Marty Sklar held many roles in his long career with the Walt Disney Company, which included vice president of concepts and planning for Walt Disney Imagineering, before being promoted to president, and then vice chairman and principal creative executive of the company then becoming International Ambassador for Imagineering, the subsidiary of the company which designs and constructs the Disney theme parks and resorts across the world. Marty retired on July 17, 2009 (Disneyland�s Birthday) and was honored with a window dedication ceremony on that date. 

Recently Marty Sklar graciously agreed to be a guest speaker with Once Upon a Classic, a Disney enthusiast club in the Los Angeles area, to raise funds for a project close to his heart, Ryman Arts. The Club would like to thank Mr. Sklar for his kindness in being one of the best speakers and possibly the BEST they ever had the pleasure of having at their club meetings.  

The following are direct quotes from Mr. Sklar: 

�I just came from UCLA, because they called me after you guys had and they said they have the finalists of the alumni scholars around the state, almost forty vying for scholarships and they wanted me to talk to them. That�s where I was before I came here�.I was asked to talk about my career. And I have a bunch of videos that are interspersed and I will use as appropriate. Speaking of UCLA, that�s a good place to start because what happened for me was that I was about to be the editor of the Daily Bruin, school newspaper at UCLA. Then I got a call one day from a Card Walker and I figured anyone with a name of Card must be a Las Vegas dealer, so I didn�t even return his call. Well, fortunately Mr. Walker called back and it turned out to be E. Cardon Walker, who at the time was head of Marketing at Disney and later the CEO after Roy O. Disney passed away. But for me this was May of 1955, I went in for an interview and he said Walt wants to put out a tabloid newspaper to be sold on Main Street, when Disneyland opens.

You�ve been recommended and they actually hired me and I went to work at Disneyland mid June of 1955, a month before the Park opened. Two weeks later I had to present the concept for this 28 page newspaper, which was called The Disneyland News to Walt Disney, THE Walt Disney. I was twenty one years old and had never worked professionally and had not yet graduated from UCLA. I had another year to finish. I was scared as hell. Believe me, I was scared! As a matter of fact, that was the key moment in my fifty four year career at Disney, because if Walt didn�t like it, I was out the door. Fortunately he did and we published it and sold it for ten cents on Main Street at Disneyland, when the Park opened. It was used for the first few years. I did go back and finish my last year at UCLA, after the first summer at Disneyland. Then I came back in the fall of �56 and worked until last July, when I retired on Disneyland�s Birthday, July 17.  

It took me a long time to figure out why Walt had time for that little newspaper, which in the big picture of Disneyland, really meant nothing to the success of Disneyland. This was two weeks before the Park opened and it was chaos. Finishing a Park is always chaos. You never get away from trying to get the details right. And in this case, it was the first time, Disneyland. I remember I was in a meeting with the TV producer and he asked the art director in Tomorrowland what am I going to have to shoot on opening day?  The art director said don�t worry about a thing because we are going to be paving. That�s lot of action to be shooting. �.So as I said it took me a long time to figure out why Walt had time for this little thing (the newspaper) and I finally did figure it out. For Walt Disney, Main Street was a real town and at the turn of the century, 1890, 1900, every town had its own newspaper so Disneyland had to have its own newspaper. It was part of the story and if you think about the Parks, it�s the details. It�s all the details that add up in those stories and those themes that really make the Parks what they are. It was a good lesson, actually. The rest of my career I can summarize in one sentence, I did a lot of things.  

For a long time I was called staff writer. In 1974 I became vice president of concepts and planning. Then later on I became president of Imagineering and then vice chairman and principal creative executive for those two positions for about thirty years. Finally the last three years I was there, Jay Rasullo asked me to be a Disney Ambassador, making a lot of speeches, which I did, and setting up programs for the Disney Legends and others to come in and talk at the Studio and at Imagineering, as well as the D23 fan program. I brought a few things to show and one of them will be kind of a summary and also a look at Imagineering.�