July 23 - Edie McClurg

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On this day, in 1945, Edie McClurg was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Edie and her older brother, Bob (who also spent most of the Eighties doing improve and appearing in movies), spent all of their formative years in KC, the children of a mailman and a government secretary (and yet they still both acquired a healthy funny bone). In the mid Sixties, Edie attended classes at the University of Missouri (the Kansas City branch, naturally) while simultaneously becoming a newswoman and producer at the local National Public Radio affiliate, KCUR-FM. After graduating, she stayed on at UM for eight more years teaching courses in radio. One of the highlights of her career with NPR was getting to play John Ehrlichman during a national broadcast of a reading of the transcripts of the Nixon Tapes. Ironically, that performance was the beginning of the end for her teaching and news careers.

In 1976, Edie made her first appearance on the silver screen when she was cast as Helen Shyres in the classic horror film Carrie. She also joined a San Francisco based improv group, the Pitcshel Players, and began performing regularly on the Tony Orlando and Dawn variety show and The Richard Pryor Show. By the end of the decade, she had begun appearing on David Letterman’s short lived morning show and had moved south to become a member of the Los Angeles improve troupe The Groundlings. While there, she helped fellow Groundling Paul Reubens develop his first play, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, and appeared in it as Hermit Hattie.

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Throughout the Eighties, Edie had several small but memorable roles on television and in films. She played Herb Tarlek’s wife Lucille on WKRP in Cincinnati, Bonnie Brindle in the sitcom Small Wonder and Mrs. Patty Poole on Valerie. You might remember her as the checkout lady in Mr. Mom or Marge Sweetwater in Back to School or the car rental agent in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. If none of those roles ring a bell (then what have you been watching all your life?), there is one character that I’m pretty sure just about everyone has seen and at least secretly been in awe of: the pencil pulling school secretary, Grace, in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That whole pencil thing began as way for Edie to keep from getting bored on the set one day, seeing how many pencils she could get into her teased up hairdo at one time. It evolved into a sort of game between her and the director, John Hughes, who kept egging her on to break her record. Eventually John decided it would be fun to actually depict it in the film and, voila, one of the great film gags was born. For those of you who were wondering, the most pencils she every got to stay in her hair at once was fifteen.

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Edie first joined the Disney family in two ways in 1989. She was the voice of Bertha in the English dubbed version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese anime film Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was produced and distributed in the US by Disney. Then she played Carlotta, the house servant who becomes exasperated with Chef Louie’s lateness in providing dinner and catches him destroying the kitchen, in The Little Mermaid. Edie would reprise the role of Carlotta for the direct-to-video sequel, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. In 1998, she popped up in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life as Dr. Flora and appeared in My Neighbors the Yamadas, another Disney dubbed and distributed Japanese film, the next year. She followed those up with roles as Gram Gram in Air Bud: Spikes Back, Mollie the Pig in Home on the Range, Minny in the first two films of the Cars franchise, Mary in Wreck-It Ralph, Gerda in Frozen and several additional voices in Zootopia. And sharp eared viewers will recognize her as the voice making the announcements in Santa’s Workshop during the direct-to-video holiday extravaganza, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas.

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All that is just the film work Edie's done for Disney. Where have we might have seen or heard her in a Disney television show, you might ask. She's been in episodes of The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, Dinosaurs, The Kids from Room 402, Higglytown Heroes, Hannah Montana, Desperate Housewives, Doc McStuffins and Fish Hooks. Whew.

Image courtesy doyouremember.com

In the course of her 40+ year career, Edie has been in over 60 films and over 370 episodes of over 110 television shows. Her last appearances on both the big and small screens happened in 2016. Why did our favorite cheerful Midwesterner seem to suddenly disappear? Unfortunately, earlier this year we found out why. Edie is apparently in a battle with dementia, a battle that anyone who has watched a love one go through it knows is heart breaking and often times brutal. Our hearts go out to Edie's friends and family and we hope that they can find peace in the fact that Edie's legacy will be one of fun and laughter. She might have tarnished the reputation of pencils a bit, but I don't think even the pencils really mind. Happy 74th Edie. Thanks for all the giggles.

June 5 - Stephen J. Anderson

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On this day, in 1970, Stephen John Anderson was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Stephen, like so many others in the animation industry, studied character animation at the CalArts School of Film and Video. When he graduated in 1991, he went to work for Hyperion Animation Company. Hyperion was founded by Thomas L. Wilhite, a former head of production at Disney, and is best known for the Brave Little Toaster series. Stephen was an animator on Rover Dangerfield (basically a vanity project written, produced and starring Rodney Dangerfield) and Bebe’s Kids (a box office flop based on the standup of the late Robin Harris). He was also able to cut his directing teeth at Hyperion on the USA Network series The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

In 1999, Stephen became part of the Walt Disney Company as a story artist on Tarzan. A story artist is not to be confused with a storyboard artist who is responsible for drawing the series of sketches that show what a scene might look like as the film develops. A story artist is a screenwriter who makes contributions to the script but not enough to share in a screenplay by or story by credit. By the very next year, Stephen had moved up to the Story Supervisor position for The Emperor’s New Groove. He then continued in that role for 2003’s Brother Bear.

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In 2007, Stephen got to step up to the plate and take another swing at directing for Disney's 47th animated feature, Meet the Robinsons. As has become de rigueur, he also provided the voices for several of the film's characters including the villain, Bowler Hat Guy, Grandpa Bud and Cousin Tallulah.  The film garnered mostly positive reviews, but failed to take in much more than its $159 million budget. Personally I think it's one of the vastly underrated Disney films of the modern era.

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Stephen followed Robinsons up by providing additional voices for Bolt and as an animator and additional story man on Tangled. He was tapped for a co-director, with Don Hall, for the 2011 Winnie the Pooh feature. The newest adventure in the Hundred Acre Wood was a critical success but not particularly a financial one. It wasn't a flop by any means, making $50 million on a $30 million budget, but opening the same weekend as the final Harry Potter movie didn't do it any favors. Stephen then added additional story elements to the juggernaut known as Frozen as well as voicing Kai, Anna and Elsa's loyal steward. His last feature credit was as an additional story artist on Zootopia. He is reportedly working on a new project as director, but there is no word on what that film might be. What ever it is, we look forward to seeing it and hope it becomes the box office success that Stephen deserves.

February 24 - Chris Buck

On this day, in 1958, Christopher James Buck was born in Wichita, Kansas. Like many an animator before him, Chris was lured into the art form by what he saw on the big screen as a child. His first movie going memory was to see the 1962 re-release of Pinocchio to theaters, and he’s been hooked ever since. Conveniently for his future plans, Chris’ family soon moved to Placentia, a quiet community in Orange County, California. After graduating from El Dorado High School, he spent two years studying character animation at CalArts, where he fell in with the likes of John Lasseter and Michael Giaimo. Then, in 1978, fresh out of room A113, Chris got a job with the Walt Disney Company.

Chris joined the company when it was in a dark period known as the Seventies. Walt had passed away over a decade before and the Disney Renaissance was still a decade away; not a great time to start a career. His first project was as an inbetweener (and later a full animator) for the modest 1981 hit, The Fox and the Hound.  He managed to almost completely avoid participating in the train wreck called The Black Cauldron, partly by doing some work on Mickey’s Christmas Carol instead, but mostly by leaving the company to freelance instead of becoming embroiled in the mess.

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Chris began doing work in advertising, including television commercials for Keebler, while maintaining a working relationship with Disney. In between animating a short, Fun with Mr. Future, and supervising a featurette, Sport Goofy in Soccermania, for the company, Chris began working with another young animator, Tim Burton. He helped Tim storyboard his live action short, Frankenweenie, and later became a directing animator on a short-lived show Tim produced (and Brad Bird created) called Family Dog. During the same time frame, Chris was assisting the fledgling Hyperion Animation Studio with character designs for projects like The Brave Little Toaster and supervising animation for the feature Bebe’s Kids.

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As the Disney Renaissance began to appear on the horizon in the late Eighties, Chris was busier than ever and began doing more and more work for Disney (without, as he puts it, becoming an in-house employee). He was an animator on Oliver and Company, contributed to the experimental stuff happening in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and designed characters for The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. When Pocahontas rolled around in 1995, Chris signed on as supervising animator in charge of Percy, Wiggins and Grandmother Willow. He bumped up the food chain even further on his next picture, co-directing Tarzan with Kevin Lima.

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While Chris was able to remove himself from The Black Cauldron, he wasn’t as lucky when it came to the 2004 flop Home on the Range. All his supervising on the character of Maggie just couldn’t overcome Rosanne’s performance (or the rest of the film’s udder lack of creativity). Chris made a second break with Disney over the picture, moving over to Sony for his next project. As co-director of the 2007 mockumentary penguin hit Surf’s Up, Chris began to cement his value at the helm of animated features.

The mess surrounding Home on the Range, and the cantankerous departure of Michael Eisner as Disney’s CEO, basically put a lot of top positions at Disney, and in the film division especially, up for grabs. When the dust settled and John Lasseter had been named the chief creative officer of Animation, John sat down with his old classmate Chris for a heart-to-heart about coming back to work for Disney. One of the ideas they talked about was reviving an idea that had been kicking around the studio for years: a musical based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen.

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Chris teamed up with Jennifer Lee to co-direct Disney’s 53^rd animated feature, Frozen. To say it worked out for everyone involved would be a gross understatement. Jennifer, already the first woman to helm an animated Disney movie, became the first woman to helm a $1 billion grossing film period. Chris had convinced another old college buddy, Michael Giaimo (who’d also had an on again off again relationship with Disney over the years), to be art director on the picture, nabbing him an Annie Award in the process. The Frozen juggernaut has earned its directors multiple awards and spawned sequel featurettes, theme park shows and rides, a Broadway musical and, later this year, a second animated feature, once again led by Chris and Jennifer. In the land of will he/won’t he, Chris is now firmly in the position of he will be spending many more years collecting a paycheck from the Walt Disney Company. And that’s a thought worth melting for.

January 1 - The Rose Parade

On this day, in 1890, the Valley Hunt Club staged the very first Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. Held annually every year since then (even during both World Wars), the Rose Parade has become a fixture on New Year’s Day for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Except, of course, for those occasions when the parade happens on January 2. When are those occasions, you might scratch your head and ask. Whenever the first falls on a Sunday. The organizers of the fourth parade didn’t want to disturb the horses tethered outside of church services, so they delayed for twenty-four hours, creating a tradition that continues to today.

Image courtesy of remembertherosebowl.com

The best part of the parade, in my opinion, is how beautiful and creative the floats are. Right from the beginning, the organizers wanted to celebrate the mild climate of their fair city and covered their horse drawn carriages with live roses and other flowers. Today, it’s mindboggling to me how far float designers have moved beyond flowers. Seeds, grasses, bark, skins, you name it, every conceivable part of a plant is used to evoke all kinds of surfaces on gorgeous, colorful and, quite often, whimsical scenes. If you can’t tell, I really like this parade.

Image courtesy of disneyhistoryinstitute.com

Disney has a long history with the Rose Parade. It all started at the 39^th Parade on January 1, 1938. The theme that year was Playland Fantasies. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had been triumphantly playing at the Carthay Circle Theatre for a week and a half and fit in perfectly. The live action model for Snow White, Marjorie Belcher, rode the float with the same costumed characters of the dwarfs that graced the film’s premiere.

In 1955, the 66^th parade featured a float based on attractions from Disneyland, even though the park was still several months away from opening. Helms Bakery sponsored the float which boasted over 7,000 pink roses. In addition to the float, the Firehouse Five Plus Two, a jazz group made up of studio employees including Ward Kimball and Frank Thomas (two of the Nine Old Men), joined in the procession.

Image courtesy of the official Disney Parks blog

Eleven years later, the 77^th Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade would be none other than Walt Disney himself. He proudly rode at the front of the parade with Mickey Mouse by his side. Interestingly, one of the spectators that year would be a young John Lasseter, future co-founder of Pixar, and another would be Pat Burke, one of the top future Imagineers.

In 1980, Disneyland was once again part of the parade when they presented a special pre-parade show celebrating the park’s 25^th Anniversary. As part of the festivities, the Firehouse Five Plus Two was enticed out of retirement to make an encore Rose Parade appearance.

In 2000, another Disney became Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade. This time it was Walt’s nephew, and longtime Disney Board member, Roy E. Disney.

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For the 115^th Rose Parade in 2004, Disneyland Resort once again sponsored a float. This one was based on its newest attraction, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Rising 100 feet above the street, this float would be the tallest in parade history.

Mickey Mouse would serve as the 116^th Grand Marshal just a year later. Disneyland Resort’s 50^th anniversary advertising campaign would also kick off during the commercial breaks of the parade’s television coverage. The following year a float with recreations of the castles from each of Disney’s five magical theme parks from around the world was featured.

Disney would have a small presence in the 2007 parade. A representation of Disneyland’s monorail would be part of the City of Anaheim’s sesquicentennial float. Six years later, a float based on Disneyland Resort’s newest area, Cars Land, would ride down Colorado Boulevard.

Image courtesy of KPCC

And, finally, in 2016, the longest, most massive float of the parade that year consisted of three distinct parts: a Frozen castle followed by Sleeping Beauty’s Castle (decorated for Disneyland’s 60^th anniversary) with the Millennium Falcon bringing up the rear.

Year after year, the Tournament of Roses Parade (as it’s officially known) never fails to please, even in those years when it pours. And whenever Disney enters a float, it’s sure to be something spectacular. I, for one, look forward to all the collaborations between the two in the years to come.