Dream It! Do It!: My Half-Century Creating Disney's Magic Kingdoms

by Martin Sklar

  The lessons were taught outside of WED’s quarters in Glendale, as well. Without a food facility on the Glendale campus, lunch was always a short walk or drive to a local eatery, where a focused discussion frequently took place about a local theater production, museum exhibition, or travel experience. Often the subject was how to solve that day’s creative challenge, and it was a way for the top Imagineers to stay informed about what each was doing. My lunch companions were frequently Coats, Gibson, Joerger, and Sewell, administrator of the Model Shop and a talent in his own right who had helped create the quintessential dioramas in New York’s American Museum of Natural History in the late 1930s.

  One of the preoccupations at these meals was my companions’ observation of other diners and servers. One night in Florida, during the building of Epcot, we were having dinner at a local restaurant. I noticed that Blaine Gibson, our chief sculptor, was totally absorbed in studying the chef, who had come into the seating area to converse with patrons. When I asked, Blaine admitted he was focused on the chef’s huge hands. Sure enough, when we all looked, we realized his hands were out of scale to the rest of his body. For Blaine, they were not just curiosities: he was making a mental note of those hands to use later on one of our Audio-Animatronics figures.

  I knew that Blaine’s love of animals, and understanding of their anatomy and movement, came partly from his years in Disney animation. But even more, they were the result of growing up as a farm boy in Colorado. When it came to the human figures he sculpted for our park attractions, my curiosity got the best of me. One day I asked Blaine where his inspiration for human characters in our shows came from—for example, the incredible buccaneers of Pirates of the Caribbean. Reluctantly, Blaine admitted that his wife, Coral, had mastered the kick under the chair at dinner: when Blaine would stare too long at another diner or server, Coral would let him have it. But she had not found a way to stop him from focusing on the special characteristics and features of fellow churchgoers.

  “You mean,” I asked cautiously, “that some of our pirates may resemble congregants in your church?” “Yes, it’s very possible,” Imagineering’s chief sculptor admitted. “Walt wanted realism in the pirates, and I found ideas and inspiration in many places!”

  Realism in life experiences was critically important to the great illustrator Herbert Dickens Ryman, who drew the first overall concept illustration of Disneyland in 1953. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ryman had become one of the most skilled artists in the MGM art department in the 1930s, working under the legendary Cedric Gibbons to illustrate scenes and locations around the world for such classic films as Mutiny on the Bounty, David Copperfield, The Good Earth, Tarzan, and A Tale of Two Cities. Then one day Ryman realized he had seen nothing of people and places, and he became a world traveler, spending weeks in China, Cambodia, Japan, and Thailand in the 1930s. Eventually, he visited Europe, Africa, and—as a Disney artist—he became part of Walt Disney’s goodwill tour of South America in the 1940s. (Herb’s sketches played a role in the design of the two films inspired by that trip for the U.S. State Department, Saludos Amigos and Fun and Fancy Free.)

  “I used to think I could research everything out of books; that I could trace or copy a horse, an eagle, an oak tree, or a girl on a beach,” Herb said. “I thought it was all in National Geographic. By actually touching ruins, feeling the wind on my cheeks as I walked along the Great Wall, and resting in the oasis of the desert, I began to realize this is real, and nature is where you have to go. This is the greatest source of my inspiration.”

  Shortly after his first odyssey to Asia in the 1930s, Herb was invited by John Ringling North to spend a summer traveling with the Ringling Brothers Circus, in the days of outdoor circus tents. He was given a private suite on the show train in 1949, 1950, and 1951. Ryman’s backstage sketches and watercolor renditions were so alive that quintessential circus clown Emmett Kelly said that Herb “put the smell of sawdust into paint.”

  Walt called Herb one Saturday in 1953 to ask his help in producing the first overall illustration of Disneyland. Herb kept a detailed diary, and in the book A Brush with Disney: An Artist’s Journey, Told Through the Words and Works of Herbert Dickens Ryman, published in 2002 by Ryman Arts, he described in detail how it came about:

  It was about 10 A.M. on September 26, 1953, when Walt called unexpectedly. When I remarked that he was at the Studio on a Saturday morning, he commented, “Yes, it’s my studio and I can be here anytime I want.”

  I was not working at the Disney Studio at that particular time, because in 1946 I had gone back to 20th Century-Fox. I had deserted Walt, which was a very criminal act (at least he thought it was).

  However, I was curious, and flattered, that Walt would pick up the phone and call me. I had no idea what he wanted.

  He asked how long it would take me to get there.… “I’ll be out front waiting for you,” he said.…

  Bill Cottrell, Dick Irvine, and Marvin Davis were there, all friends of mine. Walt said, “Herbie, I’m in the process of doing an amusement park, we’re working on it right now.”…I asked, “What are you going to call it?” He said, “I’m going to call it Disneyland,” and I said, “Well, that’s a good name. What is it that you want to see me about?” He said, “Well, my brother Roy is going to New York on Monday morning. He’s flying out of here to New York to see the bankers. Herbie, we need $17 million to get us started.… You know the bankers, they have no imagination. They can’t visualize when you tell them what you’re going to do, they have no way of visualizing it. So, I’ve got to show them what we’re going to do before we can have any chance of getting the money.” I said, “I would love to see what you’re going to do. Where is it?” He pointed at me and said, “You’re going to do it!” I said, “No. I’m not. You’re not going to call me on Saturday morning at 10 A.M. and expect me to do a masterpiece that Roy could take and get the money. It will embarrass me and it will embarrass you.” Walt asked the other guys to leave the room.

  We were alone. Walt paced around the room with his arms folded,…kind of looked back at me over his left shoulder with a little kind of sheepish smile, like a little boy who really wants something. With his eyes brimming, he asked, “Herbie, will you do it if I stay here with you?” I began to think, well he’s very serious about this, and Walt, after all, was my friend, and so I said, “Sure, if you stay here all night tonight and all night Sunday night and help me, I’ll stay here. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Our agreement cheered Walt, and he sent out for tuna salad sandwiches and malted milks and we started to work. It was just a carbon pencil drawing with a little color on top of it, but Roy got the money—so I guess it turned out all right.

  Few would question that “it turned out all right.” But in his personal copy of the book Disneyland: Inside Story, published in 1987, Herb wrote this note under a reproduction of the drawing: “First drawing of Disneyland—Sept. 23, 1953. Done under considerable stress and without thought or preparation.”

  There’s no question I learned more from John Hench than anyone but Walt himself. They were so closely connected, in fact, that most of us considered them two sides of the same coin—Walt the intuitive risk-taker and master motivator; John the philosophical thinker and articulate spokesperson for Disney park and resort design concepts.

  John loved to tell the story of his complaint to Walt, during John’s animation days, that male ballet dancers were more effeminate than athletic. “How do you know?” Walt asked. When John admitted it was his impression, Walt arranged with impresario Sol Hurok for John to spend a week backstage with Hurok’s ballet company during its stay in Los Angeles. The experience totally changed John’s view; forever after he raved about the strength and athleticism of the ballet dancers—male and female.

  Assigned by Walt to redesign Disneyland’s Victorian-style Plaza Inn in the early 1960s, John complained that he knew nothing about restaurants. “Well, find out!” Walt responded. John enrolled in a course in r
estaurant management at UCLA, and from then on he was not only the quintessential designer, he was the design staff’s authority on back-ofhouse restaurant organization and requirements.

  John Hench holds all The Walt Disney Company records for longevity. He was still working every day when he became ill at age ninety-four, in the sixty-fourth year since he’d joined the company as a sketch artist on Fantasia in 1939. His insatiable curiosity and desire to learn led him to work in many of the key departments at the Studio: story, layout, background, effects animation, camera, multiplane camera, special effects. We all considered John a true Renaissance man.

  One Friday I decided to find out how John knew so much about so many things, so I asked his assistant, Sandy Huskins, to bring me “all the books and magazines John takes home this weekend.” She dutifully complied, and on Monday, thirty-five books and magazines arrived (in shifts) on my desk! They ranged from Women’s Wear Daily to Scientific American. That very day, I determined I would not stray far from John Hench for as long as he would allow me to be near him. We became great friends and collaborators for many of John’s sixty-four years at Disney. Our “partnership”—Hench the design guru, Marty the content quarterback and sponsor liaison—was the key to creating the Epcot theme park, and numerous attractions from Anaheim to Tokyo and Paris.

  In his seminal book, Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show, published in 2004 by Disney Editions, John drew on his years as the “color guru” of the Disney parks to communicate the importance that color plays in the guest experience:

  We pay close attention to color relationships and how they help us to tell our stories. Nothing in a theme park is seen in isolation. Story threads help us to coordinate the relationships of adjacent attractions. We visualize the buildings and their facades next to one another, and also in the context of the surrounding pavement, the landscape, the sky with its changing weather, as well as the props and decorative furnishings that might be adjacent to these structures. In one sense, designing a park is all about creating distinct yet related experiences of color from one end to the other.… Each attraction has a color scheme that identifies its story clearly for the guest, yet also complements those of attractions nearby.

  Color assists guests in making decisions because it establishes the identity of each attraction in a park. The color of an object is an inevitable part of its identity—color is as important as form in helping us to recognize what we see.… After a lifetime as a designer, I have become convinced that some kind of ancestral memory, a collective conscious inheritance of sensory impressions, images, and symbols, also plays an important role in our response to what we see.

  Even though he contributed to every Disney park around the world, including Hong Kong Disneyland, John never wavered in his view that the original park was the most significant. In his book, he wrote:

  When I am asked, “What is our greatest achievement?” I answer, “Disneyland is our greatest achievement. Disneyland was first, and set the pattern for others to follow.” Disneyland has been an example for many enterprises in the entertainment industry, and its design principles have been embraced by other industries as well. The concept of “themed” environments—places designed so that every element contributes to telling a story—was developed and popularized by Walt Disney. Its influence has been extraordinarily widespread, and can be seen today in many aspects of our daily experience—in shops and shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, museums, airports, offices, even people’s homes.

  As much as John enjoyed walk-throughs at Disneyland with Walt to discuss future projects, he was constantly on guard against being mistaken for Walt, as they were about the same size and shared a particular feature: a well-trimmed dark mustache. One day, four or five different guests asked for John’s autograph—while Walt stood by, observing in silence. Later, alongside the Frontierland river, the Mark Twain Riverboat sailed past, and a father on board excitedly exclaimed to his son, “Look! There’s Walt Disney!” Overhearing, Walt pointed down the riverbank toward John, and responded: “No—that’s him over there!”

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  The master planning, creative design, and engineering organization originally called WED Enterprises was incorporated in December 1952 for the express purpose of working with Walt Disney on the creation of Disneyland. The initials were Walt’s: Walter Elias Disney. It was a private company 100 percent owned by Walt and his family, and remained that way through the opening and expansion of Disneyland, the early planning for Walt Disney World, and the creation of the four Disney shows at the New York World’s Fair 1964–65.

  Walt had a handshake agreement with his brother Roy O. Disney that he would bring any project offered to him through WED, his personal company, to Roy on the chance that Walt Disney Productions wanted it for the company’s portfolio of work. In the case of the four New York World’s Fair attractions, the public Disney company preferred not to take on the General Electric, Ford Motor Company, or State of Illinois pavilions, enabling WED to become the designer of these three hit shows. However, Roy did bring the fourth production into the Walt Disney Productions aegis when UNICEF asked Walt to create a show “about the children of the world.” It became “it’s a small world,” now a fixture in every Magic Kingdom-style Disney park around the world.

  The potential concern that shareholders might suspect Walt was feeding projects to his family company, WED Enterprises, and thus depriving Walt Disney Productions of potential income, led Walt Disney Productions to purchase the assets of WED from the Walt Disney family at the conclusion of the New York World’s Fair in 1965. Those assets were a few buildings in Glendale, and the staff Walt had assembled and trained, which had designed Disneyland and the World’s Fair shows.

  With the sale of WED to Walt Disney Productions, the Walt Disney family established Retlaw (Walter spelled backward) Enterprises as a legal and business enterprise to manage its personal assets and investments, including the Disneyland Railroad and the Monorail system. Walt had personally financed the railroad during the original construction of Disneyland, and the Monorail when it was added in 1959. Retlaw was sold to Walt Disney Productions in July 1981, and by virtue of that transaction, the company acquired Retlaw’s steam train and Monorail assets.

  “THE GREATEST PIECE OF URBAN DESIGN IN THE UNITED STATES IS DISNEYLAND.”

  Of all the accolades written and spoken about Disneyland during his lifetime, I believe Walt Disney’s favorite was delivered as the keynote speech for the 1963 Urban Design Conference at Harvard University. The speaker was James W. Rouse, developer of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Harbor Place at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, New York City’s South Street Seaport, and—when Time magazine honored him with its cover illustration—developer of the new town of Columbia, Maryland.

  I hold a view, that may be somewhat shocking to an audience as sophisticated as this: that the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland.

  If you think about Disneyland and think of its performance in relation to its purpose, its meaning to people—more than that, its meaning to the process of development—you will find it the outstanding piece of urban design in the United States.

  It took an area of activity—the amusement park—and lifted it to a standard so high in its performance, in its respect for people, in its functioning for people, that it really has become a brand-new thing. It fulfills all the functions it set out to accomplish un-self-consciously, usefully, and profitably to its owners and developers.

  I find more to learn in the standards that have been set and in the goals that have been achieved in the development of Disneyland than in any other single piece of physical development in the country.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  I had the good fortune that first summer at Disneyland, before I returned to UCLA to finish my senior year, to practice, as part of my job, a student’s thirst for knowledge about Disney and Disneyland. My favorite piece of writing was from a 1953
background document prepared for Walt. From it, the Disneyland dedication plaque evolved. I believe the longer background was written primarily by the talented Bill Walsh, once a publicist but soon the producer of the original Mickey Mouse Club and later coscreenwriter, with Don DaGradi, of Mary Poppins. It was called “The Disneyland Story”:

  The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge.

  It will be a place for parents and children to share pleasant times in one another’s company: a place for teacher and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand.

  Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world.

  Disneyland will be something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic.

  It will be filled with the accomplishments, the joys, and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make these wonders part of our own lives.

  These words began to come alive as we attended what I’ll call “the Walt Disney school of story and placemaking.” One day that first summer, I accompanied the Disneyland staff photographer Fritz Musser on an assignment in Frontierland. The heavy photo equipment of the time required Fritz to take a shortcut; in those early days, you could drive a car around the perimeter of Disneyland, and park behind the Plantation House restaurant. The only problem was, the dirt road leading to the parking place was “onstage”—completely visible to guests aboard the Mark Twain stern-wheeler and smaller watercraft navigating the Rivers of America.