July 26 - Buddy Baker

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On this day, in 2002, Norman Dale Baker passed away in Hollywood, California. Born in Springfield, Missouri on January 4, 1918, Buddy, as most people called him, learned to read music before he could read lyrics. He began playing the piano at the age of 4, learned the trumpet at 11 and had formed his own band by his teen years. He studied music at Southwest Baptist University, eventually earning his doctorate in it before moving to Los Angeles in 1938.

Buddy began his professional career as a trumpet player and musical arranger on the radio programs of the day. He started on The Bob Hope Show before moving on to Jacky Benny and Eddie Cantor's shows. When World War II started, he returned to Bob Hope and became his show's musical director. Buddy brought big band leader Stan Kenton to the show and arranged Ken's first big hit, And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine. Following the war, he added Professor to his resume taking a job at Los Angeles City College in their school of music. He wasn't above helping out his students though. In 1954, he composed the hit jazz song Journey into Love with drummer Louis Bellson. And then one day later that same year, he got a call from another former student, George Bruns, who worked over at the Walt Disney Studio.

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George was looking for someone to compose some music for a couple of episodes of the Disneyland television series and he thought of his former professor. Buddy agreed to spend a couple of weeks at the studio coming up with something for Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. It ended up being a really long two weeks as Buddy wouldn't retire from Disney until 29 years later. In those three decades, he became the studio's musical director and one of the most prolific composers Disney ever had.

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Buddy wasn't as flashy as his contemporaries at the studio. Most people have at least heard of the Sherman Brothers, and don't get me wrong, Robert and Richard Sherman produced some fantastic work over the years, but even though you might not know Buddy's name, a walk through any of Disney's theme parks would be awfully quiet if none of his work existed. The first category we'll talk about is movie scores. He did dozens of them for Disney but a short list of his live action work would have to include Summer Magic, The Monkey's Uncle, The Gnome-Mobile, The Million Dollar Duck, The Apple Dumpling Gang, The Shaggy D.A. and Hot Lead Cold Feet. In 1972, he earned an Oscar nomination for Napoleon and Samantha, which also happened to be Jodie Foster's screen debut. On the animated side of things, Buddy scored several shorts including the classic Donald in Mathmagicland and all three of the original Winnie the Pooh shorts (including additional material for the 1977 Winnie the Pooh feature). In 1981, he made his second foray into animated features providing the score for The Fox and the Hound.

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As impressive as Buddy's film work is, it's in the category of music written for theme parks that some of his most recognizable tunes occur. His most famous song has to be Grim Grinning Ghosts which he wrote with fellow Legend Xavier Atencio for the Haunted Mansion. He also scored the eerie music that can be heard throughout that same attraction. Buddy and Xavier also wrote the original music that is used in the classic Country Bear Jamboree show and the song It's Fun to Be Free for the World of Motion pavilion at EPCOT. Buddy's other music written and arranged for attractions includes The Universe of Energy, America Sings, If You Had Wings, Kitchen Kabaret, Impressions de France, the American Adventure and Tokyo Disneyland's Journey to the Center of the Earth and Sinbad's Seven Voyages. Buddy also came out of retirement briefly in the nineties to arrange his own music for the various Winnie the Pooh rides that popped up in Disney theme parks at that time.

Image courtesy findagrave.com

By the time Buddy retired in 1983, he had over 200 Disney credits to his name. Much of the background music you hear just walking through areas of parks like the Mexican Pavilion at Epcot or Tomorrowland in Disneyland is arrangements of his compositions. When he left Disney, Buddy also had the distinction of being the last composer at a major Hollywood studio. They literally don't make them like him anymore. Buddy didn't stay retired for very long, though. In 1987 he became the director of the University of Southern California's Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program and taught courses there for the remainder of his life. He received the ASCAP Foundation Life Time Achievement Award in 1999 and having already been declared an official Disney Legend the year before. Three years later, Buddy would pass away from natural causes at the age of 84.

July 10 - The Fox and the Hound

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On this day, in 1981, Walt Disney Pictures released its 24^th animated feature, The Fox and the Hound. Based on a novel of the same name, Fox the movie began its journey in 1977 when Woolie Reitherman, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men and a long-time Disney director and producer, read the story. Of course he may have only chosen it because his son had a pet fox once, but whatever the reason, Woolie would come to regret that choice (even though what transpired over the next few years would probably have happened no matter what movie was in production at the time).

Things started off well enough. Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two more of the Nine Old Men, took the lead of a team made up of a new generation of animators including John Laseter, Brad Bird, John Musker, Ron Clements, Tim Burton, the list goes on and includes most of the names of the people responsible for the Disney Renaissance period a decade later. Fox was a transitional film between two generations of great animators and, like most hand offs between the old and new guards, it did not go smoothly, but not because of conflicts among the animators.

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For their part, Ollie and Frank had finished most of their animation by 1978 when they both retired and left the finishing of the film to the young bucks. Maybe they had confidence in the next generation, maybe they saw what was coming and didn’t want to watch first hand. Around the same time, studio management, under Ron Miller, began to be unhappy with some of Woolie’s decisions and added a co-director to the picture, Art Stevens. Art had been an animator since the Forties and had just co-directed The Rescuers. As Woolie was most likely still smarting from what was essentially a public slap down, it quickly became apparent that the two directors had very different visions on what kind of film they were making.

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It’s hard to tell who had lost their way more in this dynamic, the aging director, who was running out of ideas (as we shall see in a moment) or Disney management, who would next produce the debacle known as The Black Cauldron. How a movie got made at all with those two factions constantly fighting is something of a minor miracle. Looking at Woolie’s insanity first, at some point in 1979, he decided that the film’s second act needed a boost. At the point that Todd, the fox, is left in the woods, Woolie wanted to insert two cranes, played by Phil Harris and Charro, singing a song to him called “Scoobie-Doobie Doobie Doo, Let Your Body Turn Goo.” He even went as far as having Charro record soundtracks and live reference footage before Art declared it a terrible idea and, through management (and just plain good sense), got the scene cut.

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Even though they were right about the cranes, Studio management wasn’t all about making good decisions at this point in company history. A large group of animators was becoming highly dissatisfied with how things were being run in general. The grumbling came to a head on September 13, 1979 when Don Bluth and fifteen other animators suddenly resigned their positions and asked that their names be taken off the credits of Fox. With 17% of the animation staff gone, Disney had to scramble to hire new people to fill the gaps and finish the movie. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Woolie had his last fight with management as director, got pulled from the position, was relegated to a producer credit only and the release date was pushed back from Christmas 1980 to Summer 1981.

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When it was finally released, in spite of all the infighting and behind the scenes drama, The Fox and the Hound received mostly favorable reviews. Critics generally said it wasn’t anything particularly special but it did show glimpses of that old Disney magic at times. The fight scene between Todd, Copper and the bear is generally cited as a masterpiece of animation and everyone loves Pearl Bailey’s performance as Big Mama the owl. Financially, Fox did okay as well. Because of the delays in production, costs for the picture totaled $12 million, making it the most expensive animated film ever made up to that point, even adjusted for inflation (which is kind of laughable today; animated movies routinely cost over $100 million to produce versus Fox’s $35 million in 2019 dollars). Fox grossed a comfortable $39.9 million in its initial run and an additional $23.5 million in a rerelease seven years later, making it a profitable if somewhat ho-hum addition to the Disney family.

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In the end, The Fox and the Hound holds an awkward place in Disney history. It marked the end of the era of Walt’s Nine Old Men. Woolie Reitherman was the only one who remained by the time of its release and Fox left a bitter taste in his mouth. He spent the next few years working on a handful of projects that never moved into actual production and was killed in a car accident in 1985.  The next crop of animated genius was in place but still had to go through the painful valley of The Black Cauldron before they would start to come into their own and launch the Disney Renaissance. The baton might have been passed and audiences might have been mildly entertained, but no one who was running could really say they’d enjoyed the race.

June 19 - Pat Buttram

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On this day, in 1915, Maxwell Emmett Buttram was born in Addison, Alabama. The seventh child of a Methodist minister, Maxwell spent all of his formative years in the sultry heat of the Yellowhammer State (it’s a woodpecker and the state bird). He graduated from Mortimer Jordan High School in Morris, Alabama and rolled on into Birmingham-Southern College, intending to follow his father into ministry. Instead, in an all too familiar story, he caught the acting bug when he was cast in several productions at the college and changed his mind about what he wanted to be when he grew up.

It’s not entirely fair to blame BSC for Maxwell’s change of heart though, although they did help cement it. On a trip to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, Maxwell was selected from the crowd as a typical Southern visitor to be interviewed on radio station WLS. His comedic observations about the fair were a hit with audiences and resulted in a job offer from the network’s Birmingham affiliate. He worked at the radio station throughout his college years, changing his professional name to Pat. Following his graduation from BSC, Pat moved to Chicago and became a regular on the popular National Barn Dance program.

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In the early Forties, Pat moved again, this time out to Hollywood. At first he was put into rotation as a new sidekick to Roy Rogers. The bad part of that plan was that Roy already had two regular partners and when it was quickly determined that a third one wasn’t needed, Pat was out. The good part was that he was free to team up with Gene Autry, who had returned from doing his duty in World War II and needed a new partner. It was a match made in entertainment heaven. Pat joined Gene on his radio show, Melody Ranch, starred in more than 40 movies with him and the pair even made the transition to television together, co-starring on The Gene Autry Show for five seasons.

Following the end of Gene’s show in 1956, Pat became a popular stand-up comedian, appearing several times on The Ed Sullivan Show, spinning fictional yarns about his ‘relatives’ spread throughout the south. He was also in high demand as a toastmaster and after dinner speaker at various functions around Hollywood. His seemingly gentle lampooning of Tinsel Town’s elite kept the stars coming back for more. In 1965, Pat returned to television with a recurring role as Mr. Haney, slippery salesman extraordinaire, on Green Acres, a gig he enjoyed for six seasons.

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With his distinctive voice (he once described it as the only part of him that didn’t quite make it out of puberty), it’s no surprise that Pat did a fair amount of voice work for the Walt Disney Company. He started in 1970 as Napolean, the hound dog, in The Aristocats. He then played the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham in 1973’s Robin Hood. In 1977’s The Rescuers, Pat was Luke, a resident of the bayou known for his special brews. He followed that up as Chief, another hound dog, in The Fox and the Hound in 1981. Seven years later, he showed up in a small role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit officially named Toon Bullet #1 (it’s the one with the white hat smoking a cigar). His last role with Disney (indeed his last role with anyone) was as the Possum Park MC in A Goofy Movie, released almost a year after his death.

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As the calendar turned over into the Eighties, Pat’s acting career was mostly over, with just a handful of projects over the next decade and a half. Which didn’t mean he sat on the front porch drinking lemonade for the rest of his days. In 1982, he founded the Golden Boot Awards to recognize various categories of people who’d worked on Westerns throughout Hollywood’s history. The proceeds from the Golden Boots benefitted the Motion Picture Health and Welfare Fund. He was also active in politics. A lifelong Republican, he became something of a speech doctor for President Reagan, peppering the Gipper’s addresses with down home wisdom and homilies. In 1998, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Pat remained active most of the rest of his life, until January 8, 1994, when his suffering with renal failure came to an end in Los Angeles, California. His final resting place is in his beloved state of Alabama in, of course, the chapel of a Methodist Church.

March 17 - Kurt Russell

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On this day, in 1951, Kurt Vogel Russell was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. As the only boy in a family of four children, Kurt was predestined to follow in his father's footsteps somehow. His father, Bing Russell, was both an actor and a baseball team owner, so Kurt began acting at the age of 11 and played ball through high school and on into a minor league career (he actually advanced into AA ball), but a torn rotator cuff injury in 1973 ended his game. After graduating form Thousand Oaks High School in 1969, he had also joined the California Air National Guard, spending six years as part of the 146th Tactical Airlift Wing in Van Nuys, California.

Kurt's film debut was an uncredited role as Shin Kicker in an Elvis Presley movie, It Happened at the World's Fair, in 1963. His small screen debut came the same year as the title character in The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, a Western that lasted one season on ABC. Over the next few years, he made guest appearances on several popular Westerns like Gunsmoke, The Virginian, Laredo and several episodes of Daniel Boone, as well as shows like Gilligan's Island and The Fugitive.

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In 1966, Kurt joined the Disney family when he was cast as Edward White Jr. in Follow Me Boys, starring Fred MacMurray and Vera Miles. Boys would be the last live action film to be produced by Walt Disney and was released just two weeks before his death. Kurt's involvement with the picture would give him a mysterious entry into the lore of Disneyana. After Walt passed, what is believed to be the last memo he ever wrote was discovered on his desk. It's titled "TV Projects in Production: ready for production or possible for escalation and story" and listed four items underneath: Ron Miller, 2 way down cellar, Kurt Russell, CIA - Mobley. We'll never know for sure why Kurt was included in this list. We do know that Walt was thoroughly impressed with Kurt's talent (he'd mentioned it several times before) and had made sure to get Kurt a contract with the studio. But the delightfully vague memo doesn't give any clues as to what Walt planned to do with his newly contracted talent. And it really doesn't matter as Kurt would go on to become one of Disney's biggest box office draws of the Seventies anyways.

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After being featured in 1968's The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, which starred Buddy Ebsen and Lesley Ann Warren (with Goldie Hawn, Kurt's future life partner, in her big screen debut), Kurt would go on to star in a string of hits for the company. The same year, he appeared with Dean Jones in The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. In 1969, he played Dexter Riley for the first time in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Computer spawned two sequels, giving Kurt two chances to reprise Dexter in Now You See Him, Now You Don't and The Strongest Man in the World. In 1971, he played opposite Raffles, the chimpanzee, in The Barefoot Executive (which happened to be John Ritter's big screen debut). These were followed by Charley and the Angel, again with Fred MacMurray, and Superdad with Bob Crane.

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By the end of his ten year contract with Disney, Kurt was not only a well established, successful movie star but was able to continue that stardom into more adult roles in pictures at other studios. As the Eighties began, he teamed up with director John Carpenter for a string of movies that have earned cult status including Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, a remake of The Thing and Escape from L.A. Outside of that relationship, Kurt earned a Golden Globe nomination playing opposite Meryl Streep and Cher in the 1984 drama Silkwood. He found commercial success in such films as Backdraft, Stargate, and Tango and Cash.

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Kurt continued to contribute roles to his Disney portfolio over the years as well. He provided the voice for Adult Copper in The Fox and the Hound. He played the title character in Touchstone Pictures' 1992 comedy Captain Ron. He starred as Wyatt Earp in the Hollywood Pictures' Western Tombstone. Kurt was the coach of the US Olympic Hockey team in Miracle and played a super hero in Sky High. His latest role for the company was as Ego, Peter Quill's father, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. For all of his hijinks on film, Kurt was made an official Disney Legend in 1998.

In the last two decades, Kurt has also managed to land a recurring role in the Fast and the Furious franchise as Mr. Nobody and teamed up with Quentin Tarantino several times. He was last seen over the holiday season on Netflix as Santa Claus in The Christmas Chronicles and has two projects due out later this year: a money laundering crime thriller called Crypto and another Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, both of which I'm sure will feature his usual shenanigans.

February 24 - Chris Buck

On this day, in 1958, Christopher James Buck was born in Wichita, Kansas. Like many an animator before him, Chris was lured into the art form by what he saw on the big screen as a child. His first movie going memory was to see the 1962 re-release of Pinocchio to theaters, and he’s been hooked ever since. Conveniently for his future plans, Chris’ family soon moved to Placentia, a quiet community in Orange County, California. After graduating from El Dorado High School, he spent two years studying character animation at CalArts, where he fell in with the likes of John Lasseter and Michael Giaimo. Then, in 1978, fresh out of room A113, Chris got a job with the Walt Disney Company.

Chris joined the company when it was in a dark period known as the Seventies. Walt had passed away over a decade before and the Disney Renaissance was still a decade away; not a great time to start a career. His first project was as an inbetweener (and later a full animator) for the modest 1981 hit, The Fox and the Hound.  He managed to almost completely avoid participating in the train wreck called The Black Cauldron, partly by doing some work on Mickey’s Christmas Carol instead, but mostly by leaving the company to freelance instead of becoming embroiled in the mess.

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Chris began doing work in advertising, including television commercials for Keebler, while maintaining a working relationship with Disney. In between animating a short, Fun with Mr. Future, and supervising a featurette, Sport Goofy in Soccermania, for the company, Chris began working with another young animator, Tim Burton. He helped Tim storyboard his live action short, Frankenweenie, and later became a directing animator on a short-lived show Tim produced (and Brad Bird created) called Family Dog. During the same time frame, Chris was assisting the fledgling Hyperion Animation Studio with character designs for projects like The Brave Little Toaster and supervising animation for the feature Bebe’s Kids.

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As the Disney Renaissance began to appear on the horizon in the late Eighties, Chris was busier than ever and began doing more and more work for Disney (without, as he puts it, becoming an in-house employee). He was an animator on Oliver and Company, contributed to the experimental stuff happening in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and designed characters for The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. When Pocahontas rolled around in 1995, Chris signed on as supervising animator in charge of Percy, Wiggins and Grandmother Willow. He bumped up the food chain even further on his next picture, co-directing Tarzan with Kevin Lima.

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While Chris was able to remove himself from The Black Cauldron, he wasn’t as lucky when it came to the 2004 flop Home on the Range. All his supervising on the character of Maggie just couldn’t overcome Rosanne’s performance (or the rest of the film’s udder lack of creativity). Chris made a second break with Disney over the picture, moving over to Sony for his next project. As co-director of the 2007 mockumentary penguin hit Surf’s Up, Chris began to cement his value at the helm of animated features.

The mess surrounding Home on the Range, and the cantankerous departure of Michael Eisner as Disney’s CEO, basically put a lot of top positions at Disney, and in the film division especially, up for grabs. When the dust settled and John Lasseter had been named the chief creative officer of Animation, John sat down with his old classmate Chris for a heart-to-heart about coming back to work for Disney. One of the ideas they talked about was reviving an idea that had been kicking around the studio for years: a musical based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen.

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Chris teamed up with Jennifer Lee to co-direct Disney’s 53^rd animated feature, Frozen. To say it worked out for everyone involved would be a gross understatement. Jennifer, already the first woman to helm an animated Disney movie, became the first woman to helm a $1 billion grossing film period. Chris had convinced another old college buddy, Michael Giaimo (who’d also had an on again off again relationship with Disney over the years), to be art director on the picture, nabbing him an Annie Award in the process. The Frozen juggernaut has earned its directors multiple awards and spawned sequel featurettes, theme park shows and rides, a Broadway musical and, later this year, a second animated feature, once again led by Chris and Jennifer. In the land of will he/won’t he, Chris is now firmly in the position of he will be spending many more years collecting a paycheck from the Walt Disney Company. And that’s a thought worth melting for.

February 20 - Sandy Duncan

On this day, in 1946, Sandra Kay Duncan was born in Henderson, Texas. Growing up in nearby Tyler, Texas, Sandy began her professional career when she was just 12, earning $150 a week in a local production of The King and I. after spending some time at Lon Morris Junior College, a Methodist school in Jacksonville, Texas, she left the Lone Star State for the Great White Way. She enjoyed moderate success, appearing in a number of productions throughout the Sixties (including her first run of Peter Pan, playing Wendy), culminating in a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress (Musical) for 1969's short lived production of Canterbury Tales. Around the same time she did get some recognition (at least in California) for a humorous commercial she did for the United California Bank (now a part of Wells Fargo) and some national attention for a brief stint on Search For Tomorrow, CBS' long running soap opera.

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The beginning of the Seventies saw the beginning of bigger and better things for Sandy, even if a lot of them ended up having limited runs. She earned another Tony nomination, this time for Best Actress (Musical) for the 1970 revival  of The Boyfriend. A year later she starred in the film version of Neil Simon's play The Star Spangled Girl opposite Tony Roberts. Later that year, Sandy landed the lead in a CBS sitcom Funny Face, loosely based on the 1957 movie. With a prime time Saturday night spot right after All in the Family, the show had everything going for it, except two things: critics praised Sandy but dismissed the show and a tumor was discovered behind Sandy's left eye. Filming of Funny Face was put on hiatus while Sandy went in for surgery. The tumor turned out to be benign but she lost all vision on her left side. Contrary to popular belief, she does not have a glass eye. Since her left eye still tracked with her right one, the decision was made to leave it alone. Sandy made a quick recovery from her surgery, but it was too late for Funny Face. Even though she earned an Emmy nomination for her work, the show ended after just 13 episodes. Sort of.

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In the Fall of 1972, Sandy returned to television in a New and Improved version of Funny Face, now called The Sandy Duncan Show. The retooled show had essentially the same premise but a new cast (including Tom Bosley), new writers and a new time slot, on Sunday instead of Saturday. Once again, critics liked Sandy but hated the show. Without the strong lead-in of All in the Family, The Sandy Duncan Show also lasted just 13 episodes before being cancelled.

The rest of the decade saw Sandy appearing in several one-off productions. In 1976, she played Pinocchio in a musical adaptation on CBS that also starred Flip Wilson and Danny Kaye. She followed that up with an episode of The Muppet Show, starred in an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies (as herself) and grabbed another Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Missy Anne Reynolds in Roots, a rare dramatic role. She ended the Seventies by returning to Broadway for her biggest show yet: another production of Peter Pan, but this time she played the title role, earning a third Tony nomination.

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Sandy joined the Disney family in 1970 starring opposite Dean Jones in the mostly forgettable comedy The Million dollar Duck. In 1974, she had a television special called Sandy in Disneyland and returned to the park for another special in 1976, Christmas in Disneyland. Then in 1978, she starred in The Cat from Outer Space, with Ken Berry and Roddy McDowall. But it's arguable that her best known Disney role (or at least the one that still gets regular viewings) came in 1981 when she was the voice of Vixey, Tod's foxy girlfriend who helps him survive in the wild, for The Fox and the Hound.

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Sandy's big television success finally arrived in 1987 on The Hogan Family, but it wasn't without controversy. The Hogan Family had started life two years earlier as Valerie, starring Valerie Harper. When Valerie was renewed for a third season, Harper wanted more money, was denied and walked out on the show. While negotiations continued, the feud with the network got ugly. Harper's character ended up being killed off, Sandy was brought in as a replacement and the show survived for four more seasons, marking the first time a show named after an actor continued on without its marquee name.

Since The Hogan Family ended its run in 1991, Sandy had kept busy with, mostly, a variety of stage performances. She played Roxy Hart in Chicago for two years, toured the country in a production of The King and I (as Anna this time, not one of the kids) and returned to Broadway in 2016 as Madame du Maurier in Finding Neverland. What else will the 72 year old spitfire do in her career? Only time will tell, but I can almost guarantee its perkiness will make you smile.

February 3 - John Fiedler

On this day, in 1925, John Donald Fiedler was born in Platteville, Wisconsin. When John was five, the family moved across the state to Shorewood. After graduating from Shorewood High School in 1943, he immediately enlisted in the United States Navy and served for the duration of World War II. Following his honorable discharge, John moved to New York City and fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming an actor when he joined the Neighborhood Playhouse.

John's first big professional role came on the radio comedy The Aldrich Family as Homer Brown. He became something of a staple in early television, making his small screen debut as Alfie Higgins on Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and then making guest appearances on nearly every anthology show that existed, including two episodes of both The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. One of his best known television roles came in the Seventies when John was cast as Mr. Peterson, one of Bob's regular patients on The Bob Newhart Show. John spent most of his life as an in-demand guest character on shows covering the decades from Gunsmoke to The Golden Girls and genres from Cheers to Quincy, ME.

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John hit the big screen for the first time in 1957, as nervous little Juror #2 in Twelve Angry Men with Henry Fonda. He would go on to contribute to such film classics as The Odd Couple, True Grit, Harper Valley PTA and The Cannonball Run. A role that he originated on Broadway and reprised in the movies, was that of Karl Lindner in A Raisin in the Sun. John was so perfect as the seemingly innocuous Improvement Association representative who tries to buy a black family out to keep them from moving into his neighborhood, that he was picked to reprise the role again for a television version in the Eighties.

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Although John has provided the voice for numerous roles for Disney, most people will think of only one when they hear his voice. When Disney released Winnie the Pooh and Honey Tree in 1966, they upset fans by not including Piglet (more on that tomorrow). For the next installment two years later, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, they rectified their error and gave John a character he would play for nearly four decades. He gave voice to everyone's favorite little pig in shorts (Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too), features (Piglet's Big Movie), television shows (Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too) and video games (Kingdom Hearts). From 1968 until 2005, all the dozens and dozens of things that Piglet made an appearance in, John endearingly stuttered him to life.

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But Piglet wasn't the only thing John did for Disney, not by a long shot. He also voiced Father Sexton in Robin Hood, appeared in The Shaggy D.A. as Howie Clemmings, played Deacon Owl in The Rescuers, did Porcupine for The Fox and the Hound, and was the poor guy who threw off the emperor's groove, Rudy, in both The Emperor's New Groove and Kronk's New Groove, the sequel being his final film appearance.

After over sixty years of being the classic "I know that guy but I can't think of his name" character actor, John would succumb to cancer on June 25, 2005 at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey. Interestingly, his good friend and longtime Pooh co-star, Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger, had passed away the day before. Sadly, neither of them has been declared official Disney Legends as of yet. Looks like Disney has another Pooh snafu they need to fix.

November 1 - Retta Davidson

On this day, in 1921, animator Retta Davidson was born in Arcadia, California. She should not be confused with another female animator named Retta Scott (because every company has two women named Retta, right?). After graduating from high school in 1939, Retta joined the Walt Disney Studio in the the Ink and Paint Department. Her work from this era can be "seen" in Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia. The onset of World War II would change that.

As many of the studio's male animators were being drafted into various parts of the US war machine, the studio began to get desperate for people to continue making movies and therefore a profit. In 1941, the women of the Ink and Paint Department were invited to submit their own drawings to be considered as replacements. Retta became one of just 10 women to be promoted to animator. She would only be in the position a year, however, before the war would claim her as well. She went to work for the Navy for four years. In 1946, Retta returned to Disney and began working as an assistant animator to whoever was lucky enough to nab her for their project. She continued in this role until 1966, when, still reeling from the death of Walt, she left the studio to become a freelance artist.

Retta spent time in Hollywood creating television commercials and working with Chuck Jones on such projects as Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century. She would later move to Montreal, Canada to teach animation at Concordia College there and Sheridan College in Toronto. Retta would be a part of the team that produced the animated version of Lord of the Rings in 1978 and the team that created the 1981 Canadian animated movie Heavy Metal (which happened to feature the voice of yesterday's post, John Candy).

In 1980, Retta came back to the Disney family to help train a whole new batch of animators. She was given a coordinating animator credit on both The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Retta continued as a trainer until her retirement in 1985. She would pass away in Carlsbad, California on June 12, 1998. She was 76.

September 23 - Mickey Rooney

On this day, in 1920, Joseph Yule Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York. Known professionally as Mickey Rooney, he made his screen debut at the ripe old age of six in 1927's Orchids and Ermine. 80 years and more than 300 movies later, his final appearance would be in 2017's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In between, Mickey's career had more ups and downs than a courthouse elevator.

As the only child of vaudeville performers, Mickey's destiny was pretty well wrapped up from the moment he was born. Luckily for him, he had the talent to see it through. Laurence Olivier himself once declared that Mickey was "the best there has ever been." He was one of those rare actors who was able to make the transition from silent pictures to talkies. His 15 turns as the character Andy Hardy pushed him to the top of the box office. He was the top attraction, and one of the best paid actors, for three years running, 1939-41.

The onset of World War II would change that. Mickey was drafted into the Army where he spent his service entertaining the troops. His willingness to go into combat zones to raise his fellow soldiers spirits earned him a Bronze Star. But at the end of the war, Mickey returned to Hollywood with a two-fold problem. He was too old to play the teen roles he'd made his career on and he was too short to play leading men. Fortunately, he wasn't too versatile to become the steady and endearing character actor that most of the world came to know and love.

Like many actors of his time, Mickey struggled with alcohol and pill addictions. Whether or not those factored into his eight different marriages is hard to say. He also wasn't good at managing the millions of dollars he'd earned at the height of his career, partly because of he was also addicted to gambling; he filed for bankruptcy in 1962. But no matter what happened to him, Mickey had a resiliency and optimism that gave him comeback after comeback.

In addition to hundreds film roles, Mickey would make hundreds of television appearances. He did everything from The Red Skelton Show to made-for-TV Christmas movies. He also graced the stages of Broadway in shows ranging from A Midsummer Night's Dream to The Sunshine Boys to Showboat.  Along the way he received two Oscars, a Golden Globe and an Emmy and was nominated for a Tony.

Mickey's first role with the Walt Disney Company came in 1977 as Lampie, the Passamaquoddy lighthouse keeper, in Pete's Dragon. Four years later, he would give voice to Tod, the fox of The Fox and the Hound. Two decades later, in 2000, Mickey made a brief appearance in a Disney Channel Original Movie, Phantom of the Megaplex and the following year voiced Sparkey in Lady and the Tramp II. His final cameo for Disney came in 2011, as an Elderly Smalltown Resident near the beginning of The Muppets.

In the end, Mickey's life may have seemed far more down than up. He was reportedly abused by family members, taken advantage of financially and had to declare bankruptcy a second time. Through it all though, he kept exuding energy and boyish charm, at least according to his co-stars of one of his final films, Night at the Museum. On April 6, 2014, Mickey passed away from complications due to diabetes. After a lifetime of amazing work, his net worth was reportedly only $18,000. He was 93.