With All My Love, Diane
After six years of loving effort, Diane Disney Miller presented her stunning gift to all the World: The Walt Disney Family Museum. It was all done with a gracious and elegant preview tour followed by a lavish dinner catered by Wolfgang Puck. As one of a select group of Disney friends, we were treated to a delightful banquet in a garden tent turned into an enchanted evening forest filled with flowers and trees, all lit in a style perfect for a scene from Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs.
Image courtesy and copyright Bob Gurr. All rights reserved.
As twilight of a crisp clear evening, complete with a brilliant moon paired with a mystical close by planet, washed over the Historic Presidio building, the Walt Disney Family Museum glowed warmly in special theatrical lighting. As viewed from a nearby cocktail pavilion, the Museum appeared as a warm new star ready to perform the task of sharing Walt Disney’s life, both creative and family, to all who come to this Happy Place.
Diane, Ron Miller, and Walter Miller were some of the more than a dozen Miller family members greeting their invited guests out in front of the Museum, like proud children showing off their newest creation. Just like Walt did when he delighted in showing off a new Disneyland Attraction. Then it was time to start the tour.
Image courtesy and copyright Bob Gurr. All rights reserved.
I’ll leave it to professional writers to adequately describe all the features of this special place, since many visitors will learn about Walt Disney, but for me it was a very personal revisit with a man both awed and loved. Almost from the moment Ron Miller escorted me into the first areas, I began to slowly disappear into past memories of connections and shared times. By the time I’d viewed the final scenes, my brain had been burnt to a crisp with overload going back (55) years. I now see that I’ll have to plan an all-day return viewing in order to absorb in detail what two hours briefly sketched out what is here to relive.
What is most apparent is the total perfection in the archives presented, the design, and the flawless quality of execution by Diane’s superb Museum team who selected content, conceived layout, designed and engineered structure and show, all built and crafted exactly the way Walt did things. In a strange way, Walt never left; his way of “Show” continues in Diane today.
Image courtesy and copyright Bob Gurr. All rights reserved.
Walt’s life is told in ten story chapters in a natural flow from birth to completion in an easy to follow path that reveals so much detail with precious personal items, endless hours of audio, movies, and television…all blended superbly. What’s most striking is the amount of family home movies that Walt made that reveal how full of life and funny he could be. Throughout each of the ten chapters, one can stop to see ever more snapshots and goofy but loving scenes of the real Walt.
Walt actually tells you about his life directly, as you hear him speaking from overhead speakers. Almost as if he wants to guide you through each chapter so you get a much better understanding of what he learned, how he suffered bad days, but was so enthused over what he was going to do next. I found this most chilling and emotional.
What is so enchanting about the museum is that as each chapter unfolds, the display techniques change with styles of the times. Starting with a room perfect as a front room parlor, one will progress through time to the contemporary styles of Disneyland, finally ending in clean bright wall videos. Then one reaches the last frame...poof! Oh my gosh...what a movie! Wake up folks! We’re in the museum store...Just like a Disneyland attraction climax.
Image courtesy and copyright Bob Gurr. All rights reserved.
Well, it took a big smooth martini at the cocktail pavilion to help me recover. So many guests chattered excitedly after that trip through Walt’s Time, comparing notes of what affected them most. I delighted in sharing thoughts with not only Tony Baxter, fellow Imagineering Legends Alice Davis and Don Iwerks, but with musically famous Michael Tilson Thomas, Bob Iger, John Lasseter, Pete Doctor, Leonard Maltin, and so many others. All were left aglow from what they had seen on the museum tour.
But wait...there’s more! The enchanted forest garden dinner gave everyone more time to share in Diane’s Creations. She had Wolfgang Puck assemble an absolutely unsurpassable experience lit with warm lighting instruments complete with gobo filters that gave dappled light as moonlight through forest leaves. Table flowers and real living trees were placed artfully. The best in silverware and golden rimmed fine china was a total class act.
Speech making was graciously minimal, with both Diane and Museum Director Richard Benefield giving thanks to so many brilliant folks who created this permanent tribute to her father in such a thorough and moving presentation, and launched in a Show Biz Style so much like Walt Disney premiering Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs so long ago.
Image courtesy and copyright Bob Gurr. All rights reserved.
