Invisible Themepark

Category: 1960s

Cutaways from the 1960s (1960 to 1969).

Monsanto House of the Future: When Our Future Was Made of Plastics

Monsanto House of the Future 1956

Built in Disneyland in 1957 as a joint project between Disneyland, Monsanto, and MIT, the House of the Future was constructed of 16 identical plastic shells that were fabricated off-site and then shipped to the building site for assembly. The home was meant to display technological marvels, such as the microwave oven and speaker phone, but mainly showed the many ways that plastics could be incorporated into home-building of the future. Materials included: Acrylon, melamine, rayon, vinyl (flooring), and even plywood. Each of the four wings was capable of supporting 13 tons. Besides showing off the wonders of plastic, this was an attempt to build a home of fewer but large parts rather than the current (and still current) method of building homes of many small parts.

Floor Plans

Cross Section

Dimensions: Each wing was 16 feet long and the utility core was itself a 16 foot square. Thus, total length was 48 feet.

Disneyland Monsanto House of the Future – Cross Section with Dimensions

Under Construction

Exterior: PR Materials and Tourist Images

Interior – Living Room

The living room was the swankiest area of the house, with a futuristic (and presumably non-functional TV) and both built-in and free-standing custom-made furniture that was curved to follow the curves of the house.

Interior – Family Room

The family room, like many mid-century modern homes of the time, had a family room, intended as a more casual place for family (meaning: kids) to hang out in. Since the house did not have a separate dining room area, this doubled as dining facilities.

Kitchen – Utility Core Area

The kitchen occupied the central section called the utility core and was by far the most technologically advanced room of the house with a microwave, ultrasonic dishwasher, cabinets that electrically descended from the ceiling, and not a refrigerator but a “cold zone” divided into three functional areas: cool refrigeration, frozen, and cool irradiated food.

Interior – Second, or Children’s, (Divided) Bedroom

The second bedroom could be divided into two areas with a light-weight accordion door.

Interior – Master Bedroom and Vanity Area

The master bedroom occupied an entire quarter, or wing, of the House of the Future. It had its own bathroom which, as a promotional film stated, was constructed out of just two pieces. The bathroom had its own intercom and closed circuit TV system for communicating with callers at the front door.

March 10, 2017
Screw You, Food Court! When Department Store Restaurants Reigned

Anybody who is under a certain age will not remember how mall department stores once ruled the retail roost. Before their peak and then eventual decline in the 1980s, these massive shopping cubes, which often went by a single name moniker (Alexander’s, Dalton’s, Gottschalk’s, etc.), were the place to buy everything from clothing to books and sporting goods.

To keep the shoppers imprisoned in the store for the longest period of time, these stores usually had a self-contained restaurant. They ranged from the Heather House, with its white tablecloth veneer of fanciness, to the Kmart Family Cafeterias, where, in 1977, you could dine on a full Salisbury Steak meal, with potatoes, gravy, mixed vegetables, roll and butter for only $1.08.

Vista Restaurant, Yorkdale Mall, Toronto – 1960s

Yorkdale Mall Toronto Vista Restaurant – ca mid 1960s

Credit: John Chuckman

Heather House, Carson Scott Pirie

Heather House Carson Scott Pirie

Kmart Cafeteria, ca 1970s

Kmart Cafeteria

River Room, Schuneman’s Department Store, St. Paul, MN

River Room, Schuneman’s Department Store, St. Paul, MN

March 9, 2017
Johnny Cash Has Five Minutes to Live!

Five Minutes to Live

He’s a goddamn door-to-door maniac!

He’s a milky faced, baby-faced cruel psychopath of a guitar-strumming KILLER.

It’s our favorite warbler–Johnny Cash, in the late noir thriller Five Minutes to Live, directed by Ludlow Flower, Jr., who cast his wife Cay Forrester in the role of imperiled housewife Nancy Wilson.

Johnny Cash, Five Minutes to Live – 1961

Definitely late noir: it came out in 1961, but up and down and all throughout it feels like 1951. It feels like the sleek, low-slung vehicles of 1961 and the women’s bangs and bobs and sidesweeps of 1961 and the all trappings of 1961 were somehow, mysteriously, sent back in time to 1951.

Cash turns in a quietly warbly performance as Johnny Cabot, who is baby-faced and creepily misogynistic when he tosses Mrs. Wilson’s ceramics onto the floor and when he forces her to strip and put on a negligee and when he pulls out her hairpins, saying, “Remove your artillery.”

And it’s free, all free.

March 6, 2017
Twilight Zone: “We All Know What Became of Bonnie Beecher”

And I chose Bonnie Beecher, and we all know what became of Bonnie Beecher.

William Froug, in The Twilight Zone Companion, by Marc Scott Zicree

These are the curious words uttered by Twilight Zone producer William Froug, in reference to a May 22, 1964 episode titled “Come Wander With Me.”

What Froug was so upset about: he had passed over a fledgling actress for the part because she was too nervous and scared. And that actress’ name? Liza Minnelli.

First, let it be said that the episode was no poorer for the lack of Liza Minnelli. Froug’s starry-eyed view of Minnelli in the early 1980s, when Zicree wrote the book, is predicated on the fact that Minnelli had been a big star in the 1970s. Or to put it a different way: Who cares? Miss Beecher did a perfectly fine job in that part.

In the pre-Internet days, I had no idea what Froug meant about “we all know what become of her.” I just assumed he meant that Beecher disappeared from the scene–nudge, nudge, sarcasm.

Bonnie Beecher (Jahanara Romney) Today

Jaharana Romney – 2016

Far from disappearing, Bonnie Beecher married counter-culture icon Wavy Gravy, born Hugh Romney, in 1965. She later became Jahanara Romney, and the couple had a son, Jordan.

Even prior to that episode, she had been a familiar figure in many circles; it is even said that she was the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.”

To this day, I still have no idea what Froug meant. While he was an amazing producer and writer, he wasn’t exactly a tuned-in and turned-on type.

March 6, 2017
The Day Mission: Impossible Invaded The Brady Bunch House

One of the best things about fictional environments is that we can project our dreams on them. And kids of the 1970s universally projected dreams onto The Brady Bunch house.

We all wanted to live there. It was grander, fancier, and more modern than our own houses. Even that oh-so-fake backyard, with its Astroturfed lawn and false background blue sky, was very inviting in its sterility: it felt safe.

So, one of the worst things that can happen with a beloved fictional environment is when that fantasy is punctured. Maybe you visit the set and see it in all its blandness. Or you see production stills of the set–lit and empty. Or the rare photo of a studio guy pushing a broom across the set. The fantasy is dead.

Or–two dreams collide.

May I Borrow Your Set, Please?

When I first heard that the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) from the original Mission: Impossible TV show had invaded The Brady Bunch house, I thought it was a joke. I thought it had to be a stupid mash-up, where the IMF barges in with guns and– Cut to a shot of Cindy Brady holding a cap gun! Not so.

Both were filmed at Paramount Studios in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so sets would have been reused. Very Brady Blog shows us another Paramount set shared by the two shows.

In the MI episode “Double Dead,” aired on February 12, 1972, the IMF enter a house that every person of a certain age will immediately know. Directly below, actors Linda Day George and Paul Koslo, enter The Brady Bunch house. Readers will recognize the green divider, wide door, red tile floor, and rock wall. Even the Chinese cabinet to the right and the little bull sculpture on the divider are the same. Below that, we see Alice answering the door.

And moving along toward the familiar Brady Bunch staircase area, we see that the staircase itself has been removed. But we can still make out the colored glass window above the stairs and rock fireplace.

Here is a YouTube of that clip from MI:

December 10, 2013