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.”