February 7 - Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor

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

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

Image copyright Disney

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

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

Image courtesy of historybyzim.com

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

Image courtesy of me.

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

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

January 25 - 101 Dalmatians

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1961, Walt Disney Productions released its 17th animated feature, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. When Walt read the book of the same name by Dodie Smith in 1957, he immediately bought the rights to it. He turned the book over to Bill Peet, a prominent member of the Story Department, to turn it into a script. Dalmatians thus became the first Disney animated movie to be written entirely by one person. And, unlike Mary Poppins, released a few years later, when Bill showed Dodie the revisions he'd made to her story and the concept drawings for the characters, she loved them and was enthusiastic about seeing the finished product.

One of the main obstacles to making Dalmatians was the rising costs of producing animation in general. The studio's 16th film, Sleeping Beauty, was only moderately successful in financial terms and Walt had actually held discussions with his team during its production about closing down the Animation Department entirely, lamenting over the expense. Luckily, an old friend of the company stepped forward to save the day: Ub Iwerks. Ub had been toiling away since his return to Disney in 1940, working on all sorts of special effects projects. One of the processes he developed was a way to use Xerox's technology to transfer an animator's drawings onto the acetate cels actually used for filming, eliminating the need for hand inking. Xerography, as it is called, had first been used to create the forest of thorns in Sleeping Beauty. When Ken Anderson, Dalmatians' art director, asked Walt about more extensive use of the process, Walt reportedly said "you can fool around all you want." So he did.

Image copyright Disney

The problem with Xerography was not that it could basically only handle transferring black lines, but that those lines were kind of rough. The early version of the process just didn't have the smoothness of traditional hand inking. To combat this, Ken helped create an art style for the picture that resembled more of the funny pages in the newspaper than an oil painting. He even had the background artwork done using Xerography, so the style was consistent throughout the entire movie. Walt initially hated the look of the film, but eventually came around to it. Why? Perhaps because it's estimated that by using this process, Dalmatians would end up costing about half what it would have using hand inked cels. So while the Ink and Paint Department may have lost a significant amount of work, the Animation Department as a whole was saved from oblivion.

Image copyright Disney

One Hundred and One Dalmatians was well received when it was released. Several critics hailed it as the best feature since the original, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, although that, in my opinion, was going a bit too far. They might not have been so rapturous about it if they hadn't been turned off by the angular look of Sleeping Beauty two years earlier. Most modern critics tend to give it a rating somewhere in the B+ range, which is exactly where I would put it. I can't really say if I enjoyed the live action version in the Nineties more or not. They're both entertaining, mainly because of the unabashed evilness of Cruella de Ville. Your final tidbit of Dalmatian information: the television commercial for Kanine Krunchies that the young pups go gaga for is sung by Lucille Bliss, who also voiced Anastasia for Cinderella. Now you'll never be able to think of Dalmatian cereal again without also hearing Sing Sweet Nightingale sung really off key. You're welcome.

October 26 - Bob Hoskins

On this day, in 1942, Robert William Hoskins was born in Bury St. Edmonds, West Suffolk, England. Bob suffered from dyslexia, which made school difficult for him, so much so he was actually written off by his teachers who assumed he was just stupid. After leaving school at the age of 15, he bounced around doing whatever jobs he could find: window washer, porter and truck driver to name a few. He eventually found himself in Israel where he worked for six months on a farm before moving on to Syria to tend camels for a tribe of Bedouin for two years.

By 1968, Bob had wandered back to England where one of the jobs he landed was a small role in a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent. Less than a year later, he was waiting for an actor friend in the bar of London's Unity Theatre, when someone handed him a script and said "You're next." His unintended audition was not only a success, his friend ended up being his understudy.

Bob's increasing successes in the theater eventually led to roles on British television. His first major turn came in 1975's On the Move. The show was designed to highlight the issue of adult illiteracy with Bob's character, Alf Hunt, being a moving man who had problems reading. It ran for 100 episodes. His next high profile role came in 1978 on the BBC series Pennies From Heaven. Bob's portrayal of an adulterous sheet music salesman earned him a BAFTA nomination.

Around this time Bob began to get roles in film. His first big part was Harold Shand in 1980's The Long Good Friday, which earned him another BAFTA nomination. Bob followed that performance up with one of my favorite bit parts of his, the band manager in Pink Floyd The Wall. In 1983, he would get another BAFTA nomination for his portrayal of Colonel Perez in The Honorary Consul. Bob would finally win a BAFTA, plus a slew of other awards and an Oscar nomination, three years later as George in Mona Lisa.

In 1988, Bob would appear in what is probably his most well known role, Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a joint production between Touchstone Pictures and Steven Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment. Bob was not the producers first (or second or third) choice for the part of Eddie, but he was clearly born to play him. The film didn't come without some side effects, though. Because he had to constantly play against characters that wouldn't be there until they were animated in, Bob suffered from hallucinations for months after filming stopped. Launching himself into the role paid off, however, in a British Evening Standard Award for him and a stellar performance for us.

Bob's next role to have a Disney connection also had a Spielberg tie in. 1991's Hook started out life as a Disney production and would have been more of a remake of the 1953 animated film. Development issues caused that project to be shelved. When it was revived, Disney was no longer part of it. Bob's take on Mr. Smee was, for me at least, a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre film. Dustin Hoffman, who played Captain Hook, once said that he and Bob had decided that they would play the two pirates like an old gay couple and they pulled it off brilliantly. Too bad the rest of the movie couldn't keep up with them. Bob's final television role would also be Mr. Smee in the SyFy Channel miniseries Neverland.

The worst experience Bob ever had making a movie is, unfortunately, also one he did for Disney's Hollywood Pictures label: the megaflop Super Mario Bros. He has gone on record as saying it was "the worst thing I ever did." Bob was injured several times during filming and reportedly spent a good deal of down time getting drunk with his costar, John Leguizamo (which may explain some of the injuries).

Bob appeared in several more films produced under the Disney umbrella of studios, including 1995's Nixon as J. Edgar Hoover, 2006's Hollywoodland as Eddie Mannix,  and 2009's A Christmas Carol as both Mr. Fezziwig and Old Joe.

In 2011, Bob was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which caused him to retire from acting the following year. After a multiple award winning career that spanned 43 years of entertaining people all over the world, Bob passed away on April 29, 2014 from pneumonia in London, England. He was 71.

Also on this day, in American history: The Erie Canal