list_text=          In 1952, Walt Disney hired art director Richard "Dick" Irvine away from 20th Century Fox to act as liaison between Walt Disney Productions and an architectural firm that was being considered for designing Disneyland. After a few preliminary meetings with the architects, however, Dick (along with Walt) concluded that the people who could best design the Magic Kingdom were members of Walt's own staff.
          Senior vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering John Hench recalled, "Because Dick had worked with movie set designs, creating structures and settings, he understood our needs more than standard architects, such as "forced" perspective, making things smaller to give the illusion of being farther away and other optical values."
          Dick was convinced that the motion-picture artists, art directors and technicians, with their imaginative know-how and theatrical experience, could produce an outstanding theme park. And so Walt proceeded with his own staff and formed what is now known as Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), the design and engineering arm of the Company charged with developing theme parks.
          In launching the world's first theme park, Dick helped establish and lead the new team of artists, architects, designers and engineers, known as Imagineers. With such a brilliant staff of dreamers and doers on board, anything seemed possible as Dick once recalled, "Heavens! The dream was wide open."
          Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 5, 1910, Dick moved with his family to Southern California in 1922. The son of a prominent Los Angeles ophthalmologist, he attended Stanford University and the University of Southern California, followed by Chouinard Art Institute.
          In the early 1930s, he entered the motion picture business and earned an Academy Award nomination for his art direction on "Sundown," a United Artists film directed by Walter Wanger in 1941.
          Soon after, Dick joined The Walt Disney Studios where he worked for a short time on such films as "The Three Caballeros" and other productions that combined live-action with animation. After World War II, he went to Fox, but returned eight years later when Walt asked for his helped with Disneyland.
          Until his retirement in 1973, Dick headed design and planning for all Disneyland attractions, ranging from the Haunted Mansion to Pirates of the Caribbean. He also guided creation of attractions featured at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, including It's A Small World. Dick went on to help shape the master plan and attractions at Walt Disney World and in 1967, was appointed executive vice president and chief operations officer of WED Enterprises (Walt Disney Imagineering).
          Dick Irvine died on March 30, 1976, in Los Angeles.&