April 15 - Hans Conried

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On this day, in 1917, Hans Georg Conried was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Raised as an only child (he had a brother who died at the age of five and a half-brother who lived elsewhere), Hans was pretty much given everything he could ever want as a child. He began appearing in local stage shows (mostly Shakespearean plays) at the age of 12. After graduating from high school, he attended Columbia University in New York City to study commercial art (at the urging of his father) and acting (because he wanted to). By 1934, his father’s failing health left Hans as the sole supporter of the family. It was soon decided that the Conried Clan should move to Southern California to see if the change of climate would help dear old dad. Once the family was settled, Hans spent his days working for a sports equipment manufacturer and his nights on stage with the Santa Monica Players.

One day, in late 1935, Hans heard an announcement on his favorite radio station that they were going to add locally produced broadcasts of uncut Shakespeare works. He got so excited by the prospect that he went to the station and basically accosted the manager with his enthusiasm. Once the manager understood that Hans wasn’t there to complain, he took note of the young man’s wonderful voice and extensive Shakespearean credits and hired him to be a part of the upcoming broadcasts. On January 14, 1936, Hans began his radio career as part of the cast of KECA’s live broadcast of Othello. He would be a regular voice on airwaves for the next two decades. He was a regular on Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, Ceiling Unlimited with Orson Welles and spent several years playing the dim witted Professor Kropotkin on My Friend Irma.

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Hans made the leap to the silver screen in 1938. His first role was as a snobbish student in the MGM romantic comedy Dramatic School, starring Paulette Goddard and Luise Rainer. While he would appear in dozens of films over the years, none of his roles really ever rose above that of bit part (in fact most of them for the first two years were uncredited). He often said that the highlight of his movie career came in 1953 when he got to star in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, the only movie ever written by Dr. Seuss. The film was a dismal financial and critical failure (so much so that Dr. Seuss tried his best never to mention it, ever) but Hans felt it was the most fun he’d ever had making a movie.

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When World War II finally came to America in 1941, Hans, as the only surviving son in his family, managed to keep from being drafted until September 1944. He was sent to be trained as a tank crewman, but the Army quickly realized that he was too tall for the job. He was then moved into a heavy artillery unit and shipped out to the Philippines. He wasn’t there long before Jack Kruschen, a friend and fellow actor, got him moved into the Armed Forces Radio Service. Hans spent the remainder of his tour there, travelling around Japan, Korea and the Philippines, setting up radio stations and performing for his fellow troops. While there he fell in love with Japanese culture and became a lifelong self-proclaimed Japanophile (his word).

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After returning to the United States in 1946, Hans began what would become the bread and butter of his career for the next thirty years: television appearances. One of his first gigs was on a quiz show produced in Los Angeles call Pantomime Quiz. An amiable rivalry sprung up on the show between Hans and his good friend, Vincent Price, and their often hilarious back and forth played out over several seasons. He quickly became one of the early popular personalities on the small screen through his frequent guest shots on The Jack Paar Show starting in the late Fifties. From then on, he had guest appearances on everything from I Love Lucy to The Love Boat. But his strongest collaborative relationship that beamed into everyone’s living rooms on a regular basis was with the animating team of Jay Ward and Bill Scott. The creative duo were the masterminds behind Crusader Rabbit, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends and Hoppity Hooper. Hans provided the voice for Snidely Whiplash on Rocky and Bullwinkle, Uncle Waldo on Hooper and was the live action host for Jay's Fractured Flickers (where he used many of his friends from Pantomime Quiz as interviewees). 

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Hans cemented his place in the Disney family when he took on dual roles in the company's 14th animated feature, Peter Pan. Not only did he play George Darling, he also gave voice to (and filmed the live action reference pieces for) the classic villain Captain Hook (which is the traditional way to cast those parts). As if that weren't enough, he played two roles in the classic short Ben and Me (Thomas Jefferson and a crook), was the prosecutor in The Story of Anyburg, USA, JB in The Goofy Success Story and became the Slave in the Magic Mirror for several episodes of Wonderful World of Color. On the live action front, Hans appeared as Thimblerig in the Davy Crockett series, Professor Whatley in The Shaggy D.A., and as Dr. Heffel in The Cat From Outer Space.

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In between all his screen appearances, Hans found time to grace stages, both on and off Broadway, as well. He was part of the original Broadway casts of Cole Porter's Can-Can, Candor and Ebbs' 70, Girls, 70, and a revival of Irene. Throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, he loved to take on regional theater productions or even join touring companies. His days of live theater, however, came to a halt one day in 1974, when he suffered a mild stroke. He recovered but was never again quite able to handle to physical stress of performing night after night. It also put a damper on his live action career in general. He soldiered on, though, and remained an active voice over actor right up to the end of life. He suffered a mild heart attack in 1979, then, on January 4, 1982, he had a major one. The following day, he passed away in a hospital in Burbank, California. He was only 64.

March 31 - Robert Stevenson

On this day, in 1905, Robert Edward Stevenson was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. Robert attended St. Johns College, part of Cambridge, on a scholarship. While there he won an award for aeronautics and graduated in 1927 with a degree in engineering. At that point, his parents gave him six weeks to find employment, so, of course, he became an assistant to Michael Balcon, who was one of the most famous British film producers of the time.

Robert's first real task under Michael was to write scripts (not as hard as it might seem as movies were still silent at this point). The first film he received story credit on was the 1928 war picture Balaclava. But even as movies became talkies, it was evident that Robert had a real talent for story crafting. Over the next few years, he would write musicals (1930's Greek Street), mysteries (1931's Night in Montmartre), dramas (1931's The Calendar) and comedies (1932's Lord Babs).

In 1932, Robert was given his first shot at directing a movie, a musical called Happily Ever After. Throughout the rest of the Thirties, he continued cutting a path through the British film industry, sometimes writing, sometimes directing and often doing both. He did several films with Jack Hulbert, another writer/director/actor type, and worked with the likes of Paul Robeson and Boris Karloff. By 1940, Robert had gained the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who invited him to hop the pond and ply his craft in Hollywood.

While under contract to Selznick, Robert was loaned out to RKO Pictures for hits like 1942's Joan of Paris and to Universal for 1941's Back Street, which garnered an Oscar nomination for Music. In 1943, he wrote and directed an well received adaptation of Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles. When his contract with Selznick ran out, Robert signed a new one with RKO in 1949 and produced a string of films that consistently lost money even though they had stars like Robert Mitchum, Joseph Cotton and Jane Russell. This led to a period of television directing in the early Fifties for everything from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to Gunsmoke. Many of the gigs he got during this period came from old friends in the industry (Robert and Hitchcock had worked closely together in 1940 for instance) and Robert's career could have fizzled into obscurity at this point, but a change of studio did wonders for his legacy.

In 1956, Robert was hired by the Walt Disney Studio to direct some of the live action movies they were starting to get more heavily into. His first project was Johnny Tremain. Set during the American Revolution, Tremain was filmed as part of the Disneyland television show but released to theaters before appearing on the small screen. Tremain was quickly followed up with one of the all time Disney classics, Old Yeller, the success of which cemented Robert's position with the studio.

Most of the rest of the nineteen films that Robert would direct for Disney over the next two decades are recognizable to the vast majority of people (and the few that aren't really are little gems just waiting to be discovered). His well known titles include Kidnapped, The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel Son of Flubber, In Search of the Castaways, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and its sequel The Monkey's Uncle, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug and its sequel Herbie Rides Again, and The Shaggy D.A. His lesser known films are Darby O'Gill and the Little People, The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard's Ghost, The Island at the Top of the World and One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.

Eagle eyed readers may have noticed that I've only listed eighteen movies so far. That's because the nineteenth film on the list (although in the middle of the pack chronologically) is the biggest one by far, for both Robert and the company. He was the man in charge of bringing Walt's magnum opus to life: Mary Poppins. Not only did Poppins become a run away hit, it gave Robert the only Oscar nomination for Best Director that Walt Disney Pictures had ever received (or would receive for years to come). Yes, he lost to My Fair Lady (which probably was extra galling because of the whole Julie Andrews 'controversy'), but that's still quite an accomplishment.

In a list published at the end of 1976, Robert was declared the most commercially successful director in the history of films. He had 16 films on the list of top grossing movies, all of them Disney pictures. The number two man (and of course it was a man, this was only the Seventies) only had 12. Robert's final picture, The Shaggy D.A., would join the list and push his supremacy even higher. It was estimated that he had worldwide grosses of over $750 million. I don't know if any of that was adjusted for the 20 year time frame the films spanned, but that's over $3.3 Billion in today's terms. Not to shabby for an engineer.

Robert spent the final decade of his life relaxing in his home in Santa Barbara, California with his fourth (and final) wife of 23 years, Ursula. He passed away on April 30, 1986 at the age of 81. He was posthumously declared an official Disney Legend as part of the class of 2002 as part of the opening of Disneyland Paris.

March 23 - Norman Palmer

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On this day, in 2013, Norman Palmer passed away in his sleep at his home in Northridge, California. Norm was born on October 7, 1918 in Santa Ana, California the fourth generation of his family to be native to the area. He graduated from Hollywood High School in 1937 and became a projectionist for the Walt Disney Studio the following year. After six months on the job, he moved into the Editing Department and stayed there for the rest of career.

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After helping edit features like Pinocchio and Fantasia, World War II came along and Norman did his patriotic duty, enlisting in the United States Navy. He quickly became part of the Field Photo branch and began working with the likes of legendary director John Ford. He spent most of his tour editing films for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington but he did spend some time on the front as an aerial photographer doing reconnaissance work.

When the war was over, Norman returned to Burbank and resumed his editing duties for Disney. It wasn't long before a young lady in the Ink and Paint Department caught his eye. In December 1947, Barbara Major became Mrs. Norman Palmer and happily remained his wife until her death 52 years later.

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As the Fifties began, Norman made two important contributions to the company. First, he created a whole new genre of wildlife pictures with the Tru-Life Adventure series. His ability to edit thousands of hours of raw footage down into entertaining nature films, perfectly paired with just the right music, set the standard for years to come. It's really his editing that won Oscars for movies like The Living Desert, Water Birds and In Beaver Valley. Second, he took on the potentially thankless task of mentoring the boss' kid. When Roy E. Disney joined his father and uncle's company, he started in the Editing Department and learned everything he needed to know from Norman.

After the Tru-Life Adventures ran their course, Norman continued editing other live action movies for the studio like The Incredible Journey, The Gnome-Mobile and The Shaggy D.A. He also edited more than two dozen episodes of the Wonderful World of Color (and all its later versions) right up to his retirement in 1983. In 1998, for his 45 years of hit making genius in the editing room, Norman was made an official Disney Legend. He also received a posthumous homage in the video game Bendy and the Ink Machine: one of the game's characters is a projectionist named Norman Polk. He was 95 when he died.

March 19 - The Shaggy Dog

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On this day, in 1959, Disney's first live action comedy, The Shaggy Dog, debuted in theaters. Made for less than a million dollars, it grossed over $9 million in its initial run, making it a more profitable movie than Ben Hur which was released the same year. This fact wasn't lost on Walt and his executive team and the formula of The Shaggy Dog was used over and over again for the next couple of decades: put a supernatural element in a light hearted comedy, preferably involving some kind of animal, using the same sets on the backlot and starring recognizable, but not too pricey, actors. If you think about it, that describes most of the films the studio made throughout the Sixties and Seventies. Sure, most of them would never be called masterpieces, but they created more than sufficient cash flow to subsidize everything else the company was doing.

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The Shaggy Dog is also notable for being the first Disney movie to star Fred MacMurray. Fred had already been a staple around Hollywood for years, but mostly in Westerns and film noir. This picture would start a string of comedic roles for the company that would stretch over the next fourteen years and include classics like The Absent-Minded Professor and The Happiest Millionaire (it would also be instrumental in landing Fred his long running sitcom gig on television, My Three Sons). The rest of the cast was filled out with Mickey Mouse Club regulars like Annette Funicello, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine and Kevin Corcoran. Even the film's director, Charles Barton, came from the show (he'd directed the Spin and Marty series). Paul Frees, the veteran voice actor, makes a rare live appearance in The Shaggy Dog as the psychiatrist, but interestingly doesn't receive credit for it.

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Not only did The Shaggy Dog create a formula for comedy success, it was the start of a mini franchise. In 1976, Disney released The Shaggy D.A. starring another company staple, Dean Jones. The sequel took place about 30 years after the original, but if you're wondering what happened during that time, you are in luck. The Return of the Shaggy Dog aired in two parts on the Disney Sunday Movie in 1987, starring Gary Kroeger. Two remakes have been produced as well, one for The Wonderful World of Disney in 1994 and a theatrical release starring Tim Allen in 2006, but, for my money, just stick with the original.

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.

September 6 - Jo Anne Worley

On this day, in 1937, Jo Anne Worley was born in Lowell, Indiana.

Jo Anne grew up as the dreaded middle child of not three but five children. From the moment she could speak, the young Hoosier was aware that her voice might be a little bit louder than, well, everyone around her. She once joked that she would only lip synch in church so she wouldn't overpower the rest of the congregation.

Throughout high school, Jo Anne easily won the title of school comedienne every year. She also put in hours working as a waitress at the local truck stop, which may have fueled some of her comedy. After graduating in 1955, she began an apprenticeship with the Pickwick Players in Blauvelt, New York. Her voice was heard and, once the ringing in everyone's ears stopped, she'd won a scholarship to Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Texas was only big enough to hold her for two years though. Jo Anne moved on to the similarly sunny pastures of southern California, continuing to study her craft at Los Angeles City College and performing at the Pasadena Playhouse. She got what looked like a big break as part of a musical revue, Billy Barnes People, that was headed to Broadway. It did actually make it, but only for six shows. In 1964, Jo Anne got what looked like another big break, again on Broadway, as the stand by performer for Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! Unfortunately, she was the stand by for Carol Channing, who would rather die before ever missing a performance. So Jo Anne did what many almost stars did before her, she created her own nightclub act and settled down in Greenwich Village. Of course, that's when she actually got a big break.

One night a guy by the name of Merv Griffin caught her act. He loved it and booked her on his television show. The audience loved Jo Anne so much, she would appear on the Merv Griffin Show 40 more times. All this exposure led to a role in a new off-Broadway production called The Mad Show. Believe it or not, it was a musical based on MAD Magazine and had Stephen Sondheim as one of its lyricists. Jo Anne happily sang for the cast recording and put in several hundred performances, but she would soon return to television for the defining project of her career.

In early 1968, two funny guys, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, put together a new sketch comedy show for NBC. The perks of being the show's creators included getting to name it after themselves: Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Jo Anne was a part of the mayhem known as Laugh-In from the beginning. For the next couple of years, she reveled in the non stop fun of the often politically controversial show. Jo Anne could often be seen cracking up in take after take, trying to get a joke out. By 1970, she yearned to do other projects and belted her last yodel for Dan and Dick.

Jo Anne has spent her time since then doing whatever her heart desires. She was a regular on game show like Hollywood Squares and every version of Pyramid ever made. She did guest spots on every television show that had celebrity guests from The Love Boat to Murder, She Wrote. She appeared in regional theater in shows like Gypsy, Anything Goes and, for real this time, Hello, Dolly! She also started doing voice over work.

For Disney, Jo Anne's biggest role has been as the voice of Madame Armoire the Wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast. I know, the wardrobe gets a much fancier name in the Broadway show, but that's all she gets for the movie. Jo Anne reprised the role in Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World, Belle's Tales of Friendship and the Kingdom Hearts video games. She can also be heard in A Goofy Movie as Miss Maples. Fans of Kim Possible might recognize her voice as that of Bonnie Rockwaller's mother. She also did roles on The Wuzzles and DuckTales.

Jo Anne's voice isn't the only thing she's put to good use for Disney. The first role she ever had with the company was as Katrinka Muggelberg in 1976's The Shaggy D.A. Since then she's appeared in episodes of Wonderful World of Color, Boy Meets World, Wizards of Waverly Place and Jessie.

In recent years, Jo Anne has returned to her roots in the theater, playing Mrs. Tottendale in the Drowsy Chaperone and spending eight months as Madame Morrible in the LA version of Wicked. Currently, she spends her time as president of Actors and Others for Animals, an organization that works to spay and neuter the pets of southern California.