Leota Toombs Thomas (born Leota Anne Wharton) (1925-1991) was a Disney imagineer who worked on the New York World's Fair, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
During development of the Haunted Mansion, she was asked by fellow imagineers Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey to assist them in developing his projection technology. She aided Gracey by allowing him to record her likeness as her head was made stationary so he could experiment with the technology he was planning to use to project the face of Eleanor Audley onto animatronic moulds for ghosts in the attraction. However, Gracey and the imagineering crew came to like Leota's demo-reel so much that (with her permission) they used her face as the model for the ghostly characters which come to be given the names of Madame Leota and Little Leota (the latter of whom Leota voiced).
Leota Toombs' daughter Kim Irvine would become a predominate imagineer on the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, even lending her own face for recordings of Madame Leota's character such as in the seasonal Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay.
Tributes[]
- Madame Leota was officially named after Leota Toombs. Little Leota also gets her moniker from her.
- The Family Plot tomb for Madame Leota in Walt Disney World can be taken as a tribute to Toombs Thomas.
Trivia[]
- The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland opened on Leota's 44th birthday.