A MOUSE CLUBHOUSE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
BLAINE GIBSON
talks about Disneyland and Abraham Lincoln

by Scott Wolf

If I had to choose one word to describe Blaine Gibson I'd have to say, "humble." He does not need to be. He is a mega talent. You can see him in some Disney television shows showing Walt Disney the Abraham Lincoln bust he sculpted. He sculpted for Pirates of the Caribbean, It's a Small World, The American Adventure, and even the iconic "Partners" statue of Walt holding Mickey Mouse's hand that appears in front of the castles at Disneyland and Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

But, before Blaine sculpted for Disney he was an accomplished animator on many of Disney's classic films.

He enjoyed working as a team with others and felt that everybody equally deserved the credit for the finished product.

In addition to his humility, another endearing quality is how easy it is to listen to Blaine. His voice and calm tone are like listening to the most wonderful college professor where you want to grasp on to every word.

It is such a pleasure to be able to share my Blaine Gibson interviews with you.

Blaine Gibson: Much of the stuff that was there (at Disneyland) on opening day we did over again. Like we redid the animals and Marc Davis suggested a lot of that story in the Jungle Cruise so we had to do all of those animals over again. I would do them small and we had sculptors who did them full size.

Scott Wolf: Those small ones are called maquettes?

BG: They were called maquettes. In this case, I had the sculptors blow them up. They were actually very accurate but they were quite small. It showed the whole ride with all the new elephants and the ideas that Marc had come up with and one or two of my own. It really was a great experience because it looked quite like the whole ride. The animals were fairly accurate even though they were small.

I determined the sizes of all the characters. That was the wildebeests and the elephants and the people and the whole thing. The way I did it, I went to the encyclopedia and I found out the range in sizes in animals. I chose the smaller side for the wildebeests and the giraffes and all of those things because our actual exhibit was under scale of the real things. It looked more convincing to just do them the small scale rather than the full scale, because then they would overpower the background. That was true for the lions and everything.

I just did that on my own and Marc I’m sure went along with it. I don’t think he ever disapproved of it.

SW: And Marc did everything two dimensionally…

BG: He would do it two dimensionally and mostly the way the animal would look would be pretty much determined by me, but there would be a little bit of a suggestion, of an expression, that Marc would do. He did it much more liberally than I could do in 3D. But the idea was there and we got along fine, that was no problem at all. After all, I was an animator, too. So I knew what he was after and I was also a sculptor and I think Marc could have been a sculptor if he wanted to.

SW: Then you got into realistic humans like Lincoln.

BG: Well, in Lincoln there is an exaggeration.

In fact, I was on TV one time with Walt a really long time ago, where he’s interviewing me with an actual cast based on a live cast that was made of Lincoln in 1860 by a sculptor named Leonard Volk, a Chicago sculptor. He asked me to come up there and describe that to my surprise. He said, “Get up here, Blaine.” So that was my first introduction to being filmed with Walt on the Disney show.

The reason for it was I had this mask and Walt wanted me to explain it and I told the story about it was a life mask. I didn’t go into all the details that I could have mentioned. Timing is very precise on film. You can’t just go off and try to be a big star even though you may have more things you could say. You have to say what they ask you to say that fits the timing schedule and in this case I did just what Walt asked me to do.

SW: That show is called “Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair.”

BG: It was used in the introduction of Lincoln.

SW: Yes, in the “Walt Disney Story” before you would see “Great Moments with Mister Lincoln.”

BG: That’s right. But anyway, Walt was a great person to be around and he was a man who you simply had to respect. Look at his investment in time and experience before I ever came along for crying out loud. For me, a young man, twenty one (when Blaine started at Disney), trying to say, “Hey Walt, I don’t agree with what you’re doing.” How stupid would that be to a man who was literally already a claim to genius?

More from Blaine:
How he got his start with Disney in 1939
His move to Imagineering and Disneyland on opening day
Pirates of the Caribbean - Creating the classic attraction
Sculpting for "Mary Poppins" and theme parks such as Epcot

See other interviews

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in the interviews are solely those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mouse Clubhouse. Mouse Clubhouse accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any claims made or opinions expressed within.