Randall Duell; Designed Magic Mountain, Other Parks

Randall Duell, an architect who learned to embellish movie sets and later became the designer of many of the country’s best-known amusement parks, is dead. He was 89.

He founded Duell Corp. after working as art director on 65 Metro Goldwyn Mayer feature pictures over 23 years, and was the creator of Magic Mountain, the original Universal Studios Tour and Opryland in Nashville, Tenn., a company spokesman said.

Duell died Sunday of the complications of a stroke at his Los Angeles home.

Duell was called “since (Walt) Disney’s death the No. 1 force in theme park design” by the Encyclopedia Americana. He was a 1925 graduate of the USC School of Architecture who turned to films when the Depression had slowed U.S. construction to a crawl.

He had been lent by an architectural firm to MGM to consult on a set for “Romeo and Juliet” and was to stay at that studio for the next two decades, earning Academy Award nominations for art direction and/or set design for “When Ladies Meet” (1941), “Random Harvest” (1942) and “The Blackboard Jungle” (1955).

Although he was not nominated for an Oscar, his most celebrated credit is probably the one he shared with Cedric Gibbons for “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), among the most honored musical films of all time.

He left pictures in the 1950s, telling a Los Angeles Times interviewer in 1970 as bulldozers were churning up the hills of Valencia creating Magic Mountain: “I thought it would be kind of nice to get into something else.”

Duell began as a co-designer of theme parks before forming his firm. He worked on Pleasure Island in Boston and Freedomland in New York. Then the embryonic Duell Corp. created its first preserve, the historically oriented Six Flags Over Texas. To come were Lion Country Safari in Irvine, Six Flags Over Georgia, Astroworld in Houston, Asterix Park in Paris, Bellewaerde Park in Belgium, Darien Lake in Corfu, N.Y., and Dunia Fantasi in Indonesia.

His company is now designing the theme park portion of MGM’s 33-acre, $1-billion hotel, casino and studio-tour-type attraction in Las Vegas.

Born on a farm in Russell County, Kan., Duell came to California with his family in 1912 and got his first taste of rides, slides and thrills at the San Diego Fair in 1915.

He took an active role in all of his parks before retiring two years ago, selecting the site for Magic Mountain from a helicopter.

Duell said he chose that hillside acreage northwest of Los Angeles because he wanted contours rather than flat land.

To succeed, he said then, any amusement park needs good access to freeways and a population open to new ideas. Many of his ideas for the parks came from the hours he spent in bookstores looking over works for children.

“If we can find things the kids are interested in and put it in three dimensions, we’ve accomplished something.”

Then he added:

“Behind each successful park you’ll find one man who’s totally involved. He has to live it, breathe it, walk it--and pick up the paper cups.”

Duell is survived by his wife, Rachel, and their son, Roger.