by Martin Sklar
And beyond all else, I met my wife to be, Leah Gerber, at UCLA. We were married May 12, 1957.
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My biggest disappointment at UCLA was trying out for, and becoming the last candidate eliminated from more than one hundred competitors, for a special project run jointly by the University Religious Conference and the Ford Foundation to combat the negative image of America in India. It was called, simply, “Project India.” Beginning in 1952, Project India sent twelve students of diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds for nine summer weeks to India, meeting college students, living with their hosts in villages and cities, and hopefully making friends for America. It was a kind of precursor to the Peace Corps, which began in the early 1960s.
In 1955 I truly felt that I had earned the right to be the second Jewish student selected—to join my friend Sandy Ragins, who later became a rabbi. But I was not chosen, and I wished the ambassadors well as they prepared to depart for India.
Less than a week later, I received a call at the ZBT fraternity house. It was that “Las Vegas dealer,” Card Walker, asking if I could come to the Walt Disney Studio for the interview that would change my life. Surely that trip to India would never have had such a lifelong effect.
“I’M NOT WALT DISNEY ANYMORE!”
At the end of 1965, Walt celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday, and Roy O. Disney, age seventy-two, began to plan for his own retirement. The presumptive future CEO, Card Walker, called me and the Studio’s graphics leader, Bob Moore, to his office. “We have to let the media, our fans, and the entertainment industry know that as great a talent as Walt is, he’s not the only creative person at Disney,” Card told us. “Let’s use the annual report to start the dialogue.”
Bob Moore and I were good soldiers. With Card’s direction, we identified the company’s top creative talent, and developed a plan to photograph them at work on their current projects. Some of the pictures would be with Walt, some without. There was Bill Walsh, Don DaGradi, and Bob Stevenson—the Mary Poppins team—in live-action films; Dick and Bob Sherman, the Academy Award–winning songwriters; the “Nine Old Men” in Disney animation—all were still working, although Marc Davis had moved to Imagineering; and John Hench, Claude Coats, and Davis at Imagineering. The photographs told the story, and soon, with Bob Moore’s page layouts and my captions identifying the talent, we accompanied Card to review the concept with Walt. He listened patiently—and said, “No.”
“Look,” Walt told us, “I don’t want people to say ‘that’s a Bill Walsh production for Disney,’ or ‘that’s a John Hench design for Disneyland.’ I’ve spent my whole life building the image of entertainment and product by Walt Disney. Now Walt Disney is a thing, an image, an expectation by our fans. It’s all Walt Disney—we all think alike in the ultimate pattern. I’m not Walt Disney anymore.”
In the end, the pictures still told the story in the annual report. Walt okayed the images and caption copy identifying the Disney project only. No names were used; no individuals were identified or credited in the photos. We all got the message.
In thinking about this portion of the book, I realized that few people in the entertainment world have been written about as frequently as Walt Disney. I asked Richard Benefield, then executive director of the extraordinary Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, and Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney Archives at The Walt Disney Company, to provide the number of biographies they believe have been written about Walt. Despite his death more than forty years ago, the number seemingly expands like the Flubber in his 1961 film The Absent-Minded Professor; they estimate the biographies at fifty-two, ranging from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (Diane Disney Miller’s The Story of Walt Disney and Bob Thomas’s Walt Disney: An American Original ) to the twenty-first century (Harrison Price’s 2003 Walt’s Revolution! By the Numbers and Neal Gabler’s 2006 Walt Disney—the Triumph of the American Imagination, the latter a “triumph” in 851 pages that was not well received by the Walt Disney family).
While everything worth knowing about Walt Disney hasn’t been written, I’m going to tell only personal stories—that is, those experienced directly by me or my peers. Most of these stories have never appeared in print. But I can’t help starting with several of my favorite Walt stories told to me by those who were there, illustrating his multidimensional character:
One of the first Disney traveling art exhibits, “The Art of Animation,” was about to open in Denver, Colorado. Walt attended the opening, but arrived in Denver the night before for a final check of the exhibit. At breakfast the next morning, he joined the installation team, which had already ordered their food. Walt made his choice; before the waitress could leave the table, all four of the installation team, one by one, changed his order with a “that sounds good, I’ll have that too!” comment. Now there were five identical breakfast orders. “So,” Walt said, “it’s going to be one of those days!” And he was gone.
A Disney Studio television producer was unhappy because Walt did not consider him to be “creative.” Determined to change Walt’s view, and recalling Walt’s own handiwork on his backyard trains and miniatures built in the workshop barn at his Holmby Hills home, the producer spent weeks making a model to show Walt. He arrived early one morning and set up his work in Walt’s outer office, insisting that Walt view his efforts before starting his day. Enthused over the product of weeks of work, the producer waited for Walt’s reaction; however, none was forthcoming. “Well,” the producer lamented, “at least you can give me ‘E for Effort.’” Reacting at last, Walt replied: “I’ll give you ‘S for Shit.’”
As Walt emerged from the Disney Studio Animation Building and attempted to light his cigarette, his lighter malfunctioned. Into the breach stepped one of the Studio’s great story and character development talents, Ken Anderson. His lighter worked, so well in fact that he set fire to Walt’s signature mustache in front of a large crowd of his fellow animators no less. Ken did not sleep well that night, and when he was summoned to Walt’s office the next day just before noon, he expected the worst—that his days at Disney were numbered. Walt was waiting for him—with instructions. “Come on, Ken—let’s go to lunch.” And they did, in the Disney commissary, where everyone could see them eating and talking together.
Years later, I was reminded of these stories during a recording session for the Ford Motor Company attraction at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair. I had written the narration for the Magic Skyway ride that Walt and the Imagineers had created for the Ford Pavilion. In the second year of the World’s Fair, Ford asked Walt to serve as narrator.
We recorded early one morning at the beginning of 1965. Walt’s voice was even more raspy than usual. As he mangled line after line, the number of expletives mounted. At first they were directed at me as Walt tripped over the length of some sentences I had written and the pronunciation of the dinosaurs featured in the ride. Here is the flavor of the recording session:
“Thanks to some old-fashioned magic, this Ford Motor Company car will be your time machine for our story—so if your imagination is ready, here we go! We’ll be traveling backwards in time—many millions of years—back to a time when giant creatures thundered over the land, and soared like gliders over the sky. You’re probably familiar with some of the names: allosaurus, brontosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus…
Boy what a mouthful—that’s a big long one there—I got a dang frog in my throat… Is that any better, Marty? Lousy? Oh, shit—I don’t want anyone to hear me cussing, Marty—before you send it to Ford, you’ll edit it first, right Marty?”
Yes indeed, Walt!
Walt was not a boss who wanted a “yes” at all costs. He just didn’t like “no.”
In 1953, Walt sent Dick Irvine, Bill Cottrell (president of WED; he was married to Lillian Disney’s sister, Hazel), and Harrison “Buzz” Price to Chicago to review his concept for Disneyland with the major amusement park operators of the time, who were all attending a convention of
their peers. The WED team reported the reaction of the amusement park “experts”: “Bottom line, Mr. Disney’s park idea is too expensive to build and too expensive to operate. ‘Tell your boss,’ they said, ‘to save his money. Tell him to stick to what he knows and leave the amusement business to people who know it.’”
The articulate master at “getting to yes” with Walt was his favorite consultant, the self-described “numbers man,” the author of Walt’s Revolution! By the Numbers, Buzz Price. From the very beginning of Disneyland, Buzz focused on Walt’s objectives.
“Walt said that his park was to be a work in progress,” Buzz wrote later. “Unlike existing enterprises of this kind, it was never to be finished. This idea of constant reinvestment was a new concept. Walt recognized the fickleness of audiences and the challenge of always providing something new. For me, this great entrepreneurial adventure was an exposure to ‘yes if’ consulting as a more useful format than ‘no because’…‘Yes if’ was the language of an enabler, pointing to what needed to be done to make the possible plausible. Walt liked this language. ‘No because’ is the language of a deal killer. ‘Yes if’ is the approach of a deal maker. Creative people thrive on ‘yes if.’”
For many of us, Walt was the supreme casting director. He knew the talents of his staff better than anyone, and was constantly seeking ways to expand their skills—as if to ready us for an assignment on a future project still only in his head.
Not long after moving to Imagineering after twenty-seven years as an animator, X. (for Xavier) Atencio was called to Walt’s office. “I want you to write the script for Pirates of the Caribbean,” Walt explained.
“But Walt,” X. replied, “I’ve never written a script.” X. not only became the author of lines later spoken by Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean motion pictures—he also became a songwriter when Walt liked his idea for a tune the buccaneers would sing: “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!” And when a full-size mock-up of the key auction scene in the Pirates attraction indicated to X. that he had overwritten the dialogue, Walt would not allow X. to cut any lines. “Think of it this way,” Walt explained. “It’s like a cocktail party: you hear bits and pieces of conversation, and you get the idea of what’s going on. Our boat ride is even better; if you want to hear the rest of the conversation, come back for another ride!”
Herb Ryman used to say that Walt was “the conductor of one of the world’s great orchestras—and I was proud to be one of the musicians.” But John Hench thought of Walt’s cast of talents as “dogs on a leash.” The “dogs” most trusted, John said, “could wander far to the east and far to the west, trying new tricks.” But others were kept on a tight leash; they had to stay close to home and “mind the store.” The key for everyone, John explained, was this: “Once Walt decided what direction he was going, no one wandered off. If he decided to go north, everyone went north; no one went south.”
In the late 1950s, one of my jobs was to write the copy for the The Story of Disneyland souvenir guide. As the costs of printing and production grew to 24 cents for a product that sold in the park for 25 cents, the merchandise staff wanted to double the price, to 50 cents. In those days, Walt was the judge and jury for even decisions as mundane as this. I accompanied the merchandise staff to a meeting with Walt, and watched them strike out. “No” was the answer.
Walt’s reasons were clear and direct. “Look,” he said, “we don’t have to make a profit on every line of merchandise. Our guests take those souvenir books home, put them on their coffee tables, and their friends see them and think, ‘That place looks like fun!’ And when they come, they buy tickets to the park, and food, and merchandise inside. That’s when we’ll make our profit. Keep the price at 25 cents; I want as many souvenir books as you can sell in homes across the country—around the world.”
Marc Davis, one of the Disney greats in animation since the 1930s, had a similar experience when he moved from the Studio to Imagineering in the early 1960s. Although he had made dozens of presentations to Walt in the course of creating some of the best known characters in Disney animation—from Tinker Bell in Peter Pan to Cruella De Vil in One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty—Marc was still nervous when he pitched his first storyboard sketches for a Disney park show to Walt.
When Walt, deep in thought, did not respond immediately, Marc stepped into the void. “Walt, I’ve got another idea for this, and it’s a lot cheaper.” Now Walt responded quickly. Putting a hand on Marc’s shoulder, he set the tone for how Imagineers were to create for the Disney parks. “Marc,” Walt said, “I have a whole floor of finance people and accountants upstairs who are going to tell me what the cheapest way to do something is. What I pay you for is to tell me the best way!”
I experienced an embarrassing situation when I was twenty-five or twenty-six. My lesson became a cardinal rule I shared with Imagineering’s creative staff for the next half-century. In a meeting, Walt asked an informational question, and I gave him the answer. Unfortunately, when I got back to my office, I discovered my information was incorrect. Then I made the real mistake—instead of calling or sending a note to Walt to correct the error, I did nothing.
About a year later, a similar subject came up in a meeting, and this time I had the right answer. I enthusiastically offered my information. Walt’s look of disdain would have withered the Wicked Witch of the West. “The last time we discussed this, you said…”
I didn’t need Walt’s autograph on a memo to explain this “youthful mistake” to me. Here’s the rule: no one is expected to have all the answers. If you are asked a question, and do not know the answer, just say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” And when you do, never fail to pass along the correct information. You can never tell who the elephant in the room may be—because elephants just don’t forget.
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The Disney company aircraft—an early Grumman Gulfstream purchased in 1963—was a favorite of Walt and Mrs. Disney’s. When it was finally retired to permanent display on the back lot at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida in 1992, it had established both longevity and mileage records for corporate service: twenty-nine years and 12,300 hours in the air as it logged 4.3 million miles!
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 passeng
ers, 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”!