06.06.12 – D23 says farewell to science fiction great Ray Bradbury, who wrote the screenplay based on his spine-tingling novel for Something Wicked This Way Comes and developed the original storyline for Epcot’s Spaceship Earth attraction at Walt Disney World.
Famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, whose name conjures up a chronicle from Mars, a foray into the future, a waltz on a waystation at the edge of the universe, and a carnival with a magic carousel, passed away on June 5, 2012. He was 91.
“Ray Bradbury was pleased when we started the Walt Disney Archives, as he enjoyed dropping by to chat with me about Walt, whom he admired greatly,” Disney Legend and Chief Archivist Emeritus Dave Smith remembers. “He seemed like a little child in his enthusiasm for all things Disney, especially the work done by the Imagineers. He’d speak at length of the times he was privileged to have lunch with Walt in his office. Time seemed to fly as the two dreamers, over soup and salad at a card table, loved to reminisce about the past and discuss their hopes for the future.”
Bradbury was fascinated with futuristic concepts beginning at a young age. “I had always dreamt of building a World’s Fair,” Bradbury told D23 in 2010. “When I was 12 years old, I went to the [1933] World’s Fair in Chicago and fell in love with the future. If they could do that to me when I was 12, it could happen to other people. That fair caused me to go home and prepare myself for the future, to write about it, to change the future.” Bradbury did exactly that. He authored The Martian Chronicles, the screen version of Moby Dick, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and also wrote for The Twilight Zone and The Ray Bradbury Theater, to name a few of his many beloved works.
He eventually became involved with the 1964 New York World’s Fair, which later led to his interest in the Epcot project at Walt Disney World. Ray found himself spearheading the development of one of the signature attractions, a concept called Spaceship Earth, which built upon his passion for telling the story of human beings. It would be the centerpiece of Future World. For Bradbury, its importance could not be understated. “We didn’t know who we were,” he once said. “I told them that they should present the history of mankind to people. We needed to rediscover where we came from, and where we would like to be going, so I kept talking about this again and again.” Disney Legend and former Imagineer Bob Gurr recalled that, “Ray was always prowling the halls at Walt Disney Imagineering. He’d just pop in to any meeting, sometimes in tennis shorts. Such a cool guy to talk to.”
Bradbury continued his work with Disney and he penned the sсript for 1983′s Something Wicked This Way Comes—a film he had long been attached to and one that filled him with joy when Disney decided to produce the film. “Something Wicked This Way Comes sums up my entire life of loving Lon Chaney and the magicians and grotesques he played in his early films,” Ray recalled in an interview. “I was a raving film maniac long before I hit my 18th year. When I was nine I became a full-time magician after seeing Blackstone on stage in my hometown. Magic and magicians and Chaney and libraries have filled my life. Libraries are the real birthing places of the universe for me.”
A shining moment for Bradbury came on Halloween night, October 31, 2007, when “the Father of Halloween” experienced his personal dream come true: the lighting of his very own Halloween Tree at Disneyland. In celebration of the 35th anniversary of his novel, The Halloween Tree, Disney honored him by dedicating his own Halloween tree during a tree-lighting ceremony in Frontierland. On that night, Bradbury said, ”I know that the ghost of Walt Disney is blessing me, right this very moment! To have my tree planted and lit in your midst makes this one of the greatest nights in my life.”
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