The seventh episode of the Disneyland TV series set sail on this day in 1954, featuring the documentary Operation Undersea. In what was really a glorified commercial for the upcoming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, your host Walt Disney made this hour-long program so exciting that it reeled in the Emmy® Award for Best Individual Show of the year. In addition to behind-the-scenes footage and candid sequences showing the film’s stars, James Mason, Kirk Douglas, and Peter Lorre, it also demonstrated new techniques invented for underwater filming. The episode was so popular that according the Nielsen ratings, the show managed to buoy up greater viewership during its repeat than its original run.
