The Walt Disney Family Album - Disneyland Designers (1984)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This seventh episode focuses on the Disneyland Designers. Here we get to meet Herb Ryman, John Hench, Bill Evans, and Tony Baxter. They share some of the history behind building and maintaining Disneyland.

- Herb Ryman is one of the primary founding fathers of Disneyland. He was the first primary illustrator of the Disneyland that was built. His roots at the Walt Disney Studios go back to the late 1930’s when he was made art director on several of Walt’s animated features. Prior to that, Herb had been an art director for many live action films at MGM where he also worked on the Wizard of Oz.

Herb was one of the artists on the Federal Government Goodwill Tour Walt was sent on that resulted in the Latin American animated features. He left Walt’s studio for several years to work on live action films at 20th Century Fox and for a tour with the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus where he did paintings capturing circus life.

Even though Herb was away from the studio, Walt stayed in touch with him. In 1953 Walt made an urgent call to Herb begging him to help create a prospectus map of Disneyland over a weekend so Walt’s brother Roy could present it to the bankers that Monday morning. The two men worked around the clock developing Disneyland on this piece of art and with it Roy was able to secure the funding to build the park.

Walt immediately hired Herb back at the company where he continued designing Disney theme park attractions until his death in 1989. Among his work included developing Disneyland, the New York City World’s Fair, Walt Disney World, EPCOT Center, Tokyo Disneyland and Euro Disneyland. He was the primary designer of both Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland and Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World.

A foundation was founded in his honor to guide young artist to art school.

Herb Ryman was made a Disney Legend in 1990. He passed away in 1989.

- John Hench was the longest continuously employed Walt Disney employee of all time employed with the company in various capacities for over 65 years.

He started with the studio in 1939 hoping to work on Fantasia. He worked on several animated films in story, animation, effects, art direction, and more. Recognizing that Hench was one of the studios most talented artists, Walt teamed him with famed artist Salvador Dali on a film called Destino. While the film was not completed at the time, decades later Roy Disney Jr revived the project and with Hench completed a version of it in 2003.

Hench continued working in the animation dept until Cinderella. From there, he found himself in the live action special effects unit where he helped to perfect the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Eventually he became one of the first Imagineers designing Disneyland and other attractions. From there he helped on 1960 Winter Olympics where he redesigned the Olympic Torch, a design all subsequent torches are based on. He worked on the 1964/64 New York World's Fair and was instrumental in designing Walt Disney World and EPCOT Center.

He was also Mickey Mouse's official portrait artist, supplying paintings of him for every milestone.

Hench continued working on attractions for the Walt Disney Company for the rest of his life. His motto was "Art is what makes us human."

John Hench was made a Disney Legend in 1990. He passed away in 2004.

- Bill Evans was a third generation horticulturist whom Walt had hired to landscape his home so that his railroad didn't interfere with his wife's flowerbeds. When Walt had to turn an 80 acre orange grove into Disneyland, he asked Evans and his team to do the job. Evans soon became the first landscape artist of Disneyland.

When money ran tight, Bill salvaged trees being removed from about to be constructed freeway routes. He also came up with creative solutions to get the results Walt wanted such as planting orange trees upside down to get the effect of tropical jungle vines in the Jungle Cruise attraction. He also found ways to quickly create topiaries to Walt's specifications, something that would have taken decades to do naturally. He would later go on to be the landscape engineer of Walt Disney World as well.

Although he retired in 1975, Bill continued to consult on the landscaping for EPCOT Center, The Disney/MGM Studio, Animal Kingdom, and many of the locations and hotels at the Walt Disney World Resort. He also selected plants used in EuroDisney and TokyoDisney.

Bill Evans was named a Disney Legend in 1992. He passed away in 2002.

- Tony Baxter was viewed as the first of the next generation of Walt Disney Imagineers. He started with the company in 1965 as an ice cream scooper while he was going to art college. He later moved on being the operator of various attractions to gain experience. For his senior project he created a mock up for a Mary Poppins ride that so impressed WED Imagineering that he was offered a job.

At Imagineering, Baxter worked on attractions like Space Mountain and developed new ones such as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain, the 1983 redesign of Fantasyland, Journey into the Imagination, and more. In this episode we seen him briefly discuss the never built Discovery Bay that elements of would be built in EuroDisney and what would become Splash Mountain. He also worked such innovative attractions as Captain EO, Star Tours, Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, and others. He eventually became the leader of Walt Disney Imagineering.

For a generation, Baxter became a figure who represented the legacy of Walt Disney in Walt Disney Imagineering. It's fantastic to get a glimpse of him on the cusp of his greatest successes.

Tony Baxter was named a Disney Legend in 2013 when he retired from the company. He still consults for the company and refused to stay on Tiana's Bayou Adventure.

Original air date December 2, 1984

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.