Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (5 page)

One of the reasons the Disneys loved that fifteen-passenger Gulfstream in the early 1960s was the cross-country trip it handled between Burbank and New York. Early on, the pilots discovered what became Walt’s favorite refueling stop: Grand Island, Nebraska. The family that ran the tiny airstrip and refueling station would roll out a red carpet so passengers could stretch their legs and, of course, make telephone calls—it was the days long before cell phones. But the clincher was the cake the lady of the station baked for visiting executives. It was pure 1960s Midwest America—straight from the heart and the heartland—just like Walt’s own product.

On one trip, however, we refueled in Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska. I immediately went inside the terminal and looked up the telephone number for my friend and former UCLA classmate, Sandy Ragins—by then the rabbi of the one Jewish congregation in Lincoln. Imagine my amazement when the Central Lincoln telephone operator answered my call, to inform me, “Rabbi Ragins is on vacation this week.”

I’m sure that flying over those endless Nebraska cornfields was one of the inspirations for Jack Lindquist’s brilliant idea for “Cornfield Mickey.” To celebrate Mickey Mouse’s sixtieth birthday, Jack—the marketing manager extraordinaire and later the first president of Disneyland—conceived a portrait of Mickey’s head that would be visible to airplane passengers crossing the United States. As Jack related in his autobiography,
In Service to the Mouse
: “The profile of Mickey contained six point five million corn plants and three hundred acres of oats. Mickey’s head turned out to have a three-point-five-mile circumference.” It was planted outside Sheffield, Iowa—a town of 1,224 residents. When fifteen thousand people showed up to celebrate Mickey’s sixtieth and it became an attraction for cross-country air passengers, Cornfield Mickey was showcased on the
Today
show,
Good Morning America
, and CNN. It was just one of Jack Lindquist’s incredible marketing coups.

If only that aircraft could talk—what stories it could tell. My favorite was one that Buzz Price told on himself. Preparing for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, its organizer, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, hitched a ride with Walt Disney on the Disney company’s private aircraft. While Walt Disney and Robert Moses argued over the location of the designated amusement area for the Fair, Buzz served as bartender—refilling the combatants’ glasses with Scotch “more than once,” Buzz recalled. Suddenly, Walt changed the subject—to Buzz. “You’re too fat to fly on my airplane!” Walt stated quite emphatically.

Buzz took the boss’s words seriously. In the next six weeks, Buzz lost thirty pounds. Always the numbers man, he counted every mile run, every weight lifted, and every calorie consumed.

One of Walt’s strengths in his relationship with talent was that he made it clear he cared about us. So many of us had worked overtime hours without end for months to create and install the four Disney shows at that New York World’s Fair—especially “it’s a small world,” which was actually created from first sketch in Glendale to opening in New York in eleven months. But the rewards came quickly: Walt put that Gulfstream on a weekly flight path carrying many of us—with our spouses—between Burbank and LaGuardia to spend four days at the Fair.

My wife, Leah, and I had the good fortune—along with the team that created the
Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair
TV show, Ham Luske and Mac Stewart (and their spouses)—to fly to New York with Walt and Lilly Disney. The Disneys occupied the back of the aircraft, just the two of them in a space that could hold eight or nine. The six of us were very comfortable in the forward compartment. But before we even took off, Walt appeared at the entrance to the rear compartment and (with his back to Mrs. Disney) made it clear that the rear bathroom was not exclusive to “Madame Queen”!

Another memorable flight for me was the aftermath of a failed pitch to Henry Ford II to continue his company’s relationship with Disney after the Fair, as a sponsor in Disneyland. We had pulled out all the stops in our presentation in Dearborn, Michigan. Claude Coats and X. Atencio made the creative presentation, using a fabulous model we had shipped to Detroit. I had worked with photographer Carl Frith to illustrate a one-of-a-kind commercial song Walt had asked Bob and Dick Sherman to write; it was called “Get the Feel of the Wheel of a Ford”—Dick had even recorded a version in his best faux Maurice Chevalier voice. And Walt made the final pitch, describing what Disney could do for Ford with Disneyland, and the Disney team, as a West Coast base.

Henry Ford II was not only unresponsive, he was seemingly dismissive of the value of all that Disney talent potentially available to endorse his company’s product. I know that was what set Walt off once we were on board the Gulfstream. Despite the impact of the Disney-designed Ford Pavilion at the World’s Fair (it was second only to GM in the number of guests visiting among the 150 exhibitors participating in the entire Fair), and the fact Walt had agreed to apply his personal one-million-dollar fee for the use of his name during the Fair toward Ford’s sponsorship fee in Disneyland, Mr. Ford hardly seemed to be paying attention. Walt spared little in his reaction as we took off from the Detroit airport. “That,” he said, “is the stupidest man I ever met!”

In my experience, Walt Disney made clear his reaction to some of the major executives we interfaced with in developing sponsored shows for Disneyland or the World’s Fair. General Electric vice president J. Stanford Smith (later the CEO of International Paper Company) came to the WED offices in Glendale to review the Carousel of Progress show being developed for GE’s pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. The show was a progression dramatizing how family life had changed and improved with the evolution of products for the home; it carried the audience from the days of pre-electricity to “today.” Smith complained that the show displayed GE products that the company no longer made. Walt patiently explained his approach, stressing that he often “used nostalgia for a fondly remembered time” to establish a rapport with an audience. “I love the nostalgia myself,” he often told us.

Mr. Smith was having none of it—all he could see was old washers and dryers of the 1920s and TV sets of the 1940s that GE no longer manufactured. Finally, Walt lost patience and left the meeting. Later we learned that he had gone directly to the office of WED’s attorney with this message: “Get me out of this contract!”

Fortunately, by coincidence, Walt had a prearranged visitor to his office at the Disney Studio the following Monday: Gerald Philippi, GE’s CEO. Tommie Wilck, by then Walt’s number-one secretary and a good friend, later told me that Walt’s first words once Mr. Philippi was seated in his office were: “I’m having trouble with one of your vice presidents!” Mr. Philippi understood the show business term “the show must go on”…because that was the last we heard of Mr. Smith’s concern. And the Carousel of Progress was not only a huge hit at the Fair, it went on to entertain audiences in Disneyland for six years after the Fair, then moved to the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World in 1975, where a version of the original show is still playing, nearly fifty years after its debut in New York.

* * * * * * * * * *

Walt Disney was not prone to lavish praise, even when he truly liked your work.

For a long time, I wondered how Walt—so inarticulate in personally voicing his appreciation for a job well done—could be rewarded by such enthusiasm from the incredible talent I worked alongside in the 1950s and 1960s, during Walt’s lifetime. I have often heard one of the most articulate creators of Disney magic, Academy Award–winning songwriter Richard Sherman, describe Walt’s reaction to songs such as “A Spoonful of Sugar” or “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from
Mary Poppins
: “That’ll work,” was typical, Dick remembers almost fifty years later—“and Bob and I knew that was all the praise we would get,” he added.

I believe Walt Disney felt
the praise was in the product
, meaning that the public’s positive reaction to a Disney film or television show or Disneyland attraction was all the praise we needed. To sit in a theater and hear the laughter at penguins dancing with Dick Van Dyke or shed a tear with Dumbo as his mother is led away or ride through a Magic Kingdom of all the world’s children in “it’s a small world,” is perhaps to understand why Walt did not believe he needed to voice his own praise. The public spoke for him clearly and enthusiastically.

Yet we did know where we stood in Walt Disney’s lexicon of talent. We heard it from our leaders and managers. And we knew it because of the next assignment we received.

One thing I did know from personal experience: nothing in my relationship with Walt Disney or his brother was influenced either positively or negatively because I’m Jewish. In fact, Tommie Wilck told me that Walt had called one day when I was attending services at our synagogue during the Jewish High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. When Tommie told Walt where I was, she let me know his reaction: “That’s where he should be, with his family.” I’m sure some of the company’s key talent and executives—songwriters Dick and Bob Sherman; Irving Ludwig, the head of Buena Vista Distribution, marketers of Disney films; Armand Bigle, who ran Disney’s European operation from Paris—never had a “Jewish issue” or question with Walt or Roy. My belief is that this frequent rumor stemmed from several factors in the Disney brothers’ history: first, growing up in the Midwest, where Jews were not your typical neighbors; second, seeming to be outsiders in a Hollywood environment where almost all the studios were established or run by Jews with European roots—the Goldwyns, Mayers, Thalbergs, Steins, Wassermans; and third, the fact that it was Charles Mintz, a distributor and (by the way) a Jew, who pirated away Walt’s first successful character, Oswald the Rabbit, and signed contracts with the key animators who created it in the mid-1920s. The good news is this “theft” led directly to Walt’s creation of Mickey Mouse, but at the time it was almost a deathblow to the fledgling Disney Brothers Studio.

Perhaps it was Walt and Roy who were the victims of discrimination by whoever it was that started those anti-Semitic rumors. The talent I know and worked with inside Disney, who happened to be Jewish, never experienced that “discrimination”…except on those occasions when Walt didn’t like our work!

* * * * * * * * * *

I never knew which of my assignments placed me on Walt’s “favorites” list. Some of my earlier tasks certainly brought me to his attention, because they communicated several of his cherished projects to potential sponsors. They were twenty-four or twenty-eight-page booklets promoting Liberty Street and Edison Square, and the first booklet promoting Disneyland USA itself to potential sponsors of attractions existing or planned. I had also written Walt’s copy for the newspaper section in the
Los Angeles Times
describing all the new attractions for Disneyland’s first big expansion: the 1959 additions of the Submarine Voyage, the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride, and the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere.

But I was not prepared for what occurred one morning early in 1960, when Walt joined me and my boss, Disneyland publicity director Eddie Meck, for a cup of coffee at the Hills Brothers Coffee House in a corner of Town Square at Disneyland. Suddenly the conversation turned to me, when Walt asked, “What are you doing these days, Marty?” I told Walt that I was responsible for writing the publicity material for Eddie to plant with the media. Looking directly at my boss, Walt responded: “Well, we will have to give you something more important to do, Marty.”

He was a man of his word. Within the next few months, I had been assigned part time to WED Enterprises and directed to accompany designer John Hench, architect Vic Green, and Disneyland executive Jack Sayers in January 1961 to Dearborn, Michigan, to begin work on the Ford Pavilion for the New York World’s Fair of 1964–65.

Suddenly, I was beginning to think that my Disney career, in tune with a song later to be featured in the Disney animated film
Hercules
, had an opportunity to go from “Zero to Hero.”

“THE LEADERSHIP SECRETS OF WALT DISNEY”

On November 18, 2009, in Las Vegas, at the annual convention of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), a panel of Disney Legends discussed Walt Disney’s leadership style. Moderated by former Imagineer Bob Rogers, the chairman of BRC Imagination Arts, the panel included me and four retired longtime Disney talents: Blaine Gibson, former animator, who became chief sculptor for Imagineering; Bob Gurr, designer of most of Disneyland’s vehicles, including the Monorail; Buzz Price, who pinpointed the exact sites for Disneyland and Walt Disney World; and Academy Award–winning songwriter Richard (Dick) Sherman.

Following are some of the key points made by the participants:

Bob Gurr:
“Walt had a way to see a little bit beyond what you had done. He would say, ‘That’s kind of interesting.
What if
…,’ and you would leave the room more inspired than when you came in. That’s leadership.”

Marty:
“Walt was always looking for somebody to take a chance.”

Dick Sherman:
“Bob [his songwriting partner and brother] and I always said, ‘Yes, we can!’…and then found out afterward how to do it!”

Bob Gurr
(Walt thought Bob was an engineer—when he actually had no engineering training)
:
“Walt was not interested in what kind of certification you brought with you to Disney. On paper, I was not qualified to do most of those early Disneyland vehicle designs. We taught ourselves how to do it.”

Marty:
“Walt’s lesson was that you don’t pigeonhole anybody. You never know what a talented person can do if you never give them a chance.”

Blaine Gibson:
“He would often use one employee’s work to stimulate another’s enthusiasm.”

Dick Sherman:
“He emphasized the team concept by his own actions. Everyone was equal in a story meeting—Walt just rolled up his sleeves and was one of the group.”

Marty:
“It didn’t matter who you were, or what your assignment was. He just wanted the best idea. Our job was to give him the best we knew how.”

Dick Sherman:
“Walt was open to everyone’s thoughts. He was the referee.”

Buzz Price:
“Walt had an uncanny way of zeroing in on the solution to a problem.”

Bob Gurr:
“He built a trust. No challenge ever scared you because of that trust.”

Marty:
“He was totally focused on the audience—the guest experience in the parks.”

Dick Sherman:
“In a sense,
he was the audience
. We had to please the boss. His genius was to
plus
an idea.”

Buzz Price:
“He had an instinct for people he wanted to work with.”

Bob Gurr:
“But you never expected, or got, an ‘attaboy’ from Walt Disney. You only found out secondhand that he liked what you did.”