October 12 - Bill Anderson

On this day, in 1911, producer William Hillyard Anderson was born in Smithfield, Utah. Bill's boyhood desire was to be an actor when he grew up. In 1929, he moved to Los Angeles, California looking for fame and fortune. He did manage to get a few small parts in some radio shows, but his big break never came. Eventually Bill began working for the Firestone Rubber Company and enrolled in the University of Southern California as a pre-law student. His dreams of being in the entertainment industry were down but not out as he discovered that his talents lay not in front of the camera but behind it.

In 1943, Bill got a job with the Walt Disney Studios in the production control department, where he managed the reorganization and expansion of the Ink and Paint Department. Eight years later, Bill was named Production Manager and by 1956, he was the Vice President of Studio Operations. He cut his teeth in television, producing 58 of the 78 episodes of Zorro as well as episodes of The Swamp Fox, The Wonderful World of Disney and Johnny Shiloh.

Bill moved into the realm of feature films in 1957 as an associate producer on Old Yeller. A couple of years later, his wife pointed out a young English actress to him. Bill went to Walt and recommended Hayley Mills for the lead in Pollyanna. That of course led to a string of films for the studio starring young Hayley and Bill would personally produce one of them, 1964's The Moon-spinners. His list of producing credits includes many of the popular Disney films of the late Sixties and early Seventies: Savage Sam, Swiss Family Robinson, The Apple Dumpling Gang and The Shaggy D.A., just to name a few. When Walt died in 1966, Bill was named as one of the small group of people who would guide the studios output for the next decade.

As further proof of his value to the Walt Disney Company, Bill became part of the Board of Directors in 1964. Although he would retire from his producing gig in 1975, he would continue as a director until 1984, shepherding the company from the death of Walt until the hiring of Michael Eisner. For all his contributions to the company, Bill would be posthumously named an official Disney Legend in 2007. He had passed away from a brain hemorrhage in San Francisco on December 28, 1997 at the age of 86.

Also on this day, in American history: Emperor Norton