Scarlett Stahl: A Talk by Marty Sklar - May 19, 2010

Scarlett Stahl: A Talk by Marty Sklar
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(l-r) Maggie Richardson, niece of Mary Blair and executress of her estate, Marty and Diane Brigham, Executive Director of Ryman Arts

The first video was viewed in which Marty appeared talking and showing how the people at Imagineering bring the Parks to life. He said anyone can dream but Imagineers can make a dream come true. There was a cute sequence, which showed a robot mimicking the movements of Marty. After the video, Marty resumed his talk. 

�I guess the most exciting thing in my whole career, was that I spent ten years writing personal material for Walt. I used to write his messages for the Annual Report. It is something we would always discuss with Roy because Roy would do the financial report in the end. We developed, with the help of a great artist at the Studio, Bobby Moors, themes that we used and I would write Walt�s message. A couple of times I even wrote Roy�s. I used to write all the souvenir publications at Disneyland and presentations to corporations. I wrote Walt�s narration for the Ford attraction at the New York World�s Fair, which was kind of fun. We had an early morning recording session and it was one of those mornings where his cough wouldn�t go away, all those terrible cigarettes he smoked. He just couldn�t get through; half the time he would blow a line because he would cough. We finally got a really good take and then he used a few words we wouldn�t use in polite society. He stopped and said Marty, you�re going to cut out all this s---t before you send it back to Ford, aren�t you?  Well, I still have that recording�.And then I wrote a twenty five minute film and I�ll show you an excerpt from it about Walt�s plans for Walt Disney World� And this is actually the very last time that Walt ever did anything on film.� 

The video was shown and the date was Oct 1966, with a look at Disneyland and the New York World�s Fair. Walt then talked about his plans for Walt Disney World, which would be twice the size of the island of Manhattan. After the small portion was shown, Marty resumed his talk. 

�What we used this for was to get the Florida legislature to pass a body of laws that created what is called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which is the governing body for the Walt Disney World property. That was very important because Walt had traveled around to many different companies and found that when he came they would trot out all the latest things they were working on. He would say when can I buy something based on that technology and then they would say that they didn�t know if the public would be interested in it. He became interested in being the middle man between industry and the public and that�s the genesis of EPCOT. To do that, there were many zoning regulations and building codes that he didn�t want to pay attention to because technology had surpassed them and he wanted the freedom to do what he felt was necessary. And that was why Reedy Creek Improvement District was formed.  

Working with Walt Disney and writing for him, you never knew sometimes what was going to come out. He didn�t always follow the script. My good friend and mentor, John Hench, was a victim of that a number of times.� Marty then showed a short little video with John talking about the concept of the Plaza Inn and Walt jumping in and deviating from the script.  Marty then returned to his talk. 

�It was such a fabulous experience for me to work with John Hench, who was my partner for so many years, especially on EPCOT. One day I decided I wanted to know how John knew so much about so many things. So I said to Sandy Huskins, his assistant, Sandy, bring me all the books and magazines John takes home this weekend. And Monday morning on my desk, I�m not kidding, were 35 books and magazines and they ranged from Scientific American to Women�s Wear Daily. Now I knew John hadn�t read everything in those publications but I also knew that he had gone through all of them and I said I�m never going to know as much as this man does. I�m going to grab his coat tails and make sure that I am where ever he is when I need some information or some great design. He was really brilliant. He really was.  

About two years ago there is a group called the Disney Institute that operates mainly out of Florida and they do special presentations and training for companies. They have a presentation that they use when they pitch a company they call the Disney Difference. They asked me to introduce a new version of the Disney Difference that they were producing and this is what we did.�

Another video was shown of Disneyland�s Enchanted Tiki Room, showing Walt�s quest for the best as he wanted the birds to appear to breathe. Other examples of his quest for the best were shown in the video. 

Marty then resumed his talk. �When we do a park, there are so many details that it is really amazing. When we were starting on EPCOT for Florida, I looked back at some things we had done and had stopped doing. For example, Disneyland really didn�t have any original songs until 1963, when Bob and Dick Sherman wrote In The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room and then in 1964 for the World�s Fair, they wrote that wonderful song, It�s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow Shining at the End of Every Day. By the way Dick Sherman has told me on a number of occasions that they wrote the words Man has a Dream and That�s the Start, etc. The way they wrote it originally is Walt has a Dream and That�s the Start. So this was really a tribute to Walt. So X Atencio wrote Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirates Life for Me and then he wrote Grim Grinning Ghosts for the Haunted Mansion. And then people look back at this from 1969 when the Haunted Mansion opened, we stopped doing songs. There isn�t one new song that went into Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in the next ten years. When we started on EPCOT, I said I don�t understand it, I can�t figure out why we didn�t use more songs to tell stories. Well some of the stories we were telling at EPCOT were about energy and about food and so many other things. They were hard stories to tell in a park environment so I said let�s get Bob and Dick Sherman and other song writers and do story songs�.� Marty told us that some of the songs are still there but some are gone and played them for us in a video. He returned to his talk by saying � Now in the litany of earlier songs that were done, I forgot one. Does anybody remember what it was? (The reply was Small World.) It�s a Small World. Mary Blair�s niece, Maggie Richardson is here. How could I forget It�s a Small World? (Maggie replied: I would have reminded you.) Well there�s probably no song in the park that means as much and I always tell people if only we could get the whole world to do what that song says - Its just one Moon and one Golden Sun, And a smile means, Friendship to every one. Imagine if we could get everyone around the world to just do that? I�ll be happy to take some of your questions.�