#popculture27: Walt Disney Creates Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

The animation master’s first successful character, made for a different studio—and how his own studio acquired him.

by Rich Watson 

Before Disney, the company, became an entertainment juggernaut, there was Walt Disney, the animator. In 1927, a year before his most famous creation captured the world’s imagination, he achieved his first big success was with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. 

He may not have become as big as the mouse or the duck, but in recent years, he’s made a comeback.

Why Did the Bronx’s Freedomland Fail As An Amusement Park?

Freedomland was a theme park that aspired to greatness, but was undone almost as soon as it began.

by Rich Watson 

In the northeast corner of the Bronx, where Co-Op City resides, there once was an amusement park that for a brief time in the sixties, challenged Disneyland in popularity.

Freedomland USA sought to bring America’s past, however selective and biased, to life in a variety of rides, attractions and reenactments. At eighty-five acres, it was presented as the world’s biggest entertainment center.

So why didn’t it survive?

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#WorldsFair64: How Walt Disney Resurrected Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln returned to mechanical life for World’s Fair audiences, thanks to one of his biggest fans.

by Rich Watson 

Walt Disney was an integral part of the creation of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The filmmaker and animator helped design and create pavilions for a number of corporate clients. The song “It’s a Small World,” written by the Sherman Brothers for the Fair, became an iconic theme at Disney’s theme parks.

He also spearheaded a new form of technology used to bring an American president back to life, after a fashion, a century after his death.

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