FROM 2007
JACK LINDQUIST
talks about before Disney
and his early Disney days

by Scott Wolf

Jack worked at Disneyland from the first year it opened, initially in advertising. Later he was the Vice President of Marketing for Walt Disney Attractions, and ultimately became the President of Disneyland. I don't think it's using the term loosely to say Jack is a marketing genius.

To say it was an absolute treat for me to be able to interview him about his career with Disney would be a gross understatement. It is my extreme pleasure to be able to share with you this interview with this wonderful person.

SW: What were you doing before you worked for Disney?

JL: Well, I was working for an ad agency in Los Angeles. I was the radio/tv director and it was a mid-size local agency and we did mainly white goods?

SW: What was that?

JL: White goods… refrigerators, washers, appliances, General Electric, Philco, Westinghouse, that kind of stuff. One of our clients was Kelvinator and Kelvinator was a part of American Motors, and American Motors, I found out, was what they called a participant in Disneyland. As such they had some promotional rights to promote the park. So that intrigued me and I called Disney Studios and was told to call Bud Coulson, he’s in public relations out in Anaheim. This is about late April or early May of 1955.

SW: Oh, so Disneyland wasn’t even open yet.

JL: No. So I called and went out, met with him. I told him what I had in mind and he said, “Oh, that’ll be fine. Put something together and talk to us.” And the idea was that you’d go to a Kelvinator dealer and get an appraisal of your washer which they used to do all the time in those days, and you’d get an admission ticket and you’d get to ride - cause you didn’t have ticket books, you had to buy individual tickets… and you’d get to ride on the carousel and I think the streetcar.

SW: What an interesting thing… by bringing in your appliance.

JL: You didn’t even bring it in. You’d just go in and look at the new Kelvinator washer and they’d offer you $15 on any washer… trade it in. So they said fine, went back to talked to their clients and started putting it together. And then I went out and had another meeting with them and met with a guy named Ed Ettinger, and he looked over and signed off on the stuff and I went back to the office and proceeded, but two weeks later I get a call and they say you can’t run the promotion. I said, “Wait a minute. We spent a lot of money, Ed had approved it and now you say we can’t do it.” They said, “No, Mr. Disney said no way, he wasn’t going to have anybody run a promotion the day Disneyland is open.” We scheduled ads for July 18th, to run a double truck (two full page ads that face each other) ad in the L.A. Times.

So I went back out to Disney, we had about a two hour real knock-down, dragged out session. I think we called each other every name in the book. I said, “You know, these guys signed off on it and we’ve gone ahead and had (printing) plates made…” ‘cause in those days it wasn’t all electronic. You had to have plates, and the whole thing. We probably had about three to five thousand dollars invested because we had reserved space in the Times, in the Examiner, and so they said, "Well, too bad, you can’t run it."

So I went back to my boss and I had one idea. I said, “You know, American Motors is the reason we got in here, because they own Kelvinator.” And I asked our boss, “Why don’t you call the president of American Motors and explain a little about the situation and ask him to send a telegram to Walt Disney saying that they had breached their contract and such they’ll pull out of the park.” And he said, okay, he’ll do it and he talked to the people at American Motors and the president said, “Okay, I think that is a breach of contract. We are paying this kingly sum of $25,000 a year to be in Disneyland and we want to use it in our advertising. Now they say no…” so he sent the telegram. I never really expected it to have any effect, and I don’t really know what it said, but a couple days later I got a call from this guy named Ed Ettinger and he said, “You know, why don’t you come out and talk this over. I think we can work this out.” So I went out there and basically he said, “If you’ll hold this until August 1st, we’ll approve it and you’ll be the first company to run a promotion using Disneyland.” So I said, “Fine, I’ll buy that.” And we went ahead and did it.

Then probably two months later, late in August of ’55, he gave me a call and said, “You know, we’re looking for an ad manager and I don’t really know anybody in the advertising business… I was wondering if you could suggest someone.” I said, “I sure can!” He said, “Who?” I said, “Me!” He said, “I was hoping you’d say that!” So I went out and talked to him, went to the Studio and met the Advertising Manager for Walt Disney Productions, who was Card Walker and that’s where it started… and the first Advertising Manager of Disneyland was a much bigger job than it sounded.

SW: What did it involve?

JL: There was no advertising department. I was it.

SW: Did you personally have a feeling it might be pretty successful?

JL: I knew it was something very special. Did I know it was going to be successful? I hoped so. Deep down I thought, “This has gotta work. It’s so good.” But no, nobody knew. I don’t think Walt really knew. I think he believed in it and he knew it was the right thing to do. You know, he had that uncanny knack for what he liked, and what he believed in the public loved. But as far as knowing, you don’t know something like that until you do it.

SW: I hear rumors all the time that everybody was saying it’s going to be a big flop.

JL: Oh, to the media and the financial community, yeah it was a disaster. “Has Walt Disney lost his mind?” "Putting twenty two million dollars in an amusement park in Anaheim, California… you’ve gotta be out of your mind."

SW: Did that affect you at all reading those kinds of things when you’re going to be the one promoting it?

JL: No, I think it’s like being an evangelist. You’ve got to believe in something. We were in effect pioneers. We were involved in something nobody had ever done. There was no book to go by. We wrote it every day… one page at a time. And that was exciting, it was fun. It was a challenge and you hoped it would work. I don’t think any of us really felt totally confident that we’re here to stay... until 1957, when Disney managers announced they were going to open the Submarines, the Matterhorn, and the monorail. I think then we knew, “Hey, this place is here to stay.”

SW: What were some of your jobs at the beginning?

JL: Well, the very first job I had was somebody found in a desk drawer $53,000 worth of unpaid bills. My first job was to verify that they existed, that the work had been done and approve them for payments. They were for sign companies, and shops, and printing bills from all over Orange County and L.A. and nobody had ever approved them.

And then probably the first major advertising job which was October of ’55 was we announced ticket books. The first ticket books were admission and five rides. They sold for $2.50 for adults. So that was the first job that I became involved in.

The great thing about Disney throughout the years was everyday was new. Everyday was totally something absolutely new that you didn’t expect the day before. The day after would be something else. Disney was a great dangling carrot company because there was always a project, an attraction, a show right over the horizon… you know, I never intended to make a career out of Disneyland.

SW: You didn’t?!

JL: Not really. I thought, I loved the project from the first time I saw it which was a day in ’55. Bud Coulson kept me waiting an hour because he was in a dozen meetings and his secretary said, “Would you like to go out and look at the park?” and I said, “Sure.” So I walked out by the Hills Bros. gate (just past where the current Mad Hatter shop is) and it just blew my mind. It wasn’t an amusement park. He was doing a real town. There was an opera house, a City Hall, a train station. I then walked out to the middle and looked up Main Street… and darned if they weren’t building a castle up there. I just absolutely was intrigued and enamored by it right from the beginning. So I had a chance to become involved with it and I jumped at it because what an opportunity, but would it last? Probably not. Maybe two or three years. It should look good on the resume, then go somewhere else.

It wasn’t until pretty close to the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971 when it finally dawned on me… you know, you’re not going anywhere… this is a career.

More from Jack:
Disneyland's opening day and the bad press it received
Walt Disney and his favorite Disney memory
His most elaborate marketing campaigns

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.