Bob Gurr, a vigorous, engaging man, began working for Walt back
in 1953, when the effort to build Disneyland was going full steam
forward. The relationship began when Bob's one-man company, R.H.
Gurr Industrial Design, was employed to help design the Autopia
attraction for Disneyland. As always, Walt knew a good thing when
he saw it, and Bob quickly became a full-time employee at WED.
Over the course of a three-decade career with WED,
Bob helped design over 100 attractions, including the Autopia,
the Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Disneyland Monorail, and the Ford
Company Magic Skyway ride at the 1964 World's Fair.
His post-Disney career continued to be enormously
exciting, including work with Steven Spielberg designing the T-Rex
for the film "Jurassic Park."
The following are some excerpts from an interview
with Bob conducted for the film "Walt: The Man Behind the
Myth." To see some film of Bob, please visit the Theater.
Q. In the early
days of WED, Walt's plans weren't always clear, were they?
A. In those days, Walt was sort of gathering people almost like
instruments in an orchestra and he put us all together but he never
passed out the music. Oddly enough, I think he was the only one
that knew where he was going to go and he knew the different skills
that all the different folks had and I think that was the method
he used to pick people -- put them all together and only he knew
what the outcome was generally going to be and none of us knew the
outcome until we would go to an opening of a new attraction and
find out how it all worked.
Q. Was it frustrating
not understanding the full picture of what Walt had in mind?
A. In hindsight you'd think yeah, we should have known where we
were going, but I don't ever remember being frustrated about not
knowing the outcome. I just had a sense of trust because I saw everybody
else had a sense of trust in whatever it was we were doing.
Q. Do you
remember the first time you met Walt?
A. I went over on Saturday mornings to start working on the body
for this little Autopia car for Disneyland. When you have a whole
automobile with no body on it, there's tires and guys will walk
up, put their foot on a tire and then lean with their elbow on their
knee. And we had a spare tire available and this guy walks up, unshaven,
and I remember he had a, like a Roy Rogers belt on with little silver
painted fake bullets and a funny-looking tie, and I thought he was
probably a father or one of the night guards, because he just sort
of oozed into the conversation. Then I noticed the other guys were
calling him Walt and then when everybody walked away I thought,
"Gosh, that's Walt Disney."
.
Q. You were
friends with one of Walt's earliest collaborators, Ub Iwerks. Can
you tell us a little about him?
A. Well (as a kid), Ub Iwerks was on my paper route and I became
friends with the rest of his family and particularly one of his
sons because we went to the same high school, and all those years
that I knew Ub Iwerks he never told me he [worked with Walt to start]
the studio. He was such an easy going, natural guy, had this little
shop in his garage and he would show me how guns are built and how
you take care of things and he had neat cars and whatever neat car
he had, he'd say, "Hey Bob, you want to go for a ride?"
And I'd go out and go for a ride. Not until I was at the studio
did I find out who Ub Iwerks really was. Because he was just such
a regular guy.
Q. When you
were working on designing the cars for the Autopia, was Walt involved?
A. I wouldn't say Walt was looking over my shoulder as much as
the fact that he was paying attention to what everybody was doing.
For example, anything that was really interesting to him in any
given building on any week, he would be in there looking to see
what you're doing but not with the idea of looking over your shoulder.
It's like, he was really curious to see how the ideas were coming.
Q. On opening
day, there were some troubles with the Autopia, weren't there?
A. On that day, my assignment was to keep all the Autopia cars
running. And it was a day where all the cars were getting vapor
lock and stalling and I was running around trying to keep all the
cars restarted. . . By the end of the first day we had, about half
the cars were out of commission and within a week, I think two out
of the 40 cars were the only ones left running.
Did Walt get
very upset about the problems with the cars?
A. I was out in the field with my own tools and my own Cadillac,
sitting outside the Autopia ride trying to fix these cars as fast
as they would fall apart. And after a week and a half or so, Walt
came by and he just sort of sat there in the shade and just sort
of looked at the whole thing, not any real strong emotion or anything
but he indicated, well we got to do something. In other words, he
wasn't critical. He wouldn't jump on you and say, you'd designed
junk, make these things work. He just observed and knew something
needed to be done.
I indicated that we had no mechanics because they were all over
fixing the other attractions which were breaking faster, and I said
we don't have anything designed here to maintain the cars with.
So he went away and about a half hour later, here comes a guy with
an old tractor dragging this little wooden building on a sled down
the dirt road and pulled it up and he said, "Where do you want
your damn garage? Walt just sent this over here. Tell me where you
want it." So I kind of knew that Walt would see something,
and he wouldn't be really critical, but he'd go make sure it got
fixed.
Q. How specific
was Walt in his instructions to you?
A. I don't ever recall Walt come up to somebody and say, "Now
I want this and I want you to do it and you do it this way and it's
got to be done by such and such time." You know a typical order-giving
thing. It'd be more like, he'd be in a meeting and he'd say, "Do
you know what we need?" And you'd see that little mischievous
twinkle in his eye and an eyebrow go up and he'd start to describe
something to do with the future or an attraction that he wanted.
And at that moment your brain would start racing. You'd see all
the possibilities in your mind, just from the few words that he
had said. Then he would come around and follow up what you were
doing and it was like this sort of, I take a step, he takes a step,
he looks at my step, I see his reaction. That kind of an ongoing
thing -- massaging these ideas for these attractions till they were
up and running.
Q. What if
you were going in a different direction than the one he had in mind?
A. You had to be on a parallel railroad track with Walt, or you
were going to get it. And I think that is the classical illustration
of the clash of egos in the entertainment world. I accidentally
was on the right track because I was the car guy, the only guy in
the orchestra playing cars and I was headed to where he wanted to
be so I didn't get jumped for that. But other guys who had their
own ego, I could sure see that there would be a big clash.
Q. You were
also involved in bringing a monorail to Disneyland. Tell us how
that all began.
A. Well, serendipity really drives the world. Walt really wanted
a monorail in Disneyland. And he and Lilly are driving along in
a car in Germany, and just at that moment a monorail car drives
from one side of the road to the other side of the road through
the trees and Walt sees it. And he stops and chases the monorail
over to a service yard where nobody speaks English. They send him
back across the road to the administration building and Walt now
walks in through the front door of a company that builds monorails.
He'd discovered his monorail. Thirty seconds one way or the other,
we might not have had a monorail in Disneyland.
Q. In 1966,
you were with Walt on a meeting with Westinghouse, followed by a
memorable lunch. Tell us that story.
A. After we had a day at Westinghouse, with them showing us all
their research and development center stuff, they gave us a really
nice lobster lunch. We all got back in the limousines and we were
going back to the hotel, and I was with Joe Potter and Walt, and
Walt says, "Gosh, that wasn't a very big lunch, let's go get
a cheeseburger."
So the three of us walk into the drug store at the Sheraton Hotel
in Pittsburgh to get a cheeseburger and going into the store, Walt
noticed that the merchandise rack had the Disney merchandise down
on the bottom rack. So he said something like, "Come on boys,
let's fix this."
And if you can imagine the three of us, fully grown men down on
our knees, picking up the Disney merchandise and the sales tags
off the bottom racks, and putting them up on the top and then putting
whatever merchandise was up there and putting it back down on the
lower one and a sales lady comes over, and very obstinate says,
"May I help you?" And Walt says, "No, fine, we're
all done here." And then we went over to get our cheeseburgers.
But I was amazed that Walt's attention to detail and reality, in
that Disney merchandise is not going to be on a lower shelf anywhere
in the world, and he'll personally fix it.
Thank you very much.
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