Over the last 20 years, I must have interviewed at least 700 current and former cast members for my columns and books. But when I was first starting out, mostly collecting silly anecdotes from my college buddies who’d moonlighted as Jungle Cruise skippers, I wasn’t sure if there was enough fascinating material out there to produce a whole book of Disneyland war stories.
And then I talked to Henry Filtz. “Hank” was a longtime ride operator and lead who had retired just a few years before. I’d noticed his retirement announcement in a three-year-old copy of The Disneyland Line, the internal cast member newsletter. The accompanying photo showed Hank outfitted in the costume of the attraction he most enjoyed working, the Sailing Ship Columbia. I found his name listed in the local phone book, so gave him a call.
Hank was kind and gracious. I learned he was a lifelong Disney fan, even before there was a Disneyland (“I’d always dreamed of working for Walt Disney, even back in Montana. In our basement I drew a Seven Dwarfs mural on the retaining wall.”). And he loved every minute of his 32 years as a cast member.
We talked. And talked. And talked. When I finally put down the phone an hour later, I knew, for the first time, that there were plenty of Mouse Tales to make a great book. I just had to find them.
Hank passed away last Friday afternoon at age 85. Mass, burial, and a reception will be held this Friday, October 22, which would have been the 61st anniversary for Hank and Dolores, his wife . I’m sure the anecdotes will be flowing.
Here are some highlights from our conversation of November 19, 1990:
David: I understand you began working for Disneyland just a few weeks after it opened.
Hank: I started in August of 1955. I worked in Operations most of the time. My first job was to stand out on Manchester Street [in Los Angeles] with a sign that said “Disneyland.” I was dressed in a Main Gate uniform and supplied with brochures to hand out to the people who stopped. It had information on admission and so on, and I could answer any questions.
I worked on almost all the attractions. I worked Jungle Cruise, of course. Frontierland, Bear Country, Haunted Mansion, Submarines, Skyway, Autopia, Fantasyland, Storybook Land…
David: Storybook? I thought only women worked Storybook.
Hank: No, Storybook Land once consisted of all men. Some were big guys. One was a high school football coach. At one time, a big labor pool for the park was the El Toro Marine Base, so it was kind of funny to see these big rough-and-tumble Marines giving the Storybook Land spiel.
I was also a “Tinker Bell catcher.” The first Tinker Bell was named Tiny Klein, who was 70-plus years old. She took off from the Matterhorn and two of us were waiting for her at the end of the cable, in a tower platform, about 6 feet square, above Bear Country. We held a piece of material, 12 to 14 inches wide and 30 inches long. Each corner had a flexible rubber handle. She was doing about 25 miles an hour. We’d catch her in the stomach, just to slow her down. There was rubber foam-padded post that she hit. But seeing this tiny thing coming and then all of a sudden in the very last second it was a human being coming at you, I never really got used to it. There were always butterflies in my stomach. Once a week, Tiny would come along with $10 for the catchers to split.
She had to catch a bus to Brea, which back then was in the middle of nowhere. And one night Walt came down and met her at the bottom of hill. But she wanted to catch her bus. He had this Tinker Bell gold pendant he wanted to give her and a little thank-you speech, and you could see the anxiety in her eyes that she didn’t care about Walt. She wanted to go catch her bus!
I have eight children—five boys, three girls—and every one of them has worked at the park. Three or four of the boys were shoeshine boys at the employee barber shop. My youngest daughter was the only shoeshine girl ever. One daughter worked in the warehouse. One daughter worked in custodial. Several worked for Nat Lewis’ balloon concession. Nat Lewis had a verbal agreement to run it until his death. When he died, the park took it over.
David: Weren’t there a lot of lessees in the beginning?
Hank: Strollers were run by a family in Santa Ana. UPT (United Paramount Theaters) ran all the food stands. Swift ran the Red Wagon Inn. It was the only way Walt could start out. He didn’t have the money and he especially didn’t have the experience. So when their leases would run out, the park would them take over. Pendleton was about the last one out.
David: No one had ever created anything like Disneyland before.
Hank: Those first couple of winters there were no guests at the park. We were worried if the park was gonna make it. People were used to staying in during the winter.
For the first two years, we had a Christmas Parade with live camels, llamas, trained bears. It got to be a tradition, but it wasn’t anything like the parades today. We were made up as the three wise men, as Arabs. I was leading an ostrich. It took two of us to lead an ostrich because it’s so awkward and stupid.
The first winter we had a circus. We had a tent with three rings out, I think, where Small World and Motor Boats are.
It was built as the only heated circus tent in the world. During dress rehearsals, Walt was sitting on one side with the Mouseketeers. Great big wagons came in and circled the rings. One was pulling a calliope, another with caged tigers, and so on. The second wagon clipped one of the pegs, and a whole section of the tent caved in.
There was a trapeze act with two guys and a well-built girl in a halter top. As she swung from one of the guys, her spaghetti strap broke and her halter top fell down and she couldn’t do anything about it, because she had to hold on to the trapeze.
Two llamas got away and got into the bleachers. And then there were the circus people…
David: That’s funny, because the year you retired (1987) the park had a Circus Fantasy promotion, and a lot of people complained that Disneyland wasn’t the place for a circus. Sounds like Disney should have known better.
Hank: It’s become a science. A lot of the early years was trial and error. On the Motor Boat Cruise, we had to load and unload on different sides (of the dock). The boats were guided by 3-and-a-half-inch pipes that just didn’t work. At one point, one position was standing waist deep in the water to make sure the boats went on the correct side of the dock.
Walt liked to experiment. On Storybook Land, the seats are along the gunnels of the boat. Walt took one boat out, and he rebuilt it to five rows of seats, one behind the other. He had the speaker in front, so only the first row could hear him. And when you loaded the boat, everyone went to the far end of each row, so the boat tipped up away from dock. Walt asked me, as lead, what I thought. “To tell the truth, Walt. It don’t work worth a $#%!. I don’t know whoever thought of that…” He said, “That was my idea.” The next day that boat was gone, and it came back with the old seats.
The Skyway used to be round metal buckets for two people. There was a steamlined train (the Viewliner) that didn’t last very long.
Before the submarines, the Phantom Boats were in the lagoon. They had these big fins and ran around floats. Each boat had an operator, but could carry only one or two passengers. It took 12 to 14 operators. That was a harebrained idea.
The Flying Saucers were Roy’s idea. It wasn’t very practical. It consumed too much space for the amount of people it handled. Air gushed out of holes in the platform, and we lost air pressure all the time. And it was a problem safetywise, stepping in and out [of the saucers]. You guided it by shifting your weight. You’d bump into other crafts and bite your lip.
We couldn’t operate in bad weather, because when the air gushed out, it blew rain water all over. It was like working in a hurricane.
David: Did you have a favorite attraction to work?
Hank: The Columbia was the most fun. One of the most enjoyable was Pirates. It’s a tough ride to run, very technical, high capacity. Most days you do the same thing, grouping, loading, dispatching, unloading. Some people had the attitude that loading people in boats was like putting pickles in a jar. But I went away every day happy with my day’s work. I got to be around people. It’s not a supermarket, where they have to be. People who come to Disneyland want to be there, and I helped them have fun.
David: So you really enjoyed your job?
Hank: I like being with people, seeing the kids laugh, seeing them really enjoying themselves. They appreciate how clean it is.
It’s not like working anywhere else. No matter where you go, if you work for Disneyland, everyone knows Disney.
David: Any memorable guests?
Hank: There was a live ’50s TV special, Date Night at Disneyland. And we had to drag the cameras from site to site. On TV, I had to greet Snow White and help her into a Storybook Land boat.
Well, Louis Armstrong was on the Mark Twain. He had some lines to say. They shot this after the park was closed, and he couldn’t remember his lines, so we were there till 2, 2:30 in the morning.
David: Any other downside to being a cast member?
Hank: I never did like some of the costumes that I had to wear, especially when it was really hot. You had to wear a tie and couldn’t unbutton long-sleeved shirts unless it got over 90 degrees—and the thermometer was near security, in the shade.
David: Anything ever go horribly wrong?
Hank: I was training another lead in Storybook Land. It was around midnight, and the last boat was out. I was showing him how to throw the switch to Never Neverland, where we recharged the boats. I forgot to throw [the switch] back for the last boat. So the last boat came through, and it broke out part of the bottom of the boat. It sunk immediately. Eight or nine people were on board. One had a fur coat. I thought I would be fired, but I was just reprimanded. Now they have a green-and-red light; green if the switch is on the track, red if it’s open.
One day the park had a complete blackout. I was on Pirates, and all the power went out. The emergency lights didn’t come on, either. The generators hadn’t been checked in too long. It was a very harrowing experience. It was darker than I’ve ever seen it.
People were stuck on the upramp with the chain. We lost power, so we couldn’t move the boat. A gate holds the water upstairs because gravity would let it fall to the lower level. And I couldn’t raise gate, so all the water went down from the upstairs where the bayou is. Down below, it raised the water level so boats could float outside the flume. Everyone was too afraid to move. Fortunately, I kept flashlights there—I got a special commendation—and had recently gotten fresh batteries. We used the standard evacuation procedure. No one got hurt.
When Pirates goes down, you have to put on waders, get into the water, and direct the boats to the nearest evacuation point. We had seven monitors in the control tower. Now I think there are nine monitors. We montiored the downramps and other points to make sure boats don’t get hung up, or that guests aren’t getting up or smoking. Tower can talk to people with a speaker and controls the attraction—dispatching boats, monitoring the water level, it’s the key to the whole ride.
David: Any unhappy endings?
Hank: About 1963 or 1964, I had a man die of a heart attack in my arms. He was in his 60s, from San Diego. I was helping him out of a Storybook Land boat, and he just collapsed.
Then in about 1984, I had a woman die on Pirates. I was in the control tower. There was a Hawaiian group and down the second ramp I could see them waving their arms. One woman was slumped over. Each time they appeared in a monitor, it looked like they were just having a great time. When I saw them standing when they reached the bottom of the upramp, I asked them to sit down. Then I knew there was a problem. It was a heart attack, and she was only 20-something years old. I tried to revive her, but she was gone. She weighed over 300 pounds, and we couldn’t get her out of the boat.”
