August 5 - Adventure Thru Inner Space

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On this day, in 1967, the Adventure Thru Inner Space ride welcomed its first guests in Tomorrowland of Disneyland. A decade earlier, Walt Disney had hinted at creating an atomic themed ride for his theme park on an episode of Disneyland titled “Our Friend the Atom.” It should be noted here that the theme was along the lines of chemistry and the science of atoms rather than atomic energy or weapons. Concepts were sporadically explored and work on the attraction meandered forward until the company’s contracts to build attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair basically put all other projects on hold. Once the fair was over, the atomic ride was dusted off and approved as part of the New Tomorrowland project.

Monsanto (the company that should be reviled for many reasons today but was slightly more innocent forty years ago) already sponsored a chemistry exhibit in Tomorrowland. When they agreed to sponsor the new attraction, their Hall of Chemistry and the adjoining 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Exhibit were slated for the chopping block with that area then becoming Adventure Thru Inner Space. The ride’s name comes from the idea that guests would be shrunk down to a size smaller than an atom and would then be able to travel in the space between atoms, the inner space of everything. The shrinking was accomplished at the beginning of the ride by Monsanto’s Mighty Microscope which then beamed guests into a snowflake. After shrinking to a size which made the nucleus of an oxygen atom seem room sized, guests began growing again until they were back to normal size by the end of the attraction. A post-show area housed an exhibit of Monsanto’s modern fabric and material products (and the cast member costumes for the ride were made from Monsanto fabrics).

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While it might be hard for today’s guests to imagine how atoms and molecules would make a fun ride, people in the late Sixties seemed to enjoy themselves. That enjoyment was helped along by a narration from the Legendary Paul Frees (who was actually kind of doing an impersonation of Orson Welles) and a jaunty tune by the Sherman Brothers, Miracles from Molecules. It also helped that, unlike the rest of Disneyland, Adventure Thru Inner Space was a free attraction, meaning you didn’t have to spend one of the tickets in your ticket book to ride it, for the first five years it was open. In 1972, Adventure was finally designated a C ticket ride and remained at that level until the ticket system disappeared in the early Eighties.

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Another advantage Adventure Thru Inner Space had was that it was the first attraction in Disneyland to use the Omnimover ride system. The Omnimover was similar to the continuous conveyor system that had been used on the Ford’s Magic Skyway Disney built for the World’s Fair with one huge improvement: individual cars could be independently rotated (or vibrated or whatever) from every other car. Attractions could now be designed with specific viewing angles on things that didn’t require major manipulations in the vehicle tracks, just twists and turns of the cars themselves. Omnimover attractions are so commonplace today, that we can no longer see the novelty in them but imagine you’re on a ride and for the first time ever, the car in front of you turns around and you’re briefly looking at the front of another guest before turning around yourself. I’m sure it was a lot more thrilling when you weren’t jaded about it.

As time went on, Adventure Thru Inner Space, like most science based things, began to look more and more dated. Monsanto ended their sponsorship deal in 1977 and all mention of them was scrubbed from the ride (except an audio line at the very end). The attraction would limp along for over eighteen years, finally closing forever on September 2, 1985. But sharp eyed guests can still catch a glimpse of it, or at least a virtual part of it, even today. Adventure was replaced by Star Tours, which opened 1987. When your StarSpeeder on that ride was diverted into a maintenance bay after taking a wrong turn, you could see the Mighty Microscope in the corner of that area. Since 2011, when Star Tours: The Adventure Continues began, you can only see the Mighty Microscope on some of the randomized journeys.  If you happen to be escaping the still-under-construction Death Star floating above Geonosis, it’s been moved there, although for what nefarious purpose we can only imagine.

March 19 - The Shaggy Dog

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On this day, in 1959, Disney's first live action comedy, The Shaggy Dog, debuted in theaters. Made for less than a million dollars, it grossed over $9 million in its initial run, making it a more profitable movie than Ben Hur which was released the same year. This fact wasn't lost on Walt and his executive team and the formula of The Shaggy Dog was used over and over again for the next couple of decades: put a supernatural element in a light hearted comedy, preferably involving some kind of animal, using the same sets on the backlot and starring recognizable, but not too pricey, actors. If you think about it, that describes most of the films the studio made throughout the Sixties and Seventies. Sure, most of them would never be called masterpieces, but they created more than sufficient cash flow to subsidize everything else the company was doing.

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The Shaggy Dog is also notable for being the first Disney movie to star Fred MacMurray. Fred had already been a staple around Hollywood for years, but mostly in Westerns and film noir. This picture would start a string of comedic roles for the company that would stretch over the next fourteen years and include classics like The Absent-Minded Professor and The Happiest Millionaire (it would also be instrumental in landing Fred his long running sitcom gig on television, My Three Sons). The rest of the cast was filled out with Mickey Mouse Club regulars like Annette Funicello, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine and Kevin Corcoran. Even the film's director, Charles Barton, came from the show (he'd directed the Spin and Marty series). Paul Frees, the veteran voice actor, makes a rare live appearance in The Shaggy Dog as the psychiatrist, but interestingly doesn't receive credit for it.

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Not only did The Shaggy Dog create a formula for comedy success, it was the start of a mini franchise. In 1976, Disney released The Shaggy D.A. starring another company staple, Dean Jones. The sequel took place about 30 years after the original, but if you're wondering what happened during that time, you are in luck. The Return of the Shaggy Dog aired in two parts on the Disney Sunday Movie in 1987, starring Gary Kroeger. Two remakes have been produced as well, one for The Wonderful World of Disney in 1994 and a theatrical release starring Tim Allen in 2006, but, for my money, just stick with the original.

November 2 - Paul Frees

On this day, in 1986, actor Paul Frees passed away in Tiburon, California. Born in Chicago, Illinois on June 22, 1920 with the name Solomon Hersh Frees, Paul was gifted with a four octave voice range. He would use that voice to forge an incredible career in Hollywood although he was almost never seen on any screen, big or small.

Paul started out in vaudeville during the 1930s as an impressionist using the stage name Buddy Green. By 1942 his voice had naturally led him into radio. His career would, like so many careers at the time, take a hiatus for World War II. Paul fought on the beaches of Normandy, was wounded and returned to the States to recover. He enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute thanks to the GI Bill, but was forced to drop out when his first wife's health began to deteriorate and return to radio.

Paul was all over the radio dial during the late Forties and early Fifties. You might hear him as the announcer of Suspense one week and then as a player on Gunsmoke or Crime Classics the next. He even had a syndicated show, The Player, in which he played all the parts.

Starting in the 1950s, Paul began doing extensive "re-loop" work. Basically this meant that Paul would redub the voice of another actor for a movie. Sometimes it was because the original actor was considered to have to thick of an accent, so Paul might redo the entire movie, like in Midway when he did all of Tashiro Mifune's lines. Other times the studio might just need a few lines cleaned up and the original actor wasn't available, so Paul would mimic them for whatever was needed. One of the most famous voices Paul re-looped was most of the falsetto lines that Tony Curtis did as Josephine in Some Like It Hot. Apparently the studio didn't think Tony was melodious enough. While many voice actors worked pretty exclusively with one studio, Paul wasn't picky who signed his paychecks and worked with nine different companies.

Paul has all kinds of classic Disney roles to his credit. One of his first roles was re-looping the role of Eddie the Garbageman in 1966's The Ugly Dachsund. Dick Wessel filmed the role but died before post production was complete so Paul had to rerecord all of Eddie's dialogue. When Disney's anthology television show changed to the Wonderful World of Color, Paul became the voice of Professor Ludwig Von Drake and helped to sell thousands of color sets with The Spectrum Song. Ludwig would become a regular gig, appearing on Color many times and even getting several children's records. Paul would narrate a whole slew of Disney shorts as well, including the classic Donald Duck in Mathmagicland. He narrated a large number of segments for Color and even had a rare live action appearance in The Shaggy Dog as military psychiatrist Dr. Galvin.

Paul's most lasting Disney legacy however, is apparent every time guests enjoy some of the rides in New Orleans Square at Disneyland. He can still be heard as the Ghost Host in the Haunted Mansion and if you hike across the square, you can hear him as several of the pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean. His most famous line from the latter attraction is the haunting "Dead men tell no tales." Paul was also used as the original narrator for the pre-show of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln at the 1964 World's Fair and was the narrator for the now defunct ride Adventure Thru Inner Space.

Outside of Disney, Paul is best known for roles like Boris Badenov in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show for Jay Ward Productions. He did a number of roles in the classic Rankin/Bass specials including the Burgermeister in Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Santa Claus in Frosty the Snowman. Paul worked on the Tom and Jerry cartoons, Mr. Magoo and was the voice of two of the Fab Four for a cartoon series called The Beatles. He also was the voice of several well known characters in television commercials: The Pillsbury Dough Boy, Toucan Sam and the Farmer for the Jolly Green Giant.

After logging hundreds of film and television credits and entertaining millions of people for decades, Paul's run ended tragically. He took his own life with an overdose of pain medication. In 2003, he was paid tribute with a singing bust bearing his likeness as part of The Haunted Mansion film. A more fitting (and less painful to watch) tribute was made in 2006 when he was posthumously made an official Disney Legend for his dozens of contributions to the Disney legacy.