An Actor's Life for Me, Part 5

Posted by Trevor on May 4, 2009

Tags: Disneyland, Gideon, Harry, Jerry, Pinocchio

I arrived in the character Head Room just in time. Jerry, the ever vigilant, always punctual lead, glanced at his watch and frowned. Realizing that he couldn't write me up for tardiness, he gruffly handed me an oddly shaped little piece of paper. It was my new Pinocchio unit set schedule. He said in a hushed voice with no hint of irony, "Guard that paper with your life."

I made the mistake of smiling a real smile this time, thinking that this was taking things all just a bit too seriously. Jerry interpreted my silly grin correctly and his demeanor went all icy. He rasped in an even more no-nonsense tone, "Do not lose it out on set where a guest could pick it up. Don't wad it up or fold it in your pocket because the ink will run. Pin it to your shorts, trust me." He said it in such a way that I knew I shouldn't laugh but it really sounded like he was putting me on.

So, I safety-pinned the set schedule to the outside of the elastic band of my character shorts. It was an obviously hand cut, slightly askew, eighth of a normal letter-sized sheet of paper. It had originally been typed on an actual typewriter, although many successive photocopies since then had rendered this copy barely legible. It read:

"Area 2"
9:00 - 6:00
Pinocchio Unit
9:00 - 9:20 - Dress
9:20 - 9:55 - Plaza Inn Breakfast
10:25 - 11:00 - Wishing Well
11:25 - 12:00 - Alpine
12:25 - 1:00 - Village Haus
1:00 - 2:00 - Lunch
2:00 - 2:30 - Front of Castle
3:00 - 3:30 - Matterhorn Way
4:00 - 4:30 Space Place
5:00 - 5:30 Mars
5:30 - 6:00 Dress

During my earlier Hotel Breakfast shift days and, more recently, as a replacement Pluto in the park, I didn't bother carrying around a designated set schedule. We had always been in the same place: "Disney Story, Disney Story, Disney Story, Lunch, Disney Story, Disney Story, Disney Story." The guests would walk through the main gate turnstiles, see the giant floral mouse head benevolently beaming down on them, and just as they walked under the railroad trestle to their right, there we would be with a throng of other guests all around us clamoring for an audience with the big cheese. All the Fab Five unit sets were alternated between the "A" shift and the "B" shift, right on the half-hour marks. I would only meet my furry doppelganger backstage, usually high-fiving the other dog as he went out. It was a strict rule to wait until you saw the other shiftworker backstage, so as to avoid "cloning." To disregard this and just walk out on set was a very serious offense. Nothing destroys the magic of Mickey quicker than seeing his twin coming around the corner too soon.

My brief stint as the pirate Mr. Smee had begun by the Peter Pan unit's rejection of any set schedules and my following the crew on a wild journey around the park ending in a three-day suspension. I still desperately wanted to be Peter Pan but knew that I needed to work my way up to face character by staying out of trouble. I was determined to get back into Jerry's good graces. But this whole intricate set schedule thing with multiple locations and differing times was a new experience for me. I was going to be in a one-of-a-kind costume in a popular roving unit, not just one of a handful of dogs stuck on Main Street. I was going to play a new character, well, an old character but new to me, and I was determined not to blow it.

I had been granted a wish, of sorts. Because, in the spirit of wishing upon a star, I had naively put in a shift request to be Pinocchio. Not just in the unit, but actually him. I must admit that I felt an affinity to his youthful yearning to be an actor upon the wicked stage and knew what it felt like to leave home for a place as thrilling as Pleasure Island, although Anaheim was slightly more sleazy. It wasn't until after I had filled out the paperwork that I found out how impossible my request had been, at least, without drastic surgery.

When I told Harry my wish, he had just laughed at me. "Oh kid, that's a good one. Ya really wanna be a little wooden boy, huh? Ya do know ya'd have to wear pink tights, don't ya?"

I blushed and said as seriously as I could, "I'd wear the required costume--"

"Ya'd also have to shave dem legs, kid! He's prepubescent!" Harry snorted.

I looked down at the hair below my knobby knees and wondered if he was right.

"Hey, don't get out the razor just yet, rookie. Yer just too freakin' tall."

I blinked at Harry and really thought he was bullshitting me. I wasn't that tall.

He saw that I wasn't buying it. "Nah, I mean it. Ya gotta be about five foot. He's supposed to be a little boy, ya know? But why they let those hot chicks play 'em, I have no idea. Next time yer out there check out 'his' legs. She's got nice gams. Speaking of which...." He munched thoughtfully on his cigar and went off to stare lewdly at a couple of the Golden Horseshoe Saloon dance hall girls and make unspeakable suggestions to them under his breath.

Harry was right of course; I was just too tall to be the little woodenheaded boy. That was a unique experience for me. I was hardly ever "too tall" for anything. But when the schedule had been posted, someone had seen fit to put me in the Pinocchio unit. I was too short to play either his father Geppetto or the fox, J.W. Foulfellow, a.k.a. "Honest John," but I was just at the top end of the height range for the cat character. Not Pinocchio's pet cat Figaro; the other one. The evil fox's silent sidekick. I never even knew he had a name until I saw it there on the master schedule below my own name. I was to play "Gideon," or, as he was affectionately known to the unit, "Giddy Kitty, the furry idiot." The character bio said that, in short, he was a rattle-brained con artist cat, putting on airs and assisting the fox in pulling the puppet's strings.

It was odd seeing it on my schedule, because it was a pretty popular costume. I was just glad of anything in the park and would have even been happy with a photo location shift, just so long as I didn't have to go back to the hotel. This was an odd time of the year scheduling-wise because the veterans were giving away their sucky, early morning seasonal shifts, especially those coming right after a wild weekend. So a lot of us rookies began picking up these choice shifts or getting breakfast shifts in these costumes and then extending into full-day shifts or even into the late night "PM shifts."

Jerry caught sight of a group of late dwarves piling into the Head Room, and he bolted toward them with his report book out. They had obviously just punched in after a big night out and their eyes were all red and bleary as they tried to focus on the uber-lead as he began to write them up. Heigh-ho, indeed. I was just glad that I had gotten there a little early for my new shift, because it took me a while to locate all the various pieces of the Gideon costume. I was impressed. It was a combo fur-and-cloth costume because although his body was all fake cat fur, he also wore clothes over that. He had a hat, long coat, and was one of the few cartoon animal characters to wear pants, very baggy purple pants with patches and stitches all over them. He was also one of the few furry animal suits that got to wear white mime-glove hands with five fingers. I was in absolute heaven! No more Vulcan finger cramps from fitting five fingers into four finger holes. But the best part was that the "Gidiot" had an officially sanctioned prop. A walking cane. What a luxury!

I scooped up the remaining parts of the cat costume and pelted down the service road to the break area behind the Plaza Inn. When I arrived, a little out of breath, I saw that the other members of my unit were already getting ready, and I joined in. The helmet head was big and fur-covered, but after my long dog days as Pluto with his huge swept-forward snout, this actually felt light, if a little unbalanced. I popped my head inside and secured the chin straps. As I looked in the mirror I could see that his eyelids were at about half mast and bounced up and down in a minor head-movement-induced simulation of animation. The effect made it seem as if the cat were sleepy, stoned or brain-damaged. It was a little close in there, but the binocular vision was great, especially since the eye holes were so close to my own. The ear holes--although obscured by thick tufts of brown fur--were actually open to the air at the top, and they offered a slight breeze through the cat's head. I quickly mastered the art of sticking the cane through one ear and then out the other at the same time, giving the impression that there really was nothing in between. As I stood there gently doing a time step with the taps on the bottom of my cat feet and my cane through my brain, I heard a woman's voice say in a very low purr.

"Cute, Kitty! Just don't let Jerry catch you doing that. C'mon pussycat, let's go." It was Pinocchio "herself" leading the way. The actress inside must have been very short, and I couldn't help but think about what Harry had said. When, against my better nature, I looked, I noticed that the little boy puppet had much more leg muscle development than I did. I quickly fell in line behind Geppetto and we all marched out onstage.

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