Yale Gracey

Yale Gracey was a Disney Imagineer, writer, and layout artist for many Disney animated shorts and full-length features, including classics such as "The Three Caballeros" and "Fantasia". Gracey joined the company in 1939 as a layout artist for "Pinocchio". By 1961, through years of hands-on experimentation and curiosity, Yale began his second career at Disney as a special effects and lighting artist at Walt Disney Imagineering - then WED Enterprises. He designed many of the special effects for the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion attractions at Disneyland. Gracey retired from the company on October 4, 1975. He became widely recognized for the iconic 'grim grinning ghosts' that inhabit the Haunted Mansion as well as the realistic flames burning the overtaken city in Pirates of the Caribbean. Gracey is also responsible for creating unique and creative illusions for Walt Disney's most beloved attractions including the Carousel of Progress for the 1964-65 New York World'd Fair. The simple, elegant illusion of glimmering pixie dust developed for the Carousel of Progress was later used in Space Mountain to block out the surrounding roller coaster structure. For the original EPCOT Center, Gracey created the breathtaking 'CenterCore' finale of the much missed World of Motion attraction. On September 5, 1983, Gracey was shot and killed in Los Angeles by a burglar. His wife was injured in the attack. Gracey and his wife, Beverly, were staying overnight at their cabana at the Bel Air Bay Club, on Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of western Los Angeles. The shooting was reported at approximately 2:30 a.m. by another club member. A police spokesman indicated that Gracey and his wife were both asleep when an unknown intruder entered and shot them both, then fled onto the beach. A motive was not determined, and there were no suspects.