Report: Pirates of the Caribbean Special Event
Page 14 of 20

(l-r) Tim O'Day, Sam McKim, X. Atencio, Alice Davis

O'Day: Now Harriet, Sam, X, Alice - now Pirates was the first attraction where A.A. figures were used on a grand scale. I mean was there any pressure in opening this? Were you worried about would the A.A. figures work? Would it all work together? I mean there must have been some stress in putting this thing together. In hindsight I know its fun and everything but how hard of a job was it?

Atencio: I’m not sure. On my part. (Atencio pauses but then continues matter-of-factly) I had a heart attack and I recuperated shortly after that and was there for opening day. I was down in the bowels of the ride and I think the stress kind of got to me and of course I blame John Hench and the rest of those guys. (audience laughter)

O'Day: Speaking of the A.A. figures I’ve often wondered what is this guy doing in this photo here?

Atencio: That’s Ken O’Brien and he had this thing rigged up and he would mouth the dialogue and the machinery inside the head would duplicate what he was doing. I think it worked on some of the figures but not all. I thought that’s ol Ken O’Brien, what a happy memory.

O'Day: You can’t tell who is programming who? Now, Hurricane Harriet let's talk to you? Now Harriet, what does a figure finisher do?

Harriet Burns: We would start when Blaine Gibson finished a sculpture. It would come to me and I would paint the - actually it wasn’t clay then. Well first I guess it was clay and then we would cast them and we would start with the complete skin color and so forth. One of the fun things was we had just developed the skin that was really a good skin. While they were working on the Lincoln for the World’s Fair and we had used latex before which deteriorated very rapidly in a month or so. But then we had developed a real skin that would work. And of course Lincoln, he couldn’t just be a character like the Pirates. So we had a chemist come in he had worked at MGM a lot and he brought his components and I brought in an electric cooker and we worked it out right there on a desk. And made it. We could add solubilizers, stiffeners or whatever and the color and we worked out what was a good skin.

And with Lincoln, as you recall, when they wrote him up they said he even perspires he’s so good. There was migratory oil that came to the surface and that’s why he perspired. But the fun part about the Pirates was they didn’t have to look like anything but characters and we could make them anyway, like the Auctioneer - I did him blonde, brunette and red haired and with a beard and with a mustachio, different effects and Walt picked which one he thought was the best. And we had such fun with all them, but we were at work, we couldn’t just dilly dally on them.

And the original model, you know Walt required a three dimensional model for every attraction. So when we first developed it Walt wanted this because we could make additions or corrections on anything without having to do it on the final set. The model itself was 40 feet long and one-inch scale and we put it up on sawhorses at Walt’s eye height so that when you walk through this room filled with sections of the model it really was an interesting thing and some people said they thought it was better than the live because of the miniaturization. But we completed all the themeing and the colors and everything on the one-inch scale that would be six inches for most of the Pirates and it was a delight.

Burns: But the figure finishing that you asked was from the beginning painting to the rough mock up, the life-sized mockup and then after the life-sized mockup then Alice came and did the real thing. But we tied up rags around our heads and just did fun things and worked with artificial eyes and all these things originally just painting them not using the real eyes that the opthamologists use. It was from beginning to end a delightful project and even the hairs on the legs if you remember the pirate hanging over the bridge sticking them in needle by needle and the animals because we’d never done that many animals. I’d done a cat and a dog for Carousel of Progress but never chickens, goats, pigs and all these things that we used in the Pirates ride and so all that resulted in doing the figure finishing on all the animals. We had to carve down each sculpture ¼ inch to allow for the fur. So we learned by experience but it was fun.

Pirates being transported to Disneyland

O'Day: I think we have some footage of you working on these three gentlemen here.