LOS ANGELES — Harriet Burns, the first woman hired to work as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering and who helped create and build prototypes for such Disneyland attractions as Sleeping Beauty Castle and the Pirates of the Caribbean, has died. She was 79.
The Santa Barbara resident died of complications from a heart condition July 25 at USC University Hospital, said her daughter, Pam Burns-Clair.
Burns joined Disney Studios as a set and prop painter for the “Mickey Mouse Club” television show in 1955. She arrived at the studio each day wearing a skirt and high-heel shoes to work a lathe, saw and drill press.
“She could do everything a man could do,” said Marty Sklars, executive vice president of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. “She was a fabulous artist. She had a wonderful sense of color and design. And she was the best- dressed. That never changed.”
In addition to set designing, Burns got an assignment in the model shop, crafting miniature prototypes of park attractions.
Her department of three model-makers was known as WED Enterprises and later was renamed Walt Disney Imagineering, a reference to the imagination and engineering that go into theme-park attractions.
“I think Harriet was Walt’s favorite imagineer,” Sklars said.
Her ladylike manner and perfect grooming and being a woman in a male-dominated profession set her apart. Disney included her in several episodes of “The Wonderful World of Color,” the 1960s television show on which he was the host and presented behind-the- scenes segments about his empire.
One of Burns’ first assignments in the model shop was to work on Sleeping Beauty Castle, an attraction that was in place on the park’s opening day, July 17, 1955. She later worked on the original Pirates of the Caribbean that opened in 1967 and the Haunted Mansion that opened two years later.
Harriet Tapp was born Aug. 20, 1928, in Texas. An art student, she earned her bachelor’s degree at Southern Methodist University.
She married William Burns, and in 1953 they moved to Los Angeles with their baby daughter. Harriet Burns went to work at Dice Display Industries Cooperative Exchange, making props for television shows and sets for Las Vegas floor shows.
She also worked on the Santa’s Village theme park that opened in Lake Arrowhead in the mid-1950s. When the company closed, a colleague told Burns that Disney was hiring.
