Richard Irvine

Who was Richard Irvine?

Richard Irvine was an American art director. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film Sundown. He worked on 31 films between 1939 and 1953.

In the early 1950s Walt Disney asked Irvine to help construct Disneyland. He moved from 20th Century Fox to the Walt Disney Studio in 1952 and became a senior figure at Walt Disney Imagineering. Until his retirement in 1973, he headed design and planning for all Disneyland attractions including the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. Irvine became executive vice president and chief operations officer at WDI in 1967.

Irvine's daughter Maggie followed in her father's footsteps and also joined WDI. His son married Kim Thomas who is Imagineering colleague Leota Toombs's daughter.

Irvine died in 1976 in Los Angeles, California after suffering an illness that prevented him from visiting the complete Walt Disney World Resort, which opened in 1971. In his honor, one of the original Walt Disney World riverboats was named after him.