The Golden Horseshoe
The Golden Horseshoe — formally the Golden Horseshoe Saloon, and called Pecos Bill's Golden Horseshoe Saloon while it was being built — is a Western saloon theatre and restaurant in Frontierland (Disneyland) at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Inside its two-storey, red-and-gold interior, guests eat at tables and in balcony boxes while comic musical revues play on a small proscenium stage. It is an opening-day building from 1955, and for its first three decades it was home to the Golden Horseshoe Revue, one of the most-performed stage shows in theatre history.
Today the building operates mainly as a quick-service restaurant, with live entertainment still presented on its stage.
History
The saloon's interior was designed by Harper Goff, who adapted a saloon set he had designed for the 1953 Warner Bros. musical film Calamity Jane. With its long bar, balcony and can-can stage, it was meant to feel like an 1870s frontier dance hall — although, in keeping with Walt Disney's family audience, the bar has never served alcohol to the general public.
The Golden Horseshoe was used before Disneyland opened at all. On July 13, 1955, Walt and Lillian Disney celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary there with a private party for family and friends, which included the premiere performance of the Golden Horseshoe Revue.[1] The saloon hosted a further private party for corporate sponsors on July 16, then opened to the public with the park on July 17, 1955.
Walt Disney kept a private box beside the stage — visitors disagree in retelling about whether to call it stage right or stage left, but not about whose it was — and watched the show from it frequently, often bringing distinguished guests with him. The box is now open to the public. His brother Roy O. Disney, by contrast, was said to prefer a table at the front.
The original Golden Horseshoe Revue was a fast, old-fashioned variety show built around saloon owner Slue Foot Sue, her can-can dancers, a travelling salesman character, and Wally Boag as the knockabout cowboy Pecos Bill, whose routine included slapstick, balloon animals and a spitting-teeth gag. Betty Taylor took over as Slue Foot Sue in 1956 and, like Boag, became inseparable from the show; both were later named Disney Legends.
The Revue played, several times a day, from July 17, 1955 until October 12, 1986. Guinness World Records credits it with 47,250 performances to April 1986, seen by some 16 million people, and lists it as the greatest number of performances of any theatrical presentation.[2] Lower totals, around 39,000, are also widely quoted for earlier points in the run; either way, no comparable revue matched its longevity.
After 1986 the stage hosted a succession of shorter-lived shows, including the Golden Horseshoe Jamboree Show and a Toy Story-themed revue in the 1990s, followed by residencies by comic troupe the Laughing Stock Co. and, for many years, Billy Hill and the Hillbillies. In 2013 a limited-run tribute, "A Salute to the Golden Horseshoe Revue," briefly brought back the can-can format.
Show
The modern Golden Horseshoe is first a place to eat — counter-service meals, snacks and desserts, eaten at saloon tables facing the stage — and second a drop-in theatre. Entertainment varies by season and schedule, ranging from live Western-themed music and comedy on the Horseshoe stage to piano playing, and guests can come and go during performances rather than arriving for a fixed showtime.
The room itself remains the attraction's constant: the balcony boxes, the ornate stage curtain, and Walt's former private box give present-day visitors substantially the same view that opening-day guests, and Walt himself, had of the stage.