Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (11 page)

The pavilion ended with a bang—literally. It was Ned Landon’s assignment to work with GE’s scientists to create an actual demonstration of nuclear fusion—diminished, of course, so that it could harm no one—but real, nonetheless. John Hench insisted that every “bang” had to be measured and recorded, on the off-chance that a guest would claim injury from the minuscule radiation. He was right: there were nuisance lawsuits, but the data proved that the demonstration was completely harmless. And Ned Landon celebrated his ninetieth birthday before his passing in 2011.

My job was to work with designer Claude Coats and special effects expert Yale Gracey to create the setup for the demonstration. It was simply called “The Dome Show” because it was projected on the interior ceiling of the pavilion. We introduced audiences to the power of the sun, as a lead-in to the actual creation of “sun power” in Ned Landon’s demonstration.

In retrospect, the other show I wrote (and rewrote, and rewrote) for Progressland epitomized the frustration we often experience in working with corporate sponsors. Progressland was designed like a main street in a community, with storefronts and small interior spaces that offered boutique presentations. My assignment was to tell a story about atomic energy utilizing a talking toucan—brought to life by Disney’s patented three-dimensional animation system, Audio-Animatronics. My frustration finally boiled over when I had written eight scripts, all rejected by GE, and was about to launch into number nine. Who is the audience for this show? I demanded of the GE liaison, after he objected to most of what would interest the general fairgoer. His answer stopped me cold. “Four people,” he admitted. “My boss, his boss, the VP my boss reports to, and the executive VP who heads our division.” Fortunately, not many visitors to Progressland stopped by to sample our “atomic boutique.” (I understand the executive VP was very pleased with the exhibit.)

One of the lessons I learned in our creative work for the World’s Fair was never to underestimate the talents of my Disney associates. To ensure the success of the four Disney experiences, Walt called on the whole company—not just the Imagineers, but also Studio writers like Larry Clemmons (Carousel of Progress) and James Algar (Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln); songwriters Bob and Dick Sherman (“it’s a small world” and “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” for the Carousel of Progress); operations staff from Disneyland under Dick Nunis’s direction to run the “it’s a small world” Pavilion; and many sound, projection, lighting, and electronics personnel.

One of my early assignments resulted from a call from Walt. I had written and recorded a twenty-minute slide presentation that we used to give Henry Ford II and other Ford executives an idea of the scope of the pavilion, with emphasis on the ride attraction—“the wienie,” as Walt called it, the “beckoning finger” that says “come this way!”—a technique the Imagineers use at key junctions throughout the Disney parks. Walt wanted George Bruns to write the music and called to request that I run the presentation for George.

I was thrilled, as George Bruns was a king of Disney music composition. His “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier,” sung of course by “Davy” himself (the aforementioned Fess Parker) had helped fuel the national craze for the TV show and coonskin caps in the mid-1950s. When George arrived at WED, we sat down in a small conference room. I explained to George, who was a hefty man, that the narration was recorded, but I had to punch up the slide film visuals. And so we began.

After five minutes, a sound like logs being sawed in half filled the conference room. George was fast asleep, and snoring like a “
b’ar
”! What to do? There was no sense in continuing to run the presentation; I already knew it by heart. So I woke him up, and asked, “Anything else you need so you can write the score, George?” “Nope,” he answered, “I’m all set.” And in fact, he was. The piece he composed and conducted for the Magic Skyway ride was easily one of the musical highlights of the whole Fair.

Walt’s objectives in devoting his, and his creative staff’s, energies to the World’s Fair in the early 1960s are, in retrospect, quite clear. First, he wanted to show that the kind of entertainment he had been creating for Disneyland for almost ten years would play anywhere—especially in New York City. Thus, the Fair truly was a stepping-stone from west to east; from Anaheim, California, to Orlando, Florida. Second, he wanted to expand Disneyland, and in one form or another, the four Disney-designed Fair attractions were reincarnated in Anaheim.

In fact, Walt’s vision for using a temporary event as a testing ground for permanent attractions proved to be a stroke of genius. Three technologies that would play key roles in the future growth of Disney parks around the world were introduced, or took a giant leap forward, at the New York World’s Fair:

• Audio-Animatronics:
  Disney had never created a “human figure” for one of its shows until it presented Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln for the state of Illinois; the families of GE’s Carousel of Progress; and the cavemen in Ford’s Magic Skyway attraction.
  
• Ride Capacity:
  The boat ride in “it’s a small world” and the Carousel of Progress rotating theater each generated theoretical capacities of over three thousand people per hour—almost double the largest previous capacities for an attraction in a Disneyland.
  
• Transportation:
  The WEDway PeopleMover technology used to transport Ford cars at its pavilion became an attraction in Disneyland and, later, the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. As a “real-world” transportation system, it was installed in 1981 at the Houston (now George Bush) Intercontinental Airport, transporting travelers between terminals.
  

Undoubtedly, the strongest statement about Walt’s dedication to growing his theme park relates to the “name fee” that WED Enterprises charged for using Walt Disney’s name during the course of the Fair. The fee was set at $1 million, to be paid by GE and Ford. It would be considered a down payment for sponsorship participation in the future. GE chose to continue; Ford declined.

It wasn’t a matter of money for Walt Disney—it was a matter of
commitment
. If you were with him, you were “family.” If you chose a different course, you could buy your own ticket to get into Disneyland.

* * * * * * * * * *

The New York World’s Fair was a watershed in many ways for the Imagineers. When we began work on the pavilions in 1960–61, there were only one hundred Imagineers. Over the years, I have been told many times by creative designers and engineers that their visit to the World’s Fair as a kid set the course for their future. That “sensory overload” visitors experienced became the dream that triggered many a career for youngsters like Tom Fitzgerald, now executive vice president, senior creative executive for Imagineering.

Tom’s family lived in Briarcliff Manor, a small town about an hour from the Fair in Westchester County, New York. They visited the Fair several times, the first being when Tom was eight years old. “When I saw the Disney shows, it was a huge revelation to me,” Tom recalls. “They were so unique… The art direction, the sets, the Audio-Animatronics figures, the music, the actors that voiced it all, and the wizardry of moving audiences in cars, on boats, and rotating theaters—who else but Disney could do that to the level that Walt did?

“We saw all four of the Disney shows…GE Progressland was pure magic! And I loved
small world—
the color, the animation, the song, the wonderful boat,” adds Fitzgerald. “My grandparents had given me a silver dollar, and I used it to buy the 45 record from the show. I played it over and over.

“That Fair,” says Fitzgerald, “was what convinced me I wanted to be a part of the Disney team.”

Those of us taking the red-eye flights from Los Angeles to New York and back carried such a quantity of construction drawings, props, audiotapes, and so much more that today, we would not be able to pass through security. WED leased apartments in the new LeFrak City alongside the Long Island Expressway. Don Edgren, whose engineering career at Disney had begun as a consultant in the early days of Disneyland, was our resident-in-chief; Don spent three years in New York as the Disney rep, interfacing with the contractors on the Ford and GE pavilions and managing construction of the “it’s a small world” building. Many of us would make our appearances at midnight or seven in the morning after a red-eye flight, find the room we had been assigned to, and pass our friends heading out to work at the site as we arrived.

Once I arrived about 1:00
A.M.
and tumbled into the sack. I had been told that the silver-headed Vic Green would be my roommate in the second bed. That morning I was up bright and early. Having shaved and showered, I knew that Vic was going to be late if I didn’t act, so I shook him awake. “Vic—wake up! We’re going to be
late
!” The gray-domed person in “Vic’s bed” rolled over, looked me in the eye, and said: “I’m not Vic Green, and I’m not going to work this morning!”

I also quickly became educated about dealing with the unions in New York in the 1960s. Working with an electrician in the far reaches of the ride area at the Ford Pavilion, where the show’s dinosaurs roamed, I was setting sound levels when the electrician announced that he needed some piece of equipment, and would “be back in ten minutes.” I became very familiar with the roaring of Tyrannosaurus Rex during the next two hours, while I waited for the electrician to return.

Compounding the issues we faced were short construction time frames, causing the overlap of tasks and trades. For me, the problem came to a head a few weeks before the Fair’s opening, concerning the installation of the Ford ride’s narration. It was the first year of the Fair; I had written and recorded a narrator with a spiel somewhat similar to the one Walt would record for year two. The challenge had been writing dialogue for the theoretical timing of each scene. What I really needed was the opportunity to ride through the show—not once, but over and over again. I still had time to revise the length of each scene’s piece by rerecording based on actual timing.

Unfortunately, running the vehicles through the pavilion was one of the true challenges of the Ford Pavilion. Running the ride meant stopping the work of not only my favorite electrician, but also painters, iron workers, welders, engineers, laborers, and clean-up workers. As much as riding in those Ford cars was the key to Ford’s success and popularity with Fair visitors, the narrative storytelling was the tail wagging the dog.

Finally, there was no more flex time in our schedule: I had to do my tests, or there would be no audio emanating from the car radios. I had been promised “ride time,” and arrived in New York Sunday evening for an early start Monday morning. But Monday passed with no ride movement, as did Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, at last the vehicles moved—in fits and starts, but never a complete cycle. Desperate, I appealed to Don Edgren, who promised, and delivered, several complete cycles of the track by early Friday afternoon.

My helper was a talented young member of the Audio-Animatronics installation team. Although only in his early twenties, Jim Verity was a third-generation Disney employee—his father and grandfather had worked at the Studio. As we circled the track, I sat in a car with my tape recorder, playing the narration. Jim’s job was to walk rapidly alongside the auto, holding a can of black spray-paint; my signal told him where to spray a mark along the unpainted cement walkway, parallel to the track. At each mark, a mechanism would be installed later, triggering the start of the recording for each scene.

You can imagine the satisfaction I felt at midafternoon that Friday. Now I could catch my 7:00
P.M.
flight to Los Angeles, pleased that finally I could record a narration track that would turn on and off precisely where I wanted it to.

I said my good-byes to Don Edgren, and as a last check before departing for the airport, asked Jim Verity to accompany me on a walk around the ride track. It took only moments to discover what the next trade group had accomplished in meeting
their
schedule after we had completed our job: they had painted the entire walkway black! Not one of my markings was visible; my entire week in New York had been painted out.

I missed my flight home that evening. It was a very wet night in New York, and I don’t mean rain.

One day Walt came to inspect our progress, and designer Claude Coats, special effects wizard Yale Gracey, and I drove him back to his hotel. The conversation turned to our New York experiences, and Walt asked how our spouses were enjoying the city. No one responded. “Oh, I get it,” Walt said. Walt knew that we were all family men and women and that we’d been away from home for some time. The next morning, before we had even left for the fairgrounds, each one of us received a call from WED’s finance staff with one question: “When do you want your spouse to arrive?”

For Walt, the most difficult event occurred at the State of Illinois Pavilion, where Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln brought the immortal words of our sixteenth president (and Illinois’ favorite son) to audiences a century after they were first spoken. Writer/producer James Algar of the Studio had combined lines from six different Lincoln speeches into one potent short message, and a team led by designer Marc Davis, sculptor Blaine Gibson, mechanical craftsmen Roger Broggie and Bob Gurr, and programmer/animator Wathel Rogers had breathed mechanical life into the amazing figure. The only problem was that on opening day, the president refused to utter a word or move a muscle, disappointing the governor, the state’s United States senators, a packed theater audience, the media, and of course Robert Moses, who had sold the concept of an Audio-Animatronics Lincoln to the state of Illinois. It wasn’t until several days later that Honest Abe was ready to talk. Walt, unfortunately, was forced to explain why “the winkin’ blinkin’ Lincoln” could not perform.

For the Imagineers, another depressing event was Walt’s review of GE’s Carousel of Progress. It was a late morning walk-through—just Walt and the Imagineers—but it was in preparation for an early evening event that same day: a preview Walt was hosting for the GE board of directors. The show lasted only a few moments;
nothing
worked—no Father upset that Cousin Orville had taken over the family bathtub; no dog barking in each of the four main acts; no Sherman brothers’ “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” song. Walt was clearly irritated; he wanted to see and discuss each act with the key Imagineers, and potentially tweak the show, before his guests arrived five or six hours later. And what if nothing worked
then
?