Marilyn Sotto Erdmann. My "Auntie Mare"

A Disney Career and far more.

This October 27 will make it 4 years since we lost my Aunt Marilyn to Cancer. So much gets written about me, but few of you know of another Sotto who was a Disney designer (and more!), Marilyn Sotto Erdmann had a longer Disney tenure than I, and an amazing career before that in and out of the studios, illustrating and designing costumes for some of the most memorable films of all time. We all miss her and she believed that we will one day be reunited as described here.

Her “how-to” book inspired many designers like Isaac Mizrahi

Her “Ten Commandments” work (Pharaoh) is now in the collection of Imagineer and fan of hers, Tony Baxter.

Here’s what I emailed to those who knew her at the time.. Leonard Maltin ran it on his site as well.

"It’s with great sadness that I pass on that yesterday, October 27, at 4:12 pm, my Aunt, ex Disney Costume Designer Marilyn Sotto-Erdmann lost her fight with Cancer at age 82. 

As you may know, Marilyn brought us skills she honed after several decades in the film industry working as an illustrator for costume designers Edith Head, Jean Louis, Norma Koch and others. Her credits are numerous. Classics like Cecil B De Mille’s The Ten Commandments, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, A Place in the Sun, White Christmas, Sabrina, and Hud, to name a few. She received screen credit for her design on Man of a Thousand Faces, something actor James Cagney demanded on behalf of Marilyn and she got it. 

Marilyn at Universal on “The Man of 1000 Faces”

As a kid, I’d stop and watch her work on Julie Andrews “flapper" getup for Thoroughly Modern Millie Diana Ross’ gown for Lady Sings the Blues, and many others. What an inspiration. Her talents were many; she transitioned to uniform design to bring her Hollywood touch to the opening look of the Beverly and Havana Hilton Hotels in the 1950’s. She went on to write and illustrate her own book on the subject, The Art of Costume Design. The daughter of a portrait and MGM scenic artist, she kept busy in the field of art till one day in 1986, while working on Euro Disneyland, I suggested that Marilyn consider bringing her cinematic sensibility to the costuming being designed for the Paris park, “Auntie Mare” was up for the challenge, showed her stuff, and was hired immediately.

Opening Day, Disneyland Paris. Marilyn created many of the costume designs, including Casey’s.

Many of you knew her and her "bigger than life" passion for design and flamboyant personality. She brought the company and her peers a great passion for what could be, always “pushing the buttonhole” to make the costumes less “uniform"-like and more theatrical to drive the story. It was always about the show. Her work did not stop after Disneyland Paris. She went on to relocate with her husband John to Florida to design Walt Disney World parade costumes, resort and cruise ship attire, Super Bowl spectacles and more. A high point to her was researching ancient animatronic costuming for Spaceship Earth’s recent facelift. She told me that she felt she had come full circle, reminding her of doing the Egyptian garb for The Ten Commandments,  decades earlier. 

With her work from Walt Disney World Entertainment and costuming.

Always working, Mare rose to Senior Costume Designer at Walt Disney World, where she could inspire young artists. They can speak to that. One thing that amazed me was how she embraced technology and never allowed her mind to tell her she was too old for something. When she saw that I had given up paper to "draw" on a Cintiq digital screen, she had to have one and demanded she be the first in her department to draw on one. How many people in their 70’s would embrace digital in order to be on the cutting edge? Only a true “Imagineer." Auntie Mare. Eventually she mastered it, others followed suit, and she shared her tips. She retired from a stellar career at the Walt Disney Company after nearly two decades. Even in retirement, Mare never stopped designing and at 82 she was setting the tone for the hosts and hostesses of Embraer Executive Jets. I only hope I can stay that active! 

Marilyn Sotto Erdmann is survived by her husband John, daughter Cynthia, brother Ed and wife Adrianne, myself, wife Deena and Mare’s grandniece and nephews, Brian and Venice."

Not every “Disney Legend” gets a plaque, but Marilyn was a great Imagineer, at least she was to me! - Eddie Sotto (“the nephew”)

Wayback Machine: ABC's One Saturday Morning.

Back in 1998, Animation Producer Peter Hastings (Pinky and the Brain, Tiny Toons) contacted me about sketching some ideas for a "magical expanding building" to open his new TV show "ABC's One Saturday Morning". We discussed the deco optimism of there 1939 world's fair, modern architecture, even the Matterhorn as to this amazing building that he wanted to rise from the ground. After sketching for some time, I submitted a sequence to him and the he and his producer Prudence Fenton were happy with. It was even more than a building, it had a ride in it! Fenton and her team ran with it, making my sketches of a "cereal bowl splashdown" and calendars being torn, chasing bulbs and satellite dishes, come to life and better than ever! A fun memory that in a way inspired our "thrillboard" project...

Herbie Ryman 1988, always teaching.

At WED Imagineering I had the honor of working with Disney legend Herb Ryman when heading up our Disneyland Paris Main Street design team. I was looking for talent to help visualize the project and Marty Sklar arranged to bring  the now retired Ryman back into the company to help out this young producer. I had met Herb working for industry legend Gary Goddard a few years earlier, and knew of his ability to illustrate an idea like no one else. After all, he had done the original rendering that sold Disneyland, I was hoping he could help sell this new vision of the 1920's themed Main Street for Paris. Sklar warned me that he may not be very productive, but I learned that listening to him and spending time developing a relationship was the key to Herb finding a reason to enjoy the project. And he did, and produced many great things, the best being our friendship. We enjoyed each other very much. He taught me so much that goes beyond the art, but in fact, the "why" of art.  Although he turned in some amazing pieces, his health was in decline and our time was cut short. He brought me along to his Thursday lunch group of retired Disney greats, known as "The Dinosaurs." and after his passing, I learned that the best thing he could leave me was not a painting, but his place at the table.  

Herb always had "business" going on in his work. This Main Street piece has the police and everyone else looking left as if something just happened.

Ryman can tell a story almost as good as he paints....this is no exception. 

When I see this image, I'm reminded of a story. The dark object you see by Herb's hand was the failed fan clutch from his Mercedes. Fascinated by it's shape, I told him I thought it would make a great modern hotel design for the Paris project. (It reminded me of the Tower in the 1929 Film "Metropolis") My sketch is on the board...and he is here telling the photographer the story.. I even photographed it and later developed the design, hoping to later reveal how a "massive German car part landed in the French countryside", Herb and I laughed so much about it...now that's Imagineering! 

Art lesson. Herb explains how to best leverage both sides of tracing paper with color.

Herb put a bit of himself into his work and encouraged me to do the same. "Bad taste costs no more" he'd say and encourage me to go the extra mile, researching the history of a period design, not just copying what has been done, but start with the story and the emotion of why something should be there. Good advice, and as a company, that's exactly what we do today. 

On Mocking up. "Measure thrice, cut once..."

The battle for real gaslights versus light bulbs was not easily won, but in the end they proved to be what sets the arcades apart. Made by Sugg Lighting of England, they tell the story of a small town in transition from Gas to the new Electric light. . 

Building mockups for scale is an experiential fundamental and something we strive to do on our current projects. Beyond computer modeling, simple mockups lend a tactile impression CGI does not.  Having a sense of how a space can experientially feel can be overlooked, but when your success depends on how much people love it, it pays to focus on experiential massing. This image from the late 1980s shows Disney Imagineering Chief Marty Sklar reviewing a "mockup" of the enclosed arcades of Main Street USA for Disneyland Paris. We had never attempted to create an alternate route to the center of the park,let alone an indoor one. It had to feel just as warm and intimate as the rest of the park. Part of the scheme are the 80 or more flickering Gaslights (shown in white paper and styrofoam and pictured right) that highlight our path . In that dusty Imagineering parking lot within view of the Interstate 5 Freeway, Marty gave us his approval. The real arcades emerged in 1992 and the reviews have been great, thanks to the foresight of "mocking up" the height and width to great effect. 

In fact, the Arcades were part of a mandate for the Paris park to allow the guests to warmly circulate during inclement weather. An initial proposal was covering the entire Main Street with a steel and glass roof as was done to ill effect in Tokyo Disneyland. To his credit, Tony Baxter, the executive in charge, did not want to cover the street or create an extensive network of porches and awnings, but rather to create alternate fowl weather route, which allowed the guest to experience Main Street the way it was intended, and the arcades developed from there as a way to avoid covering the entire street.  

"The issue was crowd flow and what would be the right height to allow 15 feet between the columns, so we had to make it feel tall enough to have an optimistic and romantic feeling... the mock up with a pop-up clerestory led us to the right proportion."- Eddie Sotto