Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (2 page)

It’s hard to believe, but half a century has passed since my late brother, Bob, and I first met and worked with a warm, affable, and brilliant young man named Marty Sklar. At that time, Marty was the literary right-hand man of our mutual boss, Walt Disney. As Walt’s staff songwriters, Bob and I had just finished a song for the Carousel of Progress Pavilion at the 1964–65 World’s Fair. Our song, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,” was the musical connecting link in this groundbreaking attraction. Marty, who was cocreator of the project, had written a script for General Electric (the corporate sponsor) in which Walt would present our song and then display how the pavilion worked. Marty provided one of the greatest thrills of our career, as we got to perform and sing on camera with Walt himself.

Over the years, Marty continued to inspire all those around him, lending his taste and talent to countless Imagineering projects. Bob and I had the privilege of writing songs for many of these, including: “it’s a small world,” “The Enchanted Tiki Room,” and for the Imagination pavilion at Epcot, “One Little Spark” and “Magic Journeys.”

As you will learn in this beautifully written and enlightening book, Marty Sklar, the man who rose to become vice chairman and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, devoted his entire career to creating, enhancing, and expanding Walt’s magical empire. Upon his retirement in 2009, I had the pleasure of singing a special lyric I had written for an unforgettable party thrown by Disney Imagineers, honoring Marty’s half century of imagination and inspiration. I’d like to share it with you:

(To the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”)

TRIBUTE TO MARTY

Verse I

Before the doors of Disneyland

Were opened to the world

Young Marty Sklar was asked

To have his writing skills unfurled

The Disneyland newspaper

Was first product of his skill

Then PR and Publicity

Young Marty filled the bill… He’s

Chorus

Never fearing, Imagineering

Mar-ty-sklar-e-docious

For years he’s led Imagineers

With passion so ferocious

Through stress and strains

He’s held the reins

With leadership precocious

Never fearing Imagineering

Mar-ty-sklar-e-docious.…

Verse II

For Walt he wrote his speeches

And his annual reports

Then moved to WED to help create

Attractions and resorts

From Small World to Space Mountain

To eleven Disney parks

Our Marty steered Imagineers

With their creative sparks…(and his)

Repeat chorus

Verse III

He’s first to give out credit

To the great creative teams

His one persisting goal

Was to perpetuate Walt’s dreams

Succeed he did, and so we stand

As one to give three cheers

To Marty Sklar, the champion

Of all Imagineers.… He’s…

Last Chorus

Never fearing, Imagineering

Mar-ty-sklar-e-docious

For years he’s led Imagineers

With passion so ferocious

Through stress and strains

He’s held the reins

With leadership precocious

Never fearing Imagineering

Mar-ty-sklar-e-docious.…

Richard M. Sherman

songwriter

October 2011

It may seem strange to begin a story about my Disney career with a flashback to 1974, but let me explain. That year was a scary year for the theme park and resort business. The worldwide energy crisis drove major gasoline price increases—regular gasoline skyrocketed from 38 cents per gallon to 54 cents—causing the enactment of extreme measures across the country. The national speed limit was lowered to fifty-five miles per hour, and daylight savings time began four months early.
Newsweek
magazine reported, “The one bad spot is Florida, where long lines—especially near the tourist centers of Disney World and Miami—have caused some counties to adopt odd-even programs” (dates for purchasing gas).

Walt Disney World, in its third year and well on its way to being the country’s favorite family vacation destination, was strongly affected; attendance dropped by almost eight hundred thousand. So it was a surprise to me to receive a call from Disney CEO E. Cardon Walker about a signature project that had remained dormant since it was first unveiled a few months after Walt Disney’s death in December 1966. Walt had been planning the creation of what he called EPCOT—an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. “What,” Card Walker now asked, “are we going to do about EPCOT?”

I had just been promoted to creative leader of Walt Disney Imagineering—the beginning of thirty years in that role for me. From day one, the challenge of that responsibility for what would become eleven Disney parks on three continents was daunting, even as I reminded the Imagineers of our role.

“There are two ways to look at a blank sheet of paper,” I told the creative team. “It can be the most frightening thing in the world, because you have to make the first mark on it. Or it can be
the greatest opportunity in the world, because you get to make the first mark
—you can let your imagination fly in any direction, and
create whole new worlds
!”

For the next eight years, the Imagineers, in partnership with the Operations staff at Walt Disney World, would test that axiom. As Epcot prepared to welcome its thirtieth anniversary on October 1, 2012, it celebrated being the sixth most-visited park in the world, trailing only Magic Kingdom Park, Disneyland Park, Tokyo Disneyland Park, Tokyo DisneySea Park, and Disneyland Paris in attendance.

It took a healthy belief in the future of Disney Parks and Resorts for Card Walker and the Disney board of directors to make that call in the face of all the negatives we faced as a country and as a company in 1974. But we began.

Walt Disney’s concept for an Epcot community was a grand vision that drove the planning for all of Walt Disney World from the beginning. Transportation and energy systems; experiments in construction methods, such as the off-site building of completely furnished hotel rooms for Disney’s Contemporary Resort and Disney’s Polynesian Resort; the care and responsibility for maintaining the Florida environment and ecosystems—all had been thought through following Walt’s often stated desire: to “meet the needs of people” and set an example for planning and building for others to learn from and emulate.

Walt Disney did not go to Florida just to build another “theme park” or even a destination resort; he had something far more important in mind. This is what he said about EPCOT in 1966:

I don’t believe there’s a challenge anywhere in the world that’s more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities. But where do we begin…how do we start answering this great challenge?

Well, we’re convinced we must start with the public need. And the need is not just for curing the old ills of old cities. We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land, and building a special kind of new community.

Today I believe that the creative insight that led Walt Disney to propose EPCOT is as valid as it ever was, and is needed even more than ever before.

What’s missing is the Walt Disney for our times and our challenges—the risk taker who loved to begin again and again with a new blank sheet of paper. Perhaps he was reaching for a “Waltopia”—a utopian world of Walt’s own creation. But in the words I wrote for Walt in the company’s 1966 Annual Report to shareholders and employees, he expressed his creative philosophy: “I have to move on to new things—there are many new worlds to conquer.”

I was so fortunate to board that speeding train at its first stop, in Anaheim, California, in 1955, and to retire fifty-four years later as the only Disney employee to participate in the opening of all eleven Disney parks around the world. This is my story of those parks as I lived their birth and growth, and helped shape them—the projects, the places, and especially the people who made it happen.

Welcome aboard!

The paging system at WED was screaming my name. I picked up the nearest telephone. “Call Card Walker immediately,” my secretary said. I did and thirty seconds later, I was on my way to Card’s office at the Studio. The three-mile drive seemed to take forever.

It was a few minutes after 9:00
A.M.
on Thursday, December 15, 1966, and E. Cardon Walker (who would become the chief executive of Walt Disney Productions, and was then head of marketing and publicity) needed to see me immediately. We had a close relationship: Card had hired me part time after my junior year at UCLA, just as I was about to become editor of
The Daily Bruin
, the UCLA student newspaper. I did finish my senior year and graduate from UCLA in 1956, but starting my Disney career at Disneyland the month before the park opened in July 1955 would shape my entire professional life.

“Walt’s dead,” Card said the moment I entered his office. “Write the statement Roy will sign and we’ll distribute it to the press and our employees.”

I admit I was rather shocked. It seemed implausible that Roy O. Disney, Card, and Donn Tatum (board of directors member at the time, and later chief executive officer and chairman of the board) were telling me that no one had prepared an official statement about Walt’s death. It was no secret Walt was dying.

Card said, “You’ve got an hour.”

And so I wrote:

The death of Walt Disney is a loss to all the people of the world. In everything he did, Walt had an intuitive way of reaching out and touching the hearts and minds of young and old alike. His entertainment was an international language. For more than forty years people have looked to Walt Disney for the finest quality in family entertainment.

There is no way to replace Walt Disney. He was an extraordinary man. Perhaps there will never be another like him. I know that we who worked at his side for all these years will always cherish the years and the minutes we spent in helping Walt Disney entertain the people of the world. The world will always be a better place because Walt Disney was its master showman.

As President and Chairman of the Board of Walt Disney Productions, I want to assure the public, our stockholders, and each of our more than four thousand employees that we will continue to operate Walt Disney’s company in the way that he has established and guided it. Walt Disney spent his entire life and almost every waking hour in the creative planning of motion pictures, Disneyland, television shows, and all the other diversified activities that have carried his name through the years. Around him Walt Disney gathered the kind of creative people who understood his way of communicating with the public through entertainment. Walt’s ways were always unique and he built a unique organization. A team of creative people that he was justifiably proud of.

I think Walt would have wanted me to repeat his words to describe the organization he built over the years. Last October
,
when he accepted the “Showman of the World” award in New York, Walt said, “The Disney organization now has more than four thousand employees. Many have been with us for over thirty years. They take great pride in the organization, which they helped to build. Only through the talent, labor, and dedication of this staff could any Disney project get off the ground. We all think alike in the ultimate pattern.”

Much of Walt Disney’s energies had been directed to preparing for this day. It was Walt’s wish that when the time came he would have built an organization with the creative talents to carry on as he had established and directed it through the years. Today this organization has been built and we will carry out this wish.

Walt Disney’s preparation for the future has a solid, creative foundation. All of the plans for the future that Walt had begun—new motion pictures, the expansion of Disneyland, television production, and our Florida and Mineral King projects—will continue to move ahead. That is the way Walt wanted it to be.

It was signed, of course, by Roy O. Disney, president and chairman of the board of Walt Disney Productions, and distributed to the media and all Disney employees.

As CBS newsman Eric Sevareid would note a day later:

He probably did more to heal or at least to soothe troubled human spirits than all the psychiatrists in the world. There can’t be many adults in the allegedly civilized parts of the globe who did not inhabit Disney’s mind and imagination at least for a few hours and feel better for the visitation.

It’s been nearly fifty years since that day in Card Walker’s office, but I can honestly say that I still resent being put in that position. The truth is they were all scared as hell. Disney without Walt Disney, its founder, leader, creative genius, and sole decision maker in the story, design, and invention business. Disney without “Uncle Walt” coming into your home on television every Sunday night to tell you what he was going to show your family that night, or open in a few months in movie theaters or Disneyland. Disney without the man with those thirty-two Academy Awards and more honors around the world than almost anyone.

In spite of my resentment, I know how I got there, and why it was me they called.

I had become the chief ghostwriter at Disney. It was pretty heady stuff for someone just closing in on his thirtieth birthday, and only six or seven years out of college, to be writing Walt’s and Roy’s messages in the company’s annual report; most of the publicity and marketing materials for Disneyland; presentations to the U.S. government (the Mineral King solicitation for a year-round resort in Central California); initiatives to obtain sponsors for new Disneyland developments; and, finally, the twenty-four-minute film I penned expressing Walt’s philosophy for the Walt Disney World project and Epcot.

The seven pages of notes I took at my meetings with Walt about Epcot are still among my treasures. When I re-read them occasionally, I realize how easy Walt made it for me to write the script for the film. This was Walt’s favorite method of communication with his mid-1960s audience: film not only allowed him to introduce his concepts and plans, but also gave him the last word. He asked me to write two endings. One was aimed directly at audiences in the state of Florida, because the state’s legislature was then debating passage of a law that would establish the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID)—a key to Walt’s plans for Epcot as an experimental community. The law would give the RCID the power to establish building codes and zoning regulations—and Disney would be controlling the RCID. The second ending for the film was aimed at potential corporate sponsors. Having just completed the presentation of four major attractions at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, Walt was keenly aware that his ability to communicate with family audiences was highly desirable. As Walt said in his ending for the film: “No one company can do this project [Epcot] alone.”

Walt’s segments were shot on a stage at the Disney Studios on October 27, 1966. It was the very last day he appeared on camera, just a few days before he entered St. Joseph Hospital directly across the street from his studio lot. To look at that film today is to wonder how that man we see selling his ideas could be so ill. Yet seven weeks later, lung cancer claimed the life of this heavy smoker, and I was in Card Walker’s office typing that statement.

And then the Disney world we knew imploded.