Rolly Crump, the pioneering Walt Disney Imagineer who helped design It’s a Small World, the Enchanted Tiki Room, The Haunted Mansion and different points of interest for Disneyland, has died. He was 93.
Crump died Sunday at his dwelling in Carlsbad, California, his household announced.
“Rolly and his household wish to thank the followers for supporting his work through the years,” they mentioned in a press release. “His whole life was crammed with one ‘form of a cute story’ after the following, and he can be remembered with numerous love.”
Crump’s profession with Disney, which included a stint as Disneyland’s artwork director, spanned greater than 40 years (he left a few instances to launch his personal firm and to work on initiatives around the globe). He retired in 1996 and was named a Disney Legend in 2004.
The whimsical Crump was fascinated with propellers, and the spinning mobiles and sculptures he had created and hung within the library of the studio whereas he was working within the animation division had been observed by Walt Disney himself. He moved Crump into WED Enterprises in 1959 as one of many firm’s first Imagineers.
“I feel he liked the sensation of all these little issues animating after which them and seeing each was totally different, each had plenty of creativeness in it,” Crump once said of his boss. “So I feel it actually intrigued the hell out of him.”
His propellers would grow to be the inspiration for an architectural piece he referred to as the Tower of the 4 Winds, which he designed for the It’s a Small World attraction on the 1964-65 World’s Honest in New York.
When the attraction moved to Disneyland in 1966, Crump designed the animated clock, which sends puppet kids on a parade as every quarter-hour strikes, for the doorway.
Crump additionally created the hand-carved tiki masks sculptures for the Enchanted Tiki Room and with Yale Gracey got here up with concepts for The Haunted Mansion; he did idea work for the attraction’s wonderful “stretch room.”
Rolly Crump at work.
Courtesy of Disney Animation
Roland Fargo Crump was born on Feb. 27, 1930, in Alhambra, California. When he was 3, his father took him to see The Three Little Pigs (1933).
“He knew the projectionist so we acquired to go up into the projection sales space,” he informed the Los Angeles Instances. “All that stuff caught in my head. I don’t know if I used to be aware of Disney at the moment, however I instantly fell in love with Disney.”
He started his profession at age 22 making $35 per week with the corporate as an in-betweener, engaged on movies together with Peter Pan (1953), Girl and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Magnificence (1959) and 101 Dalmatians (1961).
Years later, Crump contributed to the preliminary design of Walt Disney World and labored on EPCOT Middle, each in Florida.
His initiatives exterior of Disney included Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California; Busch Gardens in Florida and California; the ABC Wildlife Protect in Maryland; Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus World in Florida; and a world celebration attraction for the nation of Oman.
His autobiography, It’s Form of a Cute Story, was printed in 2012.
Survivors embrace his second spouse, Marie; kids Christopher, Roxana and Theresa; and three grandchildren.
