February 13 - John Lounsbery

On this day, in 1976, John Mitchell Lounsbery passed away in Los Angeles, California. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 9, 1911, John's family moved to Denver, Colorado when he was a young child. After graduating from East Denver High School, he started taking art classes at the Art Institute of Denver. When he graduated from the Institute in 1932, he moved to Southern California and became a student at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Once he'd pretty well established himself there, an instructor recommended that he apply for a job at the Walt Disney Studio. He did and his Disney journey began on June 2, 1935.

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Thrown right into the deep end, John's first assignment was to assist Norm Ferguson on animating the witch for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. John was an accomplished swimmer, though (he became one of Walt's Nine Old Men after all) and by Pinocchio, he was taking the lead on J. Worthington Foulfellow and his sidekick, Gideon. He was then put in charge of Ben Ali, Hyacinth and the rest of the gators and hippos for the Dance of the Hours segment in Fantasia. By Dumbo, John was a directing animator and he never looked back, contributing to almost every classic Disney feature produced during the Golden Age of the studio.

The list of characters that John was in charge of bringing to life is almost too long to believe:

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Dumbo and Timothy Mouse in Dumbo.

Donald Duck, Jose Carioca and Panchito for The Three Caballeros

The wolf in Peter and the Wolf and Willie, the whale who sings at the met, in Make Mine Music

Br'er Rabbit, Fox and Bear for Song of the South

Jiminy Cricket, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Willie the Giant in Fun and Fancy Free

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The Once Upon a Wintertime, Blame It On the Samba and Pecos Bill segments in Melody Time

Ichabod Crane, Katrina van Tassel, Brom Bones and various other people and creatures in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

Lucifer, mice, Bruno and Major in Cinderella

Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter and assorted flowers and creatures for Alice in Wonderland

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The entire Darling family (including Nana) as well as pirates (including Captain Hook) and the lost boys for Peter Pan

Thomas Jefferson in Ben and Me

Lady, Tramp, Tony, Joe, Peg and a slew of others for Lady and the Tramp

King Hubert, King Stefan, Queen Leah, Prince Phillip and some goons in Sleeping Beauty

The Colonel, Jasper and Horace Badun and Sergeant Tibbs for One Hundred and One Dalmatians

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Wart, Merlin, Archimedes, Madame Mim and several others in The Sword and the Stone

Most of the farmyard animals who sing Jolly Holiday in Mary Poppins

Mowgli, the elephants, King Louie, Baloo, Bagheera, and Shere Khan for The Jungle Book

The humans and Roquefort in The Aristocats

King Leonidas in Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Robin Hood, Little John and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood

Now John didn't draw all of these characters by himself of course. He was a directing animator, after all. His assistants and inbetweeners did all the grunt work after he drew key poses, but he was still responsible for how they looked and moved. It's no wonder why he was part of the Nine Old Men, even if he is one of the less well known names of the group. And he isn't as well known because he was a quiet, unassuming guy who wasn't flashy but just showed up every morning, put in an incredible days work and went home at five.

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By the mid-Seventies, John had moved up again to directing whole films, not just overseeing half the characters. His first gig in the director's chair was the third short featuring that tubby little cubby, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. The led to becoming co-director for The Rescuers with Woolie Reitherman. Unfortunately, John's story comes to an abrupt end at this point. In the midst of production on The Rescuers, he went into the hospital for some surgery and didn't come back out. Just like that, his incredible 41 year career was over. And while his body of work will never be forgotten, John, sadly, is not known outside of animation circles like Frank Thomas or Marc Davis. If he had lived longer, my guess is that would not be the case as he was the first of the Nine Old Men to die. John was made an official Disney Legend, with the rest of his fellow Men, posthumously in 1989.

January 4 - Sterling Holloway

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On this day, in 1905, Sterling Prince Holloway was born in Cedartown, Georgia. The son of the town grocer (and later mayor), Sterling went to the Georgia Military Academy for his primary schooling. He graduated at the age of 15 and almost immediately traveled to New York City to begin attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there he began a lifelong friendship with Spencer Tracy. After graduating a second time, Sterling traveled the country doing vaudeville acts interspersed with walk-on parts on Broadway whenever he was in New York.

In 1926, Sterling moved to Hollywood to try his luck in motion pictures. His high pitched voice and shock of red hair usually meant some sort of comedic sidekick role for him, but he didn't mind. Over the next five decades, he would appear in more than 150 films. It started with The Battling Kangaroo, a silent picture. A couple of years later, when talkies came along, many of the actors in Tinsel Town couldn't make the transition. Not only did Sterling make the leap but sound actually made him more popular. Over the years, he worked alongside the likes of Fred McMurray, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, to drop just a few names.

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When World War II hit, Sterling stepped right up, joining the United States Army in 1942 as an old man of 37. He was assigned to special forces where he developed a show, Hey Rookie, that ran for nine months and raised over $350,000 for the Army Relief Fund. At the end of the war, he played a rare dramatic role in the movie A Walk in the Sun, as a reluctant medic, earning quite a bit of critical praise in the process.

With his distinctive voice, and nearly ubiquitous presence in Hollywood, it didn't take long for Sterling to show up on Walt Disney's radar. In the mid thirties, Sterling was actually tested for the role of Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a role he ultimately lost to Pinto Colvig. He made his first appearance for Disney in 1941 as Mr. Stork in Dumbo. From there, he became a Disney staple. When I met Dave Smith, the head Disney archivist, once I asked him who had done the most voices in Disney films. His reply was that with all the little, mostly uncredited voices we may never know but that when it came to major roles, it was Sterling Holloway, hands down.

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Over the next few decades, Sterling would play a variety of characters for Disney, from the villainous to the downright cuddly. He provided the voice for Adult Flower in Bambi in 1942. Two years later he narrated the Pablo, the Cold Blooded Penguin section of The Three Caballeros. Two years after that, he narrated the Peter and the Wolf sequence in Make Mine Music. In 1951, Sterling was the Cheshire Cat for Alice in Wonderland, 1967 brought us Kaa in The Jungle Book and 1970 found him as Roquefort the mouse in The Aristocats.

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But it was Sterling's last series of roles (just one role but in a series of films) for Disney that he is not only best known for, but was his favorite to perform. I am, of course, talking about that tubby little cubby, Winnie the Pooh. Starting with Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in 1966, Sterling also did Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). All three of those shorts were later combined into the studio's 22nd feature film called The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh released in 1977.

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In addition to his voice work in Disney features, Sterling also narrated a bunch of shorts, including The Little House, Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, and the role of Amos Mouse in Ben and Me. His final role with the company was actually a live action one, moonshiner Hobe Carpenter in the 1977 comedy Thunder and Lightning, starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson.

Image lifted from gettyimages.com

Outside of Disney, Sterling had smoothly made the transition to television starting in the Fifties. He had recurring roles on Superman, The Andy Griffith Show and The Life of Riley as well as guest spots on everything from The Untouchables to Gilligan's Island to Moonlighting. He also landed several contracts for commercials, hawking wares ranging from Puppy Chow to Libby's baked beans. He was also the voice of Woodsy the Owl in Forest Service PSAs during the Seventies and Eighties.

In 1991, Sterling was named an official Disney Legend, the first person to receive the award for voice work. At the ceremony, the 86 year old was helped to the stage by none other than Winnie the Pooh himself. He would pass away a little over a year later on November 22, 1992 from cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California.