by Jeff Baham
In fact, according to Imagineer Kim Irvine, who serves as Disneyland’s Art Director, the seemingly placid color palette for the exterior of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion is composed of no less than 18 different paint hues, ranging from forest greens to creamy neutrals and rusty oranges. Each shutter, dormer, molding and piece of ironwork is assigned a color, and sometimes darker colors were used to subliminally simulate depth and shading, even when the house is viewed in the unforgiving California sun. [6]
“Keep moving forward.” Walt Disney may have only uttered that phrase once, but seemingly acted on the sentiment almost daily. This philosophy, which informed nearly every critical business decision Disney had ever made, became evident again when he realized that the upcoming New York World’s Fair could provide WED Enterprises with a paid period of research and development during which the Imagineers could concoct the next generation of technological achievements, and could also provide Disneyland with some stunning new attractions. “Walt needed more money to accomplish the things he wanted to create,” recalled Marty Sklar, a WED vice president who, at the time, was the primary writer for Disneyland and WED communications, and also the writer of most of Walt Disney’s speeches. “His plan was to bring the shows back from the Fair to Disneyland.” [7] Disney also recognized that the innovations realized by the Imagineers in their designs for the Fair would bring new life to Disneyland’s upcoming attractions, such as Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.
So WED Enterprises stopped most development work on Disneyland and went to work creating corporate exhibits for the World’s Fair. Exhibits were created for General Electric (Progressland), the state of Illinois (Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln), Ford (The Magic Skyway), and Pepsi-Cola on behalf of UNICEF (It’s a Small World). In the two years leading up to the Fair, WED had to develop outstanding new technology to live up to the promises Disney had made to the corporate sponsors, who were paying for the privilege to showcase WED’s new creations. The Imagineers proved themselves up to the challenge.
The pavilions and shows created by WED proved to be among the most popular exhibits at the Fair over the two years it was open to the public, but perhaps more importantly from Disneyland’s point of view, the experience enabled Walt’s designers to come up with new techniques and technologies that would prove to be critical to the future success of Disneyland, with its ever-expanding crowds and Disney’s promise to continually improve on the park. “[Disneyland] will never be finished. It’s something we can keep developing and adding to,” Disney wrote (via Marty Sklar, as was the case with most of his articles and speeches) regarding the addition of the technologically sophisticated Abraham Lincoln robot show to Disneyland’s Main Street. [8]
The WED Imagineers had come up with a name for those robots. Since they were going to move in a lifelike manner—and perhaps as a nod to the industry that built the Walt Disney Studio—the robots were going to include the term “animated.” But by operating on pneumatics, hydraulics, and a power source to make everything function, they were also electronic by nature. WED Imagineer Bill Cottrell, who was, by some accounts, Disney’s right-hand man in the earliest days of creating Disneyland, decided to merge the two terms to come up with a new piece of terminology specific to WED’s creations—“animatronic.” Since the first animatronic characters that WED designed operated by responding to pulses on magnetic tape, Dick Irvine added the phrase “audio” to the title, creating the word Audio-Animatronics, which Disney would trademark in 1961. [9] , [10]
Despite many problems and roadblocks in the development of the Lincoln Audio-Animatronic—all of which were finally solved through painstaking trial and error by WED engineer Bob Gurr—the character proved to be a great success when the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln show was launched in the Illinois Pavilion at the Fair, bringing audiences to their feet, and often to tears. Disneyland’s primitive robotic characters that would just move up and down or back and forth (the Jungle Cruise “natives” and hippos come to mind) were a thing of the past. From now on, Disneyland’s robots would take on the same illusion of life that Disney’s animated characters did—and so would Disneyland’s ghosts.
Bob Gurr was also Disney’s go-to expert on transportation. “If it’s at Disneyland and it has wheels, I designed it,” Gurr often says, with little hyperbole. Gurr’s expertise was put to the test for the World’s Fair. Walt Disney had met with Henry Ford II, and they decided to create a massive pavilion for the Fair that would showcase actual Ford vehicles which would take guests for a ride on a Magic Skyway. Gurr had worked for Ford as a stylist before joining WED Enterprises, so he was a natural fit for the project. Having designed the Matterhorn Bobsleds roller coaster a few years prior, Gurr had already utilized a system that used wheels mounted to the tracks to slow or control the speed of the vehicles, so Walt Disney decided that Gurr’s Matterhorn solution might be a system that could also control the stripped down Mustang and Lincoln convertibles that would be carting guests around.
Bob Gurr and Rolly Crump at Disneyland, October 2012. Photograph by Carrie Vines.
“At the World’s Fair, where I did a lot of work on the Magic Skyway, I really liked the General Motors ride,” Gurr recalled, mentioning a competing attraction at the Fair. “I liked it because the vehicles were all connected together so they couldn’t run into each other like the Ford ride.” [11] Gurr’s system controlled the speed of the vehicles, but when the ride would start and stop, the cars would travel slightly, eventually bumping into the cars ahead or behind, causing regular damage and a continual headache. [12] The General Motors Futurama 2 ride had a train of vehicles that weren’t on the track independently like Gurr’s Fords, or like the rest of Disneyland’s dark rides, for that matter.
After the World’s Fair, WED went back to work on the park, preparing for a number of large projects. Disney’s Carousel of Progress (from the GE Progressland pavilion) needed to be installed in the park, as did It’s a Small World. (An improved version of the Lincoln show had already been placed into Disneyland before the Fair even ended.) Work continued on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, and the New Tomorrowland was racing toward the finish line. Bob Gurr had his fingers in many projects, including the new WEDway PeopleMover, which was a transportation system intended for Disney’s dream project, EPCOT. The PeopleMover was based on the Ford Magic Skyway exhibit, with some improvements that kept the vehicles from running into each other. The system was fine for its purpose of providing guests with a leisurely trip in groups, but wasn’t really suited to a dark ride. The idea of transporting people in an orderly fashion using an unbroken chain of vehicles appealed to Gurr, especially after he witnessed the side-by-side comparison of GM and Ford at the World’s Fair. Gurr recalled:
Walt also had us working on a museum ride for the La Brea tar pits, a ride that we never went ahead with, but that was the genesis of what later became the Omnimover ride. One day I was sitting in John Hench’s office talking with him, and he had a candied apple sitting on his desk. We were just kind of discussing—blue sky like—how to do this, and how to do that, and I said look, first off we ought to have a chain of vehicles like a bunch of elephants. You know, each elephant’s trunk grabs the tail of the other and they can’t crash into each another if you do it that way. Next thing was, well, the vehicles would just ride around on tracks—but what if, on top of the vehicle, we had a post, where we could have a chair for two people, and it could rotate, look right, look left, go up and go down. That means the ride could go up a hill and the seat could stay forward, and it could go down a hill and the seat would still stay level, and we could ride backwards, sideways, forwards .
And then John Hench said, “Well you know, we could look at each scene, or a segue of scenes, much better that way.” So I picked up the apple and just kind of twirled it around, and said, “Like this, we could just do that.” So the Omnimover came about just like that in a second, in a conversation, trying to describe how you could look at scenes i
n a much better manner. [13]
Gurr’s Omnimover was first utilized in Disneyland as the conveyance vehicle for Adventure Thru Inner Space, a mind-trip of an attraction largely developed by WED’s Claude Coats, who would go on to work on the Haunted Mansion. “I always thought Adventure Thru Inner Space was every bit a San Francisco psychedelic show, but with content,” recalled Imagineer Tony Baxter. “It was contextual, without just being pointless. It was a mind-boggling new thing, without being like all the other rides.” [14] The attraction purported to take riders on a microscopic trip to the nucleus of an atom. Such a groundbreaking experience required a groundbreaking method of transportation. And after its successful launch into Inner Space, the Omnimover proved itself worthy to be utilized in the park’s next outre experience—the Haunted Mansion.
By the time the Omnimover was operational, the plans for Walt Disney’s intimate, walk-through haunted house were distant memories. However, in Rolly Crump’s mind, there is no question but that Walt Disney always had wanted the attraction to be a spooky walking tour:
If Walt had lived, it would have stayed a walk-through. We got the idea from the [1962] World’s Fair up in Seattle. You got into an elevator, and you’d watch people go straight up and disappear into the ceiling. It was really dark up there and all the lights were out. The elevator door would open and at the end of a long hallway, in front of them, a TV screen would come on, so everyone would move to the screen. There’d be a little show, then fifty feet away, it would get dark again and another TV screen would come up. You could move a hundred people at a time without telling them what to do. Walt was quite taken with that pavilion, and we kind of stole that idea for [the Haunted Mansion]. The elevator is the same size at Disneyland as it was in that pavilion. [15]
Crump also recalls Disney’s research trips to San Simeon to visit the Hearst Castle to sample their system of hosting tours, as well as Anderson’s inspection of San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House, another mansion that offers public tours. If Walt Disney was unconvinced that the attraction should be a walk-through, it wasn’t for lack of information, interest or research. But Disneyand’s Dick Nunis, the attractions supervisor for the entire park, was convinced that the ever-growing park needed attractions that would push people through at a faster pace than any walking tour could.
In addition to Gurr's Omnimover, various other means of conveyance were considered - including a boat ride, which was proposed by WED Imagineer Fred Joerger, who brought the concept to WED's Claude Coats before the Omnimover was even developed. The idea of a flooded basement or sinking Mansion abandoned in the marshy Louisiana bayou wasn't too far-fetched, and the raised cemeteries of New Orleans might have provided additional inspiration. However, Walt is reported to have dismissed the idea by saying "We've got too many boat rides already," which may seem ironic since Pirates of the Caribbean hadn't even been built yet - but it also may bolster Crump's view that Walt was really most excited about a walking tour. [16]
“Operations won, and [the Haunted Mansion] became a ride. The thing is, the walk-through had no capacity,” recalled Imagineer X. Atencio. “It would only move thirty people through at a time. Nunis wouldn’t have that. We always called him ‘Hop-along Capacity.’ We figured the Omnimovers were the thing to move people through.” [17]
Chapter Five
Too Many Cooks
By now, the lonely Haunted Mansion facade had started to cause a bit of a stir among Disneyland’s repeat guests. The structure had been erected and then abandoned, in a narrative not unlike that of the traditional haunted house story of a home left derelict.
So outside of the house, a sign had been hung from a piece of fancy wrought iron. “Notice! All Ghosts and Restless Spirits!” the black sign read, designed to be reminiscent of a tombstone, despite the colorful hand-lettered text. “Post-lifetime leases are now available in this HAUNTED MANSION. Don’t be left out in the sunshine!” The text had been written by WED’s Marty Sklar in an attempt to capture the essence of Walt Disney’s description of the upcoming attraction in his 1958 BBC interview. “Enjoy active retirement in this country club atmosphere—the fashionable address for famous ghosts, ghosts trying to make a name for themselves…and ghosts afraid to live by themselves!” the caption continued. Sklar recalled:
Walt had done the interview in the UK when he was making one of his pictures, and he said, “We’re going to gather ghosts that still want to practice their trade.” So [the sign] was Walt’s inspiration, but I took it from that beginning. The graphic designer did a beautiful job on the sign, and I’m really proud of that. It was there for a lot of years. Walt said, “We’ll take care of the outside, and let the ghosts take care of the inside,” and that was the reason that [the Mansion] doesn’t look more threatening, because Walt said, “Well, okay, they should [retire to] a nice place, so they’ll be happy doing their scaring.” [1]
The sign continued, offering guests a tantalizing hint at the things to come. “Leases include license to scare the daylights out of guests visiting the Portrait Gallery, Museum of the Supernatural, graveyard, and other happy haunting grounds. For reservations, send resume of past experience to: Ghost Relations Dept., Disneyland. Please! Do not apply in person.”
And apply, the “ghosts” did. Sklar recalled the park receiving letters from all over the world, both sincere and in jest, from souls hoping to be considered for permanent residency in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. “There was the nine year old who wrote, ‘On Halloween, I help in a spook house at our school,’ and the twelve-year-old who claimed to have ‘scared my mom clear out of her wits,’” Sklar wrote, uncredited, in a Disneyland souvenir book. [2] The public’s perception of the abandoned construction had begun to take on a life of its own. Walt Disney threw some fuel on the fire himself by featuring the Haunted Mansion in a segment of his weekly Wonderful World of Color television program celebrating the Tencennial, or tenth anniversary, of Disneyland in 1965.
“We’re out collecting the ghosts,” Disney said, as he demonstrated some of the Haunted Mansion’s concept artwork to Disneyland’s first “ambassador,” Julie Reihm. “We’re going to bring in ghosts from all over the world.” He went on to promise them “wall-to-wall cobwebs, creaking doors, and creaking floors.” On the program, Disney demonstrated some of WED artist Marc Davis’s stretching portrait ideas to Reihm (all of which result in an inescapable fatality, to which she tentatively replied ‘oh, dear’), and he also showed her one of Yale Gracey’s samples of a Pepper’s Ghost effect, a scaled-down model of a ghostly skeletal organist, which would disappear and reappear in front of a tiny pipe organ designed by Rolly Crump. “You believe in ghosts, don’t you Julie?” Disney asks, to which a befuddled Reihm responded “No, not really.” “Well let me convince you that they do exist,” Disney said. Leading her to the box containing Gracey’s organist, Reihm observes the effect along with the program’s viewing audience, and is left agreeing that ghosts must be real. “Now you believe, I hope?” Disney asks. “I have to,” Reihm admits with a laugh.
Now that Disney had broadcast evidence of the spectacular horrors to appear in the Haunted Mansion to the nation, all of America had something to chatter about. Rumors began to attach themselves to the large abandoned house on the bank of Disneyland’s Rivers of America, many of which involved the possibility that the attraction was having trouble opening because it was just too scary. “I heard that [the Mansion was closed for so long because] a woman had a heart attack, so they had to rework the whole show,” recalled Imagineer Tony Baxter. “But since I worked there, I knew that it was an empty building.” [3] But the rumors—and letters of interest in “retiring” to the ghostly community that were being collected—continued to amass as the project lingered, still torn in different directions with no specific agreed-upon storyline by the WED Imagineers working on the project.
Let’s go back in time a bit, to sometime in 1964, before Walt Disney introduced the Haunted Mansion to the country via television. “We
came home [from the World’s Fair], and we had no assignments from Walt,” Rolly Crump recalled. “Normally, we got our assignments straight from Walt, but we didn’t realize at that time that he wasn’t feeling well. We just thought he was tired from the Fair, and everything. So we were all just sitting around, drinking coffee and reading magazines.” [4] And still, the Haunted Mansion facade still sat alone at the end of New Orleans Square, empty and forlorn. No agreed-upon direction was in sight, and Disney, who suffered from a smoker’s cough, chronic pain, and, perhaps, symptoms of his yet-undiagnosed cancer, had seemed to move on to other priorities, leaving Disneyland in the hands of his chosen team. In fact, in that Tencennial show, which would air later in the year, Disney twice couldn’t even recall the names of the Haunted Mansion projects, needing to be reminded on the air by both Marc Davis and Rolly Crump, who appeared with him as he demonstrated their handiwork. Disney had grand visions, imagining new theme parks, themed resorts, even an experimental way for humankind to form communities, and perhaps he sensed time was of the essence for the pursuit of his dreams. So WED suffered a temporary leadership void as Disney refocused his efforts, and the situation left Crump restless.
“After a couple of weeks I decided, ‘No, I can’t just [sit around],’ so I decided to start drawing some things that I felt maybe should go into the Mansion,” Crump said. “I didn’t like the direction the Mansion was taking—there was no imagination in it, nothing really too unique or different…we needed to inject some weirdness.” Before the Fair, Gracey and Crump had worked together extensively on figuring out how to create the supernatural contents of the Haunted Mansion, but neither had contributed extensively to the actual storyline itself. And Crump felt the project suffered by hosting too many spook house cliches. He said:
