What is the Mount Rushmore of Imagineers?

[Figments Friend]

I think Claude Coats should be a shoe-in; the only reason he's often forgotten is that he was not the type to draw attention to himself, he died earlier than many of the other early Disneyland movers and shakers and before any attention was really given to who made the parks work, and attempts to further share his legacy haven't really amounted to much. But he was right there with Marc Davis, Bob Gurr, and the other foundational members of WED. Without him, there wouldn't be a Baxter.

The recent animatronic attempts have led me to believe that Blaine Gibson's talent was taken for granted and underappreciated in his time. Not sure if that puts him on Rushmore, but he was definitely more talented than he was credited for in his lifetime.

Agree fully with all of this.
Claude and Blaine are high on my list.

Claude was Tony’s mentor, and we all owe him a lot.
It was Claude who took the initiative to take a teenage Tony under his wing and inspire the man to do what destiny called him to do.
When Tony started working at WED, Claude got him started in a direction that helped him achieve incredible creative heights.

Without Claude being the nice guy that he was, and letting Tony have a go at some of Claude’s own projects, we would not have the Parks that we know and love today.
Not by a long shot.

Claude was also an incredible artist.
His work on some of the Disney Animated Classic films is fantastic, and that translated very well soon afterwards when he was moved over to help develop settings at Disneyland and WDW.
Ask Tony about Claude sometime and he can entertain you with wonderful stories….


Blaine I have always admired and respected.
His work is stunning and wonderfully executed.
Incredible to think he originally did not consider himself a sculptor.

There is a great story of Uncle Walt seeing a young Blaine carving peices of soap into fun little novelty figures.
Walt saw the potential and assigned him to the sculpting department, which confused Blaine.
He said he wasn’t a sculptor…but Walt encouraged him to give it a try, and the rest is history.
His wonderful work is still being appreciated today.

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[Figments Friend]

Again I repeat… it’s a travesty that Tony Baxter isn’t more involved with WDI. He’s relatively young. He’s healthy. He is one of the greatest if not the greatest imagineer of all time and he’s sitting at his house a few miles from the park while WDI lost a ton of institutional knowledge and has fumbled quite a few projects since. Why isnt Bruce Vaughn doing everything in his power to get Tony back on board?

Two words -

‘Tom Fitzgerald’.

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[PiratesMansion]

Two words -

‘Tom Fitzgerald’.

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Do tell!

 

[Figments Friend]

Do tell!

I thought it was common knowledge that these two do not get along and are sworn enemies?

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[Rich T]

i cannot pick just four, no matter how hard I try, because it involves so many different fields. Absolutely, Davis, Baxter, and Hench need to be there, but after that there are just too many great artists and engineers to choose from. For me, personally, I couldn’t leave out Mary Blair or Rolly Crump, because they contributed all my very favorite cool artistic details to DL. The park’s personality and soul owe a lot to their work.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I thought it was common knowledge that these two do not get along and are sworn enemies?

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Perhaps it was at one time, or perhaps I'm just not aware of that much WED/WDI politics.

What I know comes down to in terms of enemies/grudges/etc is basically:
1.) Quite a few people were jealous of Rolly Crump catching Walt's eye and it's no accident that he was out shortly after WDW opened.
2.) Similar story with Marc Davis, who was also not the easiest to work with.
3.) Davis was not particularly happy with Tony Baxter taking the mine train from WRE and developing it into its own thing and then reusing the America Sings figures for Splash Mountain.
4.) Clearly the Mansion was contentious enough of a project to cause Davis and Claude Coats to never work together again.
5.) There are plenty of other people who were shown the door in a similar fashion to Davis and Crump, including but not limited to Bob Gurr, the Sherman Brothers (or maybe they just moved on of their own accord?), etc. By contrast, stories of people like Coats, who more or less retired amicably and on good terms with the company, seem relatively rare.

That's about it. Probably says something about me for not following/absorbing a lot of that stuff, but it's also hard to judge how many stories of X hates Y are genuine and how much of it is nonsense.

 

[Rich T]

Okay, see, all THIS discussion revolves around what I love so much about the classic era of Disney. So much creation, originality, improvising and down-to-earth hard work coming from this glorious tornado of talent, personality, conflict, compromise and cooperation…. All under the eye of the greatest Ringmaster who ever lived (and the ringmaster’s quiet brother, who kept the circus train on track).

That’s classic Disney. Aside from loving the original SW designs of Ralph McQuarrie and the illustrators who worked for Stan Lee, I have little interest in what modern corporate Disney does with the outside IPs Bob acquired.

 

[waltography]

Maybe an aside to the "big four" since I think they fall under WDI now as a technicality after DLE was reorganized under it, but if DLE counts I feel Steve Davison should be in the conversation/extended short list. RDCT, Wishes, WoC, IASW Holiday... his resume is stacked with among my favorite Disney memories even if his attractions aren't necessarily permanent.

 

[DLR92]

I wanna say Tony Baxter too.

 

[NobodyElse]

I think it 's safe to rename this topic to "Why There Is No Mount Rushmore Of Imagineers".

 

[mickEblu]

I think it 's safe to rename this topic to "Why There Is No Mount Rushmore Of Imagineers".

Really? Im seeing a lot of Baxter, Davis and Hench.

 

[NobodyElse]

Really? Im seeing a lot of Baxter, Davis and Hench.

Which means a lot of disappointment for (fans of) the others left out.

Plus, where would you put it?

 

[DLR92]

There’s way too many imagineers who would fit in this mythical Mt. Rushmore of Imagineers IMO. LOL
Tony Baxter I would pick obviously. I would like to add a mix of a woman in the bunch. So I would also pick Leota Toombs and Mary Blair.

 

[Brer Oswald]

I think it’s interesting that most of the “historically great” imagineers that people think of are the ones behind a relatively narrow slice of WDI history (Pirates, Mansion, Tomorrowland 67). Since that was a very influential slice of history, I get it, but there’s been a lot of Imagineers that have tackled a lot of bigger projects over decades that aren’t mentioned.

Bob Weis anyone? Any Tom Fitzgerald takers?

Because most of their projects suck. They had one or two strong ones towards the early tenure, then petered off with a string of stinkers. To add insult to injury, the strong projects were the ones they usually had less input on.

 

[Rich T]

Due to recent news, Christopher Merritt is now one
of my Rushmore candidates.

 

[PiratesMansion]

To come back to Marvin Davis for a second, the new Don Hahn/Chris Merritt Book has basically laid out three different stages of Disneyland drawings and layout prior to the park being built. Prior to this book, you'd often see what was labeled as the "Mickey Mouse Park" drawings (though the authors are skeptical this name was ever actually used by Walt or anyone in any meaningful way) and the Ryman drawing, but Hahn & Merritt have gone into the archives to better illustrate the full process and uncover some missing links (or at least, often overlooked) in Disneyland's development.

Stage 1 are Harper Goff drawings for the initial Burbank site (these are the "Mickey Mouse Park" drawings).

Stage 2 are Marvin Davis drawings as he works with Walt to fine-tune what the site will look like and what will and will not be included in the final product. These drawings begin after the Burbank site is abandoned but before the final sight is selected, and gradually become more sight-specific to Anaheim as they go along.

Stage 3 is when Walt Disney takes everything he's worked on with Marvin Davis to Herb Ryman, where he makes Davis' basic plan more visually appealing, more dimensional, and more illustrative so that the bankers/investors will have a more visual sense of what Disneyland will be like and why they should invest in it.

Marvin Davis was brought over to WED in 1953 with Dick Irvine. So while there's still a lot I need to learn about what Marvin Davis has done, it seems clear that his work is basically the foundation of everyone else's. Without his work, virtually nothing else would have been possible.

 

[PiratesMansion]

Due to recent news, Christopher Merritt is now one
of my Rushmore candidates.

I wish I knew more about his actual contributions to Imagineering, Universal Creative, etc., but he is an incredible author. Every single book with his name on it is worth buying, and the Marc Davis book in particular is one of the greatest theme park tomes of all time. I have only just started the most recent book, but it's already changing the way I look at the park and its history.

He and Foxx Nolte are the two theme park authors where if they write something, I will buy it, no questions asked.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Maybe I’m just getting old but it feels that way with actors, musicians and celebrities too. I don’t know anyone’s name. There’s too much competition. Too much content. Too much accessibility with everyone on social media all the time. No mystique.

Not to mention those early imagineers were part of some huge moments in American history between Disneyland and Early animated films. We’re talking historical. You can’t compare that to Disney’s 12th park located in Tokyo or the 117th theme park in general. No matter how good it is.

I wonder how much of our perception is based on watching Disneyland shows in our youth, Disney did a fantastic job of creating perfect “characters”, including Walt Disney himself, that those perceptions likely influence us to this day.

The names I listed I’ve seen dozens of times on various Disney shows, documentaries, etc… I’m sure there were many great Imagineers who simply never got any airtime.

I’ve read books over the years detailing some of the partying of the original imagineers, they were far from saints but the marketing team from the time did a brilliant job of making them look like they did no wrong.

 

[Rich T]

I wonder how much of our perception is based on watching Disneyland shows in our youth, Disney did a fantastic job of creating perfect “characters”, including Walt Disney himself, that those perceptions likely influence us to this day.

The names I listed I’ve seen dozens of times on various Disney shows, documentaries, etc… I’m sure there were many great Imagineers who simply never got any airtime.

I’ve read books over the years detailing some of the partying of the original imagineers, they were far from saints but the marketing team from the time did a brilliant job of making them look like they did no wrong.

The whole “Disney” thing that happened from the creation of Walt Disney Studios to Walt’s death was lightning in a bottle, for sure, and the careful, staged manner in which Walt and his crew were presented to the public was definitely a huge part of it all. One of the many things I love about classic Disney is the same element that crosses over to loving theme parks: The fun of looking “behind the curtain” to see what’s really going on backstage and how that all contributes to what becomes the show. I’m very happy to have grown up in the “Uncle Walt” era that balanced the art, the “show” and the business so brilliantly and with such fearless seat-of-the-pants innovation and risk-taking. Such a contrast to today’s corporation trying to keep the momentum rolling via outside IPs they purchased.

 

[PiratesMansion]

The names I listed I’ve seen dozens of times on various Disney shows, documentaries, etc… I’m sure there were many great Imagineers who simply never got any airtime.

Tom Morris has been working on a book for eons to try and give a lot of those imagineers who never got their credit a face, a profile, some information about what they contributed over the years. Hopefully at somepoint soon it will actually get released.

The more I listen to people like Morris talk, the more convinced I am that we have barely scratched the surface on what there is to know and who contributed to what. For every Crump, Sklar, Davis, Gurr, or Baxter, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of people like Tania McKnight Norris, who was the actual designer of the Haunted Mansion wallpaper, yet only received credit for that accomplishment relatively recently.

I’ve read books over the years detailing some of the partying of the original imagineers, they were far from saints but the marketing team from the time did a brilliant job of making them look like they did no wrong.

They did such a good job of creating, well, The Disney Version of what really went down, which has produced many great stories and anecdotes that have over time. You could credit Disney himself, Sklar, and countless others for bringing that about. That said, I'm happy that we're getting to the point where all of those stories are starting to get deconstructed and we're learning a more balanced, factual look at the people and events that put everything together.