June 28 - Herb Ryman

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On this day, in 1910, Herbert Dickens Ryman was born in Vernon, Illinois. When he was 9, Herb's family moved to Decatur. He began following in his father's footsteps as a medical student at the private Millikin University there, until he became deathly ill with scarlet fever. His mother, who had pushed for the medical studies over what Herb wanted to pursue, an artistic career, became concerned for his health and relented, allowing him to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago. He graduated cum laude and, in 1932, moved out to Los Angeles, California to try his luck at making money with his art. He quickly found a job at the MGM Studio, as a storyboard illustrator. For a while during the studio's Golden Age, Herb was the only illustrator on staff and helped design the looks of such classic films as Mutiny on the Bounty, David Copperfield, the Emerald City portion of The Wizard of Oz and The Good Earth.

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Something about The Good Earth really struck a chord with Herb. He was inspired enough by his work on that film to quit his job and spend a year traveling around China. He made hundreds of sketches and paintings during his Asian tour, publishing many of them in a book when he returned to the states in 1938. As part of his homecoming, Herb had an exhibition of his work at the Chouinard Art Institute which was attended by Walt Disney. Walt was so impressed with Herb's paintings, he asked him if he wanted a job. Herb said sure and became Disney's art director on Fantasia and Dumbo. In the summer of 1941, when Walt and an entourage took a goodwill tour of South America on behalf of the United States government, Herb was one of the artists that went along for the ride. His sketches from the trip influenced the look of both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

Following the end of World War II, Herb got word that 20th Century Fox was developing a film based on the novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon. He had actually become an acquaintance of Margaret during his time in China and was interested in working on the film. He amiably resigned his position at Disney and changed studios again. Over the next several years, Herb worked on Fox films including Forever Amber, David and Bathsheba and The Robe.

For two summers, in 1949 and 1950, Herb took leaves of absence from Fox and literally joined the circus. He traveled with the performers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey, preserving their way of life through his paintings. During his time with the circus, he became good friends with Emmett Kelly, one of the greatest clowns of all time.

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On September 26, 1953, Herb received a desperate call from another old friend, Walt Disney, asking for an immediate meeting. Intrigued, Herb agreed. When they came face to face, Walt began describing all his ideas for a new theme park and asked if Herb could produce some drawings bringing those ideas to life. Herb said sure, when do you want them? Walt said how about right now? The two men worked pretty much non stop throughout the weekend to finish several detailed sketches. It wasn't long after that when Roy Disney took those sketches and showed them to the investors who would agree to finance Walt's latest dream. Without them, Disneyland might never have become reality.

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Once the plans for his theme park were securely in place, Walt asked Herb to come back to work at Disney. This time around, Herb worked mainly with WED Enterprises, designing and creating concept images for theme park attractions. For Disneyland, he helped design Sleeping Beauty Castle, Main Street USA, New Orleans Square, the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean. He was integral to the development of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair. He was the chief designer of Cinderella Castle when the Florida Project was taking shape.

In 1971, Herb officially retired from Disney, but like most old timers of the era, he never completely walked away. By 1976, he was back consulting with the company on plans for EPCOT Center, giving style to the American Adventure and the China pavilion. He then helped design a history of Japan show for the opening of Tokyo Disneyland called Meet the World. His last project with Disney was creating concepts for the version of Main Street USA that would eventually debut at Euro Disneyland.

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Outside of his work with various Hollywood studios, Herb was a prolific artist. In addition to his paintings with the circus, he created watercolors of the California coastline and portraits of various celebrities. He was a member of the American Institute of Fine Arts, the Society of Illustrators and the California Art Club. His paintings were collected by the Guggenheims, the Barrymores and Cecil B. DeMille among others.

In late 1988, Herb became ill and he passed away on February 10, 1989 at the age of 78. In 1990, he was officially declared a Disney Legend for all his work shaping the beloved Disney theme parks. That same year, his sister Lucille, along with Marty Sklar, Sharon Disney and Buzz Price, created the Ryman-Carroll Foundation in Herb's honor. The Foundation's main purpose is running Ryman Arts, an organization that provides free art classes with master teachers to Los Angeles area high school students. You can find out more about their work, and the man that inspired them, at rymanarts.org.

March 16 - Joyce Carlson

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On this day, in 1923, Joyce Carlson was born in Racine, Wisconsin. Joyce and her family moved to Southern California when she was 15. After graduating from Santa Monica High School, she needed a job and became a member of the Traffic Department at the Walt Disney Studio. Her job was to deliver mail, paint brushes, coffee and anything else that was needed to the various departments of the studio. It wasn't long before she wanted something more, so Joyce created a portfolio of drawings, showed them to management and was promptly moved into the Ink and Paint Department.

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Joyce's first assignments were the shorts Disney created for the United States Government during World War II. She was quickly moved into the Feature Animation division and worked on The Three Caballeros, Cinderella and Peter Pan. During production on Lady and the Tramp, Joyce was promoted to a Lead Ink Artist position which carried on into Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Technology had advanced by that time, however. Dalmatians ushered in the era of xerography, which allowed animators drawings to be photocopied onto cels, eliminating the need for inkers. As the Ink and Paint Department shrunk accordingly, Joyce, after 16 years of expertly floating paint on acetate, transferred to WED Enterprises and began the Imagineering phase of her career.

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In 1962, Joyce began a mentoring process under two legends: Mary Blair and Marc Davis. Her first project was as part of the team designing and dressing the sets for the Carousel of Progress for the 1964 World's Fair. She worked closely with Leota Toombs, who had also come from the Ink and Paint Department (and would later achieve immortality as the face of Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion), specifically creating the sturdier show hinges on all of the doors of the GE appliances that were used in the attraction.

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Joyce is best known for her work on another ride for the Fair, UNICEF's It's a Small World. She was responsible for designing and building the majority of the singing children figures seen throughout the attraction. She was also one of handful of cast members who traveled to New York to oversee the installation of all the Disney created pavilions. After the Fair, she was in charge of moving It's a Small World across country to Disneyland and eventually supervised the creation of the versions in Florida, Tokyo and Paris.

After the World's Fair projects were completed, Joyce and Leota continued to work together making models and final figures for all sorts of attractions. Her work can be seen in The Enchanted Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings (which had a whole slew of its figures recycled into Splash Mountain), to name a few.

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In 1982, Joyce moved to Florida where she became the resident Small World expert and was promoted to Senior Show Production Designer for Walt Disney World. She was the first female employee of the company to reach both the 50 and 55 year anniversary marks. She retired from full time work in 2000, but like most of Disney's old timers, continued to work at least part time for six more years and was available to mentor new Imagineers beyond that. Just after her retirement in 2000, Joyce was made an official Disney Legend. She was also given her own window on Main Street, USA in the Magic Kingdom that reads "Dolls by Miss Joyce - Dollmaker for the World - Shops in New York, California, Florida, Japan and Paris - Owner and Founder, Joyce Carlson." The eagle eyed among us can also spot a figure in her likeness in the Florida version of Small World. Joyce succumbed to cancer on January 8, 2008 at her home in Orlando, Florida. She was 84.

January 12 - Marc Davis

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On this day, in 2000, Marc Fraser Davis passed away in Glendale, California. Marc began life about a hundred miles north of the place he ended it. Born on March 30, 1913 in Bakersfield, California, he was a Californian through and through. Well, mostly. While he attended art classes at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, he actually graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri. Needless to say, he didn’t spend much more time in Middle America than his schooling took but his presence there at all probably helped start his career working under one of the area’s most famous sons.

Coming on board the Disney juggernaut in 1935, Marc quickly earned the admiration of his fellow animators. Ollie Johnston recalled that, while several people contributed to the design of Snow White, it was Marc who made her walk in grace and beauty.

Marc wasn’t just good at bringing women to life. The consummate draftsman also made animals more believable. It started with his work on Bambi, Faline and Thumper in Bambi. He then gave us Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear in Song of the South. Bongo in Fun and Fancy Free and Mr. Toad in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad round out his furry contributions to the Disney family.  

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But truth be told, it really was drawing women where Marc excelled the most. He was so good at grace and beauty, he would often be given the difficult task of animating either the heroine or the villainess in a picture. Over the years, not only did he join Ollie as one of Walt’s Nine Old Men, he earned himself the nickname of Disney’s Ladies Man. Name a major female character from the Fifties and it’s almost a guarantee that Marc animated her. Cinderella, Alice, Tinkerbell, Aurora and Maleficent, and, lastly, Cruella de Vil (who technically didn’t appear until the early Sixties), were all created under Marc’s steady hand. Then, when One Hundred and One Dalmatians wrapped up production, he gave up animation forever.

As the Sixties began, Disneyland was almost constantly being updated and expanded and a huge amount of effort was being put into several projects for the upcoming World's Fair. WED Enterprises (the precursor to Imagineering) was designing and building almost more attractions than they could handle. Marc had made some contributions during the late Fifties to Adventureland's Jungle Cruise and the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland. As the excitement in the department continued into the new decade, he decided to devote the rest of his career to designing characters and writing stories for the theme park instead of the silver screen.

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Marc still applied the same techniques in his new role. He still spent hours developing characters for an attraction and would use storyboards to plan out what guests would experience. His dedication payed off. As the technology behind Audio-Animatronics developed and matured, Marc would become a master at using them to tell stories. His first big project to open after his career shift was the classic show found in The Enchanted Tiki Room. For the 1964 World's Fair, he had a hand in all four of the attractions that Disney built: Ford's Magic Skyway, Great Moment's With Mr. Lincoln, It's a Small World and The Carousel of Progress.

When the World's Fair was safely behind them, Imagineers returned to creating new experiences for Disneyland. Marc's designs can be seen throughout both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, both of which opened in New Orleans Square. He then lent his style to the Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings, which was the replacement attraction for his earlier work Carousel of Progress.

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The last several years of Marc's career were spent developing an attraction that was never quite built. It was to occupy a massive area in Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom in Florida. Known as the Western River Expedition, it was supposed to be Florida's answer to Pirates of the Caribbean since, Disney executives reasoned, Floridians wouldn't be interested in pirates because the state was practically built by them. Instead, Marc designed a Western themed ride that would involve buffalo, a stagecoach robbery, a Native American adobe village, and a show with saloon girls, a bank robbery and plenty of cowboys. A mine train roller coaster would be housed in the same show building (yes, it would be the largest one Disney had ever built). From the outside, the building would look like and be called Thunder Mesa Mountain. From all accounts, it would have been a spectacular thing to see. So what happened?

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Guests to the Florida Project had one complaint they could all agree on, that's what happened. The question "Where are the pirates?" became the one most asked after the Magic Kingdom opened. So Disney hastily built a version of Pirates of the Caribbean, using a large chunk of the money allocated for Marc's Expedition. Then an economic downturn hit the country. Then Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (part of the plans for the attraction from the beginning) was built using most of the land that was to go to Expedition. And that was basically it. All the sketches and models that Marc slaved over were relegated to the research vault. Not to despair too much, though. Plenty of Imagineers have snuck elements of Marc's designs into other attractions including Splash Mountain and Expedition Everest, and I'm sure will continue to do so as often as they can.

In 1978, Marc retired after an incredible 43 year career with the Walt Disney Company.  He was named an official Disney Legend in 1989 for all of his iconic contributions to both the world of animation and beloved attractions that endure to this day. Shortly after he passed away, he was honored once more when CalArts established the Marc Fraser Davis Scholarship Fund, ensuring that creative genius will be able to flourish far into the future.

December 22 - Bill Cottrell

On this day, in 1995, Willilam H.D. Cottrell Jr. passed away in Los Angeles, California. Born on November 19, 1906 in South Bend, Indiana, Bill would move to Southern California to attend Occidental College as an English and journalism major. Following graduation, he briefly worked for George Herriman as a story man on the Krazy Kat comic strip. Then, in 1929, he became a camera man at the Walt Disney Studio.

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It wasn't long before Bill transferred to the story department and began making major contributions to shorts like Who Killed Cock Robin? He was a trusted enough part of the company that when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came along, Bill became a sequence director. His touch can be seen whenever the Evil Queen can be seen.

At the same time, Bill was proving just how small a company the studio really was. He was courting, falling in love with and, in 1938, becoming the second husband of Hazel (Bounds) Sewell. Hazel had brought her sister, one Lillian Bounds, into the ink and paint department with her many years before. In 1925, Lillian had become Mrs. Walt Disney. With his marriage to Hazel, Bill became the brother in law of the Boss. Luckily, he also had the talent to back up his newfound connections.

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Bill and Hazel would join Walt on his goodwill tour of South America in 1941. He is credited with developing the story for the two films that resulted from that trip, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. He would continue to contribute to the stories of many of the studios projects throughout the Forties and into the Fifties, including Melody Time, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. More importantly, Bill was becoming one of Walt's most trusted advisers at a time when something entirely new was brewing.

As the Fifties began and Walt was turning his imagination towards a physical place in the world, he knew he needed a separate company to generate the ideas and technology he would require. When WED Enterprises (now known as Walt Disney Imagineering) was born, he also knew just who he wanted to lead it: Bill Cottrell. As the first president of Imagineering, Bill was responsible for bringing the plans for Disneyland to life. The genius of putting a story man in charge of those plans is fairly obvious in hindsight. Every trash can, lighting fixture and door would fit in with the story that had been created for each attraction, shop or restaurant it was near. The parks would never have the flow they do if it hadn't been for Bill's leadership from the beginning.

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In 1964, Bill became an even closer part of Walt's life when he became the president of Retlaw Enterprises, the private company that managed the Disney family's financial affairs. He would hold that position until his retirement in 1982. Which doesn't mean he didn't still make contributions to the entertainment side of things. He helped develop the Zorro television series and, as a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, inspired The Great Mouse Detective.

In 1994, Bill was made an official Disney Legend for his contributions to film, the theme parks and the Disney family in general over his 53 year career with the company.