The Life & Legacy of Walt Disney Panel Discussion Neal Gabler, Moderator Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California November 15, 2006 1 The Norman Lear Center Neal Gabler: The Life & Legacy of Walt Disney The Norman Lear Center Neal Gabler The Norman Lear Center is a Neal Gabler, Senior Fellow at the multidisciplinary research and USC Annenberg Norman Lear public policy center exploring Center, is an author, cultural implications of the convergence historian, and film critic. His first of entertainment, commerce, book, An Empire of Their Own: and society. From its base in the How the Jews Invented Hollywood, USC Annenberg School for won the Los Angeles Times Book Communication, the Lear Center Prize and the Theatre Library builds bridges between eleven Association Award. His second schools whose faculty study book, Winchell: Gossip, Power and aspects of entertainment, media, the Culture of Celebrity, was named and culture. Beyond campus, it non-fiction book of the year by Time magazine. Newsweek calls his bridges the gap between the most recent book, Walt Disney: The Triumph of American Imagination, entertainment industry and “the definitive Disney bio.” academia, and between them and the public. For more He appears regularly on the media review program Fox News Watch, information, please visit and writes often for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. www.learcenter.org. Gabler has contributed to numerous other publications including Esquire, Salon, New York Magazine, Vogue, American Heritage, The New York Republic, Us and Playboy. He has appeared on many television programs including The Today Show, The CBS Morning News, The News Hour, Entertainment Tonight, Charlie Rose, and Good Morning America. Gabler also hosted Sneak Previews for PBS. Gabler held fellowships from the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center and the Guggenheim Foundation. He served as the chief non-fiction judge of the National Book Awards and judged the Los Angles Times Book Prizes. Gabler has taught at the University of Michigan and at Pennsylvania State University. He graduated summa cum laude from the Univer- sity of Michgan and holds advanced degrees in film and American culture. 2 The Norman Lear Center Neal Gabler: The Life & Legacy of Walt Disney Harriet Burns Alice Davis As the first woman ever At Walt Disney Imagineer- hired by Walt Disney ing (WDI), Alice Estes Davis Imagineering in a was the original “designing creative rather than an woman.” Married to Disney office capacity, Harriet Legend Marc Davis, she en- Burns helped design and joyed a remarkable Disney build prototypes for career of her own. theme park attractions, as well as final products Born in Escalon, California, featured at Disney- she received a scholarship land and the New York to attend Chouinard Art World’s Fair of 1964. Institute in 1947, where she met future husband, Marc, who was an instructor. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Burns received her Bachelor’s Degree in Art from Southern Methodist University in Dal- One day, years later, she received a call from Marc. He las, and went on to study advanced design for another needed a costume designed for some live-action reference year at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. footage to inspire his animation of Briar Rose in Sleeping Beauty (1959). In 1953, she moved to Los Angeles with her husband and small daughter and accepted a part-time position design- Alice recalled, “Marc wanted to see how the skirt worked in ing and producing props for television’s Colgate Comedy live dance steps, and that was my first job at Disney.” Hour along with interiors and sets for Las Vegas Hotels, including the Dunes. In 1963, Alice collaborated with art designer Mary Blair on the research, design and creation of more than 150 highly- Subsequently, she was hired to paint sets and props for detailed costumes for the Audio-Animatronics children of It’s the new Mickey Mouse Club television show. Burns soon A Small World. began coordinating the show’s color styling and even designed and built the famous “Mouse Clubhouse.” Alice translated Marc’s original drawings of the pirates’ attire into clothing designs and patterns for all of the costumes She later joined Walt Disney Imagineering (formerly called featured in Pirates of the Caribbean. When the attraction WED) where she helped create Sleeping Beauty Castle, opened in 1965, guests were dazzled by the animated figures New Orleans Square, the Haunted Mansion, and more. and their colorful, textured pirate-wear. Alice also contrib- She also helped construct Storybook Land, which features uted to General Electric’s Carousel of Progress and the Flight model-size villages inspired by Disney animated movies, to the Moon attractions. She continues consulting for the such as Pinocchio and designed all of the “singing birds” in company and making special guest appearances at Disney- the Enchanted Tiki Room, the first Audio-Animatronics® land events. attraction at Disneyland. Among other contributions, Burns worked on everything from figure finishing to stage design for attractions featured at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, includ- ing Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and The Carousel of Progress. On occasion, she would appear on segments of ABC’s Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. Burns retired in 1986, after 31 years with Disney. 3 The Norman Lear Center Neal Gabler: The Life & Legacy of Walt Disney Blaine Gibson Richard Schickel Born in Rocky Ford, Richard Schickel is a film crit- Colorado, in 1918, Blaine ic, documentary film maker attended Colorado and movie historian, who University, but left school has written over 30 books, to join The Walt Disney among them The Disney Ver- Studios in 1939. While sion; His Picture in the Papers; working as an in-be- D.W. Griffith: An American tween artist and assistant Life; Intimate Strangers: The animator, he took eve- Culture of Celebrity; Brando: ning classes in sculpture A Life in Our Times; Matinee at Pasadena City College Idylls; and Good Morning Mr. and studied with a private instructor. Among his anima- Zip Zip Zip. His 30 documentaries include Charlie: The Life and tion credits are Fantasia, Bambi, Song of the South, Alice in Art of Charles Chaplin; Woody Allen: A Life in Film; and Shooting Wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, and 101 Dalmatians. War, which is about combat cameramen in World War II. After animating all day at The Walt Disney Studios, Blaine Schickel has just completed a book about Elia Kazan and a would go home at night and sculpt. In 1954, Walt Disney documentary about Martin Scorsese, which is the eighteenth happened to see one of Blaine’s art exhibits, which fea- in the series of portraits of American film directors he has tured several animal sculptures, and recruited him to work made over the course of his career. He has held a Guggen- on special projects for his new theme park, Disneyland. heim Fellowship, and was awarded the British Film Institute Book Prize, the Maurice Bessy prize for film criticism, and Blaine ultimately went on to create hundreds of sculp- the William K. Everson Award for his work in film history. His tures from which Audio-Animatronics figures and bronzes recently completed reconstruction of Samuel Fuller’s classic were produced for exhibits in the 1964 New York World’s war film, The Big One , was named one of the year’s Ten Best Fair and Disney theme parks. Among his credits, Blaine Films by the New York Times, and he has won special citations contributed to such attractions as Great Moments with from the National Society of Film Critics, The Los Angeles and Mr. Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Man- Seattle Film Critics Associations, and Anthology Film Archives. sion, and Enchanted Tiki Room. He also sculpted all 41 U.S. He has been reviewing movies for Time since 1972 and writes Presidents, including Bill Clinton, for the Hall of Presidents a monthly column, Film on Paper, for the Los Angeles Times at Walt Disney World. Book Review. After nearly 45 years with The Walt Disney Company, Blaine retired in 1983. He has, however, continued to con- sult on such projects as The Great Movie Ride at Disney- MGM Studios in Florida. In 1993, the same year he was named a Disney Legend, Blaine created a life-size bronze of Walt and Mickey Mouse standing hand in hand. The statue, called “Partners,” is located at the Central Hub in Disneyland. 4 The Norman Lear Center Neal Gabler: The Life & Legacy of Walt Disney The Life & Legacy of Walt Disney Martin Kaplan: My name is Marty Kaplan, I’m the Associate Dean here at the Annenberg School and I’m also the Director of the Norman Lear Center, which is a center at the Annenberg School devoted to the topic that entertainment effects everything, whether it’s news or politics or architecture or religion or education. There is something about the need to capture attention and to hold attention and to get audiences which Marty Kaplan, Director of the Nor- has shaped so much of what’s going on in society that it deserves to be man Lear Center looked at. And one of the pleasures of the Lear Center is my long-term association with a senior fellow of the Lear Center, which in the tradition of speaker introductions, I’m going to delay for a moment but telegraph nevertheless. Our topic today is Walt Disney and there are many people here who have either worked for Walt Disney or worked with the Walt Disney Studios or spent time thinking and writing about Walt Disney. Let me introduce some of them to you first.