May 5 - Pat Carroll

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On this day, in 1927, Patricia Ann Carroll was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. When she was five, Pat’s family moved to Los Angeles, California and it wasn’t long before she was appearing in local stage productions. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles, spent some time in the United States Army Special Services as a civilian actress technician entertaining the troops just after World War II, returned to the United States and began classes at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. All that and she wasn’t even twenty yet.

Pat’s first professional gig was playing opposite Gloria Swanson in a stock theater production of A Goose for the Gander in 1947. Over the next eight years, she would play dozens of roles in various productions on her journey to a Broadway debut. Her first time treading the boards of the Great White Way came as part of the cast of the 1955 musical revue Catch a Star. Pat was so captivating  in the show, she earned herself a Tony nomination.

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Around the same time, Pat began her decades long television career, making her small screen debut on The Red Buttons Show. In 1956, she won an Emmy award for her appearance on Caesar’s Hour, with national treasures Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner. After that you couldn’t keep her out of your living room. She became a regular on comedy/variety shows like The Danny Thomas Show. She became a staple on games shows throughout the Sixties and Seventies (I can’t remember which one I’ve seen her on, To Tell the Truth maybe, but it was one of those black and white panel shows where the big prize was $20 and a carton of cigarettes). Pat was a triumphant guest star on everything from The Carol Burnett Show to Laverne and Shirley (as Shirley Feeney’s mom) to three seasons on She’s the Sheriff (as Suzanne Somer’s mom).

In 1979, Pat made a stunning return to the stage in a one-woman show, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein. She earned rave reviews during the show’s run in and around New York and took it on the road for four years afterwards. In 1980, she won a Grammy award for Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama for her recording of the piece and the Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Play.

In the mid Eighties, Pat began a new phase of her career as a voice actress. She was Katrina Stoneheart on Pound Puppies and Ms. Biddy McBrain on Galaxy High School. In 1987, she brought to life one of my favorite cartoon characters of all time: Grandma in A Garfield Christmas Special. If you haven’t ever had the pleasure to see it, hop on over to iTunes and check it out. A Garfield Christmas runs neck and neck with A Charlie Brown Christmas in my own personal race for best Christmas special ever. And that’s in large part due to Grandma and her dueling shenanigans and sentimentality. Lorenzo Music (who was profiled just the other day) is pretty good as Garfield, too.

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Pat joined the Disney family by helping to launch the Disney Renaissance in 1989 as one of the greatest Disney villains of all time: Ursula the Sea Witch (that's spelled with a B). Believe it or not, Pat was not the first choice of the directors, Ron Clements and John Musker, for the deliciously evil octopus, Bea Arthur was. Bea turned it down and they went through a whole list of other people, eventually casting Elaine Stritch, who clashed with Howard Ashman and Alan Menken over the musical style and was finally replaced with Pat (who in retrospect should have had the role all along). The greatest part of Ursula over the years is that no matter where you hear her, be it on film, in a video game or as part of the puppet extravaganza currently playing at the Hollywood Studios, you are hearing Pat. She is (so far), the one and only voice of behind Ursula. Someday that won't be the case, but we aren't going to think about that right now.

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Pat made a few other contributions to Disneyana over the years, too. She was the voice of Morgana, Ursula's vengeful younger sister, in The Little Mermaid II, Koo-Koo in Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers and, just last year, Old Lady Crowley on Tangled: The Series. 

In between all her animated work, Pat returned to the stage several times. She lent her talents and charm to productions of Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Nunsense and Mother Courage and Her Children. She also turned to directing, helming runs of Alice in Wonderland, Noel Coward's Private Lives and George Furth's The Supporting Cast. Nowadays, she does what so many popular voice actors do, she makes the rounds of comic cons, greeting hordes of adoring fans. I've never been to one myself (shocking, I know) but the next time she's in town, I just may have to make the trip to see the woman who brought me not one, but two of my favorite characters. In the meantime, happy 92nd birthday Pat!

May 4 - Ken Walker

On this day, in 1921, Kenneth David Walker was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. At some point, Ken's family moved to Southern California. I say some point because Ken is one of those folks who did some great work over the decades, but wasn’t well known outside of his industry. That means it can be fairly easy to pull together his professional credits, but there isn’t a whole lot of personal information available. After graduating from North Hollywood High School, he went right to work at the Walt Disney Studio as an inbetweener.

Ken’s first project was helping to finish up production on Fantasia. When World War II broke out, he, like much of the younger staff, did his patriotic duty and joined the United States Navy, spending most of time in the Pacific Theatre. When the war was over, he returned to Disney and became an assistant to Ward Kimball, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men. By the end of the Forties he was an animator in his own right, working on Alice in Wonderland. Ken also worked on a number of Pluto shorts including 1951’s Plutopia and 1952’s Pluto’s Party. It was during production on Plutopia that he appeared on You Asked For It, a television show that answered viewer mail. On the episode with Ken, someone wanted to know how animation was created and he was introduced as one of the Studio’s top animators (incidentally, the picture of Ken above is a screen shot from that clip; I couldn’t find a better picture of him). He might have been the studio’s choice to make a television appearance in 1950, but, for whatever reason (rumor has it he made a bad name for himself in a labor dispute), his career with the studio was over in 1952.

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At this point, we lose sight of Ken for more than a decade. We know he did some work for Columbia Pictures. We know he became a member of the Director’s Guild of America. And that’s about it. There isn’t any concrete information on him again until 1965, when he founded his own production company, NYC Totem Productions, which survived under his ownership until 1971. During this period, Ken worked on television shows like Milton the Monster and The Pink Panther Show. He was also the director of Seeds of Discovery, a short his company produced in 1966.

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As the Seventies rolled in, and Ken’s own company went belly-up, he began working for Depatie-Freleng Enterprises, co-founded by Warner Brothers great Friz Freleng. Ken’s credits with DFE include the television series Bailey’s Comets, the special The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, two educational shorts, The Incredible Indelible Magical Physical  Mystery Trip and The Magical Mystery Trip Through Little Red’s Head (both part of the ABC After School series) and Clerow Wilson’s Great Escape (starring Flip Wilson), all produced between 1973-74. He also was part of the team that did the animated bits for The Mad Magazine TV Special (although it was deemed too crude and never aired). In 1975, he turned to Hanna Barbera as part of the team that produced The Great Grape Ape Show.

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In 1981, at the age of 60, Ken founded a second company, The Funny Bone Film Company, which he owned and operated for the next two decades. During this period, he reteamed with DFE to animate the Emmy winning special The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat in 1982. He also returned to Hanna Barbera as an animator for their 1982 feature film Heidi’s Song. Ken was a director on the 1994 series Skeleton Warriors and an animator for 1992 Kim Basinger movie Cool World. One of the final credits of a career that spanned six decades was as a production designer on the 2000 special It’s the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown. On August 18, 2012, Ken passed away at his home in Laguna Hills, California. He was 91.

May 3 - California Institute of the Arts

On this day, in 1969, a groundbreaking ceremony was held as Lillian Bounds Disney turned over the ceremonial first shovelful for the new campus of the California Institute of the Arts. CalArts, as it is usually called, was incorporated in 1961, but it's story actually began forty years earlier. In 1921, Nelbert Murphy Chouinard founded an art school in Los Angeles, California. The whole point of the Chouinard Institute of Art was to bring some prestige to the West Coast art scene. It worked, with the help of another fledgling company that came along in 1928.

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Walt Disney's relationship with Chouinard began almost as soon as his studio did. By 1929, Walt was making sure his inexperienced animators were taking weekly classes at the Institute. He knew that the better his staff became at their craft, the better his studio would do. By the early Thirties, instructors from Chouinard were coming to the Disney lot to teach classes. By the mid Thirties, Walt was treating the school like a personal breeding ground for new talent, filling the ranks of the Snow White team as fast as he could with its graduates. And that's how things went for the next two decades. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Disney artists attended classes there over the years, including several of Walt's Nine Old Men, Mary Blair and Imagineer Herbert Ryman. More than a couple also taught classes.

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In the mid Fifties, Nelbert Chouinard suffered a terrible stroke and was unable to continue in her duties as head of the school. Walt said not a problem and the Disney Studio basically took over the administration of the place (Walt wasn't about to let go of the best trainers his staff ever had). But even with the administrative and financial help of Disney, the Chouinard Institute was struggling to stay open at the turn of the Sixties.  At the same time, the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music was also hitting hard times. Seeing an opportunity to expand Chouinard's scope and strengthen both arts schools, Walt proposed that they merge into one entity. The leadership of both institutions agreed and CalArts was born, at least on paper.

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When it was incorporated in 1961, CalArts became the first school of higher learning in the country to offer degrees to both the visual arts and the performing arts. It offers both under- and post-graduate studies in Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film, Music and Theater. Its first board of directors included Roy O. Disney, Roy E. Disney, Chuck Jones, HR Haldeman (of Watergate fame), Meredith Wilson (creator of The Music Man) and Ralph Hetzel (then vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America), among others. But the process of combining the fortunes of the two schools wasn't a quick one. It wasn't until eight years later that construction could begin on a combined campus.

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Mother nature did her best to derail the new campus, dumping massive amounts of rain on the site throughout 1970 and rocking the area with a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in February 1971, but CalArts persevered and moved in during the month of November that same year. Over the next few years the school experienced almost constant upheaval in its administration. The first president, Robert Corrigan, fired most of the instructors from Chouinard and instituted a very laid back atmosphere with cyclical rather than sequential curriculum. He lasted a year. The next president, William Lund (Walt's son-in-law), fired more than 15% of the staff, imposed structured schedules and force the school to operate on a budget. He lasted three years. In 1975, Robert Fitzpatrick took over and offered the school enough stability to find its footing and begin thriving (he lasted 12 years).

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CalArts became and remained for Disney what Chouinard had been before it: a breeding ground for new talent. The list of modern Disney artists that have been through the Institute is quite extensive and includes John Laseter, Brad Bird, Kirk Wise, Tim Burton, Glen Keane, Gary Trousdale, Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor, John Musker and many (many) more. Going to CalArts doesn't guarantee you a job at Disney, nor are you automatically excluded if you don't, but it sure does help to grease the wheels.

The last thing we need to talk about when it comes to CalArts is the infamous classroom A113. Currently the first year graphics design studio, classroom A113 has also been used extensively by first year Character Animation students and has become an inside joke in the industry. The moniker A113 appears literally every where you look in animated films and television shows. Sometimes it's a license plate number, sometimes it's an apartment number or on a billboard, sometimes it's harder to incorporate it into a story. In Finding Nemo, for instance, you see it as the model number of the camera the scuba diver uses to take a picture before capturing Nemo. In WALL-E, the directive given to prevent Autopilot from ever returning to earth is, you guessed it, code A113. A113 has appeared in everything from The Simpsons to South Park to an episode of Dr. Who. So the next time you're watching your favorite bit of animation, be on the lookout for A113. Chances are, it's in there somewhere.

May 2 - Lorenzo Music

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On this day, in 1937, Gerald David Music was born in Brooklyn, New York. The son of a shipbuilder, Gerald’s family moved to be near the shipyards in Duluth, Minnesota when he was six. After graduating from Central High School, he began attending the University of Minnesota at Duluth where he met his future wife, Henrietta. The couple formed a successful comedy duo called Gerald and His Hen and toured together for eight years, getting married at some point in between laughs. During the same time period, Gerald became interested in the spiritual movement known as Subud and as a result of his involvement, changed his first name to Lorenzo.

In 1968, Lorenzo was hired as a writer and performer on the politically charged variety show, The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour. In a highly controversial move, that show was abruptly cancelled in 1969, but Lorenzo's experience on it got him a gig writing for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. Two years later, his career exploded when he co-created The Bob Newhart Show, which would run for six seasons. He and his wife also wrote the theme song for Bob. He continued to write for Mary and, more importantly, a spin-off of Mary, Rhoda. One of the main characters on Rhoda was to be the doorman to her building, Carlton, who would be heard but never seen. When the producers heard Lorenzo's voice one day, they offered the him the part and his voice over career began. Carlton became such a popular character that he got a single, Who Is It?, that became a regional hit in 1975 and his own animated special, Carlton the Doorman, in 1980, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. In 1976, Lorenzo and Henrietta were given their own variety show, but since pretty much everyone was being given their own variety show at that time, the craze for them imploded and the show didn't last long.

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The next phase of Lorenzo's career didn't start until 1982. The most popular comic strip of the early Eighties was Garfield. Jim Davis, the creative force behind the fat. lazy cat, was capitalizing on that popularity by moving his character into television animation, but needed to find just the right voice. Dozens of people were auditioned, including Disney Legend Sterling Holloway, but none fit the bill, until Lorenzo. At the end of his first audition, he was immediately offered the role. Here Comes Garfield debuted on October 25, 1982, earned two Emmy nominations and started a twelve year association between the lovable yet cantankerous cat and Lorenzo. Over twelve specials (including A Garfield Christmas Special, one of my all time favorites) and 121 episodes of the animated series Garfield and Friends (which ran from 1988-94), Lorenzo became a voice over legend. And it's really no surprise that Bill Murray has done the voice of Garfield in more recent projects. Bill and Lorenzo have such similar voices, that Lorenzo portrayed Peter Venkman, a character originated by Bill, in the first two seasons of the animated series The Real Ghostbusters.

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Lorenzo solidly joined the Disney family three times during his cartoon decade. In 1985, he began a six season run on Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, mainly as Tummi Gummi, but doing additional characters as needed. In 1990, he became Sgt. Dunder for two seasons of TaleSpin and he voiced several minor characters on Darkwing Duck.

 In the mid Nineties, as the shows he worked on ended their runs, Lorenzo retired from all cartoon work. He continued to do some voice over work for various commercials, most notably OreIda Potatoes and Twinkies, and provided Garfield's voice for a few video games, but that was it. In one of the more touching anecdotes of his life,  he volunteered regularly for a suicide hotline. He recalled that callers would frequently be reciting their reasons for taking their own lives and suddenly stop, say you really sound like that cat on television, begin talking about that and kind of forget why they called. In other words, Lorenzo was able to talk people out of killing themselves without really saying in particular (although I'm sure it helped if he started talking about lasagna). 

In late 2000, Lorenzo was diagnosed with a double whammy of lung and bone cancers. After months of fighting against the diseases, he passed away on August 4, 2001 in Los Angeles, California. His wife of over 50 years scattered his ashes in his beloved Pacific Ocean. He was only 64.

May 1 - The Empress Lilly

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On this day, in 1977, the Empress Lilly welcomed its first guests on board. May 1 is actually a busy day in Disney history as The Disney-MGM Studios and Pleasure Island both opened on this day in 1989, but I’ve opted for a cozier story for today. As the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village (the area now called Disney Springs) was undergoing its first expansion and name change in 1977, it was clear that more dining options were needed for the area. It was decided that a seafood joint would be a good option and what better place to eat seafood than on an authentic river boat? While that may sound romantic, putting a boat turned restaurant into Lake Buena Vista (yes the lake that borders Disney Springs really exists and gave its name to the ‘town’ that’s Walt Disney World’s mailing address) would be a logistical nightmare. So Disney did the next best thing.

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At 220 feet long, with three decks, two smokestacks and a wheelhouse, the lavish riverboat that sprang up along the shore in the Walt Disney World Village (as the area was soon renamed) gave the illusion that it had just steamed in from the Mississippi River. But guests were actually being treated to an authentic building, not an actual boat, even though the detail in the scrollwork on the deck railings, coupled with the giant paddlewheel, fooled a fair number of people over the years. On May 1, 1977, Walt’s widow, Lillian Bounds Disney, was on hand for the official christening ceremony, to welcome her namesake, the Empress Lilly, into the Disney fleet.

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Originally, the Empress Lilly was home to five different dining experiences, most of which were only available for dinner. The exception was a character breakfast, offered, obviously, only in the morning. It was one of the first character dining experiences offered, so new and unique that every kid who did it got a certificate commemorating the event. My family did it once when I was a kid (the certificate has been lost to the flow of time unfortunately) and I remember that just as we finished our meal, we stepped out onto the deck and watched a space shuttle launch. The other four venues ratcheted up the Village’s night life and included the Fisherman’s Deck, Steerman’s Quarters, the uber-elegant Empress Room and the Baton Rouge Lounge.

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One of the truly unique special events that occurred on property took place in the Empress Lilly on Monday evenings during the 1980 football season. Each week, team members from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would gather to watch highlights of their game that weekend and take questions from the crowd. Afterward the Monday night game would be shown on the big screen. The Bucs had a 5-10-1 season that year, which may have influenced the fact that the event was never repeated.

The Empress Lilly was a jewel of the Village for almost 18 years. In a controversial move, the venue was closed on April 22, 1995 to undergo refurbishment. The building reopened eleven months later as Fulton’s Crab House, a third-party restaurant. The paddlewheel was removed, the smokestacks were gone and, a sin many diehard fans found they couldn’t forgive, the building was no longer named after Mrs. Disney. Change is a constant though. In 2016, the building underwent another major renovation, coming out the other side looking both more and less like a riverboat. The smokestacks and paddlewheel are back, but the building has a sleeker, much more modern look to it (the whole thing had literally been gutted down to the studs and rebuilt). Fulton’s was now gone with a new restaurant, Paddlefish, in its place (although both restaurants fall under the Levy brand). I hear the food is really good (I've never been myself) but the building formerly known as the Empress Lilly will never fool anyone into thinking it's an authentic riverboat again.

April 30 - The 1939 New York World's Fair

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On this day, in 1939, the New York World’s Fair opened for business. Disney’s involvement in the 1964 World’s Fair is Fair-ly well known. The development of Audio-Animatronics, the four attractions the company built (all of them still existing in some form today) and the birth of Imagineers are all much lauded stories from the company’s lore and for good reason. But 1964 wasn’t the first time Walt created content specifically for Fair goers. That happened twenty-five years earlier at the real New York World’s Fair.

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You heard that right. Technically, there has only ever been one World’s Fair in Queens and it took place during 1939/40. The 1964 Fair may have been better attended, represented more countries and been immortalized in the Men in Black franchise, but it was never officially sanctioned. And, yes, there is an international governing body that decides what is, and what is not, allowed to be called a World’s Fair (or Expo as it’s generally known as now). The Bureau International des Expositions, in existence since the 1790s, has all kinds of rules about this sort of thing, the chief one being how often a World’s Fair can be held (it’s been every five years for decades now). Seattle held one in 1962. Montreal would host the next sanctioned on in 1967. New York knew it was too soon to have one in 1964, but did anyways and illegally billed itself as one.  True, it’s not a legality that anyone is going to care about (except Montreal, which had the biggest, most successful official World’s Fair of the 20^th century and was still smaller in almost every way than the second New York one) but technically, 1964 never happened.

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Anyways, by 1964, Walt and his crew were well seasoned Fair exhibitors. The Walt Disney Studio didn’t have as big a presence at the 1939 Fair, participating in only one pavilion, but it also wasn’t as big a company. The studio was contracted by Nabisco to create an exclusive Mickey Mouse short that would be viewed in their pavilion during the festivities. The resulting film, Mickey’s Surprise Party, was the first instance of a Disney produced public commercial. In the original film, Mickey and Minnie refer to Nabisco products during the story, most notably Milk Bone Dog Biscuits (which are now made by the J.M. Smucker Company). At the end of the short, we learn that Mickey’s favorite cookie is apparently a Nabisco Fig Newton (not the round, black and white Nabisco Oreo you might expect, although those are on hand as well). There is a later version of the short that was released on home video in the Eighties where all Nabisco references were overdubbed with new lines by Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, but it’s fairly easy to find the original. Especially since Mickey’s Surprise Party is one of the few Disney cartoons that’s in the public domain, due to the fact that Nabisco owned it, not Disney.

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One of the features of the 1939 New York World’s Fair was that every day the fair was open was given a different theme. The buttons and programs highlighting each theme have become quite collectable over the years. On August 14, 1939, the Nabisco Pavilion sponsored Donald Duck Day. On that day, instead of showing Mickey’s Surprise Party, the pavilion screened the latest Donald short, Donald’s Penguin, released to theaters just a few days earlier. There was also a parade featuring a three foot tall Donald statue and Donald giveaways at the pavilion throughout the day.

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A final Disney related Fair fact concerns the time capsule that the Westinghouse Corporation put together. A seven foot long, 800 pound container was filled with Life magazines, a Gillette razor, thousands of pages of text on microfilm and an Ingersoll Mickey Mouse watch, first sold at the Chicago World’s Fair just six years earlier. Not only was the 1939 World’s Fair the first time the term time capsule was used, it might also impose the longest time period anyone will ever have to wait to open one. It’s still buried 50 feet down in Flushing Meadows, with a stone marker guarding the spot, waiting to be opened on the 5,000^th anniversary of the Fair. That’s right, if you want to get your hands on an original Mickey watch, all you have to do is be there when they open the time capsule in April of 6939.

April 29 - Disney's All-Star Resort

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On this day, in 1994, the first phase of Disney's All-Star Resort, All-Star Sports, opened for business in Walt Disney World. As Michael Eisner's plans to keep guests from ever needing to leave Walt Disney World property kept moving forward, it became glaringly obvious that there was a big flaw in them. Anyone who didn't want to spend a couple of hundred dollars a night for a hotel room would automatically be leaving the confines of the Florida Project every night, eating at restaurants and shopping at gift shops that weren't Disney owned. Disney needed to start catering to guests who didn't need a lot of bells and whistles, just a place to lay their heads. And maybe a pool.

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The first hurdle that had to be overcome was how to create an economy resort with making it sound like a cut rate place. The solution: insinuate that this is where the important people, the Stars, come to stay and, heck, not just some of the stars but All of them. Not only does the name make you feel good about staying there, but there are stars in all sorts of genres of entertainment, so the resort would have plenty of opportunity to expand without making it all seem the same. Because even though these were going to be pretty basic hotel rooms with pretty basic amenities, the resort was still on Disney property so story was going to be important.

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A sports theme was chosen for the first phase of the All-Star Resort and the task of designing the place was given to Arquitectonica, a Miami, Florida based firm. Phase one was divided into five areas, each themed around a different sport. It isn't hard to tell which area your room is in, all you have to do is look for the three story tall football, basketball, baseball, tennis or surfing equipment that adorns the ends of each building. With a couple of sports themed swimming pools and a food court, the resort fulfills all the needs of most families.

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The second phase of the All-Star resort to open was the Music themed part just seven months later in November 1994. All-Star Music has the same basic look as Sports with bright colors and oversized icons. Instead of football helmets and surfboards, there are juke boxes and drums. Interestingly, the phase with the theme you might think would have opened first, given the fact that Disney is known for their characters, was the last to come to life. All-Star Movies didn't open until January 1999 and features larger than life Love Bugs, Dalmatians and Green Army Men.

All told, Disney's All-Star Resort has over 5,400 rooms making it the largest resort on Walt Disney World property (if you consider the three parts to be one big resort) room wise. Situated near the southern edge of the property, it's also one of the few things that is located in Osceola County as opposed to Orange County.