For Throwback Thursday, let's go back to 2011 when CE Pro looked at Walt Disney’s 1930's-era home theater.
Walt Disney’s old home in Los Angeles is up for sale and it gives us an interesting glimpse of his private home theater.
The four-bedroom, five-bath, 6,388-square-foot Los Feliz-area home is going for $3.65 million. Inside the 12-room chateau-style house, Disney converted a guest room, bath and library into a home theater to watch dailies and enjoy private screenings of his films and other classic movies.
There is not much detail about the equipment in the home theater. According to the LA Times, the room was originally a family room, but when Disney began creating live-action films vs. just animated movies, he decided he needed an area to view the dailies, so the room was converted.
The projector was a 35mm commercial-grade unit built back in the era. There still is a built-in 4×3 aspect ratio film screen encased in a wood wall at one end of the room.
There is a clearly a large horizontal center channel in-wall speaker above the screen.
In the other end of the home theater, Disney had a small separate projection booth constructed. The projectionist’s room had its own toilet and a small bar. The original sink is still there. It’s pretty amazing that subsequent owners of the house have kept the original home theater in place (except the old projector of course) without updating it.
According to the LA Times, Disney’s daughter recalls watching “Citizen Kane” and “Gone with the Wind” in the room.
