The self-described “worst” artist ever hired by Walt Disney who went on to help create three of Disneyland’s most beloved attractions and shape Knott’s Berry Farm has died after a kooky, whimsical and fearless career as a theme park designer.
Rolly Crump died Sunday, March 12 in his Carlsbad home at the age of 93, according to the Walt Disney Company.
Crump helped design It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room — three of Disneyland’s most enduring attractions.
“I wasn’t that much of an illustrator,” Crump said in the 2016 documentary “The Whimsical Imagineer.” “I think Walt liked my imagination.”
Influenced by comic strips and comic books, Crump began drawing as a child in the 1930s while trying to imagine the mental pictures painted in his head by radio serials like “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.”
Crump got his start at Disney’s animation studio in 1952 working for Eric Larson, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men.
“They told me I probably had the worst portfolio of anyone that was ever hired in animation at the studio,” Crump said in the documentary film. “I still hold that record I think.”
Making $35 per week, Crump took a significant pay cut to work as an in-betweener animator on “Peter Pan,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “101 Dalmatians.” He lowered bricks and mixed mud on weekends, building sewer manholes to supplement his income.
His big break came when a playful propeller exhibit Crump set up in the studio library caught Walt Disney’s eye. In 1959, Crump moved to WED Enterprises — the precursor to Walt Disney Imagineering — to help bring to life the new Disneyland attractions the boss was dreaming up.
“The one thing Walt taught me more than anything else was the big picture,” Crump said in the documentary film. “He had a vision and knew exactly what it was going to be and how to get there.”
Crump immediately set to work on a…
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