July 28 - Bud Luckey

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On this day, in 1934, William Everett Luckey was born in Billings, Montana. Growing up in Big Sky Country, it’s no surprise that Bud, as all his friends knew him, would spend a summer vacation or two at a dude ranch. He once quipped that the experiences only made him a little bit cowboy but they were great at improving his drawing skills when it came to horses. Following his graduation from high school, Bud served a stint in the Korean War with the United States Air Force. When his tour of duty in Korea was up in 1953, he stayed on with the military, becoming an Artist-Illustrator with NATO forces in Europe. After a year with NATO, Bud spent three more doing the same kind of work with Strategic Air Command, also in Europe and North Africa. After his honorable discharge in 1957, he remained a reservist throughout the Sixties, but his professional life became much more animated.

Bud used his love of drawing and his GI Bill benefits to enroll in art classes at the famed Chouinard Art Institute. Part of his training happened under the direction of Art Babbitt, an accomplished Disney animator who was forced out of the company during the Animator’s Strike of 1941. After graduating from Chouinard in 1960, Bud continued to apprentice under Babbitt at Art’s own studio, Quartet Films, while also beginning to branch out on his own. He managed to get his first screen credit as part of the team that animated The Alvin Show, the first cartoon series to feature David Seville and his chipmunks.

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In 1961, Bud was hired as an Art Director and Producer for an ad agency, Guild, Bascom, & Bonfigli. For the next six years he worked with classic characters like Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam and Snap, Crackle and Pop. He created the Bosco Dumbbunnies for a series of Bosco Chocolate Syrup commercials and won a Clio Award in 1966 for a Betty Crocker spot titled Magic Faucet. GBB was a large agency, encompassing not only television commercials but television shows as well. The head of the show division was Alex Anderson, the creator of Rocky, Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right. Bud was able to cross division lines within the agency and got experience working on with all three of those characters. He also dabbled a bit in the agency’s political division, working on ad campaigns for John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.

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Several special friendships evolved during Bud’s tenure at the GBB Agency. He worked on several commercials with a young Jim Henson (probably the Wilkins Coffee ads) and the two became friends, working together off and on until Jim’s death nearly 30 years later. Bud was also an integral part of the Dolly Madison account, which used the Peanuts characters in their ads. After being made Senior Art Director of all things Charlie Brown related, Bud made frequent visits to see Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, and Bill Melendez, the director behind such classics as A Charlie Brown Christmas. The friendship and respect that blossomed between Bud, Charles and Bill was so tight that, when Bud started his own studio in 1969, Charles and Bill insisted he still be involved with all ads concerning the Peanuts and the ad agency had to contract with Bud for several more years in order to keep the account.

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Now working in his own studio, the Luckey-Zamora Picture Moving Company (and no that’s not a typo), Bud capitalized on his friendship with Jim Henson and began producing animated shorts for Sesame Street. He created all kinds of classic pieces, some of my favorites being #7 The Alligator King, The Old Woman Who Lived in a 9 and Martian Beauty. He also did work in animation of the non-Disney type (it being a dark era in the company’s history, that was probably wise). Bud has credits on the Mad Magazine Television Special (a 1974 pilot that was never actually aired but lives online in infamy), 1977’s The Extraordinary Adventures of the Mouse and His Child and Don Bluth’s first feature after leaving Disney, 1982’s The Secret of NIMH. In the mid Eighties, Bud merged his studio, which for years had been the largest animation studio in the San Francisco area, with Colossal Pictures which freed him up to make the move to another fledgling studio in 1990.

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Bud joined the team at Pixar as their fifth artist, immediately becoming a character developer, storyboard artist and animator (it was a small company, everyone wore more than one hat). Toy Story was his first foray into computer animation, but he once said that the kids who learned their numbers on Sesame Street from his animation were now teaching him how to animate with numbers and that was a good thing. Bud is credited with moving the character of Woody from a ventriloquist's dummy to a talking toy with a pull string (and the guy we all know and love today).

Bud stuck around at Pixar for a total of twenty-four years. He designed characters for A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Cars, Toy Story 3, Ratatouille, WALL*E and Up. In 2003, his animated short Boundin' premiered in front of The Incredibles. I say his because he designed it, wrote it, composed the music for it, sang in it and played the banjo for it. Boundin' was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Annie Award for Best Short. 

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It would have been enough if that were Bud's only association with The Incredibles, but he also got in front of the microphone for the film as the voice of Rick Dicker, the federal agent who oversees the Superhero Relocation Program. Bud would provide the voice of two more Disney characters in the course of his career. First he played the small but pivotal role of Chuckles the Clown in 2010's Toy Story 3 and the subsequent shorts Hawaiian Vacation and Small Fry. Then, in 2011, he took a gloomier look at life as Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh.

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Bud retired from Pixar and the world of animation in 2014. One of the things people who knew his animation work were surprised to learn was that he had also designed and illustrated over 100 children's book during his lifetime, including Sesame Street coloring books and Little Golden Books featuring Pixar characters. He removed himself to the East Coast to enjoy his twilight years, which only numbered a few. On February 24, 2018, Bud suffered a fatal stroke at his home in Newtown, Connecticut. He was 83.

July 27 - Bill Sullivan

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On this day, in 1955, William Sullivan began his new job as ticket taker at the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland of Disneyland. Born in 1936, Sully, as most people called him, was studying architecture and working his first job in the aircraft industry when a television show changed his life. Like many people on July 17, 1955, Sully was glued to his television set watching the opening ceremonies of a new kind of entertainment in Anaheim, Disneyland. Unlike most people watching, he was inspired to completely change the course of his life by what he saw. The following Saturday he went down to the park to apply for a job. He was hired on the spot, quit his job at Northrop Aircraft on Monday and two days later was happily taking people’s tickets for the Jungle Cruise.

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A quick detour into the world of tickets at the beginning of Disneyland. For the first three months of operation, it cost guests $1 to get into the park, which included three attractions, and then between 10 and 35 cents more for each additional attraction. In October 1955, ticket books were introduced with A, B and C tickets in them. The best rides, like the Jungle Cruise, required a C ticket while something like the Carousel would be an A ticket ride. In 1957, as more attractions were added to Disneyland, a D ticket was introduced and the ticket tiers were expanded once more in 1959 to include E tickets. Some attractions, like the Matterhorn Bobsleds, debuted at E ticket status while older attractions, like the Jungle Cruise, were promoted to E ticket status, or whatever level was appropriate. The phrase “that’s an E ticket ride” has sort of become synonymous with exciting thrill rides but all it really meant was you were riding one of the best rides. Yes, the Bobsleds were E ticket, but so was the Disneyland Railroad. We now return to you to our regularly scheduled post.

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It didn’t take Sully long to get promoted from Jungle Cruise ticket taker to wisecracking Jungle Cruise skipper. After 2.5 years exclusively in that madcap bubble, Sully got to train on other attractions and move around the park more. He was then promoted to what he called a Yo-Yo Supervisor. Disneyland couldn’t afford to make him a full supervisor just yet, so at high attendance times he’d be wearing a suit and tie and managing things, then when attendance dropped again, he’d be back in costume running an attraction, sometimes going back and forth between the two roles on a day by day basis. In 1959, when the park enjoyed its first expansion with the addition of the Matterhorn Bobsleds and the Nature’s Wonderland section of Frontierland, Sully was made a full supervisor.

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Almost as soon as Sully became full time management, he also became a specials man. When Walt was chosen to be a part of the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, Sully was on the company’s security team. He was part of the team that ran the premier of Mary Poppins at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Sully was then chosen to go to the 1964 World’s Fair as an assistant manager to help facilitate and troubleshoot the four attractions the company built for it. He moved his family to Queens, NY for a year and his daughter even started kindergarten there. When he returned to California in late 1965, he was promoted to manager of all of Fantasyland. And that’s when things got busy.

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While in New York, Sully had heard rumors of something Walt was cooking up called Project X that was going to take place on the East Coast, but no one knew what, when or exactly where. Shortly after becoming the head of Fantasyland, Sully was let in on the secret: another theme park was being planned for Central Florida. It then became Sully’s job, along with the Legendary Rolly Krump, to design the layout of Fantasyland for the new park. When they’d done all they could with that project, Sully was promoted to Senior Staff Assistant to the Vice President of the Florida Project, which basically meant he was now a high priced jack-of-all-trades.

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It might almost be easier to list the things Sully didn’t do in those years just before Walt Disney World opened. He helped design the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and Main Street USA (they made it twelve feet wider than Disneyland’s in order to accommodate bigger parades). He set up a post office to facilitate communication between Burbank and the construction companies. He helped get the Preview Center up and running. He was in charge of most of the promotional materials that were being made available to locals. He ran a legislator’s weekend so Jack Lindquist could convince the Florida state senators and representatives that creating a special economic zone for Disney was a great idea. He helped set up and staff the Preview Center. He was part of the Security and Fire Prevention team and was in charge of hiring the first 75 Security Cast Members for the Florida property. In short, Sully was the grease that kept the whole of Walt Disney World moving forward.

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Sully was also an integral part of the team that was planning and building EPCOT Center. Officially he was the director of PICO, the Project Installation and Coordination Office. Basically what that meant is that, while he didn’t have the authority to approve or disapprove of projects, all of them came through him and his office. With all of his operational experience, Sully could (and did) make improvement suggestions and rework the design of anything he felt needed tweaking. He spent four years perfecting the park and then was in charge of actually running the place for the first two years it was open. During the same period, Sully help train hundreds of cast members for the opening of Disney’s first international park, Tokyo Disneyland.

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In 1987, Sully was promoted to Vice President in charge of the Magic Kingdom, the world he had done so much to help create. He spent several years there until one of his old co-workers, Jim Cora, who was now in charge of all international Disney parks, sweet talked him into coming over to Europe to help get Disneyland Paris ready for its opening. So Sully spent the first few months of 1992 opening another Disney theme park. He returned to Florida where he resumed his duties as top man at the Magic Kingdom until his retirement in 1993.

Sully has the distinction of being one of the few people who have their names on not one but two windows on Main Street USA, both in the Magic Kingdom. The first one he received was as part of a group of guys who were instrumental in getting Walt Disney World off the ground. It reads “Windemere Fraternal Hall – Lodge Meetings Every Friday – Charter Members - Bob Allen - Pete Crimmings, Dick Evans, Bill Hoelscher, Bob Mathieson, Bill Sullivan” and can be found on Center Street above Crystal Arts. Sully received his second one for his retirement and it’s a solo act above the ice cream parlor. That one reads “Sully's Safaris & Guide Service - Chief Guide Bill Sullivan.” As impressive as having two windows is, Sully was absolutely floored the day he got his letter inviting him to a ceremony in 2005 where he was officially declared a Disney Legend.

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Sully still resides in Central Florida although he says he doesn’t go to the Disney parks much anymore. He admits that it’s mostly because he’d get too upset about all the changes that have been made since they were “his” parks. They aren’t his anymore but he’s okay with that. For 38 magical years he carried on the Disney tradition and now it is someone else’s turn. When asked about his favorite memory from his career, he gets a twinkle in his eye and mentions meeting the cute blonde who worked across from the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland and has been his wife for over 50 years. I know just how he feels (although my twinkle is brunette).

July 26 - Buddy Baker

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On this day, in 2002, Norman Dale Baker passed away in Hollywood, California. Born in Springfield, Missouri on January 4, 1918, Buddy, as most people called him, learned to read music before he could read lyrics. He began playing the piano at the age of 4, learned the trumpet at 11 and had formed his own band by his teen years. He studied music at Southwest Baptist University, eventually earning his doctorate in it before moving to Los Angeles in 1938.

Buddy began his professional career as a trumpet player and musical arranger on the radio programs of the day. He started on The Bob Hope Show before moving on to Jacky Benny and Eddie Cantor's shows. When World War II started, he returned to Bob Hope and became his show's musical director. Buddy brought big band leader Stan Kenton to the show and arranged Ken's first big hit, And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine. Following the war, he added Professor to his resume taking a job at Los Angeles City College in their school of music. He wasn't above helping out his students though. In 1954, he composed the hit jazz song Journey into Love with drummer Louis Bellson. And then one day later that same year, he got a call from another former student, George Bruns, who worked over at the Walt Disney Studio.

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George was looking for someone to compose some music for a couple of episodes of the Disneyland television series and he thought of his former professor. Buddy agreed to spend a couple of weeks at the studio coming up with something for Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. It ended up being a really long two weeks as Buddy wouldn't retire from Disney until 29 years later. In those three decades, he became the studio's musical director and one of the most prolific composers Disney ever had.

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Buddy wasn't as flashy as his contemporaries at the studio. Most people have at least heard of the Sherman Brothers, and don't get me wrong, Robert and Richard Sherman produced some fantastic work over the years, but even though you might not know Buddy's name, a walk through any of Disney's theme parks would be awfully quiet if none of his work existed. The first category we'll talk about is movie scores. He did dozens of them for Disney but a short list of his live action work would have to include Summer Magic, The Monkey's Uncle, The Gnome-Mobile, The Million Dollar Duck, The Apple Dumpling Gang, The Shaggy D.A. and Hot Lead Cold Feet. In 1972, he earned an Oscar nomination for Napoleon and Samantha, which also happened to be Jodie Foster's screen debut. On the animated side of things, Buddy scored several shorts including the classic Donald in Mathmagicland and all three of the original Winnie the Pooh shorts (including additional material for the 1977 Winnie the Pooh feature). In 1981, he made his second foray into animated features providing the score for The Fox and the Hound.

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As impressive as Buddy's film work is, it's in the category of music written for theme parks that some of his most recognizable tunes occur. His most famous song has to be Grim Grinning Ghosts which he wrote with fellow Legend Xavier Atencio for the Haunted Mansion. He also scored the eerie music that can be heard throughout that same attraction. Buddy and Xavier also wrote the original music that is used in the classic Country Bear Jamboree show and the song It's Fun to Be Free for the World of Motion pavilion at EPCOT. Buddy's other music written and arranged for attractions includes The Universe of Energy, America Sings, If You Had Wings, Kitchen Kabaret, Impressions de France, the American Adventure and Tokyo Disneyland's Journey to the Center of the Earth and Sinbad's Seven Voyages. Buddy also came out of retirement briefly in the nineties to arrange his own music for the various Winnie the Pooh rides that popped up in Disney theme parks at that time.

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By the time Buddy retired in 1983, he had over 200 Disney credits to his name. Much of the background music you hear just walking through areas of parks like the Mexican Pavilion at Epcot or Tomorrowland in Disneyland is arrangements of his compositions. When he left Disney, Buddy also had the distinction of being the last composer at a major Hollywood studio. They literally don't make them like him anymore. Buddy didn't stay retired for very long, though. In 1987 he became the director of the University of Southern California's Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program and taught courses there for the remainder of his life. He received the ASCAP Foundation Life Time Achievement Award in 1999 and having already been declared an official Disney Legend the year before. Three years later, Buddy would pass away from natural causes at the age of 84.

July 25 - Harriet Burns

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On this day, in 2008, Harriet Burns passed away in Los Angeles, California. Born as Harriet Tapp in San Antonio, Texas on August 20, 1928, growing up during the Great Depression really brought out her creative side. Toys and games couldn't be purchased, they had to be created out of materials that could be found. How imaginative was Harriet as a child? While most kids would give their pet goldfish a name like Goldie, she named hers Tackaonsitgo Popeye Gotsinyammer Cockapinay Kasuzyanna Karachi Dianashey Brianashey Jickalicky Jackaboney Christianna More and could actually remember the whole name every time. Was she destined to become an artistic Legend? Whether you believe in that sort of thing or not, yes.

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Following high school, Harriet's father told her that he would only pay for college if she majored in Home Economics (yes, that was, and still is, a thing). She agreed and enrolled at Southern Methodist University in Dallas but, in the end, pulled one over on dear old dad by changing her major to Art, kind of forgetting to tell him about that. After graduating from SMU, Harriet spent another year at the University of New Mexico studying advanced design (no word on whether or not dad paid for that). In 1951, she married her college sweetheart, Bill Burns and did some work designing displays for Neiman Marcus in Texas.

In 1953, the Burns family moved to Los Angeles, California so Bill could try his hand at a career in acting. It didn't work out terribly well. In spite of the fact that she had a one-year-old daughter at home, Harriet decided that she'd better find some work to help pay the bills. On the basis of her previous design work, she was able to get a position with Dice Display Industries Cooperative Exchange, a Hollywood based prop company. For a little over a year, Harriet designed and built props for shows like the Colgate Comedy Hour. She was also part of a team that designed and built sets for the floor shows at Las Vegas hotels like the Dunes. Near the end of her short time with Dice, Harriet was a leader of the team that designed Santa's Village, a small theme park in Lake Arrowhead, California. Even with all that steady work, Dice Display still went belly up in early 1955. One of Harriet's co-workers decided to  return to his former place of employment and suggested that she try to get a position there as well.

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Harriet heard rumors that the Walt Disney Studio wasn't hiring women right at the moment, but she applied anyways. She later quipped that they must have thought her name was Harry because she got the job. Her first assignment was on a new television show the studio was working on, The Mickey Mouse Club. She started out making props but soon was helping to design and build the iconic clubhouse set that would feature prominently in every episode. Harriet worked her magic at a station right next to Fred Joerger, who was one of two people in a new department known at that time as Model Department. Fred's admiration of her talents would change the course of her career (as well as the look and feel of Disney theme parks).

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Fred worked with Wathel Rogers doing a very specific job that Walt felt needed to be done. They were making models of everything that was being built for the company's new theme park over in Anaheim, Disneyland. Fred felt that he and Wathel could use the help of Harriet in their model work and suggested to Walt that she become part of their department. Walt agreed and Harriet was transferred in. She was only the third person, and the first woman, to become what would eventually be known as an Imagineer. It's a position she would hold until her retirement over thirty years later.

Harriet's first task in the Model Department (soon to be renamed WED Enterprises), was to create a detailed model of Sleeping Beauty Castle, the most iconic landmark in Disneyland. Once the park was opened in July 1955, the trio at WED continued making models of attractions, but now they started depicting potential rides instead of existing ones. One of Harriet's first projects of this kind was to design and build a model of the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride, a 1/100th scale replica of an attraction that was a 1/100th scale replica of the actual Matterhorn in Switzerland.

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As time went on, WED Enterprises began adding more and more people to its ranks and taking on more and more projects. Designing and building four attractions for the 1964 World's Fair pushed everyone's creativity to the limit and everyone, including Harriet, showed they were more than up to the task. Harriet was part of two teams for the Fair, the one working on Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln for the State of Illinois pavilion and the one creating the Carousel of Progress for the General Electric pavilion. Both of those projects have stood the test of time. Great Moments is still running on Main Street USA in Disneyland and the Carousel is still turning in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom.

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During the same time work was progressing on the rides for the World's Fair, Harriet was also busy doing another role she played with WED: she was a figure finisher. That meant she was one of the people who carefully applied paint and other materials to both Audio-Animatronics and the sets of attractions to give them their show ready or finished look. The first attraction she did this for was the Submarine Voyage which opened in 1959. It was the next one, though, that really showed off her talents. While doing finishing work on The Enchanted Tiki Room, hand applying thousands of feathers to the shows dozens of birds. she noticed a problem. When the four main birds breathed in and their chests puffed out, everything looked fine, but when they exhaled and their chests went back to normal, their skin looked bunched, kind of like Jose and the others were suffering from mites. Harriet solved this problem one day in a meeting. Walt was wearing a cashmere sweater and she couldn't help but notice that the knitted fabric moved at his elbows exactly like the Imagineers had envisioned the birds chests moving. Four custom made cashmere bird skins later and the bunching problem was fixed.

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Harriet was deeply involved in the design Disneyland's first major expansion, New Orleans Square, and all the restaurants and attractions that call it home. She made a model of the entirety of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and was one of the attraction's main figure finishers. For anyone wondering where Imagineers get their inspiration from, it just might be you. The pirate that sits on the bridge swinging his leg and singing as guests float under him was based on Harriet's mailman at the time. She was also part of the design team that created the Haunted Mansion just a couple of years later. Sharp eyed guests will notice a tombstone at the Mansion about an opera singer who shares a name with Harriet (it's not a coincidence; all the tombstones at the Mansion honor the attraction's original designers). Walt was so impressed with her talents, he featured Harriet on several episodes of the Wonderful World of Disney throughout the Sixties, showcasing her work in the Tiki Room, Pirates and the World's Fair rides.

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Harriet was part of Walt Disney Imagineering until her retirement in 1986. Not only did she work on stuff at Disneyland but she was also influential on the designs of Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland and EPCOT Center. She would continue to spend the rest of her life creating magic just on a smaller scale, doing it exclusively for her grandchildren and their friends. She also remained highly active in the Santa Barbara arts community, where she maintained her home. In 1992, she was honored with her very own window on Main Street USA in Disneyland, the first woman to ever receive one. It reads "The Artisans Loft, Handmade Miniatures by Harriet Burns." In 2000, the pioneering Imagineer was officially declared a Disney Legend. She passed away eight years later from complications brought on by a heart condition. She was 79.

Update: Russi Taylor

UPDATE: It is with great sadness that I have to report on the passing of a Disney Legend. Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse for over 30 years, died yesterday, July 26, 2019, in Glendale, California at the age of 75. She was also the wife of Wayne Allwine, the voice of Mickey Mouse for longer than anyone else, who died in 2008. Both of them were part of the post I did on February 7. You can read that post by clicking here. Our hearts go out to Russi's family. She was a talented lady who's polka-dotted bloomers will be hard to fill.

July 24 - New Orleans Square

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On this day, in 1966, the New Orleans Square area of Disneyland welcomed its first official guests. When Disneyland opened in 1955, it was the culmination of a dream, but it wasn't the end of the dream. Walt continued to think up new things that he wanted to put in his park. Within two years of opening, several of Disneyland's attractions had been removed and replaced with something new or expanded to include fanciful new elements. The first major expansion Walt wanted to do would have involved almost doubling the size of Main Street USA to include an attraction that was all about the US Presidents. The technology of the time couldn't keep up with Walt's vision, though, and that plan never made it off the blueprint. Soon thereafter, however, there were enough dreams around that a whole new area could be created.

The first time the public got an inkling that an expansion was afoot came on the souvenir maps that began being printed in 1958 showing a pirate themed land that would be coming soon. Construction didn't actually begin on the area until late 1961. Part of Frontierland was leveled to accommodate the New Orleans Square and a giant hole was dug. That hole would be the basement of a restaurant and would house the pirate wax museum attraction that would be the highlight of the place. You heard that right. A wax museum. Fortunately for people everywhere, the 1964 World's Fair began taking up everyone at Disney's time and energy and construction in Disneyland was halted for a while.

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It is almost impossible to underestimate how the leaps in technology that Disney's Imagineers were able to make while creating attractions for the World's Fair were instrumental in the development of theme park entertainment. The creation of Audio-Animatronics, the boat ride system of it's a small world and the omni-mover ride system all helped push New Orleans Square to levels that wouldn't have been possible without the sponsorship money the Fair brought in and the millions of people willing to put everything to the test during the Fair itself. When construction finally resumed, just about every plan that had been in place for the attractions in New Orleans Square were either greatly modified or tossed out altogether.

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The pirate wax museum disappeared in all but concept only. It was quickly decided that Audio-Animatronic pirates would become part of it and that it would be a boat ride (the capacity numbers of it's a small world had been very impressive). It just as quickly became clear that the hole in the ground was no where near big enough to house this new attraction. In fact the park itself wasn't big enough. While the entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean was constructed inside the park, most of the ride would be housed in a new show building located just outside the official parameters of Disneyland. But don't think that hole in the ground would go to waste. A three story building was built there with a triple usage plan: the Blue Bayou restaurant on one floor; Club 33, a private club, above it; the top floor would be a cafeteria for Disneyland employees.

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When the time came for the grand dedication ceremony on July 24, 1965, Walt invited the mayor of the actual city of New Orleans, Victor H. Schiro, to be a part of it. Mayor Schiro declared Walt an honorary citizen of New Orleans. Walt quipped that New Orleans Square cost more than the Louisiana Purchase. Without adjusting for inflation, it did. In fact the $18 million cost for New Orleans Square meant that Disneyland's first new land had a higher price tag than construction for the whole park did just a decade earlier (again, that's without adjusting for inflation, but it makes its point; it's cheaper to build a room initially than to add it on later). Though no one knew it at the time, that dedication ceremony would be the last time Walt would make an official appearance in his beloved park.

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The irony of dedicating New Orleans Square when they did was that there wasn't much to do there yet. Besides a few shops, it was just a pleasant area to stroll through. The Blue Bayou Restaurant and Pirates of the Caribbean didn't start operating until March of 1967. Club 33 didn't open until April 1967 (which means, contrary to popular belief, that Walt never entertained anyone there; he'd already been dead for four months). The Haunted Mansion (which utilizes the omni-mover ride system I mentioned earlier) didn't open until 1969. What isn't ironic, is that Disneyland's first expansion left behind of legacy of guest favorites that has endured for over five decades.

July 23 - Edie McClurg

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On this day, in 1945, Edie McClurg was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Edie and her older brother, Bob (who also spent most of the Eighties doing improve and appearing in movies), spent all of their formative years in KC, the children of a mailman and a government secretary (and yet they still both acquired a healthy funny bone). In the mid Sixties, Edie attended classes at the University of Missouri (the Kansas City branch, naturally) while simultaneously becoming a newswoman and producer at the local National Public Radio affiliate, KCUR-FM. After graduating, she stayed on at UM for eight more years teaching courses in radio. One of the highlights of her career with NPR was getting to play John Ehrlichman during a national broadcast of a reading of the transcripts of the Nixon Tapes. Ironically, that performance was the beginning of the end for her teaching and news careers.

In 1976, Edie made her first appearance on the silver screen when she was cast as Helen Shyres in the classic horror film Carrie. She also joined a San Francisco based improv group, the Pitcshel Players, and began performing regularly on the Tony Orlando and Dawn variety show and The Richard Pryor Show. By the end of the decade, she had begun appearing on David Letterman’s short lived morning show and had moved south to become a member of the Los Angeles improve troupe The Groundlings. While there, she helped fellow Groundling Paul Reubens develop his first play, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, and appeared in it as Hermit Hattie.

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Throughout the Eighties, Edie had several small but memorable roles on television and in films. She played Herb Tarlek’s wife Lucille on WKRP in Cincinnati, Bonnie Brindle in the sitcom Small Wonder and Mrs. Patty Poole on Valerie. You might remember her as the checkout lady in Mr. Mom or Marge Sweetwater in Back to School or the car rental agent in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. If none of those roles ring a bell (then what have you been watching all your life?), there is one character that I’m pretty sure just about everyone has seen and at least secretly been in awe of: the pencil pulling school secretary, Grace, in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That whole pencil thing began as way for Edie to keep from getting bored on the set one day, seeing how many pencils she could get into her teased up hairdo at one time. It evolved into a sort of game between her and the director, John Hughes, who kept egging her on to break her record. Eventually John decided it would be fun to actually depict it in the film and, voila, one of the great film gags was born. For those of you who were wondering, the most pencils she every got to stay in her hair at once was fifteen.

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Edie first joined the Disney family in two ways in 1989. She was the voice of Bertha in the English dubbed version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese anime film Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was produced and distributed in the US by Disney. Then she played Carlotta, the house servant who becomes exasperated with Chef Louie’s lateness in providing dinner and catches him destroying the kitchen, in The Little Mermaid. Edie would reprise the role of Carlotta for the direct-to-video sequel, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. In 1998, she popped up in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life as Dr. Flora and appeared in My Neighbors the Yamadas, another Disney dubbed and distributed Japanese film, the next year. She followed those up with roles as Gram Gram in Air Bud: Spikes Back, Mollie the Pig in Home on the Range, Minny in the first two films of the Cars franchise, Mary in Wreck-It Ralph, Gerda in Frozen and several additional voices in Zootopia. And sharp eared viewers will recognize her as the voice making the announcements in Santa’s Workshop during the direct-to-video holiday extravaganza, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas.

Image copyright Disney

All that is just the film work Edie's done for Disney. Where have we might have seen or heard her in a Disney television show, you might ask. She's been in episodes of The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, Dinosaurs, The Kids from Room 402, Higglytown Heroes, Hannah Montana, Desperate Housewives, Doc McStuffins and Fish Hooks. Whew.

Image courtesy doyouremember.com

In the course of her 40+ year career, Edie has been in over 60 films and over 370 episodes of over 110 television shows. Her last appearances on both the big and small screens happened in 2016. Why did our favorite cheerful Midwesterner seem to suddenly disappear? Unfortunately, earlier this year we found out why. Edie is apparently in a battle with dementia, a battle that anyone who has watched a love one go through it knows is heart breaking and often times brutal. Our hearts go out to Edie's friends and family and we hope that they can find peace in the fact that Edie's legacy will be one of fun and laughter. She might have tarnished the reputation of pencils a bit, but I don't think even the pencils really mind. Happy 74th Edie. Thanks for all the giggles.

July 22 - Alan Menken

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 1949, Alan Irwin Menken was born in New York, New York. The son of an actress and a piano playing dentist, Alan showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He learned to play the piano and the violin before moving right on into composing. By the age of nine, his original works were receiving Superior scores from the judges of the New York Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composers Contest. Alan graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1967 and moved on to New York University. He enrolled as a pre-med student, a nod to dear old dad, but graduated in 1971 with a degree in Musicology. From there, his plans went in one of two directions. He was either going to be a composer or a rock star. He got to have his cake and eat it too by becoming a rock star of composing.

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Shortly after his college graduation, Alan joined a musical theater workshop sponsored by Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). He continued to participate in BMI workshops over the next several years, writing songs for potential musicals and then performing them around town in clubs like The Ballroom and Tramps. To make money during this period, he wrote jingles, accompanied ballet troupes, wrote songs for Sesame Street and was a vocal coach. In 1979, Alan would earn some modest success when he teamed up with an up an coming playwright, Howard Ashman, to create a musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The show got great reviews but not so great box office receipts. It didn’t matter. The two men worked well together and were destined for bigger things.

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In 1982, Alan and Howard’s next collaboration opened just off-Broadway at the WPA Theater. Based on a 1960 dark comedy film by Roger Corman, Little Shop of Horrors got rave reviews and soon moved to the Orpheum Theater where it ran for five years, smashing the box office record for an off-Broadway production. In 1986, a hit movie version was released starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene, and earned Alan and Howard their first Oscar nomination. The success of Little Shop brought the duo the attention of producers at the Walt Disney Studios who were looking for the right people to turn their next animated film into a musical.

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The mission that Disney Alan and Howard in 1987 was a simple one: after years of the company’s animation product being subpar, they needed to help create a Disney musical that could stand up to comparison with Snow White or Cinderella. No pressure though. I’ve read stories about the song writing duo holing up with nothing more than a synthesizer, in one of those buildings in New York where every floor is just dozens of tiny recording studios lined up in a row. Every time the door to their studio opened, the music that spilled out into the hall caused other doors to other studios to open as everyone wanted to know what was going on in there. And that was before a full orchestra and talents of Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll and Samuel E. Wright were added. Needless to say, Alan and Howard did good. The Little Mermaid became the company’s first smash hit in years, due in no small part to its soundtrack. When awards time came around, the boys would earn an Oscar for Best Song (Under the Sea) while Alan picked up a second one for Best Score. The Disney Renaissance had begun and Alan was going to provide a pretty big chunk of the music for it.

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Alan and Howard rolled right on into their next project, another classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. You might have thought it would be hard for them to top their work in Mermaid, but they did. Their deft blending of romance and humor, spectacle and intimacy pushed Disney’s 30^th animated feature to a place cartoons had never been before: a nomination for the Best Picture Oscar. The boys also picked up not one but three nominations (and the win) for Best Song (Beauty and the Beast edged out Belle and Be Our Guest) while Alan again received the statue for Best Score. The ceremony would have been a magical evening of true celebration centering on Alan and Howard’s talents except for one thing. Howard wasn’t there to share in it.

During production on Mermaid, Howard had revealed to Alan that he’d been diagnosed as HIV+. As work progressed on Beast, so did Howard’s illness. Part way through production, meetings began to be held at Howard’s home and animators would be shocked as to how quickly AIDS was ravaging his body between sessions. Howard continued to work though, writing and rewriting songs and coaxing better performances out of Paige O’Hara and Robbie Benson, right up to the end of his life. Beast had its first screening for the press on March 10, 1991. Producer Don Hahn visited a barely alive Howard in the hospital to tell him about the incredibly enthusiastic reception. Four days later, he died.

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Work had already begun on the duo’s follow-up to Beast, Aladdin, when Howard passed away. Alan needed a new lyricist to work with (notes were his thing, not words) and he brought in the award winning Tim Rice to finish the songs for the film. Alan again picked up two Oscars that year, Best Song with Tim for A Whole New World and Best Score on his own. It should be noted that A Whole New World also won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, the only time a Disney song has managed to do that.

Following Aladdin, Alan has collaborated with a number of lyricists, none of whom can hold a candle to Howard in my opinion but all successful none the less. He teamed with Jack Feldman for Newsies, Stephen Schwartz for Pocahontas (picking up two more Oscars), Stephen again for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, David Zippel for Hercules, which was a bit of a throwback to his Little Shop days (not only musically but because he and David had worked together back then, too), Glen Slater for Home on the Range and Tangled and Stephen once again for Enchanted. Alan has also scored some non musical films for Disney as well including Touchstone Pictures' Life With Mikey and the 2006 remake of The Shaggy Dog.

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In recent years, Alan has been quite busy revisiting old projects and adding new material to them. For the Broadway stage he's helped bolster Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. A stage version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame became the longest running show ever in Berlin, Germany. Alan has also been (for better or worse; don't get me started) part of the teams that have been turning classic Disney animated films into live action movies. He revised old songs and wrote new ones for the live versions of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

Outside of Disney (does that even exist anymore?), Alan has written music for a number of shows, several of which have had Broadway runs. His version of A Christmas Carol premiered in 1994 and became an annual event at Madison Square Garden for a decade. He's also written adaptations of Sister Act, A Bronx Tale and Leap of Faith. He is reportedly working on a stage version of Corrina, Corrina and had a reading of a new piece in collaboration with Jack Feldman and Harvey Fierstein called Greetings from Niagra Falls, but that production seems to have stalled.

Image courtesy flickr.com

For basically writing everything everyone wants to put on their modern Disney playlist, Alan was declared an official Disney Legend in 2001. Not that he's done composing for the company by a long shot. He's currently working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on new music for the live action version of The Little Mermaid. And there's persistent rumors about a sequel to Enchanted (but don't hold your breath on that one). Alan is already at the top of the list of Living People with the Most Oscars with eight, but he's tied for third on the list of all time winners. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulls a couple more out of his little hat as time goes on here. Until then, we send good vibes Alan's way and wish him a happy 70th Birthday!