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Two
men held a circle of plastic over a heater in a San Luis
Obispo garage in 1948, trying to mold a lip onto the
disc's down-turned edge. One of those men would be
hailed as the inventor of the Frisbee. The other would
die unknown, just as he began to fight for a share of
the credit and millions in royalties the Frisbee
generated.
Walter
Frederick Morrison came to Warren Franscioni in 1947,
looking for work. Both men had been Army Air Corps
pilots in World War II. Maj. Franscioni served with the
Air Transport Service in India and China; Lt. Morrison
flew a fighter in 58 missions over Italy before being
shot down and held in Stalag 13, Germany's infamous
prison camp.
Franscioni's
parents lived in Paso Robles, where his father had been
mayor, so he settled after the war in San Luis Obispo.
He founded a butane company as his father had done in
Paso. He built a home on Conejo Avenue, in a
neighborhood developing near San Luis High School, and
he opened the Franscioni and Davis Butane Co. office at
884 Broad St., across Broad from Mission College Prep.
"I
first met Fred Morrison in late 1947," Franscioni
wrote in a 1973 letter. "He was a struggling World
War II veteran trying to build a home for his family at
Baywood Park, a developing residential area just outside
San Luis Obispo, California.
"At
that time, I was attempting to establish a bottle gas
business with a partner, George Davis, in San Luis
Obispo. We needed someone to assist in the installation
of home heating appliances, and Fred went to work for
us."
The
bottled gas business moved too slowly in postwar SLO to
sustain three men and their families. So Franscioni and
Morrison dreamed up an enterprise on the side.
For
decades kids had played catch with metal pie tins. The
sport grew in popularity during the Depression, and
soldiers spread it across the country during the war.
The
game had a few drawbacks. The tins made a shrill noise,
and if you didn't catch them just right, they stung.
After a few crash landings they could crack or develop
sharp edges that cut fingers.
Morrison
and Franscioni thought of casting them in plastic, a
material proliferated by wartime industry. Morrison took
credit for the idea in later interviews, but Franscioni
said they thought of it together.
"I
do know that when we compared some of our past
experiences at sailing things, it came out
plastics," Franscioni wrote.
It
seems like a simple idea today, but Morrison and
Franscioni broke new ground. And after 49 years of
improvements, the Frisbee has diverged little from their
first plastic interpretation of a pie tin.
"People
were throwing paint can lids and paper plates and pie
pans throughout history, since they were invented,"
said Victor Malafronte, a Frisbee historian in Alameda.
"The first plastic disc was that Flyin' Saucer in
1948."
Morrison
and Franscioni used a lathe to carve their first model
out of Tenite, a hard cellulose material now used in
toothbrush handles and eyeglass frames. That disc
confirmed the aerodynamics of the toy, but it shattered
on landing.
"I
tackled the job of working up a design that would
transform the pie-tin shape into what we believed would
be the best configuration of an injection-molded Flyin'
Saucer," Franscioni wrote.
Franscioni's
daughter, Coszette Eneix, remembers her father and
Morrison working in the basement of their Conejo Avenue
home.
"I
remember one time--I was like 5--I remember standing in
the basement downstairs, and I remember over the water
heater they were trying to mold this plastic thing to
try to get a lip on it," Eneix said.
Newspapers
had coined the term "flying saucer" less than
a year earlier when a pilot reported seeing disc-shaped
objects skipping through the air above the Cascade
Mountains in the Pacific Northwest. The Roswell incident
in June 1947 fueled the flying saucer craze. Witnesses
in Roswell, N.M., reported seeing the bodies of aliens
at a UFO crash site.
Franscioni
and Morrison named the new toy to capitalize on the
publicity.
"Hundreds
of flying saucers are scheduled to invade San Luis
Obispo in the near future," the Telegram-Tribune
reported in 1948. "Two local men, pooling resources
after the words 'flying saucers' shocked the world a
year ago, have invented a new, patented plastic toy
shaped like the originally reported saucer."
People
have purchased more than 200 million Frisbees in the
last 50 years, Malafronte estimates, more than
baseballs, footballs, and basketballs combined. Those
booming sales, however, began with a whimper. In 1948,
people didn't know what to make of the Flyin' Saucer.
Morrison
and Franscioni formed a company called Partners in
Plastic, or Pipco, based in SLO. They contracted with
Southern California Plastic Co. in Glendale to
manufacture Flyin' Saucers for about 25 cents each. They
sold them for $1 through outlets like Woolworth and
Disneyland.
"We
soon found the item was a dead issue on the
counter," Franscioni wrote, "which prompted
our offer to demonstrate in the store. Woolworth put
Fred and me in a cage to protect the customers. It
worked, but not for long. We soon realized the only
place to demonstrate was outdoors."
Morrison
and his wife traveled to county fairs to hawk the flying
disc. Franscioni sometimes joined them, Eneix said, but
he usually remained in SLO, handling national sales and
keeping Pipco's books.
The
demonstrations won people's attention. They hadn't seen
anything fly like the disc, which remained aloft long
after gravity would have pulled a ball back to earth.
Some
observers thought the disc followed an invisible wire,
and Morrison capitalized on that notion. He offered the
disc for free if customers paid $1 for the invisible
wire.
Teaching
people how to throw the disc became another challenge.
Americans seem born to the art of Frisbee throwing
today, but it required a new skill in 1948.
"By
running through the instructions you will see that we
repeatedly point out that an easy smooth snap of the
wrist is all that is necessary," Franscioni wrote.
Flyin'
Saucers came with directions urging people not to throw
the discs too hard or hold them too tight, and to launch
them "in exactly the same manner as sailing your
hat onto a hook."
Franscioni
and Morrison's early marketing efforts occasionally
backfired. A Disneyland employee demonstrating the Flyin'
Saucer accidentally overshot a fence and hit a woman in
the head. She sued, and Disney halted its
demonstrations.
Then
Morrison and Franscioni struck a deal with Al Capp, who
agreed to include the Flyin' Saucer in his "Li'l
Abner" cartoon strip. That strip appeared in
national newspapers sometime around 1950. Franscioni and
Morrison printed "Li'l Abner" inserts and
packaged them with their Flyin' Saucers to capitalize on
the publicity.
The
inserts infuriated Capp, who felt they exceeded the
terms of their agreement. Capp threatened to sue and
demanded $5,000 in compensation.
"I
was really hurt. How could Li'l Abner do this to my
daddy?" Eneix said. "That was a hunk of change
that put them down. That was quite a bit of money back
then."
Franscioni
and Morrison were already struggling to meet the cost of
casting the original dies for the Flyin' Saucer. The
Capp payoff devastated Pipco.
Franscioni
borrowed $2,500 from his mother and $2,500 from his
mother-in-law, Eneix said, and the demise of the Flyin'
Saucer began. Eneix and her sister went door to door in
SLO selling the discs for 25 cents. Today, collectors
will pay $500 for an original Pipco Flyin' Saucer.
The
Franscioni and Davis Butane Co. crashed at about the
same time as Pipco. In 1950, Walter Franscioni had to
sell the Conejo Avenue home where the Frisbee was born.
He moved to Greenville, worked as a trucker, and applied
for reactivation in the Air Force.
"I
remember us losing our home and how hard that was,"
Eneix said. "Korea was happening then, and my
father then applied for being recalled back into the
service, but he continued trying to get the Flyin'
Saucer thing to go."
The
Air Force moved the Franscionis to South Dakota in 1952.
Morrison moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a
building inspector, and the inventors of the Flyin'
Saucer drifted apart. Southern California Plastic Co.
continued to produce the discs, and Morrison continued
to sell them.
Eneix
keeps folders full of yellowing letters and old business
records to document what happened next. Some of those
records show that Morrison began manufacturing his own
flying disc on the side.
Morrison
set up a new company, American Trends, redesigned the
disc to make it look more like a flying saucer, and
called it the Pluto Platter. Morrison began selling the
Pluto Platter while still accepting sales commissions on
the Flyin' Saucer, according to Ed Kennedy, the
president of Southern California Plastic Co.
"We
had just found out that Fred Morrison had another die
built on the Flyin' Saucer and was merchandising the
product under the name of Pluto's Platter," Kennedy
wrote in a 1957 letter to Franscioni. "During the
time that he was having the saucer made, he was also
accepting sales commissions from the company here."
Kennedy
accused Morrison of trying to steal Flyin' Saucer
accounts by offering Pluto Platters at a lower cost.
"In
my opinion, Fred acted completely unfairly on this
entire thing," Kennedy wrote, "and we
certainly will never do business with him again."
Southern
California Plastic Co. severed its relationship with
Morrison and contacted a patent attorney. The question
of patent violations never went to court, however, and
has never been resolved.
Morrison
was demonstrating his Pluto Platter in a Los Angeles
parking lot in 1955 when Rich Knerr and Spud Melin
spotted the unusual flying object.
Knerr
and Melin had founded their own toy company back in
1948, the year Franscioni and Morrison were developing
the Flyin' Saucer. Knerr and Melin had one product, a
wooden slingshot. They named their company for the sound
the slingshot's pellets made on impact--Wham-O.
Morrison
signed a contract with Wham-O, and Knerr and Melin sold
the Pluto Platter with a marketing expertise Morrison
and Franscioni never showed. Knerr came up with the new
name for the disc.
Knerr
was visiting East Coast college campuses in the
mid-1950s, giving away Pluto Platters to seed market
demand. At Yale he encountered students tossing metal
pie tins and yelling "Frisbie!" the way
golfers yell "Fore!"
Historians
have traced that tradition to a Bridgeport, Conn., baker
named William Russell Frisbie. In 1871 Frisbie moved to
Bridgeport to manage the local branch of the Olds Baking
Co. He eventually bought the bakery and renamed it
Frisbie Pie Co.
Frisbee
historian Malafronte believes truck drivers for the
company were the first to toss Frisbie Pie tins on the
loading docks during idle times. The tins bore the words
"Frisbie's Pies" and had six small holes in
the center, in a star pattern, that hummed when the tin
flew.
The
sport moved to Eastern colleges, where students shouted
"Frisbie!" to warn people of incoming pie
tins. A sport developed and took on the name "Frisbie-ing."
Knerr took the word home to Wham-O, misspelled it
"Frisbee," and registered it as a trademark.
In 1958, Morrison's Pluto Platter became the Wham-O
Frisbee.
Southern
California Plastic Co. continued to make Flyin' Saucers
for Disneyland and a few other outlets. It handled sales
and mailed royalty checks to Franscioni until the
mid-1960s, when he headed to Vietnam.
Many
American homes have housed a Frisbee, but Coszette
Eneix's home is not among them.
"Every
time I see a Frisbee I just want to cringe," she
said. "I get angry inside. It shouldn't be called
Frisbee. It isn't Frisbee. How come they're calling it
Frisbee? That's not right. It's Flyin' Saucer."
Eneix
hasn't decided whether to use her files of yellowing
papers in a lawsuit or in a book, but she wants justice
for her father.
"I
want it in the history books, as it comes down, that my
father was there, not Fred Morrison alone," she
said.
"When
you read about the history of the Frisbee, you always
hear Fred Morrison. Fred Morrison did this. Fred
Morrison did that. Bullshit. Excuse my language.
Bullshit. It was Warren Franscioni and Fred Morrison. It
was a partnership. I think they should have equal
billing."
The
International Frisbee Hall of Fame in Lake Linden,
Mich., reserves its primary listing for Morrison.
"Fred
Morrison, Inventor of the Frisbee," it says.
"Walter F. (Fred) Morrison has provided pleasure to
millions of people throughout the world. He was the
first person to envision the creation of a plastic disc
to be used as a substitute for a ball in a game of
catch."
Wham-O
went on to market the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball, the
Water Wiggle, and other toys, but Frisbee remained its
most profitable product. In 1977, 20 years after Wham-O
began selling Frisbees, it generated up to 50 percent of
the company's annual sales. At the time, Wham-O
estimated it had sold 100 million flying discs.
Morrison
told the Los Angeles Times in 1977 he had made about $1
million in royalties.
Nearly
all written histories of the Frisbee attribute its
invention to Morrison. Stancil E.D. Johnson, a Pacific
Grove psychiatrist, may have been the first to mention
Warren Franscioni in a footnote in his 1975 book,
"Frisbee."
Johnson
heard about Franscioni from Ed Kennedy, the president of
the Southern California Plastic Co. In 1973, Johnson
contacted Franscioni, who was then an Air Force colonel
stationed in Oslo, Norway. He asked Franscioni to write
down his memories of the flying disc's origin.
Franscioni
sent Johnson one letter in August 1973.
"I
have had time to evaluate my initial concern about
whether your book might interfere in any future legal
proceedings about the subject," Franscioni wrote.
"I have come to the conclusion that your book, if
based upon the facts, would not."
Franscioni
argues that he designed the first Flyin' Saucer, not
Morrison, that he paid for the initial mold with his own
money, and that the two men jointly developed the idea
of casting it in plastic.
Franscioni
began a second letter to Johnson in 1974, but he never
completed it. He died of a heart attack at age 57.
"Fred
Morrison never wanted to admit this," Johnson said.
"Franscioni died and never was able to come back
and get his share of the profits."
Franscioni
might have acted earlier. Ed Kennedy urged him to take
legal action against Morrison as early as 1957.
"Other
people were asking my father to do something--stop him,
sue him, stop him," Eneix said, "but we were
in South Dakota. My father was getting his career going
again as an officer in the Air Force, and that was
taking a lot of his time. And I think my mom was leery
of putting more money into this thing."
In
1957, the Frisbee had not yet made its millions. The
rights to the toy hardly seemed worth the cost of a
lawsuit.
"There
was a lot of disappointment in the '50s, and they were
hurt, really hurt," Eneix said.
"So
we all started quieting down and not talking about it.
That's what we do in my family. We don't talk about it.
Then we didn't fly the Flyin' Saucer much anymore on
picnics. It was too painful to keep remembering it
because we were losing it."
Morrison,
77, now calls himself "Walt" and lives near
Monroe, Utah, a town of 1,700 people in the Sevier River
valley. He owned a motel there and operated it with his
third wife until he retired three years ago. Morrison
has an old pickup truck, but he rarely drives it into
town.
"He
lives in a house in the country and seems to enjoy
life," said Mark Fullenbaugh, publisher of the
Richfield Reaper. "I haven't seen him in person in
about six months. You don't see him out much, so I can't
tell you much more than that about him."
Morrison
declined to be interviewed for this story.
"Well,
I'd like to be a nice guy and say yes, but I'm so tired
of this shit," Morrison said.
"It's
been done so many times, so many ways, that I just don't
do it anymore. I'm an old man now and I just haven't got
time for this. I want to just sit back in my chair and
sleep."
Morrison
has always been "cagey" about the facts of the
Frisbee's birth, according to Malafronte, who met
Morrison at Frisbee tournaments.
"I
had asked Fred about his partner, and he owns up to
it," Malafronte said. "The problem is, I think
Fred has a lot of stuff he can lose and nothing to gain
by talking."
Meanwhile,
Mattel Corp. is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the
Frisbee this year, even though the plastic flying disc
turns 50 next year.
Mattel,
the world's largest toy company, bought Wham-O in 1994.
It dates the Frisbee's official birth as 1957, when
Wham-O first marketed Morrison's Pluto Platter.
Mattel
has no knowledge of plastic flying discs that may have
existed before 1957, said Mattel spokeswoman Sara
Rosales, nor of their inventors.
Jeff
McMahon hurls amazing whirling adjectives for New Times.
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