February 7 - Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor

On this day, in 1947, Wayne Anthony Allwine was born in Glendale, California. His professional career begins, like all great scripted careers do, in the mail room at the Walt Disney Studio in 1966. If we were indeed making a movie of this story, we would almost certainly have a scene in which the 19-year-old Wayne approaches sound effects guru Jimmy MacDonald who takes an envelope from Walt Disney and hands it to Wayne, just so we can get all three of them in the frame together. It’s a moment that probably never actually happened, even though Wayne and Walt’s times did overlap for several months, but it would be a scene the audience would later remember and say to themselves “Ah. Foreshadowing.”

Wayne moved up from the mail room and landed in the Sound Effects department, apprenticing under Jimmy MacDonald. He became a pretty good sound effects editor. You can hear his work on Disney films like Splash and Three Men and a Baby as well as films he did for other studios like Innerspace and Star Trek V. But in late 1976 he began apprenticing under Jimmy for an entirely different reason.

Image copyright Disney

Jimmy was nearing retirement at that point and was going to be leaving behind a large hole to fill. He’d been doing the voice of Mickey Mouse since taking over from Walt in 1947. An audition was held and his already protégé, Wayne, won the role. Jimmy began coaching him and Wayne made his debut as the Big Cheese recording the opening title bits for The New Mickey Mouse Club in 1977. From that point on, Wayne was the mouse for the next 32 years. He made his big screen debut in Mickey’s Christmas Carol and voiced the role in everything from Who Framed Roger Rabbit to The Lion King 1 ½.

Movies, television series and specials, parades, you name it and Wayne was kept as busy as he could handle doing it. He also did a handful of other voices (you didn’t think squeaking was his only talent, did you?) including a Henchman in The Black Cauldron and Thug Guard #2 (not to be confused with #1, completely different guy) in The Great Mouse Detective.

Image courtesy of historybyzim.com

On a personal note, life began to imitate art for Wayne starting in 1986. It was decided that Minnie Mouse would start talking again (she hadn’t had any lines for several years) and an audition was held. Russi Taylor won the role. She recalls meeting Wayne in a hallway one day and his excitement over having a Minnie for the first time. Both were in failing marriages (his third). After their not-so-wedded-blisses ended, they began hanging out together outside of the recording booth. They fell in love, just like the mice they played, and got married in 1991, not like the mice they played. They kept it quiet in order to make their nuptials about them and not their characters (people went a little crazy even back then when they heard that Mickey and Minnie were married), but they did live happily ever after for the next two decades.

Image courtesy of me.

Praised by many for bringing Mickey out of the world of bland falsetto and into nuanced deliveries and a multi-faceted personality, Wayne did some of his best work on the video game series Kingdom Hearts.  He was heard daily on the Disney Channel’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and can still be heard every fifteen minutes in the Mickey’s PhilharMagic attraction at the Magic Kingdom. In 2008, both Wayne and Russi were made official Disney Legends for their outstanding stewardship of Mickey and Minnie’s legacies. On May 18, 2009, Wayne passed away at his home in Los Angeles, California, finally losing a battle he’d been fighting for several years with diabetes. He was only 62.

 To date, Wayne is the person who voiced Mickey the longest of the four talents who’ve done it (regularly) so far and, with all the media outlets that exist today, the most prolific (Russi is, by far, the longest Minnie). Bret Iwan took up the mantle after Wayne’s death. Bret was hired because of Wayne’s failing health and was supposed to understudy Wayne, just as Wayne understudied Jimmy, but the two never actually got to meet. So far Bret’s doing just fine. Most people never realized that a change occurred and only time will tell if Bret hangs on to the gig longer than Wayne, or if the third voice really is the charm.