FROM: No Event Too Small Published Wednesdays

Charlie Ridgway: Pre-Disney, Part 2

In the second and final set of stories about Charlie Ridgway's life before Disney, he recalls how a lucky break landed him a job at the Los Angeles Mirror, and how his weekend road trips to the beach gave him a birds-eye view of Disneyland construction.

- by Charlie Ridgway, June 1, 2011

Share

After working at a newspaper in Erie, Pennsylvania, for about a year, I decided that I wanted to try for a bigger market, and there are no bigger markets than New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Of the three, I preferred Los Angeles, because I had been in California during World War II, and I had fallen in love with it. So I went out there to look around and to see whether any work was available.

All the editors I met told me not to come to California. Every newsman wanted to work in California, and there were few jobs around.

But I did get encouragement from the managing editor of the Los Angeles Mirror, an afternoon tabloid published by the Los Angeles Times, and he promised me a job if I moved out there. He wouldn't pay for the move, and I had nothing but his promise.

I decided it was worth the risk.

About a week after I had left my job in Erie and moved to California with my wife, I got a call from that editor who told me that one of his reporters had been killed in a plane crash.

Did I want the job?

I did, and I began work at the Mirror as a police reporter, then I covered the courts, and then I became the editor of my section of the paper.

Shortly afterward, in 1954, the Mirror merged with the Daily News, becoming the Mirror-News, and I was working for that paper (and living in Anaheim) when I got wind of Walt Disney's plans to build Disneyland nearby.

I'd often drive to the beach with my family on weekends, and our route took us past the future site of Disneyland. I remember watching the park take shape. I knew it was going to be something different, something that no one had ever done before.

I tried to convince my city editor at the Mirror-News to let me write a story about Walt and Disneyland, but he wasn't interested.

I kept asking, and he kept putting me off, until finally in late April 1955 he got tired of me beating on his door and told me to go write my story.

NEXT WEEK:
Charlie tells the story of how he snuck a kid under the fence at Disneyland to get an early scoop on the park, and other tales from the outside looking in.

Don't want to wait another week to read more from Charlie Ridgway? Don't blame you! I can help: first, read my review of Charlie's book, Spinning Disney's World, and then... buy it! The book brims with Charlie's well-told stories, and it spans the length of his Disney career, from Disneyland to Disney World and beyond.

More: NO EVENT TOO SMALL