If You're Going to Disneyland, Be Sure to Cut Your Hair

Disneyland management has always tried to control their fantasy world from the time it opened in July 1955 and this once included the appearance of their guests. It's true. Look at photos of Disneyland throughout the first two decades of its existence and you'll notice something striking about the guests at the Park. One may suggest that my request is rooted in a racial context, but a post on Disneyland and race would be something for a future publication. However, notice rather the fashion. Granted, there wasn't necessarily an embrace of casual fashion at the time, especially for occasions like going to restaurants, flying on airplanes, visiting Disneyland, and most things people do now in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Things were different. Smoking was allowed in most places. By the time I was born in the latter half of the 1990's, most places in the United States had started instituting no-smoking zones. A lot of things have obviously changed since Disneyland's first twenty years. Almost fifty years' worth.

But this is neither a discussion of everyday life in mid-century America, nor is it an indictment of our current society. It's just a brief history of Disney and long-hairs.

Since opening in 1955, Walt wanted Disneyland to be a unique place where things were clean, pristine, and ordered. That's precisely why he didn't allow male cast members to sport long hair or don mustaches. Despite brandishing his own mustache, his reasoning was simple. Carnies.

Well, carnival workers typically had mustaches, goatees, and beards and this was 1955 when the only people who had facial hair were Beats and "undesirables" as they were called. Then again, this was the 1950's, keep in mind. So the biggest issue to Walt was the criminal element attached to the carnival image and he never wanted a carnivalesque atmosphere. He wanted order and a sense of morality as portrayed by not only his animated features, but the values of the time.

This included scraggly facial hair and long hair on male guests. With the advent of the Beatles and their signature mop-top hairstyle, there was pushback. High schools had expelled male students who refused to get haircuts, restaurants and other businesses would refuse service, and even other patrons would harass and attack men with long hair. Entire countries, such as Mexico, Turkey, Singapore, etc., would deny entry or even forcibly shave any male with hair longer than a certain length. Some of those places even threw people in jail. While Disneyland did not exactly dole out involuntary crewcuts, they kept a basic grooming policy in place for admission.

This ban on long-hair was extended to male guests and it was somewhat relaxed for exceptions, such as famous musicians and entertainers on occasion. However, when Jim "Roger" McGuinn visited the Park in 1964, his Beatle-length hair was the determining factor in denying him entry into the Park. Granted, this was one year before he rose to fame with the Byrds, so it's likely that if he had been recognizable like the actual Beatles, maybe he would've been admitted that day. However, the exception towards entertainers was not always definite, either.

Of course, there is a great history regarding the Beatles and Disney worthy of its own entry in the future, but rumor has it that the Beatles visited Disneyland after they performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964. They didn't, but George Harrison did visit the park in the late 1960's and early 1970's when those rules were still roughly in-effect.

Among the bands that followed the Beatles in the British Invasion of the mid-1960's, the Yardbirds had visited California in mid-1965 and actually went out to the park one day. Unfortunately, their clothes, accents, and manes were cause enough to deny them entry into the Happiest Place on Earth.

During their May 1966 residency in Los Angeles, Andy Warhol and his ragtag army of East Coast artists had visited Disneyland. The year prior, the Dave Clark Five (a Beatlesque band) had been admitted to the park.

Unfortunately, other artists weren't exactly given the green light. A local rock singer by the name of Jim Morrison and his friends (including one Ricky James Matthews) had been rejected for their unkempt, drugged out appearance in 1966. The Monkees referenced the anti-longhair rules on occasion. In fact, a Fall 1966 article on the band commented on this with an anecdote about Micky Dolenz being kicked out of the park for his hair.

A newspaper item from July 1966 had stated that the park management would "start turning away boys with long hair". It appears, though, that they already did, but it is possible that management recognized it as more and more of a "growing" trend and needed to clarify its stance. Disneyland entertainment personnel had already stated, in 1965, that they would stay away from hiring long-haired musicians, possibly fearing the chaos associated with the Beatles (as noted by their alleged sojourn in 1964) among other acts.

In 1967, the management at Disneyland started to admit long-haired males who were considered non-entertainment on a limited basis, but it was still highly selective. They did turn away a UCLA student and a few others. Actor Terence Stamp was offered a haircut at the gate in exchange for admission, but balked at the idea. The fiancée of a Hollywood starlet had been turned away, so did a few others. Among those was a local countercultural reporter named Terry Gilliam who had been chosen to review the brand-new Pirates of the Caribbean ride. While he moved shortly afterwards to England that year to pursue a career with the Monty Python team, he cited that incident as pivotal to his future work, including Brazil (1985) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).

Going into 1968, Disneyland management also allowed more contemporary acts, such as the Lovin' Spoonful, to perform. The intriguing thing about the Spoonful by this time was that they had lost a lot of countercultural cred. While John Sebastian had his signature Beatles'-length hair, he was allowed to sing "Daydream" from the elevating Tomorrowland Terrace stage one Spring night. Part of the reasoning would be a practical business move. Since some aspects of the counterculture were becoming more mainstream by then, recruiting a contemporary pop-rock act would attract more teenage guests to the park and give local clubs and teenage fairs some competition. It is not that Disneyland talent managers had refused to allow any modern acts prior to 1968, but by then, they mostly recruited the most bubblegum of bands. Of course, this can be explained by the fear of some Hard Day's Night-style Beatlemania or Rolling Stones-meets-The Doors riot. God forbid a Grateful Dead-Jefferson Airplane Acid Test, which would've been thematically fitting for the area near the Alice in Wonderland ride...

Anyway, in October 1968, the Disneyland management relaxed its grooming standards even more with the general admission of hippies on the grounds that they would be otherwise clean and dressed properly. Interestingly enough, country-rock guitarist Gram Parsons was admitted into Disneyland that year with the help of Buck Owens' manager. The Disneylanders were reportedly more concerned about his dress-like outfit than his shoulder-length hair.

Local papers from 1967 and 1968 explain that Disney management didn't want hippies to show up, smoke dope, and wreak havoc, but at the same time, long-haired celebrities, such as John Phillips, Keith Richards, and different members of the Doors among others showed up around that time. In fact, an article on celebrity hippies and Disneyland is something I want to write about in the future, so watch out for an article in the near future.

By August 1969, commentators took note of how Disneyland had really relaxed the grooming rule, thus allowing any clothed and clean guests entry into the park without hassle. Like the apparent impetus to embracing a handful of contemporary acts such as the Spoonful back in '68, Disneyland chose to loosen the restrictive grooming guidelines around the same time to attract more business and thus avoid tough competition. Of course, the irony surrounding the measures of theme parks in response to local youth movements should be noted, including how the relatively-more conservative Knott's Berry Farm had introduced an admission system in 1968 to keep the hippies and bikers from using the park as a hangout whereas Disneyland had gradually loosened their grooming code. Needless to say, Disneyland had always boasted a basic admission system.

Unfortunately, the happy "hippie" time ended with a fateful August day in 1970. On 6 August 1970, thousands of "Yippies" or members of the Youth International Party had converged upon Disneyland to take a stand against the very machine Disney represented at that point: a capitalist paradise where attractions are sponsored by corporate elites and where the crowds and content would more or less reflect the white, middle-class demographic of politically conservative Orange County. I personally disagree with what they did because I feel that Disneyland is one of the greatest forms of escapism from the political maelstrom of the world and I feel that since it ruined a lot of families' day at the Park, it isn't something I would celebrate.

The following day, Disneyland re-opened and reintroduced their "no hippies allowed" policy. While Disneyland security turned away some 100 or so hirsute gentlemen, they did allow a handful of hairy guests into the park after inspection. Apparently, cleanliness and attitude were factors that determined entry, just like before.

PERSONAL ANECDOTE: My grandfather (my mom's dad) had some shaggy hair back in the 1960's and the 1970's (he still has long hair after all these years). Shortly after he married my grandmother and my mom was born, they went to Disneyland. It was the Summer of 1969 and from what I remember, he said that they went on the Haunted Mansion at least three times because it just opened that same August. They also apparently had lunch at the Blue Bayou, which was relatively inexpensive at the time. My grandfather looked like George Harrison with the mustache. Since this was August or maybe September 1969, it appears that the rules on long-hair had been relaxed and it contradicted my impression that the second Disney let in a long-haired man with a mustache, it escalated into the Yippie Invasion of August 1970.