When Walt Disney chose Xavier “X” Atencio in 1965 to be one of his first theme park designers, he was assigned to a series of projects that took him out of his comfort zone.
Atencio, for example, would never have imagined himself as a composer.
One of Atencio's first major projects with Walt Disney Imagineering (WED Enterprises (for Walter Elias Disney), as it was known at the time) was Pirates of the Caribbean. By the mid-'60s, when Atencio joined the Piratas team, the attraction was already underway, with fellow animators turned theme park designers Marc Davis and Claude Coats creating many of its exaggerated characters and immersive environments. Atencio's work? Make everything make sense by giving it a coherent story. Although Atencio had once dreamed of being a journalist, his work as an entertainer had diverted him from the writer's path.
Not only would Atencio discover it, but he would end up being the artist of one of Disneyland's most recognizable songs, “Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me).” In the process, he was key in creating the template for the modern theme park dark attraction, a term often applied to slow-moving indoor attractions. These twists and turns in his career are detailed in a new book about Atencio, who died in 2017. “Xavier 'X' Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” (Disney Editions), written by three of his relatives, follows Atencio's unexpected trajectory, starting from his roots in animation (his resume includes “Fantasia,” the Oscar-winning short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,” and even stop-motion work in “Mary Poppins”).
For Pirates of the Caribbean, Atencio is said to have received little direction from Disney, only that the park patriarch was unhappy with the previous attempts at narration and dialogue, finding them a bit boring. So I knew, essentially, what not to do. Atencio, according to the book, immersed himself in films like Disney's “Treasure Island” and pop culture interpretations of pirates, striving for something bordering on cartoonish rather than something ripped from the history books.
Xavier “X” Atencio started in animation. Here he is seen drawing dinosaurs for a sequence in “Fantasia.”
(Reprinted from “Xavier 'X' Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)
In fact, Atencio's words, some of those quoted in the book, such as “Avast there! You come looking for adventure and salty old pirates, right?” – have become shorthand for how to talk like a pirate. The first scene written for the attraction was the midpoint auction sequence, a section of the attraction that was changed in 2017 due to its outdated cultural implications. In the original, a proud red-haired woman is the main prisoner at a wedding auction, but today the “wench” has achieved pirate status and is helping to auction off stolen goods.
At first, Atencio thought he had overwritten the scene, noticing that the dialogues overlapped each other. In a now-famous moment at the theme park, and chronicled in the book, Atencio apologized to Disney, who ignored Atencio's insecurity.
“Hey, X, when you go to a cocktail party, you pick up a little conversation here, another conversation there,” Disney told the animator. “Every time people walk by, they'll find something new.”
This was the green light Atencio, Davis and Coats needed to continue developing their attraction as one that would be a tableau of scenes rather than a strict plot.
Putting it all together, Atencio thought, there should be a song. Atencio, who is not a composer, sketched some lyrics and a simple melody. As the authors write, he turned to the thesaurus and made lists of “hacked” traditional words. He presented it to Disney and, to Atencio's surprise, the company's founder quickly gave it the go-ahead.
“Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me),” Atencio would relate, was a challenge since the journey doesn't have a typical beginning and end, meaning the melody had to work with whatever pirate vignette we were navigating. Ultimately, the song, with music by George Bruns, underlines the humorous feel of the journey, allowing the looting, pillaging and chasing of women, another scene that has been altered over the years, to be presented with a playful touch.
The Pirates of the Caribbean auction scene in its current incarnation as seen at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom.
(Charles Sykes / Invision / Associated Press)
The song “altered the trajectory” of Atencio’s career. While Atencio was not considered a musical person (“Not at all,” says his daughter Tori Atencio McCullough, one of the book's co-authors), the biography reveals how music became a signature aspect of his work. The short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,” for example, is a humorous story about the discovery of music. And elsewhere in Atencio's career he worked on the band-centric opening animations for “Mickey Mouse Club.”
“That one has a pretty interesting mix of modern instruments in the middle,” Kelsey McCullough, Atencio's granddaughter and another of the book's authors, says of “Mickey Mouse Club.” “It was interesting, because when we lined everything up, it was like, 'Of course he felt like the trip needed a song.' Everything he had been doing up to that point had a song. Once we looked at it from that perspective, it didn't surprise us. He was doing a lot around music.”
Xavier “X” Atencio contributed concepts to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, including his famous one-eyed cat.
(Reprinted from “Xavier 'X' Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)
Atencio would go on to write lyrics for Country Bear Jamboree and Haunted Mansion. While the Haunted Mansion oscillates between spooky and joyful imagery, it is Atencio’s “Grim Grinning Ghosts” that convey the tone of the attraction and make it clear that it is a celebratory attraction, one that many of those in the afterlife prefer to experience rather than haunt.
Despite his new musical career, Atencio never stopped drawing and contributing concepts to Disney theme park attractions. Two of my favorites are captured in the book: his abstract flights through molecular lights for the defunct Adventure Thru Inner Space and his one-eyed black cat for Haunted Mansion. The latter has become a legendary Mansion character over the years. Atencio's diabolical feline would have followed the guests throughout the trip, a creature that is said to despise living humans and have possessive and predatory instincts.
In Atencio's concept art, the cat featured elongated vampire-like fangs and a piercing red eye. In a nod to Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Black Cat,” it had a single eyeball, which sat in its socket with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. Finally discarded (a crow essentially fills a similar role), today's cat has been resurrected for the Mansion, most notably in a revised attic scene where the kitten is seen near a grieving bride.
Xavier “X” Atencio retired from Disney in 1984 after more than four decades with the company. He drew his own retirement announcement.
(Reprinted from “Xavier 'X' Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)
Co-author Bobbie Lucas, a relative of Atencio's whom the family colloquially refers to as her “grandson-in-law,” was asked what unites all of Atencio's work.
“No matter the different style or era, there is a great sense of life and humanity,” Lucas says. “There is a sense of play.”
The game is an apt way to describe Atencio's contributions to two of Disneyland's most beloved attractions, where pirates and ghosts are captured at their most frivolous and jovial.
“I like that,” adds Lucas. “I like someone who wears their heart on their sleeve and shows it to you in their art.”
