(A version of this article was shared with Laughing Place and published on July 18, 2024.)
All great accomplishments start with a dream. Disneyland is perhaps one of the clearest modern-day examples of a dream pursued to perfection. But Walt Disney didn’t create his dream alone. Disneyland cost Walt almost everything owned, leaving him no money to accompany his dream park with a simple hotel.
In this edition of Disney Legends Spotlight, let’s shine the spotlight on a talented pair in Tinseltown who brought the Disneyland Hotel to life, as we celebrate Jack and Bonita Wrather.
Jack Wrather – From Oil Fields to Tinseltown
John Devereaux Wrather Jr. was born May 24, 1918 in Amarillo, Texas. The son of an oil man, Jack graduated from The University of Texas in 1939 then worked for his father in the oilfields of East Texas as a exploratory driller and pipeline walker. When his father became ill in the early 1940s, Jack assumed the responsibilities as president of Wrather Petroleum Company.
Jack’s budding career in the oil business was interrupted by his service in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II from 1942 to 1944. There, he commanded a Marine air group in the Philippines, and was dispatched on three campaigns.
Following his return from military service, Jack began to expand his business ventures. Convinced that the Hollywood entertainment industry was poised for huge post-war growth, Jack moved to California. In 1946, he established Jack Wrather Pictures Inc., and between 1946 to 1955, the company produced seven feature films. The first of these films – 1947’s The Guilty, featured a young Hollywood star named Bonita Granville.
Bonita Granville – Born to Perform
Born February 2, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois, Bonita Granville was the daughter of a vaudevillian couple. Entertainment was a part of Bonita’s family fabric, and she began performing on stage when she was only three years old.
No stranger to the Hollywood spotlight, Bonita appeared in many films in her youth, and made her mark in the 1936 film These Three, which earned her an Academy Award nomination at age fourteen. Bonita – or “Bunny” as she was known to her friends – successfully navigated the road of a child actor, starring in a series of films based on the young detective Nancy Drew.
In contrast to the upstanding and heroic nature of Nancy Drew, Bonita had a tendency to play the parts of mischievous characters in several other films, including the 1938 Academy Award-nominated film Merrily We Live. In 1939, Bonita played a smaller role in Angels Wash Their Faces alongside Ronald Reagan. Bonita and Reagan would become lifelong friends, and their careers would continue to intertwine as a result.
The Producers
It didn’t take long for Jack Wrather and Bonita Granville to strike up a relationship. The couple – who first met on the set of The Guilty – were married before the film even hit theaters. Together they built a home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, close to Walt Disney.
Image: Disney
Jack continued to produce successful films into the 1950s, and Bonita stepped away from the camera to work right along with him. The Wrathers produced television movies and series, and purchased control of television stations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and San Diego and Bakersfield, California. As the Wrathers’ interests grew, some of their holdings were pursued in partnership with television media pioneer Maria Alverez, as the Wrather-Alvarez Television and Wrather-Alvarez Broadcasting companies. The roster of television stations grew to include stations in New York and Boston.
Wrather-Alvarez continued to hit hard in the mid-1950s. The growing production company purchased the complete rights to The Lone Ranger, with Bonita Wrather taking over production of the television series from 1954 to 1957, capping off an eight-year season run.
After scoring the masked hero, Wrather-Alvarez took aim at the most popular dog in mid-century America, purchasing the Lassie television series in 1956. The show was originally the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax. Bonita took over production of the weekly series in 1957 and continued to run it for another sixteen seasons, through 1973. In total, Lassie ran for nineteen seasons, making it the eighth longest-running scripted American primetime television series of all time. Bonita is even credited with discovering actor Jon Provost, who played Timmy in the long-running series.
Magical Endeavors
While producing television shows was fun, the Wrathers wanted to move Wrather-Alvarez beyond television and film and into other entertainment ventures. A few of the Wrathers’ new ventures included Capitol Records, the TelePrompter Corporation, and Muzak, Inc. (the infamous elevator music company). The Wrathers even dabbled in the hotel business, owning the Twin Lakes Lodge in Las Vegas and the L’Horizon Hotel in Palm Springs.
The Disneyland Hotel
Perhaps the most well-known of the Wrathers’ entrepreneurial endeavors was the development of the famous Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California. Walt Disney’s innovative new theme park was costing him far more money than he anticipated. Walt didn’t have enough cash left to build a hotel to accompany his park. He tried to interest his friend Art Linkletter in building the hotel, but Linkletter declined (a decision he later admitted to regretting). Walt also invited Hilton and Sheraton Hotels to get in on the ground floor of Disneyland. Both declined, having no idea where Anaheim was even located.
But Jack Wrather was a unique individual. He possessed both the entrepreneurial spirit and the financial resources (through Wrather-Alvarez) to take the plunge with Walt. In a ceremony officiated by Jack an Bonita Wrather, as well as Anaheim Mayor Charles Pearson, construction on the Disneyland Hotel broke ground on March 18, 1955.
The hotel opened six and a half months later on October 5, 1955 – about two and a half months after Disneyland first opened its gates. The hotel’s opening day occupancy included 104 rooms split between five two-story buildings, with room rates starting at $15 a night. The Disneyland Hotel was an immediate success, and stood alongside Disneyland itself as an oasis of entertainment in the middle of an orange grove.
Shopping, dining, and recreational facilities were added to the hotel in early 1956, as well as some health and beauty support, including a doctor, a dentist on site, and a hairdresser/beauty salon.
As Disneyland grew, so did the Disneyland Hotel. Within the first five years of the hotel’s operation, it was expanded to offer over 300 guest rooms and suites. It even changed the Orange County skyline with the addition of the area’s first high-rise building, the 11-story Sierra Tower addition in 1962. Trivia Tidbit: The Disneyland Hotel was one of the first hotels in the region to offer accommodations for four persons per room.
When Disneyland proved successful and Walt regained the financial resources for expansion of the park, he offered to purchase the Disneyland Hotel from Jack and Bonita. The Wrathers refused to sell, recognizing the value of the hotel and choosing to continue operating and improving it as a popular resort destination. According to Christopher Wrather – Jack and Bonita’s youngest son – “Jack had more fun with the Disneyland Hotel than with any other investment.”
Business Split and Port Ventures
Contrary to the boom of the Disneyland Hotel, Jack Wrather and Maria Alvarez experienced an acrimonious end to their professional relationship. With the dissolution of the partnership, Jack purchased sole ownership of Wrather-Alvarez, which included the Disneyland Hotel. By 1961, Jack had consolidated all of their various holdings into the Wrather Corporation.
Restoring Glory in Long Beach
After a relatively quiet couple decades through the 1960s and 1970s, Jack Wrather spied another unique opportunity to invest in something fun. In September 1980, Jack and Bonita – through their entity Wrather Port Properties – signed a 66-year lease for the rights to manage the retired British luxury liner Queen Mary. The 81,000-ton liner had been stationed in California’s Long Beach harbor since she had made her final ocean voyage in 1967.
The ship had been converted to a hotel, museum, and entertainment complex throughout the 1970s. But by 1980, it had become apparent that the existing system of operation was not working. The entertainment enterprise was losing millions of dollars each year for the City of Long Beach because the hotel, restaurants, and museum were run by three separate concessionaires, with a lack of strategic coordination. The partners decided that a single operator with more experience in entertainment and attractions was needed for the venture.
Enter Jack and Bonita Wrather. The couple had fallen in love with the Queen Mary, having fond memories of sailing on it together numerous times. The Wrathers spent more than $25 million to restore the ship, transforming it from an underutilized tourist attraction into an enticing hotel destination. Bonita oversaw the renovation of the Queen Mary, restoring the ship to its original art deco grandeur.
In 1981, as a favor to his longtime friend Howard Hughes, Jack saved the airplane known as the Spruce Goose from impending demolition, giving it a new home next to the Queen Mary and adding a huge attraction to the area. The Spruce Goose was stationed under a giant white dome until it was later moved in 1992 to an aviation museum in Oregon.
Presidential Connections
Remember that friendship Bonita made with then-actor Ronald Reagan in 1939? It circled back multiple times over the decades, with the Wrathers partnering with Reagan in numerous political ambitions.
Going back to the 1950s, Reagan was famously friends with Walt Disney, assisting as one of the hosts of the Disneyland opening day broadcast on July 17, 1955. Reagan has continued to be celebrated by Disney in more recent years, with his 1985 second-term presidential inauguration hosted in EPCOT’s World Showcase on May 27, 1985.
Reagan also enjoyed the friendship and support of Jack and Bonita Wrather throughout his political career. Jack was a founding member of the original ”kitchen cabinet” of Californians who encouraged Reagan to run for Governor of California in 1967. In their later years, the Wrathers continued to emphasize their friendship with Reagan, supporting him in his successful 1980 presidential campaign, with Jack serving as a member of the transition committee when Reagan took office as President in 1981.
The End of an Era
As the 1980s progressed, Jack’s health began to fail, and in November 1984 he died of cancer. Bonita assumed the chairmanship of the Wrather Corporation after Jack’s death. In the months leading up to Jack’s death, and in the years beyond, Michael Eisner – CEO of Disney at the time – continued to pursue Walt’s wish of owning the Disneyland Resort outright. Jack refused to sell, as did Bonita in his wake.
But in late 1988, Bonita’s health failed as well, and she passed away of cancer. Following Bonita’s death, Disney purchased the Wrather Corporation from the Wrather family, obtaining full ownership of the Disneyland Hotel. Since Disney’s purchase of the Disneyland Hotel, the resort has continued to thrive. The original hotel buildings have been replaced with larger, more modern towers, but the spirit of the hotel – started by Jack and Bonita Wrather – proudly lives on.
Fun Fact: Over the years, Disney sold most of the other assets within the Wrather portfolio. For a period of time in the 1990s, Disney considered the creation of Port Disney – a resort and attraction area in Long Beach, the location of the Wrather-owned Queen Mary resort and Spruce Goose attraction. The property was to have featured a marine-themed attraction park, a marina, a cruise ship port, a specialty retail and entertainment area, and hotel accommodations. The project was canceled amid financial constraints to the company, largely caused by the struggling Euro Disney Resort in Paris, as well as pressure from environmental groups who were opposed to the amount of geographical transformation that would be needed. Learn more about the unbuilt Port Disney on the Dizney Coast To Coast Podcast: Episode 1109 – Disney’s Unrealized Port Disney with Former Imagineer Chris Runco.
Timeless Disney Legends
Jack and Bonita Wrather were honored as Disney Legends in 2011, for their unforgettable contribution of the Disneyland Hotel.
In addition to their Disney Legend status, the couple left their mark in television through the Lone Ranger and Lassie series, and in tourism through the Queen Mary project. Bonita even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for her contributions to motion pictures.
The next time you visit Disneyland, take a walk around the grounds of the Disneyland Hotel. It may bear very little resemblance to the 104-room hotel that opened in 1955, but like so many great accomplishments, it started with a groundbreaking first step. And for that, we can thank Jack and Bonita Wrather.
Thanks for reading about Jack and Bonita Wrather – a powerhouse couple who put their indelible mark on Disneyland history. Check out more Disney Legends in our spotlight collection.
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Sources:
D23 – Disney Legend Jack Wrather
D23 – Disney legend Bonita Granville Wrather
Jack Wrather, 66, Dies in California – Thomas W. Ennis, New York Times, 11/13/1984
Disneyland Hotel: The Early Years 1954-1988 – Donald Ballard, 7/5/2005
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