Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (7 page)

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 restaurant 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!”

* * * * * * * * * *

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.

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.

On this occasion, as Fritz drove the dirt road, some of the dust the car kicked up fell on the lone man walking along the road in a Western hat and cowboy boots. Fritz had barely stepped out of the parked car when that man was poking his finger into Fritz’s chest. “What are you going with
that car here in 1860
?” Walt Disney demanded. We had violated a key story principle with our very visible contradiction. The identity of the time period, the foundation of the story of the old West, had been destroyed for our guests. Walt made sure we understood. For me, it was a great lesson, bringing so much that I had read into a real, three-dimensional realm.

* * * * * * * * * *

When I returned to Disneyland’s Public Relations department in September 1956, after graduation, I continued to look for ways to best express Disneyland’s magic in publicity and promotion materials. Here are quotes that remain special to me:

Gladwin Hill in
The New York Times
(February 2, 1958):

What is the secret of Disneyland’s success? Many factors have entered into it. But to pinpoint a single element, it would be imagination—not just imagination on the part of its impresarios, but their evocation of the imagination of the cash customers.

Walt Disney and his associates have managed to generate, in the traditionally raucous and oftimes shoddy amusement park field, the same suspension of disbelief which has been the secret of theatrical success down the corridors of time
.…
The visitor indulges eagerly in that most ancient of games: “let’s pretend.”

The second was a letter to the editor of
Nation
magazine on June 28, 1958, by author Ray Bradbury. Responding to a prior critical letter from a guest cited below (Halevy) by describing a day at Disneyland with actor Charles Laughton, whom he called “one of the great theatrical and creative minds of our time,” Bradbury wrote:

I admit I approached Disneyland with many intellectual reservations, myself, but these have been banished in my seven visits. Disney makes many mistakes; what artist doesn’t? But when he flies, he really flies. I shall be indebted to him for a lifetime for his ability to let me fly over midnight London looking down on that fabulous city, in his Peter Pan ride
.…
I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Halevy truly loved Disneyland but is not man enough, or child enough, to admit it. I feel sorry for him. He will never travel in space; he will never touch the stars.

The third was a special piece we would call op-ed today. It was written by a Disney Studio publicity writer for that very first issue of the
Disneyland News
. This is what Jack Jungmeyer wrote in his “Under the Gaslight” column:

Yesterday, on the eve of the Disneyland opening, by a kind of Disneyesque Magic, I rediscovered the small town scene of my youth in a park actually 2,000 miles from the place where I was raised.

The name of the town doesn’t matter. But its lively business section and shady residence avenues fit with remarkable accuracy into Walt Disney’s Main Street and its adjacent wonderlands of yesterday, today and tomorrow on the sixty-acre site in this pleasant valley betwixt the mountains and the sea…

I was scarcely inside the entrance, getting my first glimpse down Main Street, before I was swept away in an avalanche of sentimental recollections.

Maybe it was the whistle of the steam engine at the ornate depot that did it all in a moment. Maybe the sight of the shining white paddle wheeler with its high stacks over yonder behind the levee. Or the clang of the horse-drawn streetcar on a trial run down to the plaza. The strangely familiar buildings. The bandstand on the green. The open-faced stores. The whole blessed scene from which I had run away, like hundreds of neighbor boys after the high school years, thinking ourselves cramped by small town restrictions, eager to tackle the big cities off beyond the grain fields, the cotton and tobacco, down the shiny tracks to Kansas City, Memphis, Denver, Chicago, or San Francisco…

I caught sight of a man far down the street. Alone. Quietly regarding the place he had so long envisaged, now complete, ready to bring pleasure and happy satisfactions to the millions who will visit it.

And I was reminded that he, too, was a Main Streeter, never weaned away from the common bond with the great majority of American small town and country folk, their taste and ideals, despite long identification with big cities as an eminent world figure.

The fourth was unsigned, but as I was to learn over the years, the handwriting was unmistakable. It was a clear illustration of just how personal Disneyland was to Walt Disney, and how “hands-on” he was about every detail. These are Walt’s notes on the copy for the brass plaques all guests see as they pass through the tunnels under the railroad trellis, and emerge in Disneyland’s Town Square—the start of their adventure in the Magic Kingdom:

* * * * * * * * * *

The city of Anaheim was a most unlikely bride for a marriage to Walt Disney’s “new concept in family entertainment.” I learned much of Anaheim’s history from my wife, whose family moved to Anaheim in 1948. Leah Gerber graduated from Anaheim High School in 1952, when Anaheim’s total population was around 14,000. Today, that attendance number would be seen as a “bad day” at Disneyland Park.

Anaheim was already nationally known in the 1940s and 1950s before Walt selected his site for Disneyland, but it was not the kind of publicity that city fathers rejoice over. Fans of the Jack Benny radio show had long laughed at Mel Blanc’s character’s famous train station call that most listeners outside California probably thought were fantasy names:
“Train leaving on track number nine for Ana-heim, A-zus-a, and Cu-ca-monga!”

A list of California cities today will show that Anaheim, as of 2010, was the tenth largest city in the state, with a population of 353,643. Anaheim is the second most populous city in Orange County (after Santa Ana) and also the second largest in land area.

The city’s name is a composition of “Ana,” derived from the Santa Ana River that flows through what was once the eastern edge of the city, and “
heim
,” German for “home”; thus, when it began in 1857 as a colony of German farmers and vintners, its pioneers thought of it as their “home by the river.” The city was incorporated in 1876.

Disney’s relationship with Anaheim began soon after Walt and Roy O. Disney engaged the Stanford Research Institute “to determine the economic feasibility of the best location for a new project—Disneyland.” Buzz Price was given the assignment.

“I asked Walt if he had a bias about the location for his Magic Kingdom,” recalled Buzz many years later. “Absolutely not,” Walt responded. “You tell me where the best location is.”

Price analyzed potential sites in the Southern California area, ultimately focusing on Orange County after considering population trends, accessibility, and climate factors. He selected, and recommended to Walt and Roy Disney, 160 acres of orange groves in Anaheim, just off the still-under-construction Santa Ana Freeway at Harbor Boulevard.

“We hit it right on the nose…dead center,” Buzz enthused to me shortly before his death at age eighty-nine in 2010. “That was the perfect place for it.”

Although enough land was available (the noted 160 acres were purchased initially for an average of $4,500 per acre from seventeen property owners; today the Disneyland Resort, including two parks and three hotels, encompasses 456 acres), there were hidden issues never reported in any media. Keith Murdoch, the highly respected city manager of Anaheim from 1950 to 1976, told me about the biggest concern: “You have to remember that we were still less than 15,000 population in 1954. Several of our city council members were worried about what they perceived to be a ‘carny’ environment; in those days, we only had the old amusement parks like The Pike in Long Beach to go by.”

Murdoch and the farsighted Anaheim mayor, Charles Pearson, found the solution for assuring Disney the city’s cooperation if they purchased the land: a trip to the Disney Studio in Burbank and a storyboard presentation of the concept for Disneyland by Walt Disney himself. As I have told many people through the years, Walt could sell anything, anytime. He was a great salesman because he totally believed in his product. Walt made the sale to the Anaheim councilmen that day, and ground was broken for Disneyland a year before its Grand Opening on July 17, 1955.