Conversations with David John Marley

Today we’d like to introduce you to David John Marley.

Hi David John, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story is a childhood passion that became the focus of my adult life. I’m an Orange County native and the only one in my family that wasn’t born and raised in LA. When I was 7 I told my family that my dream job was to be a skipper at the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. My dream came true about 20 years ago and I had no idea how it would change my life.

My serious career goal was to be a history professor. I attended Cal State Fullerton and spent five years living in Washington DC studying for my Ph.D. in history. While working on my dissertation and teaching part-time across Southern California, I landed my dream job at Disneyland. At the time I never thought my future career path would be based more on my job at a theme park than the graduate degree I worked so hard to get. I finished writing my dissertation while on breaks at Jungle Cruise or the Enchanted Tikiroom, that is how I got the nickname “Dr. Skipper.”

I left Disneyland when my oldest daughter was born and I taught at several different universities, mostly teaching American history, but I couldn’t escape the Jungle Cruise. I started a long-running comedy show called “Skipper Stand Up” that kept my love of Disney alive.

I had built a fort for my daughters in my backyard and I designed it to look like the Jungle Cruise. At the encouragement of friends and family, I started selling some of the signs I’d made for the fort, and that is how my unexpected career as an artist took off. I’ve been selling Disney and Tiki culture art online and at shows for about 8 years. This has taken me to conventions across the country where I sell my art and give talks about the history of Disneyland. Giving presentations is where I think I do my best work.

In 2017 I shifted my writing career from being an academic to something more fun and rewarding. That year I published “Skipper Stories” a collection of interviews with Jungle Cruise skippers from across the decades at Disneyland. This was followed by “More Skipper Stories” and in 2021 I published “The Jungle Cruise: The Wild History of Walt’s Favorite Ride” which is about to get an updated second edition. While I enjoy making art, my passion is writing and public speaking and being able to talk about Disneyland is pure joy. The highlights of my year is attending conventions like Tiki Oasis in San Diego where I can give a talk to 1,000 people and meet people who enjoy my work.

My writing about Disney led me to a literary agent who has found me work as a ghostwriter and co-writer for a number of projects over the past few years. Thanks to him I’ve worked on true crime books, an autobiography, and a novelization of a movie. I’m currently working on a project with a New York Times bestselling author. I stopped teaching when covid hit but it’s something I miss and one day would like to get back to doing if it was a good fit. Late last year I started a podcast called “The Jungle” with another fellow Jungle Cruise skipper and that has been a fun new adventure. Since I don’t know when I’d be back to teaching I put my History of Disneyland class online at Udemy.com

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
A good deal of my current success has come from my failures. Teaching history is a great love of mine, but dealing with academics and bureaucracy drove me crazy. I won professor of the year and was nominated for the award at two other schools, yet I still had to worry about keeping my job semester to semester as a non-tenure track professor.

The great thing about running my own business is that I get to do what I want and I don’t have to prove my worth to anyone but myself. That means I can afford to explore new ideas and if they are a disaster no one is mad about it except me.

My struggles have been on two levels. The first hurtle was learning all the technical things I needed in order to make the art I was designing. I had to master new woodworking techniques, learn how to screen print and use all the software to help my designs take shape. The second, and more constant problem is marketing. I’ve had to learn about prompting my art, books, and myself and it’s never-ending. I’m a huge extrovert so the hardest part of marketing was the most surprising. I initially found it difficult to stand in a booth at an art show and sell my stuff, but now I’m back to being totally shameless.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
All of my work is based on words. My art is usually based on signs so choosing the right phrases is important. Most people in the Disney and Tiki art world are much better artists than I am. I like to carve, but I’m not great at it yet, I don’t paint, so I keep focused on words as my art.

I think what first got me noticed was that my art was focused on a very small niche of the Jungle Cruise. My art is also unique is that many of the signs that I make are taken out to the desert and actually shot with real bullets. I did it once as an experiment and they became wildly popular. Now I drive out to Desert Hot Springs every couple of months to shoot up more signs. Nothing done in a shop can give the sign that authentic shot-up look.

What helped me stand is out that I am a former Jungle Cruise Skipper who makes Jungle Cruise-based art and writes Jungle Cruise books. It gives me a credential that perhaps other artists lack. I was able to interview over 150 current and former Jungle Cruise skippers and now I’m working on a book about cast members from across the park.

If I’m most proud of anything I’ve done, it’s my books and the live talks I give. There is nothing on earth better than feeling the energy from a room full of people who are ready to learn and have a lot of fun. The joy I get from those moments makes all the struggles worth it.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
No one can be a success without support and I’ve had help from so many people over the years. I’ve had mentors at Cal State Fullerton, and most of my dearest friends are people that I met while working at Disneyland. A friend of mine put me in contact with my agent who has helped my dream job of writing come true.

I have a group of friends who are in various creative fields and we show each other our projects and give each other notes. The results of these meetings are always positive and leave me feeling energized and creative. The great thing about my graduate school training is that it taught me to seek out answers to problems, and to ask questions and to keep learning.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @drskipermarley
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drskippermarley/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-marley-25a2a4201/
• Other: https://www.amazon.com/Skipper-Stories-Disneylands-Jungle-Cruise/dp/B0B917D464/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LNS9BHCFSY66&keywords=skipper+stories&qid=1677209834&sprefix=skipper+stories%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-1