August 24 - Hal Smith

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On this day, in 1916, Harold John Smith was born in Petosky, Michigan. Hal didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the Great Lakes State before his family travelled east and settled in the village of Massena, New York, about as far north as you can get in the Empire State before you become Canadian. After graduating from Massena High in 1936, Hal migrated a few hours south to Utica where he became a disk jockey for radio station WBIX. Over the next seven years, he played music and provided voices for all sorts of projects at the station, from promotional ads to filler bits between the scheduled programs. In 1943, he left the great state of New York to become part of the United States Army Special Services unit and travelled around Europe and the Pacific entertaining the troops for the rest of World War II. After the war, Hal moved again, this time to Hollywood. He took a number of uncredited roles in movies until the mid-Fifties, when both television and his career started to bloom.

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Hal began his run in television during all sorts of small roles on a variety of shows including Peter Gunn, Bonanza and Have Gun - Will Travel. It was the advent of cartoons on television and specifically the rise of the Hanna-Barbera studio that really gave him a boost though.  Starting in 1959 with the studio’s second series, The Huckleberry Hound Show, Hal became a staple voice talent for Hanna-Barbera. He voiced characters as diverse as narrators to Santa Clause to title characters like Yappee in dozens of series such as Quick Draw McGraw, The Flintstones, The Yogi Bear Show, Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey, The New 3 Stooges, Scooby-Doo Where Are You, Hong Kong Phooey, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Trollkins, Richie Rich and The Smurfs.

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Unlike some voice actors over the years, Hal also had a fairly prolific amount of live action appearances as well. His most famous role, hands down, was as Otis Campbell, the town drunk, on The Andy Griffith Show. Otis not only figured into 32 episodes over the shows eight seasons, but Hal reprised the role for a 1986 reunion movie, Return to Mayberry, and appeared as Otis in the music video for Alan Jackson’s song Don’t Rock the Juke Box. But the town drunk wasn’t the only way Hal’s face popped up on folks television sets. He also had guest spots on The Addams Family, Get Smart, Hogan’s Heroes, Green Acres, The Mod Squad, The Brady Bunch, Hollywood Squares, The Dukes of Hazzard, Little House on the Prairie and Fantasy Island, to name a few. He was truly one of those actors everyone recognized but few people could have told you his name.

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Hal holds a special place in the annals of Disneyana, especially for fans of Winnie the Pooh. For starters, he was the original voice of Owl, portraying the long winded know-it-all from Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in 1966 right on through The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh television series that ended in 1991. In 1981, for a new special called Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons, Hal began doing double duty in all Pooh related ventures: he provided the voice of the tubby little cubby himself, when Sterling Holloway declined to continue on in the role. Over the next seven years, Hal would do both Owl and Pooh, right up to the debut of New Adventures, when Jim Cummings took over responsibility for the fluff headed bear. Not that Hal was working any less mind you. During the run of New Adventures, Hal was simultaneously doing voices for DuckTales (including Gyro Gearloose, Flintheart Glomgold and the adult versions of Huey, Dewey and Louie), Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Nogum), TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck and The Little Mermaid.

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Hal holds five other Disney credits outside of the realm of Pooh and television. He was one of the elephants marching with Colonel Hathi in The Jungle Book. He had a small live-action role as the Courthouse Guard in 1971’s The Million Dollar Duck. He brought the Auctioneer in The Small One to life. He played everyone’s favorite man-dog, Goofy, in Mickey’s Christmas Carol (and had been playing him since Pinto Colvig had passed away several years earlier). And his final project for the company came in 1991 when he provided the voice for Belle’s horse, Phillipe, in Beauty and the Beast.

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The secular world of entertainment wasn’t the only realm that held Hal’s interest. He readily lent his voice to several religious projects as well. Starting in 1959, he was the voice of Goliath and Davey’s father for the Lutheran produced series, Davey and Goliath, which ran for sixteen years. Later, in the Eighties, he did work for the Focus on the Family broadcast, performing in various scripts for their daily show until 1987 when he signed on as John Avery Whittaker, the lead character in FotF’s longest running serial ever, Adventures in Odyssey. It was because of his commitment to the show that helped convince the rest of Odyssey’s cast to come on board.

Life was pretty sweet for Hal right up until Louise, his wife of 56 years, passed away in 1992. Without his lifelong companion by his side, Hal’s own health deteriorated rapidly. He managed to continue recording episodes of Adventures in Odyssey for a little over a year more. Then, on January 28, 1994, the character actor who spent more than four decades doing what he did best suffered a fatal heart attack, supposedly in his favorite chair while listening to beloved radio dramas. It sounds exactly like how the 77 year old would have wanted to go.

July 26 - Buddy Baker

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On this day, in 2002, Norman Dale Baker passed away in Hollywood, California. Born in Springfield, Missouri on January 4, 1918, Buddy, as most people called him, learned to read music before he could read lyrics. He began playing the piano at the age of 4, learned the trumpet at 11 and had formed his own band by his teen years. He studied music at Southwest Baptist University, eventually earning his doctorate in it before moving to Los Angeles in 1938.

Buddy began his professional career as a trumpet player and musical arranger on the radio programs of the day. He started on The Bob Hope Show before moving on to Jacky Benny and Eddie Cantor's shows. When World War II started, he returned to Bob Hope and became his show's musical director. Buddy brought big band leader Stan Kenton to the show and arranged Ken's first big hit, And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine. Following the war, he added Professor to his resume taking a job at Los Angeles City College in their school of music. He wasn't above helping out his students though. In 1954, he composed the hit jazz song Journey into Love with drummer Louis Bellson. And then one day later that same year, he got a call from another former student, George Bruns, who worked over at the Walt Disney Studio.

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George was looking for someone to compose some music for a couple of episodes of the Disneyland television series and he thought of his former professor. Buddy agreed to spend a couple of weeks at the studio coming up with something for Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. It ended up being a really long two weeks as Buddy wouldn't retire from Disney until 29 years later. In those three decades, he became the studio's musical director and one of the most prolific composers Disney ever had.

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Buddy wasn't as flashy as his contemporaries at the studio. Most people have at least heard of the Sherman Brothers, and don't get me wrong, Robert and Richard Sherman produced some fantastic work over the years, but even though you might not know Buddy's name, a walk through any of Disney's theme parks would be awfully quiet if none of his work existed. The first category we'll talk about is movie scores. He did dozens of them for Disney but a short list of his live action work would have to include Summer Magic, The Monkey's Uncle, The Gnome-Mobile, The Million Dollar Duck, The Apple Dumpling Gang, The Shaggy D.A. and Hot Lead Cold Feet. In 1972, he earned an Oscar nomination for Napoleon and Samantha, which also happened to be Jodie Foster's screen debut. On the animated side of things, Buddy scored several shorts including the classic Donald in Mathmagicland and all three of the original Winnie the Pooh shorts (including additional material for the 1977 Winnie the Pooh feature). In 1981, he made his second foray into animated features providing the score for The Fox and the Hound.

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As impressive as Buddy's film work is, it's in the category of music written for theme parks that some of his most recognizable tunes occur. His most famous song has to be Grim Grinning Ghosts which he wrote with fellow Legend Xavier Atencio for the Haunted Mansion. He also scored the eerie music that can be heard throughout that same attraction. Buddy and Xavier also wrote the original music that is used in the classic Country Bear Jamboree show and the song It's Fun to Be Free for the World of Motion pavilion at EPCOT. Buddy's other music written and arranged for attractions includes The Universe of Energy, America Sings, If You Had Wings, Kitchen Kabaret, Impressions de France, the American Adventure and Tokyo Disneyland's Journey to the Center of the Earth and Sinbad's Seven Voyages. Buddy also came out of retirement briefly in the nineties to arrange his own music for the various Winnie the Pooh rides that popped up in Disney theme parks at that time.

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By the time Buddy retired in 1983, he had over 200 Disney credits to his name. Much of the background music you hear just walking through areas of parks like the Mexican Pavilion at Epcot or Tomorrowland in Disneyland is arrangements of his compositions. When he left Disney, Buddy also had the distinction of being the last composer at a major Hollywood studio. They literally don't make them like him anymore. Buddy didn't stay retired for very long, though. In 1987 he became the director of the University of Southern California's Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program and taught courses there for the remainder of his life. He received the ASCAP Foundation Life Time Achievement Award in 1999 and having already been declared an official Disney Legend the year before. Three years later, Buddy would pass away from natural causes at the age of 84.

June 5 - Stephen J. Anderson

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On this day, in 1970, Stephen John Anderson was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Stephen, like so many others in the animation industry, studied character animation at the CalArts School of Film and Video. When he graduated in 1991, he went to work for Hyperion Animation Company. Hyperion was founded by Thomas L. Wilhite, a former head of production at Disney, and is best known for the Brave Little Toaster series. Stephen was an animator on Rover Dangerfield (basically a vanity project written, produced and starring Rodney Dangerfield) and Bebe’s Kids (a box office flop based on the standup of the late Robin Harris). He was also able to cut his directing teeth at Hyperion on the USA Network series The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

In 1999, Stephen became part of the Walt Disney Company as a story artist on Tarzan. A story artist is not to be confused with a storyboard artist who is responsible for drawing the series of sketches that show what a scene might look like as the film develops. A story artist is a screenwriter who makes contributions to the script but not enough to share in a screenplay by or story by credit. By the very next year, Stephen had moved up to the Story Supervisor position for The Emperor’s New Groove. He then continued in that role for 2003’s Brother Bear.

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In 2007, Stephen got to step up to the plate and take another swing at directing for Disney's 47th animated feature, Meet the Robinsons. As has become de rigueur, he also provided the voices for several of the film's characters including the villain, Bowler Hat Guy, Grandpa Bud and Cousin Tallulah.  The film garnered mostly positive reviews, but failed to take in much more than its $159 million budget. Personally I think it's one of the vastly underrated Disney films of the modern era.

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Stephen followed Robinsons up by providing additional voices for Bolt and as an animator and additional story man on Tangled. He was tapped for a co-director, with Don Hall, for the 2011 Winnie the Pooh feature. The newest adventure in the Hundred Acre Wood was a critical success but not particularly a financial one. It wasn't a flop by any means, making $50 million on a $30 million budget, but opening the same weekend as the final Harry Potter movie didn't do it any favors. Stephen then added additional story elements to the juggernaut known as Frozen as well as voicing Kai, Anna and Elsa's loyal steward. His last feature credit was as an additional story artist on Zootopia. He is reportedly working on a new project as director, but there is no word on what that film might be. What ever it is, we look forward to seeing it and hope it becomes the box office success that Stephen deserves.

February 4 - Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree

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On this day, in 1966, Disney released their first production starring a bear of very little brain, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Based on the first two chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne's beloved children's book, Honey Tree began a franchise in Disney history that would take on a life of its own, its popularity at times eclipsing everything else in the Disney family. As ubiquitous as the Pooh characters are today, people might not remember that they debuted steeped in controversy, albeit one that Disney brought on itself.

Walt had begun trying to acquire the rights to the Winnie the Pooh stories in 1938. It wasn't until 1961 that he actually got the job accomplished. Initially intending to make a feature film, after the mixed reception that Alice in Wonderland received, he decided to make a featurette and release it with a live action movie. Since most of his focus was on The Jungle Book, he turned the whole project over to Woolie Reitherman asking him to Americanize the characters and punch up the humor.

Woolie took his instructions to heart and decided that the story needed a more down-home folksy resident of the Hundred Acre Wood. That's when Gopher was born. For some strange reason, apparently adding a new character meant one of the old ones had to be left out. And even stranger, Woolie felt that the one that should be left out would be Pooh's best friend (outside of Christopher Robin, of course), Piglet. A move that fans of the books couldn't help but notice and they were not happy about it. Needless to say, Piglet would figure prominently in the second installment two years later, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, and would never be left out again.

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Released along with The Ugly Dachshund starring Dean Jones and Susan Pleshette, Honey Tree received mixed to positive reviews. Critics were happy that Disney literally took a page out of the books, a trope that would continue through the series and into the attraction at the Magic Kingdom. E.H. Shepard, the original illustrator of the books, called the new look of the characters a travesty (no surprises there) but A.A. Milne's widow reportedly liked it. Most folks were fairly unanimous in their praise of the songs by the Sherman Brothers.

It would take eleven more years for Walt's plan of a Winnie the Pooh feature to happen. The three shorts that had been released up to that point, Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, were combined together with additional bridging material to create the studio's 22nd animated feature, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The multitude of shorts, features, television series and video games that have spawned since, just go to show how endearing Milne's tubby little cubby continues to be.

January 4 - Sterling Holloway

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On this day, in 1905, Sterling Prince Holloway was born in Cedartown, Georgia. The son of the town grocer (and later mayor), Sterling went to the Georgia Military Academy for his primary schooling. He graduated at the age of 15 and almost immediately traveled to New York City to begin attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there he began a lifelong friendship with Spencer Tracy. After graduating a second time, Sterling traveled the country doing vaudeville acts interspersed with walk-on parts on Broadway whenever he was in New York.

In 1926, Sterling moved to Hollywood to try his luck in motion pictures. His high pitched voice and shock of red hair usually meant some sort of comedic sidekick role for him, but he didn't mind. Over the next five decades, he would appear in more than 150 films. It started with The Battling Kangaroo, a silent picture. A couple of years later, when talkies came along, many of the actors in Tinsel Town couldn't make the transition. Not only did Sterling make the leap but sound actually made him more popular. Over the years, he worked alongside the likes of Fred McMurray, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, to drop just a few names.

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When World War II hit, Sterling stepped right up, joining the United States Army in 1942 as an old man of 37. He was assigned to special forces where he developed a show, Hey Rookie, that ran for nine months and raised over $350,000 for the Army Relief Fund. At the end of the war, he played a rare dramatic role in the movie A Walk in the Sun, as a reluctant medic, earning quite a bit of critical praise in the process.

With his distinctive voice, and nearly ubiquitous presence in Hollywood, it didn't take long for Sterling to show up on Walt Disney's radar. In the mid thirties, Sterling was actually tested for the role of Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a role he ultimately lost to Pinto Colvig. He made his first appearance for Disney in 1941 as Mr. Stork in Dumbo. From there, he became a Disney staple. When I met Dave Smith, the head Disney archivist, once I asked him who had done the most voices in Disney films. His reply was that with all the little, mostly uncredited voices we may never know but that when it came to major roles, it was Sterling Holloway, hands down.

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Over the next few decades, Sterling would play a variety of characters for Disney, from the villainous to the downright cuddly. He provided the voice for Adult Flower in Bambi in 1942. Two years later he narrated the Pablo, the Cold Blooded Penguin section of The Three Caballeros. Two years after that, he narrated the Peter and the Wolf sequence in Make Mine Music. In 1951, Sterling was the Cheshire Cat for Alice in Wonderland, 1967 brought us Kaa in The Jungle Book and 1970 found him as Roquefort the mouse in The Aristocats.

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But it was Sterling's last series of roles (just one role but in a series of films) for Disney that he is not only best known for, but was his favorite to perform. I am, of course, talking about that tubby little cubby, Winnie the Pooh. Starting with Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in 1966, Sterling also did Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). All three of those shorts were later combined into the studio's 22nd feature film called The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh released in 1977.

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In addition to his voice work in Disney features, Sterling also narrated a bunch of shorts, including The Little House, Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, and the role of Amos Mouse in Ben and Me. His final role with the company was actually a live action one, moonshiner Hobe Carpenter in the 1977 comedy Thunder and Lightning, starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson.

Image lifted from gettyimages.com

Outside of Disney, Sterling had smoothly made the transition to television starting in the Fifties. He had recurring roles on Superman, The Andy Griffith Show and The Life of Riley as well as guest spots on everything from The Untouchables to Gilligan's Island to Moonlighting. He also landed several contracts for commercials, hawking wares ranging from Puppy Chow to Libby's baked beans. He was also the voice of Woodsy the Owl in Forest Service PSAs during the Seventies and Eighties.

In 1991, Sterling was named an official Disney Legend, the first person to receive the award for voice work. At the ceremony, the 86 year old was helped to the stage by none other than Winnie the Pooh himself. He would pass away a little over a year later on November 22, 1992 from cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California.

November 3 - Jim Cummings

On this day, in 1952, James Jonah Cummings was born in Youngstown, Ohio. As a young man, Jim moved to New Orleans, Louisiana where he became something of a jack-of-all-trades. He designed and painted floats for the annual Mardi Gras parades, he worked as a deckhand on the riverboats and he found local success as the singer/drummer for the band FUSION. After getting married, Jim relocated again, this time to Anaheim, California. His new job would be as the manager of a video store. Then, in 1984, his life would change forever as Jim began a career as a voice actor on the cartoon series The Transformers in the roles of Afterburner and Rippersnapper. They would be the first of over 400 parts that Jim would play, and that's only so far.

Jim's first gig with Disney was on 1985's Dumbo's Circus as the voice of Lionel the Lion. This led to the Adventures of the Gummi Bears where he played Chummi Gummi and took over his first role from Paul Winchell, doing Zummi Gummi for the show's final season. Naturally this rolled into doing voices for another Disney Afternoon show, DuckTales.

Jim's biggest role came next. The studio was looking for someone to replace Hal Smith (who had taken over for Sterling Holloway several years earlier) as the voice of Winnie the Pooh. Jim's audition was a spot on imitation of Sterling and he won the role that would last a lifetime. As if that wasn't enough, a year later he would take over another role from Paul Winchell and become the voice of Tigger. The start of this double Milne action was on the Disney Afternoon show The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and has continued through countless television programs, direct-to-video movies, theater releases, video games, you name it up to this year's movie Christopher Robin.

But it doesn't stop there. Jim is also the voice of Darkwing Duck. When Jeremy Irons had voice trouble, Jim was the singing voice of Scar in The Lion King. He was totally Scar's voice for The Lion King 2. He was Pete in Goof Troop, House of Mouse and the Goofy movies. He's done voices for dozens more Disney series: Timon and Pumbaa, Aladdin, Star Wars Rebels, 101 Dalmations, The Little Mermaid. It seems like if there's been an animated series that Disney's done, Jim is somewhere in the credits.

Disney isn't the only place Jim is demand. He was the singing voice for Rasputin in Anastasia. He's voiced characters in movies along side the likes of  Scooby Doo, Shrek, Jimmy Neutron, the Powerpuff Girls, the Land Before Time dinosaurs and literally hundreds of others. The good news, for both Jim and for us, is that he doesn't show any signs of stopping. Who knows how many more performances and characters Jim will bring us in the coming years. The one thing I think we all hope for is at least a few more featuring a certain tubby little cubby and his bouncy friend.