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by Andrew Kiste (Author)
The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair brought together the biggest industries, personalities, and nations worldwide, together descending on Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, New York. Oftentimes the exhibits that resulted were reflective of the current culture of the United States at the time. With the passage of the American midcentury, automobile culture had revved its engine, literally transforming the landscape and leisure time of people across the continent. Robert Moses, as the president of the New York World's Fair, quickly courted the Big Three automakers, as well as a dozen ancillary corporations that contributed to the manufacture of the automobile, for an entire portion of the fairgrounds that would be dedicated to transportation and the automobile.
The competition between these big corporations would prove to be fierce. The drive to have the largest, flashiest, and most popular exhibit became pedal-to-the-metal. The Ford Motor Company, not wanting to be outdone by its biggest competitor, General Motors, turned to Walt Disney Productions and WED Enterprises for assistance in designing and implementing an exhibit that would give the other automakers a run for their money. The resulting attraction, Ford's Magic Skyway, would quickly become one of the most popular at the New York World's Fair, not only due to the use of WED's fledgling audio animatronics, but also as a result of the introduction of the newest addition to the Ford family: the 1964 Ford Mustang.
In Walt Disney and the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair: TravelMagic, historian Andrew Kiste uses information never before released to the public to relate the story about the partnership between two of the largest corporations in the twentieth century--the Ford Motor Company and Walt Disney Productions--to create an exhibit that was not only one of the quickest forgotten of the New York World's Fair, but also one of the most significant in the transformation of American culture for decades to come.
