Walt Disney

by Bob Thomas

  Roy Disney pointed out that the company remained in debt to the Bank of America and it was doubtful that any bank would lend for an amusement park. Walt would not be discouraged. One day he remarked to Hazel George, “If I were to go outside to finance Disneyland, would you contribute?”

  “You bet I would!” the nurse replied.

  “Find out how many others in the studio would do the same,” Walt said. She canvassed studio workers, and most of them agreed they would be willing to invest in Disneyland; they even formed an organization, the Backers and the Boosters. Walt told Roy about it, and Roy agreed that it was a good sign. He began to view Disneyland with more sympathy.

  Disneyland became a crusade with Walt, more so than sound cartoons, color, animated features and all the other innovations he had pioneered. He told a reporter the reasons for his zeal: “The park means a lot to me. It’s something that will never be finished, something I can keep developing, keep ‘plussing’ and adding to. It’s alive. It will be a live, breathing thing that will need changes. When you wrap up a picture and turn it over to Technicolor, you’re through. Snow White is a dead issue with me. I just finished a live-action picture, wrapped it up a few weeks ago. It’s gone. I can’t touch it. There are things in it I don’t like, but I can’t do anything about it. I want something live, something that would grow. The park is that. Not only can I add things, but even the trees will keep growing. The thing will get more beautiful year after year. And it will get better as I find out what the public likes. I can’t do that with a picture; it’s finished and unchangeable before I find out whether the public likes it or not.”

  One day Roy Disney received a telephone call from a banker friend. “Walt was in my office today,” the banker said.

  “Oh?” Roy replied.

  “It’s about that park. We went over the plans he showed me. You know, Roy, that park is a wonderful idea.”

  “Did Walt try to borrow money from you?”

  “Yes, he did. And you know what? I loaned it to him!”

  Walt continued working quietly with his planning group, which occupied a small one-story building that had been moved to Burbank from the Hyperion studio. By the end of the summer of 1953, the money he had borrowed was running out, and he knew he would have to discover a way to finance the park. He found the solution while lying sleepless in bed.

  “Television!” Walt told his brother the next morning. “That’s how we’ll finance the park—television!”

  To Roy, it was the first thing Walt had mentioned about Disneyland that made sense. Like all major corporate decisions, this one had to face the approval of the board of directors of Walt Disney Productions. Walt usually prevailed, but the wisdom of entering two new fields—television and an amusement park—was questioned by conservative members of the board. Walt took the floor to explain his reasoning: Television was an important medium for acquainting the public with the Disney films; the two Christmas specials had demonstrated that. A weekly show would expend a vast amount of creative effort and money, with little or no profit except for creating bigger audiences for Disney films in the theater.

  “If I’m going to devote that much talent and energy to a television show, I want something new to come out of it,” Walt said. “I don’t want this company to stand still. We have prospered before because we have taken chances and tried new things.”

  To board members who complained that Disney was not in the amusement-park business, he replied that the company was in the entertainment business—“and that’s what amusement parks are.” He admitted that it was hard for them to envision Disneyland the way he could, but he assured them, “There’s nothing like it in the entire world. I know, because I’ve looked. That’s why it can be great: because it will be unique. A new concept in entertainment, and I think—I know—it can be a success.” When he finished, there were tears in his eyes. The members of the board were persuaded.

  Roy agreed to go to New York to seek a contract with a television network. But he needed something to demonstrate what Disneyland would be like. Walt and the planners of WED had worked on many designs but there was no visualization of the park in a form to convince hard-headed businessmen. On a Saturday morning in September 1953, Dick Irvine telephoned Herb Ryman, whom he had known in the art department at Twentieth Century-Fox. Ryman had worked for Disney in the 1940s and had been on the South America trip; he had left the studio for other movie work and to pursue his own career as an artist. Irvine asked Ryman if he could come to the Disney studio as soon as possible.

  Walt greeted him affably and told him, “Herbie, we’re going to build an amusement park.”

  “That’s interesting,” Ryman replied. “Where are you going to build it?”

  “Well, we were going to do it across the street, but now it’s gotten too big. We’re going to look for a place.”

  “What are you going to call it?”

  “Disneyland.”

  “That’s as good as anything.”

  “Look, Herbie, my brother Roy is going to New York Monday to line up financing for the park. I’ve got to give him plans of what we’re going to do. Those businessmen don’t listen to talk, you know; you’ve got to show them what you’re going to do.”

  “Well, where is the drawing? I’d like to see it.”

  “You’re going to make it.”

  Walt volunteered to stay with him through the weekend, and the astonished Ryman agreed to undertake the task. He began immediately, creating a schematic aerial view of the park from sketches and plans and Walt’s own word pictures of what he wanted Disneyland to look like. The design was triangular, with the public entering the park at the bottom tip of the triangle. A berm surrounded the park to keep outside views from intruding; atop the berm traveled a small-size railroad which afforded the customers to look at the attractions within. Main Street acted as a funnel, drawing people toward the castle at the end of the street, where a hub led to the various realms.

  By Monday morning, Herb Ryman had completed the drawing. Copies were made, and Dick Irvine and Marv Davis hastily colored them with pencils. The drawings were included in a folder with a description of the park written by Bill Walsh. For the first time, the idea of Disneyland was defined:

  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 teachers 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 those wonders part of our own lives.

  The realms were described in detail. True-Life Adventureland would feature a botanical garden with exotic fish and birds, and a ride “in a colorful explorer’s boat with a native guide for a cruise down the Rivers of Romance.” The World of Tomorrow would have a moving sidewalk, industrial exhibits, a diving bell, a monorail, a freeway children could drive, shops for scientific toys and a Rocket Space Ship to the Moon. Lilliputian Land included an Erie Canal barge ride through the famous canals of the world, passing miniature towns with nine-inch people. Fantasyland would be located within the walls of a great medieval castle, with a King Arthur carousel, Snow White ride-through, Alice in Wonderland walk-through and Peter Pan fly-through. Frontier Country would have an authe
ntic frontier street, stagecoach, pony express and mule pack rides and a riverboat which “takes you downstream on a nostalgic cruise past the romantic river towns, Tom Sawyer’s birthplace, and the old Southern plantations.” Also included was Holiday Land, which would offer special attractions with the changing seasons—a one-ring circus in the summer, ice skating and bobsleds in the winter.

  It was a boldly extravagant proposal, but the brochure declared flatly that “sometime in 1955, Walt Disney will present for the people of the world—and children of all ages—a new experience in entertainment.”

  ROY Disney flew to New York with his small burden, a six-page explanation of his brother’s vision, together with a diagrammatic map of Disneyland and a fold-out aerial conception drawn by Herb Ryman under Walt’s direction. Roy began discussions with the three television networks and with potential sponsors for an hour-long weekly television show. Roy stipulated that whoever wanted the television show would have to invest in Disneyland.

  The Columbia Broadcasting System expressed little interest. General Foods saw the value of Disney to appeal to family consumers and offered a contract—if Disney would make a pilot film. Walt had established his policy: “We don’t make samples.”

  Both the National Broadcasting Company and the American Broadcasting Company had long sought a television series from Disney. NBC, with the huge resources of its parent company, Radio Corporation of America, seemed the best prospect, and Roy had lengthy talks with the firm’s founder, General David Sarnoff. Each time Sarnoff expressed his enthusiasm for a Disney series, as well as the park. But each time he handed over the negotiations to underlings, and Roy could get no commitment. After a long, frustrating meeting with RCA executives, Roy went back to his hotel and telephoned Leonard Goldenson, president of ABC.

  “Leonard, a couple of years ago you expressed an interest in working out something with us in television,” Roy said. “Are you still interested?”

  “Roy, where are you?” Goldenson asked. Roy told him, and Goldenson said, “I’ll be right over.”

  Goldenson and Roy Disney agreed that Disney would supply a one-hour television series to ABC in return for a $500,000 investment in the Disneyland park. ABC would become a 35-percent owner of Disneyland and would guarantee loans up to $4,500,000. The arrangement was satisfactory for both parties. Disney received much-needed cash and a credit line for the park. ABC, which had been unable to compete in ratings with the two older networks, would present a prestigious show which could improve its standing in the television marketplace.

  In early 1954, Disneyland, Incorporated, which Walt had founded three years before, was reconstituted with Walt Disney Productions and American Broadcasting Company-Paramount Theaters each owning 34.48 percent with investments of $500,000 apiece. Western Printing and Lithographing, which had been associated with Disney in publishing comics and books since 1933, contributed $200,000 for a 13.79-percent interest. Walt Disney acquired 17.25 percent by investing $250,000.

  The plans for the Disneyland park and television show were announced April 2, 1954. To demonstrate the seriousness of his intentions, Walt declared the series would begin in October of 1954 and the park would open in July of 1955. He assigned veteran Disney hands to production of the television show, which would be patterned after the realms of Disneyland—Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, etc. He moved the Disneyland park unit into a first-floor wing of the Animation Building, and now the planning gave way to practicability.

  In July 1953, Walt had commissioned the Stanford Research Institute to make two surveys: to find the ideal location for Disneyland; and to determine Disneyland’s economic feasibility. Walt had been offered a former police pistol range in Canoga Park in the northeast part of the San Fernando Valley. Stanford Research advised against it, reasoning that the San Fernando Valley was fifteen degrees hotter in the summer than the coastal areas, and ten degrees colder in the winter. Besides, visitors from cities to the south would have to travel across the Los Angeles urban sprawl to reach Canoga Park.

  Harrison (Buzz) Price, Los Angeles director of the Stanford Research Institute, plotted the optimum location for Disneyland in terms of population centers and hotel-room availability. The ideal was the railroad terminal in downtown Los Angeles, but that was obviously the wrong place to acquire reasonably priced land. The future growth of the freeway system was plotted. Freeways would soon be spreading into the San Fernando and Pomona valleys and south to Santa Ana; those to Santa Monica and Long Beach would come later. Walt himself ruled out the location of Disneyland at the beach. He reasoned that the ocean would eliminate half the access to the park, creating a funnel effect. Besides, he had always disliked the honky-tonk atmosphere of amusement piers; and he didn’t want people coming to Disneyland in bathing suits.

  Price and his researchers discovered that the center of population in Southern California was moving south and east. They continued their hunt in that direction, arriving at Anaheim as the ideal location. It would be easily reached by the Santa Ana Freeway, then under construction, and twenty sites of 150 acres or more were available. The best one, Stanford Research decided, was a 160-acre orange grove near the junction of the freeway and Harbor Boulevard. (The selection was an accurate one; eighteen years later, the center of population of the eight Southern California counties would be in Fullerton, four miles away.) Walt and Roy Disney were convinced. Negotiations began for purchase of the Anaheim property.

  The feasibility survey by Stanford Research took more time. Researchers visited all the major amusement parks in the United States, as well as Tivoli Gardens and others in Europe. The American parks were found to be seasonal, unplanned, unimaginative attractions that appealed almost entirely to the local population, not tourists. The best research was accomplished at the San Diego Zoo, which had year-around attendance of two million. Thus the pattern of month-by-month patronage could be plotted.

  Price and other Stanford researchers had a memorable encounter with the owners of amusement parks at their convention in Chicago in November of 1953. In a late-night session over whiskey and cigars, the park operators studied Walt Disney’s concept of a new kind of amusement park. The decision was unanimous: It wouldn’t work. There was not enough ride capacity. Too much of the park didn’t produce revenue. The newfangled rides would cost too much in maintenance. Mechanical failures in a year-round operation would be epidemic. The park owners advised Walt Disney to save his money.

  The results of the feasibility survey were encouraging to Walt. The figures were conservative: an estimate of 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 annual customers, with spending between $2.50 and $3 per person. Stanford Research accurately forecast the seasonal variation in attendance, based on San Diego Zoo figures, and calculated the average attendance on the fifteen highest days as the proper yardstick for the size of the park. On the basis of its findings, an initial investment of $11,000,000 was recommended.

  The original plan for Disneyland was being altered. Lilliputian Land, with its tiny mechanical figures, was put aside; Walt wanted larger figures and he needed time to develop new ways of making them move. The jungle ride was originally planned with live animals, but zoo keepers advised that would be impractical; animals would be asleep or hidden much of the time. “We will need mechanical animals, so that every boatload of people will see the same thing,” Walt said. The idea of walk-through attractions was dropped; amusement-park owners cautioned that patrons had to be transported in vehicles or they would bunch up and halt the flow of traffic.

  All park operators contended that Walt’s concept of a single entrance was faulty. It would create congestion and make parking difficult, they argued. Walt remained firm. He reasoned that people became disoriented when they entered by different gates. He wanted everyone to be channeled in the same way, to have their visit to Disneyland structured as part of a total experience. He was also insistent on the idea of the hub that led to the various areas of interest. “I’m tired of museums and fairs where you have
to walk your legs off,” he said. “I don’t want anybody at Disneyland to get ‘museum feet.’”

  Throughout the planning, a familiar Disney word, “wienie,” was used. A wienie was a lure, an inducement, in the same way that an animal trainer used a frankfurter to evoke tricks from a dog act. In Disneyland, the castle served as the wienie to draw the people down Main Street. Then, when they reached the hub, two other wienies would attract them to the right or to the left. In Tomorrowland it would be the towering Rocket to the Moon; in Frontierland, the Mark Twain steamboat.

  Walt observed that other amusement parks had grown by accretion, often starting with a hot-dog stand and a merry-go-round, then adding features over the years with no design or pattern. World’s Fairs, although conceived during a single span of time, were poorly planned; they were clusters of individual, highly competitive exhibits. The result was fatigue for the visitor. Most fatiguing of all were museums, Walt concluded, even great ones like the Louvre and the British Museum.

  With his unique experience as a maker of animated films, Walt Disney brought to the amusement park an extraordinary sense of continuity. He saw the need for Disneyland to flow, as did a movie, from scene to scene. The transitions should be gentle, he realized, with architecture and colors complementing each other in the area of change. Thus the visitor would be led from one attraction to the next without the jolt of adjustment, and he would remember everything he saw. That was not true of the visitor to a world’s fair or a museum.

  Walt had the ideal collaborators to help bring his vision to reality. They were men who had created the appearance of motion pictures—Dick Irvine, Harper Goff, Bill Martin, Bud Washo, Herb Ryman, Marvin Davis. They knew from long experience as art directors how to make sets pleasing to the eye, how to heighten drama by use of perspective and color. They had been accustomed to satisfying the desires of producers and directors, no matter how impractical they were. The average architect might not have been able to fulfill the wishes of Walt Disney. Walt wanted Main Street to be five-eighths scale, creating an air of nostalgic fantasy. But the stores along the street had to be practical ones where people could browse and shop. The art directors found the solution by making the ground floor 90 percent in scale, the second floor 80 percent and the third floor 60 percent. The result was a charming illusion.