Van France was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 3, 1912.
After a series of jobs that provided training and experience in the fields of labor and industrial relations for General Dynamics and Kaiser Aluminum, Van joined Disney in March 1955. He worked at a variety of positions with Disneyland but is best known for founding the University of Disneyland, which over the years has turned Disneyland employees into cast members who exemplify Walt Disney’s philosophy of creating happiness for park guests.
Van retired in 1978, served as a consultant to the parks, and wrote an autobiography, Window on Main Street: Thirty-five Years of Creating Happiness at Disneyland Park. Van was named a Disney Legend in 1994 and died on October 13, 1999.
I interviewed Van on March 14, 1985, by telephone. He and I then developed a friendship with the Disneyland Alumni Club serving as a common bond. (I worked at Disneyland in the summer of 1982.) Over the years, we corresponded mostly by mail. Van always had different stationary and usually with a comical letterhead. His typewriter filled in some letters and had a peculiar mind of its own that seemed to fit Van. I never met him in person, but I knew from a distance that he was one of the special people that put the magic in Disneyland.
D P : How long did you work at Disneyland?
V F : Thirty years.
D P : How did you happen to go to work at Disneyland?
V F : The first vice president–general manager at Disneyland [C. V. Wood]
was a man I’d worked with before in Texas, and then we’d done some consulting work together. He had been with Stanford Research [Insti-tute]. Walt retained him to be vice president–general manager. Then finally about six months before opening, they found out that they needed a training program, so he knew that I had done that sort of thing and retained me on a consulting basis. Then I stayed around.
D P : Did you work with the training program during your entire career at
Disneyland?
V F : Well, I sort of set up what is called the University of Disneyland. I
sort of set up the first orientation program.
D P : I was really impressed with the orientation program when I went
through it. It was quite extensive and made me feel part of the whole team right from the beginning.
V F : When you went through, it was probably a little bit more
sophisti-cated than when we started out. But it’s still a good program.
D P : Were you working in that capacity when the park opened—the first
day and the first summer?
V F : Yeah, 1955. I was on a contract at that time, a week-to-week contract
to organize the orientation and training program and to set it up.
D P : During the time you worked there, I’m sure you had a chance to
meet Walt Disney?
V F : Yes.
D P : Can you tell me what your impressions were of him?
V F : I thought he was a sensational man, really, one of the most important
people in my life. I didn’t work for him directly. I usually worked for
somebody that worked directly for him, but I did know him. In fact, I’d write my handbooks pretty much with him in mind, because he had a good sense of humor and had his own idea of what he was doing. I think he was a genius of a type.
D P : I would agree with you there. What would you see as the key or
main ingredient to Disneyland’s success?
V F : There are so many of them. In the first place, I’m quite prejudiced—
I’m catholic in my tendencies, you see—because Disneyland itself is the one place in the world that Walt personally designed and then had maybe eleven years to work around and form it, so I use the expression that it’s the roadmap of Walt Disney’s life or mind. So just the basic design, the detail, and everything else is one thing. We had a lot of com-ments from people who said they would come back because the people were so friendly and the place was so clean. So you have this personal design. And Walt was there, you know. He walked over every foot, so it was molded by him and then the people—we invest an awful lot in the attitudes of our people and in the cleanliness of the park.
D P : Looking back over the years, are there any outstanding memories
that you have from 1955 to the present at Disneyland?
V F : Yeah. Everybody has a lot of them, you know. My general philosophy
is that you gotta look ahead. You can glance in the rearview mirror, but you better keep your eyes on where the hell you’re going, you know.
D P : Along that vein, how would you see the future of Disneyland?
V F : I’m very bullish about it right now. Nineteen-eighty-four was a hell
of a year, if you followed the history of Disney. People were trying to buy us out, we had a change in top management, but now we have a very aggressive top management in [Michael] Eisner and [Frank] Wells, and that sort of thing. Hopefully, they’ll come up with some movies that will then help Disneyland. You see, the last blockbuster movie we had was Mary Poppins, and Mary Poppins made enough money, as Walt said, to pretty much pay for the Pirates of the Caribbean, New Orleans Square, the Haunted Mansion, and a few other things.
D P : From what I’ve read, it sounds like the next addition may come from outside of Disney, with the George Lucas attraction themed to Star Wars.
V F : That’s what I gather. Personally, I hope that nothing really changes
much on Main Street or in most of the place—it’s like the Vatican, you know. If attendance drops off at the Vatican, they’re not going to take out Michelangelo and put in Andy Warhol! But Tomorrowland—
the world changes so rapidly that it’s almost impossible not to have it Todayland. So I’m very optimistic that we’ll come up with some stuff in Tomorrowland that will make it very, very exciting.
D P : That seems to me, too, to be the area where you could have the most
changes, because there are so few attractions that I think attendance has dropped off. One of the attractions I worked on was Mission to Mars. It didn’t seem to be as popular as some of the other ones.
V F : Mission to Mars, you know, was a warmed-over—when we first
opened, we had the Rocket to the Moon, and, by God, we got to the moon before Sputnik! We could see [Sputnik] go by from a bar across the street. At that time, it was a pretty progressive idea, but, my God, that’s one of the problems: you start in planning something, and by the time you get it done, it’s a couple or three years, and by that time, the world has changed so damn fast.
D P : I just read yesterday that Tomorrowland was originally supposed to
be 1986, so we’ve almost caught up to the original Tomorrowland.
V F : We’re past it!
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