Walt Disney

by Bob Thomas

  To some of the bankers, Walt seemed profligate. “You can’t put a price tag on creativity,” he argued. That had been his theory from the beginning. He refused to make his cartoons on a strict budget because he wanted them to be better; making them better meant spending more money. When Roy argued that payments from distributors were not enough to cover production costs, Walt’s answer was: “If we make better cartoons, we’ll get more money next time.” He was unable to establish budgets for Snow White, Fantasia, Bambi and other cartoon features because he was pioneering with new mediums, new techniques. The same with Disneyland. He set no budgetary limits on his planners and engineers. They were exploring unknown territory, and only at the end of the quest would Walt know what it cost.

  In December 1954, Joe Fowler concluded that he could no longer get woodwork done outside the park with the speed and quality Walt demanded. Fowler proposed immediate construction of the Town Square Opera House so it could enclose the mill. The cost would be $40,000. “Gee, Joe, I just don’t have the money,” Roy Disney told Fowler, explaining that he had exhausted all possibilities for additional financing. But when Fowler returned the following day, Roy told him, “Yes, I’ve got your money. Go ahead.”

  Walt never doubted that his brother would find the money to build Disneyland. Walt’s principal concern was meeting the impossible deadline that he had set for himself. By January 1, 1955, it seemed imperative that some compromises had to be made. Tomorrowland was the least developed section of Disneyland; Walt agreed to his staff’s suggestion to board up Tomorrowland with an attractive fence, announcing that it would open later. No sooner was the decision made than Walt rescinded it. “Well open the whole park,” he told his staff. “Do the best you can with Tomorrowland, and well fix it up after we open.”

  The WED planners were working forty-eight hours a week, and Walt was with them every day, including Saturday. The studio commissary was closed on Saturday, so the group went to a nearby tearoom for lunch. The talk was always about Disneyland. Walt applied his concept to everything, from the overall philosophy of the park to the details of woodwork and landscaping. Nothing eluded his view, even the trash cans. He wanted them to be attractive additions to the decor, not utilitarian eyesores; hence each was decorated to fit its location—those in Frontierland were done in rustic style, etc.

  At times it seemed that Walt was asking more than human ingenuity could provide. When the WED craftsman told him, “We can’t make it work,” he replied, “You guys are too close to this thing. Let’s approach it from a different angle; maybe we can restage this show and make it work.” He refused to compromise. Veteran operators of amusement parks viewed his plans and pointed out that the Town Square at the entrance to Disneyland would be wasteful; too much expense and space was being used in an area that would contribute little revenue. Walt listened to them and made no change. He intended the Town Square to set the mood for visitors. It would be a place with flowers and balloons, costumes and a brass band. Handsomely wrought surreys, a fire wagon and a horse-drawn trolley would take people down Main Street and to the rest of the realms. The vehicles would not have enough capacity to make a profit, but they contributed to the entire experience. Walt insisted on fine furnishings for the restaurants, even though they would be serving reasonably priced meals. He believed that if a family sat under a $50,000 chandelier and ate good food at a fair price, the experience would add to their enjoyment of the park.

  After working with movie sets at the studio, Walt had to accustom himself to the need for solidity in the Disneyland buildings. One day Walt came across a large mound covered by a tarpaulin. He looked underneath and saw hundreds of bags of cement. “What’s all this?” he asked of Robert (Bud) Washo, another art director recruited from Twentieth Century-Fox for construction of Disneyland. Washo explained that he had acquired the cement from several sources; he anticipated a shortage because of the construction of a huge military airport runway in Orange County. Walt grumbled. He scowled as he watched the first pouring of cement for the foundations of the Main Street buildings. John Wise, structural engineer for WED, had specified concrete pads four feet square, considering them the minimum for such construction. Walt thought it profligate. “Wise is wasting all my money underground,” he complained to Dick Irvine. Irvine argued the need for sturdy foundations to withstand the impact of millions of patrons.

  Walt greedily absorbed everything the engineers told him and soon could read mechanical drawings like an expert. Sometimes the engineers told him that effects he could easily accomplish in motion pictures were impractical in an amusement park. They learned not to say that to Walt Disney. To an engineer who pointed out the impossibility of a Disney proposal, Walt replied: “You know better than to kill an idea without giving it a chance to live. We set our sights high. That’s why we accomplish so many things. Now go back and try again.”

  Those who worked closely with Walt learned never to say, “This can’t be done.” The right response was, “Well, Walt, this might be difficult because…” If an engineer exhausted every possibility and could not find a solution, Walt accepted the fact that it couldn’t be done.

  Problems arose with the Orange County building inspectors. They had no experience with a place such as Disneyland; if they had applied normal building codes, construction of the park would have been exorbitant. The standards for a high-rise office building did not apply to the Sleeping Beauty castle. Disney engineers explained their methods and their good intentions, and in most cases the inspectors were understanding. They were reassured of Disney’s concern for safety when he installed automatic sprinklers in all the public buildings. Not only did the sprinklers ensure safety, they also permitted the use of materials that might otherwise have been considered a fire hazard.

  The engineers argued that a water tower was needed to supply pressure for the sprinklers and fire hydrants. When an engineer tried to argue the absolute necessity of the water tower, Walt almost ejected him bodily from the office. He refused to have the ugly tank towering over Disneyland. “Find another solution,” he insisted, and the engineers did. Water was piped in from more than one source, assuring an unchanging pressure. That cost extra money. So did the relocation of power lines on nearby properties. But Walt wanted no intrusion on the illusions he was conjuring.

  Members of the park staff urged him to build an administration building. “No,” he replied, “there isn’t going to be any administration building. The public isn’t coming here to see an administration building. Besides, I don’t want you guys sitting behind desks. I want you out in the park, watching what people are doing and finding out how you can make the place more enjoyable for them.”

  When Joe Fowler proposed a drydock for the Rivers of America, Walt opposed it. He argued that it would be unattractive and would add nothing to the customers’ enjoyment. Fowler with his Navy training realized that a drydock was necessary for maintenance of the big boats, and he argued persuasively. During the building stage, Walt referred to it derisively as “Joe’s ditch.” Later he turned the drydock into an asset by building a picturesque fish restaurant next to it. He named the drydock Fowler’s Harbor and called the restaurant Maurie’s Lobster House after Fowler’s wife.

  One of Walt’s great concerns was trees. He wanted trees to be part of the beauty and the drama of Disneyland, and to play their roles, they needed to be big. Bill Evans hunted throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties to find specimen trees, scouting new subdivisions and freeway routes for trees that were to be removed. Walt sometimes accompanied Evans to inspect trees under consideration for Disneyland. Walt wanted each tree to fit its location—maples, sycamores and birches for the Rivers of America; pines and oaks for Frontierland, etc. He sometimes rejected a tree with the comment: “It’s out of character.” During an inspection tour of Nature’s Wonderland, he rode the mine train, ordering it stopped from time to time so he could observe the vista. At one point he said, “Move all those trees back fifty feet. I want the people
on the big trains to see what’s going on in here. Those trees keep it hidden from them.”

  Always he wanted the trees bigger, despite the high cost of excavating and transporting them. One day Bill Evans found two trees that he was certain would impress the boss. He proudly exhibited them to Walt. “Where did you get the bushes, Bill?” Walt cracked. A staff member once questioned why Walt wanted big trees, since the buildings were scaled down to less than real size. “Trees have no scale,” Walt replied flatly.

  Walt rejected a design for a building with the comment: “I think the fellow was attempting a monument to himself rather than designing something that is for people.” He impressed on his designers again and again that he wasn’t seeking architectural masterpieces. “All I want you to think about,” he told one of them, “is that when people walk through or ride through or have access to anything that you design, I want them, when they leave, to have smiles on their faces. Just remember that; it’s all I ask of you as a designer.”

  Sometimes he did the designing himself. Marv Davis had labored over the contours of Tom Sawyer Island, but his efforts failed to please Walt. “Give me that thing,” Walt said. That night he worked for hours in his red-barn workshop. The next morning, he laid tracing paper on Davis’s desk and said, “Now that’s the way it should be.” The island was built according to his design.

  The railroad, of course, was a special interest of Walt’s. In the early stages of Disneyland, he considered buying an existing railroad from a hobbyist in Northern California. But he wanted the railroad, like everything else in Disneyland, to be fresh and new and his own. “Hell, we built a train before,” he told Roger Broggie of the studio machine shop, “we can do it again.”

  The experience with the Carolwood-Pacific made the railroad one of the easiest projects at Disneyland. The Carolwood-Pacific locomotive, the Lilly Belle, was a standard-gauge engine reduced to one-eighth of full size; by multiplying its dimensions five times, Broggie arrived at an engine which was five-eighths normal, with a thirty-six-inch gauge—standard for narrow-gauge trains. The cab was slightly enlarged to accommodate the engineer. The engine and cars were built at the studio, and the railroad was one of the first Disneyland features to be completed.

  The “dark rides” were also assembled at the studio. The talents of animators contributed to devising the stunts and the visual effects of the Snow White, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad rides, and mock-ups were laid out in a tin-roof shed so the planners could visualize space relationships. Other dark rides of amusement parks had steel wheels on the cars, but Walt considered them too noisy. “We’re trying to tell a story in those rides; we need quiet cars,” he said. He hired the Arrow Development Company to design a car that was both silent and highly maneuverable.

  Walt visited the tin shed every day to see how the rides were progressing. His favorite was the Peter Pan, because it was an entirely new concept—a fly-through with cars suspended from the ceiling. As the rides came closer to completion, Walt himself rode them over and over again. Bob Mattey, who did the experimental work, and Roger Broggie, who completed the jobs, could always recognize Walt’s reaction. If he was pleased, he got off the ride with a childlike giggle. If something went wrong, the eyebrow shot up and he muttered, “Fix this thing and let’s get this show on the road.”

  Walt sought expert advice during the development stage. Dave Bradley ran a little amusement park where Walt had taken his daughters, and Walt invited him to comment on the new rides. Friendly help was also provided by George Whitney, who operated an amusement park in San Francisco. Walt listened to their suggestions, accepted some, rejected others. Whitney argued that the elevated railroad station at the park entrance was a mistake. “People won’t walk up to the train,” he contended. But Walt believed that the Main Street train station performed a vital function as marquee for the park; without elevation, it would have no significance.

  “The people” were uppermost in his consideration. When an attraction pleased him, he said, “I think they’ll go for this,” or “They’re going to eat this up.” His expressions of rejection were: “That’s not good enough for them,” or “They’ll expect something better.”

  He would not sell “them” short. Walt commissioned Owen Pope to construct two Conestoga covered wagons, three Yellowstones, two single-seat and two double-seat surreys and three buckboards for use in the park. Walt was unhearing of arguments that such rides would be too limited in capacity; he wanted them to lend authenticity and atmosphere to Main Street and Frontierland.

  He also discarded contentions that vehicles would be vandalized. “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “Just make them beautiful and you’ll appeal to the best side of people. They all have it; all you have to do is bring it out.”

  Walt visited the Anaheim site during all phases of construction. He viewed the “stakeouts”—the plottings of building sizes by stakes and string. He made his suggestions as to sizes and proportions, always keeping the overall pattern in mind. Often he squatted down and commented, “Can you see little kids looking up at this?” Most of his planners had never considered looking at the park from the vantage point of a child.

  The Disney vision was clear. Scale meant everything, whether it was the fairy-tale size of the railroad, or the nostalgic foreshortening of Main Street, or the romanticism of Frontierland.

  “It’s too heavy,” he complained of the scale of Frontierland. His engineers explained that it was possible to make slim supports in iron and steel, but wood poles and fences had to be thick in order to support the weight. Walt wasn’t satisfied. He replaced fences and poles with others that were thin and light, yet strong.

  Everything had its proportion. The steamboat, the Mark Twain, had to seem as impressive as a Mississippi River paddlewheeler, yet it had to fit the scale of the Disneyland waterway. If the boat had been entirely scaled down, railings would have been at people’s knees. The scale had to be adjusted to please the eye and remain functional. Walt approved the plans, and he ordered a scale model so he could judge the Mark Twain’s appearance. The superstructure was assembled at the studio and trucked one deck at a time to Anaheim. There it was assembled on the hull.

  The Mark Twain’s hull was constructed at the Todd Shipyard in Long Beach. Nearly everything else was built by the various departments at the Disney studio. Almost from the beginning, Walt had designed the studio to be self-sufficient. In the early days, he established a laboratory to make black and white paints, so that the cartoons would have a uniform quality. When color film arrived, the studio had its own lab for making color paints. The Disney sound department created the multiphonic sound systems for Fantasia, and the machine shop perfected underwater cameras for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. All of the departments were accustomed to dealing with the challenges that Walt gave them. When Walt wanted realistic hippos and giraffes for the jungle cruise, he knew his experts could provide them. Over the years he had learned the talents of his staff, including their hobbies. Animators who sculpted in their off hours were assigned to create scale models.

  When the time came to fill the Rivers of America, Disneyland engineers explained they would need a special pump to move the water from wells. “No, just cut a flume to the river and turn the water on,” Walt said. The engineers displayed their maps and pointed out that the water would have to travel uphill to reach the river. Walt insisted that they try it his way. To the amazement of the engineers, the water did flow as he had predicted. They didn’t realize that a year before Walt had visited the property when it was still orange groves; he had questioned the growers about planting, pruning, fertilizing—and irrigating. He remembered how the water flowed; the surveyors’ maps were wrong.

  Water poured into the Rivers of America, and then disappeared. The thirsty Orange County soil absorbed it all, and engineers searched for a way to hold the water above ground. They tried plastic liners and other substances, but nothing seemed to work. “Keep trying—you’ll find something,” Walt told them. F
inally they located a clay soil nearby; an inch layer on the waterway formed a pad as hard as cement.

  The day-to-day operation of Disneyland occupied the thinking of Disney executives, and they reported to Walt that their choice for management of the park had been narrowed to two companies. “What do we need them for?” he asked.

  “To run the place,” an executive replied. “We have no experience in running an amusement park.”

  “In the first place,” said Walt, “this is not an amusement park. In the second place, we can run Disneyland as well as anyone. All you need are people who are eager, energetic, friendly, and willing to learn. They’ll make mistakes, but we can learn from their mistakes.”

  By late spring, Disneyland seemed far from completion. Joe Fowler assured Walt that the July opening would be achieved—but then the Orange County plumbers and asphalt workers went on strike. C. V. Wood, Disneyland general manager, told Fowler, “We might as well postpone until September. We’re not going to make it by July.”

  “Woody, we have to make it,” Fowler replied. He knew how urgently the Disneys needed the summer business to start paying off their enormous debt. Besides, Fowler had been accustomed to meeting impossible deadlines; during the war he had supervised twenty-five shipyards. The plumbers returned to work after Fowler guaranteed them the same payment they would receive upon settlement of the strike. The asphalt situation was solved by hauling truckloads from San Diego at an immense cost.

  With the July 17 opening approaching, money was getting scarce. The trees and shrubs which Bill Evans brought to the park became smaller as his budget shrank. By the time he reached his last landscaping task, on the northern side of the berm, no money was left. “I’ll tell you what to do, Bill,” said Walt. “You know all those fancy Latin names for plants. Why don’t you go down there and put some Latin names on those weeds?”