Wesley’s Week – June 4-10, 2007

by Wesley

I find it always a special kind of thrill when you are able to combine work and pleasure. Happily, this happened to me earlier this week when I went to the Barnes & Noble store in Cary to see a presentation by author Charles Ridgway of his new book Spinning Disney’s World, which chronicled his 40-plus years of publicity work for all things Disney. He made quite a nice presentation, including a slide show recounting in pictures his involvement with the company as far back as its construction on Disneyland in the early 1950s.

Ridgway (that is not a misspelling – his last name has no “e” in it) was a man truly in the right place at the right time. He was the only reporter with a major newspaper in Los Angeles – in his case, it was the Los Angeles Mirror-News – based in Orange County, Calif. when construction on the park was underway. He covered several aspects of what was being called “Walt’s folly,” because no one believed anyone would go to Anaheim to see the park. You see, at the time, Anaheim’s population was less than what Cary has today, and there were no freeways coming to the town.

Yet people did arrive – within seven weeks of its opening in July 1955, attendance passed the million mark – and along with the growth in crowds came an expanding fascination of the attraction by Ridgway, who wrote about it often as well as attended as a guest with his family many times. He became a familiar face there, and in 1963 they offered him the chance to be director of publicity for Disneyland. He thought that if he had to do publicity for only one business, this would be it, so he took the offer and never looked back.

Ridgway stayed with Disneyland until the opportunity came up to move to Orlando to handle publicity for the new park, Walt Disney World. He jumped at the chance and found himself getting busier all the time – he even had to stage parts of the uncompleted park for a photo feature for the late Look magazine because they wanted to provide their readers with a “sneak peek” of Walt Disney World six months before it opened. The real grand opening occurred in October 1971 with Bob Hope, Glen Campbell, Julie Andrews and other stars, then came EPCOT, Disney-MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom, and much more. Handling all the media on this was Ridgway, so if you ever see an official commemorative book from Disney celebrating the history of one of its parks, or promoting what was then a new attraction, you should realize that Ridgway had a hand in it. Eventually he was named a “Disney legend” and had his name enshrined on one of the windows on a building in Main Street on Disney World. You cannot do much better than that.

I definitely recommend that you get a copy of Spinning Disney’s World. The book is an easy, compelling read with plenty of names dropped appropriately in it (just about every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has arrived at one point at one of the parks), and a couple of rare photos from Ridgway’s collection. The anecdotes are quite enjoyable too – did you know the Polynesian Hotel in Disney World earned that name simply because that had been what everyone involved in the planning had called it, and no one could think of a better name for it? Or that one travel guide thought the Polynesian Hotel was even more Hawaiian than Hawaii?

I only wish that there had been a larger turnout at the store for Ridgway’s presentation. Here is a man who spent decades promoting one of the biggest brand names in our culture, and only a handful of people showed up. But he appreciated those of us who did appear there, and he signed a copy of my book, so I know I myself completely enjoyed the experience. If only he had given me a complimentary set of Mickey Mouse ears to wear home …

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