Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Marty was a student at UCLA and editor of its Daily Bruin newspaper in 1955 when he was recruited to create an 1890s-themed newspaper, The Disneyland News, a month before the theme park opened. After graduating, he joined Disneyland full-time in 1956, where he held responsibility for most of the park’s publicity and marketing materials.

Marty Sklar's new window at City Hall

In 1961, he moved to WED Enterprises, renamed in 1986 to Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked on attractions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Among the attractions he helped to design during this period were The Enchanted Tiki Room and It’s a Small World, the latter originally for the World’s Fair. For nearly 10 years, he wrote personal materials for Walt Disney for use in publications, television and special films. In 1974 he became vice president of concepts/planning, and guided the creative development of EPCOT Center (now known as Epcot) at Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort.

As vice president of creative development, executive vice president and then president of Imagineering for nine years, Sklar supervised the design and construction of Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney-MGM Studios, Disneyland Paris, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney’s California Adventure, Tokyo DisneySea, the Walt Disney Studios Park and most recently Hong Kong Disneyland. Former Disneyland International chairman Jim Cora later said of him, “He understands the Disney way because he learned it at Walt’s knee. He is the keeper of the keys, the conscience, the Jiminy Cricket for the organization.”

On February 16, 2006, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, , Jay Rasulo, announced that Sklar would resign from his current position and take up the new position of international ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering. The occupation would entail traveling around to art and design and architecture colleges, universities and other institutions around the world, offering seminars and attracting new talent to the company, as well as being a presence at future attraction and park openings, representing the company.

Marty Sklar and close friend and mentor John Hench

Marty said in a joint statement, “I knew that as my 72nd birthday and my 50th Disney anniversary approached, I would look for new challenges, so when Jay Rasulo asked me to talk about the future, I was ‘all ears’ to a challenging proposal Jay made. It not only seems to be one of those ideas that is overdue, but it was clear to me that I am the perfect casting (perhaps the only candidate) capable of originating and organizing this assignment.”

In 2001, Marty was recognized as a Disney Legend and was the second recipient of the Themed Entertainment Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He continues to serve as president of Ryman Arts, whose Ryman Program for Young Artists honors the late Herb Ryman, an artist, designer and fellow Disney Legend.

I leave you with a couple of great tributes that have been written up on Marty’s fantastic career – “Our Ambassador Travels On” at D23 and “Thank You For 54 Incredible Years” at DisneyShawn.

Marty was formerly vice president of concepts and planning for the company, before being promoted to president, and then eventually taking the position of vice chairman and principal creative executive of the company before his current role.

Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Marty was a student at UCLA and editor of its Daily Bruin newspaper in 1955 when he was recruited to create The Disneyland News, a tabloid newspaper set in 1890 that was sold on Main Street, U.S.A. After graduating, he joined Disneyland full-time in 1956, where he held responsibility for most of the park’s publicity and marketing materials.

In 1961, he moved to WED Enterprises, renamed in 1986 to Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), where he worked on attractions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Among the attractions he helped to design during this period were The Enchanted Tiki Room and It’s a Small World. For nearly 10 years, he wrote personal materials for Walt Disney for use in publications, television and special films. In 1974 he became vice president of concepts/planning, and guided the creative development of EPCOT Center (now known as Epcot) at Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort.

As vice president of creative development, executive vice president and then president of Imagineering for nine years, Sklar supervised the design and construction of Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney-MGM Studios, Disneyland Paris, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney’s California Adventure, Tokyo DisneySea, the Walt Disney Studios Park and most recently Hong Kong Disneyland. Former Disneyland International chairman Jim Cora later said of him, “He understands the Disney way because he learned it at Walt’s knee. He is the keeper of the keys, the conscience, the Jiminy Cricket for the organization.”

In February 2006, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Jay Rasulo, announced that Sklar would resign from his current position and take up the new position of international ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering. The occupation entails traveling around to art and design and architecture colleges, universities and other institutions around the world, offering seminars and attracting new talent to the company, as well as being a presence at future attraction and park openings, representing the company.It is this position that he will retire from on July 17 of this year.

One very interesting fact about Marty is that he is the only cast member to have had an active role in the opening of all 11 Disney theme parks to date. He was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) in 1995, and has been inducted into the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) Hall of Fame. Marty Sklar is truly a living piece of Disney history and will be missed greatly. He’s now working on a book about his career at Disney.

Photo copyright Disney.

The 128-page paperback takes readers land by land through the Anaheim theme park, offering anecdotes, history and trivia from Disney Imagineers as well as early concept art, sketches and schematics of many rides and attractions.

“From a process standpoint, it offers a bit of a peek behind the curtain of how we turn concepts into reality,” said Alex Wright, an Imagineer who gathered tales from his co-workers for the book. “In a way, there’s no one person who can tell you all these different stories. We have so many different disciplines.”

To research the book, Wright delved into the extensive Disney archives and toured the park with long-time Imagineers Tony Baxter and Kim Irvine. The hard part, Wright said, was deciding what to leave out.

“When it’s Disneyland, there’s always more to tell,” Wright said. “You could have told another 1,000 stories with all the history that’s gone on there.”

Designed to be read in the park, the “field guide” attempts to strike a difficult balance between appealing to first-time Disneyland visitors as well as life-long fans.

Brady MacDonald of Los Angeles Times who reviewed the book for an article offers some of his own personal favorite finds.

Early Concepts Never Realized:

• Walt envisioned live exotic animals roaming the banks of the Jungle Cruise.

• A runaway mine-car theme for Indiana Jones Adventure incorporating the Jungle Cruise boats and the Disneyland Railroad.

• A walk-through Pirates of the Caribbean wax museum — the water and boats weren’t added until after construction started.

• A Casey Jr. Circus Train roller-coaster thrill ride — retooled within weeks of opening day into a gentle kiddie ride.

Trivia Tidbits:

• The New Orleans Square train station depot taps out Morse code of Walt Disney’s opening day dedication speech.

• The Latin motto on Mr. Toad’s coat of arms reads: “Speeding with Toad is always absurd.”

• Walt liked to take pre-opening morning drives in a Carnation milk truck along Main Street U.S.A.

• Steven Spielberg recorded the rumbles and clanking of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for the mine-car chase scene in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

The Truly Odd:

• Uprooted orange trees were planted upside down during the construction phase of the Jungle Cruise to represent missing foliage.

• Walt gave his wife, Lilly, a petrified tree for their wedding anniversary. (She donated it to the theme park, where it still resides in Frontierland.)

• Visitors in the Star Tours queue may hear an intercom page for Egroeg Sacul (George Lucas backwards).

You can get the book on Amazon for $9.95. I’m hoping it is available at the park itself as I’ll be there next Thursday and Friday. And as this Disney fan is always hungry to learn the in-and-outs of the park, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this little gem one way or another.

Related: Book your dream Disney vacation at Expedia.com!

Inside you will find information on all the famous Imagineers – Harper Goff, Ken Anderson, Sam McKim, Marc Davis, Claude Coats, Rolland “Rolly” Crump, Yale Gracey, Fred Joerger, Harriet Burns, Wathel Rogers, Roger Broggie, Ward Kimball, and many others. The book’s 157 pages will reveal how these talented people helped to bring about what is still the most unique theme park experience today which I might add has also become a model for so many to follow after.

Following is a summary of what you will find:

Fifty years ago, Walt Disney utterly transformed the concept of outdoor entertainment venues from tawdry carnivals and seedy amusement piers called “amusement parks,” to an entirely new destination that would come into common vernacular as the “theme park.”

Although Disneyland was the inspiration of one man, Walt did not achieve this history-altering concept on his own. Using his innate talent for combining disparate skills and personalities, he assembled a creative team that blended imagination with engineering. Walt called this group his “Imagineers.”

Walt Disney’s Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park introduces a core group of the originators of Disneyland and the other Disney parks. It explores their individual relationships with Walt and each other, their creative breakthroughs and failures, and their rivalries and professional politics. This candid narrative of their lives and contributions to a very special form of entertainment illustrates why, half a century later, their work continues to be vital and important to millions of people every day, and all over the world.

Lavishly illustrated throughout with rare and never-before-seen artwork and photographs, Walt Disney’s Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park will further enrich the reader’s appreciation of the exceptional talent behind Disneyland’s creation and ongoing evolution.

If you are not already convinced you should immediately purchase this book to expand your Disney theme park knowledge, Ken Pellman has done a full review at LaughingPlace.com. Myself – I’ll skip the review and schedule some time to read through it once it arrives.

Related: Book your dream Disney vacation at Expedia.com!

Harriet first came to Disney in 1955 when she was hired to paint sets and props for the new Mickey Mouse Club television show. She soon began coordinating the show’s color styling and even designed and built the famous “Mouse Clubhouse.”

She later joined Walt Disney Imagineering (formerly called WED, “Walter Elias Disney,” Enterprises) where she helped create Sleeping Beauty Castle, New Orleans Square, the Haunted Mansion, and more. She also helped construct Storybook Land and designed all of the “singing birds” in the Enchanted Tiki Room, the first Audio-Animatronics attraction at Disneyland.

Harriet retired from Disney in 1986 and moved to Santa Barbara. In her retirement, she continued to stayed active in the Disney community and in the year 2000, was inducted into the Walt Disney hall of fame as a Disney Legend. Harriet is also the only woman to have a window on Disneyland’s Main Street USA whose inscription reads “The Artisans Loft – Handmade Miniatures By Harriet Burns”.

Next time I visit Disneyland, I’ll be sure to remember Harriet when visiting the Enchanted Tiki Room and will look for her window on Main Street as well.

Harriet is survived by her daughter Pam Clair. Memorial services will take place in August in Santa Barbara, where she was an active member in the arts and music community.

Story sources include Disney Legends and The Disney Blog. There is also a couple of great tributes at LaughingPlace.com and MouseClubhouse.com.

Related: Book your dream Disney vacation at Expedia.com!