July 18 - Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln

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On this day, in 1965, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, an Audio-Animatronic show, began wowing guests on Main Street USA in Disneyland.  In the late Fifties, Walt wanted to expand the Main Street USA area of Disneyland, specifically by building an attraction that was a tribute to the Presidents of the United States, all 34 of them up to that point. The problem was that Walt's vision had outpaced the technology of the day. There just was no physical way to create the show he had planned in his head, even if he had unlimited amounts of money to do it. The idea had to be shelved and the expansion never happened.

Several years later, as Disney was signing contracts to provide rides and shows for the 1964 World's Fair, the Imagineers of WED Enterprises brought a prototype of a new technology to show their boss. Since they couldn't make a show with 34 moving Presidents, they'd been focusing on making a single mechanical man in the likeness of Walt's boyhood hero, Abraham Lincoln. The Imagineers had managed to create something that, although quite primitive by today's standards, was kind of magical. Walt was intrigued by it, convinced the state of Illinois they needed it for their Fair pavilion and got them to foot the bill for constructing it.

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The first attraction with Audio-Animatronic technology to open was the Enchanted Tiki Room in 1963. Compared to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, though, the Tiki Room is simplicity itself. A few beaks open and close, some wings flutter and eyes blink (granted this occurs on over a hundred different figures at once, but still). As impressed as guests were by singing birds and crooning flowers, they were floored by what what they saw in the Illinois pavilion. Great strides had been made in Audio-Animatronics in a short time. Not only did Lincoln speak and gesture and address different parts of the audience, but HE STOOD UP FROM HIS CHAIR! WHAT IS THIS SORCERY? Audiences marveled at the life-like qualities of the figure in the show and made Illinois one of the must-see attractions of the Fair.

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When the last guest had passed through the 1964 World's Fair, the Disney attractions were hands down some of the highlights of the whole affair. They were already pretty much paid for by the pavilions that had commissioned them and were already popular with guests, so it was natural that Walt would want to incorporate them into Disneyland. Three of the four attractions were installed whole while just the Audio-Animatronic dinosaurs from the Ford Pavilion made their way into part of the Disneyland Railroad. Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln found its way to Main Street USA (although it was a duplicate attraction, the original was believed to have been lost when the Illinois pavilion was completely demolished; turns out, the original figure was actually carefully packed up, delivered to California, strangely forgotten and discovered years later in storage), it's a small world took over Fantasyland and the Carousel of Progress landed in Tomorrowland. All four of them can still be seen today.

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Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln ran at Disneyland until 1972 before undergoing its first rewrite. The new show that opened in the space, The Walt Disney Story, actually didn't include the figure of Lincoln for the first three years. He was reinstated as part of the show in 1975, after thousands of guests asked where he went. And that's has been his status since then. Eventually a new gets written that leaves old Abe out and eventually he has to be written back in because people love and miss him. You can see him as part of the current show, The Disneyland Story Presenting Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. His technological aspects have been updated over the years making him still just as cool to watch as when he first stood up to illuminate guests over fifty years ago. Oh, and Walt did finally get that tribute to the Presidents he wanted, he just didn't live long enough to see it happen. You can see it at the Hall of Presidents in Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World (now with forty-five moving figures!).

February 11 - Blaine Gibson

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On this day, in 1918, Ira Blaine Gibson was born in Rocky Ford, Colorado. Growing up on his parents' melon farm, Blaine showed his artistic talents at an early age. When he was twelve, he won a national contest sponsored by Proctor and Gamble for carving a figure out of a bar of Ivory Soap. The grand prize was $10 for his elephant.

Blaine would go to Western State College and the University of Colorado studying art until his family ran out of money. At the age of 21 he wrote to the Walt Disney Studio inquiring about a job. The studio sent him an application that required him to show off his drawing skills. Not only did he get the job, but he was asked to sign a release for the sketch he made of a boy milking a cow into a cat's mouth as the company wanted to use it right away. So, in the spring of 1939, Blaine moved to Southern California.

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Blaine began as an assistant animator at Disney. He worked on features like Fantasia, Bambi and Song of the South. By 1949, he was permanently assigned to working under Frank Thomas, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, and assisted him on such films as Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty and Peter Pan. He was good at animation but always kept an interest in sculpting, so much so that he would attend classes at Pasadena City College to improve his work. That dedication would pay off in 1954.

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As work was gearing up on Disneyland, Walt began pulling more and more people from the studio to work on his park. He discovered Blaine's talent as a sculptor and immediately put him to work on the new Project. Over the years, Blaine would sculpt faces for Audio-Animatronics in attractions from an uncanny likeness of Abraham Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair to the Haunted Mansion to Pirates of the Caribbean to It's a Small World. When asked where he got his inspiration for so many different looks, he admitted that some of the ghouls and pirates he created might have looked a lot like people from his church while others were people he'd had dinner with over the years.

When Walt Disney World was being designed, not only were many of Blaine's creations duplicated in the Florida versions of existing attractions, but he was tapped to sculpt each of the Commanders in Chief for the Hall of Presidents in Liberty Square. Even after his retirement, Blaine would return to sculpt each new president. The first 43 Presidents in the Hall, from George Washington to George W. Bush, were all done by Blaine.

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Blaine's best known work, however, was produced in 1993, the statue known as Partners. The copper statue of Walt, holding hands with Mickey Mouse, gesturing out over the park and towards the future, has become synonymous with the Walt Disney Company. Working from a 1960 bust of Walt, Blaine modeled it after what he considered to be Walt's prime years, the mid-Fifties. He once said that the hardest part of the piece to get right was Mickey's fingers as they wrapped around Walt's. The original Partners is located in the hub area of Disneyland. Reproductions have found their way into four other locations around the world: the hub area of the Magic Kingdom in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California and The Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris, France. The statue was also given out in a miniature version, called Partners in Excellence, for a while to recognize Cast Members who were nominated by their peers as someone who embodied the spirit of Walt Disney.

Blaine retired from the Walt Disney Company in 1983 after 44 years of enduring contributions to the company's legacy. Besides returning every 4-8 years to create a new face for the Hall of Presidents, he would come back in 1993 to be honored as an official Disney Legend, for obvious reasons. On July 5, 2015, Blaine passed away from heart failure at his home in Montecito, California. He was 97.

December 20 - Sam McKim

Photo lifted from filesofjerryblake.com

On this day, in 1924, Sammy McKim was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. During the Great Depression, Sammy and his family moved to Los Angles, California. When he was ten, Sammy was visiting a relative on the MGM movie lot when he caught the eye of a casting director as was almost immediately put to work as an extra. Republic Studios signed him to a contract and he began appearing in Westerns and other B movies, working with the likes of Spencer Tracy, John Wayne and Gene Autry. Throughout this entire period, Sammy was constantly drawing. Many times he’d make caricatures of his fellow actors and have them sign the pieces for him. When he hit high school, Sammy submitted his portfolio to the Walt Disney Studios and… was offered a job in traffic control. He said no thanks and joined the United States Army instead to serve in World War II.

At the conclusion of that conflict, Sam (as he was now called) returned to LA and enrolled in the Art Center College of Design. He graduated in 1950 and the military waited a whole 24 hours before they drafted him back into the Army for the Korean War. Sam served for 14 more months, earning the Distinguished Service Cross in the process, returned stateside again and, this time, enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute. Graduating again in 1953, Sam was faced with a choice: return to a life of acting (he was offered a role in John Ford’s The Long Gray Line) or stay behind the cameras and create storyboards for 20^th Century Fox. He chose the career in drawing and never looked back.

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A round of layoffs hit Fox the following year and swept Sam into a new job at the Walt Disney Studios. His first assignments were to draw inspirational sketches of attractions for a little project called Disneyland. It wouldn’t be long before every land in the new park had some sort of influence from the hand of Sam McKim. He contributed to the look of the Golden Horseshoe Revue, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion and many more. Eventually, Sam would touch theme parks in the Florida Project as well. He helped design The Hall of Presidents at the Magic Kingdom, the Universe of Energy at Epcot and made dozens of sketches for the Disney-MGM Studios.

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Sam’s biggest contribution to the Disney legacy, however, is easily the souvenir maps he drew of Disneyland between 1958 and 1964. The intricacy of these maps has made them one of the most sought after pieces of memorabilia in all of Disney collecting. Almost thirty years later, Sam would reprise his role of park cartographer when he created one of his detailed masterpieces for the opening of Disneyland Paris.

In 1996, Sam was declared an official Disney Legend for all of his inspiring (and enduring) design work for the company over the years. He would pass away from heart failure at his home in Burbank, California on July 9, 2004. He was 79.