Update: Russi Taylor

UPDATE: It is with great sadness that I have to report on the passing of a Disney Legend. Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse for over 30 years, died yesterday, July 26, 2019, in Glendale, California at the age of 75. She was also the wife of Wayne Allwine, the voice of Mickey Mouse for longer than anyone else, who died in 2008. Both of them were part of the post I did on February 7. You can read that post by clicking here. Our hearts go out to Russi's family. She was a talented lady who's polka-dotted bloomers will be hard to fill.

July 7 - Ub Iwerks

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On this day, in 1971, Ubbe Ert Iwerks passed away in Burbank, California. Ub, as he usually went by, was born on March 24, 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of German immigrants. When he was eighteen, Ub went to work for the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio in Kansas City. He met another young artist working there, Walt Disney, and the two became friends. When one of them began working for the Kansas City Slide Newspaper Company as an illustrator, the other soon followed (it’s unclear who went first). When Walt decided that he wanted to start his own animation company, Ub said Sign me up! And that’s how the Laugh-O-Gram Studio of Kansas City began. Two friends trying to make their way in the cutthroat film industry. It didn't work out. Neither of the talented young men were business minded and Laugh-O-Gram went bankrupt. But our story doesn't end there.

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The only thing Walt was left with after the bankruptcy of his first studio was a short film that was a hybrid of live action and animation. He took that film with him out to California and convinced his brother, a financial wizard, to start a new studio. The Walt Disney Studio got a contract to produce more films like the one he had. They became known as the Alice Comedies and they were chiefly animated by Walt's old friend, Ub.

Ub followed Walt out to California and became one of the driving forces behind the success of the Walt Disney Studio. He was basically an animating machine, able to churn out quality work at incredible rates. The look and feel of early Disney animation should actually be referred to as the look and feel of Iwerks animation. As the Alice Comedies were winding down in 1927, Walt asked Ub to create a new character. He came up with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and supposedly completely animated the first short, Poor Papa, himself. If you look at the bottom of most of the Oswald posters, you can see Ub's signature, which means he created the artwork for those as well. When the studio lost the rights to Oswald in 1928 to Universal, Ub was right in the mix helping to design the studio's next character, Mickey Mouse (who is admittedly just Oswald with round ears instead of long ones and a different tail).

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Ub was responsible for animating most of the first Mickey Mouse shorts as a lot of the Disney staff had been hired away by Universal. Steamboat Willie is almost entirely his work. The same can be said of the early Silly Symphony series as well. Ub did the animation, backgrounds and layouts for The Skeleton Dance. Ub was pouring his heart and soul into incredible characters and animated series, but wasn't feeling the love from the man who was getting all the credit, Walt Disney. By 1930, the relationship between the two friends had become completely broken and Ub walked away from the Disney Studio to start his own.

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The Iwerks Studio received financial backing from investors who had a suspicion that all of Disney's success was due to the work of one guy, Ub. Disney animation did suffer briefly after Ub's departure, but only briefly. Walt hired new, talented people, recovered from the loss of his friend and carried on to bigger and better things. The Iwerks Studio had a contract with MGM and introduced new characters to the genre like Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper, but it never quite attained commercial success. The are two claims to fame the studio could make. First, Ub invented a version of a multiplane camera in 1933, famously using parts from an old Chevrolet to do it. This camera shouldn't be confused with the better version that was invented a couple of years later at the Disney studio, but it was definitely an inspiration for that one.  Secondly, the Iwerks Studio was the first place to hire a young man named Chuck Jones, but it had folded long before that claim would mean anything. By 1936, Ub's investors had pulled out of the studio and it faded into history.

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Following the collapse of his studio, Ub was contracted by Leon Schlesinger to animate four Looney Tunes shorts, two of which he also directed. He then spent a few years under contract with Columbia Pictures' animation unit, Screen Gems, directing several of their Color Rhapsodies series. By 1940, Ub and Walt had repaired their friendship enough that Ub would return to work full time at the Walt Disney Studio.

Ub's second career with Disney was mostly involved with the technical side of things. He was kind of put into a department by himself where he worked on creating new visual effects for animation. Ub is credited with coming up with a new process, called the multi-head optical printer, for combining live action with animation that was used in Song of the South. He would win an Academy Award for later improving that process and nab another one for perfecting color traveling matte technology. He also created the xerography process of transferring animator's drawings onto acetate cels that was first used on One Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1961. That process is basically what brought production costs on animation down enough that Disney continued producing it. As the Sixties progressed, Ub moved into doing effects work with WED Enterprises, the precursor to Walt Disney Imagineering, putting his influence on many of the theme park attractions created during that decade including it's a small world and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

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While Ub remains a name that the average citizen might not recognize, he has become revered by those who know and was given several accolades within the entertainment industry. In 1963, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his effects work on a non-Disney project, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. When the Annie Awards were created in 1972, the balloted award for Technical Achievement was named after him. He was declared an official Disney Legend in the second class of honorees in 1989 (he was the only honoree that year who hadn't been one of Walt's Nine Old Men). And in 1999, there was a documentary and accompanying book released about his life and work, The Hand Behind the Mouse. 

For the last few years of his life, Ub was involved with the development of shows and attractions for the Florida Project like The Hall of Presidents. He wouldn't live to see Walt Disney World open however. On July 17, 1971, he suffered a fatal heart attack in Burbank, California. He was 70.

May 19 - Alan Young

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On this day, in 2016, Angus Young passed away in Woodland Hills, California. Alan, as he became known, was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England on November 19, 1919 (as he got older he tried to move his birth date up to 1924, but the official record didn't fall for that trick). As a toddler, his Scottish parents briefly moved the family to Edinburgh, finally relocating to British Columbia, Canada when he was six. Alan suffered from severe asthma as a child and was stuck in bed a good deal of the time because of it. During those long bedridden hours, he listened to massive amounts of radio programs and fell in love with all of them. When he hit high school, he managed to get his own radio show with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation doing comedy sketches. When World War II came along, he gave it all up, joining the Royal Canadian Navy to prove himself. Unfortunately, the RCN planned to use him as a writer for their radio programming, not as a fighter on the front. When Alan found out, he resigned the Navy, intending to join the Canadian Army instead. The Army said no thanks, your asthma isn't something we want to deal with (which given the prevalence of gas based warfare, was the right decision) and Alan's patriotic fervor would go unfulfilled.  He moved to Toronto and restarted his radio career.

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In 1944, Alan was noticed by an American agent who enticed him to move to New York. He started with appearances on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame, but quickly got his own program, The Alan Young Show, which ran off and on for six years before making the leap to television for three more seasons. On the small screen, The Alan Young Show would pick up two Emmy Awards, one for Best Variety Show and one for Lead Comedy Actor.

Alan debuted on the silver screen in 1946 as Roy Hornsdale in the romantic comedy Margie. Throughout the rest of the Forties and Fifties, he regularly appeared in films, mostly comedies, starring alongside the likes of Jane Russell in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, William Frawley (of I Love Lucy fame) in Chicken Every Sunday, Peter Sellers in Tom Thumb and as the title character in George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion.

Image courtesy looppng.com

In 1961, Alan began his run in his most famous live action role, Wilbur Post, on the hit CBS comedy Mister Ed. Most television shows have their initial runs on a network and then live beyond their cancellations (sometimes for decades) in syndication, the process by which all the episodes of a show are made available to local channels to buy and use to fill in gaps in national programming. Often times, early episodes of a show will enter syndication before it gets cancelled, which is how you might see season seven of something once a week on NBC but seasons one through five on your local Fox station every afternoon during the same time period. Some programs, like game shows, might spend their entire lives in syndication, never having prime time runs on a network. Mister Ed is a rare show that started out in syndication, became popular and was picked up by a network, CBS in this case. It might be fairly corny by today’s standards, but the thought of a talking horse in the early Sixties was pretty novel and having a pro comedian like Alan along for the ride gave the premise enough legs to last six seasons. It turns out that Bamboo Harvest, the horse that played Mr. Ed, was a pro as well. The crew only had to manually move his lips for a short time before he did it himself when prompted with a touch and eventually moved them when Alan stopped talking, like any other actor.

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Following the end of Mister Ed’s run in 1966, Alan filmed another pilot episode for a show called Mr. Terrific but declined to star in it when CBS decided to pick it up. Instead, he semi-retired from acting for several years. Actively involved with the Christian Science Church, he helped them set up a broadcasting division during this period.

By the early Seventies Alan was looking to get back into acting and started a new career as a voice over artist. His first project for Disney was the 1974 Disneyland Records album An Adaptation of Dicken's Christmas Carol, Performed by the Walt Disney Players (yes that mouthful is the full title). Alan co-wrote the script for it and performed several voices for it. He played Mickey Mouse (the one and only time he ever did) as Bob Cratchit, Morty Fieldmouse as Tiny Tim, Merlin as the Ghost of Christmas Past and, for the first time, Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge. Alan's portrayal of Scrooge marked the first time the wealthy duck had ever had a true Scottish accent. He said that he modeled the voice after his own Scottish father. Alan was so good at bringing Scrooge to life, he would portray McDuck for the next four decades.

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Eight years later, Alan reprised the role of Scrooge as Ebenezer for a reissue of the 1974 record in anticipation of a big screen adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Next of course, came Mickey's Christmas Carol (Alan only did Scrooge for that one), which was followed by every episode of DuckTales. That spawned several read along books, a DuckTales movie, more Disneyland Records, a Disney on Ice show, theme park shows and parades, Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas, House of Mouse episodes, Kingdom Hearts video games and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. You name it, Alan did it, from that 1974 record right up to the recent new Mickey shorts, making him one of the longest continuous voices of a Disney character ever.

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And Scrooge isn't the only thing Alan did for Disney. He was also the voice of Hiram Flaversham in The Great Mouse Detective and played Doctor Winger in the1978 comedy The Cat From Outer Space with Ken Berry and Sandy Duncan.



Outside of Disney, Alan returned to television, making guest appearances on dozens of shows from The Love Boat to ER to Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He ramped up the Scottishness for Ren and Stimpy as Haggis McHaggis and for the video game The Curse of Monkey Island as Haggis McMutton (is that really the only name writers can come up with for a tartan wearing character). His voice was heard on Batman: The Animated Series, Spiderman and His Amazing Friends, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, Scooby and Scrappy Doo and A Flintstone Family Christmas. Even though he was well into his nineties, Alan showed no signs of wanting to slow down. He was all set to record stuff for the reboot of DuckTales. Scrooge had been recast (Dr. Who fans were tickled to know it was now David Tennant's character) but Alan was going to play someone different. It didn't come to be however. Before he could get into the recording booth, the man TV Guide once called the Charlie Chaplin of television passed away in his sleep at his assisted living home in Woodland Hills, California in May 2016. He was 96 years Young.

May 15 - The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air

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On this day, in 1938, the final episode of The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air, “Old MacDonald,” was broadcast on the NBC radio network from the Disney Little Studio on the RKO Pictures lot. Originally created as a way to promote Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Theater of the Air’s first episode was broadcast on January 2, 1938 (Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater December 21, 1937 but wouldn’t be shown nationwide until February 1938). Pepsodent, the toothpaste company, sponsored the musical variety series to run on consecutive Sunday afternoons, geared mainly towards children. Theater of the Air proved so popular it expanded from its thirteen show contract into twenty episodes all together. Every episode opened with Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, from The Three Little Pigs, and closed with Heigh-Ho from Snow White.

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Each week, the songs and skits revolved around a different story theme. Some of them were based on stories that had appeared in the Silly Symphony series (King Neptune, Mother Goose and Who Killed Cock Robin?) while others concerned tales that the studio wouldn’t revisit until decades later (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, King Arthur and Robin Hood). All the central Disney characters, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy, made regular appearances on the show with frequent visits from Snow White herself (it was her movie being promoted after all). Walt himself did the voice of Mickey for the first few episodes then passed the baton off to Joe Twerp (who only ever voiced the Big Cheese for these broadcasts). Walt got so busy at during the run of Theater of the Air, that even his voice was impersonated during the latter half.

After the last show aired, Theater of the Air quietly disappeared. Walt was too busy working on Pinocchio to devote any time to it and he wasn’t enamored of the radio to begin with (he felt his characters had to be seen to truly be enjoyed). But, for a few months at the beginning of 1938, kids got a regular dose of Disney without having to leave their living rooms, something that wouldn't happen again for seventeen years (and then everyone would see the characters).

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.

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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.

February 1 - Jimmy MacDonald

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On this day, in 1991, John James MacDonald passed away in his home in Glendale, California from heart failure. Born on May 19, 1906, Jimmy and his parents emigrated to America when he was one month old. After a fifteen day voyage across the Atlantic (I can only imagine how nerve wracking that was with a newborn) the family settled in Pennsylvania. As a young man, Jimmy showed an aptitude for music, especially the drums. He wound up getting a job as a musician on the Dollar Steamship Line (now known as American President Lines). Through his contacts there, he began performing on the recordings for the cartoons made by the Walt Disney Studio. In 1934, Jimmy became one of two people in Disney's newly formed Sound Effects Department, a job he would hold for the next 42 years.

Jimmy was a master at finding ways to produce the sounds that were needed for any given situation. Sometimes it was something as simple as flopping down in a chair in someone's office, liking the creaking noise the chair produced and commandeering the chair for his department. Other times Jimmy had to create gadgets in his workshop to get the sound he was looking for. He would build thousands of noise makers over the years to give life to everything from Evenrude's unique buzz in The Rescuers to the sound of the forest fire that take's the life of Bambi's mother.

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Early on in his tenure with Disney, Jimmy began providing voices as well as sound effects. As he put it, the studio could save money by not hiring actors since he was already there and getting paid anyways. It started out with some laughter here and a few barks there. Eventually he just kept getting asked if he could voice something particular, he'd say I don't know, they'd have him try it and he was usually great. For instance, during the long production process on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it was decided at one point to have the dwarfs yodel during their party song. Jimmy was sent into the recording booth to test out a whole bunch of different yodels. Some professional yodelers were brought in for the official soundtrack. When a bunch of changes were made to the scene, rather than bring the professionals in and pay them again, Jimmy was sent back into the booth to record the new stuff. This sort of versatility lead to continuously bigger roles.

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The story of how Jimmy landed his biggest role is just as casual. While production was going on for Mickey and the Beanstalk, a short that eventually became part of Fun and Fancy Free, the crew called Walt in to record Mickey's lines. Walt claimed that he just didn't have time for this sort of thing anymore (although his smoking habit was making it increasingly difficult to produce Mickey's falsetto) and they should just call Jimmy. Someone did and said Walt needed to see him. Jimmy tried to think of what he'd done all the way to Walt's office. When he got there, Walt asked him if he'd ever tried to do Mickey. Jimmy said of course not. Walt said give it a try right now. Jimmy worked up his best Mouse and said "Hi Walt, how are you?" Walt said sounds good, gave him a few pointers and sent him off to the booth. He would be the voice of the Boss until 1977.

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There have been plenty of other times you've heard Jimmy. For features, he did both Jacques and GusGus in Cinderella, the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland, the wolf in Sword in the Stone and the hyena in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. In shorts, he played all sorts of animals, from Delores the Elephant to Humphrey the Bear. He only appeared twice in live action parts. He was the Circus Band Drummer in 1960's Toby Tyler and he is seen in silhouette as the timpani player in Fantasia. Outside of work he joined Ward Kimball's jazz band, the Firehouse Five Plus Two, as their drummer.

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Fans of the Monster Sound Show, the original sound effects show at the Disney-MGM Studios, might remember seeing Jimmy. The pre-show that played in the queue area was a piece he did with David Letterman, showcasing many of the homemade noise makers he'd made over the years. He even did a little bit of Mickey, even though by that point he'd handed those reigns over to Wayne Allwine (who also started out as a sound effect man). Jimmy had officially retired from the company in 1977. And by retired, I mean there was often several weeks in a row when he didn't come into the studio to consult on a project. In fact, when he passed away fourteen years later, he was preparing sounds that would be used in Splash Mountain. In 1993, Jimmy was posthumously declared an official Disney Legend, even though he was truly one of the few people who are widely regarded as such long before their final curtain.

January 1 - The Rose Parade

On this day, in 1890, the Valley Hunt Club staged the very first Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. Held annually every year since then (even during both World Wars), the Rose Parade has become a fixture on New Year’s Day for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Except, of course, for those occasions when the parade happens on January 2. When are those occasions, you might scratch your head and ask. Whenever the first falls on a Sunday. The organizers of the fourth parade didn’t want to disturb the horses tethered outside of church services, so they delayed for twenty-four hours, creating a tradition that continues to today.

Image courtesy of remembertherosebowl.com

The best part of the parade, in my opinion, is how beautiful and creative the floats are. Right from the beginning, the organizers wanted to celebrate the mild climate of their fair city and covered their horse drawn carriages with live roses and other flowers. Today, it’s mindboggling to me how far float designers have moved beyond flowers. Seeds, grasses, bark, skins, you name it, every conceivable part of a plant is used to evoke all kinds of surfaces on gorgeous, colorful and, quite often, whimsical scenes. If you can’t tell, I really like this parade.

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Disney has a long history with the Rose Parade. It all started at the 39^th Parade on January 1, 1938. The theme that year was Playland Fantasies. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had been triumphantly playing at the Carthay Circle Theatre for a week and a half and fit in perfectly. The live action model for Snow White, Marjorie Belcher, rode the float with the same costumed characters of the dwarfs that graced the film’s premiere.

In 1955, the 66^th parade featured a float based on attractions from Disneyland, even though the park was still several months away from opening. Helms Bakery sponsored the float which boasted over 7,000 pink roses. In addition to the float, the Firehouse Five Plus Two, a jazz group made up of studio employees including Ward Kimball and Frank Thomas (two of the Nine Old Men), joined in the procession.

Image courtesy of the official Disney Parks blog

Eleven years later, the 77^th Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade would be none other than Walt Disney himself. He proudly rode at the front of the parade with Mickey Mouse by his side. Interestingly, one of the spectators that year would be a young John Lasseter, future co-founder of Pixar, and another would be Pat Burke, one of the top future Imagineers.

In 1980, Disneyland was once again part of the parade when they presented a special pre-parade show celebrating the park’s 25^th Anniversary. As part of the festivities, the Firehouse Five Plus Two was enticed out of retirement to make an encore Rose Parade appearance.

In 2000, another Disney became Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade. This time it was Walt’s nephew, and longtime Disney Board member, Roy E. Disney.

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For the 115^th Rose Parade in 2004, Disneyland Resort once again sponsored a float. This one was based on its newest attraction, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Rising 100 feet above the street, this float would be the tallest in parade history.

Mickey Mouse would serve as the 116^th Grand Marshal just a year later. Disneyland Resort’s 50^th anniversary advertising campaign would also kick off during the commercial breaks of the parade’s television coverage. The following year a float with recreations of the castles from each of Disney’s five magical theme parks from around the world was featured.

Disney would have a small presence in the 2007 parade. A representation of Disneyland’s monorail would be part of the City of Anaheim’s sesquicentennial float. Six years later, a float based on Disneyland Resort’s newest area, Cars Land, would ride down Colorado Boulevard.

Image courtesy of KPCC

And, finally, in 2016, the longest, most massive float of the parade that year consisted of three distinct parts: a Frozen castle followed by Sleeping Beauty’s Castle (decorated for Disneyland’s 60^th anniversary) with the Millennium Falcon bringing up the rear.

Year after year, the Tournament of Roses Parade (as it’s officially known) never fails to please, even in those years when it pours. And whenever Disney enters a float, it’s sure to be something spectacular. I, for one, look forward to all the collaborations between the two in the years to come.

November 23 - Fred Moore

On this day, in 1952, animator Fred Moore passed away in Los Angeles, California following complications as a result of a car accident the day before. Born in the same city on September 7, 1911, Fred had very little formal training as an artist. He attended a handful of art classes at the famous Chouinard Art Institute, which he paid for by bartering janitorial services, but the rest was all natural talent. Shortly after graduating from Polytechnic High School, Fred took advantage of the situation when a friend of his had to bail on a job interview at the Walt Disney Studios. The then 19 year old went to apply instead and got the job.

Fred started out in the Shorts Department (mainly because the Features department wouldn't exist for several more years). He became an expert at drawing the studios scrappy little mouse. He was also the main animator for the Silly Symphony of The Three Little Pigs. Walt's comment after seeing the finished Pigs was "at last, we have achieved true personality in a whole picture." The picture won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1934. Fred would work on over 35 shorts, earning another Oscar and an additional Oscar nomination in the process.

Image copyright Disney

Shortly after the release of The Three Little Pigs, Walt put Fred in charge of another group of characters, the dwarfs from the studio's first animated feature. Fellow animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston once declared that the dwarfs were Fred's crowning achievement saying "in the public's eye there have been no more memorable characters than the dwarfs." Fred would continue to contribute to features with the characters of Lampwick in Pinocchio (generally considered to be a self portrait), Timothy Q. Mouse in Dumbo, some of the scenes with the mice in Cinderella, the oysters in Alice in Wonderland and the mermaids in Peter Pan.

Image copyright Disney

Contrary to Frank and Ollie's assertion about the dwarfs, I think Fred's biggest, longest lasting contribution to Disney was the redesign of Mickey Mouse for 1940's Fantasia. He did principal animation for Mickey on the short Brave Little Tailor, which was the last time the mouse appeared as a "pie-eyed" character. For Fantasia, the biggest change Fred gave Mickey was actual pupils in his eyes, something that made the character exponentially more expressive. He also made Mickey's body more pear shaped than round and changed his skin tone from white to be more Caucasian. Not much has changed for Mickey since then other than his fashion sense.

Photo taken from traditionalanimation.com

One of Fred's other legacies are the sketches he would do of young ladies. Sometimes they were nude, sometimes (at least partially) clothed but they were always in humorous poses. Other animators were constantly asking Fred for drawings of his girls and they even influenced the looks of the centaurettes in Fantasia and Casey's daughters in the short Casey at the Bat, among others.  His unique design eventually became a class of its own known as a Freddie Moore Girl. Animators still refer to that look today.

Fred left the Disney studio for two years in the late Forties to work for Walter Lantz's studio, where he helped redesign another iconic character, Woody Woodpecker. His life would be tragically cut short during work on Peter Pan when he and his second wife, Virginia, were in a head-on collision returning from a football game in November 1952. Fred would survive long enough to make it to St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, across the street from the Disney studio. 14 years later, Walt would pass away in the same building. For all of his genius at the drawing board, Fred would be given the Winsor McCay Award in 1983 and be made an official Disney Legend in 1995.

November 17 - Les Clark

On this day, in 1907, Leslie James Clark was born in Ogden, Utah. Les and his family moved from Utah to Idaho before finally settling in Los Angles, California. He attended Venice High School and had a job in a local ice cream shop where he had hand lettered all the menus. There were two brothers, by the name of Walt and Roy, who frequented the shop and had complimented Les on his menus. Les finally worked himself up to asking Walt for a job. Walt asked for more examples, Les showed him some and Walt said Nice lines, show up for work on Monday. And just like that, the first of what would become Walt's Nine Old Men had joined the studio.

Photo borrowed from moma.org

Les' temporary position began in the Ink and Paint Department. He would also occasionally operate the camera. He eventually started working under Ub Iwerks and had become an accomplished in-betweener by the time the studio was developing a new mousy character. Les helped animate Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie and, after Ub left the company, would become the expert on drawing the cornerstone character of the studio. He refused to rest on his laurels, however, and continuously took art classes in an effort to hone his talent.

When it came time to launch the Silly Symphony series, Les was an integral part of the team, animating the iconic dance of The Skeleton Dance. He would continue his fancy footwork when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was in production as the animator charged with making the dwarfs dance with Snow White. For the next few decades, Les would have a hand in every major animation project the studio did. From Pinocchio to Make Mine Music, he was a lead animator. Starting with Song of the South, he began to fill the directing animator role and did so on Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp. Les was a sequence director on Sleeping Beauty and contributed to 101 Dalmatians.

Photo lifted from exploratorium.edu

After the completion of Sleeping Beauty, Walt asked Les to transition into a new role as the director of special projects for the burgeoning television department and the educational films the studio was beginning to produce. Les spent the final two decades of his career with Disney creating things like Donald in Mathmagic Land, Donald's Fire Survival Plan and shorts on topics as varied as The Social Side of Health and one called VD Attack Plan.

After 48 years of making magic with Disney, Les retired in 1976. Just a few years later, he would pass away from cancer on September 12, 1979 in Santa Barbara, California. For his immense body of work, the plucky Venice soda jerk would become an official Disney Legend alongside his fellow Nine Old Men and his one-time mentor Ub Iwerks in 1989.

September 10 - Bret Iwan

On this day, in 1982, Bret Iwan, the fourth person to officially give voice to Mickey Mouse, was born in Pasadena, California.

 When Mickey Mouse was first created and needed a voice because sound had come to the movies, the Disney Studio didn't have to go far to find someone to do it. Walt himself stepped up to the mic and falsettoed his way through dozens of shorts and even a few features. It was always a source of pride for Walt that he shared a voice with his little mouse.

By 1946 however, the demands of leading a growing company meant that Walt just didn't have time to spend in a recording studio anymore. After the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" segment of Fun and Fancy Free, Walt had to hand squeaking duties off to someone else.

A sound effects master and veteran musician for the company, Jimmy MacDonald became Mickey's second official voice. You might remember him if you ever saw the pre-show video to the sound effects show at Disney-MGM Studios. Jimmy gave voice to most of Mickey's words from 1946 until he retired in 1977. I say most because occasionally Walt would still sneak in a voice over before his death.

Another sound effects man took over from Jimmy, Wayne Allwine. The fun part about Wayne doing Mickey's voice is that his wife, Russi Taylor, started doing Minnie Mouse's voice in 1986. And Mickey still didn't pop the question. Wayne did the Big Cheese up until his death from diabetes complications in 2009.

Thus enters young Bret Iwan, a greeting card artist and official voice number four. The crazy thing is that Bret had been hired to understudy Wayne as his health declined. Unfortunately, Wayne died before Bret ever had a chance to meet him. Bret did received Russi's blessing though and continues to work with her right up to the present. And since Bret turns the ripe old age of 36 today, I'm guessing he'll be performing M. Mouse for decades to come.

September 5 - Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

On this day, in 1927, Trolley Troubles, the first short featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, debuted in theaters.

 Walt Disney knew his successful series of shorts, The Alice Comedies, was nearing the end of its run. He and Ub Iwerks had taken them as far as they could technically and the cost to produce them was rising. Walt needed something new to keep his little studio going and he figured it should be pure animation for this next venture. Luckily, his distributor, Charles Mintz, and Universal Studios agreed with him. Walt was given a contract to get Universal into the growing animation game.

Flush with new contract money, Walt moved his studio to Hyperion Avenue and got to work. Since there was already a couple of popular cats starring in their own series, Felix the Cat and Krazy Kat, Walt decided to branch out. His new character would be a rabbit. Maybe a lucky rabbit, since he carried not one but two rabbit's feet with him wherever he went. And he would be old. You heard me. Old.

The first short Walt and Ub finished with their new character, Oswald, was called Poor Papa. Universal executives took one look at it and said no thanks! Why? The production quality wasn't very good and why is the main character so old? No one wants to see a geezer bunny in a cartoon. So Poor Papa was scraped, Oswald had several decades pared off his age and Walt and Ub stepped it up on their second effort.The result was Trolley Troubles and it would become their biggest hit yet.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was so successful as a franchise, the Disney Studio grew to nearly twenty staff members. Walt was able to pay himself $100 a week and his brother Roy $65. Happy days had come to the brothers. Nine shorts were produced that first year. The studio would produce 17 more the next year before disaster struck.

Walt was constantly worried about getting his contract with Mintz and Universal renewed. That worry intensified when he realized that Mintz was hiring away his own animators behind his back. The whole thing came crashing down around his ears in the spring of 1928, when Mintz informed Walt that he would have to take a 20% budget cut if he still wanted to produce Oswald shorts. Rather than submit to that, and with most of his animators now working for Mintz, Walt declined to sign a new deal and, as he didn't own the rights to his creation, walked away. Supposedly on the train ride home, he would come up with a new character that would completely eclipse Oswald, but since Walt could never tell the story the same way twice, I'll leave that discussion for another time.

Oswald would live on long after the Disney Studio no longer had anything to do with him. Mintz would also produce 26 shorts until Universal decided it no longer needed him and started making them right on their own lot. Walter Lantz, of Woody Woodpecker fame, took over the series and created 142 more shorts, ushering Oswald into the world of sound and, briefly, the world of color. While Oswald never had much of a regular actor to provide his voice, Mickey Rooney did provide it for a while in 1931. Interestingly, when Lantz took the series over, he consulted with Walt about some of the aspects of Oswald. Mickey Mouse had become such a cash cow by then that Walt didn't really care about Oswald anymore and reportedly gave Lantz his blessing to run with the character.

And that's how Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's story should have ended, petering out in films by 1943's The Egg Cracker Suite. Living on in comic books, albeit in a much different form, throughout the twentieth century, mostly outside the United States. Except Oswald was a Disney creation and he was destined for a resurrection.

In 2003, the branch of the Walt Disney Company that made video games came up with an idea for an Oswald game. For some reason, the idea stuck with the head of the company, Bob Iger, and he made it a pet project to return the Lucky Rabbit to the Disney fold. After negotiating with Universal, it was announced in 2006 that the two companies would take a page from the sports world and effect a trade: Disney would get the rights to Oswald and the Walt produced shorts, while Universal would get veteran sports announcer Al Michaels for their Sunday Night Football broadcasts. Al was pretty pleased with the deal and even joked "I'll be a trivia answer someday." The video game then became a reality, although before Oswald could put on any airs about his return it was name Epic Mickey.

And that is how Oswald's story ends. After almost 80 years away, guests in the Disney parks can now choose traditional mouse ears or new, hip rabbit ears. If you visit Disneyland, you might be able to actually meet him out and about. While Mickey will always be considered more successful, his older brother Oswald can now play new role and wonder what might have been.