2005:
The Broadway Disney hit Beauty and the Beast celebrates its 11th anniversary. The musical, which is the sixth longest-running show in Broadway history, originally opened at the Palace Theatre on this day in 1994.
1882:
Conductor Leopold Anthony Stokowski, who conducted the music for and
appeared in Disney's 1940 release Fantasia, is born in London, England.
Known as the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Stokowski was also the founder of the New York City Symphony. A celebrated transcriber of music originally written in other forms, his version of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, originally for organ, served as the opening item in Disney's Fantasia (a film which brought classical music to a wider audience). Stokowski is credited as being the first conductor to adopt the seating plan that is used by most orchestras today.
1927:
Disney's Alice Comedy Alice's Circus Daze is released. This film debuts Lois Hardwick as Alice, the fourth and final actress to play the role.
1946:
Academy Award-winning actress Hayley Mills is born Hayley Catherine
Rose Vivien Mills to actor John Mills and novelist-playwright Mary Hayley
Bell in London, England. Walt Disney's wife first saw 12-year-old Mills in the movie
Tiger Bay. She arranged for Mills to meet Walt and the result was her American film debut
Pollyanna (which earned Mills a special Academy Award). Also a Golden Globe Award winner,
her Disney credits include The Parent Trap (as twins Sharon and Susan), In Search of the Castaways, Summer Magic,
The Moon-Spinners, That Darn Cat!, and the televison film Back Home. The success of the song "Let's Get Together" (which she sang in The Parent Trap) also lead to the release of a record album on Disney's Buena Vista label, Let's Get Together with Hayley Mills. During her six-year run at Disney, Mills was probably the most popular child actress of the era! As an adult, Mills narrated an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, sparking renewed interest in her Disney work. She reprised her roles as twins Sharon and Susan for a trio of Parent Trap television films: The Parent Trap II, Parent Trap III, and Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon. Mills also starred as the title character in the Disney Channel-produced television series Good Morning, Miss Bliss in 1987. (The show was cancelled after 13 episodes and the rights were acquired by NBC, which reformatted Good Morning, Miss Bliss into Saved by the Bell without any further involvement from Mills.) In recognition of her work with The Walt Disney Company, Mills was awarded the Disney Legends award in 1998. Her father John Mills, also a Disney Legend, starred in Disney's 1960 Swiss Family Robinson, and had a small role in the 1961 Parent Trap.
1953:
The Mickey Mouse cartoon The Simple Things, featuring the voice of Jim MacDonald
as Mickey and directed by Charles Nichols, is released. Mickey and Pluto (voiced by Pinto Colvig) plan on spending the day fishing but many mishaps turn there fun into anything but simple. It will be the last Mickey Mouse cartoon until Mickey's Christmas Carol some 30 years later!
Actor, comedian, musician, screenwriter, and producer Rick Moranis is born Frederick Allan Moranis in Toronto, Canada. First coming to prominence on the sketch comedy series Second City Television (SCTV) in the 1980s, Disney fans know him best as Wayne Szalinski in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
(1989), Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992), Honey, I Shrunk the Audience! (1994) - a 4D film which played at several Disney theme parks, and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves (1997). In 2020 (after a hiatus of nearly 23 years from live-action films), Moranis signed on to reprise his role as Szalinski in Shrunk, a new sequel in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids series. Voicing Rutt, a moose and brother of Tuke, in Brother Bear (2003) and Brother Bear 2 (2006), Moranis also appeared on the covers of both the July and October 1992 issues of "Disney Adventures." Comedy fans know him from such films as "Strange Brew," "Ghostbusters," "Little Shop of Horrors," "Spaceballs," "Parenthood," "My Blue Heaven," "The Flintstones," "Little Giants," and "Big Bully." His voice can be heard in a 2018 episode of ABC's "The Goldbergs" as Lord Dark Helmet - a nod to his role in the 1987 Mel Brooks comedy "Spaceballs."
1957:
The Disney Studio holds a screen test for a relatively unknown actor named Guy Williams for their new Zorro TV series. (When Walt sees the results, he will be convinced he has found his Zorro!)
1961:
Actress Jane Leeves, the voice of the Ladybug in Disney's 1996 James and the Giant Peach and the voice of Athena in Disney's 1998 TV series Hercules, is born in Ilford, Essex, England. She also voiced various characters in both animated series Phineas and Ferb and Mickey and the Roadster Racers. (Originally a regular on The Benny Hill Show, TV fans will recognize her as Daphne Moon from the sitcom Frasier.)
1964:
"Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" finally arrives at
the World's Fair. (It had been flown to New York the
day before but traffic had prevented the exhibit from being delivered to the Illinois Pavilion.) The WED technicians scramble to install Mr. Lincoln in hopes of having him ready for a special April 20 preview. Due to technical problems, the exhibit will not be ready for the preview nor will it open with the rest of the World's Fair.
1969:
Various musical cues are recorded at the Walt Disney Productions Recording Stage (in California) for Disneyland's much anticipated Haunted Mansion attraction.
1983:
The Disney Channel (a pay TV network) first airs at 7 a.m. with a program
titled Good Morning Mickey. Other programs this day include Mousercise, Welcome to Pooh
Corner, a "mommy and me" themed show called You and Me, Kid and a game show titled Contraption.
Only airing 16 hours a day, the channel will later expand to 18 in April 1984. In December 1986,
Disney Channel will commence full-time broadcasting 24 hours everyday.
1984:
Actress America Ferrera is born in Los Angeles, California. She appears in Disney Channel's 2002 Gotta Kick It Up (her first TV movie) as Yolanda "Yoli" and supplies the voice of Fawn for the 2008 Tinker Bell. A Golden Globe winner, television fans know Ferrera as the star of the ABC series Ugly Betty.
1994:
Disney's first stage show, Beauty and the Beast: A New
Musical, officially opens on Broadway at the Palace
Theater with Tom Bosley as Belle's father Maurice,
Terrence Mann as the Beast, and Susan Egan as Belle.
(The show will move to the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in 1999.)
Actor Moises Arias is born in New York City. His Disney Channel credits include Hannah
Montana (as Rico), The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, the Disney Channel Original Movie Dadnapped, and
Wizards of Waverly Place.
1998:
The Disneyland show "Festival of Fools" gives its last performance.
Toon Disney, a 24-hour cable television channel, debuts.
2002:
An area of Disney World's Animal Kingdom - featuring the new attractions Triceratop
Spin and Primeval Whirl - has an official grand opening. The mini-land, located next to DinoLand
USA, also features Boardwalk-type games including Dino-Whamma, a classic mallet strength game; Mammoth
Marathon, a racing derby; Comet Crasher, a goblet toss game; Fossil Fueler, a water-squirt game themed to a
prehistoric gas station; and Bronto-Score, a basketball game.
2003:
Walt Disney Pictures' Holes, starring Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette and Shia LaBeouf, premieres in theaters. A boy is wrongfully sent to a brutal camp, where the camp warden and her staff force the children in their care to mysteriously dig holes all day long in the desert. Their rehabilitation is questioned, as they think something sinister is involved.
2004:
Disney's Beauty and the Beast celebrates its 10th anniversary on
Broadway. It ranks as the 4th highest grossing musical of all time
(recently passing Miss Saigon).
2006:
A groundbreaking ceremony for the Oriental Land Company's newest project - a permanent Cirque du Soleil theater - takes place at the
Tokyo Disney Resort. The ceremony takes place at the site reserved for the theater next to the Disney Ambassador Hotel. The show is expected to open in 2008.
1941:
Disney's Goofy short Baggage Buster, directed by Jack Kinney and animated by
Art Babbitt, is released. Goofy is given a deceptively simple job: put a magician's trunk on an
incoming train. Unfortunately for him, the trunk has a magical mind of its own!
1997:
The fourth annual Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival begins in Florida.
Leopold Stokowski appeared on
screen in Fantasia - conducting the
the segments "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" and "Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria." He also spoke
to and shook hands with
Mickey Mouse!
1955:
Newsweek runs "A Wonderful World" - an article about Walt Disney's "universe" of new television shows, films and theme park.
2007:
Disney's Beauty and the Beast celebrates its 13th Broadway anniversary.
More than 125 past & present cast members who have performed in the long-
running show gather onstage following this day's matinee performance for a
giant cast photo. A private party follows. (Beauty and the Beast will play its final
performance at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre July 29.)
1958:
Disney composer and orchestrator Edward H. Plumb passes away in California. Originally from Illinois, Plumb's work for Disney began with the 1938 short Mother Goose Goes Hollywood. Over the next 20 years his credits included Bambi (which earned him the first of four Academy Award nominations), The Three Caballeros, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, and Johnny Tremain.
1950:
Award-winning director, choreographer, and producer Kenny Ortega is born in Palo Alto, California. His vast Disney credits include Newsies, Hocus Pocus, all the High School Musical films, The Cheetah
Girls 2, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, and all the Descendants films. Ortega also directed and produced the 2006-07 tour High School Musical: The Concert. (Initially known for working with famous dancer-choreographer Gene Kelly on the 1980 Olivia Newton-John film Xanadu, Ortega went on to choreograph the 1987 blockbuster film Dirty Dancing.) He was named a Disney Legend in 2019.
1951:
Disney Imagineer and writer Bruce Gordon is born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada
(but grew up in Southern California). An avid collector of Disneyana, Gordon was
hired by Walt Disney Imagineering in 1980. He first worked on Epcot and later such Disneyland
attractions as Splash Mountain, the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tarzan's Treehouse and Finding Nemo
Submarine Voyage. Gordon was also well-known for editing and writing many feature articles on Disney for both Disney
publications and national magazines.
"A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence." -Leopold Stokowski
1947:
Film, stage and television actor James Woods - the voice of the villainous Hades in Disney's animated Hercules and the video game Kingdom Hearts - is born in Vernel, Utah. His Disney voice credits also include Rolie Polie Olie: The Great Defender of Fun and Recess: School's Out.
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THIS DAY MADE IN THE USA
Stokowski born
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2009:
California Institute of the Arts celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the
late animator and educator Jules Engel at REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert
Hall in Los Angeles. Engel's career ranged from such Disney classics as Fantasia and Bambi to
co-creating the cartoon characters Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing.
As a youngster, Gordon built a miniature replica of Disneyland attractions in his parents' garage!
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Disney Channel debuts
A few days before Disneyland opened, Walt ran out of funds to finish the landscaping.
He quickly assembled his landscaping team together and told them to start putting exotic sounding Latin names on the plant labels and stick them by the weeds. Disneyland opened
with flowers, plants and weeds and no one knew the difference!
1936:
Disney's Silly Symphony short Three Little Wolves, directed by David Hand, is
released. A Disney take on "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" - Fifer Pig and Fiddler Pig continually set off the wolf
alarm to Practical Pig's annoyance. But unbeknownst to them, they are being stalked by the Big Bad Wolves' sons!
Everything You Ever Imagined and More!
2010:
"The Curious Case of Mr. Dabney," the 3rd episode of Disney Channel's newest
family sitcom Good Luck Charlie, first airs.
The ABC Family Original Movie Beauty & the Briefcase, starring Hilary Duff, premieres.
A freelance writer looking for romance sells a story to Cosmopolitan magazine about finding love in the workplace
and goes undercover at a Finance Company.
Disney's Electrical Parade runs for the last time at Disney California Adventure. Essentially
the Main Street Electrical Parade, it had been running since July 2001. (It will be sent to Magic Kingdom as part of the Walt Disney World 2010 promotional package "Summer Nightastic!")
1976:
Actress, writer, television director, television producer and singer Melissa Joan Catherine
Hart is born on Long Island, New York. First known her title roles in the television series Clarissa Explains It
All (1991-1994), and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1996-2003) which originally ran on ABC, Hart was the voice of Becky Detweiler in Disney's Recess: School's Out. Hart hosted the Walt Disney World Christmas Parade in 1997, and made her directorial debut in a 1999 episode of Disney Channel's "So Weird" called "Snapshot." She later starred in Melissa & Joey
(2010-2015), an ABC Family original television series distributed by Disney-ABC Domestic Television. In 2019 she appeared in an episode of ABC's The Goldbergs.
Actor Sean Maguire is born in London, England. He played Robin Hood in ABC-TV's Once Upon a Time (taking over the role from Tom Ellis).
2014:
Bears, a nature documentary film about a family of grizzly bears living in the coastal mountainous ranges of Alaska, is released theatrically by Disneynature. Directed by
Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey, it is and narrated by John C. Reilly.
1990:
Actress Brittany Leanna "Britt" Robertson is born in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2013,
Robertson was cast in the Brad Bird film Tomorrowland (opposite George Clooney and Hugh Laurie) for the lead role of Casey. She also supplied the voice of Vex for 3 episodes of Tangled: The Series and appeared in the 2007 comedy-drama Dan in Real Life as Cara, one of the daughters of Steve Carell's character Dan Burns.
1971:
Actor David John Tennant is born in Scotland. He is the voice of Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot (which began airing in 2017).
1992:
Actress & singer Chloe Bennet is born Chloe Wang in Chicago, Illinois. Known for her role as Daisy "Skye" Johnson / Quake on the television series Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., her voice credits include the film Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, and an episode of Jake and the Never Land Pirates.
1987:
Actress Ellen Woglom is born in Nashville, Tennessee. Her credits include the Disney Channel movie Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior and the ABC series Marvel's Inhumans.
1930:
Actor & singer Clive Revill is born in Wellington, New Zeland. Best known for his performances in musical theatre and on the London stage, his Disney film credits include One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975),
Return to Never Land (2002), 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure (2003), and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas (2004).
2020:
After 5 seasons Doc McStuffins airs its last episode. The animated series (also known as Doc McStuffins: Toy Hospital for the fourth season and Doc McStuffins: Pet Rescue for the fifth season) was created and executive produced by Chris Nee. About a girl who can "fix" toys, with help from her toy friends, it featured songs written and composed by Kay Hanley and Michelle Lewis.
2000:
Perfect Game, a made-for-television comedy film, debuts on Disney Channel. About an eleven-year-old boy who loves baseball and yearns to play on his local Little League team, it stars Ed Asner, Patrick Duffy, Cameron Finley, Tracy Nelson, Drake Bell, and Orlando Brown.
