We all felt sad when Disney Imagineer John Hench passed away February 2004 even though he had led a long and rich life filled with recognition. After all, he had worked for the Walt Disney Company for over 60 years and contributed to many of the Disney Company’s triumphs in film and in theme parks.
In 2003, Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show, a book he had written with Peggy Van Pelt to try and record his perspectives of his work at Disney, was released. For those who never had a chance to meet and talk with John in person, it was an attempt to document for future generations what Hench felt were some of the major lessons he had learned about three-dimensional storytelling in a theme park.
John Hench at an appearance in July 2002. Photo by Adrienne Vincent-Phoenix.
However, there is even a deeper sadness surrounding John’s passing. John died just days before he was to sign the legal documents that would have kept his papers and artwork together as a resource collection for future researchers. His longtime secretary, Sandy, would have overseen the collection. However, since the documents weren’t signed, John’s collection went to relatives who sold much of it to a dealer—and the work has now been scattered and some of it has already disappeared into private archives.
John was an articulate spokesman for the Disney philosophy and not all of his wisdom could be contained in Designing Disney. In fact, at the time of his death, he was already working on a book sequel with Peggy Van Pelt to cover aspects untouched in the first book. Every time I heard John, he offered some incredible insight I had never previously considered but made perfect sense once he shared it. I have no doubt he could have created an entire series of books.
John was very generous with his time and I was able to attend a “brown bag” luncheon with several others early in 1995 where in an informal conversation setting, John shared some of his incredible insights. In an attempt to preserve some of John’s thoughts, I transcribed my notes of that luncheon that I share here today so that a little more of John’s perspective can enlighten others.
When we discussed that Disneyland was a theme park and not an amusement park because it tells stories, John was even more adamant that what made Disneyland different was that it was a “storyboarded environment.” John proceeded to talk about how the park is told in scenes with cross-dissolves.
“Just like a film, everything is controlled for an audience. There are no contradictions. We did a slide show once where we took a picture of a Gothic tower that was at Franklin and Highland and right in front of it was this big gasoline sign. It is contradictory. They are unrelated. The emotional image of that beautiful Gothic tower is destroyed by that sign and quite frankly, the tower doesn’t do the gasoline sign any good either. It certainly doesn’t help sell gasoline. When there are contradictions, when there is chaos, we feel threatened.
“Guests don’t feel threatened at Disneyland. Guests feel reassured that there is a plan, a sense of harmony.
“One of the interesting things about queues at Disney is that by walking back and forth and back and forth, there are many opportunities to catch the eyes of others. You can’t do that in a big city. That would be asking for trouble. There was a guy who visited Disneyland so often, he was eventually given a Silver Pass. When he was asked why he was here so often, he responded, ‘Because I can jaywalk and talk to strangers without fear.’ The guests experience a kind of freedom. The images here add up to something less chaotic and less contradictory than the outside world. The park is a virtual reality of what’s outside the berm.
“There is a greater sense of order. At a state fair or carnival, everything clamors for you, so you look and look and try to make sense out of all these chaotic images. You are forced into making a lot of judgments. At Disneyland, when it comes to a ‘decision point,’ we try to offer only two choices. We don’t give seven or eight so that you really have to work hard to decide which is the best of those choices. We only offer two and then a little farther along, we give another two. They are still getting those seven or eight choices eventually but we are unfolding them gradually in segments so it is less overwhelming.
“This low-level of consciousness which we exploit is the extraordinary invention of the (Disney) Studio. Other parks fail at details because they are built by people who don’t understand images. Images override everything.”
Was Main Street based after Marceline, Missouri? “There probably isn’t anything exactly from Walt’s hometown in Main Street at Disneyland, but there is similar imagery. Disneyland’s Main Street has a more theatrical look than a real street would. The Main Street at Walt Disney World is even more exaggerated. There’s an optimism in Victorian architecture. That was what we were trying to capture. The memory of our feelings about Main Street. Like a dream. There’s some nostalgia involved, but nostalgia for what? There was never a Main Street like this one. But it reminds you of some things about yourself that you may have forgotten. A sense of progress and optimism. Even with the variety in the buildings, there is a sense of a single theme, a harmony.”
Isn’t having a castle at the end of Main Street a contradiction? “It is a secured point. It is a strong point. A castle doesn’t belong on Main Street but it does belong at the end of a vista like Main Street. The old cities clustered around a strong point whether it was a castle or a fort or whatever and then spread out from there. So our castle is the strong point but because it is so small it seems like a home as well. You know the expression, ‘A man’s home is his castle’? Well, our castle is Everyman’s home so that is why it doesn’t seem like a contradiction.”
Did Walt Disney consciously understand these concepts?
“The ‘hub concept’ of Disneyland was all Walt’s intuition. For Walt Disney World, the company wanted to do the guest flow right. They contracted a big mainframe computer to analyze all sorts of guest flow scenarios for 80 percent of the biggest season, even keeping in mind the square footage required for those little family conferences where guests try to figure out where to go next. The computer determined that it would be best to have an open area near the entrance and a straight length of pathway leading into the middle of the park, divided up into blocks. As the computer completed its suggestions, everyone realized that it was re-creating Disneyland. How did Walt come up with such a thing? It was pure intuition.
“Walt was really ahead of his time, for example, putting up sound stages before the company really needed them. When Walt unveiled his plans for Walt Disney World to government officials, he was afraid they wouldn’t understand all of his innovative, ahead-of-its-time ideas, so he never revealed his whole plan to them.”
We suggested to John that not everything in Disneyland was reassuring. We pointed out that “Space Mountain” that John had worked on was pretty frightening to guests, so much so that just the fear of what they had heard about it made some guests avoid the attraction.
“The first ‘Space Mountain’ had sections where the guests experienced zero Gs and people would lose everything in their pockets, so it had to be changed. We had great insights when we watched the first carload of guests get off of the ride and a lady came off kissing the carpet! From the RCA Lounge, we were watching on video monitors of guests on the exit ramp and two ladies were just moving along and then broke out in spontaneous laughter and recognition. ‘I am not dead! I’m not as old as I thought! Hey, I can do that!’ They felt good about themselves. They enjoyed the secret satisfaction that they weren’t dead!
“Audiences respond to our animated movies because they are about survival. People respond to them. Survival is the basis for all games. There is a power of theater in it. Maybe why we have no resistance to entertainment is because it teaches us about survival. At the park, we toss a pseudo-menace at you and we allow you to win. You might feel you are going too fast for safety but it really is safe and eventually, you win and you feel good about winning. They are feeling things, maybe something they haven’t felt in years because they’ve been doing humdrum kind of things where they haven’t felt those feelings.”
What do you think of Oswald the Rabbit? “I never thought the rabbit was worth very much.”
What was John’s favorite project? “My favorite is always the last thing I worked on.”
What was one thing about how Walt Disney that most people don’t know? “One of the things Walt liked to do to see the real nature of people he didn’t know was to put on a ‘stupid’ act. Many people lost opportunities with Walt because they tried to take advantage of this ‘stupid’ man.”
Since Disneyland is about storytelling, what is the primary message of Disneyland? “There is nothing to fear.”
