The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 12

1 'nMr Volusia Comity Edition Bonus page 11B Obituaries 6C Classified 6C Real Estate 1C Editorial 2B Sports ID Financial 4C TV Log 28F Movies 8D Women IE 'Tis a Privilege to Live in Central Florida Orlando, Florida, Sunday, October 21, 1965 Vol. 81 No. 161 138 Tages SENTINEL TELEPHONE SArdcn 3-4411 20 Cts. Ctf i To Become Hub For Millions Of Tourists, Billions Of Dollars Mystery' Industry Is Disney We Says City Housing 10,000 People Will Be Built 5 Million Visitors Yearly Disneyland Produces Fantastic Prosperity V' I i 'J-V21 4 (r- V--' NOW IT IS A thriving city of 155,000. The county last July counted 1.067,704 noses, a population jump of 220 per cent since 1960.

It is in the midst of building an $11 million convention center to cater to the big gatherings of organizations of all types and to trade shows. HOTELS AND motels are going up all over the place and older ones are enlarging. The chamber of commerce can count 50 as members and that is just a small part. Gene Autry and his associates who brought American League baseball to Southern California are building a $20 million ballpark that will open in the spring. They're even dropping the name of Los Angeles and christening the club California Angels, while looking to the heavens for prosperity.

Such things wouldn't have been thought of in the days before July 17, 1955. THAT'S THE DAY Walt Disney opened "his amusement park. It represented an investment then of $17 million. Today, more than $53 million has been sunk in the 67 acres where cares are forgotten. And the adjacent 105 acres of parking lots.

(Continued back page this section) By LUTHER VOLTZ Special To The Sentinel LOS ANGELES There's a little out of tune ditty a disc jockey sings periodically over the airways on a popular Southern California radio station. "Its title: "On the Santa Ana Freeway." ONE LINE RUNS something like this: "There's a traffic jam nirfe miles long on the Santa Ana Freeway." It's catchy. But there's a catch to it, too. Actually when the Santa Ana Freeway jams it's not for nine miles. It's nearer three times that distance of motoring frustration, boiling tempers and radiators.

SUCH IS THE impact of the "Magic Kingdom" Disneyland. The 5 million people (who visit Walt Disney's creation each year make their presence felt all the way from Orange County where Disneyland is located back to the big freeway interchange in the civic center in Downtown Los Angeles. The impact, of course, Is on many things other than traffic. Orange County to the south of Los Angeles is booming. Anaheim, the park site, once was just a sleepy little place of tract homes, a bedroom community.

It ii in or Started Year Ago HA- DISNEY AND AUTOMATED FRIEND Jose, the parrot, Is Electronic Kid-er How Our Mystery Grew Walt Disney Productions will build a major tourist attraction on the 30,000 "mystery" acres between Orlando and Kissimmee. It will be a "city of tomorrow" and some 10,000 persons will live there. CONSTRUCTION should start soon after the first of the year. Although the project is not scheduled for announcement until Nov. 15, The Sentinel has pieced together bits of information from many parts of the nation and believes it can authoritatively state that the long-rumored "mystery industry" in Orange and Osceola Counties is a Disney attraction.

It will rank as one 'of the single greatest economic boosts in the history of Florida. ALONG WITH the Kennedy Space Center's proposed tourist facility that will draw some 3 million visitors a year, the new Disney project will make the Orlando area the hub of one of the world's greatest tourist concentrations. Five million dollars has already been invested to buy the 30,000 acres. Many more millions will be required to build the "city of tomorrow." Over $50 million, for Instance, has been invested in Disneyland at Anaheim, Calif. FIVE MILLION persons a year visit Disneyland there.

The area of the new city is where the interstate highways leading to the tourist-producing states of the East and the i dwest converge. Interstate 4 crosses the property. A few miles to the north, an interchange between 1-4 and the Florida Turnpike will soon be built. The turnpike leads directly to Interstate 75 the main route to the populous Midwest. 1-4 ALSO connects at Daytona Beach with Interstate 95 and U.S.

1, the primary highways to the Northeast U.S. The tract lies 12'2 miles from the Orlando city limits. The project will call for the creation of at least one and possibly two new incorporated cities which will house the employes and their families. THE NEW cities will have their own police, fire and other service departments. From what The Sentinel has been able to piece together, the cities themselves will be part of the tourist attraction.

There are also indications that movie and TV production may form a part of the gigantic enterprise. GOV. HAYDON BURNS announced some time ago that he has appointments lined up in California next month with several movie producers, including Disney. A week ago Emily Bavar, editor of The Sentinel's Florida Magazine, interviewed Walt Disney at Disneyland. She asked him point blank if Walt Disney Productions was the "mystery" buyer of the 30,000 acres.

He didn't say yes and he didn't say no. IF THE LAND HAD been bought giitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiniiiiiiiiittiiiiiitiiiiiiiitiiitiiiiiniiiiiiis Disney Index Wonderful sights of Disneyland, in color. Pg. 3-A Disneyland 'Magic Empire' Of California. Pg.

7-A Color map of area where Disney will build. Pg. 20-A Cartoonist Brudon's conception of Disney's 'City of Tomorrow'. Pg.l-B Walt Disney to wave his magic wand over us. Pg.

2-B TV. WALT by the Disney group, it would be announced in due time, he replied. As a matter of fact, he told her, he was not even an officer of the company and matters such as that were always announced by corporate boards. "I am not even an officer of the Disney corporation," were -his words, "so I couldn't possibly say anything even if it were true." Disney belongs to the rip-roaring generation of able, imaginative youngsters who presided at the birth of the motion picture industry. YET HE HAS outlasted most of his friends arid his rivals and today, while major motion picture studios nurse financial ills and public apathy, he reigns supreme over a healthy, $68 million empire that daily grows in wealth and prestige.

1 His parent company, Walt Disney Productions; makes movies for theaters and television, operates -Disneyland Park and controls such auxiliary enterprises as mu-, sic publication, Mickey, Mouse Club, a mily entertainment facilities and royalties'for the use of Disney The" single, greatest producer is Disneyland Park, an 85-acre fantasy amusemen.t. center in Anaheim, that in 1964 accounted for 38 per cent of WDP income. DISNEYLAND opened July 18, 1955, with 22 attractions and an investment of $17 million. Attrac-v tions have been "replaced and added each year, bringing the: investment to $50.1 million for 1964. As of this month the Disneyland investment is $53 million and structural steel skeletons in the park indicate that expansion continues at its million dollar clip.

Disneyland's 50 million guests have included royalty and plain folk from every nation on the globe. Among distinguished visitors have been 11 kings and queens; 23 presidents, including President Eisenhower; prime ministers and other heads of state and, 25 royal princes and princesses. UNITED STATES State Department officials have described Disneyland as one of this nation's biggest goodwill builders, acter named Oswald the Rabbit from a title owned by another studio. When rights to the character were reclaimed by the distributor, the Disney fortunes shrank and Walt vowed he would never again work for anyone but himself. -Whereupon he created Mickey Mouse, whose first picture was "Steamboat Willie," released in 1928.

By the time Mickey reached stardom, Walt Disney had employed a retinue of imaginative young artists, most of whom are still with him. I WAS THE "OLD MAN" of the business in those days, he recalls. "I was 27 years old." Today, at 63, he moves front and center through his acres of art and movie studios, the benevolent patriarch of a renowned family. (Continued back page this section) Cracker Jim Ses: That there Ole- Farmer's Almas nak is Jookin for some of that -stormy weather te git here week, New, hit's not talkih abouten winds, hit Jest means that we'll have some, of them kinda strong winds blbwin hr some them drenchers here this week. 1 From the way them breezes have been smellin lately we most sartin shore te have us a few them cool fall days this week.

Iffin I'm not too fur 0 of the mornins this week will be havin a real nip to em. Them smart folks are airin out them winter duds an them long handled onderware. Me ah Jed Prod are shore gonna git busy this week an start gittin in some of them litard' knots. One ef them real chilly days is gonna git here fore a body will know hit, an we're gonna be ready to build us a warm in fire. Them city dudes had shore' better be gittin them coal o'A hiatin stoves ready t9 be 'Kt.

Today's "Weather Fair arid rather cool "with a hieh iiuuitaiiu jus. wei aim mcinwesi to 20 Weathec mar de.fg, 3-A Disney's competitors have cried that his "Disneyland" TV show was "an hour-long commercial." Disney sees their point and goes on with the show. Those who have not seen the fantasy park for themselves cannot easily understand its appeal and those who have been there can't explain it. The park is a dimension of entertainment, color, animation, music, fantasy and history composed with an artistry to charm all ages. But Walt Disney's attention is directed primarily to youth and the image he has created for them is jealously guarded.

No alcoholic beverages are sold in Disneyland. The Disney name is not used on such ordinary souvenir trinkets as beer mugs, cigarette cases or jigger IT IS SAFE TO predict that no alcoholic drinks will ever be sold in any enterprise bearing the Disney name, In his office at WDP recently he press a preluncheoa glass of torn ate juice' and recalled the Hollywood heydey -ef "high" living and, high salaries' with; the objectivity of an historian. -v- Success was not, the oversight spectacular for Walt Disney'that it was for many of his Hollywood, contemporaries. HIS FIRST BUSINESS venture was delivering newspapers in Kansas City when he was nine. He sold candy on trains, was a mail carrier, a World War I ambulance driver and he later worked for an advertising agent in Kansas City" where he started producing animated cartoons.

In 1923, when he was 21 years old, he gathered his assets of $40 and a well-worn suit and went to, California." Pooling funds with his brother; Roy and 500 borrowed dollars'," he began his Hollywood career. Joe Reddy, one of publicity says brother Roy was in' a tuberculosis sanitarium in California at the time and that "Walt frequently was so broke he went out 40' the sanitarium and" shared JESS JSEEME1. Vfthin whea Walt- created -a--char About a year ago rumors began to spread throughout Central Florida of big land sales taking place in Osceola County. There was talk of options being placed on sizable tracts of land in Orange County. In October 1964 State Sen.

Irlo Bronson confirmed reports that he had sold some Osceola County holdings. SEN. BRONSON WAS one of the first to point out that most of the buying was being done by people representing dummy corporations, and two Miami men, Paul Hel-liwell, an attorney, and Roy Hawkins, a former vice president of the Bessemer which is the Phipps estate. Also representing buyers was Florida Ranch Lands Inc. of Orlando.

As deadlines arrived and the options were picked up, it quickly became evident that big money was present. Rumors began to fly. At first Hercules Powder Co. and McDonnell Aircraft were the early runners. Ford Motor appeared on the list shortly afterward, then came Lockheed, Boeing and Howard Hughes.

AT THIS POINT of the rumor stage, the name of Walt Disney entered the picture. The entry was so unobtrusive that Howard Hughes' name gained additional strength because, as many observers opined, "this is the way Hughes operates." By mid-May the so-called "mystery industry" took definite VISIT BEAUTIFUL. Wood lawn Memorial PARK MAUSOLEUM 7 Miles West of Orlando SUNDAY AFTERNOON Enjoy concert of sacred music played by Mr. Fred Currie WOODWH'H TOWER OF MEMORIES POSSFSHKS TRUE CARIIXONIC BELL TONES McKELLAR CADILLAC SPECIAL CLEAN UP SALE Todays Auto Class. shape.

Florida Ranch Lands Inc. supplied The Sentinel with a detailed breakdown of 47 transac-t i ons involving approximately 30,000 acres 'and over $5 million. It was here that Disney's name entered the picture so strongly that it zoomed to the top of the list of possibilities and remained there. DISNEY CONTRIBUTED heavi- ly in a personal way, by flying to Cape Kennedy to gather material for a movie about space. While here, it was reported, he and some of his top people chartered heli-copters and rveyed the layout from the air.

Shortly afterwards some Central Floridians close to the project confirmed strong talk that California interests were involved. One of these was Jock Lowery, proprietor of Jock's Corner at SR 535 and the Vineland-Winter Garden Road. Lowery had an excellent vantage point from which to base his opinions. His business was located on the fringe of the mystery tract. In addition, buyers and their real estate representatives found his store "and soda pop containers an icy oasis.

"THEY WOULD TELL me they were from California, but that's all they would say, and you couldn't pick up a thing listening to the conversation they made among themselves. I know because I tried to overhear some of them." Z. R. Breeze, a Winter Garden realtor, said he had handled six or seven parcels of land involving California money. A Winter Park real estate broker added fuel to the fire by distributing maps on which he labeled the mystery land as "Disney's Property." OTHER NAMES joined the mystery industry's list.

It was said that Douglas would put the (Continued back page this section) Auctions 8f Cliuuitd Display i CAME! MA8 NOW BLOOM1NO I 50 BROOKS NURSERY 1603 Whit A. flutdde prwntlon thoot Core" 241-3321.