“Tom Hanks’ wonderful line in A League of Their Own (“There’s no crying in baseball!”) got me to thinking last week: Sometimes the very saddest moments in life remind you of some of the grandest people you have known,” says Disney Legend and Imagineering Ambassador Marty Sklar about Disney Legend Dorothea Redmond, who passed away on February 27. “I was struck by this strange dichotomy when Dorothea passed away. At almost the same moment, I felt the sorrow we know when a friend, fellow Imagineer and enormous talent leaves us… and the joy at recalling — and truly visualizing in my head — some of Dorothea’s amazing works of art.”
After receiving her degree in Interior Design from the University of Southern California School of Architecture and attending Art Center College in Pasadena, California, Dorothea made a name for herself working on film productions like Gone with the Wind (1939) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). Dorothea also worked at RKO with famed French director Jean Renoir, and at Universal Studios and at Paramount where she helped design the great sets for The Road to Bali (1952). After working with Charlie Chaplin on Limelight (1952) and with Hitchcock again on Rear Window (1954), Dorothea joined an architectural firm. Tired of “10 years of working weekends to meet Monday deadlines,” she joined WED (now Walt Disney Imagineering) in October of 1964.
Some of her first Disney work involved the transformation of Disneyland’s Red Wagon Inn Restaurant into the sumptuously appointed Plaza Inn. Working with art director and Disney Legend John Hench, Dorothea transformed the Inn into a graceful dining facility that was one of Walt’s favorite spots to host guests. Her next project was to design interior settings for New Orleans Square. Dorothea created many interior and exterior views of the area restaurants and shops, her evocative style bringing a rich reality to the finished work.
Working with art directors Bill Martin and Bob Brown, as well as with Walt himself, Dorothea developed the interior paintings of the Royal Suite, a Disney family hideaway atop New Orleans Square, once the home of The Disney Gallery and currently the Disneyland “Dream Suite.”
Redmond remained at WED to work on the Walt Disney World project in Florida, where her work was varied and prolific, including studies for Fantasyland, renderings for an architecturally opulent Main Street and an Adventureland area development that communicated a feminine and ethereal mood of exotica. She also designed the elaborate murals in the entry passage through Cinderella Castle. The five 15-by-10-foot panels were realized in a million pieces of multicolored Italian glass, real silver and 14-karat gold and were duplicated for Tokyo Disneyland a decade later. Some of her final renderings were of the folksy frontier buildings of the Fort Wilderness area.
“Now perhaps Dorothea will be best remembered for the Disneyland Dream Suite, originally designed for Walt himself,”
Marty adds. “But certainly her most admired design work is the elaborate mosaic murals of the Cinderella story in the entry passage to the Castle at the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. Not even the medieval castles of Europe can boast of masterpieces like these!”
Redmond retired in June 1974. Her work was recently featured in the exhibit Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, organized by the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, in collaboration with The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library. In 2008 she was named a Disney Legend.
When she passed away, Marty says he recalled, “not the frail 90 some year old who was honored as a Disney Legend last fall… but instead the brilliant watercolorist whose brush strokes gave us magnificent images for shops and stores on Main Street, U.S.A. and in New Orleans Square, so immersive that we immediately believed we had already visited these magic places. I could hear [Imagineer] Harper Goff and Dorothea discussing how to illustrate the side-by-side juxtaposition of contrasting styles of architecture for the countries of Epcot’s World Showcase. And of course I could walk right into the Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom (or Tokyo Disneyland!) and revel in Dorothea’s timelessly magnificent mosaic murals conveying the story of Cinderella for our Guests.”
Of course he can. It’s not easy to forget someone who leaves such a beautiful, inspirational and timeless imprint upon our world.
By Marty Sklar
