Everyone knows that certain someone down the street that takes everything too far. They’re just bad neighbors, and it feels like everything they do is specifically planned to drive you nuts. Imagine what it would feel like if those people who are the bane of your existence become national heroes and, later, icons of Walt Disney World.
The entire turn of events would be maddening, yet that’s exactly what occurred for the people who lived on Robinwood Street. They’re either the antagonists or the unintentional motivators in this piece. These unlucky residents of Pulaski County in Arkansas happened to live on the same street as a strong-willed millionaire. And they poked the bear when they tried to stop this businessman from doing something that pleased his only daughter, Breezy.
The details of the story are further proof that truth is stranger than fiction, even the meticulously crafted fiction of Walt Disney World. The instigator of all the less than neighborly issues was a man who earned millions performing human drug trials for salacious pills such as Viagra. Somehow, he became the greatest philanthropist in Arkansas, no small feat for a state where the Walton family of Walmart fame also resides. The causality for this unlikely evolution from instigator to benefactor started with something absurdly simple: Christmas lights.
Virtually no detail listed above makes sense, and that’s why the story is so amazing. In 1986, an absentee father learned that his daughter wanted to spend time with him. They discovered a mutual love of holiday decorations. In the process, they disrupted the lives of countless residents of the capital city of Arkansas. Eventually, their shared passion progressed into such a divisive issue that the United States Supreme Court became involved.
After an unfavorable ruling appeared to end the lights show forever, the unlikeliest turn of events caused it to become one of the most famous Christmas displays in the world. As Hollywood Studios prepares to turn off the power on The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights for the last time, it’s time to learn about the events that brought the wildly popular show to Orlando, Florida.
Origin story
Image: Disney
1986 represents a different time for The Walt Disney Company. Only two gates at Walt Disney World and one at Disneyland were open at the time. Tokyo’s Disney Resort stood as the only international expansion, as Disneyland Paris remained six years away from its debut. Finally, although none of the cast members could have known it at the time, one of their central holiday selling points from 1995-2015 was beginning in the most modest of settings.
Jennings Osborne was the name of the central figure in this story. The Arkansas native came from humble beginnings, but he was the proverbial post-World War II American who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become something greater.
By earning a degree in microbiology, Osborne proved that he owned one of the sharpest minds in his state. To the day he died, he remained a diehard supporter of his alma mater, The University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and he frequently hosted massive tailgate parties for their games as well as those of the flagship university in Fayetteville. From a young age, he felt unusually strong civic pride and constantly nurtured his Arkansas roots.
Putting his degree to excellent use, Osborne founded a company in 1968 that would turn him into a multi-millionaire. Fittingly named Arkansas Research and Medical Testing LLC, this business would grow into one of the premier pharmaceutical research facilities in America. Their own site proudly proclaims the following: “Since 1968 we have conducted over 2,200 studies involving 28,000 volunteers and over 100 pharma/biotech sponsors.”
Osborne always enjoyed bragging about the diverse drugs he’d had a hand in bringing to the market. Motrin and Viagra both earned FDA approval thanks to human testing performed at the Arkansas facility. The entrepreneur’s fingerprints were all over the expansion of his business, which is how he eventually garnered a net wealth of approximately $50 million. The combination of a brilliant intellect, an explosive growth industry in big pharma, and some gutsy business choices turned the Arkansas native into one of the most respected microbiologists in the south.
And Breezy makes three
Image: Disney
A cliché exists with such successful business people, though. Family life tends to suffer when a person spends too much time at work. A founder of an eight-figure company is a workaholic by default. In the particular case of Jennings Osborne, he was lucky enough to marry a woman named Mitzi Udouj. She tolerated many long nights at home, and she suffered immeasurably in an attempt to bring a child into their life. Life punished her with a horrific five miscarriages before blessing her with a daughter.
Anyone even passingly familiar with The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights knows about Breezy. Born Allison Brianne Jennings, she was understandably the joy of her parents’ lives after so much pregnancy misfortune. For obvious reasons, Allison Brianne was an only child viewed as a minor miracle by her doting parents. Even by only child standards, she was ridiculously spoiled, the proverbial apple of their eye. Alas, work still kept her father away from home too often.
You can imagine the sensation of devastation Jennings Osborne must have experienced in 1986 when his six-year-old girl requested something unexpected. The darling child he and his wife had struggled so much to bring into being wanted a simple thing from her daddy. She asked him to decorate their home with Christmas lights.
What she really wanted was to spend more time with him. Any parent would feel crushed by such an honest, earnest request. Even before the internet era, people wrestled to find the appropriate balance of home and work life. Breezy unintentionally informed Osborne that he had room for improvement in this regard. From the mouths of babes…
Decorating the Osborne family Christmas tree
Image: Disney
The lights display that first year hardly stood out by the average decorating displays of the era. There were approximately a thousand lights. Try not to guffaw at the thought of a legendary holiday exhibition such as The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights featuring only a thousand lights.
From such humble beginnings, a shared love emerged. Mother, father, and daughter discovered their mutual enjoyment of shopping for the perfect Christmas lights and then putting them on the walls of their home. In year two, the holiday decorations escalated into something worthy of a drive for the other citizens of Little Rock.
The evolution of The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights is well known by this point. In seven years, the once precocious six-year-old was now 13. Breezy’s holiday expectations grew along with her. Her adoring father had expanded their holiday decorations so much that the millionaire had to do something truly eccentric. He purchased the two adjacent homes in order to have more room for his holiday display. It’s not quite as extravagant as Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, but buying two homes simply to have better December decorations is, well, wasteful at best.
What’s involved in upgrading a thousand-light set of Christmas decorations into a three-house extravaganza? For starters, the Osborne clan added approximately three million lights. They even introduced an entire nativity scene to emphasize the religious symbolism of the event. Then, they employed a massive globe to highlight the placement of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Bethlehem, Palestine, the two most important locations for the event.
The circular driveway included rotating carousels of lights, which added visual wonder and pageantry to the proceedings. Since no holiday decoration is complete without a Christmas tree, the family constructed a seven-story tall one right on top of their kitchen. The tree featured three different colors to enhance the holiday spirit, and the driveway alone included 70,000 lights, a factor of seventy more than the 1986 decorations.
If your mind immediately starts to wonder about their electric bill, you’re not the only one. The family patriarch stubbornly refused to provide hard numbers about his joint venture with his daughter. At one point, the local utility company, Arkansas Power and Light, offered their insights on the topic. Without adding specific details, they acknowledged that the December utility bill for the lights show rivaled the average annual bill for citizens of Little Rock.
Two points emphasize the absurdity of the situation. The first is that the display took on a life of its own to the point that the Osborne family had to hire a full-time engineer. His sole job was literally to keep the lights on at the Osborne house(s). The other is that the display drained so many resources that one year when Jennings flipped the power switch for the first time, he blew the breaker for the entire neighborhood. And that was probably the moment that directly led to…
Angry neighbors aka wear your sunglasses at night
Image: Disney
How would you feel if you were a neighbor of Jennings Osborne? It’d be like living next to Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation, only ramped up several orders of magnitude. There were THREE MILLION lights. Take the time to count how many lights you have stored in your holiday boxes. Then, perform some multiplication to understand just how massive an undertaking the Osborne family offering eventually became.
Today, many cities seem to have that one home whose holiday decorations are so festive that people drive across town to enjoy the view. In the early 1990s, the Osborne situation was still somewhat of a novelty. Given the larger-than-life persona of the Santa Claus-shaped microbiologist and the ostentatious nature of his light show, locals swarmed the accompanying roads to see the sights.
For the other people who lived on Robinwood Street and Cantrell Road, the entire situation was a nightmare. December is always a busy time for homeowners, whether they celebrate the holidays or not. Retail shopping and end-of-year get-togethers force people to travel more often than normal. Suffice to say that the logistics of the Osborne Family Spectacle V1.0 caused many trials and tribulations for the rest of the people living on the block.
Over time, people alerted the media that they needed as long as two hours simply to drive to the grocery store during December, the month when the lights were on display. It was a five-minute trip otherwise. Traffic escalated by a factor of dozens when the rest of Little Rock headed to Robinwood Street to see the lights. And the lights themselves were no picnic. It was the holiday decoration equivalent of staring directly at the sun. Neighbors complained that they had to purchase thicker drapes and shades to reduce the glare caused by millions of Christmas lights.
Jennings Osborne was an accomplished businessman with a generous disposition and a terrific personality. He was also a terrible neighbor, at least in December. When the other residents asked that he dial down the lights a bit, Osborne responded by adding more. Three million more. It’s simultaneously an obnoxious and hysterical response, although the people living there understandably found little amusement. The butting of heads put the microbiologist and six of his most opinionated neighbors on a legal collision course.
The lawsuit that went viral
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While a Rashomon aspect exists with regards to the he said/she said nature of the Osborne Christmas Lights lawsuit, all parties acknowledge a few pertinent details. For 35 days each year, Robinwood Street and Cantrell Road featured one of the most dazzling light shows in the United States. Pilots confirmed that they could see the light show from 80 miles above. The people residing on Cantrell Road in particular suffered, because the three Osborne homes directly faced that road.
In addition to the complaints above, a very serious problem existed. Due to the ridiculous level of traffic near the decoration event, cars couldn’t get through easily. The other people living there rightfully worried about emergency situations. No early responders could navigate their way to a crisis situation in acceptable time, and every second counts in such situations. A delay of a few minutes could literally stand as the difference between life and death for people living on these streets. While everyone loves Christmas decorations, nobody wants to die because of them.
For his part, Jennings Osborne was resolute on the point that he owned three different houses on the block. He paid for everything out of his own pocket, including special dispensations to the utility board to ensure that his lights no longer endangered everyone else. They operated on their own transformer system. He felt that he’d been more than fair with his neighbors and remained resolute that he would not shut down something that pleased his daughter so much.
The war was on.
A little more than the law would allow
Image: Disney
Half a dozen residents in the neighborhood filed suit against Jennings Osborne. They stated their case in Pulaski County, asking that the court file an injunction against their troublesome neighbor. They noted that Osborne had created six acres of headaches with no discernible benefits. His counterclaim was simple. “I do this to make people happy.” The unbiased perspective of the matter is that both parties were correct. Osborne provided an inimitable service that enriched the lives of many Arkansans. In doing so, he wreaked havoc with the lives of the people residing nearby.
The suit itself was a slam dunk according to most legal analysts. It’s simply an electric interpretation of the premise that your rights end where your friend’s nose begins. As predicted, the court ruled against the multi-millionaire, albeit in a compromise. He could keep the lights on as long as he limited the event to 15 days and kept to a strict schedule. Osborne could operate the festivities from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Most people would evaluate the situation as an amicable solution. The microbiologist raged over the court decision. After his attorneys examined the court ruling, they pointed out a loophole of sorts. He could just ignore the county courthouse, but it would cost him. To keep the Osborne Family Lights Spectacle thrilling his fellow citizens, he would have to pay a $10,000 fine. Given that the man bought two adjoining properties to boost the show’s potential, this was a no-brainer. After only three days, his neighbors pointed out to the court that the entrepreneur had violated their terms. The actual legal documents are still online if you’re interested.
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Image: Disney
As the Osborne clan kept the lights on, they appealed to a higher power, the Arkansas State Supreme Court. Their first attempt stood on more solid legal ground than a later one that fittingly used a religious argument to request removal of the injunction. Initially, the family attorneys argued that attempts by the neighbors to shut down the display infringed on Osbornes’ First Amendment rights. The highest court in the state refused to negate the lower court ruling.
At this point, Osborne’s lawyers attempted to entice the United States Supreme Court into accepting the case. They changed their argument. Many of the items on display celebrated the family’s Christian faith. One of the most famous of them was a manger that created additional legal issues on its own a couple of years later.
Due to the deployment of such artifacts, these attorneys maintained that the lower court ruling to shut them down diminished Osborne’s religious rights. He was unable to celebrate Christmas in his preferred manner. It was a desperate gamble that they only tried because everything else had lost. They determined that their best chance for a legal save was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative members of the nation’s highest court.
Thomas infrequently accepted such legal rulings, and Osborne had several connections with the man thanks to his friendships with soon-to-be Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and current president of the United States Bill Clinton. Arkansas was an insular state, and Jennings Osborne was a beloved industrialist. Alas, Thomas recognized what everyone else did. As much as people loved the family light show, it was infringing on the rights of their Robinwood Street neighbors.
The frustrated Osborne family patriarch later recounted, “I got 60,000 letters last year from people thanking me.” He felt like the needs of the many should outweigh those of the few unfortunates residing in the same neighborhood as him. After all, he did many other things to bring positives into their lives. He hosted free barbecues in the backyard and never turned down a request to help anyone in need, even when they were suing him to shut down something he loved.
The night the lights went off in Arkansas
Image: Disney
Bitter over the legal results, Jennings Osborne resolved to maintain Christmas decorations at the family home(s). He simply reduced them in scale to abide the court decision. Otherwise, he would have eventually faced legitimate jail time. As it was, a judge gave him a 10-day suspended sentence. That left the family holding a ridiculous number of lights and other holiday paraphernalia.
They donated some of it to the city of Little Rock. Amusingly, this backfired a bit when civil rights advocates noted that the aforementioned manger shouldn’t stand on display at a public facility. Such a move failed to separate church from state. Given everything else that had transpired, Osborne took this as the final insult to his generosity, noting that he could easily sell the piece for $30,000 or more.
As Jennings Osborne experienced the humiliation of public censuring for performing a kind deed for the community, his Christmas decorations went viral. News organizations across the country picked up the story. How could people sue a person for having one of the greatest holiday exhibitions in the United States? Isn’t that the true definition of an American? In an era before the concept of going viral, the Osborne family lights show became a national curiosity virtually overnight.
Residential Street versus a residential street
Image: Disney
One of the people who heard the Little Rock Christmas lights story was named Bruce Laval. He happened to be a vice president in what was then known as the Theme Parks division of The Walt Disney Company. Laval assigned one of his employees, John Phelan, to make first contact. He was a show director at Walt Disney World, which you can see if you read this 2011 Disney Parks article about Jennings Osborne. In the story, Phelan reveals that in 1995, The Walt Disney Company tasked him with the responsibility of bringing a new Christmas pageant to Hollywood Studios or, as it was then known, Disney-MGM Studios.
The decision was understandable given that the other two Orlando gates, Magic Kingdom and Epcot, already offered majestic holiday festivities. Already perceived as the least of the three parks, Hollywood Studios needed to offer stronger entertainment to overcome its reputation as a half-day park. In watching the news, Phelan received inspiration.
The situation represented kismet at its finest. In Orlando, the leading family vacation destination in the world needed a new Christmas exhibition. In Little Rock, a frustrated entrepreneur owned literally millions of lights and decorations that the state court banned him from displaying. Everything seemed so perfect and yet an odd hiccup almost prevented the parties from forming a partnership.
Jennings Osborne was of course familiar with Walt Disney World. Everyone in America is, and most southerners vacation there at least once a decade. The Osborne clan had more money than the average southerner, which means that they were able to visit often. The close-knit family adored the place. The news that The Walt Disney Company wanted to host their light show should have put them over the moon. Alas, this is the one about the misunderstanding.
Disney utilizes tongue-in-cheek naming conventions for their parks. When you enter Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, you walk down Main Street, a road that is relatable to everyone. Sustaining that philosophy, Hollywood Studios includes a place called Residential Street. When Phelan pitched Jennings on transporting the Osborne show to central Florida, he announced his intention to locate it right there on Residential Street, a central location of the theme park.
Osborne, like a lot of casual Disney fans, didn’t appreciate the distinction. What he heard was that his majestic family heritage of lights wasn’t special to Disney. Instead, they would host it on a standard residential street. It was a Disney homonym that underscores the importance of capital letters, but those are difficult to emphasize in speech.
For his part, Phelan felt understandable confusion about the cool reception to his idea. He expected the Osborne family to embrace this turn of events as serendipitous. Had he not pressed Osborne further by writing a follow-up letter, the entire display could have easily never moved to Hollywood Studios. Thankfully, the parties worked through the miscommunication, saving the Osborne family lights for years to come. Phelan discovered his good fortune in a hilarious way. When he returned from his own family vacation, boxes of Christmas decorations were waiting in his office. Osborne had excitedly shipped them the moment they realized the show was moving to Walt Disney World.
A Hollywood spectacle
Image: Disney
From The Walt Disney Company’s perspective, the Jennings lights were a gift from above. The corporation notoriously planned and plotted everything. With the Hollywood Studios lights show, however, someone else had already done the initial shopping for them. The Osborne family shipped everything they thought Disney could use. The transported decorations required four 18-wheel Mayflower Moving Vans to transport farther south to Florida. And the price was right for any corporation: free.
The already rich Osborne clan had no need for money. They simply wanted to vacation at Walt Disney World over the holidays to visit the lights that they loved so dearly. The company agreed to host them free of charge onsite whenever they wanted during the holiday season. Disney feasibly could have spent millions of dollars on a light show. Instead, one fell right in their lap and from Disney fans to boot.
A game of cat and mouse
Image: Disney
Because Disney is in the habit of plussing attractions, they never rested on Osborne Jennings’ laurels. Instead, they constantly added new pieces to the collection. They did so partially to entertain the multi-millionaire. Cast members played a game of cat and mouse with the entrepreneur they grew to love, changing the location of some of his favorite items while introducing others. They knew that he would walk past every section, meticulously inspecting that it met his lofty standards, which were every bit as high as Disney’s.
An adorable game even developed by happenstance. While sifting through the literal millions of items from the Osborne Lights boxes, they found a black cat decoration. The Disney employees puzzled over the appropriate location of this oddity. Eventually, they quit trying to guess and simply asked the curator himself. When queried, Osborne busted up with laughter, confessing that it was a Halloween decoration that his family accidentally misplaced in the wrong storage container.
The cast members ran with the joke, choosing to place the cat among the Christmas decorations. Osborne again experienced delight when he discovered the hidden treasure. From that point forward, hiding the Halloween cat became an annual tradition. The delightful game reinforced the perfection of the lights permanently residing at Walt Disney World.
By the numbers
Image: Disney
When placed in their proper locations, the lights and other decorations cover 10 miles of Hollywood Studios. The wizards at Disney also found a way to disguise most of the extension cords needed to provide power to the breathtaking display. Those cords are approximately 30 miles long. Remember that when you look at your mess of tangled cords next time.
Putting up the lights is an ordeal. Disney spends 20,000 man-hours each year on the project, the equivalent of 500 40-hour work weeks. And the power required to keep the lights on is staggering. Disney estimates they utilize 800,000 watts during the six weeks that the show runs each year from mid-November until the start of January. Disney eventually discovered a way to mitigate the costs of the electricity. They persuaded Sylvania to sponsor the display in 2005.
The year prior to the sponsorship, a major change occurred. After 10 years of operation on Residential Street, the demolition of that area to make room for Lights! Motors! Action! Extreme Stunt Show necessitated relocation of The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. At this point, it moved to Streets of America, a title that likely also confused Jennings Osborne at first.
Originally, fans worried that the show might go away. Those fears proved unfounded at the time. As late as 2011, just before tragedy befell him, Osborne noted in an interview that people caused too much fuss about the future of his exhibition. He pointed out that Disney had just extended the contract yet again, and he expected them to continue to do so. After all, Disney fans across the globe loved to visit during the holidays to enjoy his family’s decorations.
Death and taxes
Image: Disney
Alas, the innate largesse of the microbiologist eventually proved his undoing. It also had help. No man who loves barbecued ribs that much is assured of a long and healthy life. On July 27, 2011, Jennings Osborne died of a heart ailment. He was 67 years old. By that time, he’d spent almost half of his life enriching the lives of others with his lights show.
Even before Osborne died, however, his natural generosity had cost the man his fortune. He paid for holiday lights for government exhibitions in more than 25 cities across the country. He frequently provided financial aid to people struck by tragedy. He also paid for the funeral arrangements when locals informed him of people who couldn’t. Even the barbecues that increased his chances of heart problems also earned enough in charitable donations to feed thousands of indigent people in his state. He was a hero to his very core and the very definition of someone who would literally give a stranger the shirt off his back.
After his demise, the long-rumored financial woes about Jennings Osborne proved correct. The court system, unkind to him even after his death, ruled that his estate was several million dollars in debt. It was a stunning financial collapse, particularly in light of the fact that he sold his company for $24 million in 2004. Facing bankruptcy, the family was left with no other choice. They eventually had to sell the three houses from which The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights originated.
Even in his death, he found a way to give back to the state of Arkansas. A buyer at auction ceded the properties Osborne once owned there to Redfield, and the eventual earnings from the resale of the main property earned $890,000 for a city with an annual operating budget of $650,000.
In 2015, Mitzi and Breezy received additional bad news. The Walt Disney Company’s announced Star Wars and Pixar Land expansions required part of the tract of land ordinarily reserved for The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. People had already deduced the implication of the construction work at Hollywood Studios even before the announcement.
On September 11, 2015, Disney confirmed that they would discontinue the beloved Osborne lights show on January 3, 2016. In December of 2016, for the first time in 30 years, the Jennings clan will not display a lights show at either their former home on Robinwood Street or their adopted home at Hollywood Studios. Truly, it’s the end of an era.
Perhaps the saddest part of the closing is that the family who only recently lost their patriarch is now forced to watch his legacy die. And that comes on the heels of his overly generous nature leaving him millions of dollars in debt, meaning that the homes that embodied a key part of his legacy are no longer owned by the family.
Jennings Osborne was an innovator, a philanthropist, and an American original. His impact on the citizens of Little Rock, Arkansas, once appeared to be his legacy. Then, his breathtaking exhibition of dancing lights transferred to Walt Disney World. At that point, he became a signature part of the annual holiday tradition of many families. Millions will miss The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, and Disney would be wise to take those millions of lights out of storage and put them back on display sooner rather than later.
