August 7 - Wilfred Jackson

Image courtesy waltdisney.org

On this day, in 1988, Wilfred Emmons Jackson passed away in Newport Beach, California. Born in Chicago, Illinois on January 24, 1906, Jaxon, as he came to be commonly referred to, had made his way to Los Angeles, California and the Otis Art Institute by 1925. As his artistic talents blossomed from a few years of instruction, he began hanging around a little studio on Hyperion Avenue. It wasn’t a good time to be trying to get a job with the Disney brothers. They’d just lost the rights to their popular rabbit character, half their staff and were struggling to keep their heads above all the red ink. Jaxon was willing to do the most menial of tasks for free, however, and stuck around. He would later quip that at some point someone just stuck a paycheck in his hand, making him the only Disney employee that was never actually hired. One of the first things he ever did with the company, however, would cement his place in Disney history forever.

Image courtesy findagrave.com

Hollywood was a quickly changing place in 1928. The Jazz Singer had hit people’s eyes and ears just a few months before and rung the requiem bell for silent pictures. Walt knew that animation wasn’t going to be any different. The problem was how to get the soundtrack to synch up with action happening on screen, something that is crucial to expressing emotions and invoking laughter in an animated film. The new kid on the block, Jaxon, came up with the solution. He devised a system where the ticks of a metronome could be notated on a musical score and the cel count sheet for a film, causing the drawings and the sound effects and score to be nearly perfectly synchronized. Think of it like a precursor to the modern click track. Disney began utilizing Jaxon’s system immediately, starting with Steamboat Willie. The studio was also able to keep their new secret weapon pretty much under wraps. Competing animation studios spent over a year trying to figure out how Disney was so much better at getting all the elements of their movies to line up that well. Once they did, Jaxon’s notation system swept through the entire industry, revolutionizing entertainment as it went.

Image copyright Disney

Jaxon’s innovation, along with his meticulous attention to detail, quickly propelled him into the role of Director at the studio. Over the next several years, he would direct more than 35 shorts. Some of them would star Mickey Mouse, like the first time Mickey appeared in color, 1935’s The Band Concert. A lot of them were entries in the Silly Symphony series, three of which won Academy Awards. Jaxon put a little gold statue on the studio’s mantle for The Tortoise and the Hare in 1934, The Country Cousin in 1936 and The Old Mill in 1937. That’s right. He won three times in a four year stretch. Something no other Disney director could match.

Image copyright Disney

With his successes in the Shorts Department piling up, it was natural that Jaxon would become a sequence director when the studio expanded into feature length films. Starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and ending with Lady and the Tramp in 1955, Jaxon directed parts of eleven classic Disney animated features. Some consider his direction of the Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria segment of 1940’s Fantasia to be his crowning achievement, but he was also responsible for all the animated (albeit seldom seen) parts of Song of the South. His amiable but stubborn adherence to doing things right also elevated Cinderella, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.

Image courtesy flickr.com

In the mid Fifties, as the studio was getting heavily into television, Walt asked Jaxon to be one of his main go-to directors, especially of animated episodes, for Disneyland and Walt Disney Presents. He spent the remainder of the decade directing and producing (and once even appearing in) several episodes of the anthology show, as well as a one-off special in 1955 called Dateline: Disneyland.

Unfortunately, during this later period in his career, Jaxon’s health went began to decline and by 1961, after 33 years of inspiring everyone around to produce some of the best films in the industry, he was forced to retire. Retirement seemed to suit him, though, as he would live another 27 years, passing away in 1988. Eleven years later, in 1999, for all his lasting contributions to not only the company but the industry as a whole, Jaxon was officially declared a Disney Legend.

June 14 - Evelyn and Claude Coats

Image courtesy disneybooks.blogspot.com

On this day, in 1910, Evelyn Henry was born in Edmonton, Ontario, Canada. When she was three, the family moved to Southern California, first to San Diego and then to Los Angeles. Evelyn studied art at Los Angeles High School and became a master at silk screening. In 1932, she was hired over at the Walt Disney Studio in the Ink and Paint Department as an inker, tracing the animators' pencil drawings onto cels. One of her first projects was the Silly Symphony The Three Little Pigs. Evelyn continued working on the Symphonies, contributing to the Academy Award winning The Old Mill for instance, while occasionally branching out into other series, like Mickey's first color short, The Band Concert.  

Image courtesy disneybooks.blogspot.com

During production on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Evelyn was promoted to head of Ink and Paint. She was specifically in charge of supervising the late night and weekend shifts all the women had to work if the studio was ever going to be finished in time for the  film's release date. At one point there was a brief break in the grueling schedule and Evelyn used it to marry one of the studio's background artists, Claude Coats. Following Snow White, she continued supervising the work that started up on the next animated feature, Pinocchio. 

Image copyright Disney

In 1939, she decided to retire from Disney to focus on raising a family. She turned the Ink and Paint Department over to her friend, Grace Bailey, and walked away for forever. Or so she thought. When the Great Animator's Strike came along in 1941, the studio was desperate for people to keep things moving along. They called Evelyn asking her if she could return to ink some cels for old times sake. She said sure and crossed the picket lines for several months (she later said she did not support the strikers in any way), helping to keep production on Dumbo rolling along. When the strike ended, she returned to her home in Burbank, at that point finished with her professional career.

Her husband, Claude, on the other hand, continued on to bigger and better things. Born on January 17, 1913 in San Francisco, California, he lived most of his childhood in Los Angeles as well, eventually graduating from Polytechnic High School. He went to the University of Southern California as an architecture student but changed majors and graduated with a degree in art, specifically drawing. He went on to study water color painting at the Chouinard Art Institute and became a member of the California Water Color Society. This led to an interview at the Walt Disney Studio and, in 1935, Claude began an apprenticeship as a background artist.

Image courtesy pinterest.com

Claude started out doing backgrounds for Mickey Mouse shorts such as Mickey's  Fire Brigade and Pluto's Judgement Day but it was his work for the Silly Symphony series that really got him noticed. His distinctive, richly layered backgrounds on films like The Old Mill and Ferdinand the Bull helped push both of them into the winner's circle at the Academy Awards. (It also brought him in contact with a fetching young woman in the Ink and Paint department.) These accolades convinced Walt to hand pick Claude to create the backgrounds for the studio's first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Over the course of his career, he would paint backgrounds for 15 features, ending with Lady and the Tramp, and influence the look of several more. But his contributions wouldn't end there.

Image courtesy wdwforgrownups.com

In 1955, Walt once again hand picked Claude to join WED Enterprises, what would eventually come to be called Walt Disney Imagineering, as an art director and show designer. Along with the Legendary Mary Blair, he was responsible for crafting the look of three of the four attractions Disney built for the 1964 World's Fair: Carousel of Progress, Ford Magic Skyway and it's a small world. Following the fair, Claude served as a designer for such classic attractions as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, World of Motion and Horizons. When he retired in November 1989, there was an attraction of his design in Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT Center and Tokyo Disneyland, every Disney park that existed except the newly opened Disney MGM Studios. For all of his spectacular work on the screen and in the parks, Claude was declared an official Disney Legend in 1991. You've also seen his name outside the Haunted Mansion on a tombstone that reads "At Peaceful Rest Lies Brother Claude – planted here beneath this sod."

Claude passed away on January 9, 1992 at the Coats' home in Burbank, California. He was just eight days shy of his 79th birthday. Evelyn remained there, spending her time volunteering at the Braille Institute, Goodwill and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She passed away on July 13, 2009. She was 99.

January 5 - Jack Hannah

Image courtesy of cartoonresearch.com

On this day, in 1913, John Frederick Hannah was born in Nogales, Arizona. Another Legend that it's hard to find background information on (other than he enjoyed hunting with his dad), we pick Jack's story up in 1931. He'd made his way to Los Angeles and was attending the Art Guild Academy. As a student, one of the first jobs he managed to get was designing movie posters for local theaters. As the Great Depression ground on, Jack made a visit to the Walt Disney Studio to try for a job. His portfolio was deemed good enough and, in 1933, he began his animation career as an inbetweener on Mickey Mouse shorts.

Jack had moved up to full animator by 1937, when his contributions to The Old Mill helped win an Academy Award for the studio. After slaving over the drawing board for 12 more shorts, Jack moved over to the story department and started writing for Donald Duck shorts. From 1939-43, he wrote 27 stories for the cantankerous fowl, sometimes collaborating with the legendary Carl Barks, including Donald Gets Drafted (where we learned Donald's middle name is Fauntleroy). Jack and Carl would also work together on the first couple of Donald comic books. Carl would leave the studio for the comic world full time, but Jack stuck around and became a director.

Image copyright Disney

The 1944 short Donald's Off Day was the onset of Jack's spectacular run of feathered mayhem surrounding the perennial second banana at the Disney studio. Over the next decade, he would helm 94 shorts, most of them featuring Donald. Jack would introduce the world to classic foils for his fowl friend, including Chip and Dale and Humphrey the Bear. He was so prolific in developing Donald's character that more than one Disney historian has referred to him as "Donald Duck's Other Daddy."

As the studio began winding down short production in the mid Fifties, Jack tried to make the transition to television. He was able to direct several episodes of the Disneyland series, all of them involving Donald, usually having conversations with Walt. He tried to get Walt to let him direct more live-action projects, but claims that Walt had him pigeon-holed as an animation guy and wouldn't do it. Whether or not that was true, Jack would retire from the Disney Studio in 1957, mildly disgruntled. He wouldn't stop working though.

Image courtesy of 2917hyperion.blogger.com

Following his departure from Disney, Jack went to work for another animation legend, Walter Lantz. For the next several years, he directed Woody Woodpecker shorts and became Assistant Director on Lantz's television project, The Woody Woodpecker Show. In 1963, he retired a second time.

By the mid Seventies, Disney was starting to feel the pinch as all of the original crew of animators were retiring (or passing away) and a vacuum was being created with no readily available replacements. Studio executives approached Jack with a proposal to jump start the Character Animation program at Cal Arts. He teamed up with T. Hee to create it and actually taught classes himself for the next eight years. Countless members of the current pantheon of animators cut their teeth studying under Jack and the fabulous Cal Arts program.

In 1992, Jack was made an official Disney Legend, not only for all his shepherding of Donald but for basically ensuring the continuation of the medium in general. Two years later, he would pass away on June 11, 1994 in Burbank, California. He was 81.

December 10 - Leigh Harline

On this day, in 1969, Leigh Adrian Harline passed away in Long Beach, California from complications due to lung cancer. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 26, 1907, Leigh was the youngest of 13. His parents, both from Sweden, had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and moved to Utah in 1891. After graduating from the University of Utah as a music major, Leigh studied piano playing with J. Spencer Cornwall, the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

By 1928, Leigh had moved to California. He found work at several radio stations in both the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. He did everything from announcing and singing to playing instrumentals to composing original works and conducting them for on air concerts. His work on the radio culminated in participating in the first coast-to-coast broadcast that originated on the West Coast in 1931. One of the people to hear that broadcast and be impressed by it was Walt Disney.

Image copyright Disney

Leigh became part of the Disney Studio in 1932. Over the next few years, he would score over 50 shorts. His music for several Silly Symphonies, including The Old Mill and The Pied Piper, has been described as some of the finest music ever created in Hollywood. In recognition of all he'd achieved so far, Walt had Leigh co-create the score for the studio's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Working closely with Frank Churchill, the pair managed to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Score. Leigh would then work on Pinocchio with Paul J. Smith. This time around they would win the Academy Award for Best Score. Additionally, Leigh's song When You Wish Upon a Star would not only win for Best Original Song but become the de facto theme song for the studio, used in everything from training videos to the signature horn blows of cruise ships.

Image copyright United Artists

In 1941, Leigh left the studio to become a freelance composer. He scored dozens of films over the next two and a half decades for several different studios. The Pride of the Yankees, Johnny Come Lately and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm all earned him additional Oscar nominations. Over the course of his career, Leigh would be nominated for Academy Awards a total of eight times. In the last several years of his life, he also made the leap to the small screen and composed for the television series Ben Casey and Daniel Boone.

Leigh was 62 when he died and was made an official Disney Legend for all his marvelous contributions to the Disney songbook in 2001.

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.