August 22 - The Skeleton Dance

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On this day, in 1929, the first Silly Symphony, The Skeleton Dance, is released to theaters nationwide. In 1928, as Walt travelled by train to New York City to get the soundtrack to Steamboat Willie recorded, he made a stop in Kansas City, Missouri. He had a proposition for an old friend of his, an theater organist by the name of Carl Stalling. Synchronized sound was clearly the future of film, so would Carl be willing to compose music for the other two Mickey Mouse shorts that had already been completed without sound? Not only was Carl willing but during the course of the between the two men, he made a proposition to Walt. What about doing a cartoon series where the animation was drawn for a specific piece of music, rather than writing the music for the animation? For example, maybe have some skeletons dance through a graveyard to some spooky music.

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Even though he had a lot on his plate at that precise moment (what with trying to keep his studio from going under and all), the idea stuck with Walt throughout the whole process of getting the Mickey Mouse series up and running. As things began to roll successfully with his little mouse, he was able to give this new idea his full attention. It probably also helped that Carl was well on his way to becoming the studio’s staff composer. In order to create a second stream of revenue (in case, God forbid, their new star suffered the same fate as their previous one), the Silly Symphony series was born and it was as much of an experiment as anything else.

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As the concept of dancing skeletons developed, a musical piece called March of the Dwarves by Edvar Grieg was chosen as the soundtrack. Animation for the short was turned over to the Studio’s resident technical genius, Ub Iwerks. Like the first couple of Mickey shorts, Ub would do most of the drawings for The Skeleton Dance himself. And, something you would never know considering how marvelous the short is, he banged it out in about six weeks. That’s how good he was. The music was tacked on to an already scheduled recording of the soundtrack for the Mickey short The Opry House in February 1929, helping to keep costs down on the untested new series. At the end of production, The Skeleton Dance cost just under $5,500 to make (about $80,800 today), so Walt wasn’t betting the whole studio on its success but it was still a chunk of change. Now came the dance to find a distributor.

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When Walt sent a print of The Skeleton Dance to the distributor of the Mickey films, the reply was reportedly a terse, two word rejection: “More mice.” Undaunted, Roy Disney arranged to have the short played in two theaters on the West Coast, the Fox Theater in San Francisco and the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles. Pat Powers, who owned Cinephone (the process Disney used to marry sound and image for their shorts) and made him a party interested in the studio’s continuing success, managed to convince the Roxy Theater in New York City to play it as well. The Skeleton Dance was a hit in all three venues, although it did garner a bit of controversy. The short was considered by some to be too gruesome for children (the skeletons literally scare a couple of cats right out of their fur) and was reportedly later banned in Denmark for the same reason. Columbia Pictures disagreed, however, and agreed to distribute the Silly Symphony series nationwide starting in August. Interestingly, when it played again at the Roxy under the Columbia deal, The Skeleton Dance became the first film to ever play a return engagement there.

Over the decade or so that the Walt Disney Studio produced Silly Symphonies, the series proved to be groundbreaking in so many ways. It includes the first cartoon made in three-color Technicolor, Flowers and Trees (1932), which was also the winner of the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Short; the first use of Disney’s technically superior multi-plane camera in The Old Mill (1937); the studio’s first hit song, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? (1933); the first appearance of Donald Duck in The Wise Little Hen (1934). Mostly, the 75 films in the series were used to try out new techniques and push the envelope of what animation could do. The fact that their popularity eventually outpaced that of Mickey Mouse was just icing on the cake. Over the course of its run, the series would pick up seven Oscars with an additional three nominations.

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Everything the studio learned from producing the Silly Symphonies culminated in their first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The success of Snow White was the beginning of the end for the series, however. Features required so much time and energy to produce that one of the Silly Symphonies, Merbabies, was actually produced by an outside company in exchange for more artists to work on Snow White. Within two years of the studio’s first princess gracing the big screen, the Silly Symphonies ended their triumphant run. And although every other studio in town would try to imitate Disney’s success (the world would be subjected to Looney Tunes, Merry Melodies, Happy Harmonies and Swing Symphonies, all with varying degrees of popularity), the originals still stand out as pieces of art that will continue to be enjoyed for years to come.

August 21 - Vance Gerry

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On this day, in 1929, Vance Bryden Gerry was born in Pasadena, California. Vance studied at the famed Chouinard Art Institute before joining the Walt Disney Studio in 1955. His first position with Disney was as assistant inbetweener, which goes to show how much the place had expanded since the early days; Walt couldn’t afford anything below regular inbetweener in the beginning. Like most enormously talented people at the studio, Vance didn’t stay on the bottom rung for long. He was quickly moved into the Layout Department. His first projects in that department were for the burgeoning television division and were all a bit… well, goofy. Goofy with a capital G, that is. Vance helped put some zaniness in specials like The Goofy Success Story, Goofy’s Cavalcade of Sports and Goofy’s How to Relax. He also lent his talents to the Shorts Department (although since shorts were on their way out, those films were now being called featurettes). His layout work can be seen in The Truth about Mother Goose and the eternal educational classic Donald Duck in Mathmagicland. By the early Sixties, Vance was in the Features Department full time, working on One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone. At the end of production on Stone, Walt decided to move him once again, this time to the position he was born to have.

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Although you might not realize it by looking at it, story development for The Jungle Book was a long almost tortuous process. Walt considered the first several drafts to be too dark for a children’s movie (even though they were pretty faithful to the book). He rotated through a number of people on the writing team (one of whom, Bill Peet, would actually leave the studio over disagreements about this script) before joining it himself and taking a bigger interest in an animated feature than he had in years. The final four man writing team (and yes, in those days it was all men) included Vance and getting to work that closely with Walt was an experience he never forgot. He once commented that Walt had a certain aura about him and you felt his presence in a room even before you saw him. And Walt’s laser focus on creating strong characters was a lesson Vance took to heart for the rest of his days.

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Vance would go on to become a legendary story man in not just at Disney, but in the animation industry as a whole. Don Hahn, the producer of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, described him this way: you could probably find someone who drew better than him or wrote better than him or communicated characters better than him, but absolutely no one could do all three at once better than, or for as long as, Vance did. Vance himself once described his writing style as very loose. He preferred to only have a picture’s title rather than a script. Titles encouraged exploration and dreaming. Scripts, he felt, were fairly constricting. Necessary to the process, of course, but something that could come later on as far as he was concerned. One thing everyone could agree on, was that Vance could convey not only characters but whole sequences, complete with camera angles and how a character would react to the general mood, with only a few quick pictures on a storyboard. Ask anyone in animation at the time who the most charismatic, respected and all around fun to be with story man was and they would all tell you: Vance.

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After Walt’s passing, Vance continued to work his story magic in the Features Department for pretty much the rest of his life. He made major contributions to The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers (including the scene where Madame Medusa crushes Penny’s dreams of adoption), The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective (for which he also received story adaptation credit) and Beauty and the Beast. Starting in 1995, at the age of 66 (you know, when most people start a new phase of their careers), he began focusing more on character design and overall visual development. In that capacity, he helped shape Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, Fantasia 2000 (particularly the Carnival of the Animals sequence, the one with the flamingos and the yo-yo), Hercules and Home on the Range.

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If all his work with Disney wasn’t enough to keep a man occupied (and in this case, clearly it wasn’t), Vance also had a side gig going for most of his life as well. Starting in 1963, he started his own book printing business, Peach Pit Press. As a teen during World War II, he’d worked for a printer basically because he and his family needed money and the job was available. The profession didn’t turn into an interest until almost two decades later. He changed the name of the business to Weather Bird Press in 1968 and spent decades making small batches of lavishly illustrated books that are highly collectable today. Most people have never heard of Weather Bird, mainly because Vance wasn’t much of a guy for self-promotion, but those who know about this sort of thing covet his creations.

In 2004, around the time the last animated feature he worked on was being released, Vance was diagnosed with cancer and it didn’t take long for the disease to consume him. He passed away from it on March 5, 2005 at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, in almost the same place he came into the world 75 years before.

August 20 - Demi Lovato

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On this day, in 1992, Demetria Devonne Lovato was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As the daughter of a musician and a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, Demi was pre-destined to a life of performing.  What wasn’t so easy to see were the obstacles she would have to overcome getting to that life, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Demi’s parents divorced when she was barely two and she moved with her mother to Dallas, Texas. She began taking piano lessons at the age of seven and added the guitar three years later. With acting and dancing classes on top of her musical lessons, it’s a wonder how she managed to fit in regular appearances as Angela on seasons seven and eight of Barney and Friends (which filmed in the Dallas area) as well as school. And that’s where we hit a major bump in the highway of Demi’s life. During an interview with Ellen Degeneres, she revealed that she was the victim of relentless bullying at school. It got so bad she begged her mother to be homeschooled. Her mother granted that wish and not only was she able to fit her educational schedule around all her other activities, but she was able to graduate from high school a year early.

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While still in school, Demi began to branch out from her beginnings with the purple dinosaur. She made appearances on the Fox drama Prison Break and the Nickelodeon show Just Jordan. This exposure led to her first starring role in a series as Charlotte Adams in the Disney Channel show As the Bell Rings. Bell was what is known as an interstitial program meaning it was only a few minutes long and played in the spaces between other shows and movies on the network. For Demi, it was her ticket to bigger and better things.

In 2007, Demi auditioned for and got starring roles in two major projects on the Disney Channel. The first one was as Mitchie Torres, an aspiring singer, in the teen movie Camp Rock. While Camp Rock debuted in 2008 with more viewers than its genre busting predecessor, High School Musical, it never reached the same frenetic heights of popularity. Not that that really mattered to Demi. She sang four of songs on the film’s soundtrack, including her debut single This Is Me, which would peak at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This Is Me led to a contract with Hollywood Records and her debut album, Don’t Forget, which hit the charts at number two in September of that year and had three tracks that charted as well.

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The following year, as she was graduating from high school early, Demi starred in her own show, Sonny with a Chance, also on the Disney Channel. 2009-2010 would turn out to be an incredibly busy two years for the young star, in ways both good and bad. She recorded a charity single, Send It On, with several other DC stars, proceeds going to environmental causes. In June 2009, she starred in another DC movie, Princess Protection Program, with Selena Gomez. In July, she released her second album, Here We Go Again, which debuted in Billboard’s number one slot and jump started a 40 city tour during July and August. In 2010, Demi and Joe Jonas recorded a second single, Make a Wave, for Disney’s Friends for Change charity. That fall, Camp Rock 2 debuted with Demi reprising her roll of Mitchie Torres. The new soundtrack debuted at number 3 and prompted the cast of Camp Rock 2 to join the Jonas Brothers on their tour. Then, at the end of October 2010, everything abruptly fell apart.

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While Demi would later explain everything that had been going on, it seemed to her fans that she was there one moment and vanished the next. She walked away from the Jonas Brothers tour, quit not only Sonny with a Chance but acting altogether and checked herself into a treatment facility for physical and mental reasons. After emerging from treatment nearly three months later, Demi slowly began to share the list of reasons that led to her self-imposed exile. That list is almost dizzying and yet all too common at the same time. Still suffering from effects of the intense bullying she endured when she was younger, Demi added more and more problems to her plate, fueled by her newfound fame and fortune, until she could no longer hold that plate, much less keep it spinning. She began to suffer from bulimia and depression (not necessarily in that order), both of which caused her to harm herself in other ways. In order to dull the increasing pain she felt, she began to drink and eventually became addicted to cocaine. She was spiraling towards a complete nervous breakdown when she physically assaulted a female dancer with the tour. Her manager and family staged an intervention at that point and convinced her to seek help. To top everything off, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder during her treatment.

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2011 became a rebuilding year for Demi. She was released from treatment in January. By April, she’d become a contributor to Seventeen magazine writing articles about her experiences.  In September, she released her third album, Unbroken, which went gold and had two singles, Skyscraper and Give Your Heart a Break, go platinum. In May 2012, Demi joined the judges panel of The X Factor and things seemed to be looking up for the young star. She’d even made a documentary of her struggles for MTV called Demi Lovato: Stay Strong. Unfortunately, she wasn’t staying as strong as everyone thought.

When Demi released her fourth album, Demi, in 2013, she revealed that she had been living in a sobriety house for more than a year. And that she’d actually been high when she was filmed for the documentary about her recovery. This time, though, she really did seem to be sticking to her plan to be better to herself. In addition to the new album, she released an e-book, also title Demi. She appeared in several episodes of the fifth season of Glee. She released a self-help book, Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year, that shot to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List. She sang a version of Let it Go for the end credits of Frozen that spent twenty weeks on the charts. And she went on tour again, once in North America and again on her first world tour.

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Over the next few years, Demi released two more albums, Confident and Tell Me You Love Me, both of which went gold with singles that went platinum (a trend she’s managed to keep up with every release). In 2017, she returned to acting as the voice of Smurfette in Smurfs: The Lost Village and, the following year, appeared as Lenore in the animated movie Charming. She’s also made numerous appearances on reality competition shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and The Bachelorette, as either a guest judge or a performer. And on March 15, 2018, she celebrated being sober for six years. Except she then revealed that she’d only been mostly sober and had experienced some mighty struggles with her addictions. And then in June, just days after she admitted she’d had a relapse, Demi was rushed to the hospital, this time for an opioid overdose.

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Demi is currently on the mend once again. She’s endured more treatment, made new life plans and continues to battle her demons in a pretty public way. It’s no surprise that among the many causes to which she lends both her financial support and celebrity power, there are several that aim to combat bullying, raise awareness of mental health issues, empower women and advocate for the LGBTQ community and others who feel marginalized in society. She announced this last May that she’d signed up with a new manager and looks forward to the next chapter in her life. At least one project in that chapter has already been completed, with another gearing up. You’ll be able to see her in a Netflix original comedy, Eurovision, sometime next year with Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams. She will also be appearing in several episodes of the next season of Will and Grace. What else will this talented if embattled young woman unleash on the world? No one knows but Demi, but if she continues to move forward with the authenticity and determination she’s shown so far, there is more than a chance her future will be sunny.

August 19 - Harry Tytle

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On this day, in 2004, Harry Tytle passed away in Rancho Bernardo, California. Born on August 9, 1909, Harry couldn’t be described as a great artist (or even a middling one, truth be told) but he did do something else that would help him start his career: he played polo.  He actually went to the Pennsylvania Military College on a polo scholarship and was at one point the youngest 2-goal handicap player in the country. By the mid Thirties, he’d already played with the likes of Will Rogers (in what turned out to be Will’s last game) and he was friends with Harold Helvenston, an employee of the Walt Disney Studio. One night in early 1936, Harold invited Harry to a dinner that included other Disney employees and everyone got along splendidly. By March of that year, Harry was working at the studio himself in the Traffic Department. When Harold introduced him to Walt, a certain emphasis was placed on Harry’s polo skills, that being a game that Walt loved to play, even if he wasn’t the best of horsemen. Harry soon found himself riding a horse on a team with the big boss and being encouraged to teach others around the studio how to play. At one point in 1938, he headed up a team that Walt brought all the way down to Mexico City to play. He figured they won that match because they had Donald Duck emblazoned on their jerseys and the other team simply underestimated their abilities. At any rate, when Walt was forced to stop playing his beloved sport a few years later because of injuries, the bond he shared with Harry would last for the rest of his life.

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As I mentioned, Harry started out in the Traffic Department and that doesn’t mean he spent his time in the parking lot making sure cars flowed in and out efficiently. He was part of the crew that made sure information (in the form of sketches, paint samples and just about anything else) flowed between all the studio’s different departments efficiently. It’s an important job that at the same time is pretty entry level. It didn’t take long for Harry to move into the Camera Department or to move up from there to Scene Checking and then the position of film cutter. By the end of the Thirties, he was an assistant director in the Shorts Department. Near the end of 1941, just as the country was getting pulled into World War II, he was made Production Manager of the whole studio and, unofficially of course, became known as Walt’s right hand man. A few years later, Harry began keeping a detailed daily diary of everything he saw going on at the studio, including over 200 meetings he had with Walt. That diary became the basis of an autobiography he would publish decades later called One of “Walt’s Boys” chronicling the studio during the last two decades of Walt’s life.

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As the studio transitioned into the Fifties and the age of television, Harry became instrumental in the studio’s new pet projects. He presided over numerous episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club, the Disneyland anthology show and Zorro. When those shows began winding down their runs, he moved into the realm of live action movies, which were just beginning to heat up for Disney. He would occasionally return to television, producing and even directing one episode of The Magical World of Disney right up to his retirement in 1976.

After just over 40 years with the Walt Disney Company, you might think Harry deserved to relax during his retirement. While I’m sure he did a fair amount of that, he also became a philanthropist and served on the boards of several organizations. He served a term on the Board of Governors of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (the people in charge of the Oscars) as well as stints with the Los Angeles History Museum and the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. When he passed away in 2004, just ten days after his 95^th birthday, there may not have been many who could have remembered his name in association with Walt Disney, but the mark Harry left on his company, and the Los Angeles community in general, is undeniable.

August 18 - John Debney

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On this day, in 1956, John Cardon Debney was born in Glendale, California. John’s father, Louis, was a television producer for the Walt Disney Studio throughout his childhood. Louis was responsible for episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club, Zorro and the Disneyland anthology show. You name it and if it occurred during those early years, Louis had a hand in it. As a result, John did a whole lot of growing up on Disney soundstages and backlots. He also received the musical talent in his family, having started guitar lessons when he was just six years old. He also became proficient at a keyboard (the piano kind not the computer kind) and rotated through a number of bands right on into his college years. He was talented enough to get into the music program at CalArts and dedicated enough to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Music Composition in 1979. He then had to wait two whole weeks before starting a new job at the same place his father earned his living for so many years.

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John started out at Disney about as low on the totem pole as you can get. He was in the copying department and was basically what they call a runner. He gathered up sheet music and recordings and ran them to wherever they needed to go. Until the day the Legendary composer Buddy Baker, who undoubtedly was aware of both John’s parentage and his musical degree, dropped a little project in his lap. Buddy needed someone to arrange some French classical music into a medley and if it could seamlessly repeat itself, that would be great. Could John accomplish that? Sure, no problem. Soon Buddy was bringing John all sorts of tasks like that. One week it might be German oompah bands, the next traditional Japanese melodies. It might sound like a bunch of eclectic busywork, but by the end of three years, John had arranged and composed a big chunk of the background music that was going to be heard continuously in the pavilions of the World Showcase area of Disney’s newest park, EPCOT Center. So the next time you find yourself drinking around the world, pause a moment in each country and enjoy some of John’s early work.

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After three years of cutting his teeth with Disney, John was ready to cut himself loose and began freelancing as a composer of musical scores. He worked exclusively in television to begin with, collaborating with Mike Post, the legendary producer of series like Magnum, P.I., Quantum Leap and Hill Street Blues. He also dove into the madcap world of television animation with the Hanna-Barbera Studio apprenticing under their long-time musical director, Hoyt Curtin. During this period John wrote the scores for series as diverse as Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Young Riders (which earned him his first of three Emmy Awards for musical composition) and Dink, the Little Dinosaur.  As the Eighties turned into the Nineties, John began getting work writing scores for independent films, including two directed by Beau Bridges, The Wild Pair and Seven Hours to Judgement. Those projects led to his first studio film and the resurrection of a long relationship with the Walt Disney Company, for the second generation of Debneys.

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John returned to Disney in 1993 with the score for a little Halloween film that has since become a cult classic, Hocus Pocus. Since then he’s provided the music for all sorts of Disney films including White Fang 2, Houseguest, the Mickey Mouse short Runaway Brain, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, My Favorite Martian, Inspector Gadget, The Emperor’s New Groove (which nabbed an Annie Award nomination), The Princess Diaries (and its sequel), Snow Dogs, The Hot Chick, Raising Helen, The Pacifier, Chicken Little, Hannah Montana: The Movie, Old Dogs, Iron Man 2, and 2016’s live action remake of The Jungle Book.

Highlights of John’s work outside of Disney include several more collaborations with Garry Marshall (Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve) and John Favreau (Elf, Zathura: A Space Adventure). He nabbed his only Academy Award nomination so far for his work on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (he lost to Finding Neverland). He also picked up two more Emmy Awards, one for writing the main theme for SeaQuest DSV and another for scoring the pilot episode of The Cape. Currently you can hear John’s work on two television series, The Orville on Fox and Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix, as well as in movie theaters, if Dora and the Lost City of Gold is your thing. And of course, you can always take a stroll around World Showcase, where John’s music has been playing for over thirty years and will continue to underscore your Epcot adventures for many more to come. Happy 63^rd birthday John!

August 17 - Luxo Jr.

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On this day, in 1986, Pixar’s first animated short, Luxo, Jr., had its world debut in Dallas, Texas at SIGGRAPH, an annual computer graphics conference. The Graphics Group, a conglomeration of 40 individuals, spent the first few years of its life as part of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic effects shop. In February 1986, The Graphics Group was spun off into its own corporation having the financial backing of Steve Jobs, who had just left Apple. The new company, now named Pixar, was actually formed to sell computers. It had a tiny little animation department solely to create pieces that would show off the capabilities of those computers. A young man by the name of John Lasseter was in charge of those creations and was never expected to be profitable, just innovative.

In 1984, The Graphics Group had made an animated short, The Adventures of André and Wally B, which involved the first use of motion blur in a computer animated short. The film was shown at the annual computer graphics conference, SIGGRAPH, that year in Minneapolis. The group didn’t have anything of note to show the next year. When Pixar became its own entity, its President, Dr. Edwin Catmull, decided that it should have something to show every year as a way to keep the company’s name on everyone’s lips. There was only four and a half months left to make good on Catmull’s promise for 1986. In spite of the short time frame, John was confident he could get the job done. Even if it meant bringing a sleeping bag to work and napping in his office. Which it did.

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The short was first designed as an exercise in photo realistic animation as well as the concept of self-shadowing, meaning that the two lamps in the film would be casting light and shadows on themselves rather than a fixed light source coming from off stage. It wasn't until John showed some early versions at a Brussels film festival that he was reminded by famed Belgian animator Raoul Servais that even a ten second film should have a plot. At that point, John began developing the emotional realism of his two characters and the short really began to take off. He finished his short, now titled Luxo, Jr, after the younger of the lamps, just in time for the 1986 SIGGRAPH conference.

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Luxo, Jr clocked in at a whole two minutes, not really enough time to connect with an audience one might think. One would be wrong. Before the 120 seconds was up, the audience was on its feet, hailing Luxo, Jr as an incredible achievement. It is widely considered to be the first time that computer animation told a story with emotional resonance. The first time that people forgot they were watching computer generated images and really connected with the characters. After the viewing, when people came up to John to ask questions about Luxo, Jr, he assumed they would be about the technical aspects of the new shadow mapping technique or how he rendered the lamps so realistically. What people actually wanted to know: was the older lamp the younger lamp's father or mother? (John considers Luxo, Sr. to be a father figure, in case you were wondering.)

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Luxo, Jr. went on to earn a nomination for the Best Animated Short Academy Award, the first piece of computer animation to ever do that. It was later included in the National Film Registry as well. And we all know what John and Pixar went on to do. It wasn't long before Pixar stopped trying to sell computers and the animation department became the whole company (and yes it became highly profitable). And all because of Pixar's dedication to story, which they've managed to adhere to pretty well in the intervening years. As for Luxo, Jr himself, he became the mascot of the little animation studio that could, appearing before (and quite often after) every short and eventual feature Pixar has produced. He even showed up in the initial Pixar area of Disney's Hollywood Studios as an animatronic figure for a while. And I know for me, whenever I see that little lamp come bouncing onto the screen, I am most likely going to enjoy the next ninety minutes or so, easily forgetting that I'm watching computer generated images, just like that audience over thirty years ago.

August 16 - Fess Parker

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On this day, in 1924, Fess Elisha Parker Jr. was born in Fort Worth, Texas. The Parker family soon moved out to the rural part of Tom Green County, Texas and the open prairie seemed to suit young Fess just fine. He grew to be a strapping lad of 6 feet 6 inches. Which was a great height to be right up until he wanted to serve his country. After graduating from high school, during the latter part of World War II, Fess joined the United States Navy with dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. Turns out he was too tall for that position. Okay, how about being a radioman gunner, then? Sure, let’s give it a whirl. Nope. Turns out he was too big to fit in the rear cockpit as well. He was finally transferred to the Marine Corps and made into a radio operator. He was sent to the Pacific theater of war, arriving just in time for Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the end of the war.

After his honorable discharge in 1946, Fess used his G.I. Bill benefits to enroll at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. He was active in the drama club there and continued to act when he transferred to the University of Texas a year later. He graduated in 1950 with a degree in history and, since he still had a year of military benefits left, moved on to the University of Southern California to start a master’s degree in theater history.

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Fess’ professional acting career began in 1951 when he began earning $32 a week as an extra in a production of the play Mister Roberts. It didn’t take long for him to nab a small role in the Western Untamed Frontier with Joseph Cotton and Shelley Winters. Shortly after that, he was given a contract at Warner Brothers and began appearing a string of Westerns. That rolled into roles on Western television anthology shows like Death Valley Days in 1954.

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Also in 1954, Walt Disney was looking for someone to star as Davy Crockett in a five episode arc for his own anthology show. Walt was seriously considering James Arness, who later came to fame on Gunsmoke. While watching James do his thing in a sci-fi flick called Them!, Walt was actually more intrigued by someone in a smaller role in the same film. Fess played a pilot who gets committed to an insane asylum after claiming his plane was downed by giant insects. Walt saw that pilots commitment to the truth in the face of official pressure to say otherwise as the exact same qualities that Davy Crockett frequently displayed and brought Fess in for an audition. He brought his guitar, met briefly with Walt, sang a song and went on his way. He then heard nothing for weeks. Enough time passed that Fess figured that opportunity had passed him by. Then he got the phone call that changed his career (and arguably the history of television, at least the merchandising part).

Fess was cast as Davy Crockett over several better known actors, including James and the man who was cast as Crockett's sidekick, Buddy Ebsen. Even though Fess was only in five episodes of Disneyland he became one of the biggest television hits ever. Pretty much anything Crockett related started flying off store shelves but kids in the mid Fifties went absolutely gaga over coon skin caps. Widely considered to be the first television miniseries (even though the term wouldn't be coined until the early Seventies), the first three Davy Crockett episodes were even spliced together and released theatrically. The huge popularity of the series led to a contract for Fess with the company. And that eventually led to big problems for Fess.

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Once the last of the Davy Crockett scenes was filmed, Fess began appearing in full theatrical releases for Disney. He was in The Great Locomotive Chase, Westward Ho, the Wagons!, Old Yeller and The Light in the Forest. While the films were fairly successful, Fess began to chafe more with each one. He felt that every part he was doing was exactly like the one before it. And he wasn't wrong. Not only was Disney pigeonholing him into one specific role, Walt refused to let him do anything outside of that role. Fess had to pass on Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and The Searchers with John Wayne. When he was cast in a small role in 1959's Tonka, Fess decided enough was enough. He refused to do it, was put on suspension from his contract and ultimately parted with Disney.

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Fess didn't have to wait long to get picked up. Paramount considered Disney's loss to be their gain and put him under contract. Over the next few years, he made a handful of appearances in small roles, but his movie career never really took off. Television was always were he shined and once he returned to it in 1962, he would only ever appear in one more film, 1966’s Smoky. But return to the small screen he did, filling the shoes of Jimmy Stewart in a television adaptation of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. After one season of playing the new senator from an unnamed state, Fess moved on to the stage for a year. He (naturally) played Curly in a touring production of Oklahoma! When the tour finished, he was cast in his next big role, one that is often confused with his iconic portrayal of Davy Crockett (and for good reason).

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Starting in 1964, Fess played the second role of his lifetime, Daniel Boone, another figure from the frontier days of American history. He was again a hit. Daniel Boone ran for six seasons on NBC and was a top rated show during its entire run. Not only did Fess star in the show, but he helped produce it and even directed several episodes. Interestingly, the producers of the show initially wanted it to be about Davy Crockett, but Disney refused to relinquish the rights to that character, so they had to settle for Daniel Boone. While the show was popular it never quite attained the same level of craziness that Fess’ earlier run did. Even though Boone wore a coonskin cap that the creators made sure was mentioned in the theme song (just one more reason that people can’t seem to differentiate between Fess’ two major roles).

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To confuse matters even more, Fess became interested in opening a Davy Crockett inspired theme park during the filming of Daniel Boone. He went so far as to option some land in Northern Kentucky for the venture, but he was a little too late to make it happen. The King’s Island amusement park started construction less than two hours away from his site and investors didn’t think the area could support more than one park. Since King’s Island was already on the way, they’d have to pass on Fess’ idea.

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Daniel Boone ended its run in 1970 and, even though he didn’t have to, Fess ended his run, too. He could have rolled right on into a new show, McCloud, but felt it was too similar to things he’d already done. Dennis Weaver was more than happy to take that opportunity of his hands. When a pilot for his own sitcom, The Fess Parker Show, failed to get picked up by a network in 1974, Fess retired from acting completely. He did not, however, spend the rest of his life sipping gin and tonics by the pool. He opted instead for a nice glass of chardonnay.

In the late Seventies, Fess, his wife Marcella and their two children settled down in Santa Ynez, California. He acquired 1,500 acres of prime land in nearby Los Olivos, planted a variety of grapes and opened the Fess Parker Family Winery, a venture he devoted the rest of his life to. Over the years, the winery has produced several award winning vintages and every bottle sports a label with a golden coonskin cap on it, hearkening back to Fess’ acting days. You can also buy actual coonskin caps in the tasting room’s gift shop, as well as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone inspired bottle toppers. The winery brought Fess back into the entertainment world (sort of) in 2004 when it became the setting for the fictitious winery in the Academy Award winning movie Sideways.

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Even though he didn’t do any acting during the last several decades of his life, Fess was still bestowed with a few honors for his talents. In 1991, in spite of the somewhat acrimonious end to his relationship with the company, he was declared an official Disney Legend. In 2003, the Texas Cultural Trust awarded him the Texas Medal of Arts for his faithful portrayal of Davy Crockett. And in 2004, giving further evidence that there wasn’t any hard feelings on Disney’s end, Fess was given a coveted window in Disneyland. It isn’t located on Main Street USA, however, but is more appropriately on display in Frontierland above the Pioneer Mercantile. It reads “Davy Crockett - Coonskin Cap Supply Co - Fess Parker Proprietor.”

Fess enjoyed the remainder of his life working on his winery. And it truly was (and is) a family affair. His son is currently president of operations and his daughter is vice president of marketing. Fess himself is no longer part of venture, though, having passed away quietly in his sleep on March 18, 2010. He was 85.

August 15 - Make Mine Music

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On this day, in 1946, the Walt Disney Studio generally released its eighth animated feature, Make Mine Music. As a big chunk of the staff went off to fight the Nazis and most foreign movie markets dried up, the Walt Disney Studio faced dire financial times during World War II. Even with government contracts for military training films, the studio couldn’t continue to make feature length animated films and turn a profit. The solution was to take all the spare ideas that were lying around (mostly unfinished shorts) and cobble them together into  feature length packages. What makes the so-called package films different from Fantasia, which is also a number of shorts put together, is that Fantasia’s segments were specifically chosen for their artistic merit. In other words, that film was a deliberate choice. The package films were born out of necessity and the segments don’t necessarily belong together. That’s why you rarely see the package films in their entirety but you see their segments individually all the time. It’s kind of like the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which works as a concept because the Beatles said it did and everyone accepts that. Just don’t try to figure any other reason.

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The first two package films, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, came out of a goodwill trip Walt and his staff took to South America at the behest of the federal government (and on their dime, I might add). The third package film, Make Mine Music, came into being because of the financial successes of the first two. They might not have been huge money makers, but the package films kept costs much lower than feature length movies and kept cash flowing into the financially troubled studio. Even though the war was officially over by the time Music was released, Disney would release three more package films while waiting for the world markets to recover.

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The original release of Make Mine Music included ten different segments, ranging from a musical exploration of the Hatfield and McCoy feud to a tragedy about an opera singing whale (and if you don’t remember that part as a tragedy, it’s clearly been a while since you’ve seen it). In between those two shorts are a variety of musical genres, including two swing parts with Benny Goodman and his orchestra, a love ballad sung by Andy Russell, a telling of Peter and the Wolf complete with classical score, songs sung by Dinah Shore, the Andrews Sisters and the Ken Darby singers and Jerry Colonna, who would later voice the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland, reciting the epic poem Casey at the Bat.

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Make Mine Music was never given terribly wide theatrical release as a whole, but many of its pieces were later re-released to theaters individually. The movie proved popular enough that it grossed over $3.2 million all together on a $1.3 million budget. Which is, again, why the studio released three more package films before getting back up to feature length strength.

It should be noted that later releases of Make Mine Music, especially the first VHS and DVD United States versions, were edited for content. In the All the Cats Join In segment, some brief nudity was removed although it was left in for the Japanese home market. The Martins and the Coys segment was also removed entirely because it was deemed unsuitable for children due to its comic gun play. That segment has been reinserted in subsequent releases.