IN MEMORIUM:   HARPER GOFF

Artist and production designer Harper Goff, whose credits included Willie Wonka and the Chocolate

Factory, Fantastic Voyage, The Vikings, The Great Locomotive Chase, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,

died March 3 at his home in Palm Springs at the age of 81.

Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, he and his family later moved to Santa Ana, California. He attended art

classes at Choinard in Los Angeles. For a while he lived in New York where he executed paintings for

Colliers, Esquire, National Geographic, and Coronet.

His lifelong hobbies included Dixieland music and model railroads, and, for several years, he was banjo

player for Ward Kimball's "Firehouse Five Plus Two," the famous jazz band composed of Disney animators.

In 1951, at the Bassett-Lowke Ltd. shop in London, Harper met Walt Disney, as both were interested in

purchasing the same antique locomotive model. Walt later hired Harper to execute storyboards for a "True

Life Adventure" short tentatively titled "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." He instead filled eight 4 x 8

storyboard panels with designs and sketches for a potential full-length feature, which Walt finally

acquiesced to produce as his first all-live action film made in the U.S. Harper was best remembered for his

designs of the alligator-sharklike submarine NAUTILUS, with it's luxurious Victorian interiors as described in

the Jules Verne novel.

Additional assignments included conceptual ideas for Main Street USA and Jungle River Cruise for

Disneyland, where he worked closely with Walt throughout the construction phases.

Harper later moved over to work with Jack Webb (a fellow Dixieland Jazz enthusiast), art directing and

sometimes acting in bit parts for Dragnet and Pete Kelly's Blues.

Kirk Douglas brought Harper to Norway as art director and associate producer for The Vikings in 1957.

Following semi-retirement from motion pictures, he designed the structural globe fountain centerpiece for

the 1964-65 New York World's fair, as well as a series of VIP hotel suites for the Houston Astrodome.

Harper's final film credits were Fantastic Voyage and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. After a

short while, he moved back to WED Enterprises (now known as Walt Disney Imagineering), designing

several world showcase pavilions for EPCOT in Florida.

He is survived by his wife Flossie of more than sixty years of marriage.

                                                                                                                        by Tom Scherman

but even more fundamentally, inspired a whole generation with an image of the NAUTILUS, gliding through the seas of the

world. I suspect that many of the members of the SubCommittee (and no small number of those who joined the Submarine

Forces) found their first impression of submarining in the work of Harper Goff. In return, while Harper never joined the

SubCommittee, Tom Scherman tells me that Harper had seen several of the Reports and found them interesting. As with so

many of the ones of talent and vision, I only wish we had had more of an opportunity to have gotten to know him better.]

HARPER GOFF'S MEMORIES

This is an unusual format for a

SubCommittee article -- but it's an

unusual article. Tom Scherman sent

this copy of a handwritten letter from

Harper Goff to Frank Johnson of Scale

Modeler, back in 1974. I'm re-printing

the letter here, full-length, as part of our

remembrance of Harper. But I suspect

that you will find this letter as

fascinating as I did. It's a rare glimpse

into the process of creation -- and will

certainly give you a better appreciation

of the artistry of the design of the

Disney NAUTILUS.

In Good Hands: Nautilus expert Tom Scherman checks a model of the

submarine walk-through attraction planned for debut in mid-1994.