MAY 2005
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Historic DowntownGo To: Mickey Mouse • Pioneer HotelTucson Mickey Mouse Clubby Steve Renzi
Audiences were startled and amazed. People would call the local theater and ask if a “Mickey” was playing. Many times, they were more popular than the main movie feature. During the 1930s, the heyday of the Mickey Mouse era, eighty-seven cartoon shorts were made. In 1932, Walt Disney won an Oscar for his creation. However, the impact of Mickey Mouse extended far beyond just movie entertainment. He became a cultural icon and changed American popular culture. The appeal of Mickey Mouse was universal, but he especially appealed to kids and parents of young children seeking wholesome family entertainment. Walt Disney and theater owners across the country soon recognized this, and began forming Mickey Mouse clubs at local theaters. Of course, it was good for business. Also, Walt Disney Enterprises and theater owners saw Mickey Mouse clubs as a way to promote the local theater as a center of the community and as a way to transmit the small town Midwestern values that Walt Disney grew up with and that Mickey Mouse embodied. The first Mickey Mouse Club began in 1929 in the Fox Dome Theater in Ocean Park, California. By the mid-thirties, there were over 800 clubs counting over a million members. Tucson was no exception. The first meeting of the Tucson Mickey Mouse Club was held at the Fox Theater in Downtown Tucson on May 24, 1930.
Imagine a Tucson youngster walking into the first meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club at the Fox. It begins at noon on Saturday. Today, admission is free, and thereafter for many years the admission price was only ten cents. The Fox Theater just had its grand opening a little more than a month ago, so everything is new, clean, shiny and luxurious. Inside, the theater is big, air-cooled, and jam-packed with over 1,500 noisy kids. There is no assigned seating so everyone moves towards the front. A Wurlitzer organ plays. Above your head hangs a six-foot chandelier, ablaze with multi-colored lights, and mounted onto the domed ceiling painted in fabulous art deco designs and colors. Behind and also above is a large balcony. In front, a wooden stage ensconced by two curtains, one a thick red velvet plush, the other, a shimmering white with black polka dots. A typical itinerary of the Mickey Mouse Club was an afternoon of cartoons, movie serials, contests and games. Boys and girls attended. All the Mice had to learn the secret handshake, special member greeting, code of behavior and special club songs. Over the years, there were roping, yo-yo, and costume contests, rodeo events, parades, and patriotic and citizenship activities. Many of the former members still remember the cartoon and movie serials like “Last of the Mohicans” and “Flash Gordon”, some of them divided into as many as fifteen episodes - cliffhangers till the end. Celebrities like Kate Smith, Will Rogers and Art Linkletter appeared on the Fox Theater stage. Also appearing was “The Flying Nelsons,” an acrobatic troupe and Pinky Gist, a rodeo clown with his two trained burros, Freckles and Peanuts. Also, not to be forgotten was Queen and Semi, two dogs who it was said could understand up to 700 spoken words. Speaking of dogs, one of the most memorable club meetings ever held had to have been “Dog Day”. Held on May 30, 1930, the second meeting of the Tucson Mickey Mouse Club, and kids were encouraged to bring their dogs. Over 1,500 kids showed up, along with over 1,000 dogs. Before the meeting, a parade was held outside the Fox and around the block. One-dollar prizes were awarded to the biggest, smallest, best-looking, ugliest and most unusual dogs. At noon, the doors were opened and the kids and all their dogs poured into the theater. The final meeting of the Tucson Mickey Mouse Club at the Fox was on July 4, 1962. Times had changed. Its been over forty years since that last meeting but the memories of the Mickey Mouse Club still linger in the hearts and minds of many Tucsonans. Important lessons and values were learned. Lifelong friendships started there. The Tucson Mickey Mouse Club was open to all races from day one, thoroughly integrated, unlike the Tucson school system and even the Fox Theater itself. The children met some wonderful Tucson adults who became important friends and mentors. People like Mabel Weadock, “Aunt Minnie”, the head of the Mickey Mouse Club, and Roy Drachman, manager of the Fox, and especially Dooley Bookman, the local merchant with a heart of gold, who organized parades, officiated contests, and handed out prizes. He made kids always feel welcome. The Tucson Mickey Mouse Club at the Fox was a wonderful place for kids to have fun, learn values, make friends and be thoroughly entertained. Maybe when the Fox re-opens it, or something like it, can happen again. Although I doubt the new management will hold another “Dog Day” and open the place up to over one thousand dogs. Pioneer Memoriesby Ken Scoville
The hotel celebrates the life accomplishments of Albert Steinfeld who was a pioneer and visionary for the future of the Old Pueblo after arriving by stage in February 1872. The six-day stage adventure from Los Angeles ended at a bleak desert outpost of approximately 1,200 rugged individuals who might have done the same thing that eighteen-year-old Albert did upon his first night in Tucson, cry himself to sleep. He endeavored to make the best of the situation as he began to work for the three Zeckendorf brothers at their mercantile store then located at Pennington and Main Avenue. The brothers had decided to bring their nephew out west to work in the family business and had no idea of their role in his destiny. Albert became store manager and partner at age twenty-six and after decades of work purchased the entire business in 1904 and established a hardware, grocery, and general merchandise emporium at the southwest corner of Stone and Pennington. The family tradition continued when his son Harold began working for his father in 1908. At that time the enterprise was primarily a wholesale concern but eventually evolved to become a modern department store recognized throughout the Southwest.
Albert lived the life of a pioneer by not only venturing into the unknown that was the Old Pueblo in the 1870s but also by opening up new business opportunities and modes of production in other endeavors. In the early 1900s Albert and other business leaders purchased the stock of the Consolidated National Bank and after a major reorganization, doubled the available capital and expanded business opportunities. He became a legend in the development of copper mines in Arizona and the promotion of the mining industry. Albert incorporated the Copper Queen Mining Company and was the general manager for several years before selling this venture to the Phelps-Dodge company. He later sold the Ray Mining Company to other investors after his successful start-up of this business. During all his years in business, Albert carried the vision of building a great hotel for Tucson. He owned the property at Stone and Pennington and although he had become less active in business, investors were organized and construction on Albert&Mac226;s dream began on January 11, 1929. Roy Place was the architect for this modern twelve-story hotel that would incorporate Spanish Colonial Revival details. The hotel was sold before construction was completed, but the deal fell through, and Harold took over as principal owner to finish the project. Before completion the hotel was again sold to outside buyers. The grand opening on the evening of December 12, 1929 of the Pioneer Hotel was a major event for the entire town with many rooms already reserved for this gala event. The recent stock market crash in October of that year was a harbinger for future economic problems that had not yet arrived in Tucson. The controlling interests could not make a go of the operation given the business climate in 1932 and defaulted on $600,000 worth of bonds. Harold Steinfeld became the owner for several decades until finally selling the Pioneer in 1963 for a reported $4.5 million. A group of local investors purchased the hotel and over two acres of property that the hotel occupied. Peggy and Harold Steinfeld would continue to maintain their home on the top floor of the Pioneer where they had lived for many years. Great hotels build memories for everyone in the community and the Pioneer was the place for all types of receptions and special events that a growing community would need. A multitude of weddings, conventions, and famous people enjoyed the Pioneer over the decades. The Pioneer became “THE PLACE” for lunch if you were downtown. The phrase, “Meet you at the Pioneer” became a tradition, and this author still remembers having lunch in that beautiful dining room just prior to enrolling at the U of A in 1969. No one could imagine the tragedy that would follow and even with the restoration after the fire, nothing was the same. All we have left are memories, but hopefully the name “Pioneer” will always be attached to the building at the northeast corner of Stone and Pennington. |
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n 1928, when Mickey Mouse first appeared on American movie screens in a seven-and-a-half minute cartoon called “Steamboat Willie,” it was a sensation. Created by twenty-six-year-old Walt Disney, “Steamboat Willie” was the world’s first cartoon with fully synchronized sound. Not only that, Mickey Mouse was an animated character with personality. By the late 1920s, animation had become stale and predictable, filled with flat one-dimensional characters who moved from one sight gag to the next. No plot, no story. Audiences were bored.
“Steamboat Willie” and the many other Mickey Mouse cartoons that soon followed were entertaining and innovative. Mickey was surrounded by a well-rounded ensemble, characters like; Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Terrible Tom, and later Donald and Daffy Duck. In “The Chain Gang” (1930), Mickey is being chased by a pair of bloodhounds. Suddenly, one of the dogs veers off and heads directly towards the audience. Soon, a slobbering, panting mouth fills the entire screen.
“America was just coming out of the “Roaring Twenties” where a lot of the old values and morality were being questioned and parents saw the Mickey Mouse Club as a safe place that kids could spend the day and enjoy wholesome entertainment,” according to Bill Buehler, Chairman of the Tucson Fox Memories Committee, and currently compiling a book on the Tucson Mickey Mouse Club.
he word pioneer was an appropriate name for a venture that became a Tucson tradition at the northeast corner of Stone and Pennington, the Pioneer Hotel. There are many people living today with memories of their connection to the hotel even though twenty years has passed since the conversion to offices by investor Allan Elias in 1975. Sadly, there are too many memories of the horrible fire on December 20, 1970 that claimed the lives of 28 people including Peggy and Harold Steinfeld. Few are the memories for the grand opening of the hotel on December 12, 1929 and the story of who the hotel was named for.