May 14 - Richard Deacon

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On this day, in 1921, Richard Deacon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a young boy, Richard’s family moved across the state border to Binghamton, New York where he would finish his childhood years. After graduating from Binghamton Central High School, alongside the other future Binghamton star Rod Serling, he would serve in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. Following the end of the war, Richard returned home, began working as a lab technician at Binghamton General Hospital and started taking courses at nearby Ithaca College with the intent of becoming a doctor. Along the way, he was bitten by the acting bug, though, and he never become a actual doctor, but he did get to play one on tv several times.

Richard began acting in the late Forties in college productions which naturally led to regional theater stages. He eventually crossed paths with Helen Hayes, who told him that while he would probably never become a leading man, he should definitely pursue a career as a character actor. He took the advice to heart and built a massive body of work on it.

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Richard’s film and television careers both started in the Fifties. His first film role was as an MP in 1953’s Invaders from Mars, which also featured future co-star Barbara Billingsley. Over the next five years, before his debut on the small screen, Richard appeared in 34 films, ranging from comedies like Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy (pictured) to dramas like The Power and the Prize to musicals like Carousel. He would grace the cast list of over 100 movies before his career was over, but it wasn’t until he started making weekly visits in everyone’s living rooms that he became someone everyone knew.

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Richard made his television debut on The Jack Benny Show in 1954 but his first recurring role was on the venerable sitcom Leave It To Beaver.  He spent six years as Fred Rutherford, father to Lumpy Rutherford, one of Wally Cleaver’s friends. His most famous role started in 1961 (and actually overlapped his Beaver gig for a year). Richard was cast as Melvin Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show (pictured). For five seasons, he masterfully played the butt of Morey Amsterdam’s jokes, occasionally also doing producer duties for his brother in law Allen Brady on the show within a show. Following the end of that series, Richard had recurring roles on The Phyllis Diller Show, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Mothers-In-Law. In 1969, he returned to the stage, making his Broadway debut as a replacement Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly, reteaming with Phyllis Diller for almost a year.

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Richard joined the Disney family early in his career. In 1958, he starred as Uncle Archie McCloud in the serial Walt Disney Presents: Annette on the original Mickey Mouse Club (pictured). He later appeared in a string of films for the company throughout the Sixties, including That Darn Cat!, Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN, The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard’s Ghost, and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. His final Disney appearance came in 1984 when he was part of the cast of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, a film that aired on the newly minted Disney Channel.

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Throughout the Seventies and into the Eighties, Richard made dozens of guest appearances on everything from Maude to The Love Boat (of course) to a recurring role as Sheriff Masters on BJ and the Bear. He even continued to land a handful of big screen roles in films like The Man From Clover Grove, Rabbit Test (Billy Crystal’s debut) and The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (pictured). He was also something of a gourmet chef in his private life and hosted a microwave cooking show in Canada, publishing a companion cookbook to go along with it. In 1983, twenty years after Leave It To Beaver went off the air, Richard reprised his role of Fred Rutherford for a made for tv reunion movie, Still the Beaver. The reunion was so successful that a new Beaver series was developed (which would air its first season on the Disney Channel) and Richard was slated to be a part of it, but it wasn’t to be. Before filming could start, he suffered a heart attack on August 8, 1984 at his home in Los Angeles, California. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival. He was 63.

April 18 - Hayley Mills

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On this day, in 1946, Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills was born in Marylebone, London, England. As the daughter of Sir John Mills, an actor who appeared in over 120 films, it was probably inevitable that Hayley would become a star herself. Talent does run in her family: her mother, Mary, was a playwright, her sister, Juliet, was on the soap opera Passions for decades, her brother, Jonathan, became a screenwriter and her son, Crispian, is a musician.

Hayley was first noticed when she was 12. Her father was set to star in a British crime drama, Tiger Bay. The producers were looking for a boy to play the other lead in the movie, a street rat who witnesses a crime. A pre-production meeting with John took place with Hayley tagging along. I’m not sure what exactly happened at that meeting, but the role was changed to a girl, Hayley got the part, the film was a huge success in England and she went on to win a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer. Just as important to our story (and maybe Hayley’s, too), Bill Anderson, a producer at the Walt Disney Studio in America, happened to see Tiger Bay.

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Disney was gearing up to do a big screen adaptation of the 1913 novel, Pollyanna. The studio was having difficulty coming up with an actress to play the title role, until Bill said he’d seen someone who might be perfect in a British film. Walt watched Tiger Bay and agreed, hiring Hayley to play his upbeat orphan alongside Karl Malden and Jane Wyman. When Pollyanna was released in 1960, it was almost unanimously praised as Disney's best live action film to date, but failed to ignite audiences (or at least failed in the eyes of the studio, which was hoping for twice the box office of $2.5 million it achieved). It was enough to catapult Hayley to international stardom. For her work on the film, she was presented with a Juvenile Academy Award, the 12th and last ever presented. Interestingly, when Hayley was unable to attend the Oscar ceremony, another Disney Legend, Annette Funicello, accepted for her.

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For her followup to Pollyanna, Walt cast Hayley in her two most enduring roles:  Sharon McKendrick and Susan Evers in The Parent Trap. The film, also starring Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith, was a bona fide hit. It reached number six on the box office list for 1961 (just behind another Disney classic, The Absent Minded Professor) grossing over $25 million. It also marked the first time Hayley sang on screen, a duet with herself called Let's Get Together. The single version topped out at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and had the cheeky singing credit "Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills". The same year she did a British film, Whistle Down the Wind, which also became an English hit and, along with The Parent Trap, earned her the vote for biggest star in Britain 1961.

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Hayley's third film for the studio came in 1962, In Search of the Castaways. Starring opposite Maurice Chevalier this time, Castaways became the hit of the Christmas season, reaching number three at the box office for the year. The next year, she starred with Burl Ives in the musical Summer Magic. Not as big a commercial success as her two previous films, Hayley still managed to earn a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. In 1964, she appeared in a critically acclaimed British adaptation of The Chalk Garden with her father and her fifth Disney film, The Moon-Spinners. The last of her string of hits with the studio came the next year when she played Patti Randall in That Darn Cat! opposite Dean Jones (in his first Disney film). Her six films in six years had turned Hayley into the most popular young actress of the decade.

Hayley's major affiliation with The Walt Disney Company ended about the same time as her major popularity did. Her career, however carried on. Over the next decade, she appeared in eleven more films. Some she did with her father (The Family Way in 1966) and some she did with her new husband, director Roy Boulting (Twisted Nerve in 1968 and Mr. Forbush and the Penguins in 1971). In 1970, Hayley made her West End stage debut in a production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. After starring in a South African film, The Kingfish Caper, in 1975, she simply stopped acting for a while (it may have had something to do with the affair she had with Leigh Lawson, a fellow cast member in A Touch of Spring on the West End; a year later her marriage had ended and she and Leigh had a son, Jason, together).

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In 1981, Hayley returned to acting on British television in a mini-series called The Flame Trees of Thika. The positive critical reception gave her the courage to accept more roles and revive her career. She narrated an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney. The buzz that generated prompted the company to throw her into back into her old roles of Sharon and Susan from The Parent Trap in a series of made-for-tv sequels: The Parent Trap II, The Parent Trap III, and (for some sad reason) Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon. In 1987, Hayley starred in a new show on The Disney Channel called Our Miss Bliss. Bliss only lasted 13 episodes before moving to NBC, where it was reformatted (unfortunately for Hayley, minus Miss Bliss) and renamed to something you might be more familiar with, Saved By the Bell. Her longest gig of recent times was on a British drama, Wild at Heart, where she starred as Caroline Du Plessis for six seasons starting in 2007.

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Hayley has also been regularly appearing on stages around the world since her return to acting in the early Eighties. She played Anna in both an Australian production and a touring company of The King and I (I happened to catch a performance of that when it came through Orlando in the late Nineties; she sounded exactly like she did in The Parent Trap). She won a Theatre World Award in 2000 for her off-Broadway debut in Noel Coward's Suite in Two Keys. In 2015, she toured Australia with her sister, Juliet, in the comedy Legends!

Haley was one of the earliest people to be declared a Disney Legend. As part of the class of 1998, she only trailed Fred MacMurray, Ib Iwerks and the Nine Old Men in receiving the honor. And the honors coming her way may not be done yet. At the age of 73, Hayley's career is far from over. Later this year, she'll be featured in a new BBC drama, Pitching In. Hopefully the new venture will make us  more Wild at Heart and less craving a Hawaiian Honeymoon. 

December 12 - Peter Boyle

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On this day, in 2006, Peter Lawrence Boyle passed away in New York, New York. Born October 18, 1935 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Peter grew up as the son of Francis Boyle, a local television celebrity in Philadelphia. After graduating from high school in 1953, he entered a seminary run by the De La Salle Brothers. While he would earn his bachelor's degree from La Salle University in Philadelphia four years later, Peter did not feel a religious calling and left the order. He then enrolled in Officer Training School, graduated in 1959 and entered the United States Navy as an ensign. His military career didn't last long, however, as he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to leave the service.

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Peter moved to New York, got a job as a clerk with the United States Postal Service and began studying acting. He landed the role of Murray in a traveling production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. When the tour played in Chicago, Peter ended up leaving the company and joined the famed comic troupe The Second City. At the end of the Sixties, he had a few minor roles in films that were shooting in Chicago.

In 1970, Peter had his first starring role in a movie, the title character in Joe. Amid the controversy the film generated over its violence and language, Peter enjoyed being nominated for a Film Critics Award but thereafter tried to stay away from roles that he felt glamorized violence. He had mixed success with that ideal as he would play a mobster twice over the next few years in Crazy Joe and The Friends of Eddie Coyle. After Joe, Peter found success as Robert Redford's campaign manager in The Candidate and, perhaps his most famous film role, as the "monster" in Young Frankenstein.

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Peter met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of Young Frankenstein. She was a reporter for Rolling Stone and was friends with Yoko Ono. Peter subsequently became good friends with John Lennon, who was best man at Peter and Loraine's wedding. How's that for a kid from Philly?

For most of the rest of his film career, Peter became an accomplished character actor. He played roles as diverse as a cab driver in 1976's Taxi Driver to a retiring crime boss in the 1984 comedy Johnny Dangerously. One of my favorite roles of his is as Jack McDermott, a mental institution patient, in the 1989 comedy The Dream Team (which also features his Johnny co-star Michael Keaton). Peter also continued appearing on stage in New York. In 1980, he was on Broadway in the Carl Reiner play The Roast and off Broadway in Sam Shepard's True West. A couple of years later he lead the ensemble cast of Snow Orchid at the Circle Repertory.

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Then in 1990, his career, and his life, nearly ended when Peter suffered a devastating stroke. For six months, he was completely speechless and immobile. The next few years would involve grueling rehab sessions but Peter's recovery would be remarkable. By 1996, he was on television in an episode of The X-Files that would win him an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor. That same year, Peter began the role he will be forever known for as Frank Baron, the cranky father of Ray Romano, on Everybody Loves Raymond. Over the next nine years, he would be nominated for the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor seven times. He wouldn't manage to take the statue home even once though, losing many of those times to his co-star Brad Garrett.

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Peter became a member of the Disney family in 1994 as part of the cast of the Tim Allen comedy, The Santa Clause. He plays Tim's boss at a toy company who becomes concerned for his employee's well being. Peter would go on to appear in both of the sequels to The Santa Clause, but in a completely different role, Father Time. He also appeared in the Hollywood Pictures film While You Were Sleeping in 1995. That film stars Sandra Bullock and also features Glynis Johns, who played Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins. Finally, Peter was a part of the cast of the 1997 remake of That Darn Cat in the role of Pa.

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Less than two years after the end of Everybody Loves Raymond, Peter passed away due to complications from myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. His death was fairly unexpected as he was due to begin filming another comedy movie, The Golden Boys. Following his death, Peter's widow, Loraine, established a memorial fund in his name that supports the International Myeloma Foundation. A yearly comedy benefit, frequently hosted by Ray Romano, has helped raised millions of dollars and awareness of the deadly disease.

November 9 - Ed Wynn

On this day, in 1886, Isaiah Edwin Leopold was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Isaiah attended high school only until the age of 15. He then ran away from home, found work as a hat salesman (the job his father held) and eventually found his way into show business. To spare his family the embarrassment of having a comedian in the family, he morphed his middle name into the stage name Ed Wynn.

Ed started out on the Vaudeville circuit in 1903. By the mid Teens, he was starring in the annual Broadway revues, the Ziegfeld Follies, working alongside the likes of W.C. Fields. Ed would appear in several other shows on Broadway, including ones he wrote and directed like 1921's The Perfect Fool.

In the early Thirties, Ed, like many other vaudevillians, made the transition to radio. He was the host of Texaco's The Fire Chief and would even play the role in two movies, Follow the Leader and The Chief. Ed even started his own radio network, the Amalgamated Broadcasting Network, but it went belly up after just a few weeks. The effects on his marriage, his finances and his mental health were all devastating. Ed continued appearing on Broadway and in movies throughout the rest of the Thirties and most of the Forties.

In 1949, Ed made the leap to the small screen, although technically his first appearance was as part of an experimental broadcast in 1936. As the host of one of the first variety shows on television he welcomed comedians such as Lucille Ball, Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges. From 1950-52, Ed also hosted Four Star Revue on a rotational basis with Danny Thomas, Jack Carson and Jimmy Durante. He even got his own show, The Ed Wynn Show, though it only lasted one season.

It was around this time that Ed's son, Keenan (who was also an actor), encouraged him to branch out into more dramatic roles. The two would appear together a number of times over the years. The first time was 1956's Requiem for a Heavyweight. Ed was terrified to do a straight acting gig but shined for the actual performance. The second time was the same year in the movie The Great Man. The final time was, oddly enough, in a 1960 piece about the making of the 1956 Requiem. Ed had established himself so well as a serious actor, he appeared in 1959's Diary of Anne Frank and nabbed an Oscar nomination. One of my favorite television appearance's of Ed's around this time was for The Twilight Zone in an episode that Rod Serling wrote specifically for him, "One for the Angels."

Ed joined the Disney family in 1951 as the Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland. Full of wonderfully quotable lines ("Mustard? Don't let's be silly."), Ed's Hatter is a delightful island of fun in a totally surreal film. Ten years later, he would become the Toymaker opposite Annette Funicello in Babes in Toyland. My favorite Disney role of Ed's, though, has to be Uncle Albert in 1964's Mary Poppins. As a child I couldn't help but wish that a fit of laughter would make me flit around the ceiling. Ed would also appear in That Darn Cat!, The Absent Minded Professor (another production with his son Keenan), Son of Flubber and, his final film appearance, The Gnome-mobile, which was released posthumously.

Ed passed away on June 19, 1966 at the age of 79 from throat cancer. Reportedly, Walt Disney, who once referred to Ed as "our good luck charm," was one of his pall bearers. He was made an official Disney Legend in 2013.

October 28 - Elsa Lanchester

On this day, in 1902, Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born in Lewisham, London, England. As the daughter of severely Bohemian parents, Elsa was born into a life with theatrical leanings. Her older brother Waldo would start his own marionette company. Prior to World War I, Elsa spent time in Paris studying dance under Isadora Duncan. She hated it so much that she was probably the only person who wasn't terribly sad that war broke out and closed the school. Not that she was done with dance.

During the Great War, as it was then known, 12 year old Elsa began earning extra money for her family by teaching little girls in her South London neighborhood how to dance. And not just how to dance, but how to dance like Isadora Duncan. She wasn't even a teenager yet and she'd already learned how to give the people what they want.

After the Great War ended, Elsa continued in her entrepreneurial vein and started a children's theater and then a nightclub, Cave of Harmony. In the Cave, she performed in both plays and a cabaret act, singing everything from old Victorian ballads to modern tunes. Elsa gained enough notoriety that Columbia Records made a couple of 78 recordings of her (one of the songs being "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father").

Elsa began doing more serious work in the theaters of London. An appearance in a 1927 play called Mr. Prohack introduced her to a fellow cast member she found intriguing, Charles Laughton. Within two years, the pair was married and would act together on stage and screen throughout their lifetimes, including a turn in 1936 when Elsa played Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook.

Elsa made her first film appearance in 1925 in The Scarlet Letter. She continued doing British movies throughout the remainder of the Twenties and the beginning of the Thirties. Sometimes she appeared with her husband, sometimes she worked with the likes of Laurence Olivier or H.G. Wells. By 1935, Laughton had begun appearing in American films and Elsa joined him in Hollywood. After a couple of minor roles, she landed the most iconic role of her career: the title character in 1935's Bride of Frankenstein.

During the Forties, Elsa took on all sorts of supporting roles in multiple films, playing everything from a housekeeper to an artist. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as a nativity scene painter in 1949's Come to the Stable. As the Fifties rolled on, Elsa continued to work steadily with people like Danny Kaye, Shelley Winters and Jerry Lewis. In 1957, she appeared with her husband in Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, for which they both earned Academy Award nominations and she won a Golden Globe.

Elsa's first job with Disney was as the beleaguered departing nanny, Katy Nanna, at the beginning of Mary Poppins. She would then play Mrs. MacDougall in That Darn Cat! with Dean Jones and Emily Stowecroft in Blackbeard's Ghost, with Jones and Peter Ustinov. Later she would be Mrs. Formby for two episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color entitled "My Dog, the Thief."

For the remainder of her career, Elsa would do everything from memorable guest appearances on I Love Lucy to singing a duet with Elvis in Easy Come, Easy Go. You might see her on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on your television set and then go to the movies and see her with Ernest Borgnine in Willard. The last thing you would have watched her in was the film Die Laughing, which also starred the voice of the Beast, Robbie Benson.

In 1983, Elsa published her autobiography, Elsa Lanchester Herself, detailing her 64 year career in entertainment and her 33 year marriage to Charles Laughton. Sadly, several months after the release of her book, Elsa would suffer a stroke followed by another one the next year. Left completely incapacitated, she would be confined to bed until her passing on December 26, 1986. She was 84.

Also on this day, in American history: Macy's Department Store

September 30 - Bill Walsh

On this day, in 1913, Bill Walsh was born in New York, New York. He was a bearcat on an athletic scholarship at the University of Cincinnati. It was in college that he also began writing for shows. After they caught the reviews of a show Bill wrote, Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay hired him to contribute to their 1933 Broadway show Tattle Tales. The show itself flopped but Bill was destined for bigger things.

In 1934, Bill headed west to Hollywood. He started out in publicity, writing not only press releases but sketching advertisements. One of his clients happened to be Edgar Bergen, who used Bill to juice up gags for his ventriloquist act. And one of Edgar's good friends happened to be Walt Disney.

By 1943, Bill was working for The Disney studio, writing gags and stories for the Mickey Mouse comic strip. He happily did that for several years until one day the big boss called him into his office. Bill tells this story: "Walt said he'd decided to go into television and I was the guy who was going to do it. I looked stunned and said 'But I don't know anything about television.' Walt smiled back at me and said, 'That's okay. Nobody does.'"

In 1950, Bill wrote and produced One Hour in Wonderland. It was Disney's first attempt at a television program and was a promo for the soon to be released Alice in Wonderland. It was also a smash hit, at least by the modest standards of early television shows. It was enough of a success that Bill would go on to produce both The Mickey Mouse Club and Davy Crockett programs.

Bill moved from the small screen to the big one in 1956. Over the next two decades, he would be an integral part as both writer and producer of 18 movies for the studio, seven of which appeared on a 1973 list of all-time box office champions. Maybe you've heard of a few of them: The Shaggy Dog, The Absent Minded Professor, That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. His grandest achievement coincided with Walt's. He co-wrote Mary Poppins with Don DaGradi, earning one Oscar nomination and a Writer's Guild of America win, and also produced the film, earning a second Oscar nomination.

Shortly after returning home from the set of his last film, One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, Bill suffered a heart attack and passed away on January 27, 1975. In 1991, he would become an official Disney Legend for his 32 years of outstanding work with the Walt Disney Company.