The work of many woman Imagineers is evident in the intricate details of the theme parks they influenced, designed, and built, from the vibrant costumes of Mary Blair’s dolls in “it’s a small world” to the puff of each feathered chest Harriet Burns crafted for Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room.
Few if any, however, can claim as much ‘recognizability’ as the late Leota “Lee” Toombs Thomas, best known for providing the serene, all-knowing visage (and name) of the Haunted Mansion’s Madame Leota. Not only did Thomas give life to one of the most iconic Disney Parks characters ever created; she was also instrumental in shaping attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean, “it’s a small world,” Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and Ford’s Magic Skyway. Perhaps most importantly, she approached her retirement by training Imagineers in Disneyland’s Show Quality Service Department, passing along principles of design and craftsmanship that endured long after she left the company.
Wharton goes to work for Disney
Image: Jeff Christiansen, Flickr (license)
In the early 1940s, eighteen-year-old Leota Anne Wharton showed up at the Ink & Paint department of the Disney Studios. The studio was putting the finishing touches on films like Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942), and had just started to refocus its efforts on propaganda films in support of the U.S. government during World War II. According to Life Magazine, 90% of the 550 employees at the studio were involved in the production of wartime films; at the time the article went to press, the Navy alone had ordered over 50 films on gunnery, bombing, and paratroop training, among other subjects.
To put it briefly: There was no shortage of work for animators, inkers, and painters, especially those of Wharton’s exceptional talent. And it wasn’t long before her skills were recognized with a promotion to the Animation department.
“[The studio] realized she was very good at line work and they put her in as an Inbetweener,” said Wharton’s daughter, Imagineer Kim Irvine. ‘Inbetweeners’ were tasked with refining the keyframes drawn by principal animators, as well as creating in-between frames that detailed the precise movements and gestures assigned to a specific character.
At some point, Irvine noted, Wharton was assigned to work in tandem with head animator Harvey Toombs on a full-length feature called Victory Through Air Power (1943), the first of the studio’s films with a clear educational bent. Four years later, the two artists wed, and Wharton—now Toombs—began a multi-year hiatus from the company to raise her family.
From Ink & Paint to Imagineering
Image: Disney
Fifteen years following Toombs’ departure from the Disney Studios, Walt was in the throes of another pet project. His first-ever theme park, Disneyland, was verging on its seventh anniversary with a seemingly endless list of attractions and shows still waiting to be developed and debuted to an eager public.
Walt already had a talented core of designers, figure-finishers, and model-makers in Harriet Burns, Wathel Rogers, and Fred Joerger—all inaugural members of a small but integral division termed ‘WED Enterprises’—and needed to expand his roster of Imagineers in order to maintain the kind of innovative standards that gave the park its pristine reputation.
As the company scoured its own departments for talented artists and would-be Imagineers, they ultimately decided to extend an invitation to Toombs. No longer an Inbetweener, she became one of just four or five women in the Model Shop, as the department was first called, and assisted with crafting, painting, and detailing scale models of the park, in addition to working on more complex projects like humanoid Audio-Animatronic figures and feathered, furry creatures. Her work as an immaculate figure-finisher was also evident in Disney’s custom-built attractions for the 1964-65 World’s Fair, which included future theme park rides like “it’s a small world,” Ford’s Magic Skyway, and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.
So often during its 64-year history, the Disney Parks have been lauded for their incredible attention to detail, with nary a leaf nor synthetic hair out of place. The classic attractions that Toombs helped flesh out were some of the most intricate ever attempted by the company, with hundreds of Audio-Animatronics to be outfitted, intricate set pieces to be constructed, special effects to be rigged, and historical and cultural costumes to be researched and patterned. Toombs was one of many Imagineers who took that attention to detail seriously, spending much of her time touching up the makeup on the swashbuckling antagonists of Pirates of the Caribbean and tweaking their hair and clothes until their expressions and style looked exactly right.
“It was that eye for detail that got her noticed by Walt and the rest of the team,” Rick West wrote at Theme Park Adventure in 2015. “[…] The finishing touches that Lee put on the figures in these world-class attractions were astonishing—and I absolutely feel that Disney’s animatronic figures never looked as good as they did when they were under the care of Lee and those early Imagineers that not only specialized in animatronics—they created them.”
Disney immortalizes Leota in the Haunted Mansion
Image: SolarSurfer, Wikimedia Commons
Every Imagineer left their mark on the Disney Parks in some shape or form, and for Toombs, that opportunity arose with the development of the Haunted Mansion in the late 1960s. The attraction was unlike anything else Imagineers had created for Disneyland: a spooky, chill-filled dark ride through an antebellum-era mansion, where guests came face-to-face with all manner of ghostly apparitions and optical illusions en route to their eventual escape. In the séance room, Imagineers envisioned a disembodied medium speaking to riders from within a crystal ball, someone to “call in the spirits” and receive messages from “somewhere beyond.”
Of course, it would take a special sort of person to channel the character of the blue-haired medium, and Disney had just the talent in mind. They turned to the first woman who step into the Imagineering department—Harriet Burns, already well-known for her work on Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and the Enchanted Tiki Room, among other attractions.
“They had me in a brace,” Burns told Jay Meyer (a model for one of the mansion’s singing graveyard busts). “I was going to be Madame Leota!”
Had it gone off without a hitch, guests might be singing the praises of ‘Madame Harriet’ today. But Burns’ features were too small to work for the floating head, and Imagineer Yale Gracey pivoted to Toombs instead.
“Blaine [Gibson] made a life mask of her face and Yale [Gracey], Wathel [Rogers] and the rest of the team filmed her, crazy makeup and all,” Irvine explained to D23. She was just 15 years old when her mother began the three-day rehearsal process prior to the recording, practicing widening her eyes and enunciating every word of Madame Leota’s spine-tingling script.
When it came time to record the audio for the spirit-like Leota, however, Toombs’ voice was deemed too high-pitched. Instead, the team brought in Eleanor Audley—familiar to Disney fans as Lady Tremaine (Cinderella) and Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)—to lend her deep, throaty voice to the séance scene. Toombs’ girl-like voice was reserved for the miniature Ghost Hostess who dismissed guests at the end of the ride. To this day, her small, sweet entreaties to “Hurry back!” can still be heard reverberating through the mansion’s final corridor.
Toombs moves out East
Image: Josh Hallett, Flickr (license)
Shortly after she wrapped her work at Disneyland, Toombs shifted her attention to the Florida Project. Walt and his team were paving the way for their next big resort and planned to replicate many of the attractions that had made its West Coast counterpart so successful. With Toombs’ help, they crafted another expansive cast of Audio-Animatronic figures and animals and expanded their offerings to include large-scale projects like the Hall of Presidents. There was no end to which she wouldn’t go in order to complete a job—even, as her sister-in-law Joann Loughlin told the Magical Mouse Schoolhouse, venturing into the chest-deep waters of the Jungle Cruise to fix the animatronic animals.
Toombs ran quality control on Walt Disney World’s shows and attractions for several years and eventually met and married her second husband, landscaper Hugh Thomas, while on the job. Eventually, she returned to California in 1979, where she helped found the Thomas Ceramics Company and designed special molds for distribution and retail in the Lillian Vernon Catalog. Prior to her official retirement from Disney, she passed on a wealth of knowledge and experience to up-and-coming Imagineers in the Staff, Paint, and Sign shops of Disneyland’s WDI Show Quality Service Department, ensuring that Disney’s attractions would retain the same level of quality and detail they had carried in the past.
Leota’s legacy lives on
Image: Loren Javier, Flickr (license)
No Disney Imagineer reaped more benefits from Toombs’ extensive knowledge and showmanship than Kim Irvine. The daughter of the infamous ‘Madame Leota,’ Irvine continued her mother’s legacy during her own lengthy and decorated career at the Disney Parks. She currently serves as the Director of Concept Design at Walt Disney Imagineering and accepted Leota’s Disney Legend award in 2009, which recognized Toombs’ enormous contributions to the company 18 years after her death in 1991.
While Irvine’s influence can be seen in everything from the cascading waterfalls around Rivers of America to the compass gracing the ground in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. There is perhaps no more fitting tribute to her own work (and that of her mother) than the revamped séance scene in Disneyland’s Haunted Manion Holiday overlay. When the overlay debuted in 2001, guests might have noticed a slight change in the visage and voice of the floating Madame Leota. Irvine had graciously agreed to model for the seasonal version of her mother’s classic character, while actress Susan Blakeslee delivered an effortless impersonation of Audley’s voice.
Observant guests visiting the Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion, on the other hand, might notice a still more permanent tribute to Toombs—and her best-known contribution to the parks—in the form of a semi-animated tombstone. Under her watchful gaze, the inscription reads:
“Dear sweet Leota,
beloved by all,
in regions beyond now,
but having a ball.”
