Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Now Open: the Enchanted Tiki Room!!




Great and colorful fold-out flyer with both illustrations and full-color photos (very rare in this kind of hand-out.) Would love more info on Papotin's Revue. Does anyone know anything about the show? Is there any film of it, whether shot at Disneyland or not? And whatever happened to that guy?

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Jedblau,

André Tahon spent the summer of 1963 in Southern California and performed 500+ shows with his marionettes that summer. He spent 6 months at the Stardust in Vegas a few years earlier and was a bit hit in European variety shows.

Merlinsguy said...

I saw the show many times. It was a "black art" type show where the performers dressed in black against a black curtain, making them nearly invisible. The puppets were mostly day-glo so they really stood out. One puppet was a lengthy day-glo worm who seemed to do impossible stunts.

The Viewliner Limited said...

Wow!!! the historians are on the mark today. Thanks for all the great information and as always great posting VDG.

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

Great Treasure, Thanks!

I so dig the Tiki God on the original art work! I've got the original tickets that they are talking about, see them here:

http://vintagedisneylandtickets.blogspot.com/2007/11/walt-disneys-enchanted-tiki-room.html

Papotin's Revuew was news to me, I had never heard of it until I did research for my blog, here is the "E" ticket the show appeared on:


http://vintagedisneylandtickets.blogspot.com/2007/12/e-ticket-part-2-1962-to-1965.html

Great Stuff, you rock!!!!!!

Jason Schultz said...

Apparently Tahon first did a string of spring vacation shows from April 7 to April 14 while also negotiating to come in full time for the summer. These were advertised as "André Tahon and his famous puppet show 'Compagnie Des Marottes." The newspaper says Walt personally chose him after seeing a film Tahon made in Hollywood in 1962 (though I have no idea what film that was and a quick search of IMDB turns up nothing).

That photo of him on the handout was from a press photo taken in the Castle Courtyard.

jedblau said...

Great info! I have another Papotin flyer that I'll post tonight.

Unknown said...

Great post!

I love the tiki graphics and the copy.

Thanks!

Chris Merritt said...

Great information everyone! Thanks Merlinsguy for that info on Papotin - I love hearing about these obscure early performers that we still don't know much about.

Jed - have any good information about Serrano the Educated Horse - who performed both at Knott's and Disneyland in the early 1950s? I don't know if a lot on Seranno is going to make it into the Knott's book, but he will at least be mentioned.

Here's an article on him from the 'Knotty Post' in 1957:

SERRANO THE EDUCATED HORSE – Out near the Calico Square in Ghost Town one of the smartest animals we have ever seen does his act daily for our guests. The amazing act of Serrano. The World’s Most Educated Horse, would make even the great Dunniger stop and scratch his head.
Serrano will tell you your age, your weight, your address, simply by looking at you. It would be wrong to say he guesses these things for he never makes a mistake so you can see he doesn’t “guess,” he KNOWS.
Serrano started his career 22 years ago on the banks of the Santa Ana River where he was born the spindly legged son of famous parents. When Serrano was five months old, he was sold to Clint Brush of Huntington Beach for the ridiculous sum of $50.00.
Since that time, Clint has trained his animal to perform its unbelievable feats of mental telepathy. We naturally suspect that Clint puts Serrano through his paces with some form of sign language or trickery but how he does it remains to this day. Last week Serrano told us our house number (and he did it correctly) but since Clint didn’t know the number of our home we are only more dumbfounded as to how Serrano knew. Confidentially though, when Clint told Serrano to look in our eyes he did look at us kind of funny like so – maybe he was doing a job of mind reading.
Recently, we in the office were searching madly for a phone number we wanted to call. We had neither the name of the individual or the address so we were at a loss to locate the phone number. Mr. Knott came up with a solution. His suggestion – “Go ask Serrano.” (‘Serrano – The World’s Most Educated Horse’ – KP Jan. 1957)

Anonymous said...

Andre Tahon is alive and well and living in France! Here's a web address: http://andre-tahon.blogspot.com/2007/02/andr-tahon-biography-of-creator-of.html

He made nine appearances on ABC's Hollywood Palace, which is where I saw his work. -Mitch Dutton