May 18 - Larry Lansburgh

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On this day, in 1911, Lawrence Muzzy Lansburgh was born in San Francisco, California. Larry’s father, Gustav Albert Lansburgh, was an architect who designed many of the opulent theaters built on the west coast during the early part of the twentieth century. His work includes the San Francisco Opera House and the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles (the latter now fully owned and restored by the Walt Disney Company). The family was wealthy enough that young Larry learned to ride horses at a venerable old stable on the campus of Stanford University and developed a lifelong love of animals at the same time.

After finishing high school, Larry moved to Texas to tend livestock and compete in the rodeo scene. He loved working with the animals but couldn’t make enough money to keep his stomach full. Eventually he had to give it up, move to Hollywood and become a stuntman for Cecil B. DeMille. He hated it but it paid the bills. Or at least it paid them right up to the moment he fell off a horse and broke his leg in 1939. Now in his late twenties, and injured, Larry desperately took the first position he could find. That job just happened to be as a delivery boy at the Walt Disney Studio. Larry probably couldn’t feel it at that moment, but he was going to turn out just fine.

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Larry started out at Disney whisking memos and story boards and all manner of things between the different departments, including bringing Walt his lunch every day. As time went on, he slowly worked his way up through the ranks, learning film editing, writing, sound production and cinematography. As a cameraman, Larry joined Walt and his crew when they went on their goodwill tour of South America. Some of his footage can be seen in the two films that came out of that tour, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. 

Following World War II, Larry started producing and directing films, becoming instrumental in the filming and production of the True-Life Adventure films. By the mid Fifties, he was making his own documentary films for the company. His 1956 film, Cow Dog, was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1957, Larry started his own production company, sort of. For the first several years, he was mostly funded and distributed by Disney, but he did have the autonomy to make whatever movies he wanted. Two of his movies from this early period would win Oscars, The Wetback Hound in 1958 and The Horse with the Flying Tail in 1961. During this same period, he was also asked to direct several animal based episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney. 

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Larry never liked the word documentary. He always felt that there was plenty of drama to be found in the lives of animals, if only you looked hard enough. But he was equally against using gimmicks to make a story. If you let the animals be themselves, the story will present itself. Larry was a also a pioneer in not only championing the ethical treatment of animals in film but in keeping guns out of sight of his audience, especially on films geared toward kids, and if a gun did appear, it was never used gratuitously.

By the early Seventies, Larry had moved his production company to a sprawling ranch in Oregon. He continued to make films throughout the next couple of decades, mostly using local talent.  He also used his prodigious talent as a horseman as a judge for the American Royal Horse Show, held each fall in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1998, for all his help in moving the Walt Disney Studio beyond animation and into live action films, Larry was declared an official Disney Legend. Three years later, among the dogs and horses he'd loved all his life, Larry passed away on his ranch in Eagle Point, Oregon. He was 89.

May 6 - Joe Grant

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On this day, in 2005, Joe Grant passed away in Glendale, California. Born on May 15, 1908 in New York City, Joe and his family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was two. His father was a newspaper art editor, which gave Joe exposure to the possibilities of the art world from an early age. Following high school, Joe attended classes at the famed Chouinard Art Institute. His first professional gig was drawing caricatures of celebrities for a local newspaper. One of the readers of that paper was Walt Disney, who was impressed enough with Joe’s style to invite him to submit some caricatures for incorporation into the 1933 short Mickey’s Gala Premier.

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The success of Joe’s work in Gala led to him being offered a full time job with the Walt Disney Studio as production on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was ramping up. Joe was given the task of designing the Queen and her alter ego, the Wicked Witch. Supposedly the old hag’s appearance (but not, presumably, her evil intent) was fashioned after a woman who lived across the street from Joe at the time. He continued working on character designs for Pinocchio before switching over to the story department when production began on Fantasia. Not only did Joe help develop the plot of several of the segments in Fantasia, he assisted in helping Walt and Leopold Stokowski choose what music would be used in the first place.

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Joe received credit for co-writing the script on his next two films, Dumbo and Saludos Amigos. As World War II raged on, he went back to the Shorts Department (of course so did everyone else, really; even the features during that period were just shorts that had been cobbled together). His input can be seen in the propaganda shorts The New Spirit, Reason and Emotion and the Academy Award winning Der Fuehrer’s Face. Following the war, Joe served as Production Supervisor on Make Mine Music. He then began working in earnest on a story he’d first conceived of in 1937. While watching the antics of his English springer spaniel after his daughter was born, he made some sketches and wrote a bare bones plot for a film that was known for years as Lady, after his spaniel. Even though Joe tinkered with the story off and on for almost a decade, Walt was never quite satisfied with the direction it was taking. After reading a 1945 short story, Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog, Walt thought that merging it with Joe’s story just might do the trick and Lady and the Tramp was born.

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Joe didn’t stick around to see his story develop into a classic film, though. He left Disney in 1949, six years before Lady hit theaters, but not because of any animosity or hard feelings. Wanting a new challenge in his life, Joe left to open his own ceramics studio. Some years later, he started up his own greeting card company. Throughout the years, no matter what else he was doing, he would still occasionally come over to the Disney lot to consult on a character’s design or a particularly sticky situation in a movie’s plot, chat with the boys and then return to his pots or cards.

In 1989, when Joe was 81, the age when most people have long since retired, he was apparently looking for another new challenge. Whether it was because the Disney Renaissance was just starting to hit its stride making animation exciting again or Joe just missed the good old days, he returned to work at Disney, forty years after he left. And not just on a consulting basis, but actual full time work. He would come into the studio at least four days a week from then until his death, over fifteen years later.

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Joe became part of the Visual Development team on Beauty and the Beast. From there he added Character Design back into his repertoire and did both tasks on The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules and Tarzan. He added to the stories of Mulan and Lilo and Stich and came up with the concept of giving yo-yos to a flock of flamingoes for the Carnival of the Animals sequence in Fantasia 2000 (making him the only person to contribute new material to both Fantasia movies). In 1992, long before he was done making significant contributions to the company but decades after he had started, Joe was declared an official Disney Legend

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Joe’s final project was a short called Lorenzo, which he thought up after observing another pet of his, this time a cat, after it had been in a fight with two poodles. He thought What would happen if my cat lost its tail and what would that look like set to tango music?  Lorenzo was initially supposed to be part of a third Fantasia film, but when that project fell apart it was released on its own in 2004. The following year it received an Oscar nomination and won the Annie Award for Best Animated Short. Just over two months later, Joe was sitting at his drawing desk at home (it being one of the few days he didn’t go to the studio), doing one of the things he loved most in this world, when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The Legendary story man was just nine days short of his 97^th birthday.

December 30 - Bill Tytla

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On this day, in 1968, Vladimir Peter Tytla passed away at home on his farm in Flanders, Connecticut. Bill, as he was known, came into this world on October 25, 1904 in Yonkers, New York as the son of Ukrainian immigrants. Supposedly at the age of nine, he saw Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur and instantly fell in love with the medium of animation. While in high school, Bill started taking night classes at the New York Evening School of Industrial Design. It wasn't long before his love of art began to win out over his love of pretty much every other subject and he didn't bother going to high school anymore. By the time he was 16, Bill worked at the New York branch of Paramount Studios doing the lettering for their title cards.

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Bill soon moved over to the Raoul Barre Studio and began working on the Mutt and Jeff shorts. He then sign on with John Terry and eventually ended up at John's brother Paul's studio, Terrytoons. By this time, Bill was making a good living as an animator but the medium was a little simplistic and crass for his taste. He still dreamed of becoming a master artist. He enrolled in classes again, this time at the Art Students League of New York. Then, in 1929, he relocated to Paris, France and studied painting and sculpture. Unfortunately, being surrounded by the works of the old masters didn't help his confidence any. He ended up destroying most of his work from this period because of its inferiority and hightailed it back to America.

Determined that his studies would make him a master animator if not painter or sculptor, Bill resumed working for Terrytoons. He became good friends with a fellow artist there, Art Babbitt. When Art left New York for Hollywood and the Walt Disney Studio, he would spend the next two years trying to entice Bill to follow him. Bill resisted. He was making great money during the Great Depression after all. But finally, he decided to make a visit to his old friend Art. He was so impressed by the city and the studio, he took a pay cut to move there.

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Starting in 1935, Bill worked on Silly Symphonies like The Cookie Carnival and Mickey shorts like Mickey's Fire Brigade. His work was so filled with passion that he reportedly tore holes in his paper with his pencil. His work was also so incredibly good that Walt was quickly throwing money at him to get him to stay. Bill and Art became the studio's top money makers and even became roommates again, like they'd been while working at Terrytoons. That arrangement would stand until Bill's 30 year marriage began in 1938.

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When work began on Disney's first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bill was one of the first animators assigned to the project. Working closely with Fred Moore, he designed the look of the whole film and helped define each of the dwarfs personalities. One of the best scenes in the film where you can experience Bill's talent is watching Grumpy's transformation after Snow White kisses him. Following the success of Snow White, Bill's next assignment was the villain of Pinocchio. His ability to express the strong inner feelings of the somewhat crazy kidnapper makes Stromboli marvelous to watch.

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Bill's followup to Stromboli would be the Giant in Brave Little Tailor. Ollie Johnston, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, rightly argues that the look, feel and personality of giants in cartoons was set once Bill had done it. The short was nominated for an Oscar but lost to another Disney short, Ferdinand the Bull. Bill then moved on to animating the sorcerer, Yen Sid, in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Once that became part of the larger project of Fantasia, though, Bill would get assigned perhaps the most iconic character of his career, Chernabog. The fierce, domineering and downright scary demon is clearly only that way because Bill Tytla was his animator. Growing tired of drawing "heavies," as he put it, his next assignment was decidedly more light hearted. He got to become the title character of 1941's Dumbo, which he modeled partly on his baby son.

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Then came the infamous Disney Studio Strike of 1942. Even though he was one of the best paid animators, Bill sympathized with his friends and, to the consternation of Walt, joined them on the picket line. Even though he returned to work once the strike was over, it was never the same. The war economy meant much less stimulating assignments. For Saludos Amigos, Bill animated Pedro the airplane and Jose Carioca, neither much of a challenge for him. He lent his talent to a couple of wartime shorts, but his growing dread of a Japanese attack on California led him to make a decision he would regret for the rest of life. On February 24, 1943, Bill resigned from the Disney Studio and went to live on a farm he owned in Connecticut.

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For a while, Bill went back to work for Terrytoons as an animator but soon left to become a director at a Paramount owned studio, Famous Studios. Over the next decade he directed shorts featuring Popeye, Little Lulu, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Little Audrey. In the early Fifties, he joined Tempo Productions, a studio formed by former Disney compatriots David Hilberman and Zack Schwartz, and began producing animated television commercials for the likes of Camel cigarettes, Plymouth cars and Tide. His last project was on the 1964 Warner Brothers film The Incredible Mr. Limpet, which starred future Disney Legend Don Knotts.

During production on Limpet, Bill's health began to decline and, shortly after it wrapped, he suffered a series of small strokes that left him blind in one eye. Near the end of his life, he tried several times to return to Disney, but, since Walt had passed a couple of years before, he was told there wasn't a place for him anymore. The excuse was given that there wasn't enough work for the animators the company already had, but Bill's heart just became even heavier with regret. He would pass away in 1968, mere weeks after his final rejection. Thirty years later, in recognition of his animation genius he was made an official Disney Legend.

November 30 - Dick Huemer

On this day, in 1979, Richard Martin Huemer passed away in Burbank, California. Dick is one of those animators who was around for the early days of cartoons, did almost every job connected to cartoons and helped make the genre what it is. I would also wager that no one outside of real animation aficionados has any idea who he is.

Born January 2, 1898 in New York, New York, Dick was a student at P.S. 158 in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, he attended the National Academy of Design and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, both in New York City. His first job in animation was at Raoul Barre's Studio in 1916. Seven years later, he'd moved over to the Max Fleischer Studio as an animation director where he also helped develop the character of Koko the Clown. By 1930, Dick had moved to Hollywood and taken a position at the Charles Mintz Studio, pumping out Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. Three years later, Dick joined Oswald's original studio, Disney, and stayed there for the next four decades.

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In his early years with Disney, Dick worked as an animator on Silly Symphonies like The Tortoise and the Hare and Mickey Mouse shorts like Lonesome Ghosts. Fellow animator Ward Kimball said his favorite piece of Dick's animation was Donald Duck in The Band Concert. Dick then directed a few shorts including 1938's The Whalers and 1939's Goofy and Wilbur. He moved on as a story director for features starting with Fantasia. Kimball, only partially tongue in cheek, credits Dick with introducing Walt to music that wasn't Sousa marches and therefore giving Fantasia some quiet, sophisticated moments it might not have had otherwise.

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Dick's writing skills came in handy on several of the features the studio produced during the Forties and early Fifties. The Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos, Make Mine Music, Peter and the Wolf, and Alice in Wonderland all benefited from his talents. The technique he employed while co-writing Dumbo may have been instrumental in getting the picture made. Instead of submitting a completed storyboard like typically happened, Dick and his writing partner, Joe Grant, kept giving Walt storyboard chapters that usually ended in a cliff hanger. Walt enjoyed them so much, his enthusiasm for the project just kept growing.

In 1948, Dick left the Disney company to draw a comic strip called The Adventures of Buck O'Rue and create animated commercials for the new medium of television. After three years of freelancing, he returned to Disney to elevate the studios television projects and help with its burgeoning publishing division. Dick's creation of a number of episodes breaking down and explaining the animation process for the Disneyland series rank among the finest work he ever did. He also adapted 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Tru-Life Adventure movies into books (or into a new book version in 20K's case). He began writing a Tru-Life comic strip in 1955 and continued it until he retired in 1973.

In 1978, Dick received the Windsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement at that year's Annie Awards. A year later, the man who was there for the birth of animation, suffered through the medium's growing pains and helped shape it into what we all know and love today, passed away at the age of 81. In 2007, Dick was made an official Disney Legend.

October 21 - Mary Blair

On this day, in 1911, artist Mary Browne Robinson was born in McAlester, Oklahoma. Her family had moved to Morgan Hill, California by the early Twenties. She had already graduated from San Jose State University when she received a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute. Mary graduated from Chouinard in 1933 and soon married another artist, and future Disney employee, Lee Blair. Her dream was to have a career in the fine arts but the Great Depression had other plans for her. To make ends meet, she ended up taking a job at MGM, in a medium she felt was beneath her: animation.

Mary continued to paint, and try to sell her work, whenever she could. Both Mary and her husband were devoted to watercolors. Even though her work at this time was saturated with color, few if any fans of her later work would recognize them as "Mary Blairs". Her paintings during the Thirties were probably influenced by the economic turmoil around her as they tend to be dark and moody.

By 1940, Lee, who had worked for several studios around Hollywood, had migrated to the Walt Disney Studio and Mary would join him there in April of that year. Her initial time with the studio would prove to be incredibly frustrating for her. She had plenty of work to do, making sketches and concept drawings for a variety of projects, but every film she worked on had already been pretty much conceived and she didn't have any room to let her imagination run wild. She also had to work under various other veteran company artists, so her work never looked like it was actually hers. To top it all off, one of the biggest projects she worked on was a "Baby Ballet" segment for a second version of Fantasia that never ended up being produced. Pretty disgruntled, she would resign her position by June of 1941. Lee, however, stayed on with the company, a decision that turn out to be spectacular for his wife.

In 1941, Walt was to embark on a three month goodwill tour of South America at the behest of the United States Government. He decided to bring a bunch of staff along to see if he couldn't pull some projects out of the trip. Lee Blair was one of the artists Walt chose to bring, mainly because he wanted to know if Lee's wife would also come along. During the time Mary had been with the studio, even though she felt stifled the whole time, Walt had fallen in love with her work. He was excited to see what she could do in South America. So, in August 1941, just two months after resigning, Mary was rehired.

South America would turn out to be the most important development in Mary's career. She experienced a literal color explosion in her work. She also began using charcoals, tempera and gouache in addition to her usual watercolors. As she layered color upon color, she found her true artistic voice and began producing the kind of work most of her fans enjoy and love. One of those fans was her boss, Walt. He was crazy about the pictures she was producing on the tour and gave Mary what she wanted from the beginning: her own artistic license at the beginning of a project, letting her create true concept art.

Mary was highly influential on the development of the two films that came directly out of the South America trip. Both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros benefited from her color combinations and vibrancy. Walt was so delighted, he assigned her to work on many of the films throughout the late Forties and early Fifties. Mary's designs for Song of the South, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan made each of those films richer and more beautiful than they ever would have been without her.

By 1953, Mary was ready for a change and once again left the Disney Studio. She would now spend her time raising a family, having two sons, and she became a freelance illustrator and artist. Her best know work from this period would be the Little Golden Books she illustrated, but she also designed ad campaigns for companies like Nabisco and Maxwell House and created sets for Radio City Music Hall.

In the early Sixties, Walt began ramping up several projects for the 1964 World's Fair. One of them was for Pepsi and UNICEF and he knew just who he wanted to design it. Mary was enticed to work for Disney once again, designing It's a Small World. The song that stays stuck in your head for days might be a Sherman Brothers classic, but the look of the attraction is pure Mary. It's a Small World was so successful, that Walt would have it moved to Disneyland when the fair ended. It became such a beloved part of Disneyland, that versions of it would pop up in Florida, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong. The sun never sets on Mary's endearing little children dancing in their fanciful settings.

Mary would continue to do occasional work for the Walt Disney Company, mostly in the form of murals. In 1967, she created two murals in Tomorrowland at Disneyland, both of which have unfortunately been covered over. In 1971, she put a 90 foot high mural in the Grand Canyon Concourse of the Contemporary Resort of Walt Disney World. This one can still be seen today. Mary also created a series of Disney note cards for Hallmark.

Mary had lived in Washington and Long Island before returning to Soquel, California in the later part of the Seventies. On July 26, 1978, she passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. Her legacy, though, lives on. In 1991, Mary was made an official Disney Legend. In 1996, she was awarded the Winsor McCay Award. And on October 21, 2011, Google created a doodle in honor of her 100th birthday.

Also on this day, in American history: First Transatlantic Voice Transmission

September 29 - Charles Wolcott

On this day, in 1906, composer Charles Wolcott was born in Flint, Michigan. By 1927, Charles was part of the growing Big Band scene, arranging music for and playing piano with folks like Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Paul Whiteman. He also worked with radio stars like Rudy Vallee, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

In 1937, Charles started working at the Walt Disney Studio writing scores for the shorts department. He soon moved up to feature films. His credits include Bambi, Pinocchio, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Song of the South, Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free. By 1944, Charles had become General Music Director for Disney and had a hit single, his orchestra's recording of the Brazilian choro song "Tico Tico no Fuba."

In 1950, Charles left Disney to become an Associate General Music Director for MGM. At his new studio, Charles gets credit for bringing rock and roll to the big screen. While scoring the 1955's The Blackboard Jungle, he convinced the producers to use "Rock Around the Clock" in the film. The sky didn't fall and, as they say, rock was then here to stay. By 1958, Charles had become General Music Director for MGM. In 1960, he would release another hit single, "Ruby Duby Du," and leave the world of music behind.

Charles was a practitioner of the Baha'i Faith. In 1953, he had been elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. In 1960, Charles was made secretary of that body and resigned his position at MGM. Just one year later, he was elected to the International Baha'i Council and moved to Haifa, Israel. When the Council turned into the Universal House of Justice (think of it kind of like the Baha'i Supreme Court) in 1963, Charles became one of the first nine members. He would hold that position until his death in 1987.