July 23 - Edie McClurg

Image courtesy carriemovies.fandom.com

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

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

Image courtesy wired.com

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

Image copyright Pixar

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

Image copyright Disney

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

Image courtesy doyouremember.com

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

February 24 - Chris Buck

On this day, in 1958, Christopher James Buck was born in Wichita, Kansas. Like many an animator before him, Chris was lured into the art form by what he saw on the big screen as a child. His first movie going memory was to see the 1962 re-release of Pinocchio to theaters, and he’s been hooked ever since. Conveniently for his future plans, Chris’ family soon moved to Placentia, a quiet community in Orange County, California. After graduating from El Dorado High School, he spent two years studying character animation at CalArts, where he fell in with the likes of John Lasseter and Michael Giaimo. Then, in 1978, fresh out of room A113, Chris got a job with the Walt Disney Company.

Chris joined the company when it was in a dark period known as the Seventies. Walt had passed away over a decade before and the Disney Renaissance was still a decade away; not a great time to start a career. His first project was as an inbetweener (and later a full animator) for the modest 1981 hit, The Fox and the Hound.  He managed to almost completely avoid participating in the train wreck called The Black Cauldron, partly by doing some work on Mickey’s Christmas Carol instead, but mostly by leaving the company to freelance instead of becoming embroiled in the mess.

Image copyright Paramount

Chris began doing work in advertising, including television commercials for Keebler, while maintaining a working relationship with Disney. In between animating a short, Fun with Mr. Future, and supervising a featurette, Sport Goofy in Soccermania, for the company, Chris began working with another young animator, Tim Burton. He helped Tim storyboard his live action short, Frankenweenie, and later became a directing animator on a short-lived show Tim produced (and Brad Bird created) called Family Dog. During the same time frame, Chris was assisting the fledgling Hyperion Animation Studio with character designs for projects like The Brave Little Toaster and supervising animation for the feature Bebe’s Kids.

Image copyright Disney

As the Disney Renaissance began to appear on the horizon in the late Eighties, Chris was busier than ever and began doing more and more work for Disney (without, as he puts it, becoming an in-house employee). He was an animator on Oliver and Company, contributed to the experimental stuff happening in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and designed characters for The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. When Pocahontas rolled around in 1995, Chris signed on as supervising animator in charge of Percy, Wiggins and Grandmother Willow. He bumped up the food chain even further on his next picture, co-directing Tarzan with Kevin Lima.

Image copyright Disney

While Chris was able to remove himself from The Black Cauldron, he wasn’t as lucky when it came to the 2004 flop Home on the Range. All his supervising on the character of Maggie just couldn’t overcome Rosanne’s performance (or the rest of the film’s udder lack of creativity). Chris made a second break with Disney over the picture, moving over to Sony for his next project. As co-director of the 2007 mockumentary penguin hit Surf’s Up, Chris began to cement his value at the helm of animated features.

The mess surrounding Home on the Range, and the cantankerous departure of Michael Eisner as Disney’s CEO, basically put a lot of top positions at Disney, and in the film division especially, up for grabs. When the dust settled and John Lasseter had been named the chief creative officer of Animation, John sat down with his old classmate Chris for a heart-to-heart about coming back to work for Disney. One of the ideas they talked about was reviving an idea that had been kicking around the studio for years: a musical based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen.

Image copyright Disney

Chris teamed up with Jennifer Lee to co-direct Disney’s 53^rd animated feature, Frozen. To say it worked out for everyone involved would be a gross understatement. Jennifer, already the first woman to helm an animated Disney movie, became the first woman to helm a $1 billion grossing film period. Chris had convinced another old college buddy, Michael Giaimo (who’d also had an on again off again relationship with Disney over the years), to be art director on the picture, nabbing him an Annie Award in the process. The Frozen juggernaut has earned its directors multiple awards and spawned sequel featurettes, theme park shows and rides, a Broadway musical and, later this year, a second animated feature, once again led by Chris and Jennifer. In the land of will he/won’t he, Chris is now firmly in the position of he will be spending many more years collecting a paycheck from the Walt Disney Company. And that’s a thought worth melting for.

December 29 - Duncan Marjoribanks

Image courtesy animationguild.org

On this day, in 1953, Duncan Marjoribanks was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Duncan grew up in a liberal family and was considered a far-out hippy type in high school. Painfully introverted, he was also incredibly smart and extremely talented at drawing. His talents would take him to the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Canada’s premiere school for animation located in Oakville, Ontario. Following his graduation from Sheridan in 1978, Duncan became part of a group that was hired by Hanna-Barbera prompting a move to Los Angeles, California. Duncan quickly became one of the studio’s top animators, working on shows like Scooby and Scrappy Doo and Godzilla. Then the great Animator’s Strike of 1982 happened. 

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The strike began as the union protested how much work was being sent overseas (where it was much cheaper to produce) and lasted for several months. The end result, ironically predictable, was that most US animation production disappeared. Duncan changed his career focus to designing characters and began freelancing for several studios. One of the projects he would work on, and his first as animator in a decade, was a short lived television series called Family Dog. It was created and directed by a guy named Brad Bird who was thoroughly taken with Duncan’s style and talent. Brad recommended Duncan to a friend of his, John Musker. John was starting a little project over at Disney about a mermaid and hired Duncan as the first animator on the team.

Image copyright Disney

Duncan became supervising animator for Sebastian the Crab on Disney’s 28^th animated feature, The Little Mermaid. He took Samuel E. Wright’s marvelous vocal performance and the basic character designs that had already been done and created one of the most endearing and enduring characters that had been seen in decades. Don’t believe me? Just watch the scene when Sebastian finally decides to help rather than hinder Ariel and get back to me.

The success of The Little Mermaid led to Duncan staying on with Disney and supervising again for the next feature film, The Rescuers Down Under, this time for the villain, McLeach. While this film did end up being less successful, it was the grueling schedule that really took its toll on Duncan. By the time the last frame had been drawn, he needed more than a vacation and actually took a year off to live in England. Which doesn’t mean he didn’t work. He provided some character design for a short-lived Hanna-Barbera show called The Pirates of Dark Water.

Image copyright Disney

In 1991, Duncan returned to the states, and Disney, to begin supervising work on another great sidekick, Abu in Aladdin. As if his previous work wasn’t impressive enough, now he would create a memorable character without using words at all. His work in the film can also be seen in the opening sequence with the shady salesman. Duncan went right from Aladdin onto the team for Pocahontas and once again supervised a villain, Governor Ratcliffe. His portrayal of Ratcliffe was more cartoonish than the other characters, which give him more of a presence, but still this side of overly flamboyant, so he remains believable. Duncan was then slated to supervise Megera for Hercules but that never happened.

Image copyright Dreamworks SKG

Around this time, Jeffrey Katzenberg was making his spectacularly messy exit from Disney and starting his own studio, Dreamworks SKG, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. With big plans to stick it to his former employer, especially in the animation department, one of the first big talents Katzenberg poached was Duncan. The relationship didn't blossom the way anyone hoped. Duncan started out as supervising animator on Moses for Prince of Egypt but struggled with the job so much his only credit on the picture is plain old animator. He did some work on The Road to El Dorado, animating a few scenes with Tzekel-Kan and contributed some story ideas to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron before leaving Dreamworks for good. He spent a year over at Warner Brothers, working on the animated parts of the box office bomb Osmosis Jones (he did pretty good work on the movie but left before it was finished, unhappy with the direction it was taking), before returning to the fold at Disney in 2000.

Image copyright Disney

Unfortunately, Duncan's return to Burbank came at a time when the studio was producing its worst picture since The Black Cauldron. As supervising animator for Mrs. Calloway on Home on the Range, Duncan managed some moments of greatness but the movie was a critical and financial failure. Following that disaster, he was trained in computer animation and contributed to the Bowler Hat Guy for Meet the Robinsons. Duncan then got the privilege of working on Disney's last hand drawn feature, The Princess and the Frog, as head animator for Big Daddy La Buff. 

In 2009, Duncan and Disney parted ways once again. The company had decided to stop using traditional animation techniques and Duncan didn't feel comfortable working with CGI. The only thing he's really done since then was a hand drawn short utilizing the characters from Kung Fu Panda. Which is really a shame. Hopefully some day the talent behind Sebastian and Abu, who has inspired so many animators still working today, will himself find inspiration in some new project and give us all a reason to smile again.