Four years ago, for its 60th anniversary, Disneyland honored 10 members of the prestigious “Club 55” during a flurry of special activities. The festivities began on July 15, when former Parks head Dick Nunis hosted a private dinner for his comrades at Steakhouse 55’s Oak Room in the Disneyland Hotel. Club members were then spotlighted on July 17 during a ceremony in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, brunch in the Dream Suite, and a parade down Main Street. Guests lined up along the curb, cheering and waving as antique vehicles rolled by carrying Nunis, Ron Dominguez, and the other First Year pioneers. Reporters waited to interview the group, anxious to ask about working on Opening Day and alongside Walt.
The turnout at the time represented two-thirds of the then-15 surviving members of Club 55 (today, the ranks are down to nine). Over the years, membership in the club has been kind to the initiated. Members are still called on by the park or the media for an occasional quote or special appearance—and once every five years for park anniversaries. While they were still employed, on or about every July 17, the 55ers and their families would be invited to an exclusive party, inspired by the 10th-anniversary bash where Walt and Roy appeared to hand out the first 10-year service awards. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, Club 55 celebrations ranged from opulent dinners aboard the Queen Mary and the private Magic Island in Newport Beach, to trips to Catalina Island and Walt Disney World. And, of course, they’d typically receive special mementos, often tied to “55.”
Although Club 55 ostensibly represented the “original” employees of Disneyland, by design it didn’t include everyone who worked at the park in Year One. Two groups were automatically eliminated: Those who worked strictly for a lessee (unless they stayed on after Disney took over their concession) and those who left the park before the club began shortly after the park’s 15th anniversary in 1970. To be eligible, they also were required to have started with Disneyland no later than December 31, 1955, and to have worked continuously until at least 1970—allowing for breaks due to military service and transfers to other divisions of Walt Disney Productions.
But like everything in the post-Walt days at Disney, a lesser-known qualification for membership was how well you were liked and how much power you had. Over the years, the club’s rules have been bent to allow in several cast members who technically didn’t meet the requirements and keep out an even greater number who did. In fact, 40 years ago, 14 members were cut out of the club—basically blacklisted—in one fell swoop.
Club 55 was the brainchild of Disneyland University founder Van Arsdale France, with help from his assistant, Dick Milano, and his boss, Dick Nunis. Early on, France realized that, as the company’s first retail operation, Disneyland’s success hinged on its workforce being able to convey customers the same “magic” that its movies did. Disneyland needed employees to love what they did and treasure where they worked. Van set this as the foundation of the park’s first indoctrination program.
A few years later, he left to join Disneyland’s first general manager, C.V. Wood, in opening multiple competing theme parks in the Northeast. France saw firsthand how these regional parks suffered because the employees didn’t believe they were working for something greater than themselves; there was no pixie dust. Van eventually returned to Disney to rework its training program so that it would be transferrable to other operations of the company.
But despite helping to facilitate Disney’s expansion, Van was becoming more convinced than ever that what Walt had created in Anaheim could never be adequately replicated. At that time, in that place, with those people, Disney had captured magic in a bottle. (Van would later tell me he thought the Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris—all these “Disneyland franchises”—were mistakes that detracted from the original.)
So in 1969, with the impending opening of Walt Disney World, Van determined that Disneyland and the special people who hired on in 1955 not be forgotten. He proposed forming a special club to honor the first-year employees. By rummaging through employment records, Van came up with a list of close to 100 names, so he called it “The 100 Club.” As his list circulated, another 30-some cast members stepped forward, asking to join. So Van renamed it “The 55 Club.” They eventually went with “Club 55,” since it sounded like the equally exclusive “Club 33.” Member John Catone even designed a logo for Club 55 patterned after Club 33’s.
Disney had always been a highly political organization. When people heard the club was forming, many tried to get in, some of whose resumes really didn’t fit the requirements. The ones who were extra beloved—or powerful—were let in.
As the parties got fancier, active cast members who thought they should be included began soliciting to be allowed in. In 1955, machinist Arnold Lindberg was working in the Studio’s Machine Shop and didn’t move on-site for several years. Conductor Vesey Walker semi-retired in 1966 and had fully retired by the time the club formed in 1970.
Others weren’t so lucky. Hank Filtz was first hired by the park part-time to do odd jobs in August of 1955, and became a permanent member of the Operations Department in 1956. So Disney personnel records gave him a hire date of 1956. Hank spent the remainder of his 32 years at Disneyland pleading—unsuccessfully—to be admitted into the club, an injustice that bothered him the rest of his life.
Some who were overlooked didn’t think to make a big deal about it. Marty Sklar said he could have been a member but wasn’t interested enough to call attention to his omission. As well, at least three 55ers who retired in 1972—Publicity’s Eddie Meck, accountant Clint Chittenden, and Youth Activities’ Dorothy Manes—should have been in the club, but weren’t. They may have been overlooked inadvertently, although in the case of the highly divisive Manes (nicknamed “The Dragon Lady”), the slight was likely intentional.
Modest Club 55 banquets were held in 1972 and 1973. Then in 1974, Disneyland cleaned house. With park management under pressure to tighten its belt due to the Gas Crisis, 63 managers at all levels were terminated. For a company that had prided itself on loyalty, longevity and seniority, the shakeup was an eye-opener. Released were a number of 55ers, including supervisors Bob Reilly, Jim Haught, and Bob McDonald. Executive Jack Sayers, age 59, “retired.”
Disney now faced a dilemma, since the ousters went against everything management had been preaching. The company decided to pull out all the stops for the following year’s 20th-anniversary celebration. Walt’s widow, Lillian, attended the celebration, held in the Executive Room of the Disneyland Hotel. Each Club 55 member received a Bull’s Eye Ring, designed by artist Ralph Kent, and a commemorative coffee-table book called The Pioneers, profiling each member of Club 55. The book also rewrote history. Disney knew it couldn’t invite to the party the managers it had just ousted—let alone immortalize them in a coffee-table book. Instead, they revised the club’s membership rules. Now, to be a member, one had to have worked directly for Disney until 1970 and, if no longer active, to have left only by retirement.
That left in limbo at least 14 55ers who had quit or been fired over the last three years.
Suddenly excised were:
• Simon Dubois, Landscaping supervisor
• Jim Haught, Operations supervisor
• Lou Mayan, Foods supervisor
• Bob McDonald, assistant supervisor
• Buck Parker, Construction manager
• Orville Phelps, window washer
• Daniel Poppa, projectionist
• Bob Reilly, Operations area manager
• Jack Sayers, VP
• Ray Skinner, auto mechanic foreman
• Kelly Smith, Purchasing director
• Ken St. Hill, Admissions manager
• Herman Terando, trumpeter
• Warren Weems, Decorating Department foreman
No one ever told any of the 14 that they had been ousted. Most simply assumed their Disney careers were over, and they moved on. About four years ago, unaware of the expulsion, I asked Bob McDonald why he wasn’t considered part of Club 55. He didn’t know, and figured he still should be. He knew he started in August of 1955 and met all of the other initial requirements. Bob tried to arrange a visit to the Team Disney Anaheim Building to view his personnel file and make a copy of his original hiring paperwork with start date, as proof. He then contacted long-retired but still-influential Dick Nunis to see what could be done to get him reinstalled in the club.
“It’s too late,” Nunis told him. “Forget about it.” Club 55 no longer organized any official events. There were no more goodies to hand out. Let it go. Surely Nunis was aware that McDonald’s exclusion wasn’t an oversight, since he likely played a role in removing him from the rolls.
Nunis is correct that for the most part Club 55 is generally inactive. But it sure would be nice if one day the Walt Disney Company formally recognized all of the first-year cast members who helped give birth to the Happiest Place on Earth.
Making sure the world gets to know not just the members of Club 55, but ALL of the original employees of Disneyland was the primary motivation behind my just-released The 55ers: The Pioneers Who Settled Disneyland. The coffee-table book profiles more than 700 Year One cast members featuring more than 300 never-before-published photos, primarily supplied by the 55ers and their families.