August 26 - Retta Scott

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On this day, in 1990, Retta Scott passed away in Foster City, California. Born on February 23, 1916 in the tiny town of Omak, Washington (it had less than 1,000 residents at the time), Retta and her family moved four hours east to the Seattle area when she was a fairly young girl. Art was her favorite subject in school and she first thought about doing it as a career when, in the fourth grade, she won a scholarship from the Seattle Art and Music Foundation. She was able to stretch that award into nearly ten years of art classes, continuing to get local training well past her 1934 graduation from Roosevelt High School. Her dedication to honing her craft paid off when she then won a second scholarship, this time for three years of study at the famous Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, California. Retta packed up her belongings, moved a couple of states south and set her sights on becoming a fine artist. She ended up making history.

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While at Chouinard, Retta would spend a lot of her free time at the Griffith Park Zoo, just a short distance from the school. Her bold sketches of the animals there caught the attention of one of her professors. He recommended that she apply for a job at the Walt Disney Studio. Retta said no thanks, cartoons did not appeal to her. The professor explained he had more of the type of artistry present in the recently released Snow White in mind and understood, through some contacts of his, that the studio was looking at doing an adaptation of Bambi next. Retta’s expertise with animal drawings would be a natural fit. Retta was finally convinced to apply and, almost to her surprise, was hired.

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Retta began her Disney career in 1938 in the Story Department, a fairly unusual start given that most women at animation studios were almost always relegated to the tediousness of the Ink and Paint Department. Her time spent at the zoo came shining through in her story sketches and character development work. Both David Hand, Bambi’s director, and Walt himself were impressed with the intensity of her drawings. When the movie moved into the actual production phase, Retta was moved into the actual animation department, put under the tutelage of the Legendary Eric Larson and assigned to the sequence where the hunting dogs are chasing Faline. Her amazing work led to a full-fledged on-screen credit as an animator for Bambi, making her the first woman at Disney ever to receive that honor.

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Over the next few years, Retta continued on as an animator for both Fantasia and Dumbo (although she gets no official credit on either of those films) as well as contributing to at least two Donald Duck shorts, Donald’s Snow Fight and Donald Gets Drafted (again sans credit). Retta was working on animating the weasels for the studio’s adaptation of The Wind in the Willows when she made an on-screen appearance during the filming of The Reluctant Dragon in 1941 (she presents the film’s star, Robert Benchley with a caricature of him as an elephant). Later that year, as things became increasingly tight for Disney just prior to World War II, she was briefly laid off with a number of other animators, but by the beginning of 1942, she was hired back into the Story Department. She worked on several animated shorts and educational films until she married a submarine commander and retired from Disney in April 1946.

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Retta and her husband, Benjamin Worcester, moved east to Washington, DC where she continued her art career as an illustrator. She would work with the Walt Disney Company several more times over the years, most notably on Little Golden Book editions of Disney movies. Her illustrations for the Cinderella Big Golden Book are what make that book a must have for collectors. She was praised for a picture book that didn't look exactly like the film but yet still felt like it came directly out of it. Other vintage non-Disney Little Golden Books she is famous for include The Santa Claus Book and Happy Birthday.

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In the late Seventies, Retta returned to the world of animation when she was hired by Martin Rosen, a British filmmaker, to help animate The Plague Dogs released in 1980 (it's said to be a pretty decent movie in spite of a terrible title). She moved to San Francisco to work on the picture (having divorced her husband around the same time), teaming up with a youngish Brad Bird (who would go on to direct The Iron Giant and The Incredibles). And even though four decades had passed since the last time she had to prove herself in an animator's workroom, the men in the room were reportedly both surprised by her talents and awed by them. Unfortunately, some things take longer to change than we might like.

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After production wrapped up on Dogs, Retta would join another future member of Pixar, Bud Luckey, at his studio, doing animation for commercials like Cookie Crisp Cereal. She worked there until 1985, when she suffered a stroke that spared her life but robbed her of the ability to produce quality work. She would live quietly for another five years before passing away at her home in Foster City. The pioneering animator who helped open doors for generations of women after her was 74. Ten years later, in 2000, Retta would posthumously be declared an official Disney Legend, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

August 8 - Bambi

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On this day, in 1942, the Walt Disney Studio’s fifth animated feature, Bambi, had its world premiere in the midst of a war-torn London, England. In 1923, an Austrian novelist, Felix Salten, published one of the forerunners to environmental literature, Bambi, A Life in the Woods. The book about a buck who grows up in the forest, loses his mother, learns a few things from his father and avoids predatory hunters quickly became a bestseller and was almost instantly considered a classic. MGM purchased the film rights to Felix’s book in 1933, intending to make a live action adaptation of it. They spent four years trying to figure out how that would work without ever coming to a conclusion. In April 1937, MGM sold the rights to Walt Disney, who intended to turn Bambi into his studio’s second animated feature. That didn’t happen.

Disney ran into their own set of adaptation problems almost immediately. The book was written with an adult audience in mind; its dark themes and message were almost the opposite of the usual light and frothy children’s fare the studio produced. The story also lent itself to an almost infinite array of interpretations and subplots. The Story Department might spend weeks developing a sequence involving Bambi stepping on an ant hill and what happens to the colony in the aftermath before realizing none of that has anything to do with the central story and scrapping the whole thing. Compounding all of the story problems: the animators were finding deer to be extremely hard to draw realistically and consistently, especially their skinny little legs. Walt still believed that Bambi was worth doing, and doing right, but as time went by, the film slipped in the studio’s release order from second to third, then from third to fourth.

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By July 1940, the story issues had all been worked out. The animators had visited the Los Angeles Zoo multiple times to study deer and a pair of fawns had even been housed at the studio for a while for observational purposes. In fact, the work the animators put in on studying all kinds of animals, not just deer, would push the envelope on what kinds of characters and styles of animation the studio did for decades to come. Work on Bambi was finally ready to begin in earnest. When the last cell slid into place two years later, though, the world’s market for movies was a much different place.

Europe had already been embroiled in World War II for several months before production ramped up on Bambi. As a result, most of that continent’s market was closed off to American (or any other) movie studios. Pinocchio and Fantasia didn’t enjoy the same wide distribution as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and both lost money. Dumbo managed to recoup some of those losses only because it cost nearly a third less to produce than Pinocchio. In spite of the fact that Bambi cost almost $100,000 less than Dumbo to make (a huge chunk of change in those days), it too lost money in a war-time economy that now included the United States.

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Bambi received mixed reviews when it was initially released. Hunters hated it, of course, but there were a number of critics who bemoaned the fact that the film was too realistic in its depiction of animals. They felt that Disney was overreaching himself by removing the fantasy element. Even Walt’s own daughter, Diane, was critical. When she wanted to know why Bambi’s mother had to die, Walt said he was only following the book. Her response? You’ve changed stories before, dad. You’re Walt Disney. You can do whatever you want. Since those early days, however, Bambi has come to be seen for the masterpiece that it is. It’s listed at #3 on the American Film Institute’s list of the Top 10 Animated Films of All Time and was nominated for their list of the best 100 films. And the character of Man, who is never actually seen in the movie, came in at #20 on AFI’s list of best villains.

In 2006, the National Forest service began using footage from Bambi in their fire prevention public service announcements. It was a natural fit but wasn’t the first time that had happened. Right after the film was released, Disney allowed characters from Bambi to be used for the same purpose, but only for one year. At the end of that term, the licensing agreement wasn’t renewed which left the government in a bit of a bind. They managed to rally, though, creating the character of Smokey the Bear to take Bambi’s place.

May 26 - Sam Edwards

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On this day, in 1915, Sam Edwards was born in Macon, Georgia. Sam’s parents had met as performers on the vaudeville circuit, so it’s no surprise that his first appearance on stage was as a baby in his mother’s arms in a show called Tess of the Storm Country (a 1914 film version starred Mary Pickford). Shortly after Sam’s birth, his parent’s marriage ended in divorce and Sam, with his older sister Florida (care to guess where she was born?) stayed with their mother, Edna. He would never know who his birth father was until a chance meeting in Hollywood over thirty years later. Edna married another actor in 1917, Jack Edwards, and they would soon add a third child to the family, Jack Jr.

The Edwards relocated themselves to the Jacksonville, Florida area, started their own theater troupe and travelled around the country performing in all kinds of plays. Sometimes the kids would be cast alongside mom and dad, but not always comfortably. Sam recalled the first time he could remember being on stage, in Why Men Leave Home, as his mother’s daughter (he wasn’t apparently a very convincing actor at that age; he said most of the audience could tell he was a boy in spite of the lacy underwear that was part of his costume).

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As the Edwards children grew, the family transitioned from the stage into radio. Now based mostly in San Antonio, Texas, Jack managed a movie theater, interspersing the new fangled medium of moving pictures with short live performances done by Edna and the kids. As he moved into his teens, Sam began participating in and winning local singing contests. Jack Sr. and Edna were already performing on WOAI, one of the first radio stations in Texas, when they began producing a show starring Sam and Jack Jr. In 1933, The Adventures of Sonny and Buddy became one of the first weekly serials to ever be broadcast. Sam would enjoy a long, prolific career on the airwaves. His whole family appeared as a fictionalized version of themselves on The Edwards Family. He was part of an early soap opera, One Man's Family, and an early kid's adventure show, Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police. Over the couple of decades that radio reigned supreme, Sam had recurring roles on Father Knows Best, Guiding Light, Meet Corliss Archer, The First Hundred Years, Dragnet, Gunsmoke, This is Your FBI and several others.

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Sam broke into movies almost by accident. In 1937, He tagged along with his brother to the set of a movie Jake was in, intending to be an extra, mostly for fun. His radio expertise, however, not only got him noticed but also got him a speaking part in High Hat. While never becoming a movie star, Sam would occasionally appear in films for the next four and a half decades. He had significant parts in Twelve O'Clock High with Gregory Peck, Operation Pacific with John Wayne and The Beatniks (which was featured in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000). His final film role came in 1981 as a Ticket Clerk in the remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.

When radio transitioned into television, Sam transformed himself as well. While he would never have a starring role like he did before, he would start appearing on the small screen in the mid Fifties and add more than 60 different series to his resume over the years. He is probably most remembered as Bill Anderson, the banker on Little House on the Prairie, but he had recurring roles on Dragnet and Gunsmoke (hold overs from his radio days) and guest shots on everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Mission: Impossible to Happy Days. He even, in another throwback to his earlier career, had a stint on Days of Our Lives. 

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Sam joined the Disney family pretty early in both his career and the history of features at the studio. In the 1942 classic Bambi, he brought the adult part of Thumper to twitterpated life. A great deal of his work for Disney came through Disneyland Records. He played both the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodman for a series of Wizard of Oz albums. He played Tigger, Rabbit and Owl on a whole bunch of Winnie the Pooh records. He also served as the narrator for many of the Disneyland Storyteller series. Throughout the Seventies, he appeared in a string of live action films for the company, including Escape to Witch Mountain, The Biscuit Eater and two episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Hog Wild and The Flight of the Grey Wolf. His final 'appearance' for the company was as the voice of Ollie Owl opposite Burl Ives' Sam the Eagle in the patriotic Disneyland attraction America Sings, that ran from 1974 until 1988.

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In the early Eighties, Sam retired from acting, mostly. He did some traveling around with his wife of three decades to old time radio conventions, meeting up with old friends and often giving live readings of favorite episodes from back in the day. But mostly he spent time with his family enjoying life. In 1992, he had bypass surgery, recovered nicely and spent another twelve years living peacefully in Durango, Colorado. Then, on July 28, 2004, three days after suffering a heart attack that revealed a hole in his heart, Sam passed away, surrounded by family. He was 89.

February 9 - Bill Justice

On this day, in 1914, William Barnard Justice was born in Dayton, Ohio. Raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Bill was a student at John Herron Art Institute, now a part of Indiana University. He graduated in 1935 and moved out to southern California. In 1937, he became a part of the Walt Disney Studio. Bill may have started his Disney career as an animator, like all of the company greats, but he would go on to do a little bit of everything (and do it all spectacularly).

Bill lent his animation skills to feature films like Fantasia, The Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. He's best known in that arena for his work on Thumper in Bambi. He also worked in the Shorts Department, most notably as a lead animator for Chip and Dale.

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In the mid-Fifties, Bill started directing. One of his first projects in the director's chair was the opening march for The Mickey Mouse Club. He went on to direct The Truth About Mother Goose in 1957, Noah's Ark in 1959 and A Symposium on Popular Songs in 1962. All three of those shorts were nominated for Academy Awards. He didn't get any statues to put on his mantle, but that's still an impressive run.

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In the early Sixties, Bill was busy redesigning character costumes for Disneyland as well as coming up with the floats for the park's first Christmas parade. He also made early sketches for the Main Street Electrical Parade. The natural result of these projects was his transfer into the Imagineering department. That's when Bill became more of an engineer than an animator, although he still remained an artist. He got involved with the development of Audio-Animatronics and was soon an expert on programming them. He would be responsible for the movements of figures in Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Carousel of Progress, Mission to Mars, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings (just to give some highlights). When Walt Disney World opened, Bill had his hand in the Hall of Presidents and the Mickey Mouse Revue as well.

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Bill retired from Disney in 1979. In 1992, he published his autobiography, detailing his career, called Justice For Disney. He was made an official Disney Legend in 1996 for his amazing contributions, spanning practically every department in the company for 42 years. In his later years, Bill loved to attend Disneyana conventions, chat with people and (to the annoyance of ever hotel he stayed in) draw Disney characters on linen napkins.He passed away in his sleep at a nursing home in Santa Monica, California on February 10, 2011. He was 97 years 1 day old.

December 27 - Jack Bradbury

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On this day, in 1914, John Morin Bradbury was born in Seattle, Washington. Jack was always interested in the comic strips he saw in the newspapers growing up and felt that drawing them must be a pretty great way to spend one’s time. So he practiced his skills as often as he could, waiting for an opportunity to break into the business. In 1933, he saw the Disney produced Silly Symphony The Three Little Pigs and not only was enamored of it himself, but noticed how everyone in town seemed to be talking about it. He heard rumors that the Disney Studio was hiring and sent a portfolio down to Hollywood. He was invited to come down for a two week trial run, mostly at his own expense. Jack put $50 in his pocket and took the offer. He passed the test and, at just 20 years of age, started his life in cartoons for the princely sum of $15 per week.

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For the next four years, Jack worked as an inbetweener on such classic Mickey Mouse shorts as The Band Concert and Through the Mirror. As work ramped up on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he began working under Eric Larson and Milt Kahl. The employees of the studio were encouraged to work up their own little pieces of animation and actually have them filmed so they could be critiqued and given pointers on how to improve. As the big drive to finish Snow White wound down, Jack made a couple of those pieces and asked Ham Luske, who’d been supervising animator for Snow White’s title character, to look at them. Ham approved of them and showed them to Walt, who also approved.

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In 1938, Jack became a full animator. He worked on shorts like Ferdinand the Bull (one of his sequences is when Ferdinand sits on the bee) and Barnyard Symphony. He also lent a hand to the next several features the studio produced. Jack’s work can be seen in some of Figaro’s scenes in Pinocchio, the Pegasus family in Fantasia and the stage fight in Bambi. Then, in 1941, Jack got caught up in the big animator’s strike at the studio. After being out for several weeks, he was invited back to work when the strike ended but his return didn’t last long. By the end of the year, Jack was one of a number of animators who would be permanently laid off.

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From 1942-44, Jack went across town to work for Friz Freleng at Warner Brothers, mostly working on Bugs Bunny shorts. Following his stint there, he went to work for American Comics Group working on comic book stories for characters like Fremont Frog and Spencer Spook. In 1947, Jack began working for Western Publishing, the company that produced comic books based on works by Disney, Walter Lantz and Warner Brothers. For the next 31 years, he drew practically every Disney character that existed for comic books and the Little Golden Books. He was so adept at it that Walt reportedly told Western that if Jack drew it, it didn’t need to be submitted for approval.

Starting in late 1969, Jack would begin to suffer from macular degeneration. As his eyesight worsened, he gradually moved from drawing comics to writing them instead. He finally had to call it quits for good in 1978. Towards the end of his life, Jack enjoyed a resurgence of interest in his work and would occasionally make appearances at various comic cons. He would pass away from kidney failure on May 15, 2004 in Sylmar, California. He was 89.

November 1 - Retta Davidson

On this day, in 1921, animator Retta Davidson was born in Arcadia, California. She should not be confused with another female animator named Retta Scott (because every company has two women named Retta, right?). After graduating from high school in 1939, Retta joined the Walt Disney Studio in the the Ink and Paint Department. Her work from this era can be "seen" in Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia. The onset of World War II would change that.

As many of the studio's male animators were being drafted into various parts of the US war machine, the studio began to get desperate for people to continue making movies and therefore a profit. In 1941, the women of the Ink and Paint Department were invited to submit their own drawings to be considered as replacements. Retta became one of just 10 women to be promoted to animator. She would only be in the position a year, however, before the war would claim her as well. She went to work for the Navy for four years. In 1946, Retta returned to Disney and began working as an assistant animator to whoever was lucky enough to nab her for their project. She continued in this role until 1966, when, still reeling from the death of Walt, she left the studio to become a freelance artist.

Retta spent time in Hollywood creating television commercials and working with Chuck Jones on such projects as Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century. She would later move to Montreal, Canada to teach animation at Concordia College there and Sheridan College in Toronto. Retta would be a part of the team that produced the animated version of Lord of the Rings in 1978 and the team that created the 1981 Canadian animated movie Heavy Metal (which happened to feature the voice of yesterday's post, John Candy).

In 1980, Retta came back to the Disney family to help train a whole new batch of animators. She was given a coordinating animator credit on both The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Retta continued as a trainer until her retirement in 1985. She would pass away in Carlsbad, California on June 12, 1998. She was 76.

October 20 - Frank Churchill

On this day, in 1901, composer Frank Churchill was born in Rumford, Maine. By the age of four, his family had moved to Southern California. He began his professional music career at 15 the same way many musicians of the time did, as a pianist in a movie theater. After graduating from high school, Frank's parents coerced him into enrolling at UCLA as a pre-med student. He didn't last a year. Bound and determined to make it as a musician, Frank would spend the next few years performing anywhere from honky-tonks in Tijuana to an orchestra in Tuscon. Upon his return to California in 1924, he was awarded a contract with KNX as the radio station's accompanist.

In 1930, Frank became part of the Disney family and began writing the scores for dozens of shorts, including Who Killed Cock Robin, Mickey's Gala Premier and the flypaper scene from Playful Pluto. His most famous composition from this period is the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" from 1933's The Three Little Pigs. The song's perky confidence caught on with a nation deep into the Great Depression. When the sheet music went on sale, over 39,000 copies were sold in the first three days in New York City alone.

Based on his successes with the shorts, Walt gave Frank the job of scoring the studio's first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Not only did he produce an Academy Award nominated score, but Frank also helped write "Whistle While You Work", "Heigh Ho", and "Someday My Prince Will Come." By helping propel the success of the Snow White with his catchy tunes, Frank propelled his own success within the company. He became the studio's Supervisor of Music.

Frank's next project was 1941's The Reluctant Dragon. Not only did he contribute to the score, but he can be seen in person in the Studio Tour portion of the film. Next came Dumbo. He collaborated with Oliver Wallace on the score and composed the classic Disney ballad "Baby Mine" with Ned Washington. When Oscar time rolled around, Frank shared a nomination with Ned for Best Song and a win with Oliver for Best Score. A year later, he received dual nominations again for Bambi, one for the score he co-wrote with Edward Plumb and the other for his work on the tune "Love Is a Song."

Tragically, his Oscar nominations for Bambi would come posthumously. While working on the film, Frank became severely depressed when two of his close friends and orchestra members died within a month of each other. He began to drink heavily and, on May 14, 1942, committed suicide while sitting at the piano in his Castaic, California home.

Frank's legacy would outlive him by quite a bit. He had already written music for two more films in production at the time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and Peter Pan, and although the lyrics were never used in Peter Pan, Frank's song "Never Smile at a Crocodile" was. In 1977, he was posthumously nominated for a Grammy Award for the Snow White soundtrack and in 2001 he became an official Disney Legend.

Also on this day, in American history: Eugene V. Debs

October 11 - David Dodd Hand

On this day, in 1986, animator David Dodd Hand passed away in San Luis Obispo, California. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey on January 23, 1900, Dave wanted to start a career as a newspaper comic strip artist. He moved to Chicago to take some commercial art classes. He ran out of money to pay for those classes and began to work for Wallace Carlson, a pioneer in the art of animation. Dave discovered he loved the medium and moved to New York, where he would do work with most of the animation studios around at the time. In late January 1930, almost on his 30th birthday, he moved again, this time to California and began working for the Walt Disney Studios.

Dave worked as an animator on all kinds of shorts throughout the early Thirties. He got assigned birds a lot. There was just one problem. He wasn't very good at animating. His co-workers described him as being very mechanical. Most of the animators would let the drawings dictate how a character would move, flowing along as the art moved them. Dave would chart out the flight of his birds with a military precision that had nothing to do with how birds actually fly. Luckily, he was good at something else. Directing.

In 1933, Walt had Dave direct his first short, a Minnie and Mickey story called Building a Building. He was clearly better at directing than he was at animating birds. Some of the best Disney shorts over the next few years would be produced under the leadership of Dave: 1934's The Flying Mouse, 1935's Who Killed Cock Robin? and The Orphan Kittens and 1936's Thru the Mirror. Dave's secret was that he didn't worry about every little detail in the short. He put the animators on the team that, by playing to their individual strengths, would produce the best work. And then he drove them pretty hard. His mantra was "You've got to make decisions and as long as you're right 51 percent of the time, you're right." This system worked out well, for Dave and for the studio. The studio got great shorts and Dave got promotions.

When Walt decided that he wasn't going to direct the studios first feature himself, the job went to Dave.  As Supervising Director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the future of the studio was literally in Dave's hands. He pulled it off with flying colors. For the remainder of the Thirties and part of the Forties, he would be a surrogate for Walt around the studio, watching over the shorts, returning as Supervising Director again for Bambi. Dave was Walt's right hand man. Which caused another problem for him. What sort of future do you have at a company when literally the only job left for you rise into is held by someone younger than you who has no intention of ever leaving? As much as Dave revered Walt, he eventually grew tired of being a second banana who had to watch the first banana get all the credit. In 1944, he left Disney to go across the pond for a new venture.

Dave approached the largest entertainment company in England at the time, The Rank Organization, with a plan to expand British animation. J. Arthur Rank, the organization's founder, gave him the green light to start a studio, Gaumont British Animation. Dave would produce two different series, Animaland and Musical Paintbox, creating a total of 19 shorts. Unfortunately, he couldn't find an American distributor and GBA would close its doors in 1950. Dave returned to the United States, settling in Colorado Springs. He would spend the next 18 years working for the Alexander Film Company. Alexander made advertisements that played during the intermission at drive-in movie theaters as well as industrial films.

David Hale Hand, Dave's son, currently owns the rights the films his father made in England and hopes to produce new films in both series. Dave was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 1994.

Also on this day, in American history: Alaska P. Davidson

September 29 - Charles Wolcott

On this day, in 1906, composer Charles Wolcott was born in Flint, Michigan. By 1927, Charles was part of the growing Big Band scene, arranging music for and playing piano with folks like Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Paul Whiteman. He also worked with radio stars like Rudy Vallee, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

In 1937, Charles started working at the Walt Disney Studio writing scores for the shorts department. He soon moved up to feature films. His credits include Bambi, Pinocchio, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Song of the South, Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free. By 1944, Charles had become General Music Director for Disney and had a hit single, his orchestra's recording of the Brazilian choro song "Tico Tico no Fuba."

In 1950, Charles left Disney to become an Associate General Music Director for MGM. At his new studio, Charles gets credit for bringing rock and roll to the big screen. While scoring the 1955's The Blackboard Jungle, he convinced the producers to use "Rock Around the Clock" in the film. The sky didn't fall and, as they say, rock was then here to stay. By 1958, Charles had become General Music Director for MGM. In 1960, he would release another hit single, "Ruby Duby Du," and leave the world of music behind.

Charles was a practitioner of the Baha'i Faith. In 1953, he had been elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. In 1960, Charles was made secretary of that body and resigned his position at MGM. Just one year later, he was elected to the International Baha'i Council and moved to Haifa, Israel. When the Council turned into the Universal House of Justice (think of it kind of like the Baha'i Supreme Court) in 1963, Charles became one of the first nine members. He would hold that position until his death in 1987.