Marty Sklar

Martin A. "Marty" Sklar (February 6, 1934 – July 27, 2017) was a scriptwriter and construction developer. He was The Walt Disney Company's international ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering, the subsidiary of the company which designs and constructs Disney theme parks and resorts across the world. He was formerly vice president of Concepts and Planning for the company, before being promoted to president, then vice chairman and principal creative executive before his final role. Disney honored him with a Disneyland window dedication ceremony on his date of retirement, July 17, 2009. Career highlights Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Sklar was a student at University of California, Los Angeles and editor of its Daily Bruin newspaper in 1955 when he was recruited to create a 1950s-themed newspaper, The Disneyland News, a month before the theme park opened. After graduating, he joined Disneyland full-time in 1956, where he held responsibility for most of the park's publicity and marketing materials. In 1961, he moved to WED Enterprises (renamed Walt Disney Imagineering in 1986), where he worked on attractions for the 1964 New York World's Fair. Among the attractions he helped to design during this period were the Enchanted Tiki Room and It's a Small World, the latter originally for the World's Fair. For nearly 10 years, he wrote personal materials for Walt Disney for use in publications, television and special films. In 1974 he became vice president of concepts/planning, and guided the creative development of EPCOT Center (now known as Epcot) at Florida's Walt Disney World Resort. As vice president of creative development, executive vice president and then president of Imagineering for nine years, Sklar supervised the design and construction of Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney-MGM Studios, Disneyland Paris, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Disney California Adventure Park, Tokyo DisneySea, the Walt Disney Studios Park and Hong Kong Disneyland. Former Disneyland International chairman Jim Cora later said of him, "He understands the Disney way, because he learned it at Walt's knee. He is the keeper of the keys, the conscience, the Jiminy Cricket for the organization."