family Album - Disneyland Golden Horseshoe Revue (1985)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This fourteenth episode focuses on The Golden Horseshoe Revue, one of the original and longest running attractions in Disneyland history. In it we learn the history of the attraction and meet its long running cast; Wally Boag, Betty Taylor, and Fulton Burley. We also meet Boag's successor Dana Daniels.

The Golden Horseshoe Revue was one of the original Disneyland attractions and stemmed from Walt's childhood love of Vaudeville. The original headliners of the Revue were Wally Boag and Betty Taylor. Boag was an experienced stage performer who had over twenty years of stage experience and worked in film. After auditioning for Walt he was originally booked for a two week run at Disneyland but it turned into the rest of his career.

Boag became known as the Clown Prince of Disneyland and was the only person other than Walt Disney who often stayed overnight in the park. He had a dressing room in over Aunt Jemima's and would usually head down to breakfast there in the mornings. Sometimes Wally would make surprise appearances around the park as a pirate or a cowboy or any other "character" where he could get a laugh interacting with guests. He also wrote a regular column in the Disneyland newsletter where he'd pretend to be writing about a serious topic but was always satirical. When other writers complained Wally wasn't writing serious news, he wrote a satirical column about that!

Walt did everything he could to further Wally's career and often gave him cameo's in his films. He appeared in such films as The Absent Minded Professor and Son of Flubber. He made appearances on the Mickey Mouse Club and Walt had intended him to be Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh featurettes. Because he was a favorite of Walt's, after Walt died Wally's cameos in Disney films ceased with The Love Bug and he remained a stage performer. (his voice was deemed "too zany" to be Tigger and the role was recast.)

Boag was also the mentor of comedian Steve Martin, who started at Disneyland as a news paperboy and finally worked his way up to the Magic Shop. Martin has commented on how he studied Boag's timing and type of humor that inspired his own standup routine a few decades later.

Betty Taylor was also cast from the start. Her career in show business began on the stage by age 12 and at 18 she was headlining her own band, Betty and Her Beaus. She appeared on stage, in radio and film but her big break came when she answered an audition for a show at the newly opened Disneyland and she was cast as Slue-foot Sue and headlined the Golden Horseshoe Revue until her retirement in 1987.

The chemistry between Wally and Betty are what made the show memorable to guests and popular for decades. The content of the show barely changed in its three decade run and it hold's the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running show in history with over 50,000+ performances. Lucille Ball, who regularly attended the show, marveled at how the cast was able to make it always appear it was the first time they were performing the material each time.

Fulton Burley had worked in stage and film for decades. He'd met and worked with Wally Boag at MGM in the 1940's. He started with the Golden Horseshoe Revue in 1962 when one of the main players became ill. Wally called him asking if he could fill in. Walt loved his performance and wouldn't let him leave. Burley's various vaudeville routines became a staple of the show and with Boag, the two co-wrote and appeared as characters in Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room. He stayed with the show until the Revue closed in the 1987. He passed away in 2007.

Wally Boag, Betty Taylor, and Fulton Burley were named Disney Legends in 1995. Burley passed away in 1997. Both Taylor and Boag passed away within 24 hours of each other in June 2011.

Dana Daniels started with the Revue when Boag retired in 1982 where he kept the tradition alive for several years. After the attraction shut down in 2003, Daniels continued doing comedy and magic. He's known as one of the clean comedians and performs and act with a psychic parrot. You can book him for your events through his website.

The Golden Horeshoe Revue was a favorite attraction of Walt Disney's. He had his own special box in the theater and often caught the show or brought his own special guests to see the show from his box when they visited Disneyland.

In 1962 the 10,000th performance of The Golden Horseshoe Revue was filmed for Walt's TV Show. That broadcast is in this archive.

Original air date July 1, 1985

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.