January 19 - Adriana Caselotti

On this day, in 1997, Adriana Caselotti passed away in Los Angeles, California. She was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on May 16, 1916 as the second daughter in a family of musical Italian immigrants. Her father, Guido, was a vocal coach and her mother, Maria, sang with the Royal Opera Theatre of Rome. Even her older sister, Louise, would one day sing opera and give voice lessons. When Adriana was seven, her family returned to Italy so her mother could tour with an opera company. While there, she received her education at the convent of San Getulio near Rome. When the family returned to the States in 1926, her three year Italian adventure had been so immersive, she actually had to relearn English. Now located in Southern California, Adriana studied singing under her father and by 1935 was starting to appear in MGM films as a chorus girl. Then her father got a phone call that changed everything.

As production started gearing up on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs over at the Walt Disney Studio, the time came to hire voice actors. Knowing just how important the right voice was going to be in selling this picture to the audience, the company casting scout started calling local voice coaches, looking for leads on great voices. Guido Caselotti had gained a healthy reputation in the years since settling in Los Angeles and was near the top of the list. When Guido answered the phone, Adriana snuck into the other room and listened in on the conversation with the extension phone (those of you who've never experienced a land line before won't understand the gleeful deviousness of doing that). As the talk turned to any voices Guido might be able to recommend,  Adriana immediately piped up with an impromptu audition. Apparently it was good enough to get her an official one.

As the story goes, Walt would sit behind a screen while listening to the actors who came to try out for a role so he wouldn't be influenced by how they looked, not something terribly important in animation. Afterwards, Walt would like to say that when he heard Adriana sing, he was pretty sure he was listening to Snow White. Whether or not that was true, over 150 other women were given a shot before the role was offered to her at the ripe old age of 19. She was paid about $20 each day she came in to record dialogue and songs. After 48 days of working her magic in front of the microphone, she made a total of $970, the equivalent of $17,000 today.

Adriana always maintained that she had no real idea of what she was working on. She knew it was going to be longer than the usual cartoon short but was only thinking it would be twenty minutes max. It didn't really sink in until the film's gala premiere when, surrounded by Hollywood stars, the story took over an hour and twenty minutes to tell. A lot of people like to say something about the fact that Adriana never got a credit for providing the voice of the original Disney princess, but it's not like she was singled out to be slighted. No one received voice credit in a Disney film until the mid-Forties. What's less clear is whether or not Adriana's subsequent career was deliberately squashed by the studio or not.

Image copyright Disney

Shortly after Snow White hit the silver screen, Jack Benny reputedly wanted Adriana to appear on his radio show. When he asked Walt about it, Walt said no, he couldn't allow the illusion of Snow White to be spoiled. She would later be involved in a law suit against the studio, alleging she was owed part of the profits for the songs she recorded that were released as records. The case was dismissed. Adriana would only have two more roles in film following Snow White. In the Tin Man's song in The Wizard of Oz, she sang the part of Juliet, specifically doing the line "Wherefore art thou Romeo?". Then, in It's a Wonderful Life, she can be heard singing in Martini's bar while Jimmy Stewart is praying. And that was it. She tried to get an opera career going at one point but nothing ever came of it.

Now, was Adriana's complete lack of a career because her voice was too recognizable as Snow White's or was it because mean Uncle Walt wouldn't let her have one? Arguments could probably be made for both sides, but considering Adriana herself never (publicly at least) complained about her treatment from Disney (in spite of the lawsuit) and she continued to have an amiable relationship with the studio for years to come, I'd have to say it just wasn't in the cards for her. She would do plenty of publicity for Disney over the years, frequently wearing a familiar blue and yellow dress and gamely singing "I'm wishing." In 1972, she went on a Thanksgiving Day episode of The Julie Andrews Hour and sang a couple of duets from Snow White with Julie and later was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show as well.

Image copyright Disney

In 1992, when Disneyland was refurbishing their Snow White Grotto, Adriana stepped into the recording studio once more to make a new track of "I'm Wishing" for the wishing well. Even though she was 75 at the time, she still sounded the same. I remember seeing an interview with her once (probably from around that time) where she said the reason she could still sound like everyone expected her to after almost six decades was because she had always done Snow White in a falsetto. Whatever the reason, it worked (even if she kind of didn't). But, hey, if you can only ever have one role in your acting career, you can't do much better than the first Princess. Speaking of firsts, Adriana was made an official Disney Legend in 1994 (not even posthumously, for once) and was the first woman voice actor to receive the honor. And if that doesn't make you Happy, you must be Dopey.

November 5 - The Old Mill

On this day, in 1937, RKO released the Walt Disney Studio's Silly Symphony "The Old Mill." This short is really more about mood and effects than plot, but the story centers around a group of animals getting ready for bed in an abandoned mill with a storm brewing. It's noted for being the first Disney production to use the multi-plane camera. I say Disney production because Ub Iwerks had used a different multi-plane camera on some other work he'd done. That camera was a horizontal contraption. The Disney camera was a 14 foot high vertical monster that was so expensive to build, the studio only ever had two of them. The results, though, are undeniably magnificent.

The multi-plane camera wasn't the only innovation happening in The Old Mill. Disney animators were also perfecting things like raindrops, lightning, complex lighting techniques and rotating detailed three-dimensional objects. Everything they learned doing this short would make Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that much better. Everyone's hard work paid off. The Old Mill would win the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon for 1937 and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.

The Old Mill has become an iconic part of Disney history. One of the scenes depicted on Disneyland's Storybook Canal attraction was of its three windmills (until the ubiquitous Frozen bumped them to storage). A snack bar in Fantasyland at Disneyland Paris is shaped like the old mill and at one time had a ferris wheel type ride attached to the back of it (technically the buckets of the ride are still there, it's just that no one gets in them anymore). Mill is so iconic, it's even been parodied on The Simpsons.

October 30 - Paul J. Smith

On this day, in 1906, composer Paul J. Smith was born in Calumet, Michigan. By the time Paul graduated from high school, the family had moved to Caldwell, Idaho where his dad, Joseph, was a professor at the College of Idaho. Not surprisingly, Paul spent three years studying music at that very same college. The boys in the family all turned out to be pretty musical. Joseph composed several songs for the college, Paul's brother Arthur became a studio musician and played on the soundtracks of all kinds of movies and television shows and Paul himself became a legend.

In 1925, Paul moved on from the College of Idaho to attend the Bush Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Illinois. While there, his talent earned him a scholarship to Julliard but for some reason he never used it. After graduating from Bush, Paul would spend two years teaching at Elmhurst College. In 1932, he moved to Los Angeles, California to go back to school at UCLA. This time he majored in English and wrote four musical comedies during his time there.

When Paul landed a job at the Disney Studio in 1934, he hit the ground running. He loved to push the boundaries of scoring animation just as much as Walt loved to push the boundaries of the animation itself. After composing for some shorts, Paul co-wrote the music for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline. He would continue this pattern of scoring some shorts then creating music for a feature film over and over for the next few decades. All told, Paul wrote the score for over 70 of Disney's shorts. His feature credits include Pinocchio (which earned him an Academy Award), Fantasia, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, the animated portions of Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart, and Cinderella.

About the time of Cinderella's release, the studio began producing its Tru-Life Adventure series of animal documentaries. Paul would score most of them, using the same techniques that he used to compose music for animation. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston would later acknowledge that those films became immeasurably better because of Paul's innovative scores. Throughout the Fifties and early Sixties, Paul would move into scoring many of the studio's live action classics. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Shaggy Dog, Pollyanna, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Parent Trap are just a few of the movies that benefited from Paul's touch.

In 1962, after 28 years with the Disney studio, Paul officially retired from the company but not from making music. He scored 26 episodes of Leave It to Beaver and 35 episodes of the Wonderful World of Color. He's even credited with some of the background music in a special celebrating Donald Duck's 50th birthday in 1984. On January 25, 1985, Paul passed away at the age of 78 due to complications brought on by Alzheimer's Disease. In 1994, for all his marvelous musical contributions, he was made an official Disney Legend.

Also on this day, in American history: John J. Loud

October 20 - Frank Churchill

On this day, in 1901, composer Frank Churchill was born in Rumford, Maine. By the age of four, his family had moved to Southern California. He began his professional music career at 15 the same way many musicians of the time did, as a pianist in a movie theater. After graduating from high school, Frank's parents coerced him into enrolling at UCLA as a pre-med student. He didn't last a year. Bound and determined to make it as a musician, Frank would spend the next few years performing anywhere from honky-tonks in Tijuana to an orchestra in Tuscon. Upon his return to California in 1924, he was awarded a contract with KNX as the radio station's accompanist.

In 1930, Frank became part of the Disney family and began writing the scores for dozens of shorts, including Who Killed Cock Robin, Mickey's Gala Premier and the flypaper scene from Playful Pluto. His most famous composition from this period is the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" from 1933's The Three Little Pigs. The song's perky confidence caught on with a nation deep into the Great Depression. When the sheet music went on sale, over 39,000 copies were sold in the first three days in New York City alone.

Based on his successes with the shorts, Walt gave Frank the job of scoring the studio's first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Not only did he produce an Academy Award nominated score, but Frank also helped write "Whistle While You Work", "Heigh Ho", and "Someday My Prince Will Come." By helping propel the success of the Snow White with his catchy tunes, Frank propelled his own success within the company. He became the studio's Supervisor of Music.

Frank's next project was 1941's The Reluctant Dragon. Not only did he contribute to the score, but he can be seen in person in the Studio Tour portion of the film. Next came Dumbo. He collaborated with Oliver Wallace on the score and composed the classic Disney ballad "Baby Mine" with Ned Washington. When Oscar time rolled around, Frank shared a nomination with Ned for Best Song and a win with Oliver for Best Score. A year later, he received dual nominations again for Bambi, one for the score he co-wrote with Edward Plumb and the other for his work on the tune "Love Is a Song."

Tragically, his Oscar nominations for Bambi would come posthumously. While working on the film, Frank became severely depressed when two of his close friends and orchestra members died within a month of each other. He began to drink heavily and, on May 14, 1942, committed suicide while sitting at the piano in his Castaic, California home.

Frank's legacy would outlive him by quite a bit. He had already written music for two more films in production at the time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and Peter Pan, and although the lyrics were never used in Peter Pan, Frank's song "Never Smile at a Crocodile" was. In 1977, he was posthumously nominated for a Grammy Award for the Snow White soundtrack and in 2001 he became an official Disney Legend.

Also on this day, in American history: Eugene V. Debs

October 16 - Ham Luske

On this day, in 1903, Hamilton Luton Luske was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the University of California, Berkeley and earned a degree. In business. Ham was also, however, an incredibly gifted artist. The places he went with his talent are even more remarkable when you know that he never had any formal art education.

Ham's first real job was as a cartoonist for the Oakland Post-Inquirer. Today we think of cartoonists as the folks who's work is relegated to the funnies section (or if they're a bit more serious the opinion page). Back in the Twenties though, before photos could be reproduced in newsprint, cartoonists were also responsible for creating advertisements. Every paper needed at least one good artist on staff.

In 1931, Ham joined the Walt Disney Studio as an animator. His first contribution was some of the animals in the Mickey Mouse short The Barnyard Broadcast. His rendering of Max Hare in the 1935 Silly Symphony The Tortoise and the Hare helped that short win an Oscar. Ham was in charge of the character of Jenny Wren in Who Killed Cock Robin? that same year. Jenny was modeled after Mae West, who was so delighted with the caricature, she wrote a letter to Walt complimenting the artistry. His successes with those two shorts led him into a pivotal role in the future of the studio.

As Walt was developing his first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he knew that if audiences didn't connect with the title character, the whole venture was doomed. Walt also knew that he had only one animator he could trust with Snow White: Ham Luske. In order to deliver the goods, Ham created a groundbreaking technique: live-action reference films. His idea wasn't to trace a live model's movements, but to have very specific movements captured on film to inspire the animators in their drawings. He would plan out what the model would do, always keeping in mind how those moves would be used in the animated finale. Not only did this technique convince millions of audience members to actually cry during Snow White, it proved simple and effective enough to teach a whole new crop of animators how to improve their craft, ensuring the studio's success for years to come.

After Snow White, Ham plunged headlong into directing. He was co-supervising director for Pinocchio with Ben Sharpsteen. Ham was then a sequence director on Fantasia, The Reluctant Dragon and Saludos Amigos. When World War II came to the United States, he would direct training films for the troops with names like Weather at War. At the war's conclusion, Ham returned to Disney, directing sequences in almost every animated feature from 1946's Make Mine Music through 1961's 101 Dalmatians. If you remember watching the classic Donald Duck featurette Donald in Mathmagic Land in school, that was Ham's work, too. He would strike Oscar gold again in 1964 as the director of the animated parts of Mary Poppins, this time winning for Best Visual Effects.

The last few years of Ham's career had him moving into the world of television. He became associate producer and director of episodes of Disneyland and its later evolutions. Ham passed away in Los Angeles, California on February 19, 1968 at the age of 64. He was made an official Disney Legend in 1999 for his 37 years of magic making.

Also on this day, in American history: Noah Webster

October 11 - David Dodd Hand

On this day, in 1986, animator David Dodd Hand passed away in San Luis Obispo, California. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey on January 23, 1900, Dave wanted to start a career as a newspaper comic strip artist. He moved to Chicago to take some commercial art classes. He ran out of money to pay for those classes and began to work for Wallace Carlson, a pioneer in the art of animation. Dave discovered he loved the medium and moved to New York, where he would do work with most of the animation studios around at the time. In late January 1930, almost on his 30th birthday, he moved again, this time to California and began working for the Walt Disney Studios.

Dave worked as an animator on all kinds of shorts throughout the early Thirties. He got assigned birds a lot. There was just one problem. He wasn't very good at animating. His co-workers described him as being very mechanical. Most of the animators would let the drawings dictate how a character would move, flowing along as the art moved them. Dave would chart out the flight of his birds with a military precision that had nothing to do with how birds actually fly. Luckily, he was good at something else. Directing.

In 1933, Walt had Dave direct his first short, a Minnie and Mickey story called Building a Building. He was clearly better at directing than he was at animating birds. Some of the best Disney shorts over the next few years would be produced under the leadership of Dave: 1934's The Flying Mouse, 1935's Who Killed Cock Robin? and The Orphan Kittens and 1936's Thru the Mirror. Dave's secret was that he didn't worry about every little detail in the short. He put the animators on the team that, by playing to their individual strengths, would produce the best work. And then he drove them pretty hard. His mantra was "You've got to make decisions and as long as you're right 51 percent of the time, you're right." This system worked out well, for Dave and for the studio. The studio got great shorts and Dave got promotions.

When Walt decided that he wasn't going to direct the studios first feature himself, the job went to Dave.  As Supervising Director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the future of the studio was literally in Dave's hands. He pulled it off with flying colors. For the remainder of the Thirties and part of the Forties, he would be a surrogate for Walt around the studio, watching over the shorts, returning as Supervising Director again for Bambi. Dave was Walt's right hand man. Which caused another problem for him. What sort of future do you have at a company when literally the only job left for you rise into is held by someone younger than you who has no intention of ever leaving? As much as Dave revered Walt, he eventually grew tired of being a second banana who had to watch the first banana get all the credit. In 1944, he left Disney to go across the pond for a new venture.

Dave approached the largest entertainment company in England at the time, The Rank Organization, with a plan to expand British animation. J. Arthur Rank, the organization's founder, gave him the green light to start a studio, Gaumont British Animation. Dave would produce two different series, Animaland and Musical Paintbox, creating a total of 19 shorts. Unfortunately, he couldn't find an American distributor and GBA would close its doors in 1950. Dave returned to the United States, settling in Colorado Springs. He would spend the next 18 years working for the Alexander Film Company. Alexander made advertisements that played during the intermission at drive-in movie theaters as well as industrial films.

David Hale Hand, Dave's son, currently owns the rights the films his father made in England and hopes to produce new films in both series. Dave was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 1994.

Also on this day, in American history: Alaska P. Davidson

October 8 - Art Babbitt

On this day, in 1907, animator Arthur Harold Babitsky was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Known in life as Art Babbitt, his family moved to Sioux City, Iowa when he was in kindergarten. His father had injured his back, causing the family to struggle financially. Art decided he would become a psychiatrist to help alleviate that struggle, so after high school, he moved to New York to be a pre-med student at Columbia University. He didn't realize how much money that would take. To earn some, Art transformed into a freelance commercial artist, drawing advertising cartoons for companies like Sylvania. Inspired by the Silly Symphony The Skeleton Dance, he got a job with the Terrytoons studio in New Rochelle doing animation. He never did become a psychiatrist.

In the early 1930s, Art moved west to try to get a job with the Disney Studio. He managed to snag one along with a fellow Terrytoon animator, Bill Tytla. Starting as an assistant animator, Art's talent was immediately noticed and he was promoted to animator. His first major work was bringing to life the drunken bumpkin mouse in the 1936 short The Country Cousin. Cousin would go on to win the Academy Award for best animated short.

The next project Art did at the studio, required all hands on deck. For Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he was part of the team that worked on the Evil Queen, a role that fellow animators acknowledged was probably the trickiest one in the film. Incidentally, the movie also brought Art his first wife, Marjorie Belcher. She was a dance model for the animators to reference. Following Snow White, Art became a directing animator. For Pinocchio, he led a team of 22 in the creation of Gepetto. Art reportedly felt that some of the best work he ever did, and the studio ever did for that matter, was on Pinocchio. His work in Fantasia can be seen in the characters of Zeus, Vulcan and the dancing mushrooms. When Dumbo came along, Art was again a directing animator on the character of Mr. Stork, who looks a bit like his voice actor, Sterling Holloway, thanks to him.

During this period of work on features, Art didn't forget about the shorts. His biggest contribution of all to the Disney family can be summed up in one word: Goofy. Art saw something in the decidedly minor character of Dippy Dawg that no one else did. He gave him a distinctive walk and developed his personality. Art once described Goofy this way: "He was someone who never really knew how stupid he was. He thought long and carefully before he did anything. And then he did it wrong." Art's work on Goofy's character paid off. Goofy had a long string of immensely popular shorts where he taught viewers how to do everything from skiing to driving a car. And his popularity continues to this day. He's had his own movie, his own television series and endures as one of the most beloved characters in Disney history. Love Goofy? Thank Art.

Unfortunately, in 1941, Art's relationship with the Disney Studio didn't just sour, it went full-on rotten. By that time, every animation studio in Hollywood had been unionized, except one. Even though he was one of Disney's highest paid animators, Art sympathized with the lower earning employees. Not only was he one of the few lead people to support unionization, he went a step further and became a leader in the fight. Walt fired Art and 15 other union leaders in May of that year basically for what he viewed as personal betrayal. The next day, 200 employees began a strike that would last for five weeks. Art spent that time rallying the troops and leading the picketing, at one point almost coming to blows with Walt. The studio finally gave in to union demands but the damage was done. Walt never forgave the strikers (in fact he named a bunch of them as communists when he testified before the McCarthy Hearings) and the familial attitude around the place was gone.

Walt was forced to rehire Art following the settlement but immediately looked for grounds to fire him again. The two men would go back and forth several times, Walt firing Art, Art suing the studio, if Art won, Walt would be forced to rehire him and on to the next round. Eventually Art left Disney for good and, along with other strike victims, joined a newly formed studio, United Productions of America. UPA was kind of the anti-Disney studio. While Disney was going for ultra-realism in animation, UPA was all about stylized minimalism. Art was involved in a mess of UPA's award winning shorts. One of the highlights of his time there was an Academy Award nominated short titled Rooty Toot-Toot. Art was also involved in creating the early Mr. Magoo shorts.

Later in the fifties, Art co-owned a firm named Quartet Films, which mainly created television commercials. He would win a Cleo Award for a spot he did for Parkay Margarine. Later he became part of Hanna-Barbera. In the early seventies, Art began teamed up with Richard Williams, a Canadian animator, to give a series of lectures to young (and sometimes old) animators about the craft. It's said that the notes from those lectures constitute the most circulated, most copied, most revered unpublished bible on animation out there.

Art would continue working pretty much right up to his death. His final project was a film with his lecture partner called The Thief and the Cobbler. The movie was independently financed at first and was in production for nearly three decades. Warner Brothers finally agreed to finish and distribute it, but that fell apart when the production went over budget. Cobbler was finished by a bond company and released in Australia. Ironically, two years later, after Art had passed away, Miramax, a subsidiary of Disney, would acquire it, edit the daylights out of it and release it in the US. Art's work had come full circle.

The story goes that in 1991, when Fantasia was released on video, Roy E Disney sent Art a note thanking him for all his contributions to the Disney Company. Supposedly Art was touched by Roy's kindness and released 50 years of animosity toward Roy's father and uncle. People close to Art say that since he was dying at that point, it's possible but considering how vehement his anger towards the Disney brothers stayed well in the late seventies, it's not all that probable. On March 4, 1992, Art passed away from kidney failure, most likely still harboring some justifiable resentment towards the Walt Disney Company. Nevertheless, his former co-workers Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas spoke at his funeral and he was made an official Disney Legend in 2007.

Also on this day, in American history: Great Chicago Fire

September 17 - Robert Carey Broughton

On this day, in 1917, film effects artist Robert Carey Broughton was born in Berkeley, California.

 A California native through and through, Bob grew up in Glendale, graduating from Glendale High School. He then moved on to Glendale Junior College. When he had learned all he could there, he took the next logical step and went to the University of California, Los Angeles (you thought I was going to say UC Berkeley, didn't you?). Not one to shy away from a challenge even then, Bob studied chemistry, physics, math and optics, all of which would help him fulfill his destiny making movies.

In 1937, Bob got the most iconic Hollywood job he possibly could at the Walt Disney Studio: he started in the mail room. And just like in the movies, he didn't stay there long. Bob quickly got pulled to the camera department as an assistant in the test camera area. His job was to shoot test footage of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to check for fluid movement before the final shots were made. Bob's eye for detail helped him graduate from test footage to working on the granddaddy of Disney innovations, the multiplane camera. He helped give visual depth to Pinocchio and Bambi. Then came Fantasia and another semi-promotion: Bob was one of only two people running a special camera creating special effects like the ghosts on Bald Mountain.

After the successes of Fantasia, Bob was promoted again, this time to camera department supervisor. At about the same time, World War II broke out and Bob signed up to serve in the United States Army. He was assigned to the Field Photographic Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, what would eventually become the CIA. Bob spent most of the war working with director John Ford making documentaries of the fighting. They would win the Academy Award for best documentary in 1942 for their film about the battle of Midway.

Following the war, Bob returned to the Disney Studio and began working as assistant to Ub Iwerks. He started transitioning into doing effects for live action films. Bob was even in charge of filming Walt's introductions to the Wonderful World of Color television show for a while. He believed that his job was to create effects in the most subtle way possible. He once said "If it looked like we doctored up a scene, we were a failure." One of his great successes was making Dick Van Dyke dance with penguins in Mary Poppins, using a system called Color Traveling Matte Composite Technology to blend the live action shots with animation.

After 45 years with company, putting his mark on almost every movie from 1937's Snow White to 1979's The Black Hole, Bob retired from Disney in 1982. But only from officially working as he headed up the retiree club, The Golden Ears, for the next 15 years. In 2001, Bob became a Disney Legend. In January of 2009, he passed away in Rochester, Minnesota. He was 91.