August 16 - Fess Parker

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On this day, in 1924, Fess Elisha Parker Jr. was born in Fort Worth, Texas. The Parker family soon moved out to the rural part of Tom Green County, Texas and the open prairie seemed to suit young Fess just fine. He grew to be a strapping lad of 6 feet 6 inches. Which was a great height to be right up until he wanted to serve his country. After graduating from high school, during the latter part of World War II, Fess joined the United States Navy with dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. Turns out he was too tall for that position. Okay, how about being a radioman gunner, then? Sure, let’s give it a whirl. Nope. Turns out he was too big to fit in the rear cockpit as well. He was finally transferred to the Marine Corps and made into a radio operator. He was sent to the Pacific theater of war, arriving just in time for Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the end of the war.

After his honorable discharge in 1946, Fess used his G.I. Bill benefits to enroll at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. He was active in the drama club there and continued to act when he transferred to the University of Texas a year later. He graduated in 1950 with a degree in history and, since he still had a year of military benefits left, moved on to the University of Southern California to start a master’s degree in theater history.

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Fess’ professional acting career began in 1951 when he began earning $32 a week as an extra in a production of the play Mister Roberts. It didn’t take long for him to nab a small role in the Western Untamed Frontier with Joseph Cotton and Shelley Winters. Shortly after that, he was given a contract at Warner Brothers and began appearing a string of Westerns. That rolled into roles on Western television anthology shows like Death Valley Days in 1954.

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Also in 1954, Walt Disney was looking for someone to star as Davy Crockett in a five episode arc for his own anthology show. Walt was seriously considering James Arness, who later came to fame on Gunsmoke. While watching James do his thing in a sci-fi flick called Them!, Walt was actually more intrigued by someone in a smaller role in the same film. Fess played a pilot who gets committed to an insane asylum after claiming his plane was downed by giant insects. Walt saw that pilots commitment to the truth in the face of official pressure to say otherwise as the exact same qualities that Davy Crockett frequently displayed and brought Fess in for an audition. He brought his guitar, met briefly with Walt, sang a song and went on his way. He then heard nothing for weeks. Enough time passed that Fess figured that opportunity had passed him by. Then he got the phone call that changed his career (and arguably the history of television, at least the merchandising part).

Fess was cast as Davy Crockett over several better known actors, including James and the man who was cast as Crockett's sidekick, Buddy Ebsen. Even though Fess was only in five episodes of Disneyland he became one of the biggest television hits ever. Pretty much anything Crockett related started flying off store shelves but kids in the mid Fifties went absolutely gaga over coon skin caps. Widely considered to be the first television miniseries (even though the term wouldn't be coined until the early Seventies), the first three Davy Crockett episodes were even spliced together and released theatrically. The huge popularity of the series led to a contract for Fess with the company. And that eventually led to big problems for Fess.

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Once the last of the Davy Crockett scenes was filmed, Fess began appearing in full theatrical releases for Disney. He was in The Great Locomotive Chase, Westward Ho, the Wagons!, Old Yeller and The Light in the Forest. While the films were fairly successful, Fess began to chafe more with each one. He felt that every part he was doing was exactly like the one before it. And he wasn't wrong. Not only was Disney pigeonholing him into one specific role, Walt refused to let him do anything outside of that role. Fess had to pass on Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and The Searchers with John Wayne. When he was cast in a small role in 1959's Tonka, Fess decided enough was enough. He refused to do it, was put on suspension from his contract and ultimately parted with Disney.

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Fess didn't have to wait long to get picked up. Paramount considered Disney's loss to be their gain and put him under contract. Over the next few years, he made a handful of appearances in small roles, but his movie career never really took off. Television was always were he shined and once he returned to it in 1962, he would only ever appear in one more film, 1966’s Smoky. But return to the small screen he did, filling the shoes of Jimmy Stewart in a television adaptation of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. After one season of playing the new senator from an unnamed state, Fess moved on to the stage for a year. He (naturally) played Curly in a touring production of Oklahoma! When the tour finished, he was cast in his next big role, one that is often confused with his iconic portrayal of Davy Crockett (and for good reason).

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Starting in 1964, Fess played the second role of his lifetime, Daniel Boone, another figure from the frontier days of American history. He was again a hit. Daniel Boone ran for six seasons on NBC and was a top rated show during its entire run. Not only did Fess star in the show, but he helped produce it and even directed several episodes. Interestingly, the producers of the show initially wanted it to be about Davy Crockett, but Disney refused to relinquish the rights to that character, so they had to settle for Daniel Boone. While the show was popular it never quite attained the same level of craziness that Fess’ earlier run did. Even though Boone wore a coonskin cap that the creators made sure was mentioned in the theme song (just one more reason that people can’t seem to differentiate between Fess’ two major roles).

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To confuse matters even more, Fess became interested in opening a Davy Crockett inspired theme park during the filming of Daniel Boone. He went so far as to option some land in Northern Kentucky for the venture, but he was a little too late to make it happen. The King’s Island amusement park started construction less than two hours away from his site and investors didn’t think the area could support more than one park. Since King’s Island was already on the way, they’d have to pass on Fess’ idea.

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Daniel Boone ended its run in 1970 and, even though he didn’t have to, Fess ended his run, too. He could have rolled right on into a new show, McCloud, but felt it was too similar to things he’d already done. Dennis Weaver was more than happy to take that opportunity of his hands. When a pilot for his own sitcom, The Fess Parker Show, failed to get picked up by a network in 1974, Fess retired from acting completely. He did not, however, spend the rest of his life sipping gin and tonics by the pool. He opted instead for a nice glass of chardonnay.

In the late Seventies, Fess, his wife Marcella and their two children settled down in Santa Ynez, California. He acquired 1,500 acres of prime land in nearby Los Olivos, planted a variety of grapes and opened the Fess Parker Family Winery, a venture he devoted the rest of his life to. Over the years, the winery has produced several award winning vintages and every bottle sports a label with a golden coonskin cap on it, hearkening back to Fess’ acting days. You can also buy actual coonskin caps in the tasting room’s gift shop, as well as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone inspired bottle toppers. The winery brought Fess back into the entertainment world (sort of) in 2004 when it became the setting for the fictitious winery in the Academy Award winning movie Sideways.

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Even though he didn’t do any acting during the last several decades of his life, Fess was still bestowed with a few honors for his talents. In 1991, in spite of the somewhat acrimonious end to his relationship with the company, he was declared an official Disney Legend. In 2003, the Texas Cultural Trust awarded him the Texas Medal of Arts for his faithful portrayal of Davy Crockett. And in 2004, giving further evidence that there wasn’t any hard feelings on Disney’s end, Fess was given a coveted window in Disneyland. It isn’t located on Main Street USA, however, but is more appropriately on display in Frontierland above the Pioneer Mercantile. It reads “Davy Crockett - Coonskin Cap Supply Co - Fess Parker Proprietor.”

Fess enjoyed the remainder of his life working on his winery. And it truly was (and is) a family affair. His son is currently president of operations and his daughter is vice president of marketing. Fess himself is no longer part of venture, though, having passed away quietly in his sleep on March 18, 2010. He was 85.

August 6 - Oliver Wallace

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On this day, in 1887, Oliver George Wallace was born in London, England. Oliver was classically trained as a musician and conductor in his native Britain before moving across the pond to Canada in 1904 and then on to Seattle, Washington by 1910. He began honing his eclectic musical stylings alongside vaudeville acts and silent movies in Canadian theaters and continued doing so when he moved to America. Oliver is generally credited with being the first person to play a pipe organ to accompany motion pictures but he was just as comfortable conducting a house orchestra. He slowly worked his way down the West Coast, becoming the house organist at San Francisco’s Granada Theater and then the Rialto Theater in Los Angeles. Along the way, he became an American citizen in 1914 and composed a hit song, Hindustan, in 1918.

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Oliver’s ability to write popular music, coupled with the improvisational skills he picked up backing unpredictable silent pictures, would serve him well when movies began arriving at theaters with their own music, putting a lot of other organ players out of business. He began his film score career composing and playing for Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios. For a great example of his mad organ playing skills, listen to the soundtrack of Universal’s Bride of Frankenstein. Then, in 1936, he was hired by the Walt Disney Studio where he would remain until his death.

Oliver was a natural fit for the world of animation. Because of his years of experience playing behind silent movies he could create music to fit any mood or action the animators could come up with, no matter how outrageous. Over the course of his career, Oliver wrote the scores for almost 140 Disney shorts in every category. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Silly Symphonies, you name it, Oliver has a credit (or twelve) somewhere in there. One of his most notable contributions to the Shorts Department (although his short scores as a whole have been called a virtual textbook for writing music for cartoons) came during World War II when he composed and wrote the lyrics for the title song from the Academy Award winning Donald short, Der Fuehrer’s Face. Spike Jones and his band would reach #3 on the popular charts with their rendition of it. Oliver would score another Oscar winning short, the classic Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom, a decade later.

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But don’t start thinking that the multi-talented Oliver was relegated to just the Shorts Department (even though he was really good at it). Walt had him conduct the orchestra for the studio’s second feature, Pinocchio, and co-write the score for the fourth one, Dumbo. He would be instrumental (literally and figuratively) in developing the songs Pink Elephants on Parade and When I See an Elephant Fly for the picture. Oliver and his fellow composer, Frank Churchill, would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Musical Score for their work, the only win that Oliver received from his five overall nominations. He would go on to contribute to the scores of Bambi, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Peter Pan, Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp.

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As Disney moved into the realm of live action productions, Oliver took the same journey. It turns out that his talent for scoring animated shorts translated very well into scoring the documentaries the studio began making. Most of the 17 shorts in the Academy Award winning People and Places series boast scores by Oliver, including The Alaskan Eskimo, Men Against the Arctic and Japan Harvests the Sea. He also wrote the music for a handful of the True-Life Adventures (most of which were scored by the Legendary Paul Smith), notably doing Seal Island, the first film in the series, and Jungle Cat, the last film. His score for 1958’s White Wilderness was even nominated for an Oscar, a rare honor for music coming from a documentary.

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Outside the realm of non-fiction, Oliver began to build his repertoire of whimsical and dramatic scores for other Disney projects. He is credited for his work on Darby O’Gill and the Little People, Ten Who Dared, Old Yeller (for which he also penned the titular song) and its sequel Savage Sam, Tonka and 1963’s The Incredible Journey. As happened with so many employees at the Walt Disney Studio, Oliver occasionally got roped into lending his voice to a character in a film. He has two acting credits with the studio that we know of: Mr. Winky, the gang leader, in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and the Bandleader in Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with the Circus.

When the fellow that the Legendary animator Frank Thomas once described as a madman who was funny, eccentric, noisy, unexpected and loved by everyone suddenly passed away on September 15, 1963, the 76-year-old was still working at Disney full time. Forty-three years later, in 2008, for his nearly three decades of constantly improving the works of the studio with his musical genius, Oliver was officially, and most deservedly, declared a Disney Legend.

April 17 - Ron Miller

On this day, in 1933, Ronald William Miller was born in Los Angeles, California. The son of Canadian immigrants, Ron played football at John C. Fremont High School before continuing his sports career at the University of Southern California. While he was there, he went on a blind date after a USC football game with a fetching young woman by the name of Diane Marie Disney. It was love at first sight and the couple was married on May 9, 1954. Ron then did a tour in the United States Army, returning to Los Angeles in 1956 to play professional football for the Rams. His career as a tight end only lasted one season. His father-in-law saw him play in exactly two games. In the first one, Ron was knocked unconscious on a carry early in the game and didn’t wake up until the third quarter. The second only went marginally better. Walt informed his son-in-law that he wasn’t interested in raising his own grandchildren, so why didn’t Ron come work for Disney before he got himself killed? Ron felt good about achieving his dream to play in the pros, agreed that Walt’s idea was probably a much safer way to go and hung up his jersey at the end of the season.

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Ron’s first job at his father-in-law’s company had actually occurred a few years earlier. While waiting for his draft notice to come through from the army, he shuttled plans for Disneyland back and forth between the WED Enterprises offices in Burbank and the construction site in Anaheim. For his return, Walt sponsored Ron’s membership in the Director’s Guild of America and made him an assistant on Old Yeller (but whether it was an assistant director or an assistant to the director is unclear, he didn’t get any official credit).

Shortly after getting his feet wet in production, Warner Brothers called Ron asking if he would audition to replace an actor they were having problems with on their popular Western Cheyenne. The audition led to a screen test, but didn’t go any further. When Walt got wind of what was going on, he told his son-in-law to forget acting and concentrate on being a producer. Ron acquiesced. The actor in question, Clint Walker, soon settled with Warner Brothers and returned to the show, so it’s a moot point whether Walt was simply being heavy handed with Ron or if he had some knowledge as to how the situation was going to turn out and was saving Ron some headaches. Either way, Ron never tried acting again.

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Putting his nose to the grindstone, Ron began moving up the production ladder, moving from associate producer to producer and, eventually, executive producer. He worked on classic films like Son of Flubber, Summer Magic and That Darn Cat! His first gig as a full-fledged producer was for the 1968 comedy Never a Dull Moment, starring Dick Van Dyke and Edward G. Robinson. Throughout the Seventies, Ron racked up producing credits on movies like Tron, Pete’s Dragon, Escape to Witch Mountain, The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound. He also produced several episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney anthology show, earning six Emmy nominations and one win along the way.

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In 1978, Ron became the President of the Walt Disney Company, the number two man to then-CEO Card Walker. Ron was the more experimental of the two men. He embraced new computer animation techniques for Tron. He was a driving force behind the development and construction of Epcot Center. He created The Disney Channel. When he moved into the CEO position in 1984, he created Touchstone Pictures to open up the company creatively, which it desperately needed. But he also made colossal blunders, too.

Under Card, the company had been playing its cards very conservatively, spending most of the almost two decades since Walt’s passing trying to guess what the founder would have done. As a result, Disney stopped innovating (for the most part), putting out mostly mediocre fare that really didn’t even play to the company’s strengths much less build on them. Profits fell even though Disney held assets that could have prevented that from happening, if utilized properly. A fact that didn’t escape the notice of investors. One of them, Saul Steinberg, attempted a hostile takeover. As CEO, Ron negotiated a buyout of Saul’s 11.5% ownership, saving the company but at a huge cost (Saul made about $60 million off the deal). A group of shareholders sued. Around the same time, Ron was praising all the wonderful synergistic things that were going to happen along with the next animated classic the company was putting out, so it’s okay that it was the most expensive one yet (spoiler alert: The Black Cauldron failed on nearly every level). When a second hostile takeover reared its ugly head, it proved to be too much. After just 18 months at the helm of the company, Ron was asked to resign and replaced with Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.

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Following his forced retirement, Ron and Dianne relocated to the Napa Valley. A few years earlier, they’d purchased some land there with the intention of cultivating a vineyard for their twilight years. That plan just got moved up a bit. They founded the Silverado Vineyards, which currently produces five varieties of wine.

In 2009, Ron and Dianne help found the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, California. Ron served on the board of the museum from the beginning and was the President for several years. After Dianne passed away in 2013, Ron continued to look after the museum and the winery, until succumbing to heart failure himself earlier this year. On February 9, 2019, he passed away in Napa, California, never quite shaking the stigma that comes with getting fired on such a grand scale, but always believing that he had left Disney stronger for his service. He was 85.

October 12 - Bill Anderson

On this day, in 1911, producer William Hillyard Anderson was born in Smithfield, Utah. Bill's boyhood desire was to be an actor when he grew up. In 1929, he moved to Los Angeles, California looking for fame and fortune. He did manage to get a few small parts in some radio shows, but his big break never came. Eventually Bill began working for the Firestone Rubber Company and enrolled in the University of Southern California as a pre-law student. His dreams of being in the entertainment industry were down but not out as he discovered that his talents lay not in front of the camera but behind it.

In 1943, Bill got a job with the Walt Disney Studios in the production control department, where he managed the reorganization and expansion of the Ink and Paint Department. Eight years later, Bill was named Production Manager and by 1956, he was the Vice President of Studio Operations. He cut his teeth in television, producing 58 of the 78 episodes of Zorro as well as episodes of The Swamp Fox, The Wonderful World of Disney and Johnny Shiloh.

Bill moved into the realm of feature films in 1957 as an associate producer on Old Yeller. A couple of years later, his wife pointed out a young English actress to him. Bill went to Walt and recommended Hayley Mills for the lead in Pollyanna. That of course led to a string of films for the studio starring young Hayley and Bill would personally produce one of them, 1964's The Moon-spinners. His list of producing credits includes many of the popular Disney films of the late Sixties and early Seventies: Savage Sam, Swiss Family Robinson, The Apple Dumpling Gang and The Shaggy D.A., just to name a few. When Walt died in 1966, Bill was named as one of the small group of people who would guide the studios output for the next decade.

As further proof of his value to the Walt Disney Company, Bill became part of the Board of Directors in 1964. Although he would retire from his producing gig in 1975, he would continue as a director until 1984, shepherding the company from the death of Walt until the hiring of Michael Eisner. For all his contributions to the company, Bill would be posthumously named an official Disney Legend in 2007. He had passed away from a brain hemorrhage in San Francisco on December 28, 1997 at the age of 86.

Also on this day, in American history: Emperor Norton