My daughter (age 29) just watched Sleeping Beauty for the first time, and apart from making me feel like a failure as a mother for not introducing her to it myself :eek: it got me to thinking about my childhood in the 50s and 60s.
You see, children, we didn’t have any sort of videos back then - we had to go to the movies or perhaps see the movies on TV. But I recall that my mother had bought us some record albums of some of the Disney movies - I specifically recall having Sleeping Beauty and Peter Pan. And if I remember correctly, the album covers opened like big books, but that’s where my memory fails me.
Were there just pictures inside, or did it tell the story of the movie? Were the words to the songs printed in there? I’ve tried googling all the terms I could think of but without success. So I’m hoping some of the vintage Dopers will remember these vintage records.
I’m sure my mom tossed them long ago, and I bet they’d be worth a few $$ today, but alas…
We had an album of Disney’s “Robin Hood”. The album had the songs from the movie connected by a very abbreviated retelling of the story (by Roger Miller) and the album cover opened into an accompanying picture book as you described.
We had one based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” That was a Disney short, not a full-length movie, but I believe I remember seeing it on The Wonderful World of Disney. At any rate, there was a great baritone singer on the record singing Brom Bones’ part … might have been Thurl Ravenscroft, but I don’t know for sure.
Man, I haven’t thought about that record in 40 years, I bet.
Robin Hood would have been after my time. I’m trying to remember if we had any others - like Snow White, maybe? I remember being in the basement playing them on the old portable record player (only Mom and Dad’s good records were allowed on the stereo upstairs!!) It’s not unlikely that my sister and brother and I might have acted out some of the scenes, too. I need to ask them what they remember…
We had a few of these. I particularly remember this version of Snow White. The “magic mirror” in the cover was a die-cut window. Inside the cover were a few bound-in pages with the story told in the form of captioned pictures (probably stills from the movie). I don’t think it included printed lyrics.
I remember having both some of the book-and-LP (12") sets, particularly several Winnie-the-Pooh titles, and some of the smaller (7") book-and-record sets.
The Snow White album doesn’t look familiar at all, so I’m guessing we didn’t have that one. I know we didn’t have any 45s either - at least not of Disney music.
I remember having the soundtrack albums for The Jungle Book and Mary Poppins. No story books, just the record albums, but I played those a lot. I loved “The Bear Necessities” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (or however the hell it’s spelled) from those albums.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and we had a bunch of LPs of Disney movies: Snow White, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beuaty, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Peter Pan, Jungle Book, and 101 Dalmatians are the ones I remember. We also had Mickey Mouse Club LPs. In fact, we had the records for years before we got to see the movies in most cases, because each movie was only released theatrically every 7 years or so. Unfortunately, the ones we had were just in regular sleeves, with no book or lyrics.
For years I only knew some of the Disney movies from the records. I had an LP of ** Bambi** with illustrations taken direct from the movie, which I didn’t get a chance to see until I was in grad school. We had a book of Alice in Wonderland with a set of yellow 45 RPM records in it that told the story. My aunt and uncle had a set of records that told the story of Mickey and the Beanstalk (from the movie Fun and Fancy Free) that dated back to the 1940s. I didn’t see either of those movies until I was in college, either. (Since the dawn of Home Video, I got to catch up on a LOT of movies I hadn’t the chance to see earlier. Re-releases helped, too.) We also had a circa 1950 record (with pictures) of Little Toot (from the movie Melody Time). Again, I didn’t see the cartoon until MUCH later.
We also had a number of other Disney records – Bongo (the bear), Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom (the cartoon of which I didn’t see until a couple of years ago), various Mickey Mouse Club songs.
It wasn’t just Disney. We had a record of Bill and Coo, a weird movie in which all the parts were played by birds (WAYYYYY before Jonathan Livingston Seagull). The record was illustrated with black and white stills from the movie, which I didn’t see until it was put on YouTube.
My copy of the The Jungle Book album had a Sebastian Cabot sound-alike as Bagheera narrating a synopsis of the scenes that occurred between each of the songs.
Disney also released albums with just the songs, especially musicals like Mary Poppins. I had both Mary Poppins and the Jungle Book record. But they also released “storybooks” that told the story. The Alice in Wonderland storybook I mention above, for instance, included none of the songs. I think the Bambi record had a bit of the opening song and the “April Shower” song.
Just went over to the record cabinet, and the first one I found was 50 Happy Years of Disney Favorites 1923-1973, a 2 record set with an 11-page book of full-color illustrations. Each page has a few drawings from the film along with the release date and a list of the awards each film won, from Snow White in 1937 to Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day in 1967. If I dig deeper I may find the albums for individual films.
Huh…thought I’d posted that…well, I’ve gotten down on the floor (not easy with the knee replacements) and most of our Disney albums are compilations…but I do have Sleeping Beauty (not a book-type, brief synopsis of plot with black and white drawings on the back), Uncle Remus (only pictures of other album covers on the back, none mention booklets) and Mary Poppins, which opens like a book, has a full synopsis inside…very full, with quotes and photos and a cast list, but no lyrics. Ads on the album sleeve mention a 3 record set for Fantasia that includes a beautifully illustrated book. If I find any more albums I will update later.
Oh yeah, We had a bunch of those. Some had songs straight from the movie and some were re-done. (The* Sleeping Beauty* record featured Mary Martin, as I recall.) Some of the songs were way better than the movie versions, like a very cool arrangement of “Substitutiary Locomotion” from Bedknobs and Booksticks, or a gorgeous fully orchestrated “Skumps” from Sleeping Beauty. There are even some songs that aren’t in the movies at all, like “Playful Melody” from 101 Dalmatians (the music is in the opening credits but they never sing it), or “Sing a Smiling Song” from *Sleeping Beauty. * I’m pretty sure my parents still have all of them.
We had the Disney album Dragons & Dinosaurs narrated by Thurl Ravenscroft. All I remember about it is that we listened to the Wizard’s Duel from “The Sword in the Stone” over and over and over and over again. That part rocked!
