WALT DISNEY'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR: AN ADVENTURE IN COLOR / MATHMAGICLAND (TV)
Summary
One in this series of family programs, presented under the umbrella title of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color," hosted by Walt Disney.
This episode is the first of Disney's shows to be presented in color, following its move from ABC to NBC. Disney opens the program as he relates the introduction of color, sound, and music to cartoons, showing clips from "Steamboat Willie" (1928), "Silly Symphony" (1929), "Flowers and Trees" (1932), and "Fantasia" (1940). He then introduces his "co-host" for the evening, the animated Professor Ludwig Von Drake, an "expert" world traveler and great-uncle to Donald Duck.
Ludwig is the viewer's guide through "An Adventure in Color." He starts by presenting the primary colors -- red, yellow. and blue -- and showing how they can be combined to form a rainbow of hues. Donald Duck then exemplifies primitive man's experiments with color. Ludwig takes the occasion to sing "The Spectrum Song" and later moves to the piano to deliver "The Green With Envy Blues," which showcases how the brain perceives colors. Ludwig answers callers' "questions" about all shades before demonstrating how color televisions work. Finally, he introduces the "Wonderful World of Color" theme song, accompanied by visuals that mirror ways in which "the world is a carousel of color."
Disney resumes hosting duties to show how the advent of a color-based television show has affected goings-on in the Disney lab, leading to a discussion of the importance of mathematics. Donald Duck takes over to lead viewers on a tour of "Mathmagicland."
Donald follows the trail of a pencil-bodied bird to "the land of great adventure," as guarded by Mr. Spirit. The spectral voice first shows Donald about math's role in the musical sphere, going back to ancient Greece to explore math and music's origins. Donald learns how Pythagoras and his followers met in secret to discuss math-based theories, some of which resulted in the musical scale. Donald plays "a beat" with them, then shows how such exchanges developed into today's musical sounds.
Donald next learns about the pentagram, and how its structure gave birth to the rectangle. He quickly comes to appreciate the rectangle's significance to architecture and art. He also observes how the patterns of rectangles and pentagrams show up in nature. Moving on, Donald finds himself in the midst of a chess game, populated by the talking pieces that gained fame in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," with Donald cast as Carroll's literary heroine, Alice. Donald observes how chess moves depend on math, as do games such as baseball, football, basketball, and even hopscotch. Donald then takes to a billiards table to see how math calls the shots on making balls reach their targeted destination.
As Donald's journey winds down, he learns to "think straight," and observes how a sphere can become a lens. As circles and triangles take over his vision, Donald acknowledges that imagination is limitless and that a cosmos opened up by mathematics will lead to endless discoveries. The segment closes with Galileo's quote: "Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe." Commercials deleted.
(Series title varies: From 1954 to 1958 this series was telecast under the title "Disneyland"; from 1958 to 1961 this series was telecast under the title "Walt Disney Presents"; from 1961 to 1969 this series was telecast under the title "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color"; from 1969 to 1979 this series was telecast under the title "The Wonderful World of Walt Disney"; from 1979 to 1981 this series was telecast under the title, "Disney's Wonderful World"; and from 1997-2005 this series was telecast under the title "The Wonderful World of Disney.")
(Network varies; this series was telecast on ABC from 1954-1961, on NBC from 1961 to 1981; on CBS from 1981 to 1983; and on ABC from 1997-2005.)
(This program contains technical problems. This represents the best copy of this program currently available to the Museum.)
Details
- NETWORK: NBC
- DATE: September 24, 1961 Sunday 7:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 19:52:41
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:00394
- GENRE: Animation; Education/Information
- SUBJECT HEADING: Animation; Education/Information
- SERIES RUN: NBC - TV series, 1961-1969
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Walt Disney … Producer
- Hamilton Luske … Director
- Wolfgang Reitherman … Sequence Director
- Les Clark … Sequence Director
- Joshua Meador … Sequence Director
- Frank Thomas … Animation
- Ollie Johnston … Animation
- Milt Kahl … Animation
- Ward Kimball … Animation
- Milt Banta … Writer
- Bill Berg … Writer
- Larry Clemmons … Writer
- Otto Englander … Writer
- Heinz Haber … Writer
- Joe Rinaldi … Writer
- Richard M. Sherman … Music by, Theme Music by
- Robert B. Shemand … Music by, Theme Music by
- Buddy Baker … Music by
- Walt Disney … Host
- Paul Frees … Narrator, Voice, Ludwig Von Drake/Mr. Spirit
- Clarence Nash … Voice, Donald Duck
- Galileo Galilei
- Lewis Carroll
- Pythagoras of Samos