January 23 - Disneyland Monorail

On this day, in 1987, Monorail Purple began regular operations as the first of the new Mark V trains on the Disneyland Monorail System. While I’m confident that anyone who’s ever been to either of Disney’s American theme park complexes will know what a monorail is, the rest of that statement may not be as easy to decipher. Allow me to elucidate. But first, some backstory.

Walt Disney easily became super geeked about new technology. From sound in movies to color on television to innovations in city planning, he loved exploring the latest, greatest ideas and gadgets. So, when he heard about monorails, he firmly believed them to be the transportation design of the future. That, of course, meant he needed to have one in his theme park. In 1958, he began planning to build one in Disneyland that would open along with the reimagined Tomorrowland. Using designs made by the company who came up with monorails, ALWEG (a German company founded by a Swedish industrialist), Walt commissioned the Standard Carriage Works of East Los Angeles to build it. The SCW ended up taking longer than he wanted though, so he moved construction to the studios in Burbank late in 1958. His Imagineers came through, getting the cars, chassis, suspension and motors built in time for the re-dedication of Tomorrowland.

On June 14, 1959, Mark I Monorails Red and Blue went into service as not just America’s first monorail, but the first in the entire Western Hemisphere. Now those colors, red and blue, designate specific trains. It’s like the letters and numbers on a plane’s tail but a whole lot easier to remember. The color of the train’s cars (or in modern times, the stripe of color on the otherwise white monorail) instantly tells you which train you’re boarding. The Mark I means that those trains are the first version of monorail cars that Disney built. As we’ll see, Disneyland’s current trains are Mark VII (although there have only been five versions of monorails at the California park, but I’m getting ahead of myself).

Image copyright Disney

When it debuted, Disneyland’s monorail wasn’t really a transportation system. It was just a sightseeing attraction that took guests in a loop around the reimagined Tomorrowland. In 1961, that changed. The track was lengthened to 2.5 miles to end at a new boarding platform, one connected to the Disneyland Hotel. The platform in Tomorrowland was also lengthened as the new Mark II trains were being deployed. Mark II trains had four cars instead of the three that Mark I trains had. A third train, Monorail Yellow was added at this point, too.

In 1968, both station platforms had to be lengthened again to get ready for the Mark III trains, which, you guessed it, would add a fifth car to the monorail’s length. Another train was introduced at that point as well, Monorail Green. Interestingly, at this time guests could ride the monorail from Hotel Station without purchasing admission to the park. For a separate ticket, they could ride in the driver’s compartment in the nose or tail section, view the park from the comfort the monorail and return to the hotel. For those who like to keep track of that sort of thing, yes, the monorail was an E ticket ride.

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By the Eighties, the Mark III trains were getting pretty old and were beginning to look like it too. Plans were made to strip each train down to its chassis, one at a time, and rebuild it as a new Mark V. But hold on. What happened to the Mark IV trains? When Walt Disney World opened in 1971, it of course needed its own monorail system. Not only is Florida’s layout almost exponentially longer than California’s but Florida got snazzy new streamlined monorails as well, known as the Mark IV. Disneyland’s Mark V trains were modeled after the Disney World look, with minor modifications and upgrades of course. The new look also meant that the color schemes got a shake up. Monorail Green became Monorail Purple and Yellow became Orange; Monorail Blue was lightened up a few shades but the original, Monorail Red, got to stay the same. In 2008, the latest version of the monorail, the Mark VII, began running as each train was again individually updated (why yes, the latest trains in Florida are the Mark VI version, thanks for asking). Except for poor Monorail Purple, who was retired.

Image copyright Disney

The track has undergone extensive redesigns since 1958 as the resort has expanded and added new attractions right next to (and sometimes right underneath) the monorail. The original Hotel Station was demolished in 1999 and the current Downtown Disney Station was built, well, in exactly the same place. And, alas, gone are the days of being able to ride the Disneyland Monorail without a park entrance ticket (although you still can do that in Florida). In fact, on really busy days, you can’t even ride it round trip without disembarking in the middle. But if you get a chance, I do recommend riding it. It’s not every day that you get to be part of the longest operating of something in the country. And even if monorails haven’t exactly caught on yet outside of theme parks, it just means that Walt’s future still isn’t here yet.

January 22 - John Hurt

On this day, in 1940, John Vincent Hurt was  born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. John was the son of a former actress turned engineer and a former mathematician turned vicar. At the age of eight, he began attending St. Michael's Preparatory, an Anglican school in Otford, Kent. It was here that he caught the acting bug after playing the role of a girl in The Blue Bird. John failed the entrance exam to the school his brother attended, was strongly discouraged from becoming an actor by his parents and enrolled in the Grimby Art School as art teacher was apparently an acceptable professional choice. In 1959, he won a scholarship to St. Martin's School of Art in London. In 1960, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he would finally get to indulge his true passion for the next two years.

Image copyright Columbia Pictures

Upon graduation from RADA, John performed his first film role in 1962's The Wild and the Willing. Four years later, he had his first major role as Richard Rich in A Man For All Seasons, with Orson Welles. Over the next five and a half decades, John would amass a body of work that easily put him the running for greatest actor of his time. With many dozens of films to his credit, the bare minimum highlights are the stuff most actors of today can only dream of. They include:

Caligula in the BBC's I, Claudius (1976)

Max in Midnight Express (1978) - Golden Globe win, BAFTA win, Oscar nomination

Image copyright Paramount Pictures

Kane in Alien (1979)

John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980) - BAFTA win, Golden Globe and Oscar nominations

The Narrator in Jim Henson's The StoryTeller (1988)

Bird O'Donnell in The Field (1990) - BAFTA nomination

Mr. Olivander in the Harry Potter films (2001-11)

The War Doctor in Doctor Who (2013)

Image copyright Disney

John became part of the Disney family in unfortunate way. He voiced the Horned King in the 1985 animated disaster The Black Cauldron. From what I remember from the only time I've seen it, his performance created a superbly scary villain that was totally wasted in a decidedly sub par movie. Thankfully, John was also the narrator for the 2000 picture, The Tigger Movie. Whether or not that actually elevated his standing in Disneyana is a matter of personal taste, I'll just say that The Tigger Movie doesn't generally make people cringe like mentioning Cauldron does.

Image copyright BBC

In 2004, John was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and became a Knight Bachelor for services to drama in 2015. That same year, he went public with the fact that he had been diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer. He underwent treatment, declared his cancer to be in remission and continued working practically non-stop. He was set to star as Don Quixote in a Terry Gilliam project and as Former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the Gary Oldman film The Darkest Hour, when his health would begin to go downhill again. Both projects had to happen without him when he died at his home in Cromer, Norfolk on January 25, 2017, just three days after his 77th birthday.

January 21 - Peggy Lee

On this day, in 2002, Norma Deloris Egstrom passed away in Bel Air, California. Norma was born on May 26, 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota as the seventh child (of eight) of a station agent for a railroad and a stay-at-home mom. She first professional gigs as a singer were on local radio station KOVC. At one point she had her own show which she was paid for in food (a local restaurant was her sponsor). During high school, she made appearances on WDAY out of Fargo. It was there that one of the DJs changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee, a moniker she would keep for the rest of her life. At the age of 17, Peggy left North Dakota to seek her fortune in Los Angeles, California.

Her first break came when she was singing in a joint called the Doll House in Palm Springs. She'd already developed her signature sultriness when she decided that rather than out shout the patrons, she'd tickle their eardrums for attention instead. An agent from Chicago, Frank Bering, heard her and offered up a spot in The Buttery Room, the nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel. Once she moved to Chicago, Benny Goodman caught her act. Benny was losing his singer and decided that Peggy should be the replacement. She joined the big band in 1941 and spent two years belting out tunes with them, including a pair of 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl. That same year she married a guitarist in the orchestra, Dave Barbour, and had a number one hit with Why Don't You Do Right? She left the band in the spring, fully intending to be nothing more than a wife and mother. Fortunately, her husband was able to eventually persuade her otherwise.

Image copyright Warner Brothers

By 1947, Peggy had begun to write songs again and make an occasional recording. The following year, her retirement officially ended when her album Manana became the top selling record of the year. She hit the radio waves again as co-host of The Chesterfield Supper Club and make frequent appearances on both Jimmy Durante's and Bing Crosby's shows. She then recorded one of her most popular songs, Fever, to which she added her own lyrics about Romeo, Juliet, John Smith and Pocahontas. The song cemented her relationship with Capitol Records, whom she would deal with for most of the next three decades.

In 1952, Peggy starred opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of The Jazz Singer. Three years later she played an alcoholic singer, Rose Hopkins, in Pete Kelly's Blues, earning herself an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

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Peggy joined the Disney family in 1955 in a big way as an integral part of Lady and the Tramp. Not only does she provide the voice for four characters in the film but she wrote the songs as well. You here her as Darling, the jailhouse pup Peg and both the Siamese Cats, Si and Am. She herself sings La La Lu, He's a Tramp, What Is a Baby? and The Siamese Cat Song throughout the movie as all of her different characters. Peggy was also the reason that Lady and the Tramp was out of print for so long on home video back in the day. Under her contract with Disney, she retained the rights to all transcriptions of her songs in the picture. In 1988, she sued claiming that videotape editions were transcriptions. This was an issue as the movie had already been released and had sold really well (which I'm sure fueled the law suit). It quickly went back in the vault and after three years of legal wrangling, the company settled with her for $3.2 million. Tramp wouldn't be released again until 1998.

Peggy would continue to release records, write songs and perform well into the Nineties. Near the end of her career, she would sometimes sing from the confines of a wheelchair, but she still put on a hell of a show. She was nominated for a dozen Grammy Awards over her lifetime, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance in 1969 and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1995. In 1999, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. After years of poorly managed diabetes and declining health, she would suffer a fatal heart attack at her home in 2002. She was 91.

January 20 - Leon Ames

On this day, in 1902, Harry Wycoff was born in Portland, Indiana. A fairly typical Midwestern boy, Harry attended Indian University at Bloomington, served in World War I in the Army as a field artillery gunner (later transferring to the flying corps) and always dreamed of becoming an actor. He began pursuing that dream as a stage manager for playwright Charles K. Champlin's theatre company. He eventually drifted on stage in progressively larger roles until he played the lead in Tomorrow and Tomorrow in Los Angeles.

That performance led to a name change to Leon Waycoff and, in 1931, to his big screen debut in a pre-code Spencer Tracy/George Raft film called Quick Millions. Leon spent the Thirties playing dozens of bit parts in film. By 1935 he'd changed his name again to Leon Ames. Fame still eluded him until he became an "overnight" success after playing Mr. Smith, Judy Garland's father, in Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944. Leon worked steadily for the rest of the decade and into the Fifties, working alongside Red Skelton, Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day.

Image copyright Disney

Leon was also a regular player on the stages of Broadway. He made his debut in 1933 in It Pays to Sin (which apparently didn't pay all that well, it closed after three performances). Over the next three decades, he appeared in a dozen shows on the Great White Way including 1942's The Russian People and 1958's Winesburg, Ohio.

Leon joined the Disney family in 1961 as the President of Medfield College, Rufus Daggett, in the Fred MacMurray classic The Absent-Minded Professor. He reprised the overly stuffy Rufus for the 1963 sequel, Son of Flubber. In 1964, he appeared with Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as an overly stuffy judge (who also happens to write crime novels on the side). Leon would again reprise his role in that movie's sequel, The Monkey's Uncle, the following year.

Image copyright TriStar Pictures

Leon spent much of the rest of his career as a staple on television and in movies. For the small screen, he had recurring roles in Mr. Ed, Father of the Bride (a one season series based on the Spencer Tracy film) and Bewitched. On the big screen, his appearances include Tora! Tora! Tora! and Timber Tramps. His final film was Peggy Sue Got Married in 1986 as Kathleen Turner's grandfather.

There are two other aspects to Leon's life worth mentioning. First, he was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933. In 1957, he would serve a term as its president. Second, on February 12, 1964, an armed intruder broke into his home and held Leon and his wife hostage in demand for $50,000. Leon called his business partner for the money, the business partner alerted the police on the way over and the intruder was captured shortly after leaving the house (with Mrs. Ames and the business partner in the trunk of the car).

Leon would enjoy his twilight years until he suffered a stroke on October 12, 1993. He passed away in his home in Laguna Beach, California from complications brought on by that stroke and was buried in the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Cemetery. He was 91.

January 19 - Adriana Caselotti

On this day, in 1997, Adriana Caselotti passed away in Los Angeles, California. She was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on May 16, 1916 as the second daughter in a family of musical Italian immigrants. Her father, Guido, was a vocal coach and her mother, Maria, sang with the Royal Opera Theatre of Rome. Even her older sister, Louise, would one day sing opera and give voice lessons. When Adriana was seven, her family returned to Italy so her mother could tour with an opera company. While there, she received her education at the convent of San Getulio near Rome. When the family returned to the States in 1926, her three year Italian adventure had been so immersive, she actually had to relearn English. Now located in Southern California, Adriana studied singing under her father and by 1935 was starting to appear in MGM films as a chorus girl. Then her father got a phone call that changed everything.

As production started gearing up on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs over at the Walt Disney Studio, the time came to hire voice actors. Knowing just how important the right voice was going to be in selling this picture to the audience, the company casting scout started calling local voice coaches, looking for leads on great voices. Guido Caselotti had gained a healthy reputation in the years since settling in Los Angeles and was near the top of the list. When Guido answered the phone, Adriana snuck into the other room and listened in on the conversation with the extension phone (those of you who've never experienced a land line before won't understand the gleeful deviousness of doing that). As the talk turned to any voices Guido might be able to recommend,  Adriana immediately piped up with an impromptu audition. Apparently it was good enough to get her an official one.

As the story goes, Walt would sit behind a screen while listening to the actors who came to try out for a role so he wouldn't be influenced by how they looked, not something terribly important in animation. Afterwards, Walt would like to say that when he heard Adriana sing, he was pretty sure he was listening to Snow White. Whether or not that was true, over 150 other women were given a shot before the role was offered to her at the ripe old age of 19. She was paid about $20 each day she came in to record dialogue and songs. After 48 days of working her magic in front of the microphone, she made a total of $970, the equivalent of $17,000 today.

Adriana always maintained that she had no real idea of what she was working on. She knew it was going to be longer than the usual cartoon short but was only thinking it would be twenty minutes max. It didn't really sink in until the film's gala premiere when, surrounded by Hollywood stars, the story took over an hour and twenty minutes to tell. A lot of people like to say something about the fact that Adriana never got a credit for providing the voice of the original Disney princess, but it's not like she was singled out to be slighted. No one received voice credit in a Disney film until the mid-Forties. What's less clear is whether or not Adriana's subsequent career was deliberately squashed by the studio or not.

Image copyright Disney

Shortly after Snow White hit the silver screen, Jack Benny reputedly wanted Adriana to appear on his radio show. When he asked Walt about it, Walt said no, he couldn't allow the illusion of Snow White to be spoiled. She would later be involved in a law suit against the studio, alleging she was owed part of the profits for the songs she recorded that were released as records. The case was dismissed. Adriana would only have two more roles in film following Snow White. In the Tin Man's song in The Wizard of Oz, she sang the part of Juliet, specifically doing the line "Wherefore art thou Romeo?". Then, in It's a Wonderful Life, she can be heard singing in Martini's bar while Jimmy Stewart is praying. And that was it. She tried to get an opera career going at one point but nothing ever came of it.

Now, was Adriana's complete lack of a career because her voice was too recognizable as Snow White's or was it because mean Uncle Walt wouldn't let her have one? Arguments could probably be made for both sides, but considering Adriana herself never (publicly at least) complained about her treatment from Disney (in spite of the lawsuit) and she continued to have an amiable relationship with the studio for years to come, I'd have to say it just wasn't in the cards for her. She would do plenty of publicity for Disney over the years, frequently wearing a familiar blue and yellow dress and gamely singing "I'm wishing." In 1972, she went on a Thanksgiving Day episode of The Julie Andrews Hour and sang a couple of duets from Snow White with Julie and later was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show as well.

Image copyright Disney

In 1992, when Disneyland was refurbishing their Snow White Grotto, Adriana stepped into the recording studio once more to make a new track of "I'm Wishing" for the wishing well. Even though she was 75 at the time, she still sounded the same. I remember seeing an interview with her once (probably from around that time) where she said the reason she could still sound like everyone expected her to after almost six decades was because she had always done Snow White in a falsetto. Whatever the reason, it worked (even if she kind of didn't). But, hey, if you can only ever have one role in your acting career, you can't do much better than the first Princess. Speaking of firsts, Adriana was made an official Disney Legend in 1994 (not even posthumously, for once) and was the first woman voice actor to receive the honor. And if that doesn't make you Happy, you must be Dopey.

January 18 - Jay Meyer

On this day, in 2009, Jay Meyer passed away in Los Angeles, California. In a career that spanned decades, Jay was truly one of those performers that literally everyone has heard at some point but no one has any idea who he is. Born in Webb City, Missouri on May 20, 1923, he began singing at the age of five, mostly in local churches. He learned to play the trumpet and, in high school, was his team's only cheerleader (they for some reason didn't have any female cheerleaders and he wasn't big enough to actually play football). His older brother was a radio entertainer in St. Louis and Jay would occasionally visit him and sing on his program.

After graduating from high school in 1941, Jay could sense that war was coming and he signed up for the Marine Corps. He was officially stationed in New Zealand for most of his tour and spent his time singing for his fellow troops, both on Marine Corps radio and all over the world in live shows. When the war ended, Jay knew he couldn't go back to Missouri, so he stayed in Los Angeles, California and enrolled in the University of Southern California. Meanwhile he began performing with the likes of Spike Jones and eventually joined the Sportsmen's Quartet, a group that regularly sang on Jack Benny's radio program, including all the Lucky Strike cigarette commercials. For a while, the Sportsmen were doing double duty; they'd no sooner finish Jack Benny's show then they'd go down the street and do Phil Harris' show.

All this exposure led to the Sportsmen getting their own radio deal in New York. So Jay moved across the country with his wife, Tommy, to make it big in the Big Apple. The show flopped, but Jay stuck around, working pretty constantly. Tommy was a writer and Jay got into doing summer stock theater for a few years. Eventually, Tommy wanted to be back on the west coast, so the couple returned to their home in Los Angeles. Jay began doing all sorts of film gigs. He's in the chorus for movies like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins.

Then one day, he got a call to come do a recording at the Disney Studio. He arrived to see fellow Sportsmen Quartet member Thurl Ravenscroft, as well as Chuck Schroeder, Bob Ebright and Vernon Rowe. Jay says they didn't really understand what they were making the recording for but the song they sung was called "Grim Grinning Ghosts." The five performers were also filmed and, as anyone who's ever ridden the Haunted Mansion knows, they became a quintet of singing busts in the graveyard section of the attraction. The bust that Jay plays is the only one not wearing a necktie, is officially named Ned Nub and is generally the fourth one from the left. Phantom Manor, the Disneyland Paris version, only has four busts, so Jay is third from the left there.

As if that wasn't a big enough contribution to Disney lore, Jay got another call in 1972. Fulton Burley, a staple performer in the Golden Horseshoe Revue in Disneyland was taking some time off and needed a substitute. Jay agreed to fill in for him as resident Irish Tenor (although Jay is actually more German than Irish) over a six week period. When the month and a half was over, it was decided that the show needed Jay for a few more weeks. He actually stopped performing in the Revue when it closed fourteen years later. He was even a featured performer in the final show on October 12, 1986.

In addition to all his work with Disney and in films, Jay appeared in television commercials for everything from McDonald's (singing, of course, the famous slogan "You deserve a break today") to Mattel Toys and Knotsberry Farm. He sang in concerts at the Hollywood Bowl with Sammy Davis Jr. and Ray Charles. He made records with the Ray Connif Singers, the Pied Pipers and the Johnny Mann Singers. His final public appearance was, ironically, at a private function at the Walt Disney Studio, where he sang Too Ra Loo Ra Loo, a song he'd sung hundreds of times in the saloon in Frontierland. His amazing, mostly unrecognized, career ended 80 years after it began as a little five year old local singing sensation.

January 17 - Eartha Kitt

On this day, in 1927, Eartha Mae Keith was born near North, South Carolina (and, yes, that is a confusing name for a town). Her early life was anything but idyllic. Born on a cotton plantation to a mother of American Indian and African descent, it's widely believed that Eartha was the product of a rape perpetrated by the plantation owner's son. When her mother began living with a man who refused to take her in, Eartha began living with a relative known as Aunt Rosa, who abused her. When her mother died, Eartha was shipped off to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City to live with another relative, Mamie Kitt. Life took a decided upturn with her arrival in New York, which may have prompted the name change from Keith to Kitt.

Eartha attended the Metropolitan Vocational High School, better known after its own name change as The High School of Performing Arts (it's the setting for Fame if that helps you place it, but since that's a terrible movie, try to henceforth think of it as the birthplace of the careers of Eartha and Liza Minnelli, to name just two). Her professional career began in 1943 with the Katherine Dunham Company, the country's first African American modern dance troupe. She would tour with the company for the next five years.

Image courtesy of flickr.com

As the Fifties rolled around, Eartha began extensively touring the cabaret halls of Europe. This wasn't a big stretch for her as she reportedly spoke four languages (English, German, Dutch and French) and could sing in eleven. During the decade, she recorded a number of hits including Let's Do It, C'est si bon, which made it into the top ten, and her most well known song (another top ten), Santa Baby, which is still played repeatedly every Christmas.

In between the European tours and studio recordings, Eartha managed to find time to appear on Broadway as well. In 1950, she starred as Helen of Troy in an Orson Welles directed production of Dr. Faustus. She reteamed with Orson in 1957 for Shinbone Alley (co-written by a young Mel Brooks). Eartha was also in a handful of films including 1958's St. Louis Blues and Anna Lucasta with Sammy Davis Jr.

Image lifted from pinterest.com

With the dawn of the Sixties, Eartha continued to make records, sing in nightclubs, and appear in films. Near the end of the decade she added television to her resume in a big way when she replaced Julie Newmar as Catwoman during the final season Batman. With her career growing all the time, it all came crashing down in 1968.

At a luncheon at the White House in January of that year, then First Lady Ladybird Johnson asked Eartha what her thoughts were on the Vietnam War. Never one to hold back, Eartha replied "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot." She also made comments about mothers raising their children to be sent off to war and asked Ladybird about her own children. The First Lady reportedly burst into tears at the luncheon table and, as a result, a smear job was begun against Eartha lead by the CIA, who branded her a sadistic nymphomaniac. She was now basically unemployable in the US.

Luckily, Europe didn't care what the CIA said. Eartha spent most of the Seventies making appearances on BBC variety shows and touring her old cabaret haunts. By 1978 the furor had died down in the States and she made a triumphant return to Broadway in Timbuktu! Her sultry performance was nominated for a Best Actress Tony. In 1987, she took London's West End by storm as Dolores Gray in Follies. Throughout the Nineties and into the Aughts, she joined several productions: as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, The Wild Party, Nine and, in a touring show that I had the pleasure of seeing, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella.

Image copyright Disney

Earth joined the Disney family in 2000 when she voiced the deliciously evil Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove. The animators apparently loved her performance as they found her distinct way of enunciating really easy to work with. They weren't the only ones to enjoy Yzma; Eartha won an Annie Award for her performance. She would continue to bring the old crone to life in the sequel, Kronk's New Groove, and for the animated television series, The Emperor's New School. During the two seasons the latter one ran, Eartha would manage to win two Emmy Awards and two more Annie Awards.

Eartha was an activist for most of her life. She established the Kittsville Youth foundation to help underprivileged youth in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She supported a group of youths in the Anacostia part of Washington DC. She was a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. As the AIDS crisis heated up, she frequently sang at benefit concerts. She was an out spoken advocate of LGBT rights. Having been down and out and repressed herself, she constantly looked out for anyone she saw in the same position.

In 2008, faced with inoperable colon cancer, Eartha lived out her last days near her only daughter in Weston, Connecticut. Kitt, her daughter, says that, characteristically, Eartha did not leave this life quietly but fought and literally screamed until the end. Perhaps fittingly, she breathed her last on Christmas day. She was 81.

January 16 - Roger Mobley

On this day, in 1949, Roger Lance Mobley was born in Evansville, Indiana. The son of a pipefitter and a real estate agent, Roger was one of eight Mobley children. A few years after his birth, the family moved to Pecos, Texas. While there, Roger performed with his older brother and one of their sisters in a singing group called The Little Mobley Trio. When Roger was seven, the family moved to Los Angeles, California and the Trio appeared on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. The group failed to impress but an agent took notice of Roger and signed him. His first gig was on the NBC series Fury, a western that also starred Peter Graves (of Mission: Impossible fame). After 39 episodes of Fury, his career was on its way.

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Roger spent the next several years appearing on dozens of television shows, mostly westerns like The Virginian and Gunsmoke. He also began getting small roles in a handful of films. In 1964, Roger was cast as Gustav in Disney's version of Emil and the Detectives. Walt was so taken with his performance that he signed Roger to play the title role in a series being developed for the Wonderful World of Color, "Adventures of Gallegher". Gallegher is an amateur sleuth/newspaper reporter and the series of episodes earned an Emmy nomination. It seemed that Roger was destined for even bigger things. In the last known memo that Walt ever wrote, about future television projects, Roger is mentioned in connection with a show centering around the CIA. Unfortunately, the US government had other plans for him.

Image courtesy imdb.com

At the age of 18, Roger was drafted into the United States Army. He completed parachute jump training at Fort Benning, volunteered for Special Forces training at Fort Bragg and was assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company (Airborne) in Thailand. When the Green Beret returned to the States in 1970, he found out that he only had about $6,000 dollars left of all the money he'd made as a child actor. With a young bride (his high school sweetheart no less) and the beginnings of a family, Roger made the decision to move to Texas and become a police officer.

His acting career was effectively over, but not completely over. He would make two more cameo appearances: in 1979 in Disney's The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again as Sentry #1 and as a police sergeant in a 1980 Disney made for television movie, The Kids Who Knew Too Much. He was last known to live in Arkansas, still married to his sweetheart, occasionally making appearances at comic cons, ready to great his fans.

January 15 - Space Mountain

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On this day, in 1975, Space Mountain launched its first guests in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. Walt Disney wanted to build a space themed roller coaster in the Sixties after the success of the Matterhorn Bobsleds, which opened in 1959, convinced him that thrill rides were okay to have in his park. Concept drawings were made as early as 1964 for a coaster called Space Port, consisting of four separate tracks that (slightly) intertwined with each other. Unfortunately, Disneyland didn't have enough land to accommodate that design and mid Sixties technology wasn't quite up to something that ambitious anyways, so the project was delayed. By 1967, the design had gone through several refinements, one of which was a name change to Space Mountain (another was the reduction to two tracks), but Walt's death and a focus on the Florida Project caused the coaster to be shelved indefinitely.

Image copyright Disney

Once Walt Disney World opened, it proved to be extremely popular, especially with teens. Disney executives were suddenly in need of something to satisfy their teenage guests. They considered building a replica of the Matterhorn Bobsleds (in fact the show building for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea had been constructed to support that ride) but ultimately brushed the dust off the Space Mountain plans instead. Computing power had advanced enough to pull the coaster off and Tomorrowland had the space. The only thing that lacked was the funds to actually build it. That's where RCA came in.

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When Disney signed a contract with RCA to provide all the communications hardware for the Florida Project, there was a clause that said if a suitable attraction were developed, RCA would pony up $10 million to make it happen. Executives showed RCA the plans for Space Mountain, they agreed that it sounded good and construction moved forward. RCA would sponsor the ride for its first eighteen years. In 1994, sponsorship switched to FedEx, who would lend their name for a decade. Since 2004, there hasn't been a sponsor (and yet it still seems to function with great regularity).

The version of Space Mountain in Florida may have been the first one (and is the state's oldest operating coaster) but versions of the attraction have opened in every Magic Kingdom type theme park around the world except Shanghai Disneyland. The Magic Kingdom's reaches a top speed of 35 MPH, pretty tame compared to most coasters, but since it's in the dark, it feels a whole lot more thrilling than that for the two and half minutes of whiplash inducing twists and turns. And, of course, the most thrilling part doesn't even occur on the ride itself. Everyone knows that only happens when you're on the PeopleMover and you happen to get to see Space Mountain with the lights on.

January 14 - Guy Williams

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On this day, in 1924, Armando Joseph Catalano was born in New York City, New York. The Catalanos were once wealthy timber barons from Sicily, but by the time Armando was born in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan, they'd fallen on hard times. He did most of his formative years in Brooklyn's Little Italy where his family fell into the habit of calling him Williams. Armando excelled in math in grade school and played football and chess when he went to the Peekskill Military Academy, but his dream was to be an actor.

During World War II, Armando worked stateside as a welder and aircraft parts inspector. Following the war he submitted a head shot to a modeling agency. His classic good looks and 6-foot-four stature was tailor made for the job. He became quite successful, appearing on billboards, book covers and in Harper's Bazaar. During this time is when he started calling himself Guy Williams.

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In 1946, Guy was offered a one year contract by MGM. He made the trip to Hollywood, had small appearances in a handful of films and returned to New York. In 1948, the model was given a contract to film some advertisements for a cigarette company (during the filming he would meet his wife of 35 years). By 1950, Guy was starting to appear regularly in early television commercials. This lead to a film contract with Universal, another move to Hollywood and several more minor roles. An accident while filming a Western (he was dragged behind a horse for a couple of hundred yards) caused him to return to New York again to recuperate. He continued to model and began making appearances in television shows until 1957 when he caught the eye of Walt Disney, who was looking for the lead for a new television project.

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Walt was putting together a show based on a character created by Johnston McCulley in 1919: Zorro.
When he interviewed Guy, Walt told him to grow a thin mustache and to brush up on his fencing skills. Guy did both, adding in some guitar lessons as well. He was hired on for the princely sum of $2,500 a week. Zorro made his first appearance on the Disneyland anthology series' fourth anniversary show and debuted in his own show on October 10, 1957. The show was an instant hit. Over the next two seasons, Guy would play the swashbuckling hero in 78 half hour episodes. In 1959, a legal dispute between Disney and ABC (over how much ABC paid Disney for the shows they produced, not any show itself) caused the cancellation of Zorro. Four more hour long episodes would be filmed and shown as part of Walt Disney Presents during the 1960-61 season. Several episodes were also edited into two films and released to theaters.

In 1962, Guy made a separate appearance in Disney's adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper as Sir Miles Hendon.

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As his contract with Disney finished, Guy spent time in Europe filming a couple of pictures for MGM. Upon his return to Hollywood in 1964, he joined the cast of Bonanza for what was supposed to be a permanent gig. He was replacing Pernell Roberts, who played Adam Cartwright, but Pernell decided not to leave the show so Guy was only part of the Ponderosa for five episodes. This, however, left him open to take on the role of Professor John Robinson in Lost In Space, another hit show that ran for three seasons.

Following Lost In Space, Guy decided to retire from acting to enjoy his wealth. He'd made several lucrative investments in upstart companies and was adept at playing the stock market. In 1973, he visited Argentina and fell in love with the people and their culture (the fact that they all loved "El Zorro" probably didn't hurt). Within a couple of years, Guy had settled into an upscale neighborhood in Buenos Aires, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He did return to the States once more in 1983, to appear on a celebrity episode of Family Feud with his fellow Lost In Space cast members.

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In 1989, after Guy had disappeared from public view for a few months, police searched his apartment and discovered his body on May 6, dead from a brain aneurysm. His popularity in Argentina allowed his ashes to be displayed at the La Recoleta Cemetary in Buenos Aires for two years before being spread over the Pacific Ocean near Malibu, California. But his legacy lives on. In 2001, Guy was posthumously granted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 2003 a plaque was placed on the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia where Zorro was filmed in Oceanside, California and, in 2011, Guy was officially declared a Disney Legend.

January 13 - Trevor Rabin

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On this day, in 1954, Trevor Charles Rabin was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Rabins were a musical family. Dad was first violin in the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, mom was a classical pianist and ballet dancer. And, as Trevor puts it, all three of their children learned to play the piano whether they wanted to or not. At the age of twelve, Trevor started using his piano lesson books to teach himself how to play the guitar. He began playing in the equivalent of South African garage bands, until 1973 when he joined the group Freedom's Children and toured with them for a year. The name of the band's tour that year was State of Fear, which just happened to also be the name of a song Trevor wrote. After returning home, he began to study arranging and orchestration at the University of Johannesburg with the intent to become a conductor. The intent didn't last long.

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At nineteen, Trevor went into the South African military for his mandatory year of service as part of the entertainment division. He lead the big band and performed in a rock group, spending hours and hours practicing the guitar in between. After leaving the army, Trevor met up with some old band mates to form the group Rabbitt. Technically the group had released a single back in 1972, but their debut album came out in 1975. Boys Will Be Boys would win Trevor an award for his orchestral arrangements and a Best Contemporary Music SARIE for the band (a SARIE is like a South African Grammy). Two years later, Rabbitt released a second album, A Croak and A Grunt in the Night, winning another Best Contemporary Music SARIE plus a production SARIE for Trevor. That same year, Trevor released a solo album and managed to gain the interest of a US record label. International sentiment towards South Africa at the time was pretty low, though, and, unable to get a visa to tour America, Trevor decided to move to London.

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Over the next few years, Trevor released a new solo album each year and sat in on some of the recordings of Manfred Mann's Earth Band. In 1981, he moved to Los Angeles, where he met up with some of the former members of the rock group Yes. As they began putting together an album of Trevor's songs, other members of the defunct group wanted in until the group basically was Yes with the addition of Trevor. The album they put out in 1983, 90125, became the groups highest selling record ever and they all toured for the next two years on its popularity. Yes's next album, Big Generator, was less successful, the lead singer struck out on his own and the group took a two year break. Yes reformed a second time in 1990, released two more records and toured until 1994, when Trevor decided he needed a career adjustment.

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In 1978, Trevor had written some score music for a film he admits he's never watched, a blaxploitation picture called Soul Patrol. Scoring films piqued his interest and when he tired of tour life, he looked for a way into the film industry. He found it when he gave Steven Segal guitar lessons and got to score Steven's next film, 1996's The Glimmer Man. And don't think this change in the focus of his career was just a whim. Trevor was dead serious about honing his craft as an composer. In order to practice, he wrote scores to a couple of silent films on the piano and then transcribed them for orchestra.

The following year, Trevor became part of the Disney family when Michael Bay hired him to score the Touchstone Pictures film Con Air. Like Danny Elfman and Tim Burton, Trevor and Michael hit it off and began a long collaboration. So far, they've made 13 movies together. Trevor's Disney credits include the scores for Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Gone in 60 Seconds, Bad Company, and The Guardian, all for Touchstone. For the Walt Disney Pictures brand, he's done Whispers: An Elephant's Tale, Remember the Titans, National Treasure, Glory Road, National Treasure 2, Race to Witch Mountain, G-Force, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and I Am Number Four. His composition Titans Spirit from Remember the Titans, is frequently heard during coverage of the Olympics and was also used by Barack Obama during his first presidential run. You can also hear Trevor's work whenever you ride Mission: Space at Epcot.

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Trevor has also managed to release three more solo albums in between all his film score work and, in 2016, reunited with some of his former Yes bandmates a third time and has been touring with them all over the world. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. He reputedly has several albums in various stages of production happening, not to mention more film scores on the horizon. As he celebrates his 65th year on this earth, his creative output shows no signs of stopping.

January 12 - Marc Davis

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On this day, in 2000, Marc Fraser Davis passed away in Glendale, California. Marc began life about a hundred miles north of the place he ended it. Born on March 30, 1913 in Bakersfield, California, he was a Californian through and through. Well, mostly. While he attended art classes at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, he actually graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri. Needless to say, he didn’t spend much more time in Middle America than his schooling took but his presence there at all probably helped start his career working under one of the area’s most famous sons.

Coming on board the Disney juggernaut in 1935, Marc quickly earned the admiration of his fellow animators. Ollie Johnston recalled that, while several people contributed to the design of Snow White, it was Marc who made her walk in grace and beauty.

Marc wasn’t just good at bringing women to life. The consummate draftsman also made animals more believable. It started with his work on Bambi, Faline and Thumper in Bambi. He then gave us Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear in Song of the South. Bongo in Fun and Fancy Free and Mr. Toad in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad round out his furry contributions to the Disney family.  

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But truth be told, it really was drawing women where Marc excelled the most. He was so good at grace and beauty, he would often be given the difficult task of animating either the heroine or the villainess in a picture. Over the years, not only did he join Ollie as one of Walt’s Nine Old Men, he earned himself the nickname of Disney’s Ladies Man. Name a major female character from the Fifties and it’s almost a guarantee that Marc animated her. Cinderella, Alice, Tinkerbell, Aurora and Maleficent, and, lastly, Cruella de Vil (who technically didn’t appear until the early Sixties), were all created under Marc’s steady hand. Then, when One Hundred and One Dalmatians wrapped up production, he gave up animation forever.

As the Sixties began, Disneyland was almost constantly being updated and expanded and a huge amount of effort was being put into several projects for the upcoming World's Fair. WED Enterprises (the precursor to Imagineering) was designing and building almost more attractions than they could handle. Marc had made some contributions during the late Fifties to Adventureland's Jungle Cruise and the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland. As the excitement in the department continued into the new decade, he decided to devote the rest of his career to designing characters and writing stories for the theme park instead of the silver screen.

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Marc still applied the same techniques in his new role. He still spent hours developing characters for an attraction and would use storyboards to plan out what guests would experience. His dedication payed off. As the technology behind Audio-Animatronics developed and matured, Marc would become a master at using them to tell stories. His first big project to open after his career shift was the classic show found in The Enchanted Tiki Room. For the 1964 World's Fair, he had a hand in all four of the attractions that Disney built: Ford's Magic Skyway, Great Moment's With Mr. Lincoln, It's a Small World and The Carousel of Progress.

When the World's Fair was safely behind them, Imagineers returned to creating new experiences for Disneyland. Marc's designs can be seen throughout both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, both of which opened in New Orleans Square. He then lent his style to the Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings, which was the replacement attraction for his earlier work Carousel of Progress.

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The last several years of Marc's career were spent developing an attraction that was never quite built. It was to occupy a massive area in Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom in Florida. Known as the Western River Expedition, it was supposed to be Florida's answer to Pirates of the Caribbean since, Disney executives reasoned, Floridians wouldn't be interested in pirates because the state was practically built by them. Instead, Marc designed a Western themed ride that would involve buffalo, a stagecoach robbery, a Native American adobe village, and a show with saloon girls, a bank robbery and plenty of cowboys. A mine train roller coaster would be housed in the same show building (yes, it would be the largest one Disney had ever built). From the outside, the building would look like and be called Thunder Mesa Mountain. From all accounts, it would have been a spectacular thing to see. So what happened?

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Guests to the Florida Project had one complaint they could all agree on, that's what happened. The question "Where are the pirates?" became the one most asked after the Magic Kingdom opened. So Disney hastily built a version of Pirates of the Caribbean, using a large chunk of the money allocated for Marc's Expedition. Then an economic downturn hit the country. Then Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (part of the plans for the attraction from the beginning) was built using most of the land that was to go to Expedition. And that was basically it. All the sketches and models that Marc slaved over were relegated to the research vault. Not to despair too much, though. Plenty of Imagineers have snuck elements of Marc's designs into other attractions including Splash Mountain and Expedition Everest, and I'm sure will continue to do so as often as they can.

In 1978, Marc retired after an incredible 43 year career with the Walt Disney Company.  He was named an official Disney Legend in 1989 for all of his iconic contributions to both the world of animation and beloved attractions that endure to this day. Shortly after he passed away, he was honored once more when CalArts established the Marc Fraser Davis Scholarship Fund, ensuring that creative genius will be able to flourish far into the future.