You can’t step foot in a Disney park without marveling over some feat of Disney Imagineering. From the twinkle in José’s eye during “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room” to the smart-aleck swagger of the red-headed pirate to the way Sleeping Beauty Castle towers over the Hub, Imagineers are responsible for breathing life into Disney’s greatest attractions and most convincing details.
Today, it takes thousands of Imagineers to take new attractions, lands, transportation systems, advanced Audio-Animatronics, shows, and nighttime spectaculars from conception to implementation in Disney’s six theme parks. Back in the 1950s, however, there were just three founding members of Walt Disney Imagineering (then termed WED Enterprises): Fred Joerger, Wathel Rogers, and Harriet Burns. Together, their small team helped shape some of the most iconic attractions in Walt’s original park, including Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Enchanted Tiki Room, even Sleeping Beauty Castle itself.
While all three were pioneers and Disney Legends in their own right, Burns held a unique and coveted distinction as the company’s very first (non-clerical) female Imagineer. Not only did her tenacious, creative spirit and fastidious attention to detail distinguish her among her peers, but her contributions stood the test of time as the parks expanded in scope and style. Here’s a little history about one of the most influential women in Disney Parks history.
From Mousketeer (prop designer) to Imagineer
Image: Josh Hallett, Flickr (license)
Two years after relocating her family to the sunny clime of Los Angeles, California, Harriet Burns took a job at the Disney Studios. A 27-year-old interior, prop, and set designer, Burns was brought onto The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955 to help design, shape, and paint props for Disney’s new television program. Her timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous. It was a formative year for the company in nearly every division: The Mickey Mouse Club would soon introduce its viewers to the likes of child actors Annette Funicello, Sharon Baird, and Bobby Burgess (not to mention the famously catchy “Mickey Mouse Club March” theme song); the studio would debut its eighth feature-length animated film, Lady and the Tramp; and Walt’s longtime pet project, Disneyland, would begin to revolutionize the theme park industry from the moment it opened its gates to the public.
In the midst of all the hubbub, Burns found ways to set herself apart. Equipped with a degree in art from Southern Methodist University and a keen sense of color and advanced design, she conceptualized and helped build many of the set pieces that were used in the show, including the iconic barn-shaped “Mouse Clubhouse” with its rustic sloped roof, cut-out window, and familiar red-and-white Mickey Mouse logo hanging on the door.
That talent certainly wasn’t wasted on sets and props, but Disney soon devised bigger plans for the young designer. She was invited to expand her responsibilities by taking on projects at WED Enterprises, a humble division which boasted no more than a handful of employees and was something of a glorified model shop during its inception in the mid-1950s. Small as it was, it played a pivotal role within the company. Alongside model-maker Fred Joerger and artist/sculptor Wathel Rogers, Burns operated sanders and drill presses, saws, and lathes as she crafted miniature models of Disneyland attractions for Walt to review. It was her model of Sleeping Beauty Castle—the soon-to-be centerpiece of the park—that she submitted to artists Herb Ryman and Eyvind Earle, each of whom outfitted the turrets and towers in whimsical color schemes of their choosing. (We have Ryman to thank for the pink-and-blue palette of the modern Sleeping Beauty Castle, which eventually won out over Earle’s bolder, jewel-toned prototype.)
And, as Disneyland grew its attractions and special projects in the decades following Opening Day, Burns’ work became more and more integral to the park’s development.
Flying elephants and circus mice, oh my!
Image: Gene Spesard, Flickr (license)
Disneyland opened with 17 initial attractions in the summer of 1955, but it wasn’t long before Walt began adding to the roster. On August 16, less than a month after the park’s debut, Dumbo the Flying Elephant took its place above the tent-like show buildings in the leftmost corner of Fantasyland.
Getting the elephants to Fantasyland had been a long and frustrating process for Disney’s Imagineers, one which required the talents of sculptors Chris Mueller and Blaine Gibson, artist Bruce Bushman, and, once again, Harriet Burns. Each ride vehicle weighed over 700 pounds—an unliftable weight for a carnival-style ride—and the ears that were supposed to flap up and down as boys and girls operated the internal levers continued to malfunction. The most grueling task was set to Burns during one of the ride’s major renovations, when she was tasked with painting a petite figure of Timothy Q. Mouse while sitting astride the top of the attraction.
It took an extra dose of courage for Burns to complete the job while managing her acrophobia, as she later revealed in her memoir (excerpted by Sam Gennawey): “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to do the best job I’ve ever done so I’ll never have to do it again!’”
Away from Dumbo’s posse of flying elephants, Disney kept Burns far more grounded. She tinkered with the intricate miniaturized models for the Storybook Land Canal Boats and collaborated with Joerger, animator Rolly Crump, and designer Claude Coats on the concept of a “Rock Candy Mountain” attraction that would have combined Walt’s love of miniatures with the world of the fantastical and eventually-scrapped spinoff film Rainbow Road to Oz. The former project became a classic after its premiere in 1956, while the latter never made it past the planning stage—and the enormous, candy-decorated model it inspired was ditched in a parking lot once everyone lost their appetite (both metaphorically and physically) for the idea.
Burns brings Walt’s birds back to life
Image: Ken Lund, Flickr (license)
By the 1960s, there were far more exciting projects in the works at Disneyland. A new strain of robotics, termed “Audio-Animatronics,” was finally nearing completion, and it had huge ramifications for the future of the company’s films and attractions.
As with everything he did, Walt had grand visions for the new technology. He fantasized about an early version of the Hall of Presidents and commissioned an early working model of Abraham Lincoln’s head. The Imagineers, meanwhile, kept more modest goals in mind. Well before a full-bodied version of Lincoln would debut at the World’s Fair or receive a permanent installation in Disneyland’s Town Square, Magic Kingdom’s Town Square, and Magic Kingdom’s Liberty Square, Disney’s team came up with the idea of an Audio-Animatronic populated restaurant.
Birds would sway and sing as guests relaxed in the tropical ambience of the “Enchanted Tiki and Bird Room featuring Disney’s Legends of the Enchanted Tiki Show”… but it quickly became apparent that both the name of the restaurant and the concept itself were far too complicated to work as smoothly as Walt would have liked.
The idea gradually took shape as a 16-minute show adjacent to the Tahitian Terrace, where a witty foursome of internationally-based macaws would introduce the audience to a wider cast of animated characters. It was easier said than done. Among the many problems the avian Audio-Animatronics ran into—staying cool in the Anaheim heat and syncing up with the lyrics to the Sherman Brothers’ “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room,” for instance—was the issue of their plumage.
The problem in a nutshell: Although the animatronics were programmed to replicate the natural inhalation and exhalation patterns of live birds, the synthetic feathers began to crumple against their frames every time they took a breath.
This is where Burns came in. As a figure finisher, she gathered inspiration from the materials around her (including Walt’s own brushed wool sweater) and played around with various dyes until she found something that looked natural and long-lasting—and not, in her words, “like mange.” Her successful fixes for the birds led to work on Mary Poppins (1964), where she helped engineer the tiny robin that perched on Julie Andrews’ finger during “A Spoonful of Sugar.” The creation of this animatronic proved far more difficult than simply sourcing synthetic material, as Burns ended up having to comp some Disneyland tickets in exchange for rare 71-year-old, arsenic-preserved robin feathers from the Natural History Museum.
Animating the first president of Disneyland
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
Walt’s dream of seeing the U.S. presidents come to life began to take a more concrete shape in the mid-60s. A full year before it was replicated and installed in its semi-permanent station in Disneyland’s Opera House, a life-size Audio-Animatronic of president Abraham Lincoln was created for the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair as part of a show called Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. The crowds had never seen its equal.
The reasons for developing an animatronic president were trifold. First, Walt claimed there was not enough depth and authenticity in paintings and speeches, no matter how famous or well-executed. A living, speaking sculpture could pay more accurate homage than a stationary piece of art. Second, it was a far more convincing medium to express some of Lincoln’s lofty ideas and historical messages. Reading (silently) a transcript of the Gettysburg Address would pale in comparison to hearing it from the lips of Honest Abe himself—that is, as close an approximation to Abe as you could reasonably get. And third, as Imagineers Marty Sklar and John Hench put it, a robot could provide a more consistent portrayal day-to-day than any living actor.
Figuring out how to construct such a convincing, human-like Audio-Animatronic was a challenge that none of the Imagineers had quite faced before. Certainly, it would take more labor and creativity than had been required to populate the whole of the Jungle Cruise and the Enchanted Tiki Room combined. A human animatronic would need to have more fluid movements than a singing macaw and a wider range of motion than the hippos that wagged their ears as they bobbed up and down the river. It would need to not only evoke the image of the person it was patterned after, but bring that person to life—similar to the famous wax figures of Madame Tussauds, only far more animated.
As Gibson sculpted a model of Lincoln’s head from the former president’s life mask, Rogers recorded complex movements via the control harness, Bob Gurr and Roger Broggie fine-tuned the mechanisms inside the animatronic, and Marc Davis helped flesh out the attraction, Burr was saddled with the responsibility of figuring out the skin. Like the birds’ feathers in the Enchanted Tiki Room, she needed a synthetic material that wouldn’t look unrealistic or rapidly decay with frequent, repeated movement. In an interview with Scott Wolf of Mouse Clubhouse, Burns admitted that she got pretty creative as she tried to develop a working skin for the president, experimenting with everything from fiberglass to latex and even resorting to using a home fryer, in which she would play around with various mixtures. In the end, she helped devise a vinyl plastisol-based substance called “Duraflex,” something close enough to real human skin that it could both flex and compress without cracking and, in doing so, channel Lincoln’s expansive range of emotion.
From Main Street to Chinatown to New Orleans… and beyond
Bryce Edwards, Flickr (license)
Beyond Burns’ models of Sleeping Beauty Castle, Storybook Land Canal Boats, and the Matterhorn Bobsleds, and her innovating figure finishing on the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Submarine Voyage, the Carousel of Progress, Pirates of the Caribbean (for which, it is said, she patterned one of the pirates after the family milkman), and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, she also worked on concepts for new lands within the Disney Parks. One of the first such projects was an area called “Chinatown,” which would have branched off Main Street, U.S.A. along Center Street.
Burns toiled over models for Disneyland’s Chinatown. Its main draw was a restaurant featuring an Audio-Animatronic Confucius, who was designed to bow to guests and dispense wise sayings. In the months before Abraham Lincoln was used as a model for Walt’s first human-based Audio-Animatronic, Confucius would have been the first such animatronic installed at Disneyland.
The idea was never realized, however. Burns worked on delicate building models for a week and was all set to run the project past Walt when he decided that Disneyland didn’t need a Chinatown.
“He said, ‘San Francisco has a good Chinatown,’” she told Wolf, “‘and we’ve got a little one here, so we don’t need one in Disneyland.’” Perhaps it was for the best—with Confucius and his Chinatown scrapped, Walt was inspired to take the project in a more… presidential direction.
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
Luckily, Burns got a second chance to fiddle with the development of a new land. Walt’s fascination had shifted from Chinatown back to New Orleans, another exoticized haunt of his, and it would become one of the biggest and most expensive projects the park had taken on since its inception. Like Main Street, New Orleans Square wasn’t intended to evoke a single American city (or several), but a specific time in history. With its ornate iron balconies, one-of-a-kind antique shops, and array of Southern comfort food, it veered toward romanticism rather than realism.
Among the various models Burns created for New Orleans Square was that of a mansion perched near the banks of Rivers of America. Well, to be more precise, she created three models: two that looked decrepit and spooky, as you might expect a haunted house (or, as it was at the time, a haunted walk-through attraction) to appear, and one that was in near-pristine condition.
It was the third model that Walt favored time and time again, driven, Burns said, by a strong desire for “everything in Disneyland to look good.” And when it came time to figure out the logistics of a haunted house attraction in the years after Walt’s death in 1966, she was among those considered to model for the ethereal Madame Leota—a role that was finally bestowed on fellow Imagineer Leota Toombs Thomas.
Burns’ legacy lives on even today
Image: Ken Lund, Flickr (license)
The best Imagineers aren’t marked by their innovative designs and out-of-the-box thinking, but by the way they continue to inspire the growth and creation of future Imagineering projects. Like so many of her talented peers, Harriet Burns left a legacy that is still followed and improved on today. You could fill a book with the contributions that she made to the Disney Parks. Better yet, take a stroll around Disneyland—you’ll be hard-pressed to make it more than a few steps before running into an attraction, building, or prop that she didn’t develop or enhance in some way.
You can find her in the dynamic staging of the wayward pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean, in the sky-colored turrets of Sleeping Beauty Castle and the snow-tipped peak of the Matterhorn Bobsleds, in the beautiful columns of the Haunted Mansion, in the elegant solarium and patio of the Plaza Inn, and the trill of every brilliantly-feathered bird in the Enchanted Tiki Room. You can find her, too, in the window over the Carriage Place Clothing Company as you turn from the Emporium to the Fire Station, one of 80+ windows specially decorated to honor the upper echelon of Disney Imagineers, animators, and pioneers: “The Artisans Loft – Handmade Miniatures By Harriet Burns,” it reads.
