Walt's Family & Friends A Conversation with Marty Sklar When Marty Sklar was still a student at UCLA, he got a call from Disney executive Card Walker. Sklar was, at that time, about to be editor of the school's newspaper, and he was told that Walt Disney was interested in putting out a tabloid newspaper to be sold on Main Street, Disneyland. "They interviewed me, and hired me for the job," he recalls, "and I went to work a month before Disneyland opened. And two weeks after I went to work, I had to present the concept to Walt, which was a little frightening for a 21-year-old who'd never worked professionally. But I got my first lesson in what Walt felt about what people did. He didn't care about what your background was or how old you were or anything like that. He just wanted to know what you could do." Decades later, Marty is still with the Disney organization. Over years working with Imagineering, he was central to many of the concepts for the theme parks, was fundamental to Walt's work in the 1964 World's Fair, and was called upon by Walt for his help on numerous projects. Following are excerpts from an interview done with Marty: Q. Tell us a little about the first newspaper on which you worked for Walt's Disneyland Q. That sounds much like Walt’s way of thinking. Nobody would have known you were using wood-type technology, but it makes a difference, right? Q. You were involved in a souvenir guide to Disneyland that taught you something important about Walt, right? Q. You were very involved in the World's Fair. What do you think got Walt involved in that venture? Q. The companies certainly got a good return on the investment, didn't they? Q. Let's talk about the Disney name. You've made reference to the distinction between Walt Disney the man, and Walt Disney the icon. Can you help us understand how Walt thought of this? Q. With that way of thinking, there must have been a line between the people who could sublimate their own need for credit and those who couldn't, right? Q. Tell us a little about the first newspaper on which you worked for Walt's Disneyland Marty:    It was called the Disneyland News and it was sold for ten cents on Main Street and it was treated like an old-time newspaper, in fact, I found the Earl Hayes Press, which no longer exists, in Hollywood, and they used wooden type for headlines and we really made it look authentic. And I remember very well that it sold 75,000 the first couple of months that Disneyland was open. You could get your name imprinted in the headline. We'd take off the main headline on the front page and you could say, "Marty Sklar visits Disneyland." Q. That sounds much like Walt’s way of thinking. Nobody would have known you were using wood-type technology, but it makes a difference, right? Marty:    Well, first of all, Walt was interested in the story and how to tell the story. There are lots of ways to tell stories but he loved the marriage of technology with story-telling, and I think it informed the whole theme-park business starting with Disneyland. And that marriage is so key to everything that we've always done in this field. Q. You were involved in a souvenir guide to Disneyland that taught you something important about Walt, right? Marty:    In the early ‘50s, one of my first assignments was doing pictorial souvenir guides. The souvenir books were costing 24 cents to print and handle and they were being sold in Disneyland for 25 cents. And in those days you had to go to Walt to get permission to raise that price. So the merchandise people and I went to Walt's office and they explained why they wanted to raise the price and he immediately said no. And they were kind of in shock and asked for an explanation. And he said, "Look, I don't care if we make any money on this single item. What's important about this item is that it gets on the coffee table in the living rooms of everybody who comes to Disneyland. Because that publication will communicate what Disneyland is." He said, "What I want is for that book to be on the coffee table of every home in America, Guests who come to Disneyland. So their friends and relatives will see it and want to come here. We'll make our money when they come here, they'll pay for admission, and then they'll buy souvenirs. That's really the purpose of something like this. We don't have to make money on every single item." Q. You were very involved in the World's Fair. What do you think got Walt involved in that venture? Marty:    The World's Fair was a great opportunity for Walt and he saw something that none of us realized at the time. He already was planning to do something in the eastern part of the country. So he was taking his entertainment directly to where all the sophisticates who sometimes criticized Disney entertainment, right in their homeland, right in New York. And beyond that, he had the idea that he could expand Disneyland, which he wanted to do, by using other people's money and those were the big corporations. And I remember that at the time, Bill Cottrell, who was the president of WED and Walt's brother-in-law, had to decide in talking to these big companies like General Electric and Ford and Pepsi Cola, how much to charge for the use of Walt's name during the fair. And he decided that Walt should be paid a million dollars just for the use of his name during the fair, aside from everything else that we did and the companies paid for. But Walt said that any company that comes in to Disneyland with their show afterwards, the million dollars is your down payment. So you don't have to pay for my name at all. Q. The companies certainly got a good return on the investment, didn't they? Marty:    General Electric had come into the fair in a big way because they'd been involved in a price-fixing scandal in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, and they had a real public relations problem. And they did surveys about the attitude of the public toward General Electric before the fair. And then they did a survey after the fair. And the attitude toward General Electric had turned around entirely. It went from negative to 85 percent positive. And they likened it entirely to the association with Walt Disney and his name and his entertainment during the New York World's Fair. So it was a real quid pro quo in the sense that Walt got what he wanted: the General Electric Carousel of Progress, and the Dinosaurs from the Ford Pavilion, and It's a Small World, that Pepsi Cola paid for, and the Lincoln show all came back to Disneyland and we had great new entertainment, and the companies got what they wanted which was the association and the goodwill from the Disney name. Q. Let's talk about the Disney name. You've made reference to the distinction between Walt Disney the man, and Walt Disney the icon. Can you help us understand how Walt thought of this? Marty:    Well, Card Walker asked me to do the annual report for two or three years, it was in the mid-sixties, and one of the things that I was asked to do for the annual report was to talk about other producers, directors, etc. in the Studio. And we took the concept to Walt after we'd worked it out. And we explained to him what Card wanted us to do. And Walt said, "No, I don't want to do it that way." He said, "I don't want to have to name everybody in the Studio, they're great talent but I've worked my whole life to establish the name Walt Disney." He said, "I am not Walt Disney in that sense. Walt Disney is a thing, it's an image that people have and as a person I'm not exactly that person, and it's not important because the public persona that we built all these years is really what's important, from a company standpoint. And I can be a different person than that but I don't want you breaking it down. Everything we do here as a team, everything is Walt Disney. And it's not just me, it's all of us. Q. With that way of thinking, there must have been a line between the people who could sublimate their own need for credit and those who couldn't, right? Marty:    It had totally to do with ego. And a lot of people chafed at not having the recognition that they felt they deserved, but the more important thing was that all of us contributed to the entertainment that came out and still comes out under the name Walt Disney. And we know we can't be that big but we can be a part of something that is truly important and significant and exciting and, you know, teams achieve, in most things in life, teams achieve more than individuals. But you have to have a certain mindset and not be concerned about having your name in lights.