August 4 - Don DaGradi

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On this day, in 1991, Don DaGradi passed away in Friday Harbor, Washington. Born on March 1, 1911, on the East Coast in New York City, Don actually spent most of his childhood growing up on the West Coast in San Francisco, California. After graduating from high school, he took his artistic talents south to Los Angeles and the Chouinard Art Institute. He honed his skills for a few years before joining the Walt Disney Studio in the mid-Thirties, at the height of the Great Depression, as a background painter. He was quickly bumped up to the Story Department, where he contributed gags and minor plot points to many of the studio’s shorts produced at the time.

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As the studio grew, Don's responsibilities grew as well. By 1940, he was the production designer on Dumbo. Throughout World War II, he was put in charge of layouts for in the Shorts Department (really the only thing the studio was producing in those lean years). His work can be seen in classic films including Der Fuehrer’s Face and Victory Through Air Power. Following the war, Don added features to his plate as the layout artist for The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free.  At the end of the Forties, he started designing the color schemes and the overall feel of features. He sharpened the look of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.

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As successful as all of Don’s endeavors were up to this point, he didn’t really start hitting his stride until he became a senior member of the story department in the mid-Fifties. He has a full story credit on Lady and the Tramp and contributed additional story elements to Sleeping Beauty (as well as being part of that production’s design team). Then, in 1959, he made the leap into live action movies and blossomed like never before.

Don’s Legendary co-workers, the Sherman Brothers, once said that he wrote scripts with a sketch pad and pencil, meaning that Don’s pictures were worth more than a thousand words. He could draw a quick picture of what a scene looked like in his head and everyone else could see it too. Pages of words could flow from each drawing, most of the time with very little effort. Don’s first effort in the live action arena was at Walt’s personal request. He designed and wrote the underground cavern scenes in Darby O’Gill and the Little People. He followed that up by developing sequences in The Absent-Minded Professor, Pollyanna, Kidnapped and The Parent Trap. For the sequel to Professor, Son of Flubber, Don teamed up with the Legendary Bill Walsh, completely writing that film’s script between the two of them. It was a professional match made in heaven that would last until Don’s retirement nearly a decade later.

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After Flubber, Don and Bill created the script for what is arguably the Walt Disney Studio’s magnum opus, as far as live action films go. Mary Poppins turned out to be as whimsically delightful as it is because of the two men wrote it. Don is credited with creating the visions of everything from people popping out of chimneys and flying through the air to how a tea party on the ceiling might look. His sense of wonder paid off. Audiences have adored the film since its debut and it was honored with five Academy Awards. Don and Bill’s script had also been nominated for an Oscar but lost out to Beckett.

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The overwhelming success of Mary Poppins basically gave Don and Bill carte blanche as screenwriters. While they would never reach those same heights again, they add several more classic Disney films to their resumes. Over the next seven years, the duo wrote Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., Blackbeard’s Ghost, The Love Bug, Scandalous John and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

During his career, Don was also tapped to occasionally do some moonlighting over in Imagineering. He designed costumes for Disneyland cast members including the outfits the resident marching band wore. He also designed the look of the exteriors of attractions, like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, keeping them in line with the looks he helped create for the animated features they were based on. And then, in 1970, after 34 years of making magic on and off the silver screen, the man who often described himself as a misplaced cartoonist retired from Disney.

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Don and his wife of many years, Betty, moved north to the state of Washington, enjoying their post-work life away from the hubbub of Hollywood for the next two decades. When Don passed away in August 1991, it was just a few months before his old company would honor him, and his writing partner Bill, as official Disney Legends. He might have been 80 years old at his death, but in his heart he still saw magic everywhere he looked.

May 17 - Ralph Wright

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On this day, in 1908, Ralph Waldo Wright was born in Grants Pass, Oregon. Beyond his place of birth, there is no information on Ralph’s life until he shows up in Burbank, California in 1940 and starts working at the Walt Disney Studio in the story department.  His fellow artists sometimes poked fun at his appearance, calling his too-short pants and suspender ensembles country bumpkinish, but no one doubted his ability to come up with seemingly infinite variations on every gag in a picture. His first project with the studio was Goofy’s Glider, the very first How To… short starring Goofy. Ralph is generally credited with creating the format of the would-be hero comedically failing at something over and over. The Disney Studio itself would use the formula many times, especially with Goofy, but the highly successful trope spilled over into other studios, most notably at Warner Brothers with their Roadrunner shorts, and is still in use today.

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Over the next two and a half decades, Ralph quietly added elements to (or flat out wrote) the stories for all sorts of films at the studio. His feature credits include Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Peter Pan, Song of the South, Sleeping Beauty and Lady and the Tramp. His other credits include the Oscar nominated shorts Donald’s Crime and Lambert the Sheepish Lion, several more How To Goofy shorts and a number of Donald Duck and Pluto shorts. And, of course, when the studio started getting into television in the Fifties, it was all hands on deck and Ralph did his share, writing several episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney anthology show.

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Ralph was no stranger to freelance work during this period either. In the late Forties he wrote for Gaumont British Animation, working with former Disney animator David Hand on his Animaland series. In the early Sixties, he dabbled in writing episodes of different cartoon series that began popping up on all the networks, including Popeye the Sailor, Mr. Magoo, The Dick Tracy Show, and Snuffy Smith and Barney Google. He even contributed dialog to Warner Brother’s first animated feature, Gay Purr-ee, which starred Judy Garland (in her only animated role) and Robert Goulet (in his first feature film).

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In the mid Sixties, the time for Ralph to do things quietly came to an end. As the studio was developing its first Winnie the Pooh short, the team of writers (which included Ralph) began modeling one of my favorite characters, Eeyore, the old gray donkey, on the pleasantly gloomy guy with the deep voice in the Story Department whose name was… Ralph Wright. As the time came to assemble the voice cast, director Wolfgang Reitherman asked Ralph to make a test recording for Eeyore. Ralph was brilliant at it and got the part. When Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree debuted in 1966, his voice became synonymous with the beloved sad sack of the Hundred Acre Wood.  Ralph would reprise the role he was born to play for 1968’s Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, the 1977 feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and 1983’s Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (his final project).

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Following his triumphant turn as Eeyore, Ralph didn’t let all that fame go to his head. He saved the drama for the recording booth and continued making the stories Disney told as funny and as heartwarming as he could. He nabbed several more story credits over the remaining years of his career, adding his touch to The Aristocats, The Jungle Book and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. As the Seventies came to a close, Ralph retired from Disney to spend more time with his wife and play with his grandchildren. On December 31, 1983, he suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Los Osos, California. He was 75.

May 7 - David Tomlinson

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On this day, in 1917, David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was born in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. David’s early life gave no indication of path he was eventually going to forge for himself. He went to boarding school at the venerable Tonbridge School in Kent, became a part of the British Army as a Grenadier Guard for 16 months and took a job his father, a respected lawyer, procured for him as a clerk in the London headquarters of Shell Oil. All very proper and aboveboard, as the English might say. It didn’t take long, however, for that Edwardian sense of propriety to start slipping.


It started with the revelation that David’s father was leading a double life, having sired another, separate family. A letter mailed to the wrong wife began unravelling the lies but when one of David’s brothers, from the upper level of a double decker bus, chanced to look into an apartment window and see their father lying in a strange bed casually reading the paper (he was supposed to be visiting his club), the duplicity had no choice but to be revealed. His father was wholly unapologetic, causing a rift between father and son that never healed. As an escape, David began acting in local amateur plays, soon discovering that he had a knack for that sort of thing. By 1940, he’d landed his first (uncredited naturally) film role in Garrison Follies. The following year brought him not one but three named roles and a starring role in the British war movie Name Rank and Number. Then World War II, as it did to so many people, fully interrupted his life, in more ways than he ever bargained for.

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David joined the Royal Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant. He was sent to Canada where he became a flight instructor, seemingly far away from the tragedies of war. While in North America, he met Mary Lindsay Hiddingh, the daughter of the vice president of the New York Like Insurance Company and already a war widow. Her first husband had been killed in action in 1941, leaving her two young sons fatherless. David and Mary hit it off, became romantically involved and married in September 1943. Two months later, he was reassigned to a position in London. Because of wartime restrictions on immigration, Mary and the boys weren’t allowed to travel with him. Apparently terrified that she would lose another husband to battle, Mary’s mental state quickly deteriorated. On December 2, 1943, she jumped from the 13^th floor of the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York City, with her two sons, killing all three of them. The blow was devastating to David. It would be another decade before he fell in love again and even years later he admitted he was still too distraught to ever visit Mary’s grave.

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Not that anyone was able to guess at David’s personal woes from his (usually) bright, cheery screen persona (I mean, there’s a reason it’s called acting, but even today, a whole lot of people can’t quite grasp that). Over the next eighteen years, he would star in 34 British films, mostly comedies with titles like Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? and Warning to Wantons. In 1963, David was part of the cast of the hugely successful comedy Tom Jones, playing the rare villainous role. All the sunny, yet sometimes stuffy characters David played over the years brought him to the attention of the producers at a studio in Burbank, California who were poised to give him everlasting, international fame.



A large chunk of the cast of Mary Poppins was relatively unknown in America (with the obvious exception of Dick Van Dyke). The Banks’ children, Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice, had already appeared together in The Three Lives of Thomasina, but that was nothing compared to the fame that was coming. David, Glynis Johns and even Julie Andrews were not household names until August 27, 1964 when Mary Poppins exploded onto the big screen. David, already popular in Britain, would now be recognizable throughout most of the known world. Not only did he play the venerable George Banks, who wakes up to the fact that his children need their father to actually be present for their childhoods, but he also provides several other voices for the film, including Mary Poppins’ umbrella and a overdub for Admiral Boom’s first mate.

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David would return to the Walt Disney Studio twice more in his career, both times playing iconic characters (albeit not quite on the scale of Mr. Banks). In 1968, he played the bumbling villain, Peter Thorndyke, in The Love Bug. Three years later, in what was conceived as a reteaming with Julie Andrews (she turned down the part), he starred with Angela Lansbury in the big screen adaptation of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. This time around he plays a smooth talking con man who struggles with the fact that he may have actually taught someone real magic.

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Post Disney, David appeared in a handful of films throughout the Seventies and made a rare television appearance on an episode of Hawaii Five-O in 1976. His final film (which also happened to be Peter Sellers final film) was the unfortunate The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu in 1980. I’ve never seen it, but apparently it is just awful. Maybe David wouldn’t have retired from acting before its release if he’d known how bad it would be, but he probably still would have. He’d already done pretty much everything he’d ever wanted and was ready to concentrate on enjoying his family.



In 1953, David had married a second time, to an actress, Audrey Freeman. They had four sons together and enjoyed 47 years of relatively happy marriage. I say relatively, because one of their sons, Willie, was autistic. Being the parent of an autistic child today is no walk in the park, but it was far worse in the Sixties. In his memoir, David writes with bitter frustration about living through a time when doctors barely recognized autism as a condition, forget being able to get a diagnosis for it. He also recounted the stark lack of sympathy he and his wife got from friends and family, calling most people’s reactions to his son downright inhuman. His (bad) relationship with his father may have gotten him into acting, but he got out of it determined to have a good one with his son.



David quietly lived out the last two decades of his life, doting on his children and grandchildren, occasionally reliving his marvelous career in an interview. Then, on June 23, 2000 he suffered a massive stroke and was rushed to King Edward VII’s Hospital in Westminster. Early in the morning of June 24, he passed away without regaining consciousness. Two years later, he was posthumously declared an official Disney Legend for portraying not one but three titans of Disneyana and living forever in our hearts.

March 31 - Robert Stevenson

On this day, in 1905, Robert Edward Stevenson was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. Robert attended St. Johns College, part of Cambridge, on a scholarship. While there he won an award for aeronautics and graduated in 1927 with a degree in engineering. At that point, his parents gave him six weeks to find employment, so, of course, he became an assistant to Michael Balcon, who was one of the most famous British film producers of the time.

Robert's first real task under Michael was to write scripts (not as hard as it might seem as movies were still silent at this point). The first film he received story credit on was the 1928 war picture Balaclava. But even as movies became talkies, it was evident that Robert had a real talent for story crafting. Over the next few years, he would write musicals (1930's Greek Street), mysteries (1931's Night in Montmartre), dramas (1931's The Calendar) and comedies (1932's Lord Babs).

In 1932, Robert was given his first shot at directing a movie, a musical called Happily Ever After. Throughout the rest of the Thirties, he continued cutting a path through the British film industry, sometimes writing, sometimes directing and often doing both. He did several films with Jack Hulbert, another writer/director/actor type, and worked with the likes of Paul Robeson and Boris Karloff. By 1940, Robert had gained the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who invited him to hop the pond and ply his craft in Hollywood.

While under contract to Selznick, Robert was loaned out to RKO Pictures for hits like 1942's Joan of Paris and to Universal for 1941's Back Street, which garnered an Oscar nomination for Music. In 1943, he wrote and directed an well received adaptation of Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles. When his contract with Selznick ran out, Robert signed a new one with RKO in 1949 and produced a string of films that consistently lost money even though they had stars like Robert Mitchum, Joseph Cotton and Jane Russell. This led to a period of television directing in the early Fifties for everything from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to Gunsmoke. Many of the gigs he got during this period came from old friends in the industry (Robert and Hitchcock had worked closely together in 1940 for instance) and Robert's career could have fizzled into obscurity at this point, but a change of studio did wonders for his legacy.

In 1956, Robert was hired by the Walt Disney Studio to direct some of the live action movies they were starting to get more heavily into. His first project was Johnny Tremain. Set during the American Revolution, Tremain was filmed as part of the Disneyland television show but released to theaters before appearing on the small screen. Tremain was quickly followed up with one of the all time Disney classics, Old Yeller, the success of which cemented Robert's position with the studio.

Most of the rest of the nineteen films that Robert would direct for Disney over the next two decades are recognizable to the vast majority of people (and the few that aren't really are little gems just waiting to be discovered). His well known titles include Kidnapped, The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel Son of Flubber, In Search of the Castaways, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and its sequel The Monkey's Uncle, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug and its sequel Herbie Rides Again, and The Shaggy D.A. His lesser known films are Darby O'Gill and the Little People, The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard's Ghost, The Island at the Top of the World and One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.

Eagle eyed readers may have noticed that I've only listed eighteen movies so far. That's because the nineteenth film on the list (although in the middle of the pack chronologically) is the biggest one by far, for both Robert and the company. He was the man in charge of bringing Walt's magnum opus to life: Mary Poppins. Not only did Poppins become a run away hit, it gave Robert the only Oscar nomination for Best Director that Walt Disney Pictures had ever received (or would receive for years to come). Yes, he lost to My Fair Lady (which probably was extra galling because of the whole Julie Andrews 'controversy'), but that's still quite an accomplishment.

In a list published at the end of 1976, Robert was declared the most commercially successful director in the history of films. He had 16 films on the list of top grossing movies, all of them Disney pictures. The number two man (and of course it was a man, this was only the Seventies) only had 12. Robert's final picture, The Shaggy D.A., would join the list and push his supremacy even higher. It was estimated that he had worldwide grosses of over $750 million. I don't know if any of that was adjusted for the 20 year time frame the films spanned, but that's over $3.3 Billion in today's terms. Not to shabby for an engineer.

Robert spent the final decade of his life relaxing in his home in Santa Barbara, California with his fourth (and final) wife of 23 years, Ursula. He passed away on April 30, 1986 at the age of 81. He was posthumously declared an official Disney Legend as part of the class of 2002 as part of the opening of Disneyland Paris.

February 12 - Peter Ellenshaw

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On this day, in 2007, William Samuel Cook Ellenshaw passed away in Santa Barbara, California. Born in Essex, England on May 24, 1913, Peter (as he was known) lost his father to World War I. He left school when he was 14 to work as a mechanic to support his family. He displayed a talent for art in his spare time and after meeting W Percy Day, a British portrait painter, he spent seven years as Percy's apprentice.

Percy was also an early pioneer in the art of matte painting for films. Rather than travel to exotic (and expensive) locations, an artist could create a location on a pane of glass. When the camera was placed on one side of the pane and the actors were strategically placed on a small set on the other side of the pane, the illusion was created that the actors were in the jungle or on the moon when in reality they were on a soundstage. Peter learned the art from his mentor working on such films as 1940's The Thief of Bagdad.

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World War II would interrupt many careers and Peter's was no exception. After a tour with the Royal Air Force, he would return to matte painting once the war was over. The biggest post-war change was that he began working with Hollywood studios who were making pictures in Europe, like MGM's ancient Roman epic, Quo Vadis.

In 1950, Peter was hired by the Walt Disney Studio to paint backgrounds for the company's first live action film, Treasure Island, which was being filmed in England. His masterful renditions of historical England saved the studio from having to find and shoot in cramped, hard to reach locations. It also started a relationship that would span several decades.

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In 1953, Peter moved from his native land to Hollywoodland. He next painted backgrounds for the Disney classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1954. Ten years later, he once again returned to historical London when he painted 102 different mattes for Mary Poppins. His genius with a brush allowed the picture to be shot entirely on soundstages in Burbank. His efforts on Poppins also earned him an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, which he shared with Eustace Lycett and Hamilton Luske.

Peter would earn three more Academy Award nominations, all for Best Visual Effects, for his work on Disney features: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), The Island on Top of the World (1974) and The Black Hole (1979). All told, he painted for 34 Disney films including Old Yeller, Pollyanna, The Absent-Minded Professor and The Love Bug. He also contributed to a slew of television productions, mostly for whatever Disney anthology show was currently running.

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Following his contributions to The Black Hole, Peter retired from the motion picture industry and devoted the remainder of his life to his passion of creating fine art. Some of his works were Disney themed and some were the landscapes he loved to paint of the California coastline. All of them are highly collectible. He would return as a matte painter a handful of times, most notably for the 1990 Disney film Dick Tracy and working with his son Harrison, another Oscar winner for effects, on Superman IV. In 1993, Peter was declared an official Disney Legend for his invaluable contributions to so many classic films. He was 93 when he died.

October 7 - Bedknobs and Broomsticks

On this day, in 1971, Bedknobs and Broomsticks made its world debut in London, England. Based on two books by British author Mary Norton, some have called Bedknobs little more than Mary Poppins' less talented cousin. In my opinion, that is a totally unfair assessment. As far as the talented part goes. Otherwise it absolutely is Mary's cousin.

The similarities between the two films run deep. In fact, Bedknobs had started production a decade earlier when Walt was having trouble getting the rights to Poppins. Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi co-wrote both scripts. David Tomlinson appears in both. Both movies utilize a mix of animation and live-action. The Sherman Brothers wrote songs for both. And a certain lead actress was wanted for both.

After Poppins, and Walt's death, the Bedknobs project kept getting put on the production schedule, it was a project Walt himself had started after all, and then getting taken back off the production schedule, mainly because executives felt it was too similar to the earlier film. Bill Walsh kept developing it anyways and, when he finally got the green light in 1969, offered the role of Eglantine Price to Julie Andrews. Julie hesitated. By the time she called Bill back about it, he'd already moved on, offered the role to Angela Lansbury and she'd accepted. Ron Moody, who would appear in other Disney productions, was originally to play Professor Emelius Browne, but he decided that the only way he would do the picture was if he got top billing. The studio said no and replaced him with David Tomlinson.

Filming was mostly done on sound stages at the Disney Studio in Burbank, although some scenes were shot in Dorset, England in Corfe Castle. Those beach scenes with the Nazis were actually done in Southern California. Principal filming only took 57 days. The animated parts took five months and the special effects took another five months. The initial length of the finished film was 141 minutes. Because its US debut was going to be at Radio City Music Hall, the film needed to be less than two hours long. Over twenty minutes were cut to satisfy that requirement, including 3 entire songs. My guess is that was not helpful to the film's critical reception.

Upon its release, Bedknobs and Broomsticks got mixed reviews. Critics loved the technical aspects of the film but felt it took too long to get to the end. Audiences liked the movie and made it the 12th highest grossing film of the year. It also earned 5 Oscar nominations and would win for Special Effects. Bedknobs was re-released in 1979, but for some reason with a an additional twenty minutes cut out, which almost turned it into a non-musical. In 1996, Scott MacQueen, a senior manager of Disney's library, wondered why the song "A Step in the Right Direction" was on the movie's soundtrack album but not in the picture. This led him down a rabbit hole that ended with a version of Bedknobs that was restored to 139 minutes, almost its original length, as some bits and pieces were lost to the dustbin of time.

As far as I'm concerned, Bedknobs and Broomsticks stands out as a gem from the hazy time in Disney's history between Walt passing away and the renaissance of the mid eighties. I mean how can you go wrong with Angela Lansbury fighting Nazis with a army full of empty armor? Is it Mary Poppins? Of course not. It's a different movie, silly. And clearly I'm not the only one who likes it. A stage version is reportedly in the works. It will debut in 2019 and I for one, can't wait to see how they stage that epic battle.

Also on this day, in American history: Stamp Act Congress

September 30 - Bill Walsh

On this day, in 1913, Bill Walsh was born in New York, New York. He was a bearcat on an athletic scholarship at the University of Cincinnati. It was in college that he also began writing for shows. After they caught the reviews of a show Bill wrote, Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay hired him to contribute to their 1933 Broadway show Tattle Tales. The show itself flopped but Bill was destined for bigger things.

In 1934, Bill headed west to Hollywood. He started out in publicity, writing not only press releases but sketching advertisements. One of his clients happened to be Edgar Bergen, who used Bill to juice up gags for his ventriloquist act. And one of Edgar's good friends happened to be Walt Disney.

By 1943, Bill was working for The Disney studio, writing gags and stories for the Mickey Mouse comic strip. He happily did that for several years until one day the big boss called him into his office. Bill tells this story: "Walt said he'd decided to go into television and I was the guy who was going to do it. I looked stunned and said 'But I don't know anything about television.' Walt smiled back at me and said, 'That's okay. Nobody does.'"

In 1950, Bill wrote and produced One Hour in Wonderland. It was Disney's first attempt at a television program and was a promo for the soon to be released Alice in Wonderland. It was also a smash hit, at least by the modest standards of early television shows. It was enough of a success that Bill would go on to produce both The Mickey Mouse Club and Davy Crockett programs.

Bill moved from the small screen to the big one in 1956. Over the next two decades, he would be an integral part as both writer and producer of 18 movies for the studio, seven of which appeared on a 1973 list of all-time box office champions. Maybe you've heard of a few of them: The Shaggy Dog, The Absent Minded Professor, That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. His grandest achievement coincided with Walt's. He co-wrote Mary Poppins with Don DaGradi, earning one Oscar nomination and a Writer's Guild of America win, and also produced the film, earning a second Oscar nomination.

Shortly after returning home from the set of his last film, One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, Bill suffered a heart attack and passed away on January 27, 1975. In 1991, he would become an official Disney Legend for his 32 years of outstanding work with the Walt Disney Company.