12 HONOREES TO RECEIVE PRESTIGIOUS
DISNEY LEGENDS
AWARD
The Walt
Disney Company Honors
Individuals Who
Have
Helped to Create
Disney Magic
WHAT:
The Walt Disney Company will
present 12 individuals with the
prestigious Disney Legends
Award. The award, established
in 1987, honors men and women
who have made significant
contributions to building the
Disney legacy. At a special
ceremony, Disney President and
CEO Robert A. Iger, along with
fellow presenters, including
Dick Cook, Chairman of The Walt
Disney Studios; Roy E. Disney,
Disney Director Emeritus; and
Marty Sklar, Executive Vice
President and Walt Disney
Imagineering Ambassador, will
help to honor this year’s
outstanding inductees,
including: Randy Newman, music
composer for animated films
like, Toy Story,
James and the Giant Peach,
A Bug’s Life
,Toy Story 2 ,
Monsters, Inc. and
Cars; Marge Champion,
live-action reference model for
characters in animated features
such as Snow White and The
Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and
Fantasia; Lucille Martin,
assistant to Walt Disney; and
Dave Smith, Chief Archivist,
The Walt Disney Company.
Past
honorees to have been named
Disney Legends include Tim
Allen, Julie Andrews, Buddy
Baker, Phil Collins, Dick Van
Dyke, Annette Funicello, Sir
Elton John, Dean Jones, Angela
Lansbury, Jack Lindquist, Art
Linkletter, Steve Martin, Kurt
Russell and Richard
Sherman.
The first
recipient of the award was
actor Fred MacMurray, who can
be seen in classics like
The Shaggy Dog,
The Absent-Minded Professor
and The Happiest
Millionaire. Since then,
215 distinguished individuals,
including this year’s
talented inductees, have been
named Disney Legends. Alongside
those of Mac Murray, their
signatures and handprints will
eternally be displayed in
Legends Plaza, at The Walt
Disney Studios headquarters,
forever memorializing their
contributions.
WHO:
Twelve new Disney Legends will
be named this year representing
the fields of Administration,
Animation, Archives, Film
Production, Imagineering,
Music, Parks and Resorts and
Television.
Roone Arledge |
Television |
Art Babbitt |
Animation |
Carl Bongirno |
Imagineering |
Marge Champion |
Animation |
Dick Huemer |
Animation |
Ron Logan |
Parks and Resorts |
Lucille Martin |
Administration |
Tom Murphy |
Administration |
Randy Newman |
Music |
Floyd Norman |
Animation |
Bob Schiffer |
Film Production |
Dave Smith |
Archives |
WHEN:
Wednesday, October 10,
2007
Event Begins: 4:30 p.m.
Media Check-in: 3:30 p.m.
WHERE:
Ceremony and Handprint Moment
-The Walt Disney Studios,
Legends Plaza
500 South Buena Vista Street,
Burbank, CA
Parking: Buena Vista Street
Entrance
CONTACT:
Andrea Rausa
The Walt Disney Company
(818) 567-5941
2007 DISNEY
LEGENDS
Biographies
Roone Arledge,
president of ABC
News
Roone had a
more profound impact on the
development of television news
and sports programming and
presentation than any other
individual. In fact, a 1994
Sports Illustrated
magazine ranking placed him
third (behind Muhammad Ali and
Michael Jordan) in a list of 40
individuals who have had the
greatest impact on the world of
sports in the last four
decades. In addition, a 1990
Life magazine poll
listed Roone as among the
“100 Most Important
Americans of the 20th
Century.”
Born in Forest Hills, New York
in 1931, Roone received a B.A.
at Columbia College in 1952,
and began his broadcasting
career as a production
assistant at the DuMont
Television Network. After
serving in the Army, where he
made radio public relations
spots from 1953-1955, he
returned to DuMont as a
producer-director in 1955; then
moved to NBC as a stage
manager, director, and
producer.
In 1960, Roone moved from NBC
to ABC, where as vice president
of ABC Sports, he created what
would become the
longest-running and most
successful sports program ever,
ABC’s Wide World of
Sports, where he
introduced such techniques as
slow motion and instant
replays, and was one of the
first users of the Atlantic
satellite, enabling him to
produce live sporting events
from around the world.
Roone’s “up close
and personal” approach to
sports features changed the way
the world viewed competing
athletes.
This success resulted in a
promotion to president of the
sports division in 1968, where
Roone again elevated
ABC’s sports prominence
with NFL Monday Night
Football. This prime-time
sports blockbuster gave ABC the
lock on ratings during its time
slot, and helped elevate ABC
Sports to the unchallenged
leader of network sports
programming. Roone’s
innovations on Wide
World were also successful
for the ten Olympic Games
broadcasts he produced.
Despite his successful
transformation of ABC Sports,
his 1977 promotion to president
of ABC News came as a surprise
to many individuals, as Roone
had no formal journalistic
training.
“Peter Jennings and I
were convinced hiring Roone was
a big disaster,” Ted
Koppel recalled. “We went
to see Fred Pierce [in 1977],
who was then president of ABC.
He…listened to us
explain why Roone should never
become president of ABC News.
Then he very politely ushered
us out and ignored
us.”
Roone functioned as president
of both ABC Sports and ABC News
for nearly ten years, and ABC
was soon on the top of the
network news business.
“Roone created the forum
for each of us,” Koppel
says, “Barbara Walters
got 20/20, Peter
Jennings got World News
Tonight, I got
Nightline, Sam
Donaldson got PrimeTime
Live, and ultimately Roone
created This Week With
David Brinkley.”
His shows received virtually
every broadcasting honor
possible. In 1995, ABC News was
the first-ever news
organization to receive the
Alfred I. duPont-Columbia
University Award, given for the
network’s overall
commitment toexcellence.
Roone passed away on December
5, 2002, in New York City.
Don Hewitt, the producer of
60 Minutes at CBS (and
the only executive in network
news whose longevity and
influence rivals
Roone’s), said,
‘’Just about
everything that’s good in
television has a Roone Arledge
trademark on
it.’’
Art
Babbitt: Animation
As early as
the 1942 publication of the
first scholarly study of
animation, The Art of Walt
Disney by Dr. Robert
Feild, Art Babbitt had gained a
reputation as “The
Greatest Animator
Ever.”Art was not only a
stellar “performer with a
pencil,” but he was also
a director, an activist, a
tireless teacher, and—to
this day—a remarkable
influence in the field of
animation.
Arthur
Harold Babitsky was born in
October 1907, in Omaha,
Nebraska. In 1912, his family
relocated to Sioux City, Iowa,
where soon after High School,
Art fell into drawing and crude
animation to make ends meet,
and found he had a knack for
the medium.
He went to New York to put
himself through pre-med at
Columbia College, instead, he
was inspired to become an
animator when he saw
Disney’s Skeleton
Dance (1929), and got a
job at the Van Beuren Studio,
then became an animator for
Paul Terry. In 1932 he joined
Disney, where by 1941 he was a
top artist. He took the minor
character Dippy Dawg and
developed him into Goofy, and
animated the Queen in Snow
White and the Seven
Dwarfs, Geppetto in
Pinocchio, the Chinese
Dance in Fantasia, and
Mr. Stork in
Dumbo.
“He studied the acting
theories of internalization of
Stanislavsky and Boleslavsky,
as any actor of his time
would,” animator Tom Sito
says.
“Flinty, confrontational,
indefatigable, and honest;
straightforward to some,
abrasive to others, Art was a
warm friend and a tough
opponent…He did things
not because they were politic,
but because they affected his
sense of right and
wrong,” Sito says.
Walt felt betrayed when Art
resigned as head of the Disney
company union in 1941 to join
the Screen Cartoonist’s
Guild. Babbitt led a bitter
strike that forever changed the
culture of the Studio, and
Babbitt and Disney were
permanently estranged.
Art was a master sergeant in
the Marines in World War II,
after which he returned to
Disney, but he soon quit and
went to Lou Bunin, then UPA,
where he was a principal
animator on the acclaimed
cartoon Rooty Toot
Toot and several Mr. Magoo
shorts. He later ran the
advertising commercial
department of Hanna-Barbera. In
the 1970s, he worked with
Richard Williams Studio in
London, until his retirement in
1983.
“Art
Babbitt was one of the great
animation teachers,” Sito
says. “He had the ability
to put into words the processes
most animators only knew by
instinct.” Art lectured
on animation throughout the
1960s and 1970s.
In 1973 Richard Williams
suspended production so his
artists could re-train under
Art and his Warner Bros.
colleague Ken Harris. Sito
recalls, “Anybody who
attended those lectures never
forgot them. The notes from
Art’s London lectures
were copied and recopied until
they became the most widely
read—if
unpublished—animation
manual of all time.”
Recently, Stephen Worth posted
a fond memory on the
Animation Nation web
site. “When
Fantasia came out on
home video,” Worth said,
“Roy [E.] Disney sent Art
a copy with a short note that
said, ‘I want to give you
long overdue thanks for your
contribution to making
Fantasia the classic
film that it is.’ Art was
very proud of that note. He
told me that any animosity that
he had harbored all those years
against the Disneys was cleared
up by that simple act of
kindness on Roy’s
part.”
Art passed away on March 4,
1992, in Los Angeles,
California.
Carl Bongirno:
Imagineering
For a
decade between 1979 and his
retirement in 1989, Carl
Bongirno led the Disney
Imagineers to unimagined
heights of creative
achievement, worldwide
expansion, and unprecedented
growth and change, both within
the organization and within the
themed entertainment
industry.
During that decade, Walt
Disney’s boutique
creative enclave met the
challenge of The Walt Disney
Company’s directive for
growth, adding Epcot and Tokyo
Disneyland, Disney-MGM Studios
and Disneyland Paris. In
addition, new attractions for
existing parks and ambitious
ideas for new business
directions were being
aggressively pursued. “We
have more than 40 projects in
various stages of design and
construction,” Bongirno
told Disney News in
1987. “In all, it’s
approximately $2 billion worth
of work.”
Between 1972 and 1979, Carl
served as vice president of
finance and treasurer of Walt
Disney World in Florida. He had
begun his association with Walt
Disney World at the very
beginning of that resort as
director of the Finance
Division, a position he had
also held at Disneyland a year
earlier.
He not only was responsible
for all financial matters for
Walt Disney World but had
overall responsibility for all
service activities: wardrobe,
warehousing, transportation,
laundry, even the Disney
telephone company—no
small feat in the essentially
barren “outback” of
Central Florida at the
time.
Before his involvement in
resort finance, Carl spent four
years as treasurer for WED
Enterprises. He first joined
the Disney Company in 1963 as
chief accountant and controller
for the then-Disney-owned
Celebrity Sports Center in
Denver, Colorado.
Born in Pueblo, Colorado, Carl
holds an associate degree in
business from Pueblo College,
and BA and BS degrees in
accounting and finance from
Denver University. Before
joining Disney, he was a member
of the Denver office of Arthur
Anderson & Co.
Carl served for many years on
the board of directors of
SunTrust Banks, one of the
nation’s largest
commercial banking
organizations, and was a member
of the Florida Governor’s
Tax Reform Commission and the
Business Advisory Council of
the College of Business
Administration at the
University of Florida.
Carl curtailed his business
activities for health reasons
in September 1987. He remained
as a special adviser to WDI,
assisting with the development
of special projects until his
retirement in June of 1989.
After his retirement, Carl and
his family returned to Pueblo,
where he remains active in
local civic affairs. Although
far away from his Disney roots,
Carl’s thoughts on
Imagineering in 1987 remain
true today:
“Epcot and all of
Disney’s attractions will
always be in a state of
becoming,” Carl
toldDisney News.
“The challenge to us is
enormous, but we are ready to
meet it. We seek ideas that
spark the interests of our
guests. We’re looking for
ways to engage the imagination,
through story and technology.
Our Imagineers will always be
discovering new frontiers.
It’s a process that I
believe makes Imagineering the
most unique design organization
in the world.
Marge Champion:
Animation
Marge is
something of a golden girl. Not
only is she a veteran of the
golden age of MGM musicals, but
also the golden age of
television—and the golden
age of Disney Animation,
including several of the
greatest animated features of
all time.
Marjorie Celeste Belcher was
born on September 2, 1919, in
Los Angeles. She began dancing
as a child under the
instruction of her father,
Ernest Belcher, a noted
Hollywood ballet coach who
trained Shirley Temple, Cyd
Charisse, and Gwen Verdon.
Marge was a ballet teacher at
her father’s studio by
the time she was 12.
A short time later, she was
approached with the seemingly
preposterous notion of
auditioning for a cartoon.
“A talent scout came to
my father’s studio
sometime in 1933,” Marge
said, “and chose three of
us out of the class to audition
for this.”
She was the live-action
reference model for the heroine
of Disney’s
feature-length cartoon Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937), performing dances,
scenes, and special business so
the animators could caricature
her actions and make their
princess as human as
possible.
She later modeled for the Blue
Fairy in Pinocchio,
and Hyacinth Hippo in the
“Dance of the
Hours” segment of
Fantasia (1940), a
ballet parody that she also
helped choreograph. Marge even
recalls doing some modeling for
Mr. Stork in Dumbo
(1941).
She appeared in Honor of
the West and All Women Have
Secrets (1939) under the
name “Marjorie
Bell,” and became a
legend in Hollywood with Gower
Champion, whom she married in
1947. They went on to appear
together in hit musical films
including Show Boat
(1951), Lovely to Look
At (1952), Give a Girl
a Break (1953), and
Jupiter’s
Darling (1955), becoming
the screen’s most popular
dance team since Astaire and
Rogers.
The Champions also fixed their
stardom through frequent
television appearances
including “The Red
Skelton Show,”
“General Electric
Theater,” “The
United States Steel Hour”
“The Dinah Shore Chevy
Show” and “Toast of
the Town.” The couple
even starred in their own
situation comedy, “The
Marge and Gower Champion
Show,” which ran briefly
in 1957.
During their collaboration,
Marge and Gower Champion also
staged the dances for the
Broadway musical revues
Lend an Ear (1948) and
Make a Wish
(1951).
After the couple’s
divorce in 1973, Ms. Champion
co-authored two books with
Marilee Zdenek, Catch the
New Wind (1972) and
God Is a Verb (1974),
and was the choreographer for
Whose Life Is It
Anyway? (1981), The
Day of the Locust (1975),
and Queen of the Stardust
Ballroom (1975) for which
she received an Emmy®
Award.
Marge is a Trustee Emeritus of
the Williamstown (MA) Theatre
Festival, has taught master
classes at the Jacob’s
Pillow Dance Festival, and was
a member of the Advisory Board
of the Berkshire Theatre
Festival. In 1997,
Massachusetts honored Ms.
Champion with its Commonwealth
Award, citing her
“leadership as a true
patron of the arts.”
She remembers her Disney days
with fondness. “The
atmosphere was like a giant
high school or college, as far
as I was concerned. Mr. Disney,
for me, was like a very
friendly head principal. Now,
that’s a
fourteen-year-old’s point
of view. I later on learned
that he was probably one of the
most important men, certainly
in animation, and probably in
the movie industry.”
Dick Huemer:
Animation
Dick was a
jack of all trades,”
Disney Legend Ward Kimball
recalled. “He was an
animator, and I loved his
animation. It was always
funny—remember the Duck
in The Band Concert
with those goddamn whistles? He
was a director. He was a story
man. And he was a very
important sequence story man on
Fantasia.”
Richard Martin Huemer was born
on January 2, 1898, in little
old New York. He attended P.S.
158 in Brooklyn, and Alexander
Hamilton and Morris High
Schools. After high school he
was a student at the National
Academy of Design, the
Beaux-Arts Institute of Design,
and the Art Students
League.
Dick’s first industry
job was as an animator at the
Raoul Barré Cartoon
Studio in 1916. In 1923, he
became an animation director at
the Max Fleischer Studio, and
seven years later assumed a
similar position at the Charles
Mintz Studio.
Moving to Disney in 1933, Dick
contributed to classic Silly
Symphonies such as The
Tortoise and the Hare,
Funny Little Bunnies,
and The Grasshopper and the
Ants (1934); Mickey Mouse
shorts such as Alpine
Climbers, Mickey’s
Rival (1936), and
Lonesome Ghosts
(1937), and directed the
animated shorts The
Whalers (1938) and
Goofy and Wilbur
(1939).
“He was a dapper little
guy, who had kind of a ruddy
complexion, wore a pork-pie hat
dipped at a rakish angle with a
little shaving brush up here,
had a very New York
cosmopolitan mustache, and he
wore very tweedy suits,”
Kimball said.
Among the Disney features on
which Dick worked as story
director were Dumbo,
Saludos Amigos, Make Mine
Music, and Alice In
Wonderland. His work as a
story director on
Fantasia was
especially admired. “In
fact, we owe it most to Dick
Huemer that Walt Disney was
weaned away from John Phillip
Sousa and introduced to the
classics!” Ward Kimball
asserted. “Walt learned
all about Beethoven,
Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky through
Dick Huemer’s
tutelage.”
Dick left Disney to free-lance
the comic strip “Buck
O’Rue” from
1948-1951, but returned to work
in story and television. Among
his TV works he wrote a series
of outstanding programs on the
art and technique of Disney
animation for the
“Disneyland” TV
series: “The Story of the
Animated Drawing” (1955),
“The Plausible
Impossible,”
“Tricks of Our
Trade” (1956), and
“An Adventure in
Art” (1958).
He also contributed to Disney
Publishing adaptations of
Baby Weems (1941),
20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea (1955), and Walt
Disney’s True-Life
Adventures (1956), and
wrote the “True-Life
Adventures” newspaper
comic strip from 1955 until his
retirement in 1973.
In 1978, he received an
“Annie” award from
the animators’ group
ASIFA for his career
achievements. Dick passed away
on November 30, 1979.
Animation great Grim Natwick
said of Dick Huemer, “He
was one of the artists who
helped build the early
framework of animation. He was
a wise and witty man, a droll
man who, in a quiet way, pulled
rugs from under pompous and
false heroes, transformed
giants into pygmies and
inauspiciously extracted the
teeth from snarling paper
lions. He was with animation
through all its growing pains.
Whatever animation became, he
helped to shape it, drawing by
drawing, idea by
idea.”
Ron
Logan: Parks and
Resorts
"Main
Street Music Co.” reads
the Magic Kingdom window,
“Ron Logan,
Conductor—Leading the
Band into a New Century.”
Ron Logan’s 23-year
Disney career did, indeed, lead
the concept of Disney and live
entertainment from humble
origins into the 21st
Century.
From a
starting point of simple
marching bands and costumed
characters, Logan developed the
expectation of the Disney guest
to spectacles, fireworks, music
spectaculars, and
Broadway-style stage musicals,
all within the gates of
Disney.
Ron was born in 1939, and grew
up in Leavenworth, Kansas,
where he studied trumpet,
violin, piano, and dance. He
began performing professionally
when he was in the ninth grade,
and has played in bands and
orchestras nationwide. He has
also performed as a trumpet
player and singer on
recordings, television, motion
pictures, and with name bands
and lounge acts throughout the
United States.
He graduated from U.C.L.A.,
holding both B.A. and M.A.
degrees in Music/Music
Education. It was during this
time that he began his career
at Disneyland as a trumpet
player, and also played with
one of the Disney-produced
pageantry acts for the 1960
Winter Olympics in Squaw
Valley, California.
From 1965 to 1978, he was
Director of Bands and Jazz
Studies at Long Beach City
College, in Long Beach,
California.
In 1978,
Ron moved to Florida as Walt
Disney World music director. He
returned to Disneyland in 1980
as the Park’s director of
Entertainment, and in 1982,
turned around and went back to
Walt Disney World as vice
president of Entertainment. In
1987, he was promoted to vice
president of Creative Show
Development for all of Walt
Disney Attractions.
In his last
role for Disney, Ron was
executive vice president,
executive producer, for Walt
Disney Entertainment (now Walt
Disney Creative Entertainment).
He was responsible for
creating, casting, and
producing all live
entertainment products for The
Walt Disney Company, including
the Disneyland Resort, Walt
Disney World Resort, Tokyo
Disneyland Resort, Disneyland
Resort Paris, The Disney
Institute, Disney Business
Productions, Disney Cruise
Line, Disney Entertainment
Productions, and Walt Disney
Entertainment Worldwide. He was
also executive vice president
of the Walt Disney Special
Events Group, and executive
vice president of Disney
Special Programs, Incorporated.
He produced dozens of shows for
the parks, including Beauty
and the Beast Live on
Stage!, Fantasmic!,
Festival of the Lion King
at Disney’s Animal
Kingdom, IllumiNations:
Reflections of Earth at
Epcot at the Walt Disney World
Resort in Florida—even
the Tapestry of
Nations Super Bowl XXXIV
Halftime Show.
Ron was a founding member of
the International Foundation
for Jazz, a corporate advisory
council established in support
of the International
Association of Jazz Educators
(IAJE). He is a board member of
the Orlando Repertory Theatre
(UCF), serves on the Board of
Directors (USA) for the Famous
People Players (Canada) and the
International Theatre in Long
Beach, California. He is an
Associate Professor at The
University of Central Florida,
Rosen College of Hospitality
Management.
Although he
retired in 2001, Ron continues
to pursue volunteer activities
in music and theatre and
consults and creates for Disney
on a regular basis. “We
have so many young people who
don’t know our
heritage,” Ron says,
“Part of my contribution
is to teach them
that.”
Lucille Martin:
Administration
“I
had a hard time not calling him
‘sir,’”
Lucille Martin recalls of her
days in Walt Disney’s
office. “I’d say,
‘Yes, sir,’ and
he’d say, smiling,
‘Yes,
Walt.’ After
about a week he gave me a
drawing of a girl carrying a
sign that read ‘DOWN WITH
SIR.’ I kept it on my
intercom the whole time I
worked for him. I still have
it.”
Lucille Martin never expected
to work for Walt Disney. In
fact, the Illinois native
planned to be a teacher, and
had attended Southern Illinois
Normal University and earned
her state teaching credential
there.
But when the young single
mother of a five- and
ten-year-old moved to
California, her Illinois
credential was not valid. She
chose to put her secretarial
skill to work instead, and look
for work—against her
children’s wishes.
“What if I worked for
Disney?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s
different!”
So, one Friday in September of
1964, a few weeks after the
World Premiere of Mary
Poppins, Lucille typed up
a resume and stopped by the
Studio to inquire about work,
and was hired on the spot. She
started in the Secretarial Pool
the following Monday, and was
immediately sent to work for
Donovan Moye in Publicity, and
she never dipped her toes in
the pool again. She worked
briefly for the vice president
of Labor Relations, Bonar Dyer,
and in early 1965 was called to
report to Walt’s office.
“I thought they had the
wrong person!” Lucille
laughs.
“Walt made me feel
comfortable right away,”
Lucille recalls fondly,
“He saw himself as an
ordinary guy.” Walt took
special care of his office
staff, and Lucille remembers
many kindnesses. “I had
never flown on a plane and one
day when Walt was going to San
Diego with a press group, he
closed the office so I could
have my first plane
ride.”
“Another time, there
were two empty seats on the
plane to New York City, and he
let my co-worker Tommie Wilck
and I go to New York for the
weekend, because he knew I had
never been to New York! It was
fun on Monday to tell people I
‘went to New York for
dinner.’ Such a thing was
unheard of forty years
ago.”
After Walt’s death,
Lucille stayed on for a year to
help close the office, then
worked for Ron Miller in the
Studio, moving with him as he
ascended to president of the
Company in 1980 and CEO in
1983.
After Ron retired in 1984,
Lucille was asked to stay on in
Michael Eisner’s office.
“Lucille embodies that
rare combination of loyalty,
dedication, talent, tact, and
trust so necessary to the
smooth operation of an
executive staff,” Michael
said.
In 1995, Lucille was promoted
to vice president and special
assistant to The Walt Disney
Company Board of Directors. In
this role, she served as a
liaison between Company
management and the Board.
“It was quite a
surprise,” Lucille said
of her promotion. “I had
no idea at all, and I loved it,
naturally.” She retired
from this position in January
2006.
“But I have enjoyed all
my days at Disney,”
Lucille says. “When
Michael came, I was surprised
he wanted me to stay on as his
assistant. When I got my
20-year service award, he made
a speech about how glad he was
to be at Disney. Then he
twinkled —like
Walt—and added ‘And
I got Lucille!’ Everyone
applauded, and I felt
wonderful!”
Tom
Murphy:
Administration
Tom Murphy
built Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.
from a single TV and
radio station into a
multibillion-dollar
international media
conglomerate. In addition to
leading Capital Cities to its
position as a media empire,
Murphy distinguished himself as
a responsible corporate citizen
by a constant emphasis on
public service.
Thomas S. Murphy was born in
Brooklyn, New York in 1925.
After service in the U.S. Navy,
Tom attended Cornell
University; where in 1945 he
earned a B.S. An M.B.A.
fromHarvard University followed
four years later.
After five years at Kenyon
& Eckhardt Advertising and
soap and detergent manufacturer
Lever Brothers, Tom began his
broadcasting career with a
little help from his
father’s friends. The
legendary broadcaster, Lowell
Thomas, and Thomas’s
business manager, Frank Smith
and a few other investors
started Hudson Valley
Broadcasting. They needed a
station manager, and turned to
their friend’s ambitious
son.
In 1954, Tom assumed duties as
station manager, the first
employee at WROW-TV in Albany,
New York. This station and its
sister radio station, WROW-AM,
constituted the Hudson Valley
Broadcasting Company. It took
nearly three years of red ink
before the station saw a
profit, but the company evolved
into Capital Cities, and
eventually into Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc. A single share
of this company in 1957 would
have cost $5.75—forty
years later it would have been
worth more than $12,000!
In 1960, chairman Frank Smith
moved Tom to New York City, as
executive vice president of
Capital Cities. In 1964 Tom was
named president. With
Smith’s death in 1966,
Thomas Murphy became chair and
chief executive officer.
As Tom’s management
philosophy developed, it
included three important
tenets: tight financial control
and fiscal responsibility;
strong, lean management with
de-centralized local
responsibility; and a corporate
conscience with a focus on
social responsibility.
Additionally, Tom was fearless
in the notion of always hiring
people smarter than himself,
believing that mediocrity only
breeds further mediocrity. Tom
has always attributed much of
his success to what he learned
from Smith.
For the next two decades, Tom
led Capital Cities during a
time of extraordinary growth.
In 1985, Capital Cities
announced its merger with
network giant ABC. At the time
this was the largest union of
media companies in history.
Capital Cities/ABC reclaimed
this record ten years later
when it merged with The Walt
Disney Company. Tom retired as
chair and chief executive at
that time. Tom served as a
member of the Board of
Directors of The Walt Disney
Company from 1996 to 2004, and
its Executive Committee from
1997 to 2004.
Tom will long be remembered
not just for his business
acumen and the shaping of
Capital Cities into a media
powerhouse, but also for his
firm belief in the importance
of public service. In 1961, the
company received national
attention and a Peabody Award
for its non-profit, exclusive
television coverage of
Israel’s trial of the
Nazi war criminal Adolf
Eichmann. Murphy and Capital
Cities continued that level of
dedication to public service
throughout the early years of
the company and into the era of
Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.
This commitment is evidenced
in the significant role that
the company played in the
public service campaigns to
“Stop Sexual
Harassment,” PLUS
Literacy, the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America, and dozens
of others.
Randy Newman:
Music
I have
great interest in animation and
found computer graphics
fascinating,” Randy
Newman said in 1995.
“I’ve always
admired Carl Stalling and the
other composers who specialized
in music for cartoons, and I
wanted to do one
myself.”
That “one,”
Toy Story (1995), led
to scores and songs for
James and the Giant
Peach (1996), A
Bug’s Life (1998),
Toy Story 2 (1999),
Monsters, Inc. (2001),
and Cars (2006). And
amusingly and surprisingly to
many longtime fans, the cutting
social critic and brilliant
curmudgeon Randy Newman has
found himself a beloved Disney
entertainer.
Perhaps it’s no surprise
that at seventeen Randy was
already a professional
songwriter, knocking out tunes
for a Los Angeles publishing
house, since he was born in
1943 into a famously musical
family. His uncles Alfred,
Lionel, and Emil were all
well-respected film composers
and conductors. Even
Randy’s father Irving
Newman—a prominent
physician—wrote a song
for Bing Crosby.
In 1968, Randy made his debut
with the orchestral recording,
Randy Newman, and
before long, his extraordinary
and eclectic compositions were
being recorded by an unusually
wide range of artists, from Pat
Boone to Ray Charles, Peggy Lee
to Wilson Pickett.
Critics rightly raved about
his 1970 sophomore effort
12 Songs, and
increasingly the public started
to take notice with albums like
1970’s Live, and
even more so with the 1972
classic Sail Away and
the brilliant and controversial
1974 release, Good Old
Boys.
With the 1977 release of
Top Ten Little
Criminals, Randy
experienced a huge left-field
smash in the unlikely form of
“Short People.”
In the Eighties, Randy was
dividing his time between film
composing and recording his own
albums. In 1981, he released
his exquisite score for
Ragtime, earning him
his first two of sixteen
Oscar® nominations for Best
Score and Best Song.
Nineteen-eighty-three saw the
release of Trouble In
Paradise, while the next
year saw the release of his
Grammy-winning,
Oscar®-nominated and
now-iconic score for The
Natural.
Following some more film work,
Randy finally got around to
recording another studio album,
1988’s Land of
Dreams, another
breakthrough work marked by
some of his most personal and
powerful work yet.
As for Toy Story,
“I took a look at some of
the storyboards and animation
tests they had done, and I was
just amazed by the way it
looked, and I liked the idea of
the story,” Randy says of
his attraction to the film.
“I absolutely loved the
people involved with the
project.”
Still, Randy also managed to
play to the adult audience as
well with his darkly hilarious
take on
Faust—the 1995
recording of which included
performances by Don Henley,
Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Linda
Ronstadt and James Taylor.
In 1998, Randy put out an
impressive compilation,
Guilty: 30 Years of Randy
Newman and a new 1999
album for DreamWorks, Bad
Love. In 2002, Randy
finally won his first
Oscar® for “If I
Didn’t Have You”
from Monsters Inc.
Whether expressing himself
through music or lyrics, in
concert, recordings, or film;
live-action or animation; Randy
Newman is a songwriter’s
songwriter—one of the
most musically and lyrically
ambitious ever to be at play in
the field of popular music.
Floyd Norman:
Animation
Though he
prefers to be called a
“cartoonist,” few
other artists working in
animation today can boast a
career as varied as that of
Floyd Norman. From the 1950s to
today, Floyd’s diverse
career, insightful viewpoint,
and unflinching honesty have
truly made him a Disney
Legend.
Floyd E. Norman was born in
1936 and says, “I first
recognized Walt Disney’s
signature before I could read.
I would see that famous
signature on books and comics,
and I asked my grandmother,
‘What is that
name?’ She said,
‘That’s Walt
Disney.’ I never forgot
that name. I just felt like I
wanted to work at the Disney
Studio one day.”
When Floyd was in high school
he managed to get a ride to the
Disney Studio one Saturday
morning. The studio was closed,
but the Security Guard took
pity on him “I’ll
never forget entering the gates
of the Disney Studio and just
walking down to the Animation
Building,” Floyd recalls.
“I didn’t
know any Disney
artists, but I knew the names,
because I had seen
these names in the screen
credits.
“I didn’t get a
job, by the way, but they were
very
encouraging—suggested I
go to art school. Might be good
to learn how to draw, you
know?”
Floyd returned a few years
later, at a time when Disney
was not only expanding, it was
exploding. “The
studio was probably the busiest
it had been in many years. They
were just moving into
television. Disneyland was
under construction. They were
doing feature films, and they
were still doing shorts at that
time. I don’t think I
even saw Walt Disney
the first few weeks, because he
was so busy. I couldn’t
have chosen a better time to
start at Disney.”
Floyd worked as an
in-betweener and animator on
Sleeping Beauty, The Sword
in the Stone, and The
Jungle Book, along with
various animated short projects
at Disney in the late 50s and
early 60s.
After Walt Disney’s
death in 1966, Floyd left
Disney to co-found the AfroKids
animation studio with
animator/director Leo Sullivan.
Norman and Sullivan worked
together on various projects,
including the original
“Hey! Hey! Hey!
It’s Fat Albert”
television special, which aired
in 1969 on NBC.
Floyd returned to Disney in
the early 1970s to work on
Robin Hood (1973), was
a layout artist on
“Wheelie and the Chopper
Bunch” (1974), an
animator on
“Jabberjaw” (1976),
character designer and key
layout artist on “The New
Fred and Barney Show”
(1979), and key layout artist
on “The Kwicky Koala
Show” (1981).
More recently, he has worked
on Toy Story 2 (1999)
and Monsters, Inc.
(2001) for Pixar and The
Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1996) and Mulan
(1998) for Disney, among
others. He continues to work
for The Walt Disney Company as
a consultant on various
projects.
Floyd has also published
several books of cartoons
inspired by his lifetime of
experiences in the animation
industry: Faster! Cheaper!,
Son of Faster, Cheaper!,
and How The Grinch Stole
Disney.
“I’m sort of a
Disney…kind of
a…troublemaker,”
Floyd says slyly. “A
story artist.
Animator—tried to be an
animator. But mainly writer,
artist, and a guy who’s
trying to learn his craft. Been
doing it now for about 40 years
and, just beginning to get the
hang of it.”
Robert J. Schiffer :
Film Production
During his
seven-decade career he dyed a
camel, made a wiener dog look
like a Frankenstein monster,
turned Dean Jones into a shaggy
dog, Jonathan Winters into a
pumpkin, gave a tailless dog a
prosthetic wagger, aged Burt
Lancaster from age 18 to age
80, and glamorized a galaxy of
stars including Joan Crawford,
Paulette Goddard, Errol Flynn,
and Cary Grant.
Robert J. Schiffer was born in
1916 in Seattle, Washington,
where his father was a
prominent businessman. During a
stint as a Merchant Seaman, Bob
discovered that the
ship’s barber was doing
makeup for the guests of the
Captain’s Dinner (a
costume affair) for five
dollars a head. Bob set up his
own paint pots (seascapes
had been his artistic
expression) and charged half
that. His success led him to
register for constructive
anatomy and portrait painting
at the University of
Washington, which set him on a
course to a career as a makeup
artist.
Bob began his professional
career in 1932 at age 17, when
he did make-up for the Marx
Brothers’ Horse
Feathers. The Last
Days of Pompeii (1935) led
to RKO Studios, where he worked
on Becky Sharp (1935),
Hollywood’s first
three-strip Technicolor film.
At RKO, his credits also
include most of the classic
Astaire/Rogers films. During
this time, he earned his
reputation as being an expert
with ladies’ makeup,
creating innovative and stylish
looks for Joan Crawford, Myrna
Loy, Ingrid Bergman and Rita
Hayworth, among others.
During the 1930s, Bob also
worked at other studios,
including MGM, where he
contributed as a makeup artist
to such popular motion pictures
as Mutiny on the
Bounty (1935), The
Good Earth (1937), A
Night at the Opera, The
Hunchback of Notre Dame,
and The Wizard of Oz
(1939).
In 1938, Bob moved over to
Columbia, where he worked on
all of Rita Hayworth’s
notable films as the
star’s exclusive makeup
artist for nearly 20 years. Of
all the male stars that Bob
worked with (including Humphrey
Bogart, Errol Flynn, and Cary
Grant), he had a particularly
long association with Burt
Lancaster, on such films as
Elmer Gantry (1960),
The Young Savages, Judgment
at Nuremberg (1961), and
The Leopard
(1963).
Among Bob’s other
impressive makeup credits are
the films My Fair Lady
(1964), Whatever Happened
to Baby Jane? (1962), and
Camelot (1967).
Arriving at the Walt Disney
Studios in 1968, Bob went on to
head the makeup department, and
contributed to a wide variety
of live-action feature films
over the next 33 years,
including Bedknobs and
Broomsticks (1971),
The Apple Dumpling
Gang (1975), The
Shaggy D.A. (1976, for
which he transformed actor Dean
Jones into a canine character),
Return From Witch
Mountain (1978) and
The Watcher in the
Woods (1980, both with
screen legend Bette Davis),
Tron (1982),
Something Wicked this Way
Comes (1983), and
Splash (1984).
Bob retired from Disney in
2001, and passed away in April
2005. Michael Eisner said,
“Bob was one of the quiet
talents who made Hollywood
great. He worked with the
legendary stars, who we all
know by single
names—Astaire, Bogart,
Welles, Hepburn, Hayworth,
Lancaster, Midler, and Hanks.
But, among people behind the
cameras, Bob was a legend
himself. It was my privilege to
work with him throughout my 21
years with the company. He is
very much a part of the Disney
legacy.”
David R. Smith:
Archives
Walt Disney
Archives founder and chief
archivist David R. Smith
officially joined The Walt
Disney Company on June 22,
1970, but his Disney roots are
even deeper.
A fan of Disney films
throughout his youth, Dave
adds, “I grew up in
Southern California, and so my
appreciation of Disneyland
began as a child.” In
1967, he had become interested
in compiling an extensive
bibliography on Walt Disney.
With approval from the Disney
organization, he spent more
than a year researching all
Disney publications and
productions.
When the Disney family and
Studio management decided to
attempt to preserve Walt
Disney’s papers, awards
and memorabilia, it was natural
for them to contact Dave to do
a study, and make a
recommendation which
established the guidelines and
objectives of the Archives.
Dave was selected as archivist,
and in the years since the
Archives was established, it
has come to be recognized as a
model among corporate archives
in the country—and Dave
is regarded as the final
authority on matters of Disney
history.
Born on October 13, 1940, and
raised in Pasadena, Dave
graduated as valedictorian from
both Pasadena High School and
Pasadena City College. He
earned his B.A. in history at
the University of California at
Berkeley. While in school, Dave
worked part-time for six years
in the Manuscript Department of
the Huntington Library in San
Marino.
Upon receiving his Masters
Degree in Library Science from
the University of California in
June 1963, he was selected as
one of seven outstanding
graduates of library schools
throughout the country to
participate in an internship
program at the Library of
Congress in Washington.
He returned to California
where he served for five years
as a reference librarian at the
UCLA Research Library. While
there, Dave authored several
articles and had bibliographies
published on the Monitor and
the Merrimac Civil War
warships, and on Jack
Benny.
Of his Disney role, Dave said,
“The thing I like best is
the tremendous variety in our
work. We never know when we
come to work in the morning
what we’ll be doing that
day. It keeps the job
interesting when you’re
not doing the same thing day in
and day out.”
Dave has written extensively
on Disney history, with a
regular column in The
Disney Channel Magazine, Disney
Magazine, Disney Newsreel,
and numerous articles in such
publications as Starlog,
Manuscripts, Millimeter,
American Archivist, and
California Historical
Quarterly. He is the
author of the official Disney
encyclopedia Disney A to
Z (now in its third
edition), with Kevin Neary he
co-authored four volumes of
The Ultimate Disney Trivia
Book, with Steven Clark he
co-wrote Disney: The First
100 Years, and he edited
The Quotable Walt
Disney. Dave has written
introductions to a number of
other Disney books.
“My greatest reward has
been getting to know the many
people who have come to use the
Archives over the years. I have
been especially proud to be a
guide and mentor to so many
young people who have gone on
to exceptional careers in the
Disney organization.”
Dave says humbly.
“I have had the pleasure
and privilege to work with Dave
Smith for nearly 35
years,” author and
animator John Canemaker says,
“and, to me, he has
always been legendary. For his
steady building of the Disney
Archives over the years into
one of the greatest, most
invaluable, world-class
resources for studying American
animation—and for his
kindness and generosity to all
researchers.”
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