January 4 - Sterling Holloway

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On this day, in 1905, Sterling Prince Holloway was born in Cedartown, Georgia. The son of the town grocer (and later mayor), Sterling went to the Georgia Military Academy for his primary schooling. He graduated at the age of 15 and almost immediately traveled to New York City to begin attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there he began a lifelong friendship with Spencer Tracy. After graduating a second time, Sterling traveled the country doing vaudeville acts interspersed with walk-on parts on Broadway whenever he was in New York.

In 1926, Sterling moved to Hollywood to try his luck in motion pictures. His high pitched voice and shock of red hair usually meant some sort of comedic sidekick role for him, but he didn't mind. Over the next five decades, he would appear in more than 150 films. It started with The Battling Kangaroo, a silent picture. A couple of years later, when talkies came along, many of the actors in Tinsel Town couldn't make the transition. Not only did Sterling make the leap but sound actually made him more popular. Over the years, he worked alongside the likes of Fred McMurray, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, to drop just a few names.

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When World War II hit, Sterling stepped right up, joining the United States Army in 1942 as an old man of 37. He was assigned to special forces where he developed a show, Hey Rookie, that ran for nine months and raised over $350,000 for the Army Relief Fund. At the end of the war, he played a rare dramatic role in the movie A Walk in the Sun, as a reluctant medic, earning quite a bit of critical praise in the process.

With his distinctive voice, and nearly ubiquitous presence in Hollywood, it didn't take long for Sterling to show up on Walt Disney's radar. In the mid thirties, Sterling was actually tested for the role of Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a role he ultimately lost to Pinto Colvig. He made his first appearance for Disney in 1941 as Mr. Stork in Dumbo. From there, he became a Disney staple. When I met Dave Smith, the head Disney archivist, once I asked him who had done the most voices in Disney films. His reply was that with all the little, mostly uncredited voices we may never know but that when it came to major roles, it was Sterling Holloway, hands down.

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Over the next few decades, Sterling would play a variety of characters for Disney, from the villainous to the downright cuddly. He provided the voice for Adult Flower in Bambi in 1942. Two years later he narrated the Pablo, the Cold Blooded Penguin section of The Three Caballeros. Two years after that, he narrated the Peter and the Wolf sequence in Make Mine Music. In 1951, Sterling was the Cheshire Cat for Alice in Wonderland, 1967 brought us Kaa in The Jungle Book and 1970 found him as Roquefort the mouse in The Aristocats.

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But it was Sterling's last series of roles (just one role but in a series of films) for Disney that he is not only best known for, but was his favorite to perform. I am, of course, talking about that tubby little cubby, Winnie the Pooh. Starting with Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in 1966, Sterling also did Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). All three of those shorts were later combined into the studio's 22nd feature film called The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh released in 1977.

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In addition to his voice work in Disney features, Sterling also narrated a bunch of shorts, including The Little House, Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, and the role of Amos Mouse in Ben and Me. His final role with the company was actually a live action one, moonshiner Hobe Carpenter in the 1977 comedy Thunder and Lightning, starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson.

Image lifted from gettyimages.com

Outside of Disney, Sterling had smoothly made the transition to television starting in the Fifties. He had recurring roles on Superman, The Andy Griffith Show and The Life of Riley as well as guest spots on everything from The Untouchables to Gilligan's Island to Moonlighting. He also landed several contracts for commercials, hawking wares ranging from Puppy Chow to Libby's baked beans. He was also the voice of Woodsy the Owl in Forest Service PSAs during the Seventies and Eighties.

In 1991, Sterling was named an official Disney Legend, the first person to receive the award for voice work. At the ceremony, the 86 year old was helped to the stage by none other than Winnie the Pooh himself. He would pass away a little over a year later on November 22, 1992 from cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California.

December 24 - The Aristocats

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On this day, in 1970, Walt Disney Productions 20th animated feature, The Aristocats, is generally released to theaters. The Aristocats began life as an idea for a two part episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. It was also going to be a live action production. The project spent a couple of years being rewritten and reshaped until Walt suggested it could be the studio’s next animated feature. And so, in the Fall of 1966, as production on The Jungle Book wound down, development of The Aristocats started in earnest, making this film the studio’s last movie to bear the personal seal of approval from its founder.

Unlike many of its predecessors, The Aristocats is an original script developed by staff writers, most of the work being done by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe. The original concept centered on two servants who stood to inherit a fortune once the family brood of cats was disposed of and their ill-conceived antics to try to make that happen. As time went on, one of the servants, the maid, was dropped and the focus of the story shifted to the cats themselves. Following Walt’s death, the emotional parts of the tale were pared down even more and the picture became more of an adventurous caper, similar to One Hundred and One Dalmatians (which is why The Aristocats is often described as Dalmatians except with cats).

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Casting the voice roles for the film followed a pattern that had been established with The Jungle Book and would continue with films like Robin Hood: a few splashy big names along with some tried and true Disney stalwarts. While the part of the villainous butler, Edgar, had been written with Boris Karloff in mind when the project was going to be live action, the role ended up going to veteran English actor Roddy Maude-Roxby. Walt had personally asked Phil Harris to play Thomas O’Malley the alley cat. This would be the second of three roles Phil would play in quick succession for the studio. Eva Gabor was tapped as Duchess, the mother cat and unlikely love interest of Thomas O’Malley. The cast was rounded out by Sterling Holloway, Pat Buttram, George Lindsay, Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Winchell to drop just a few more names.

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The Aristocats also marks another last for the studio. It is the final animated picture that the Sherman Brothers worked on as staff songwriters for the Walt Disney Studio. Robert and Richard had been getting increasingly frustrated with how things were being run after Walt’s death and this movie would represent the last straw for them. Only two of their songs made it into the final product, The Aristocats (which enticed Maurice Chevalier to come out of retirement to sing) and Scales and Arpeggios, sung by Marie. The rest of the songs were written by various folks and include classics like Ev’rybody Wants to Be a Cat and Thomas O’Malley Cat.

The Aristocats was a financial success upon its release, grossing over $17 million worldwide on a budget of only $4 million. The reviews were generally favorable with many critics giving it three out of four stars. My only complaint about the movie is that some of its portrayals of foreign cultures have not aged well at all (I’m talking to you Paul Winchell). Otherwise, The Aristocats is a fun way to spend an hour and half, even if you might not remember too many of the specifics the next day.

October 18 - The Jungle Book

On this date, in 1967, Walt Disney Pictures 19th animated feature, The Jungle Book, was released in theaters. Based on Rudyard Kipling's book of the same name, The Jungle Book is also the last animated film from Disney that Walt had a hand in producing as he died several months before it opened. It was also the first animated film in a while that Walt actually paid attention to.

For 101 Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone, Bill Peet, a long time animator and story man for Disney, had been allowed to develop the script pretty much on his own. Dalmatians had been a success for Bill and the company, Stone decidedly less so. When his initial script for Jungle Book was closely aligned with the dark tone of the book, Walt told Bill to lighten it up. Bill for some reason refused and subsequently left the company. Walt then took an active interest in developing the story and characters and the improvement of this film over Stone shows it.

In a break with his casting practices of late, Walt decided to hire more well known stars to voice some of the characters in his version of Jungle Book. Comedian and jazz singer Phil Harris was brought in for the role of Baloo, his first of three major Disney characters. Phil would confound the script team by ad libbing most of his lines because, as he put it, the written ones "didn't feel natural." Fellow jazz artist Louis Prima became King Louie. Sebastian Cabot, who also narrated the Winnie the Pooh shorts, was tapped for Bagheera. Also included in the cast were Disney stalwarts like Sterling Holloway, J. Pat O'Malley and Verna Felton, in her last film role. Walt had wanted to cast the four members of The Beatles as the vultures and have them sing the song "We're Your Friend", but when John Lennon refused, the vultures simply became Beatle-esque.

The Jungle Book cost the studio four million dollars to make but was released to critical acclaim and financial success, reaping box office receipts of over 378 million worldwide to date. Several current animators, including Brad Bird and Glen Keane, will tell you that Jungle Book was their inspiration to get into animation in the first place. The movie has spawned an animated sequel, two different live action versions, the Disney Afternoon series Talespin and the animated series Jungle Cubs.

Also on this day, in American history: Candy Cummings