August 8 - Bambi

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On this day, in 1942, the Walt Disney Studio’s fifth animated feature, Bambi, had its world premiere in the midst of a war-torn London, England. In 1923, an Austrian novelist, Felix Salten, published one of the forerunners to environmental literature, Bambi, A Life in the Woods. The book about a buck who grows up in the forest, loses his mother, learns a few things from his father and avoids predatory hunters quickly became a bestseller and was almost instantly considered a classic. MGM purchased the film rights to Felix’s book in 1933, intending to make a live action adaptation of it. They spent four years trying to figure out how that would work without ever coming to a conclusion. In April 1937, MGM sold the rights to Walt Disney, who intended to turn Bambi into his studio’s second animated feature. That didn’t happen.

Disney ran into their own set of adaptation problems almost immediately. The book was written with an adult audience in mind; its dark themes and message were almost the opposite of the usual light and frothy children’s fare the studio produced. The story also lent itself to an almost infinite array of interpretations and subplots. The Story Department might spend weeks developing a sequence involving Bambi stepping on an ant hill and what happens to the colony in the aftermath before realizing none of that has anything to do with the central story and scrapping the whole thing. Compounding all of the story problems: the animators were finding deer to be extremely hard to draw realistically and consistently, especially their skinny little legs. Walt still believed that Bambi was worth doing, and doing right, but as time went by, the film slipped in the studio’s release order from second to third, then from third to fourth.

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By July 1940, the story issues had all been worked out. The animators had visited the Los Angeles Zoo multiple times to study deer and a pair of fawns had even been housed at the studio for a while for observational purposes. In fact, the work the animators put in on studying all kinds of animals, not just deer, would push the envelope on what kinds of characters and styles of animation the studio did for decades to come. Work on Bambi was finally ready to begin in earnest. When the last cell slid into place two years later, though, the world’s market for movies was a much different place.

Europe had already been embroiled in World War II for several months before production ramped up on Bambi. As a result, most of that continent’s market was closed off to American (or any other) movie studios. Pinocchio and Fantasia didn’t enjoy the same wide distribution as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and both lost money. Dumbo managed to recoup some of those losses only because it cost nearly a third less to produce than Pinocchio. In spite of the fact that Bambi cost almost $100,000 less than Dumbo to make (a huge chunk of change in those days), it too lost money in a war-time economy that now included the United States.

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Bambi received mixed reviews when it was initially released. Hunters hated it, of course, but there were a number of critics who bemoaned the fact that the film was too realistic in its depiction of animals. They felt that Disney was overreaching himself by removing the fantasy element. Even Walt’s own daughter, Diane, was critical. When she wanted to know why Bambi’s mother had to die, Walt said he was only following the book. Her response? You’ve changed stories before, dad. You’re Walt Disney. You can do whatever you want. Since those early days, however, Bambi has come to be seen for the masterpiece that it is. It’s listed at #3 on the American Film Institute’s list of the Top 10 Animated Films of All Time and was nominated for their list of the best 100 films. And the character of Man, who is never actually seen in the movie, came in at #20 on AFI’s list of best villains.

In 2006, the National Forest service began using footage from Bambi in their fire prevention public service announcements. It was a natural fit but wasn’t the first time that had happened. Right after the film was released, Disney allowed characters from Bambi to be used for the same purpose, but only for one year. At the end of that term, the licensing agreement wasn’t renewed which left the government in a bit of a bind. They managed to rally, though, creating the character of Smokey the Bear to take Bambi’s place.

May 26 - Sam Edwards

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On this day, in 1915, Sam Edwards was born in Macon, Georgia. Sam’s parents had met as performers on the vaudeville circuit, so it’s no surprise that his first appearance on stage was as a baby in his mother’s arms in a show called Tess of the Storm Country (a 1914 film version starred Mary Pickford). Shortly after Sam’s birth, his parent’s marriage ended in divorce and Sam, with his older sister Florida (care to guess where she was born?) stayed with their mother, Edna. He would never know who his birth father was until a chance meeting in Hollywood over thirty years later. Edna married another actor in 1917, Jack Edwards, and they would soon add a third child to the family, Jack Jr.

The Edwards relocated themselves to the Jacksonville, Florida area, started their own theater troupe and travelled around the country performing in all kinds of plays. Sometimes the kids would be cast alongside mom and dad, but not always comfortably. Sam recalled the first time he could remember being on stage, in Why Men Leave Home, as his mother’s daughter (he wasn’t apparently a very convincing actor at that age; he said most of the audience could tell he was a boy in spite of the lacy underwear that was part of his costume).

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As the Edwards children grew, the family transitioned from the stage into radio. Now based mostly in San Antonio, Texas, Jack managed a movie theater, interspersing the new fangled medium of moving pictures with short live performances done by Edna and the kids. As he moved into his teens, Sam began participating in and winning local singing contests. Jack Sr. and Edna were already performing on WOAI, one of the first radio stations in Texas, when they began producing a show starring Sam and Jack Jr. In 1933, The Adventures of Sonny and Buddy became one of the first weekly serials to ever be broadcast. Sam would enjoy a long, prolific career on the airwaves. His whole family appeared as a fictionalized version of themselves on The Edwards Family. He was part of an early soap opera, One Man's Family, and an early kid's adventure show, Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police. Over the couple of decades that radio reigned supreme, Sam had recurring roles on Father Knows Best, Guiding Light, Meet Corliss Archer, The First Hundred Years, Dragnet, Gunsmoke, This is Your FBI and several others.

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Sam broke into movies almost by accident. In 1937, He tagged along with his brother to the set of a movie Jake was in, intending to be an extra, mostly for fun. His radio expertise, however, not only got him noticed but also got him a speaking part in High Hat. While never becoming a movie star, Sam would occasionally appear in films for the next four and a half decades. He had significant parts in Twelve O'Clock High with Gregory Peck, Operation Pacific with John Wayne and The Beatniks (which was featured in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000). His final film role came in 1981 as a Ticket Clerk in the remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.

When radio transitioned into television, Sam transformed himself as well. While he would never have a starring role like he did before, he would start appearing on the small screen in the mid Fifties and add more than 60 different series to his resume over the years. He is probably most remembered as Bill Anderson, the banker on Little House on the Prairie, but he had recurring roles on Dragnet and Gunsmoke (hold overs from his radio days) and guest shots on everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Mission: Impossible to Happy Days. He even, in another throwback to his earlier career, had a stint on Days of Our Lives. 

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Sam joined the Disney family pretty early in both his career and the history of features at the studio. In the 1942 classic Bambi, he brought the adult part of Thumper to twitterpated life. A great deal of his work for Disney came through Disneyland Records. He played both the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodman for a series of Wizard of Oz albums. He played Tigger, Rabbit and Owl on a whole bunch of Winnie the Pooh records. He also served as the narrator for many of the Disneyland Storyteller series. Throughout the Seventies, he appeared in a string of live action films for the company, including Escape to Witch Mountain, The Biscuit Eater and two episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Hog Wild and The Flight of the Grey Wolf. His final 'appearance' for the company was as the voice of Ollie Owl opposite Burl Ives' Sam the Eagle in the patriotic Disneyland attraction America Sings, that ran from 1974 until 1988.

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In the early Eighties, Sam retired from acting, mostly. He did some traveling around with his wife of three decades to old time radio conventions, meeting up with old friends and often giving live readings of favorite episodes from back in the day. But mostly he spent time with his family enjoying life. In 1992, he had bypass surgery, recovered nicely and spent another twelve years living peacefully in Durango, Colorado. Then, on July 28, 2004, three days after suffering a heart attack that revealed a hole in his heart, Sam passed away, surrounded by family. He was 89.

February 9 - Bill Justice

On this day, in 1914, William Barnard Justice was born in Dayton, Ohio. Raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Bill was a student at John Herron Art Institute, now a part of Indiana University. He graduated in 1935 and moved out to southern California. In 1937, he became a part of the Walt Disney Studio. Bill may have started his Disney career as an animator, like all of the company greats, but he would go on to do a little bit of everything (and do it all spectacularly).

Bill lent his animation skills to feature films like Fantasia, The Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. He's best known in that arena for his work on Thumper in Bambi. He also worked in the Shorts Department, most notably as a lead animator for Chip and Dale.

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In the mid-Fifties, Bill started directing. One of his first projects in the director's chair was the opening march for The Mickey Mouse Club. He went on to direct The Truth About Mother Goose in 1957, Noah's Ark in 1959 and A Symposium on Popular Songs in 1962. All three of those shorts were nominated for Academy Awards. He didn't get any statues to put on his mantle, but that's still an impressive run.

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In the early Sixties, Bill was busy redesigning character costumes for Disneyland as well as coming up with the floats for the park's first Christmas parade. He also made early sketches for the Main Street Electrical Parade. The natural result of these projects was his transfer into the Imagineering department. That's when Bill became more of an engineer than an animator, although he still remained an artist. He got involved with the development of Audio-Animatronics and was soon an expert on programming them. He would be responsible for the movements of figures in Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Carousel of Progress, Mission to Mars, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings (just to give some highlights). When Walt Disney World opened, Bill had his hand in the Hall of Presidents and the Mickey Mouse Revue as well.

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Bill retired from Disney in 1979. In 1992, he published his autobiography, detailing his career, called Justice For Disney. He was made an official Disney Legend in 1996 for his amazing contributions, spanning practically every department in the company for 42 years. In his later years, Bill loved to attend Disneyana conventions, chat with people and (to the annoyance of ever hotel he stayed in) draw Disney characters on linen napkins.He passed away in his sleep at a nursing home in Santa Monica, California on February 10, 2011. He was 97 years 1 day old.