Discounting the great man himself, there can be few people who’ve played such a key role in Disney’s success as Marty Sklar. During a 54-year career, in which Sklar started out as the writer of Walt Disney’s narratives and ended as the realiser of his visions, the IAAPA Hall of Famer played a hand in the opening of all 11 Disney parks around the world.
When he retired from his position as head of Disney Imagineering in 2006, after more than 30 years in the role, former Disneyland International chair Jim Cora referred to him as the “keeper of the keys” – someone who understood the Disney way because “he learned it at Walt’s knee.”
Sklar was hired to write Disneyland marketing materials in 1955, when he was still a UCLA undergraduate. Working closely with Disney helped instil in him a sense of the “Disney DNA”, which he circulated to his Imagineers through the doctrine of “Mickey’s Ten Commandments.”
“As I began to learn to write things that sounded like Walt Disney, I found a little book called Words to Live By. It was from the 1940s,” says Sklar. “There was an article from Walt in there called ‘Take a Chance.’ I realised that was Walt’s model – take a chance. He was a big risk-taker.”
“Everybody thought Disneyland was going to be a disaster and that it wouldn’t work. But Walt believed in it so strongly and he convinced people that it was going to work – including the bankers – and ultimately, that’s why we’re all in this industry today.”
“Walt was never interested in what he did yesterday. He was only interested in what he was going to do today and tomorrow. So we all had to grow all the time to keep up with him and that was a great challenge and a great opportunity,” Sklar says.
