1906:
Voice actor/sound effects man, musician & creator of hundreds of one-of-a-kind gadgets and props, James Macdonald is born in Dundee, Scotland. (Yes, he spells his last name with a small "d"!) He and his parents will come to the United States when he is only a month old, and James will grow up in Philadelphia. While playing drums and percussion with a band for the Dollar Steamship Lines in 1934, Macdonald will be called to the Disney Studios to record music for a Mickey Mouse cartoon. His impeccable timing and talent will earn him a permanent position to form the sound department at the studio. In 1946, Walt Disney will personally select Macdonald to take over the voice of Mickey Mouse. His many Disney credits will include Mickey and the Beanstalk and the TV series House of Mouse as well as the animated classics Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Alice in Wonderland.
1934:
Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoon Gulliver Mickey, directed by Burt Gillett, is released. Mickey enthralls his young nephews with the story of his adventures among the tiny people of a faraway land (a nod to Jonathan Swift's classic tale).
1939:
Disney's Donald Duck short Donald's Cousin Gus is released. Donald's cousin Gus arrives with an inexhaustible appetite and a bottomless tummy.
1941:
Mouseketeer Bobby Burgess is born in Long Beach, California. He will audition 5 times before finally being chosen as a member of The Mickey Mouse Club. Fans of The Lawrence Welk Show will recognize him as half the dancing duo Bobby & Barbara.
1950:
Disney's Primitive Pluto is released.
1960:
Disney's Pollyana starring Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, Richard
Egan, and Nancy Olsen (and based on the novel by Eleanor H. Portera) is
released. Her first Disney film and her American film debut, it will earn Mills
an Academy Award.
1971:
Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes debut in Disneyland. A free-floating gas-powered canoe experience, it had originally opened as Indian War Canoes in 1956. Inspired by the Davy Crockett Disneyland television shows, the park's guides wear coonskin caps.
1989:
Episode 20 of MMC airs on the Disney Channel. Today is Hall of Fame Day!
1997:
Epcot's Illuminations 25 debuts with classical music.
2000:
Disney's Dinosaur starring D.B. Sweeney, Ossie Davis, and Julianna Margulies is released in the U.S. Set 65 million years ago during the late Cretaceous Period, the film follows the adventures of an Iguanodon named Aladar who is separated from his own species when a Carnotaur allows an Iguanadon nest to be robbed.
Plans for Disney's newest attraction Mission: SPACE (to be
completed in 2003-2004) are launched into space aboard Atlantis,
NASA's International Space Station shuttle flight (STS-101).
The crew, made up of six American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut, will spend nearly 10 days in space.
The 1999–2000 Daytime Emmy Awards are presented at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. The award for Outstanding Children's Series goes to Disney Presents: Bill Nye the Science Guy. Rolie Polie Olie wins for Outstanding Children's Animated Program (special class).
2001:
A set of Mickey Mouse drawings from 1928 - estimated to be worth more than $3 million - fail to sell at auction, leaving The International Museum of Cartoon Art (at this time located in Boca Raton, Florida) scrambling for other ways to pay its debt. The six-page, 36-panel storyboard from the Disney cartoon Plane Crazy was the first appearance of Mickey Mouse.
The ABC-TV series House of Mouse airs the episode "King Larry Swing In."
2005:
Euro Disney replaces its chief executive with Karl Holz.
2006:
The first Star Wars Weekend of the 2006 season kicks off at the Disney-MGM Studios in Florida.
As of this day, the non-intense version of Epcot's
Mission: Space opens to guests.
1998:
The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (a film not created by Disney but released by Walt Disney Home Video) is released. Voice credits include veteran Thurl Ravenscroft, Farrah Fawcett, and Carol Channing.
1915:
Disney Legend Al Konetzni is born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1953, he will join Walt
Disney Productions as an artist and idea man for the character merchandising division - located at the time
on Madison Avenue in New York City. Over the next 28 years he will develop ideas for toys, clothing,
stationery, greeting cards, and jewelry. Konetzni's most famous creation will be a popular lunch box set,
featuring Disney characters on board a school bus. (The lunch box, will sell 9 million units in 1976, and
become a prized collector's item among Disney fans.)
1986:
Actor Eric Lloyd - Charlie Calvin in all three of Disney's Santa Clause features - is born in Glendale, California. He also supplies the voice for Blanky in the 1998 The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars and the 1997 The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue.
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Disney Legend James Macdonald
created a prop that made a
"clackety-clack" sound that was
perfect for recreating a train car.
He mounted wheels on a track
that one could spin around with a
handle. It can be heard every day
at Disneyland's Thunder Mountain
Railroad, when the train circles
the mountain in the distance!
20
2007:
A gala premiere for the feature Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End takes place at Disneyland. Johnny Depp and his fellow actors attend the world premiere.
1987:
The Disney Channel Premiere Film Anne of Avonlea: The Continuing Story of Anne of Green Gables debuts.
1937:
Walt Disney's animated film Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons is released for a limited time to help promote the upcoming release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is a collection of five Oscar-winning Silly Symphony shorts, bridged together with title cards and narration. At approximately 41 minutes, the film includes Flowers and Trees, Three Little Pigs, The Tortoise and the Hare, Three Orphan Kittens, and The Country Cousin.
1969:
Animator Dan Lee is born in Montreal, Quebec. Best known as the creator of the title character from Finding Nemo, his Pixar credits also include
Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Ratatouille.
“Part of its success can be attributed to a fine cast that does exact justice to a collection of assorted colorful characters. Its most remarkable member is 13-year-old Hayley Mills, who imbues Pollyanna herself with so much quiet curiosity and enjoyment that her unshatterable optimism seems delightfully plausible.” -Newsweek
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MAY
MAY 19
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MAY 19
THIS DAY MADE IN THE USA
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2009:
Baltimore money manager T. Rowe Price Group's new financial education and interactive exhibit opens at Epcot. The Great Piggy Bank Adventure at Innoventions features personal finance lessons for families on saving, spending wisely and diversifying investments.
It is reported that Disney plans to build a 500-room hotel resort on 15 acres at the ambitious National Harbor development about eight miles south of Washington D.C. in Maryland. National Harbor already includes a 2,000-room Gaylord National convention center, a Westin, an Aloft and other hotels, shops, restaurants and residential units.
