Tucson Daily Citizen from Tucson, Arizona • Page 18

THAT WAS GIVEN ME FOR-' Walt Disney shows Micheline Keating sortie of his memento' The Magic In The Man Who Created Disneyland By MICHEL1NE KEATING Citizen Entertainment Editor Where, else but in America could a man parlay a mouse into a multi-million dollar business? And what is he Jikc, this 20th century Aesop who created a wonderful world ot fantasy" for children only to find that three adults to every child buy his dream? Walt Disney's office his Burbank studios is large, cluttered room filled with big, easy chairs, books, scripts, a collection of elephants, and plans, plans, plans scattered everywhere. An outsize coffee table serves him for a desk, and on it is concentrated the most clutter of all. Disney himself is very much like this room a big, affable man who makes a kind of cult of informality. You wonder a bit how much of this easy-going manner is simulated and how much is the real man. And probably, by now, he doesn't quite know himself.

WHAT YOU SENSE immediately is an inner restlessness in him, and it is this restlessness that, perhaps" is the secret of his success. What is done, is past: what matters is tomorrow and what can be done in all the tomorrows to come. "People live too in the present," he said. "Everyone should plan ahead. I found out that most of my people get as stale as hell working on a current project.

So I plan ahead, I make sketches, I get them excited. Then they say, got something new planned. Let's get this thing It's a good trick." Disneyland is an example. Already he has millions of dollars worth of new features for the park on his drawing board. Occupying most of the wall opposite his desk is a map of the park.

But it is a map few visitors to Disneyland would recognize. About half the rides and exhibits on it are still a part of Walt's dreams, the shape of things to come. There are boldfaced dates marked on all of these projects, dates reading as far ahead as I960. But you know that when 1960 is here, there will be still more plans, and later dates. He 'showed me models and sketches of such features as Thomas Edison Place, showing how American living has been changed through electricity; a 17th century town, probably Philadelphia, recreating the events which cradled our liberty; a reproduction of New Orleans' French quarter, including a fabulous haunted house complete with ghosts, sliding panels and all that goes with them.

"I'm told I'm not supposed to scare the he said with a disarming grin. "But, shucks, people like to be scared. If there's one thing I've found out, it's that I'm not alone in being corny." BY.NEXT YEAR there will be a three-masted a small-scaled duplicate of the- Columbia, the first schooner to sail the seven seas. There will 1 be a 300-foot painting of the Grand Canyon to be viewed from the Rainbow Mine train in Frontierland. For Tomorrowland, he is planning a ride that will take patrons into a drop of water seen through a microscope; another that will reproduce the universe as seen through a telescope.

"There's a great urgency today to interest young people in science as a profession. I want to give them some attractions KiU5 illuming more about science." All these plans for the future were a little dizzying. -He was still talking of the future when we left the office and went down a tree-shaded walk to the studio restaurant for luncheon. DISNEYLAND IS already an enormously successful enterprise. What.

puzzled me was, why add to so much success. So I asked Disney what would happen if he left the park just as it is. "You sound like my bankers." he laughed. Then he said seriously, "When I built the park, I never intended it to be a static affair. The "fun of it thing like Disneyland is to keep it creative, make it grow." "But where will you put all these new projects?" I asked.

"We still have some unused space in the 64 acres laid out now. Then we will take over some of the present parking area. We have 100 acres for parking and we've found we don't need it miscalculated on the number of people who would come in each car." He said that in summer the out-of-state visitors at the park average 47 per cent. The rest come from California, and the percentage of local patronage is much higher in the off-season. That means the park must count on a goodish amount of repeaters.

"I don't want anyone to say he's not going back to Disneyland because he's seen everything," Disney said, indicating that he has an eye for business as well as being a. creator. Last year he put in $2 million worth of new things. And both the park and the studio were humming with new features abuilding for this year. "Most of the new things will be ready for our second anniversary celebration," Disney said.

NEW THIS SEASON and already open is the interior of. Sleeping Beauty's castle, showing animated scenes that make the visitor part of the popular fairy story. There also will be a new Streamlined Train of Tomorrow. "People love trains," Disney said. He is a lover of trains himself, and is delighted to find that the public shares this interest.

large section of the studio has been turned into a factory for the manufacture of new things for Disneyland. After lunch, Disney showed me through the buildings where the half-scale streamliner was befog put together in the machine shop; and the carpenter shop where the gondolas for Peter Pan's night night over London are being enlarged. "Last season it was estimated we needed 5,000 more rides per hour to handle peak day. There were 25,000 rides an hour then. Well, we're giving them the additional 5.000." In the plastics shop workmen were busy making such things as life-sized gorillas, antelopes and zebras.

At he led me through the confusion of pounding, riveting, welding- pausing here to show how the hydraulic mechanism that animates the jungle animals, stopping there to inspect the hide that was to cover a deer frame--the excitement in Disney's eyes and manner equalled that of any of the youngsters I'd seen at the park the previous day. "THE FOREMOST problem in all of this is money," he said, a little sadly. "We use the income to retire previous debts and need new capital to make improvements. 1 a J700.000 for this year's work and managed to get another 1600,000. We need more capacity in peak periods to maintain a profit.

We manage to break even in winter, so we've got to make it up in the summertime. "I'm trying to interest big companies in sponsoring such exhibits as Edison Place and the New Orleans sector. I want more free attractions in the park. This year' we'll have Monsanto's all-plastic House of Tomorrow; it will be ready, by June IS. I want a lot more things like that." I asked him if he was surprised by the large public response to the park--more than 6 million people have already gone through the turnstiles, including guests from such faraway places as Saudi Arabia, Iceland, Indonesia, and even the Soviet Union.

"I was surprised that we had our biggest day on Christmas," he said. "Nearly 35,000 people showed up. It was too many. We couldn't properly handle that big a crowd. "And I've been surprised that more adults than children go to the park.

I didn't think to many grownups would come by themselves. Another surprising thing is how early people arrive. This summer we're going to open up earlier--at 9 a.m. We may even open Main Street at 8:30, people can browse around that section before the rides get under way." When we finally said goodbye couldn't help feeling that the biggest show in Disneyland isn't the park but iu creator, Walt Disney himself. LAST DAY ALSO ALEGRES COMADRES" STARTING SUNDAY LYRIC 171 Phone MAin 2-9711 DOORS OPEN 12:45 From I COMEDY STAGE HIT! MARLOV GI-ENN BRANDO FORD MACH1KO KYO Thp Teahouse of th? August Moon I I LIBERT Watch For "The Ten Commandments" AT 12:30 LAST DAY IMfHISALIKTCfflWIOIMl MCtUHC PLUS CMN STntm (U MUM.

MUM Mfffl A favorite for more generation and Mill going strong! Read Orphan Annie Ibe comic pafe. SATURDAY, MAY II, 1957 TUCSON DAILY CITIZEN PAGE 19.