June 20 - The Reluctant Dragon

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1941, RKO Pictures released the Walt Disney Production of The Reluctant Dragon to theaters. Dragon is based on a story of the same name by Kenneth Grahame, who also wrote The Wind in the Willows, which would also be adapted by the studio several years later. The movie is the first of the so-called package films Disney released during World War II. The war hadn’t reached America’s shores yet, but it was raging in Europe and the foreign revenue stream had all but dried up. Dragon is also the first Disney film to contain a significant portion of live action footage; almost half of its 74 minutes lack any kind of animation at all.

The plot of The Reluctant Dragon is kind of a weird take on a meta-reality theme. It stars Robert Benchley, a popular humorist of the era. For some reason Robert has a nagging need to sell the movie rights for Kenneth Grahame’s Dragon story to the Disney studio (it’s unclear why Robert would be able to sell the rights to someone else’s work, but that’s what is happening). His wife drops him off at the studio on her way to do some shopping (what else do wives do in 1941?) so he can get the deed done. He brushes off his official greeter and begins wandering around the place, unaccompanied (except for the massive camera crew, of course), visiting all the different departments, learning about how animation is produced. Along the way he (and therefore the audience) watches a clip of Casey Jr. in Dumbo as it goes through the Foley sound process, a story reel of rough animation for a new short called Baby Weems, and the first of Goofy’s infamous How to… sports shorts, How to Ride a Horse. Robert’s greeter finally catches up with him and delivers him to Walt’s side. Walt invites Robert into a screening room to watch a film the studio has just finished, which turns out to be the very story Robert was stopping by to sell the rights to, The Reluctant Dragon. When his wife picks him up on her way home, she berates Robert for missing out on selling Walt the rights to Dragon (which he clearly didn’t have the authority to do anyways) causing him to do an impression of Donald Duck’s famous retort, Phooey!

Image copyright Disney

The Reluctant Dragon was not well received. Part of that was due to the fact that it was released during the bitter animator’s strike at the studio. Part of it was because it wasn’t a new full length feature but a series of seemingly unrelated shorts strung together which confused audiences. It did, however, make money, earning $960,000 on a $600,000 budget. That fact alone set things up for the string of package films Disney released over the next several years. Since its initial release, it’s rare to see Dragon in its entirety, although it was released on both VHS and DVD with limited availability. How to Ride a Horse was rereleased as a standalone short in 1950 and, with the advent of television, both it and the extended Dragon short have been shown numerous times (and included in numerous home video collections) by themselves. One final note about The Reluctant Dragon: it is the only feature film that Walt appeared in. He had appeared on the big screen before, as part of the promotional ads for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Dragon would be his only acting gig until the studio’s anthology series came out on television.

June 19 - Pat Buttram

Image courtesy imdb.com

On this day, in 1915, Maxwell Emmett Buttram was born in Addison, Alabama. The seventh child of a Methodist minister, Maxwell spent all of his formative years in the sultry heat of the Yellowhammer State (it’s a woodpecker and the state bird). He graduated from Mortimer Jordan High School in Morris, Alabama and rolled on into Birmingham-Southern College, intending to follow his father into ministry. Instead, in an all too familiar story, he caught the acting bug when he was cast in several productions at the college and changed his mind about what he wanted to be when he grew up.

It’s not entirely fair to blame BSC for Maxwell’s change of heart though, although they did help cement it. On a trip to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, Maxwell was selected from the crowd as a typical Southern visitor to be interviewed on radio station WLS. His comedic observations about the fair were a hit with audiences and resulted in a job offer from the network’s Birmingham affiliate. He worked at the radio station throughout his college years, changing his professional name to Pat. Following his graduation from BSC, Pat moved to Chicago and became a regular on the popular National Barn Dance program.

Image courtesy geneautry.com

In the early Forties, Pat moved again, this time out to Hollywood. At first he was put into rotation as a new sidekick to Roy Rogers. The bad part of that plan was that Roy already had two regular partners and when it was quickly determined that a third one wasn’t needed, Pat was out. The good part was that he was free to team up with Gene Autry, who had returned from doing his duty in World War II and needed a new partner. It was a match made in entertainment heaven. Pat joined Gene on his radio show, Melody Ranch, starred in more than 40 movies with him and the pair even made the transition to television together, co-starring on The Gene Autry Show for five seasons.

Following the end of Gene’s show in 1956, Pat became a popular stand-up comedian, appearing several times on The Ed Sullivan Show, spinning fictional yarns about his ‘relatives’ spread throughout the south. He was also in high demand as a toastmaster and after dinner speaker at various functions around Hollywood. His seemingly gentle lampooning of Tinsel Town’s elite kept the stars coming back for more. In 1965, Pat returned to television with a recurring role as Mr. Haney, slippery salesman extraordinaire, on Green Acres, a gig he enjoyed for six seasons.

Image copyright Disney

With his distinctive voice (he once described it as the only part of him that didn’t quite make it out of puberty), it’s no surprise that Pat did a fair amount of voice work for the Walt Disney Company. He started in 1970 as Napolean, the hound dog, in The Aristocats. He then played the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham in 1973’s Robin Hood. In 1977’s The Rescuers, Pat was Luke, a resident of the bayou known for his special brews. He followed that up as Chief, another hound dog, in The Fox and the Hound in 1981. Seven years later, he showed up in a small role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit officially named Toon Bullet #1 (it’s the one with the white hat smoking a cigar). His last role with Disney (indeed his last role with anyone) was as the Possum Park MC in A Goofy Movie, released almost a year after his death.

Image courtesy theboot.com

As the calendar turned over into the Eighties, Pat’s acting career was mostly over, with just a handful of projects over the next decade and a half. Which didn’t mean he sat on the front porch drinking lemonade for the rest of his days. In 1982, he founded the Golden Boot Awards to recognize various categories of people who’d worked on Westerns throughout Hollywood’s history. The proceeds from the Golden Boots benefitted the Motion Picture Health and Welfare Fund. He was also active in politics. A lifelong Republican, he became something of a speech doctor for President Reagan, peppering the Gipper’s addresses with down home wisdom and homilies. In 1998, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Pat remained active most of the rest of his life, until January 8, 1994, when his suffering with renal failure came to an end in Los Angeles, California. His final resting place is in his beloved state of Alabama in, of course, the chapel of a Methodist Church.

June 18 - Alex Hirsch

Image courtesy hollywoodreporter.com

On this day, in 1985, Alexander Robert Hirsch was born in Piedmont, California. As a junior at Piedmont High School, Alex had his first brush with fame when he won the school's infamous Bird Calling Contest and got to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman. After graduation, he went to CalArts. He spent the summer after that junior year working on a stop motion animation film for Laika (of Coraline fame) ended up in the dust bin. Alex's first job after graduating in 2007 was with the Cartoon Network as a storyboard artist and writer for The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. His writing partner on that gig was Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time.

Image copyright Disney

Following the end of Flapjack's run, Alex teamed up with Maxwell Atoms and Justin Rolland (the creator of Rick and Morty) to develop Fish Hooks, an animated series that aired on the Disney Channel for three seasons. He also served as the modest hit's creative director during its run. It was his next project, also for the Disney Channel, that struck gold.

While at CalArts, Alex started developing a series about twin kids who get sent to spend the summer with their great-uncle in a mysterious town in the American Northwest. It was semi-autobiographical, based on vacations with his own twin sister to visit his grandfather. He even created a low budget, low quality 11 pilot of sorts. Somehow he knew that the property was just right for Disney. He even turned down an offer from Dreamworks. When he showed his film to executives at the Disney Channel, as Fish Hooks was winding down, they loved it, bought it and put it into production. On June 15, 2012, Gravity Falls made its debut, pulling in rave reviews and better than average Disney Channel ratings. The quirky, endearing show, bolstered by the performance of Kristen Schaal as Mabel Pines (the female twin), became a cult classic almost right out of the gate. Alex not only oversaw its production but provided several voices for the show as well, including Gruncle Stan, Soos and Bill Cipher.

Image copyright Disney

Gravity Falls slowly aired it's first season of shows over a couple of years on the Disney Channel before moving to Disney XD for its second season. After just 40 episodes, Alex announced that the series would be wrapping up in order to do right by the characters by not overstaying their welcome. Over the course of its run, Gravity Falls was nominated for numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, and won several Annie Awards. A few months after the final episode aired in February 2016, Alex announced a world wide treasure hunt based on the series. The goal was to find a statue of Alex's character, Bill Cipher. It was discovered in Reedsport, Oregon and the celebration of the end of the hunt mysteriously coincided with a release party of a Gravity Falls book. The book was a hit and spent almost a year on the best seller list.

Image courtesy theverge.com

Since the end of Gravity Falls, Alex has kept busy. He lent his voice to the Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb. He co-wrote Detective Pikachu, the Pokemon movie starring Ryan Reynolds. He contributed story bits to the Academy Award winning Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse. In February 2018, he released a Gravity Falls graphic novel that was considered a continuation of the recurring plot threads from the series. Since August of last year, he has been under a multi-year contract with Netflix to develop content for the streaming giant. There hasn't been any word yet on what he's cooking up, but we can assume it will be delightfully weird and look forward to binge watching all of it. Happy birthday, Alex!

June 17 - Terry Gilkyson

On this day, in 1916, Hamilton Henry Gilkyson III was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Known as Terry most of his life, he grew up in a close knit family where, like many folks living through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, music formed the bulk of their entertainment. Terry found it interesting enough that he became a music student at the University of Pennsylvania. He chaffed under the structure of classwork, however, and dropped out after two years. He then moved out to Tucson, Arizona in 1937 and began working as a ranch hand on a friend’s big spread. In his spare time, he learned how to play guitar and write folk songs. When World War II came to America, he joined the United States Army, serving first in the cavalry then moving on to the Army Air Corps. Following his discharge at the end of the war, Terry returned to Pennsylvania, took over his father’s insurance company and got married. But the siren song of a career in music proved too strong to resist.


In 1947, Terry and his new bride, Jane, relocated to Los Angeles, California. In 1948, he landed his first professional music gig on Armed Forces Radio as The Solitary Singer. The next year he recorded The Cry of the Wild Goose, a song he also wrote. A version sung by Frankie Laine became a hit in 1950. Throughout the first half of the Fifties, Terry produced three albums for Decca Records, sang two hits with a group called The Weavers (On Top of Old Smoky and Across the Wide Missouri), wrote another hit song for Frankie (Tell Me a Story) and began appearing in small roles in movies, frequently writing the music for them as well. (1951’s Slaughter Trail).

Image courtesy allmusic.com

In 1953, he joined a group called The Easy Riders. The trio prospered in an era of political uncertainty (damn you, Joe McCarthy!) by studiously avoiding controversial topics, something most folk singers of the time (or any time really) were unable to do. The Riders released one song, Marianne, that went gold (meaning it sold over a million copies) in 1957 and wrote the song Memories Are Made of This which became a hit for Dean Martin (with backing vocals by… The Easy Riders!). Terry continued writing songs by himself throughout the decade, creating several folk standards that would be recorded by Burl Ives, The New Christie Minstrels and even Harry Belafonte. One of his last compositions with the Riders would be Greenfields, which became a hit for The Brothers Four.

Image copyright Disney

In the early Sixties, Terry dropped out of The Easy Riders and started writing songs for the Walt Disney Company. Some of his work from this period includes My Heart Was an Island from Swiss Family Robinson, Savage Sam and Me from Savage Sam (the sequel to Old Yeller), Thomasina from The Three Lives of Thomasina and the title song from The Moon-Spinners. In 1967, Terry wrote several songs for the studio’s 19^th animated feature, The Jungle Book, as did the Sherman Brothers. Only one of his actually made it into the film (Walt felt most of them were too dark), but it’s the one everybody knows and hums along with, The Bare Necessities. Terry’s song was also the only part of The Jungle Book to earn an Oscar nomination, his one and only shot at an award (he lost to Talk to the Animals from Dr. Doolittle). His final contribution to the company came in 1970’s The Aristocats with the song Thomas O’Malley Cat.

Following the success of his work in The Jungle Book and The Aristocats, Disney asked Terry to sign on with the company full time, instead of the contract work he’d been doing up to that point. He was leery of the offer, however, afraid that he would no longer have rights to his own songs. Rather than accept, Terry chose to retire altogether. He spent the remainder of his life watching his three kids build careers in the music industry. While visiting family in Austin, Texas, he passed away on October 15, 1999. He was 83.

June 16 - DisneyQuest

On this day, in 1999, DisneyQuest Chicago opened its doors to guests on the corner of Ohio and Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. The concept of DisneyQuest began in the late Nineties as an experimental attraction in a little side room of Innoventions at Epcot. Guests were invited in as test subjects to play a virtual reality game based on Aladdin. They donned big heavy VR helmets, sat on “flying carpets” and flew their way through the streets of Agrabah and the Cave of Wonders, collecting jewels and searching for the Genie. Guests oohed and aahed their way through the simple game, marveling at the new technology. What they didn’t know is that Disney wasn’t just testing out virtual reality. They were also testing out an entirely new concept for a theme park.

Image courtesy forums.wdwmagic.com

The end of the 20^th Century found the Walt Disney Company thirsting for new arenas to make money in, mostly outside of the existing parks and resorts. A new division was created called Disney Regional Entertainment to make this dream come true. There are several projects from this period that either never came to fruition or actually started and then were abruptly shut down. One that didn’t make it past the planning stages was the idea of having Disney owned and operated rest stops along the major highways of America. The first concept to open was Club Disney, a playland/birthday party destination for the under 10 crowd. That chain made it up to five locations in California and Arizona before being shut down just months after the fifth one opened. The second idea to open was DisneyQuest.

Image courtesy touringplans.com

The first DisneyQuest opened on the West End of Downtown Disney in June 1988 and was touted as the first virtual theme park. Personally, I loved the place. There was that original Aladdin attraction as well as ‘rides’ based on Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Book, Space Mountain and Alien Encounter. It really was like having a whole theme park in one multi-story building, complete with a midway on the top floor and classic video games scattered throughout. The concept really caught on and a second DisneyQuest was announced for the Magnificent Mile shopping district of Chicago, Illinois.

Full disclosure time: a few months after DisneyQuest Chicago opened, my wife and I moved from Orlando to Chicago and I began working there as a cast member in the retail operations part of it. I wasn’t around for the honeymoon period, but I did get to watch all the missteps that occurred over the next year. My version of what happened is probably a little (or a lot) more honest than the official company version.

Image courtesy picclick.com

DisneyQuest Chicago was the first entertainment venue Disney ever opened in Midwest, making it the closest Disney destination for tens of millions of Americans. On top of that, it was located in a city that hosts millions of tourists from all over the world every year. The success of DisneyQuest Chicago really should have been an easy thing to attain. Of course, unlike the California and Florida properties, this park would have to rely more heavily on repeat business from the locals and that is where management started going wrong.

Hear me now: DisneyQuest Chicago always turned a profit, no matter what you read in company accounts. As it was told to me, the place achieved somewhere in the 6-7% range. Unfortunately, Michael Eisner at the time was fixated on (and had promised shareholders) 20% profits from business units, not necessarily an attainable goal much less a sustainable one. In an effort to boost the numbers, DQC management began tinkering with its mode of admission. They tried a system where guests would buy points, everything inside cost a certain amount of points, you could buy more points as you went along. They tried a flat admission fee, everything included. They tried a tiered plan where you paid different amounts for different groups of attractions and games. The biggest problem was that they tried all of these things one right after the other during the year I was there. They knew that locals would probably come once every three months or so. Want to guess how often they changed admission prices and systems? Locals were really beginning to love the place and be excited about making it a regular part of their entertainment rotation, but every time they showed up, it was like visiting a completely new place when they went to buy a ticket. That gets tiresome really quickly. Eventually people will throw their hands up in frustration and stop coming. And, by the end, that’s what was happening.

Image courtesy yelp.com

I wasn’t there for end. I saw it coming and got out. The breaking point for me came when the third DisneyQuest that had been announced for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was cancelled even though construction had already begun. That deal left a literal hole in the ground for several years before it was finally filled in and turned into a parking lot. On September 4, 2001 DisneyQuest Chicago closed its doors forever, leaving the DQ at Downtown Disney the sole surviving part of the great experiment. That first and final location continued operating for almost sixteen years after that however, not closing until July 2, 2017. In my mind that proves the viability of the concept, but my mind also thinks that turning a profit is a good reason to keep a venture going. Clearly, in a world where large chunks of money are poured into failing ventures in order to try to save them (rarely successfully), I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Image courtesy planet99.com

Disney Regional Entertainment did launch a third brand during its tenure, the ESPN Zone, a sports themed restaurant, in July 1998. Nine of those eventually opened in places like Baltimore, Maryland and Denver, Colorado. A large one was located right next to DQC. Although that chain lasted the longest, most of them were closed or closing by 2009 (one, in Los Angeles,  lasted until 2013 but it was operated by a separate company) and DRE itself was dissolved in 2010. What had started so promisingly a dozen years before was now a victim of corporate impatience and greed. The time when a virtual theme park was considered an innovative place to play has probably passed us by (although with the rise of personal virtual reality systems, you never know), so the chances of seeing anything like DisneyQuest in the near future is slim. Which is too bad. I kinda miss the place.

June 15 - Bill Martin

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 1917, Wilson E. Martin was born in Marshalltown, Iowa. Bill, as he was known, and his family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was still pretty young. After high school, he went to Los Angeles Junior College and then on to the Chouinard Art Institute to study architecture. Following his graduation from Chouinard, Bill got a job as a set designer for 20^th Century Fox in 1940. His career was interrupted by World War II, which he spent in the United States Air Force as a bombardier trainer. Following the war, Bill worked for a company called Panoramic Productions before returning to Fox, this time as an assistant art director. Then, in 1953, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Image courtesy disneydetail.me

While working at Fox, Bill got a phone call. Someone from the Walt Disney Studio was wondering if he would like to switch companies. Disney was looking for new talent to become part of a group of employees referred to as Imagineers, was he interested? Bill jumped at the chance and became part of the team working to make Walt’s Disneyland dreams come true. One of his first assignments was to travel around to existing amusement parks to study existing systems and figure out what was working and, more importantly, what wasn’t. Then it was back to Burbank for massive brainstorming sessions.

Image courtesy disneyhistoryinstitute.com

Bill would be the first to admit that not all of his ideas were great ones. Take, for example, the corset shop he dreamed up for Main Street USA called The Wizard of Bras. Obviously that particular shop never made it past the idea phase, but it was that kind of creative thinking that convinced Walt to make Bill the art director for Fantasyland. As a result, he was integral in shaping the design of everything in the area, attractions like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and Peter Pan’s Flight, as well as the land’s general layout and look. Once Disneyland was opened, Bill would move on to other projects in the ever expanding park. He helped design the Autopias, Bear Country, the monorail system and New Orleans Square including both its signature attractions, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion.

Image copyright Disney

By 1971, Bill had become the Vice President of Design at WED Enterprises (now called Walt Disney Imagineering). He was the man in charge of the master layout for the company’s newest theme park endeavor, the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. Bill’s personal design projects included the famous utilidors (the ‘tunnels’ underneath most of the Magic Kingdom’s guest areas), Cinderella Castle, Main Street USA (still no corset shop though) and the system of canals which connect various areas of the entire Florida property. As if that wasn’t enough, he also designed a wide array of watercraft that was going to be used in those canals, including the large ferry boats that run between the Magic Kingdom and the Transportation and Ticket Center and various smaller steam launches and side wheelers.

Image courtesy disneyworldexplorer.com

Bill officially retired from Disney in 1977, but, like so many of the influencers of that era, he didn’t simply walk away. He continued to keep his hand in the theme park creation business, just on a consultation only basis. His influence can be experienced in the Mexico and Italy pavilions at Epcot and the master layout for Tokyo Disneyland. Bill was, naturally, declared an official Disney Legend in 1994 for taking the theme park design torch from Walt himself and carrying it right on into the future. He has also been honored with not one but two mentions on Main Street USA windows. If you are in Disneyland, look above the Main Street Bank and you’ll see a window with his given name, Wilson Martin, right over the name Gabriel Scognamillo, who was the art director for Tomorrowland during Disneyland’s creation. If you find yourself in the Magic Kingdom, Bill is named as part of a larger group of Walt Disney World’s original designers on a window above the Plaza Restaurant. That window reads “Walter E. Disney - Graduate School of Design & Master Planning - Instructors, Howard Brummitt, Marvin Davis, Fred Hope - Headmaster, Richard Irvine - Dean of Design, John Hench - Instructors, Vic Greene, Bill Martin, Chuck Myall.” Bill passed away on August 2, 2010. He was 93.

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.

June 13 - Mary Wickes

Image courtesy findagrave.com

On this day, in 1910, Mary Isabella Wickenhauser was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Mary’s parents loved the theater and began taking their daughter to see shows as soon as she was old enough to stay awake through an entire one. She was extremely intelligent for her age, ended up skipping not one but two grades and graduated from high school when she was only 16. She graduated from Washington University in 1930 with a double major of English Literature and Political Science with the intent of going into a career in law. But (and there always seems to be a but, doesn’t there), a professor said she should try a little acting, you know, just for fun. So she did. The law career never materialized.

By 1934, Mary was on Broadway having simplified her last name to Wickes. Her first show was The Farmer Takes a Wife with Henry Fonda. She followed Farmer up with runs in Stage Door, Hitch Your Wagon, Father Malachy's Miracle and Stars in Your Eyes. Her breakthrough role came in 1939 when she originated the uptight nurse Miss Preen in Kaufman and Hart’s classic comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner. The show enjoyed an almost two year run and when it came time to make the film version in 1942, Mary and star Monty Woolley were the only two cast members to make the leap to the big screen.

Image courtesy trueclassics.com

The next two years were busy ones for Mary. She appeared in eleven films including the Abbott and Costello mystery Who Done It? She slowed down slightly after that, doing eight more movies through the end of the decade, perfecting her persona of the character who appears to be stodgy at first (like a nun or a secretary) but spits out the most sassy one liners by the picture’s end. Through the same time period, Mary also appeared in six more Broadway shows, ending with Town House in 1948. It would be three more decades before she returned to the Great White Way, when she spent nearly a year as Aunt Eller in a 1979 revival of Oklahoma!

Image courtesy pinterest.com

Mary’s career television career practically began with the medium itself. Though NBC had been broadcasting television since 1939 (CBS started a couple of years later), it wasn’t until after World War II that people began buying sets and actual content was needed. Mary’s first appearances came in 1948 on two episodes of Actors Studio on the brand new ABC network. She continued showing up on various anthology shows, including an episode of Studio One in Hollywood in 1949 as Mary Poppins (preceding Julie Andrews by fifteen years!). Her first series as a regular cast member came in 1953 as part of The Danny Thomas Show. She spent the first three seasons playing Liz O’neal. Over the next four decades, Mary would guest star in dozens of episodes of show ranging from whatever Lucille Ball’s latest series was to M*A*S*H to Punky Brewster to a Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of The Man Who Came to Dinner in which she reprised he role of Miss Preen. She appeared as a regular cast member on eight more series, including Mrs. G. Goes to College (which earned her an Emmy nomination in 1962) and the show she’s probably best known for, Father Dowling Mysteries with Tom Bosley. She also had a few dozen supporting roles in films over the remainder of her career, including a turn as the housekeeper of the inn featured in White Christmas, Mrs. Squires in The Music Man and Aunt March in the 1994 version of Little Women.

Image courtesy chicagonow.com

Mary enjoyed a number of positions in the Disney family during her career. She first worked for the company on two of its early television shows. She was Katie, the housekeeper, for the serial Walt Disney Presents: Annette which aired during the third season of The Mickey Mouse Club and she played Dolores Bastinado in three episodes of the first season of Zorro, both in 1958. She then played a pivotal, if entirely unseen, role in 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians as the live action model for the classic villain, Cruella de Vil. Thirty-one years later, Mary delighted audiences as the crusty old Sister Mary Lazarus in Touchstone Pictures’ Sister Act and its sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Her final role with Disney (her final role with any studio for that matter) was as a wisecracking gargoyle named Laverne in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

As Mary got older, she suffered from the usual list of illnesses that plague us all. Unfortunately for her, she fell during one of her hospitalizations and broke her hip. Complications from the resulting surgery proved to be too much for her and she died on October 22, 1995 at the age of 85. She was one recording session away from finishing her work on Hunchback; if you listen carefully, you might be able to pick out the six lines that Jane Withers had to record in her place. She never married nor did she have any children, so, besides the millions of laughs she left behind, her legacy was to use her estate to establish a $2 million memorial fund in her parent’s names at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, thereby honoring the people who planted the seeds of her remarkable career so many years before.

June 12 - Monsanto House of the Future

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1957, the Monsanto House of the Future officially opened its doors to guests in Tomorrowland of Disneyland. The Monsanto Company (yes, THAT Monsanto) once upon a time had a plastics division and, like the well-meaning gentleman in The Graduate, thought plastics were not only pretty neat-o but represented the future. They just needed a way to show that concept off. When Disneyland opened and not only proved to be popular but was owned by a future focused guy (who was always looking for sponsorship cash), they knew they’d found their venue. Teaming up with architects and engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Monsanto set about proving the versatility and durability of plastic to the fine folks of the late 1950s.

Image courtesy synergyenvironments.com

The team designed a house that had four identical wings coming off a hub, making it look a bit like a weird pinwheel from above. The entire house was raised up several feet on a central base beneath the hub and was constructed of some concrete, a little steel for support and a whole lot of glass reinforced plastic. Not only was the outside of the house supposed to represent the future of construction, but the inside was designed to be prophetic as well. The designers decided that this is what America would be used to right around 1987. Like most visions of the future, while some of it looks fairly ridiculous from our vantage point, they actually did get quite a few things right.

One of the big things the House of Future correctly predicted was microwave ovens. Even though they’d technically been around for over a decade at that point, and you could buy a home version for around $2,500 (the equivalent of $22,750 today), microwaves were still a novelty item in 1957. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find a home in America that doesn't have one and you can get one for under $50 (around $6 in 1957 terms). Other things they guessed right on include security systems, whole house intercom systems and fancy thermostats. The walk through attraction also got dishes and utensils made out of plastic right, sort of. Plastic forks are certainly a whole lot more, well let's just say it, ubiquitous today, but they aren't durable, everyday pieces of silverware that get washed in our sonic dishwashers and used over and over again. The things that might have been, am I right?

Image courtesy laughingplace.com

The Monsanto House of the Future was a huge hit with Disneyland guests. Nearly half a million traipsed through it in the first six weeks alone and over 20 million people experienced it during the 10 years it was open. But all futuristic endeavors can only stay around for so long before reality either makes them look dated or silly. In December 1967, the House of the Future became a thing of the past. But not before proving Monsanto's point about the durability of plastic, particularly in the house's exterior shell.  When a wrecking ball was brought in to knock the house down, it just kept bouncing off, doing almost no damage at all. Saws and drills and sledgehammers were tried next, to no avail.  Apparently, the large bolts holding the thing together broke, but the shell remained intact. Finally, each wing was looped with chains and squeezed down into smaller chunks of plastic that could be hauled away. And that was after sitting in the Southern California sun for a decade. Rumor has it that you can still see a remnant of the House, if you know where to look. Some day, when you find yourself in the Pixie Hollow area of the park, you might notice a large concrete planter painted green that looks like it could hold up the hub of a giant surreal looking pinwheel. You can then turn to your companions and say "Did you ever hear of the time Monsanto thought we'd all be living in plastic houses by now?"

June 11 - Richard Todd

Image courtesy tardis.fandom.com

On this day, in 1919, Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Andrew, was a doctor, an officer in the British Army and an international rugby player for Ireland. Part of Richard’s formative years were spent in India, where his father was stationed for a while, with the bulk of his youth taking place in Devonshire, England. Upon graduating from the historic Shrewsbury School, he began studies at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst with the intent of following in his father’s footsteps. That intent didn’t last long and soon he was student at the Italia Conti Academy in London training for a life in entertainment instead. The change in careers put additional strain on an already rocky relationship he had with his mother. When he learned that she committed suicide a year later, he later admitted he didn’t grieve much (a sentiment that would come back to haunt him as we’ll see).
 

Image courtesy ww2.gravestone.com

Richard’s first professional gig as an actor came in 1936 in a production of Twelfth Night at the Open Air Theater in Regent’s Park. He bounced around regional theaters for a few years before co-founding the Dundee Repertory Theatre in Scotland in 1939. During the same time period, Richard had begun winning small roles, all of them uncredited, in British films, beginning with Good Morning, Boys in 1937. He would have continued to slowly build his acting career, except for something else that was building at the time: World War II. It turned out that Richard was going to follow in his father’s footsteps after all.


Richard joined the British Army as a commissioned officer in early 1941 as part of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He later became part of the 7^th Light Infantry Parachute Battalion and was among the first British soldiers to land in Normandy on June 6, 1944 as part of Operation Tonga during the D-Day campaign. He was part of the battalion that met John Howard on the Pegasus Bridge near Caen and repulsed several German attempts to retake it. He managed to survive the liberation of France and was honorably discharged in 1946
.

Image courtesy imdb.com

Upon his return to Britain, Richard once again found himself in Dundee, Scotland and began performing with the Rep once again. His agent arranged for a screen test with the Associated British Picture Corporation and, in 1948, they awarded him a long-term contract. His first film for ABPC was the 1949 crime drama For Them That Trespass. Richard’s performance as the movie’s lead helped make it a moderate success and launched his career on the big screen. Earlier in the year, he’d played a supporting role in a Rep production of The Hasty Heart. When the production moved to London, Richard was moved into the lead role of Cpl. Lachlan McLachlan. That casting change led to his star turn in the Warner Brothers film adaptation that also came out in 1949, costarring Ronald Reagan and Patricia Neal. Richard was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for Heart and won Favorite Male Star in the British National Film Awards. 

Image copyright Disney

Richard followed that up with a string of thrillers, including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1950 film Stage Fright, that earned mixed reviews. In 1955, he starred in the two films he is most remembered for. The first, for 20^th Century Fox, was titled A Man Called Peter and cast Richard as US Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall. The second, and even more popular, was The Dam Busters, about the RAF’s mission to destroy key German dams using so-called bouncing bombs. Busters easily became the highest grossing film in Britain that year. Over the next several years, Richard starred in a variety of films, mostly period pieces or World War 2 stories, that were popular but never quite lived up to 1955. 

Richard became part of the Disney family early in the company’s shift to live action movies. His first role came in the second fully live film Disney produced, 1952’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (obviously the title department still had some work to do). Playing Robin Hood himself, Richard was surrounded by a great cast and the film, while not quite up to the level of the previous Errol Flynn version, proved to be quite popular with audiences and critics alike. The following year, Richard and Robin’s director, Ken Annakin, would team up again for The Sword and the Rose. Also starring Glynis Johns (she played Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins), Rose tells the story of Mary Tudor, a younger sister of King Henry VIII. Rose did not do as well as Robin Hood, but was popular enough in Europe to bring Richard back for a third Disney film later that same year. For 1953’s Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue, he was once again in the title role and was critically deemed a better than decent Rob. However, Rob Roy, like Rose, didn’t perform up to expectations in the United States and soured Walt on making any more period pieces, thus beginning the era of light comedies that the company excelled at. One other notable aspect to Rob Roy is that it was the last Disney film distributed by RKO Pictures. Everything from that point on was distributed in house by Buena Vista Distribution. For his live action pioneering work in those three films, Richard was declared an official Disney Legend in 2002.

Image copyright Disney

As the counter-culture vibe took over in the mid Sixties, Richard’s roles began to get fewer and farther between. His solid, dependable and definitely establishment persona fell out of vogue. One highlight from the decade came in 1962 for the star studded The Longest Day. Richard played John Howard, the Major he met up with in real life to defend the Pegasus Bridge, while, in a move that had to add extra layers of surrealism to the shoot, someone else played him. Throughout the Seventies, Richard’s voice could be heard as a reader on Radio Four’s Morning Story in Britain. During the Eighties, he appeared on a handful of television shows including episodes of Silent Witness, Doctor Who and Murder, She Wrote. His final appearance happened well into his own eighties, in an episode of Heartbeat in 2007 on the BBC.



The end of Richard’s life was marred by personal tragedies, when not one but two of his sons (he had five children by three different mothers) committed suicide, Seumas in 1997 and Peter in 2005. He rarely spoke of either incident but both made him think of his mother’s end and how his career ended up with terrible book ends. Richard passed away himself on December 3, 2009 and was buried between his two sons, in a gravesite he’d regularly visited over the last several years. He was 90.