Disney artist McKim drew souvenir maps
LOS ANGELES – Sam McKim, an artist whose career as a member of Walt Disney’s Imagineering team included drawing the first souvenir map of Disneyland and early sketches for many of the theme park’s attractions, has died. He was 79.
McKim, who was a popular child actor in numerous B-westerns in the 1930s, died of heart failure July 9 at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said a Disney spokesman.
McKim was long known as the “master map maker.” As a Disney theme park cartographer, he created “fun maps” charting the layouts of Disneyland, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Pirates of the Caribbean and Tom Sawyer Island. He later came out of retirement to draw the first souvenir map of Disneyland Paris.
McKim joined WED Enterprises as an illustrator in 1954, the year before Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955. Walt Disney had founded the design and development organization in late 1952 to help create Disneyland. In 1986, WED was renamed Walt Disney Imagineering.
Among McKim’s initial assignments were sketches for attractions, shops and restaurants on Main Street and in Frontierland, including the Golden Horseshoe Revue.
He later played a key role on the four Disney attractions at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, contributing sketches for Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, It’s a Small World, Carousel of Progress and Magic Skyway.
His conceptual drawings also helped visualize the Haunted Mansion and the Monorail at Disneyland, and the Hall of Presidents at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.
As a Disney artist, McKim worked on films and TV shows, including “Zorro,” “Johnny Tremain,” “The Shaggy Dog,” “The Gnome-Mobile” and “Nikki: Wild Dog of the North.”
“Sam’s early sketches for Disneyland’s Main Street and Frontierland are inspirational to Imagineers – among the very best ever drawn for Walt Disney theme park attractions,” Marty Sklar, vice chairman and principal creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a statement.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1924, McKim moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1935. Shortly after their arrival, he visited a cousin who worked at MGM. A casting director spotted McKim there, and he immediately began working in films.
He appeared frequently in westerns.
While under contract at Republic Studios, McKim worked on films with Gene Autry and others.
“He was one of the best-remembered western child actors of the 1930s and ‘40s,” said Boyd Magers, editor and publisher of Western Clippings, a publication about western films. “He had a great smile and just that all-American, freckled-face look that was perfect for those westerns of that era.”
McKim’s four siblings – Harry, David, Lydia and Peggy – also worked as child actors in the movies. But Sam, Harry McKim recalled Wednesday, “was the prominent one.”
A Hollywood High School graduate, McKim served in the Army during World War II and enrolled in Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles when he got out. Called back to military duty, he served in Korea, where he earned the Distinguished Service Cross.
After returning home, he took advanced art classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and continued his acting career.
He had played an Irish urchin in director John Ford’s 1936 film “The Plough and the Stars,” and Ford offered him a supporting lead in “The Long Gray Line,” starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O’Hara.
“Would you believe I turned it down to become an artist?” McKim once recalled. “I started (in the art department) at 20th Century Fox, then moved to Disney for a temp job, and didn’t leave until I retired 32 years later.”
He is survived by his wife, Dorothy; sons Matt, a former senior production designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, and Brian, a former Disney artist; and two grandchildren.