JANUARY 2009
Walt Disney & the 1964 World's Fair, part 1
The story behind the five CD set

Scott Wolf: How did the the five disc World's Fair set come about?

RT: It's been a project that's been on and off the pot for a long, long time. It was a pet project of (Imagineer) Bruce Gordon's. He and Tony Baxter and several other Imagineers developed the Disneyland/Walt Disney World Forever CD burning kiosks through Red Dot Net. That's where you could buy clips from soundtracks to attractions, rope drop spiels and all that kind of stuff.

I don't know if this is fact or not, (facetiously) but I kind of had the feeling Bruce was really passionate about Disney history and all that stuff.

SW: (chuckling) You think?

RT: (chuckles) Yeah, just a tad. I think his wanting to do the World's Fair set is kind of how the whole Disneyland Forever system started, to try to find a way to get this stuff out there.

Everybody knows (Disney's World's Fair exhibits) Great Moments with Mister Lincoln and It's a Small World, and everybody is familiar with the old Carousel of Progress, but very few people outside of the fair are familiar with the Ford show. The only thing from that exhibit that made it to Disneyland is the Primeval World which is now in the railroad.

So it was something he had been working on for a long time, but Imagineering is not a record label and Red Dot Net is more of a distribution kind of thing.

This also involved a full-fledged book that was written by (Disney artist and historian) Stacia Martin. It has layouts, images, pictures. Bruce had laid it all out and built this mockup and Stacia had written the book and Bruce did all the layouts and everything, but they were having problems trying to get it done. Red Dot Net was not set up to do something like that and they couldn't figure out how to do it. It was about this time that I got involved.

They contacted me and talked about the possibility of Walt Disney Records releasing it. Although the administration here is really up on history and we have some people here that really understand the audio history of the company and the music history of the company, with the World's Fair set there wasn't really something that they could grab on to.

This is back in 2001 and that was about the same time that I started working on the Disneyland (50th anniversary) box set that I knew was going to be released in 2005. I knew, but the rest of the administration didn't because I hadn't told them yet. I was building all the research and talking to Bruce and those people, exploring how I was going to handle the Disneyland set and everything.

The difference between the Disneyland set and the World's Fair set is there was a 50th anniversary, a national promotion. The audience for the World's Fair set is relatively small compared to the millions of people all over the world for the Disneyland set. So it was kind of a hard sell.

Another thing is that even though Lincoln had been cleared for a record, Small World had been cleared for a record, and Carousel of Progress for the most part had been cleared for a record, nothing for the Ford show had ever been released on record before, so all the new use payments and all that kind of stuff was going to come in. We're talking a considerable amount of money and that has to be offset by how many records they think they're going to sell. Without a big event like Disneyland's 50th or national World's Fair celebration or something like that, we just really couldn't make it work. We tried several different ways to try and put it out there and it just never happened, so the problem sort of went away.

Four years later, I'm in production on the Disneyland (50th anniversary) box set, and I really felt bad that we couldn't get the World's Fair thing done and Bruce is such a passionate guy, so I contacted him to work on the book for the Disneyland box set and he recommended having Stacia (Martin) write the text.

By this time there had been several management changes, several people that are in charge now are really into the history, they really appreciate it, which is how they allowed me to do the Disneyland set. I did my little demo for them and they said, "That's exactly what we should be doing," so I knew we had a foothold somewhere. When I brought Bruce in, we got the Disneyland set going and I said, "Once this set's done I think you should talk to several people here about the World's Fair set again." So he took me up on that and management thought it was a really great idea.

The Disneyland box set was the largest set we've ever done and the reason I was allowed to be as extravagant as I was is that management knew it was the right thing to do. The way everything was structured financially to get the set out there was that we can't obviously lose money, but if we break even that's good for everybody because this is just the right thing to do. That was the kind of mentality that I was hoping for and thought that could probably get the World's Fair set going again.

After the Disneyland set was done, I'd taken copies over for Tony Baxter and Bruce and Marty Sklar. Bruce took me over to Marty's office and unfortunately Marty wasn't there, I wanted to hand it to him personally. But, as we were walking back, Bruce said, "I really love what you did with the Disneyland set, it sounds so incredible. I would really like you to do the World's Fair set, because it looks like we're going to be able to release it through you guys and I want you to produce it and clean it up and everything." I said, "Do you want me to go through and do like what I did with the Disneyland set and restructure the playlist where you're being presented to the fair?" and he said, "No, I really like the way I have it laid out. I just want you to clean it up and make it sound as good as it can." I said, "You got it," and everything was going along fine, and the next thing I know Bruce is no longer with the company and he's working up at the Disney Family Museum. So I said, "Okay... well, I wonder what's going to happen with the World's Fair set."

It was still kind of plugging along, but it seemed to have lost momentum as far as the big mechanics of corporate go. The next thing I heard is that Bruce had suddenly passed away.

SW: He was young.

RT: Yeah, he was only in his mid fifties. So not only did we lose Bruce, but I lost the figurehead of the World's Fair, because seeing that this isn't exactly in the way that I would be producing it, I really wanted him involved to make sure that I was being true to what he really wanted. I just felt that the project was probably going to go, too.

A couple months later, one of our execs here goes, "So what's going on with the World's Fair set?" I explained what was going on and that Bruce had passed away and he goes, "Well, we should still do it." I go, "Teriffic!" So I started working on it again and being very true to Bruce's things I called several people that worked with Bruce, Paula Sigman and Jeff Kurtti. They got me his hard drive so I got all the elements that he had to build it with and I got all the layouts for all of the book and everything, so everything was going to be done exactly the way he wanted it with the same images and everything.

As I started going through the audio, which I had had, I just wasn't happy with it. Not the sequencing or anything, it was more of the quality of the sounds. Though Bruce had some of the original orchestra sessions and stuff, he's not an audio guy.

SW: What was his job with Imagineering?

RT: He was a Show Producer and worked on Splash Mountain and things. He did his job, but he didn't want to be called out as anybody special on a project. When we were talking about doing the set and we were going over the credits and things, I had listed him as Producer and he had me take it off. He didn't want to be listed as Producer, he wanted me to be listed as Producer and I said, "But, I'm not the Producer, you're the Producer." That was just the kind of guy Bruce was.

So finally, after nearly eight years of on again, off again, it's finally out there.

SW: What is the title of this set?

Well, Bruce had originally named it "Disneyland Goes to the World's Fair" after the episode of the "Wonderful World of Color" where Walt took you through the exhibits. I thought it was a teriffic nod to the past and it started getting out and the retailers and things like that couldn't seperate the Disneyland thing from it and they were thinking it was Disneyland stuff and there was some miscommunication on it. So it is now called "Walt Disney and the 1964 World's Fair."

It came out really good and we were able to stay true to Bruce's vision. (Pictured, right: Bruce Gordon)

SEE PART 2 OF THIS INTERVIEW