Report: Pirates of the Caribbean Special Event
Page 15 of 20

Sam McKim's map

O'Day: The Park is closed on Monday and Tuesday? Nobody told me. Sam, we’re going to you a bit because we all recognize that map from the well-collected Pirates of the Caribbean souvenir booklet, which many of you have. Now how did this map come about?

McKim: This map came about after the ride was through and they wanted something to show the great drawings of our friend Marc Davis. This brochure they put together and they wanted to show the ride in its entirety. So I went at it and laid it out and had a few people tell me if I was off base somewhere to correct it even though I shifted some things left and right in order to show them in the same little area. But I got through with that and Dick Irvine told me they were going to make wrapping paper with it and maybe a game out of it but this is all they did with it but who knows what they’ll do in the future. I had a lot of fun with this thing and I might say there were those of us working on kindred assignments at the same time Pirates was getting off the ground.

Whatever I was working on, I got called into Dick Irvine’s office one day. He said 'Sam, Walt wants you to do something. He remembers...' and he started to tell me Walt’s memories of the depression days and Walt went down to the corner drugstore and then these grabber machines that would go in among the red hot candies and they had various cheap little cameras and bracelets and a watch and the like and these grabbers would grab them but they weren’t very strong and they’d take them up so far like these stuffed animal [machines] today at the grocery store and it would drop but the guy would always get a handful of red hot candies for his nickel. Well Dick said that Walt explained a few things to him and he was passing [them] along to me later. But he wanted me to start sketching something that would incorporate a pirate feel where a number of people, six or eight, in a big circle would deal with their individual grabber that would go down underwater, that’s the way we planned it at first. We changed our minds eventually but this first one of the Pirates arcade machines which I was in charge of, and I put that arcade together with about 18 machines which I can tell you a little bit about afterwards perhaps. But we had a setting that had sunken ships, pirate treasure, mermaids, etc, etc and these people had seconds, six or eight were on there, and they dropped these grabbers through the sand and come up maybe - Walt wanted a good string of cultured pearls or something decent that someone could get now and then, and even the cheap things would be worthwhile. He wanted people to get quality for the money they were spending on these games. (audience cheers)

Walt knew how to put his finger on the pulse, didn’t he? But I went back and I started drawing these things up. I had different version and we decided maybe water in the front and everything dry inside. And we went from that to fish in the water. It was getting fancy but that led to other machines and I started determining for Walt and he would drop by now and then and ask me about what I was doing. And I had a lot of crazy pirates doing different things in machines from fortunetellers to some kind of prize coming out and I had a mess of these all over the wall. And Walt would look at them now and then go away. Well I was called over to the Studios afterwards and I worked on a couple of projects, one was the Gnomemobile where Walter Brennan starred with himself as a knee high little gnome and a full sized fellow and I worked for some months on that with Jim Algar and then I was moved on to the preshow for Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln where I did 35 paintings telling the life of Lincoln.

Well I got through with that and got a telephone call when I was through with those two assignments over at the Studio. And a lady’s voice came on and said, 'Sam' and I said, 'Yes.' 'Walt would like to talk to you.' It was Walt’s secretary and Walt came on and said, 'Sam I’m sending you back to the salt mines.' That’s what the people who worked at the Studio and came over for a while to work at WED called it, and after they were through with their assignment they came back and said 'hey you better not go back there, they had tight deadlines and long hours it’s better back at the Studio.' But they’d still return on occasion because Walt would send ‘em. But I didn’t know that Walt was aware that people referred to it as the salt mine. [Walt said] 'You’ve left something unfinished.' I couldn’t think what he was referring to and he said 'you remember all those Pirates games, the arcade games that you were working on? We’ve got a lot of these sketches put to one side.' I said 'oh,' then I knew. Then he said to me quite succinctly, 'we’re going to quit talking about it and we’re going to do it.' Right to the Point! I said o.k. 'shall I call Dick Irvine up and tell him I’ll be over in a day or two?' And he said 'no I’ll tell him.'

So I went back and I started to work on these things and at the same time they were making Pirate magic I was doing my own fun things and Walt was very interested in these but he didn’t see a finished machine, he passed away before we opened the arcade and the ride, of course by a couple of months. But when he did swing by some months prior to that he’d look at what I had. He was always looking to the future, looking to the future and all these games.

Well, I used some good talent, I gathered up some of the sketches of Marc’s, they all looked good but I selected quite a number of them and had them made into postcards and asked my friend X here to write little four line humorous verses, naturally in Pirate jargon which he is quite good at and we sold these nickel postcards for 25 cents for a packet and we put six in them - something more for their money. And we had a pirate fortune teller. You’d get your fortune down below in the machine and a bell - like that sound (referring to the passing train bell) - to tell you where to look. I had some drawings on this stuff and my friend X. Atencio wrote some great Pirate jargon for every one of these about two dozen or 30 different fortunes and the machine would alternate these so you wouldn’t get a couple in a row. And you did a good job on that X.

Sam McKim and X. Atencio

Atencio: I’d almost forgotten about that, Sam.

O’Day: I have a few of those postcards. Well now Pirates opened in March of 1967 and all of us to a point here have commented on the opening of Pirates. It was a pretty elaborate opening but I've got to tell you, well I don't think that it would happen today. It was pretty politically incorrect, we'll just see it.

Alice Davis asks if this scene from the Pirates opening is politically incorrect?

(A video clip of the grand opening of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland is shown. The appearance of legend Wally Boag as the captain elicits applause.)