Disney anthology television series (Johnsonverse)

The Walt Disney Company has produced an anthology television series since 1954 under several titles and formats. The program's current title, The Wonderful World of Disney, was used from 1969 to 1979 and again from 1991 to the present. The program moved among the Big Three television networks in its first four decades, but has aired on ABC since 2014 and Netflix since 2020.
The original version of the series premiered on ABC in 1954. The show has been broadcast weekly on one of the Big Four television networks, a 68-year span. The series was broadcast on Sunday for 25 of those years.
The program resumed a regular schedule in 1997 on the ABC fall schedule, coinciding with Disney's purchase of the network in 1996. From 1997 to 2008, the program aired regularly on ABC. In 2009, the series went back to WBC (its network from 1984 to 1985 and 1991 to 1997), before returning to ABC in 2014.
The show has had only three hosts, founder and former president, Walt Disney, former chairman and C.E.O., Michael Eisner, and current C.E.O., Tim Johnson.
The show is the second longest-running prime-time program on U.S. television, behind Hallmark Hall of Fame.
== Titles ==
* Walt Disney's Disneyland (1954–1958; ABC)
* Walt Disney Presents (1958–1961; ABC)
* Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1961–1969; NBC)
* The Wonderful World of Disney (first era; 1969–1979; NBC)
* Disney's Wonderful World (1979–1981; NBC)
* Walt Disney (1981–1986; CBS and WBC)
* The Disney Sunday Movie (1986–1988; ABC)
* The Magical World of Disney (1988–1991; NBC)
* The Wonderful World of Disney (1991–1997; CBS) (third era; 1997–present; ABC and WBC)
== History ==
The anthology series was an outgrowth of Walt Disney looking for funding for Disneyland with his brother Roy Disney approaching all the big-three networks with American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres taking the deal for programming for ABC.
=== Walt Disney's Disneyland (1954–1958) ===
Although Walt Disney was the first major film producer to venture into television, two established independent film producers successfully ventured into television production before Disney, Hal Roach and Jerry Fairbanks. Disney wanted to produce a television program to finance the development of the Disneyland amusement park. After being turned down by both CBS and NBC, Disney eventually signed a deal with ABC (which had merged with United Paramount Theaters in 1953) on March 29, 1954. The show contained teasers for Walt's park, as well as episodes representing life in one of the park's main sections: Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Frontierland, with the opening titles used from its inception until the show's move to NBC in 1961, showing the entrance to Disneyland itself, as well as the four aforementioned lands, one of which was then identified as the main feature of that evening's program.
Consequently, Davy Crockett and other pioneers of the Old West, and American history in general, appeared in "Frontier Land". Similarly, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea might be the focus of an evening spent in "Adventure Land", although a documentary on the film could also be possibly presented as a topic for such episodes, including clips from the actual film. Topics for "Fantasy Land" would include either actual cartoons, and animated films, or documentaries on "The Making of ..." (such as behind-the-scenes presentation of Peggy Lee singing the duet of the wicked Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp, or the barbershop quartet of lost dogs in the municipal Dog Pound); excerpts from a True-Life Adventure documentary might also be included (for example, one on the life and works of beavers and their dam-building) or those using stroboscopic stop-action photography (such as investigating what really happened when a rain-drop fell in a puddle, as part of a "Fantasy Land" episode), explaining the techniques of cartoon animation. The multiplane camera used to create the three-dimensional effects of Bambi was also a topic for a "Fantasy Land"-set telecast. In one episode, four different artists were given the task of drawing the same tree, with each artist using his own preferred ways of drawing and imagining a tree; this led to cartoon examples of differently animated trees, as in some of the early Silly Symphonies shorts, and later full-length animated films. "Tomorrow Land" was an opportunity for the Disney studio staff to present cutting-edge science and technology, and to predict possible futures, such as futuristic automobiles and highways, and featured Wernher von Braun as an on-air technical consultant in Man and the Moon, which aired December 28, 1955. This format remained basically unchanged through the 1980s, though new material was scarce in later years. Other episodes were segments from Disney films such as Seal Island and Alice in Wonderland, or cartoons of Donald Duck and other Disney standbys.
The program spawned the Davy Crockett craze of 1955 with the airing of a three-episode series (not shown over the course of consecutive weeks) about the historical American frontiersman, starring Fess Parker in the title role. Millions of dollars of merchandise relating to the title character were sold, and the theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett", became a hit record that year. Three historically based hour-long programs aired during late 1954/early 1955, and were followed up by two dramatized installments the following year. The TV episodes were later edited into two theatrical films.
On July 17, 1955, the opening of Disneyland was covered on a live television special, Dateline: Disneyland, which is not technically considered to be part of the series. It was hosted by Art Linkletter, with whom Walt Disney had worked out a deal prior to the opening to allow Linkletter to lease a shop on Main Street in return for the broadcast. Art Linkletter was assisted by Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan, and the program featured various other guests, including various appearances of Walt himself as he dedicated the various lands of Disneyland.
=== Walt Disney Presents (1958–1961) ===
In 1958, the series was retitled Walt Disney Presents and moved to a Friday-night timeslot; by 1960, ABC had switched it to Sunday nights, where it remained for 21 years. During this iteration, The Peter Tchaikovsky Story, an episode made to promote Walt's latest animated feature, Sleeping Beauty, was one of the first stereo simulcasts on TV; in this case it was 3 channel stereo. FM radio stations across the country carried the left channel at the same time as ABC broadcast the TV show in mono, which served as a center channel, and AM radio stations broadcast the right channel. In the second half of the show, a lengthy clip of Sleeping Beauty was shown, with its 6 channels (70mm version) mixed down into 3 for the broadcast. Walt apparently wanted people to see Sleeping Beauty in 70 mm, so, in the introduction, he explained the difference between 35 mm and 70 mm and held up a card with both sizes on it. In addition to episodes devoted to the latest additions at Disneyland, many episodes during this period were Westerns such as "Texas John Slaughter" and "Elfego Baca", while others talked about the United States' burgeoning efforts to explore outer space and others, such as "Moochie of the Little League", were set in the then-present day. Some episodes even mixed live-action and animation, showing Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Chip 'n' Dale, Professor Owl and Jiminy Cricket talking with Walt himself, while one 1959 episode (titled The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale) turned the spotlight on Chip 'n' Dale, combining their theatrical cartoons with mixed media wrap-around footage including the chipmunks' own theme song. The episode's genre is a live action/animated musical comedy, and as the title suggests, it stars the titular chipmunks. At the end of the episode, Chip 'n' Dale say (singing) their goodbyes to the audience and return to their nut home on the counter hoping the audience enjoyed their show.
=== Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1961–1969) ===
Although the basic format remained the same, the series moved to NBC on September 24, 1961, to take advantage of that network's ability to broadcast programming in color. In addition, Walt Disney's relationship with ABC had soured as the network resisted selling its stake in the theme park before doing so in 1960. In a display of foresight, Disney had filmed many of the earlier shows in color, allowing them to easily be repeated on NBC; since all but three of Disney's feature-length films were also made in color (the three black-and-white exceptions were The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, and Son of Flubber, all family comedies starring Fred MacMurray), they could now also be telecast in that format.
To emphasize the new feature, the series was retitled Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color when NBC began airing it. The first NBC episode even dealt with the principles of color, as explained by a new character named Ludwig Von Drake (voiced by Paul Frees), a bumbling professor with a thick German accent, who was the uncle of Donald Duck. Von Drake was the first Disney character created specifically for television.
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, 12 years after the anthology series premiered. While the broadcast that aired three days after his death featured a memorial tribute from Huntley-Brinkley Report anchor Chet Huntley with film and television star Dick Van Dyke, the introductions that Walt already filmed prior to his death continued to air for the remainder of the season. After that, the studio decided that Walt's persona as host was such a key part of the show's appeal to viewers that the host segment was dropped.
=== The Wonderful World of Disney (1969–1979) ===
The series was retitled The Wonderful World of Disney in September 1969, by which time the color distinction was no longer needed as all big three networks were broadcasting in color. It continued to gain solid ratings, often ranking in the top 20, until the mid-1970s.
In 1976, Disney showed its hit 1961 film The Parent Trap on television for the first time, as a 2½-hour special. This marked a major step in broadcasting for the studio, which had never shown one of its more popular films on television in a time slot longer than an hour (although it had shown Now You See Him, Now You Don't and Napoleon and Samantha in a two-hour format in 1975). Walt Disney Productions also began running some of its multiepisode television programs, such as 1962's Sammy The Way-Out Seal, as televised feature films on the anthology series. A slightly edited version of the 1954 Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea made its television debut as a two-hour special on NBC in October 1976. Several other Disney films, some of them not especially successful (such as Superdad, which was an outright flop in its initial theatrical release) were also aired on the program in the form of two-hour broadcasts that year. However, the multiepisode format for feature films had not been discontinued; as late as 1981, films such as Pollyanna were still being shown on the Disney program in several installments running a week apart.
During the early 1970s, the show began to increasingly concentrate less on animated cartoons and dramatic or comedy films, and began to place an emphasis on nature-oriented programs (such as the True-Life Adventures).
The show's continued ratings success in the post-Walt era came to an end during the 1975–76 season. At this time, Walt Disney Productions was facing a decline in fortunes due to falling box-office revenues, while NBC as a whole was also slipping in the ratings. The anthology series became even more dependent on airings of live-action theatrical features, its True-Life Adventures, reruns of older episodes, and cartoon compilations. Nothing from the Disney animated features canon aired, with the exceptions of Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo, as part of a long-standing policy placed on the program by Disney. Additionally, in 1975, when CBS regained the broadcast rights to the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz, it was scheduled opposite Disney, as it had been between 1960 and 1968. At that time, telecasts of that film were highly rated annual events, which largely attracted the same family audience as the Disney series. From 1968 to 1975, when NBC held the television rights to Oz (which it had acquired from CBS in 1967), it usually pre-empted Disney to show it. However, the show's stiffest weekly competition came from CBS's newsmagazine 60 Minutes.
In 1975, an amendment to the Prime Time Access Rule gave the Sunday 7:00 pm Eastern Time slot back to the networks, allowing NBC to move Disney back by a half-hour. It also allowed CBS to schedule 60 Minutes at 7:00 pm Eastern Time starting on December 7; prior to this, 60 Minutes had aired at 6:00 pm Eastern and did not begin its seasons until after the National Football League season ended. Disney fell out of the top 30, while 60 Minutes had its ratings rise significantly.
=== Disney's Wonderful World (1979–1981) ===
In September 1979, the studio agreed to then-NBC president Fred Silverman's request for changes to the program. The show shortened its title to Disney's Wonderful World, and updated the opening sequence with a computer-generated logo and disco-styled theme song, but largely kept the same format. The problems for the show continued. As a result of the ratings strength of 60 Minutes, compounded by low ratings, increasingly less original material, and frequent pre-emptions (primarily due to sporting events such as NFL game telecasts), NBC cancelled Disney in 1981. One factor that was beyond the control of either Disney or NBC was a 94-day strike by the Screen Actors' Guild that cut the number of shows for the 1980–1981 season, but the damage was done nonetheless.
=== Walt Disney (1981–1986) ===
Following NBC's announcement that it would drop the anthology series, CBS picked up the program and began airing it on Saturdays at 8:00 pm Eastern Time, in September 1981. Despite a more elaborate credit sequence and another title change, to simply Walt Disney, the series' format remained unchanged. During the 1981–1982 season, the series had a full season's worth of material again, but little of it was new. Among the little that actually was new were a handful of pilots based on Pollyanna, Escape to Witch Mountain, and The Apple Dumpling Gang, but only the last of the three pilots was sold and became the half-hour sitcom Gun Shy the following season, one of the studio's first entries in that genre but only lasted six episodes.
The 1982–1983 season had enough material to fill the time slot, but almost all of it was pre-existing material, the lone exception being the celebrity-laden opening ceremony of Epcot on October 23. It also did not help matters that NBC slotted the family-friendly sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and Silver Spoons at 8:00 pm and 8:30 pm up against it to draw children away from CBS. After moving to Tuesday at the beginning of 1983, it went on hiatus on February 15 while the aforementioned Gun Shy took up the second half of its time slot. When it came back for summer reruns on May 3, it was still on Tuesday at 8:00 pm; its final CBS broadcast was on September 24.
The end of the show's CBS run coincided with the launch of the studio's cable television network, the Disney Channel. Beginning in the 1983-1984 season, the series moved to WBC.
=== The Disney Sunday Movie (1986–1988) ===
After the studio – which was rechristened as the Walt Disney Company in 1986 – underwent a change in management, WBC canceled Walt Disney in 1986 due to low ratings. It was brought back as The Disney Sunday Movie, which debuted on February 2, 1986, on ABC. Many names were considered to serve as presenter for the revived show, including Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, Cary Grant, Tom Hanks, Walter Cronkite, Roy E. Disney (who closely resembled his uncle), and even Mickey Mouse. The studio finally decided to have Michael Eisner, the company's recently hired CEO, host the series. Although he was not a performer, after filming a test video with his wife Jane and a member of his executive team (which required multiple takes), studio management believed he could do the hosting job. Eisner hired Michael Kay, a director of political commercials for then-U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, to help him improve his on-camera performance.
The Disney Sunday Movie initially aired as ABC's lead-off program on Sundays, running from 7:00 to 9:00 pm Eastern Time. By this point, the format was similar to a movie-of-the-week. Gary Barton, a Disney senior vice president, was in charge of the program. Help Wanted: Kids was the first episode's film. Other first revival year films were, Young Again, The Richest Cat in the World, I-Man (starring Scott Bakula), and My Town. Sometimes the slot would feature a special instead of dramatic material, such as "Disney Goes to the Oscars" featuring the studio's Academy Award winners, and "The Greatest Moments in Disney Animation". A handful of Disney Channel original films made their network television debuts during these iteration as well, but the program did not present any film made by Disney's Touchstone subsidiary, as such films were not considered appropriate for children. However, Splash, Too, a sequel to the 1984 film, aired on the series over two weeks in May 1988. The series had increased Disney park attendance and ABC's Sunday night ratings for the evening by an average 27% for the rest of the season. Disney, wanting to make it a regular viewing habit, gave ABC additional films from its library, including Old Yeller, The Apple Dumpling Gang and Candleshoe for the normal rerun mid-year period. The Last Electric Knight series movie produced a spin-off, originally to be called Karate Kid for ABC's 1987 season.
Despite improving ABC's numbers, the program's ratings were never strong as the established 60 Minutes and scripted mystery series Murder, She Wrote on CBS, both of which Disney was competing with for viewers, remained the leading primetime programs on Sunday nights. In 1987, ABC reduced The Disney Sunday Movie from two hours to one. The move did not help drive ratings, and the network decided not to renew its contract with Disney or pick up a fourth season of the second iteration of the anthology series.
The Disney Sunday Movie was also being run on the Disney Channel, also hosted by Eisner.
=== The Magical World of Disney (1988–1990) ===
In early 1988, NBC decided to renew its association with the company after it cut ties to the anthology series seven years earlier; the network brought the series, now named The Magical World of Disney, to serve as the lead-in of its Sunday lineup in September 1988. As the program had done during its last season as The Disney Sunday Movie, The Magical World of Disney ran for one hour, airing at 7:00 pm Eastern Time; Michael Eisner also returned as its presenter. During this period, the show attempted to reintroduce the rotating format the show started out with in 1954. It also introduced new versions of Walt-era movies and TV shows such as The Absent-Minded Professor, a reboot of Davy Crockett, and the musical Polly, which was based on the book Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter and the Walt Disney's 1960 film adaptation of it.
After two seasons experiencing the same lackluster ratings as it had accrued during the end of its initial NBC run and its subsequent runs on CBS and ABC, Disney elected to move the series back to WBC – in the same time slot it had been airing for the past decade – starting in September 1990, expanding back to a two-hour format.
=== The Wonderful World of Disney (1991–present) ===
The series was renamed back to The Wonderful World of Disney in 1991.
In 1997, with Disney acquiring ABC the previous year, ABC gave the series a regular slot in the schedule. Disney CEO Eisner formed Disney Telefilms by 1995 to supply original films to the series and program together with ABC. It led the network's Sunday night lineup at the 7:00 p.m. Eastern time slot, resulting in the displacement of Sunday mainstay America's Funniest Home Videos, which had occupied the slot since 1992. On September 28, 1997, the all-new The Wonderful World of Disney premiered with the network television premiere of Toy Story. On October 5, 1997, Disney Telefilms' first production, Toothless, debuted on the series. In addition to the planned 16 original Disney telemovies, ABC and Disney added a few direct-to-video movies and films from other sources.
In 2001, a Spanish-language version of the program premiered on Telemundo (which, incidentally, was acquired by the English version's former home, NBC, that same year 2001–2010) as El Maravilloso Mundo de Disney, with more of a focus on Disney theatrical films than the English broadcasts at the time for Spanish version's former Disney Channel (Latin America).
In September 2003, The Wonderful World of Disney moved to Saturdays at 8:00 pm Eastern, with the previous Sunday time slot being ceded to AFV (which moved back to Sundays that season) and drama series in the 8:00 pm hour. Rare exceptions to the program's format occurred during this time; for example, a Little House on the Prairie miniseries ran for several weeks in 2004 under the Wonderful World of Disney banner. For most of its second run on ABC, the program aired throughout the television season, with the exception of the 2005–06 season (when it aired during the midseason only), and in 2007 and 2008 (when it was relegated to the summer months), with a broader array of films occupying the network's Saturday primetime slot at other times, when sports programming did not air. The series moved back to WBC in 2008.
At this point, the series began to shift focus toward Disney theatrical films, relying less on original television films; however, the series aired two Disney Channel Original Movies (2002's Cadet Kelly and 2008's Camp Rock, currently the only Disney Channel television films to have aired on non-Disney Channel-branded network domestically) during its ABC run. The second ABC revival also included some family-oriented films produced by studios other than Disney under the Wonderful World banner, such as The Sound of Music from 20th Century Fox (which is presently owned by Johnson) and the Harry Potter film series and Space Jam from Warner Bros., as well as television films such as Princess of Thieves from Granada Productions and the 2001 remake of Brian's Song from Columbia TriStar Television (now known as Sony Pictures Television).
On TBA 2014, The Wonderful World of Disney officially returned to ABC and its anthology format with a showing of Mary Poppins for the first time on ABC since 2002, hosted by Tim Johnson (who became the main permanent host) and Dick Van Dyke. Johnson and Van Dyke took viewers on a tour through the Disney Archives, as they explored props and costumes from the production of Mary Poppins and discussed the film's history and context within the Disney legacy. It was then shown on February 21, 2016, with the special Disneyland 60, which honored Disneyland's 60th anniversary; on November 24, 2016, for their Magical Holiday Celebration, filmed at Walt Disney World; and on December 11, 2016, for the network television premiere of Frozen. On August 5, 2019, it was announced that The Wonderful World of Disney would present The Little Mermaid Live! on November 5 of that year with Auliʻi Cravalho, Queen Latifah and Shaggy starring as Ariel, Ursula and Sebastian, respectively. The cast also included John Stamos as Chef Louis and Graham Phillips as Prince Eric. The special featured music from both the film and the Tony Award-nominated Broadway stage version and was performed in front of a live audience with giant projection surface. The title was used again on November 28, 2019, for a two-hour music special, The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration, hosted by Emma Bunton and Matthew Morrison.
== The Magical World of Toons ==
The Magical World of Toons was the daily prime time programming block featuring character's key series episodes coinciding with the launch of Disney's new channel, Toon Disney, on April 18, 1998. It continued at least until 2003.
== The Magical World of Playhouse Disney ==
In 2012, Playhouse Disney (then Disney Junior) launched a variant of the movie night anthology as The Magical World of Disney Junior on its new 24/7 channel. The channel also premiered its first Playhouse Disney Original Movie, Lucky Duck during Magical World on Friday, June 20, 2014.
== Reruns ==
== Programming ==
== Theme music ==
* From 1954 to 1961, the series used the song "When You Wish Upon a Star" as its theme. The recording was taken directly from the soundtrack of the movie Pinocchio. Once the title was changed to "Walt Disney Presents" in 1958, the theme was used only over the ending credits.
* From 1961 to 1969, an original song was used, "The Wonderful World of Color", written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman & composed by Buddy Baker. This song helped to emphasize the use of color with its lyrics.
* From 1969 to 1979 (The Wonderful World of Disney), orchestral medleys of various Disney songs from movies and theme parks as theme songs.
* From 1979 to 1980 (Disney's Wonderful World), a disco-styled theme was written to emphasize the new visual changes, even though the format remained the same. John Debney composed the melody and John Klawitter wrote the lyrics.
** From 1980 to 1981, the series discarded the Debney/Klawitter theme and went back to an earlier orchestral medley theme, while keeping the 1979 credits motif and title.
* From 1981 to 1986 (Walt Disney), a short disco arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star", arranged by Frank Gari, served as theme against some elaborate, then-state-of-the-art computer graphics. CBC Television in Canada also used this title sequence and theme music for their own versions of the show. The sequence was also used as the opening sequence on international Walt Disney Home Video releases from 1983 until 1987.
* From 1986 to 1988, a synthesized, pop-rock arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" with some clapping was the theme. This was used again for the 1989–90 season of The Magical World of Disney and the 1991–96 run on The Disney Channel.
* In 1988, an orchestral medley of "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" and "When You Wish Upon a Star" was used. This was switched back to the 1987 theme in 1989.
* From 1991 to 1997, an orchestral medley of "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "Part of Your World" (the latter from Disney's then recent hit The Little Mermaid), composed by Bruce Broughton, was used for network airings of the show (known as The Wonderful World of Disney on CBS and A Disney Special on other networks) as well as The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage, a collaboration with Stephen J. Cannell Productions. This theme was also used internationally.
* From 1997 to 2000, Vocals added, an orchestral medley of "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "A Whole New World" (the latter used in the movie Aladdin), composed by Jerry Goldsmith, were used; also used occasionally was the Louis Armstrong hit "What a Wonderful World". This theme is still used currently internationally.
* From 2000 to 2007, a newer orchestral arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" with a wordless choir, composed by James Horner, was used for ABC airings in the United States.
* From 2007 to 2014, another orchestral arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" (in actuality, the theme from the then-current Disney logo, written and composed by Mark Mancina and co-arranged with and orchestrated by David Metzger) and a brand-new opening title sequence (depicting a montage of the company's work with audio from Walt Disney himself) are used for ABC and WBC airings in the United States.
* From 2014 on, a new orchestral arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" by Cal Johnson, Jr. is used alongside a brand-new opening title sequence, consisting mainly of a 2D cel-animated Tinker Bell flying through the clouds (although she is depicted as simply a gold dot with a sparkling trail until towards the end), generating footage from various films, television series, and theme park attractions throughout with her magic wand, before transitioning to a variation of the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures logo via Tinker Bell waving her wand at the viewer. It also features a longer voice-over from Walt Disney, plus added representation for the Star Wars property.
== International broadcasts ==
Category:Johnsonverse