Bruce Gordon, a former Disney Imagineer who spent 25 years working in a variety of top creative capacities for the Disney theme parks and authored/co-authored definitive books on a wide range of Disney subjects and legends, passed away suddenly on November 6th at his home in Glendale, California. The cause of death has yet to be determined. He was 56 years old.
Gordon wrote and designed books about the Disney theme parks (Disneyland: The Nickel Tour, The Art of Disneyland, Disneyland: Then, Now and Forever, Walt Disney World: Then, Now and Forever, The Art of Walt Disney World), and such famous Disney figures as the Sherman Brothers (Walt’s Time), Peter Ellenshaw (Ellenshaw Under Glass), and Herb Ryman (A Brush with Disney). Since leaving his post as project director at Walt Disney Imagineering in 2005, he had been serving as show producer and creative consultant for The Walt Disney Family Museum, which will be housed in San Francisco’s Presidio area.
Image courtesy of the Walt Disney Company.
Commenting on Gordon’s passing, Academy Award®-winning composer/songwriter Richard Sherman said, “Bruce had an amazing and inventively creative mind. He had a warm and generous heart. He marched to his own drummer with an unswerving desire to achieve excellence. He was my great and very dear friend and I will miss him forever; many will.”
Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney, added, “All of us who have been working with Bruce on the Walt Disney Family Museum are devastated by his sudden death. When we conceived the idea of the museum, Bruce was at the top of our list of people we wished to engage to work with us. Bruce had a deep understanding and appreciation of my father as a man, not simply a brand, or icon. Brilliant, inventive, creative, Bruce understood the value of entertainment, of playfulness. He knew the story we wanted to tell so well, and he had strong ideas about how to tell it. As ‘show producer,’ he was always a passionate voice for the things he considered vital to the story. He himself was vital to our project. His fingerprints are all over our museum, and they always will be.”
Tony Baxter, creative vice president at Imagineering, noted “Bruce’s talent in fabricating the amazing show for Epcot’s ‘Journey Into Imagination’ stood out so dramatically from all other efforts being done back in the early 80’s. It was destiny that he would become my instant creative partner in conceiving and producing attractions that continue to delight guests around the world. He was a true renaissance artist, accomplished in every area of creativity, with the practical ‘know how’ to make complex Disney dreams a reality. His talent and friendship will never be replaced.”
Gordon began his career as a model designer at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) in 1980, and went on to lend his talents and passion to the creation of numerous Disney theme park attractions around the world. He made major contributions to such popular attractions as Splash Mountain (for which he was credited as show producer), Tarzan’s Treehouse, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Most recently, he helped to develop the concept for the “Finding Nemo” Submarine Voyage, which opened at Disneyland earlier this year. Among his earliest assignments for WDI, Gordon produced show set pieces for a number of Epcot attractions and was also a member of the installation team for Journey Into Imagination in Future World. At Disneyland, he assumed the same responsibility for New Fantasyland, which opened in 1983.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Gordon grew up in Palo Alto and Fullerton, California. He went to Disneyland often as a child, and built countless models of the famous landmark in his parents’ garage. One particularly ambitious project involved actual water from the Jungle Cruise that he smuggled out of Disneyland in a milk carton.
Gordon was a lifelong collector of Disneyana and sought vintage Disneyland memorabilia at swap meets, conventions, and collectible shops. In addition to the numerous books that he authored and designed on the history of Disney theme parks, he was also a frequent editor and contributor to various Disney employee publications, and wrote feature articles on the subject for national magazines. He also appeared frequently as a speaker at Disneyana conventions, often paired with his initial co-author, the late David Mumford.
Over the past two years, besides working on The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, Gordon worked closely with acclaimed songwriter Richard Sherman (and collaborator Milt Larsen) writing the book for an ambitious new musical themed to the early days of Broadway called Pazazz! He is also credited as co-producer on The Boys, a feature length documentary about the Sherman Brothers that is currently being directed by Gregg Sherman (son of Richard) and Jeff Sherman (son of Robert). He had also recently completed co-authoring and designing a biography on famed Disneyland Golden Horseshoe performer Wally Boag. Entitled The Clown Prince of Disneyland, the book will be published in 2008.
Gordon is survived by his father, Walter E. Gordon of Placentia, California, and his sister, Nancy M. Gordon of Washington D. C. A memorial service is scheduled for Monday November 12th at 2:00 pm at Forest Lawn - Glendale in the Church of the Recessional (1712 S. Glendale Ave. Glendale, 91205).
