PROLOGUE In 2008, I was invited to screen my recently completed feature documentary The Pixar Story at Walt Disney Imagineering. It had been a long time since I had visited the unassuming campus in Glendale, California, and I was thrilled to step back into this illusive place that had long been shrouded in secrecy. After the screening and Q&A were over, I remember Marty Sklar, then the Global Imagineering Ambassador, and a protégé of Walt Disney himself, walked up to me and asked very directly, “So, Leslie, when are you going to make the Imagineering story?” And without hesitation I responded, “Well, Marty, you tell me!” And that was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my career to date, to tell the then sixty-plus-year history of Walt Disney Imagineering since its formation by Walt Disney in 1952. The result would be a six-part documentary series for Disney+ along with this official biography for Disney Publishing, both called The Imagineering Story in honor of Marty’s initial question.
The film was originally commissioned by WDI as a feature documentary to be completed within a year or so; however, it wasn’t long before Marty and the leadership felt I should travel to all the parks over the span of five years—which ultimately became seven—to capture a new golden age of Imagineering during one of the company’s greatest periods of growth. At this time, the Imagineers were just breaking ground on a new Disney resort in Shanghai, overhauling Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, revamping Walt Disney World’s New Fantasyland in Orlando, mapping out a whole new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and about to launch two new state-of-the-art Disney Cruise Line ships, the Disney Dream and the Disney Fantasy, out to sea. At the time, I had no idea all this and more was currently in the works, but was soon given unprecedented access to document virtually every secret work-in-progress attraction around the world.
Back during the construction of EPCOT in the early ’80s, my dad, Don, oversaw the Studio Machine Shop where hundreds of state-of-the-art projectors and camera systems were being designed and built for the many unique attractions in the park. He would take me with him on weekends and let me loose while he worked extra hours to meet the grueling deadlines. These were the wondrous days of the Studio Machine Shop and backlot, and it became my own haven to roam around. I remember seeing one of my favorite film stars—Herbie the Love Bug—parked on the side of the backlot street, right in front of the Shaggy D.A. set. Then walking through the old Western saloons to find no interiors, but just plywood infrastructure holding up the exterior facades. So much of this behind-the-scenes magic was imprinted in my mind because of the sixteen-millimeter Disney movies my dad brought home to project for my sister and me and the neighborhood kids, and then to see the real locations backstage was awe-inspiring. I remember him driving us through the back gates of EPCOT, where large animatronic dinosaurs and other hydraulic creatures were being built and tested. Being a fly on the wall to all this activity growing up was the spark that fueled my lifelong interest in telling stories about creators, artists, visionaries, and innovators.
Cut to nearly four decades later, and I am walking backstage at every Disney park around the world and Walt Disney Imagineering, meeting and interviewing over two-hundred Imagineers, so many of the brightest minds the film and themed entertainment industries have ever seen. From dirt to opening day, I made numerous trips to Shanghai Disney Resort to document the journey, but what was captured through my lens was just a fraction of the enormity and scale of the Imagineers’ monumental endeavors. It became clear that Walt Disney created “The Happiest Place on Earth,” but creating happiness is hard work. I was guided through history by Imagineers of each generation. Bob Gurr walked me inside the echoey chambers of the Matterhorn, where we took a narrow elevator up and shot hoops on the basketball court where mountain climbers of decades past took their breaks. Kim Irvine and I strolled down Main Street, U.S.A., discussing John Hench’s original color schemes, then down into the Haunted Mansion dining room to film dancing ghosts. Marty Sklar toured me through Pirates of the Caribbean (at four a.m.!) and, standing amidst pirates, he illustrated the genius of Imagineering storytelling under one roof, from X Atencio’s songs, to Marc Davis’ character designs, Alice Davis’ costumes, to the state of the art Audio-Animatronics technology developed by a cadre of geniuses. And how could one not mention being one of the first people to launch out of a vehicle at 60mph with Scot Drake, the creative lead on TRON Lightcycle Power Run as he proudly showed off the fastest Disney roller coaster yet in Shanghai Disneyland. Imagineers have one of the best jobs in the world, and nothing was more clear than when Scott Trowbridge toured me through the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge prior to one of the most historic opening day’s in Disney theme park history. His enthusiasm to show off every bit of handcrafted detail, not only overt but hidden, all in service to the new Batuu story, was truly inspiring. It was especially touching when Kevin Rafferty and Charita Carter toured me through Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, only to reveal their own “hidden Mickey” homage to my grandfather, Ub, with a sign above the culvert that reads iwerks and uwerks water works, seen just before the railway car is swept into the city by a digital rush of water. The passion for all things past inspires the present at Imagineering.
From blue sky ideation, to pencil on paper, to digital models, to plaster and paint, Imagineers build dreams. They never say “never,” and the sky is not the limit. No idea is a bad idea (at first, anyway!) and they inherently have it in their veins to say “Yes, if,’’ instead of “No, because,” to any creative idea. Imagineering is a mindset. It is teamwork. It is passion. It is egoless. It is about creating the most exciting, immersive, and unexplored experiences yet. This goes across every facet—be it a ride, an attraction, an Audio-Animatronics figure, a show, a restaurant, a hotel, a meal, a parade, a costume, or just a simple story pulling you through a queue. The goal of every Imagineer, just like Walt Disney himself, is to reassure you—to make you smile, to make you laugh, and to make you wonder, how did they do that?
For every person documented in this biography, there are thousands more who have contributed greatly behind the scenes. This is just a marker in time as the next generation of Imagineers rise up and stand on the shoulders of those who’ve come before, and build on the great legacy of Walt Disney and his original Imagineers.
—Leslie Iwerks
June 2022
Santa Monica, California
Chapter 1: An Impossible Idea “ When I see things I don’t like, I start thinking, ‘Why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them?’ ” —Walt Disney i. Walt Disney Calling Herbert Ryman could not say no to Walt Disney—even though he didn’t work for the man. Ryman had worked for Walt, for eight years. From 1938 until 1946 he’d been an artist and art director for Dumbo and Fantasia and other early classics. But on this Saturday morning in 1953, he was at his home in Van Nuys, California, north of Los Angeles, working on one of his circus paintings. He had begun his series of oils while traveling for two summers with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus; he was the only artist the circus had ever hosted for such an extended time. Ryman was a respected painter—his circus art had been the subject of two New York exhibitions. He had an impressive Hollywood résumé—not just his work at Disney but also at the MGM Studios in the early 1930s, creating scenic designs and prop art for classic films such as Mutiny on the Bounty and The Good Earth. After MGM and Disney, Ryman had worked at 20th Century Fox on films including Anna and the King of Siam, a 1946 release that fed his passion for Asian culture, acquired on a two-year trip around the world he had taken after leaving Disney. He had lived in Siam and France and England and spent one winter in Peking and the Gobi Desert, just “for my own self-edification,” as he put it.
He had worked hard, traveled hard, and had earned some quiet time at home, just painting. Then the phone rang. It was Walt. Could Herb come down to the Disney studio? Ryman’s former boss made it sound urgent—no time to shave and shower, just get to Burbank immediately. When he got there, Ryman learned that the crisis was related to Walt’s amusement park project, which he called “Disneyland.” As Ryman told the story, Walt said, “Well, Herbie, my brother Roy has got to go to New York on Monday.” Roy O. Disney, the brother with the financial smarts, would be trying to raise millions from investors, Walt said, who “don’t understand anything except money. And we’ve got to show them what we’re going to do.” A crucial selling point would be a grandly scaled drawing depicting an aerial view of the proposed park. Ryman’s interest was piqued. “Well, gee,” he said, “I’d like to see it, too.” To which Walt quickly responded, “You’re going to do it.”
Ryman said no—or tried to. Creating such a persuasive illustration from scratch in less than forty-eight hours, he said, was “an utter impossibility.” But Walt did not back down. “He paced all around the room, and he was thinking, and he went over and stood in the corner, facing the corner. And he kind of turned around and looked at me and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Well, you’d do it if I stay here with you?’ And then I thought, ‘Well, if he wants to sit up all night Saturday night and all day Sunday and all night Sunday night—if he wants to stay here with me, I’ll give it a try.’ ” And that was that. Ryman had one demand: “a big chocolate malted milkshake.” He got it.
“Walt, as you know, was a very persuasive person. He could make anyone do anything,” remembered Ryman, one of the original and most celebrated of the Imagineers who worked to bring Disneyland to life. “When he had this idea, and whoever he called in, it was instantaneous. You were supposed to be instantly useful and instantly productive and a kind of instant genius, if that’s possible.”
That Saturday morning, Walt showed Ryman preliminary sketches of proposed sections of the Disneyland park, created by Disney artists, and a “Proposed Diagrammatic Layout,” created by Walt’s friend Marvin Davis just a couple of weeks earlier. (Davis was an in-demand Hollywood art director, having worked on that year’s musical hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.) From those fragments, Ryman went to work, with Walt at his side, hunched over a drawing table in the studio, around the clock, to produce the first complete depiction of what would become Disneyland. The drawing had a castle, a Fantasy Land, a World of Tomorrow, and, of course, a Main Street leading to the central hub. It had a train and a riverboat, docked at Frontier Country. And it had dozens of teeny-tiny patrons, wandering through the park’s streets and pathways or stopping to watch the carousel. By Monday morning, this penciled masterpiece, measuring forty-three by seventy inches, was ready for Roy Disney to roll up and take to New York.
Marty Sklar, who worked at Disneyland on Opening Day and later became president, vice chairman and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, recalled Ryman referring to his weekend’s achievement as “the drawing that Roy Disney used to raise the $17 million from the bankers”—a not entirely accurate account—but Sklar saw more than that in Ryman’s work. He saw the future. “If you look at the original drawing,” he said, “there’s so much in it because it was all in Walt’s head. Things that were not done in Disneyland for five or six years later.” It was as if Ryman had reached into Walt’s brain to pull out all those images he had bouncing around, then neatly organized them into a rendering so that less imaginative minds would be able to grasp them.
In the early days, this was the magic of Imagineering—work that went on in a company called WED Enterprises, initially intertwined with the Disney studio and taking its name from Walter Elias Disney. Walt later called Imagineering “the blending of creative imagination with technical know-how,” which was true, but it was more intangible and more instinctive than that. From the start, Imagineers were people in touch with Walt’s psyche, and Walt was in touch with their abilities—sometimes talents they didn’t even know they had. Unbeknownst to them at the time, an animator would become the sculptor who created characters that would live on for generations. A background artist would become a master at ride layouts. A man known for his ability to draw would write lyrics that park visitors would be humming their whole lives. A woman who painted props and sets would help build castles and create lifelike singing birds from piles of feathers. Imagineering grew beyond the confines of Walt’s mind, but it has never stopped coaxing out hidden talents from artists, craftspeople, scientists, and technicians who were, like Walt, unfettered dreamers.
In that sense, the secret of Imagineering’s initial success was “Walt knowing his staff,” Sklar said. “I always thought that Walt Disney was the greatest casting director I’d ever worked with, because he could put together people that you would never expect to work together very well and something magic would come out of it. He understood what he could get out of almost every one of the people that he had here at Imagineering in those early days. Many of them he’d worked with for twenty or thirty years already before working on Disneyland.”
Certainly the seeds of Imagineering were sown in the movie studio Walt created, where fairy tales and dreams were molded and shaped into stories that audiences would revisit again and again. In fact, though, just a few of the top artists from Disney’s early animated classics made the leap to WED Enterprises.
Copyright © 2022 by Disney. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
