Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) by Martin Sklar

newsboy promotions. Basically, Jack Lindquist’s team worked with local newspapers to reward their delivery boys for building circulation, all the while publicizing the trips to Disneyland that the carriers could win. The problem was twofold: first, newspaper staffs often neglected to follow the rules, especially the one about advance reservations; and, second, because it involved newspapers and publicity, there was a handoff from Jack to Eddie when it came time for the actual visit to the Magic Kingdom.
    One day we just had to have our little fun and games, so we arranged for the security team at the Main Gate to call Eddie and inform him that “Shorty Rogers,” the editor, and the carrier boys from the “Martian Evening Star” had arrived. Now Shorty Rogers was actually one of my favorite jazz musicians of the era, and the venerable “Martian Evening Star” had yet to publish its first edition (as far as we knew). Neither their publisher’s name nor the title of the “newspaper” rang a bell with Eddie—but not because of the fictional names. For him, it was all about the lack of prearrangements—for this very professional man, they had sinned by failing to make advance reservations with his office. As Eddie raced out of our offices in Disneyland’s City Hall to confront “Shorty Rogers” and his carrier boys at the Main Gate, we realized that we had gone over the line. Eddie didn’t speak to us for days afterward. We never again played our cheap tricks on this wonderful pro, revered by the press as if he, himself, were a Disney character. (The great San Francisco columnist Herb Caen once wrote that Eddie Meck was “no relation to Mecky Mouse.”)
    Jack Lindquist was to become the quintessential marketing guru for creating promotions in the modern amusement industry (I wasn’t around when Barnum was doing his thing). Jack and I were often the instigators of these pranks, and it began early on, when our team was assigned to supervise one of the divisions in the annual Halloween parade in the city of Anaheim. This was no small, or small-town, task. The Halloween Festival Parade had begun as a local tradition in 1924. It had become one of the biggest events in Orange County; in the early years of Disneyland, it would draw as many as 150,000 viewers to see the parade move through Anaheim’s downtown streets.
    Jack gave his version of our PR staff’s participation in the 1956 parade in his book In Service to the Mouse . He called it “Halloween Mischief”:
When Disneyland opened, the biggest annual event in town was Anaheim’s Halloween Festival, so Disneyland became involved right from the start. This included pumpkin-judging contests, kids’ costume contests in school, the traditional night of trick-or-treating, and the Halloween Festival Parade up Anaheim Boulevard, from Lincoln to La Palma Park. The event also included the Anaheim High School Band, plus bands from other Orange County high schools, color guards, horses, and floats representing local groups, such as Rotary, Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, the mayor and the city council, as well as a few floats representing local businesses, and finally, the Jaycees to clean up after the horses. [On a personal note, ours was the 20/30 Club of Fullerton. Their consumption of alcohol easily exceeded the amount of horse droppings they retrieved.] There were four divisions in the parade and my boss, Ed Ettinger, was asked to be a division captain.
    About a week before the event, Ed called me into his office and told me he was going to be out of town on business and asked if I would take his place. It wasn’t actually a question, so of course, I said yes. He said that there wasn’t much to do except to make sure the division was lined up correctly and ready to move in position. I could ask our staff to help. And there was one other thing: division captains rode on the back of new Thunderbird convertibles and dressed in top hats and tails.
    First, I