January 8 - Iwao Takamoto

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On this day, in 2007, Iwao Takamoto passed away from a heart attack in Los Angeles, California. Born in the same city on April 29, 1925, Iwao graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School when he was just 15. Shortly thereafter, Pearl Harbor was bombed, World War II began and Iwao's family was imprisoned in the Manzanar internment camp with tens of thousands of other Japanese Americans. Luckily for him (and for us), he learned the basics of drawing, illustration and animation from two of his fellow prisoners.

When the war ended, Iwao decided to apply for work at the only animation studio he knew the name of, Disney. He was told to submit his portfolio. Having been imprisoned for the four years prior, he of course didn't have one. He bought two notebooks and spent a weekend filling them with sketches of literally everything he saw. Those sketches did the trick and he was hired as an assistant animator in 1945. Iwao contributed to several features during his sixteen years with the company, both as animator and as character designer. He would spend a good deal of his Disney career working directly under Milt Kahl, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, on projects like Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians.

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In 1961, Iwao left Disney to join Hanna-Barbera Productions. As cartoon television series seemed to bloom on every network throughout the rest of the decade, Iwao left his indelible mark on the genre. He would hold several positions at Hanna-Barbera but his work as a character designer remains the most visible and therefore most impressive. His highlights reel started with Astro, the Jetson's dog in 1962. A few years later, his next big hit was Penelope Pitstop, who starred in Wacky Races and its spinoff show, The Perils of Penelope. But his most enduring character by far is another canine, Scooby-Doo.

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When asked how he came up with Scooby's look, Iwao once said that a woman at the studio owned great danes and enthusiastically showed him pictures of them, pointing out all their features. He then drew every aspect of the dogs the opposite of what they were in reality. Instead of a straight back and legs and a small chin, Scooby got a hump back, bowed legs and a large mug. Iwao even purposely made him the wrong color. And yet it somehow all works. Michael Mallory, a Hanna-Barbera historian, makes the claim that if Scooby had looked any different, more like an actual Airedale say, the show probably wouldn't have lasted more than one season. Instead, because of Iwao's genius, Scooby had been on a screen, big or small, almost continuously since his creation.

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Iwao would eventually move into the director's chair. One of his biggest projects was the 1973 feature film, Charlotte's Web, which he co-directed with Charles Nichols. He once said one of the hardest things he ever did was creating a spider with a look that inspired people to care about it. The film, which featured songs by the Sherman Brothers, received mixed reviews, with most critics calling out the obviously quick television type animation. But, really, what else would you expect from Hanna-Barbera?

After producing series like The Smurfs, The Addams Family and Hong Kong Phooey, Iwao would settle into the role of Vice President of Creative Design. He was in charge of all of Hanna-Barbera's merchandise and oversaw all the design work going on in the Animation Art Department.  When Time-Warner merged with Hanna-Barbera's parent company, Turner Broadcasting in 1996, Iwao became Vice President of Special Projects for Warner Brothers Animation. He held this position for the remainder of his career.

Iwao received two major honors from his peers during the latter part of his life. The first came in 1996 when he was given the Windsor McCay Award, a lifetime achievement statue given out each year at the Annie Awards. The second came in 2005 when the Animation Guild bestowed upon him their Golden Award for his more than five decades in the field. The ultimate honor, though, may have happened when he passed away in 2007. For the next week, Adult Swim, on the Cartoon Network, displayed "Iwao Takamoto (1925-2007)" as one of their bumpers. I think Iwao would have approved.

January 7 - Voyage of the Little Mermaid

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On this day, in 1992, Voyage of the Little Mermaid first invited guests to travel under the sea at the Disney-MGM Studios. When the studios first opened in 1989, the Backlot Tour was half of the available attractions. When the park proved to be more popular than anticipated, pieces of the Backlot Tour were slowly taken off the tour and made into their own stand alone things. One of those pieces was a theater at the end of the tour.

At that time, Disney was in negotiations with Jim Henson to acquire the Muppets. In anticipation of that deal, two attractions opened at the Studios featuring Jim's characters. One of those attractions, Muppet*Vision 3D is still running. The other was a live stage show with life size Muppet characters that opened in that little theater located just off Animation Courtyard. That show was called Here Come the Muppets and ran for just over 15 months. The show that replaced it is one of my favorite shows in all of Walt Disney World.

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Now is a good time for full disclosure. I'm more than a little biased when it comes to VoLM. I performed in it more than 7,700 times over a three year period. That number sounds impressive when I say it but it's really not. There are performers still there who have been with the show since the beginning and have logged well over 25,000 performances. Compared to them, I'd barely started. I am immensely proud of the not only the work I did while part of the cast but of everyone I worked with, most of whom put me to shame with their talent. So even though VoLM is getting shiny patches on the knees of its pants and looking a little haggard when it crawls out of bed each morning, I think the world of it.

And, for the most part, so do guests. They might not all appreciate the fact that Ariel is singing live rather than lipsynching to a track. They might not care that being able to watch nine puppeteers ply their craft at one time doesn't really happen much anymore, or anywhere. They don't even notice that the show doesn't make much sense if you've never seen the movie (let's be real, though, who hasn't seen The Little Mermaid?)  But I do think they enjoy the show completely and wholeheartedly. After all, audiences have been consistently showing up, day in and day out, for 27 years now. In fact about a third of all guests who come to the Studios each day find their way through the little theater near the back of the park. To put that in perspective, about half of all guests will find a seat in the much (much) larger space that houses the park's premiere show Fantasmic. VoLm does more than all right for itself.

There are constantly rumors afoot that Voyage of the Little Mermaid is on the brink of closing. The reasons are always varied: it's so old, so tired, it would cost too much to properly refurbish it, Disney is getting rid of all puppeteers, etc. etc. etc. A couple of years ago, more than one blog even reported as "fact" that it was done that Labor Day. As the Studios are in a constant state of flux these days, those rumors get more rampant the closer Star Wars Land gets to opening but so far they remain rumors. Will there be a place for VoLM in the new Disney's Hollywood Studios? I'm sure at some point it will go the way of Legend of the Lion King and Here Come the Muppets, but don't count this little slice of undersea adventure out just yet. And when you do go to see it, if you run into Max, tell him an old friend says hello.

January 6 - Disney-MGM Studios

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On this day, in 2008, the third Walt Disney World theme park, the Disney-MGM Studios, ceased to exist. Which sounds more dramatic than it really is. The theme park didn’t actually go anywhere, of course, it just suffered a name change to Disney's Hollywood Studios. But that is enough of an excuse to talk about a place that has become near and dear to my heart. The park opened on May 1, 1989 as a theme park, yes, but with a fully operational production studio layered on top. The concept for the park had actually started on a much smaller scale. In the mid-Eighties, Legendary Imagineer Marty Sklar had teamed up with Randy Bright with the task of creating two new pavilions for Future World in Epcot. The two lead a team that came up with plans for a health based pavilion called Wonders of Life and an entertainment pavilion known as the Great Movie Ride. When Michael Eisner became the head of the company, he looked at the Great Movie Ride and thought it might be better to make it the anchor for a third theme park. To that end, Disney signed a licensing agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Disney-MGM Studios was born, at least on paper.

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As plans for the new park grew, it was decided that included would be television and film production facilities, a functional backlot area and an auxiliary animation department to the California studio. The animation studio was the first thing to open and it promptly caused problems. MGM filed a lawsuit claiming they only agreed to a theme park and didn’t know anything about new film productions at the site. The fact that MGM wanted to open (and eventually did open) their own theme park at their hotel in Las Vegas, may have had something to do with it. Disney would file a countersuit over that theme park. In 1992 a federal judge decided that there was enough money to go around that both parks could exist. Only one still operates today, however, making the whole thing an overly expensive, not to mention pointless, spat.

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Plans for the new park were further complicated when Universal Studios announced that they were going to build a theme park in Orlando that would be similar to the one that already existed in Southern California. Construction had begun on Disney-MGM in 1987 but was accelerated in order to beat Universal’s opening by as much as possible (Universal’s actual opening was so plagued by problems it might not have mattered, but that’s a discussion for another time).

When Disney’s version of studio opened in 1989, it only had two attractions to offer guests. One was the Great Movie Ride (from the original Epcot brainstorms) and the other was the Studio Backlot Tour, which was part tram ride (through Catastrophe Canyon) and part walking tour. The Little Theme Park That Could proved to be popular, though, and it began to change in subtle ways almost immediately. Part of the backlot, New York Street, was taken off the tram tour and opened to relieve pedestrian traffic as the Streets of America. Bit by bit, pieces of the backlot tour were made into their own attractions, mainly to help with traffic control, including the theater in the Animation Courtyard area that made me love the Studios (more about that in my next post).

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The park also began expanding almost from the beginning. Star Tours debuted before the end of that first year. In 1991, the Grand Avenue area opened featuring one of my favorite attractions, Muppet*Vision 3D. The next big expansion opened in 1994 when Sunset Boulevard appeared on the map and dead ended at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Since then all sorts of changes have happened. Actual productions stopped happening (too late to matter to MGM). The animation studio packed its bags and moved to California. The backlot tour systematically phased itself out until it was closed and the entire area was demolished to make way for an expanded Star Wars area. A Pixar street was added with the ever popular Toy Story Midway Mania ride and then even more Pixar was added as Toy Story got it's own land. And then, seventeen months ago, the Great Movie Ride itself closed its doors to make way for a new Mickey Mouse based experience.

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When the Great Movie Ride closed, the argument could be made that the Disney-MGM Studios actually did cease to exist at that point, not with the name change nine years earlier. The park has changed and evolved so much since opening day that hardly any of the original park is left. It is poised to change even more later this year with the opening of Star Wars Land (yes, I'm aware it's called Galaxy's Edge, not Star Wars Land, I'm marginal on that name) but that's okay. Change is something Walt expected his theme parks to do and I think Disney's Hollywood Studios has done the best job of embracing that change of any of them. It's gone from being a place where movies are made to being the place that brings movies to life. Will it get another name change as it moves into the future? Bob Iger once hinted as such, some really terrible names were focus grouped and then denials were made about Bob's hint, so I honestly don't know (although I'm still pulling for The Pixstar Ranch). What I do know is that the Disney-MGM Studios... I mean Disney's Hollywood Studios (some habits really do die hard) becomes more relevant and more exciting with every change.

January 5 - Jack Hannah

Image courtesy of cartoonresearch.com

On this day, in 1913, John Frederick Hannah was born in Nogales, Arizona. Another Legend that it's hard to find background information on (other than he enjoyed hunting with his dad), we pick Jack's story up in 1931. He'd made his way to Los Angeles and was attending the Art Guild Academy. As a student, one of the first jobs he managed to get was designing movie posters for local theaters. As the Great Depression ground on, Jack made a visit to the Walt Disney Studio to try for a job. His portfolio was deemed good enough and, in 1933, he began his animation career as an inbetweener on Mickey Mouse shorts.

Jack had moved up to full animator by 1937, when his contributions to The Old Mill helped win an Academy Award for the studio. After slaving over the drawing board for 12 more shorts, Jack moved over to the story department and started writing for Donald Duck shorts. From 1939-43, he wrote 27 stories for the cantankerous fowl, sometimes collaborating with the legendary Carl Barks, including Donald Gets Drafted (where we learned Donald's middle name is Fauntleroy). Jack and Carl would also work together on the first couple of Donald comic books. Carl would leave the studio for the comic world full time, but Jack stuck around and became a director.

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The 1944 short Donald's Off Day was the onset of Jack's spectacular run of feathered mayhem surrounding the perennial second banana at the Disney studio. Over the next decade, he would helm 94 shorts, most of them featuring Donald. Jack would introduce the world to classic foils for his fowl friend, including Chip and Dale and Humphrey the Bear. He was so prolific in developing Donald's character that more than one Disney historian has referred to him as "Donald Duck's Other Daddy."

As the studio began winding down short production in the mid Fifties, Jack tried to make the transition to television. He was able to direct several episodes of the Disneyland series, all of them involving Donald, usually having conversations with Walt. He tried to get Walt to let him direct more live-action projects, but claims that Walt had him pigeon-holed as an animation guy and wouldn't do it. Whether or not that was true, Jack would retire from the Disney Studio in 1957, mildly disgruntled. He wouldn't stop working though.

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Following his departure from Disney, Jack went to work for another animation legend, Walter Lantz. For the next several years, he directed Woody Woodpecker shorts and became Assistant Director on Lantz's television project, The Woody Woodpecker Show. In 1963, he retired a second time.

By the mid Seventies, Disney was starting to feel the pinch as all of the original crew of animators were retiring (or passing away) and a vacuum was being created with no readily available replacements. Studio executives approached Jack with a proposal to jump start the Character Animation program at Cal Arts. He teamed up with T. Hee to create it and actually taught classes himself for the next eight years. Countless members of the current pantheon of animators cut their teeth studying under Jack and the fabulous Cal Arts program.

In 1992, Jack was made an official Disney Legend, not only for all his shepherding of Donald but for basically ensuring the continuation of the medium in general. Two years later, he would pass away on June 11, 1994 in Burbank, California. He was 81.

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.

January 3 - Kitchen Kabaret

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On this day, in 1994, the final notes of the Kitchen Kabaret show, located in the Land Pavilion in Future World at Epcot, drifted into the ether. As part of Epcot's opening day offerings, this 13 minute Audio-Animatronic show centered on teaching guests about the four food groups and the importance of a balanced diet. The main thing anyone remembers from it, however, are the four words "Veggie, Veggie, Fruit, Fruit" (and for those of you who do remember, that will now be in your head for the rest of the day, you're welcome).

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The show was hosted by Bonnie Appetite, a combination of a Fifties housewife and a cabaret singer. She was voiced by Jeanine Brown, a studio musician and member of the country-swing group The Doo-Wah Riders. Bonnie starts out being less than enthused about cooking dinner and sets out on a journey meeting members of each of the food groups for inspiration. The highlights included a trio of grains who parodied the Andrews Sisters with Boogie Woogie Bakery Boy, a vaudeville type act featuring Mr. Hamm and Mr. Eggz and a group of broccoli, bananas and tomatoes chanting the earworm known as Veggie, Veggie, Fruit, Fruit.

The show was sponsored by Kraft Foods, who also sponsored the entire Land Pavilion for the first decade it was open. When the initial sponsorship deal ended in the fall of 1993, Kraft declined to renew. Nestle became the new sponsor and, naturally, wanted a new show that wasn't connected to Kraft. Kitchen Kabaret would survive a few more months while it's replacement was in development.

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The replacement show was called Food Rocks. It was also about 13 minutes long, also featured a cast of Audio-Animatronics, also centered on nutrition and, coincidentally, also closed on January 3, exactly one decade after Kitchen Kabaret. Food Rocks was, in my opinion, less memorable than its predecessor. It was staged as a benefit concert promoting healthy eating that was hosted by Fud Wrapper, voiced by real-life rapper Tone Loc. The show featured several parodies of actual songs and bands (The Peach Boys singing Good Nutrition, that sort of thing). Several of the parodies were voiced by the real performers including Neil Sedaka as Neil Moussaka, Little Richard, the Pointer Sisters and Chubby Checker as Chubby Cheddar.

Food Rocks closed in 2004 to be replaced by Soarin'. Nestle renewed their sponsorship of the Land Pavilion for a while but stopped in 2009. The pavilion has lacked sponsorship since then.

January 2 - World of Motion

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On this day, in 1996, the last guests rode the World of Motion attraction in Future World at Epcot. Built as one of Epcot's opening day attractions, World of Motion had some heavy hitters behind its development. Animator Ward Kimball, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, actually designed the attraction. If you didn't know that Ward dabbled in ride creation that would be because this was the one and only time he ever did. His brand of humor was evident throughout, from cavemen blowing on their overheated feet to the world's first traffic jam involving a horse and an ice truck.

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Ward got some help from a couple more Disney Legends for the ride's theme song. Buddy Baker composed the music and Imagineer Xavier Atencio wrote the lyrics to It's Fun to Be Free. One of the unique aspects of Free is that unlike most attractions where the same version of a song might get repeated at different points (think about Pirates of the Caribbean), for World of Motion the song kept changing to suit the changing periods in history. It had a ragtime feel for one scene, an Asian sound in another and at one point was played exclusively on a kazoo. All due to the genius of Buddy.

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The ride itself took guests on a tour through the history of transportation narrated by Gary Owens, best known as the announcer on Laugh-In. World of Motion boasted on of the largest casts of Audio-Animatronic figures ever assembled with a total of 188 characters. At the end of the line, literally taking a page from the Haunted Mansion, guests saw their Omnimover vehicles transformed into cars of the future through a Pepper's Ghost illusion. After disembarking, guests moved into a mini Innoventions type area dedicated almost exclusively to cars. Exhibits spanned topics on everything from how wind tunnels help make cars more fuel efficient to an Audio-Animatronic show about assembly lines. The most popular part was, as always, the concept cars on display.

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The whole shebang was sponsored by General Motors from its opening to its closing. After Ford's successful sponsorship of the Disney produced Magic Skyway ride at the 1964 World's Fair, GM wasn't about to miss out again. They signed a 10 year deal just to begin with, renewed several times and still sponsor the replacement attraction today.

Speaking of the replacement attraction, it was GM who would ultimately spell out the demise of World of Motion. In the early Nineties, sales began to slump for them and they felt a new attraction devoted to cars and cars only, not the whole of transportation, would be a better use of their sponsorship money. Since World of Motion was beginning to show its age at that point, Disney agreed and Test Track was created. Even though I personally miss the charm of the old ride, it was ultimately a smart move. While Test Track was plagued with problems and delays in its early days, it is now one of the most popular rides in all of the Florida Project, although the concept cars at the end are still, arguably, the best part.