In 1954, LIFE magazine sent their movies editor Mary Leatherbee and photographer Peter Stackpole to the Bahamas where Disney was filming 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. See a marvelous gallery of photos over at the LIFE site. Above, the film's director Richard Flesicher. "These distinctive suits, as the original captions noted, were a technical problem because they 'had to be invented to clothe the fabled Nautilus crew-- Victorian-looking yet practical and self-contained... the way Jules Verne imagined it for his mythical hero, Captain Nemo.'" 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea photo gallery
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Interesting magazine cover: a full spread devoted to a Disney movie with a small insert for a story on the discovery of the polio vaccine. Plus ca change...
That's mostly because Life was not a news magazine. It focused on photography, which is what the cover blurb on the polio vaccine refers to. Also, the vaccine mentioned is probably the first Salk vaccine announced in 1952, so, old news by '54.
All of the photos taken are at google.
source:life 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Hello Remembering watching The movie "2000 Leagues Under The Sea" & having the game board. The Time picture capture the image of that era. Almost looks like today space suit.
Kula May
"In 1954, LIFE sent reporters to the Bahamas to cover the filming of Walt Disney's first live-action picture, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
according to Wikipedia, 20KLUTS was actually the fifth live action movie made by Disney films.
amazing that they could do all that with scuba tech being so new. It's be like Lucas making flying X-wings for Star Wars.
Man, now I want a flying X-wing.
The guy in the diving suit in your photo is Richard Fleischer, director of the film and son of Walt Disney's old rival Max Fleischer. Betty Boop, the animated Popeye the Sailor, and the animated Superman all originated at Fleischer Studios.
The family business declined, but Richard made his own way, eventually directing plenty of classic films. See his book Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution for a good profile of his father.
From the hilarious SNL sketch with Kelsey Grammer, Phil Hartman, Mike Myers, Rob Schneider:
Mr. Land: So now we're really 20,000 leagues under the sea?
Captain Nemo: Well, actually, no, that's a bit of a misnomer. I misspoke. A league is actually a measure of distance traveled, and not a measure of depth, you see.
But, Captain, we're so deep! Surely, we must be 20,000 leagues under the sea by now!
First Mate: Yesss. 20,000 leaguesss! Under the sea!
Captain Nemo: Well, no. As I said before, I misspoke, you see. I should have said.. fathoms. Fathoms are what you use to measure depth! Fathoms, not leagues!
Professor: And so, we are 20,000 fathoms under the sea?
Captain Nemo: Yes. But, I mean.. I mean no. No. We could be. But right now, we're just about, uh.. 200 fathoms beneath the sea.
Mr. Land: Oh, I get it. So 200 fathoms equals 20,000 leagues under the sea?
Captain Nemo: No! No! now, look, I was obviously wrong to have ever even mentioned 20,000 leagues nder the sea. I simply meant that we would traveling a total distance of 20,000 leagues - lengthwise, while we happen to be underwater.
The full sketch is here:
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/93/93qleagues.phtml
Here's the storyboard to scene comparison of the underwater burial sequence:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=164179956917&oid=161478049711
Disc 2 of the '20,000 Leagues' DVD is loaded with goodies.