1918:
Singer & radio personality Dennis Day is born Owen Patrick Eugene McNulty in
The Bronx, New York. He can be heard in Disney's 1948 feature Melody Time; narrating and providing
all the voices for "The Legend of Johnny Appleseed" segment.
1928:
Walt Disney's trademark application for "Mickey Mouse"
is filed with the United States Patent Office.
1933:
A 23-year-old artist named Wolfgang Reitherman is hired at the Disney Studios in
Hollywood, California. Reitherman has become an animator by chance - his ambition was to be a
aeronautical engineer, but he drew cartoons in his spare time at school and eventually decided to study art.
"Woolie" as he will be nicknamed, will start work in June and go on to become one of Walt's "Nine Old Men".
Stage, film and television actor Richard Libertini is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Known for playing character roles and his ability to speak in numerous accents, his Disney credits include a 2010 episode of Sonny with a Chance, and the 1990 animated DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp. Movie fans will recognize him for his roles in Popeye (1980), All of Me (1984), Fletch (1985), Fletch Lives (1989), Awakenings (1990), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), and Dolphin Tale (2011).
1934:
Disney comic illustrator Luciano Gatto is born in Venice, Italy.
1948:
Disney's Donald's Dream Voice, directed by Jack King, is released. Donald tries his hand at selling brushes door-to-door ... but since nobody can understand him, nobody buys anything!
1954:
The Disney cartoon Pigs is Pigs, directed by Jack Kinney, is released. Narrated by
Gary Owens, the short is a verse adaptation of a turn-of-the-century short story of the same name by Ellis
Parker Butler. The presence of a couple of guinea pigs at the Westcote railroad station creates countless
offspring as well as a load of paperwork for by-the-book agent Flannery! The short features the sounds of the
Mellomen - a vocal group which includes Thurl Ravenscroft. (It will be nominated for an Academy Award.)
1961:
The TV series Walt Disney Presents airs "Wonders of the Water World,"
narrated by Winston Hibler.
1993:
CBS-TV airs the 2nd part of the Disney special "The Best of Disney Music: A Legacy in Song."
1998:
The new Disneyland Tomorrowland is unveiled
after being given an extreme facelift. Various dedications will take place over
the next 2 days. Among the special guests are legendary astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Wally Schirra.
1999:
Disney Presents: Bill Nye the Science Guy wins a Daytime Emmy for
Outstanding Children's Series.
A refurbished Main Street Electrical Parade returns to Magic Kingdom for a limited engagement, just in time for Walt Disney World Millennium Celebration (which will
begin October 1, 1999). The parade will run through April 2001.
2001:
In Hawaii, Disney turns the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis into a party ship and outdoor movie theater for the premiere of its summer blockbuster, Pearl Harbor. Movie stars mingle with survivors and top military officers as some 2,000 guests gather on the flight deck of one of America's biggest ships for the screening.
2005:
Actor, director & writer Howard Morris, the original voice of Gopher in Disney's
Winnie the Pooh features, passes away in Los Angeles, California. Since the early
60s, he had been a main staple of the Hanna-Barbera Productions vocal team, offering hundreds of voices
for The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. (As a director he was responsible for the classic black-and-white pilot of TV's Get Smart as well as episodes of Hogan's Heroes and The Andy Griffith Show - in which he was also known for his comedic role of Ernest T. Bass.)
1957:
Actor Judge Reinhold - Neil Miller in Disney's 1994 live-action feature The Santa
Clause (and its sequels) - is born in Wilmington, Delaware. (Reinhold has appeared in more than 75 films including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ruthless People, Beverly Hills Cop, and Swing Vote.)
Walt Disney first leased the 708-acre
Golden Oak Ranch (just north of their
Burbank studio) in the late 1950s as a
film location for the "Spin and Marty"
segments of the Mickey Mouse Club.
In 1959, Disney purchased Golden Oak
Ranch, and over the years acquired
additional land which brought the
total to just under 900 acres!
2008:
During the season finale of American Idol, Jordin Sparks, last year’s winner,
announces that The American Idol Experience, a theme-park version of the show, will open at Disney Hollywood Studios in January 2009. David Cook, who is voted this season's American Idol, shouts "I'm going to Disney World!" during the celebration following the live announcement. It is a rare off-field exception for those famous promotional words, which have almost always been uttered by sports figures. (The attraction will officially open February 14, 2009.)
Disney’s VirtualMagicKingdom.com shuts down at 10 p.m. The free social gaming site, also known as VMK, let players choose and style avatars, chat with other players and play games - all in a virtual theme park environment.
1914:
John Hubley, an Academy Award-winning animator and animation director, is
born in Marinette, Wisconsin. In 1935, he got a job as a background and layout artist at Disney
(at the age of 22) and worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He later became an art director
and designed layouts for Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, and "The Rite of Spring" segment for Fantasia. He left
Disney in 1941 (during the strike) and shortly thereafter became a founder of UPA (United Productions of
America) - where he designed Mr. Magoo. Hubley later founded Storyboard Studios, turning out wildly popular animated commercials. His famous 1956 "I Want My Maypo" commercial featured his young son’s voice. In the 1970s, Hubley worked on both the series Sesame Street and Electric Company. Passing away in 1977, The Academy Film Archive has since preserved a number of John Hubley's films, including A Smattering of Spots, A Doonesbury Special, and Of Men and Demons.
1940:
Disney's Pinocchio is generally released in the U.K.
2007:
Actress Scarlett Strallen returns to the title role of the West End production of
Mary Poppins. She had first joined the London show at the end of 2005 to
replace original cast member Laura Michelle Kelly.
(In 2008 Strallen will play 'Mary' on Broadway.)
MAY 21
2009:
ASIFA-Hollywood celebrates the 20th anniversary of Walt Disney Animation’s The
Little Mermaid, with an evening of lively discussion with some of the animators and
crew members at the Fletcher Jones Foundation Auditorium at Woodbury
University (in Burbank, California). Special guests include the film’s writers and directors John Musker & Ron Clements, and animators Andreas Deja, Mark Henn, Duncan Marjoribanks, Reuben Aquino and Tina Price.
"I'm going to Disney World!" -David Cook
1943:
Walt Disney writes to painter/illustrator Norman
Rockwell, thanking him for the painting of The
Saturday Evening Post cover (dated March 1, 1941).
Walt tells him that members of the Disney staff have been trooping up to
his office to admire the gift. "To all of them," Walt writes, "you are some
sort of a god." Rockwell is enjoying a broad popular appeal in the
United States as he is famous for the cover illustrations of everyday
life scenarios he creates for The Saturday Evening Post magazine.
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MAY 21
THIS DAY MADE IN THE USA
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Disney hires Woolie Reitherman
"The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it."
-Bill Nye the Science Guy
2002:
The CD You Were Mad for Me/In Disneyland, made up of 2 Freddie & the
Dreamers' albums - 1964's You Were Mad for Me and 1966's In Disneyland, is
released. You Were Mad for Me was the group's second album and features covers such as "It Doesn't
Matter Anymore" and "What I'd Say." In Disneyland, originally only issued in the U.K., is made up of covers of
songs associated with Disney films including "When You Wish Upon a Star," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,"
and "Whistle While You Work." (Freddie & the Dreamers were one of the many British bands that rode on the
popularity wave created by the Beatles in the mid-1960s.)
2010:
The 2010 Star Wars Weekends officially begin at Disney's Hollywood Studios.
There will be 4 consecutive weekends in all: May 21-23, May 28-30, June 4-6, and June 11-13.
1992:
Actor Hutchings Royal "Hutch" Dano, known for his role as Zeke Valconi on the
Disney sitcom Zeke & Luther, is born in Santa Monica, California. Also appearing on The
Suite Life on Deck, Dano is the grandson of Royal Dano (the original voice of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln).
Also born on this day is actress & singer-songwriter Olivia Rose Olson in Los Angeles, California. She is known for her voice role of Vanessa Doofenshmirtz in Disney Channel's Phineas and Ferb.
2004:
Today is the start of the second of five consecutive Star Wars Weekends at Disney-
MGM Studios. Celebrity guests for the next 3 days include Peter Mayhew (best to known to fans as the towering
and ever-loyal Wookiee, Chewbacca) and Jerome Blake (who played a variety of roles in Episode I, from the slimy
Neimoidian schemer Rune Haako, to Mas Amedda, the booming voice of order in the Galactic Senate).
1984:
Clarence "Ducky" Nash leaves Donald's "footprints" in cement at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California.
MAY
As part of the massive grand opening of the new American Idol Experience attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios on February 12, 2009, American Idol winners David Cook and Carrie Underwood sang a duet for the media inside the new attraction's theater. They performed Fleetwood Mac's
"Go Your Own Way." Cook is no stranger to the Florida resort, in December 2008 he took part in the filming of the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade and in August 2009 vacationed with family at WDW.
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Photo by Bernie at Disney.Rocket9.net
May 21
2015:
The premiere performances of "Paint the Night" parade and "Disneyland Forever"
fireworks takes place at Disneyland park. Both additions to Disneyland's 60th birthday
bash (which kicks off the following day), the parade and fireworks are broadcast live on
the Disney Parks blog.
1997:
Actor Kevin Quinn is born in Chicago, Illinois. He is known for his starring role as Xander in the Disney Channel original series Bunk'd, and his supporting role in the 2016 Disney Channel Original Movie Adventures in Babysitting.
Quinn was a contestant on season 12 of American Idol.
2011:
Sound engineer David J. Hudson passes away at age 67 in California. Nominated for three Academy Awards, his Disney/Touchstone credits included Tin Men, Adventures in Babysitting, Good Morning, Vietnam, The Little Mermaid, Pretty Woman, The Rescuers Down Under, What About Bob?, Beauty and the Beast, Sister Act, Aladdin, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, The Return fof Jafar, and The Lion King.
1977:
Animator Art Landy passes away at age 73 in Van Nuys, California. Specializing in animation set decoration, he began his career with the Disney Studio in the early 1930s. He was a background artist on such shorts as Figaro and Frankie, Mickey's Delayed Date, Pluto's Blue Note, and Camp Dog. Landy began working for Walter Lantz in 1953 on the popular Woody Woddpecker shorts.
2018:
The season finale of American Idol airs on ABC with Maddie Poppe being crowned the winner.
The sixteenth season of the popular singing competition, it was the first to air on ABC after 15 seasons on Fox.
1955:
Herman Schultheis, a retired Walt Disney Studios photographer and technician in the Special Effects Department, disappears while on a trip to the Mayan temples at Tikal in Guatemala. He is 55. Emigrating to New York City in 1927 from his home in Germany, he eventually moved to Los Angeles and in February 1939 joined Walt Disney's Special Effects department. He worked on Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi before leaving Disney in 1940. During his tenure with Disney, he documented everything he did at the studio in a notebook he titled "Special Effects." The notebook will be considered lost to history until 1990, when Disney historian Howard Lowery will find the notebook in a chest of drawers at Schultheis’ former Los Angeles residence.
2013:
Frank Comstock, a composer, arranger, conductor and trombonist, passes at age 90 in California. Best known for his theme and incidental music for Rocky and His Friends (1959–1964), his music for Adam-12 earned him a 1971 Emmy nomination. Working as a freelance arranger for Disney Theme Park Music Director James Christensen, Comstock arranged some of the music heard to this day at Disney Theme Parks. His credits include The Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade, Tokyo Disneyland opening music, Walt Disney World Family Concerts, Disney Street Band - Medleys of Disney film music (all Disney parks), Christmas parades (all Disney parks), and Walt Disney World Candlelight Services. Comstock's work for Disney also included several television specials and a new score for the Toot, Whistle, Plunk & Boom animated short.
2014:
ABC airs 2 back-to-back episodes of The Middle in which the Heck family goes to Walt Disney World. In the episode "Orlando," Sue counts down the days until the Hecks depart on their road trip to Disney World that she won in a contest. Meanwhile Brick begs his parents to take a detour to North Carolina to meet his online girlfriend and Axl anxiously awaits the posting of his final grades as a college freshman. Unfortunatley when they arrive at the Magic Kingdom, it is discovered that they won a free trip to Disneyland, not Disney World.
In the second episode "The Wonderful World of Hecks," a series of misfortunes threatens their wonderful time. The episode highlights the new MagicBand technology installed at theme park entrances.
1949:
Voice actor, singer and musician Will Ryan is born in Cleveland, Ohio. Providing the voices of Rabbit and Tigger, and the singing voice of Eeyore, in Disney Channel's long-running series Welcome to Pooh Corner, his film credits include Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Little Mermaid. Ryan's Disney television credits include Dumbo's Circus, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, DuckTales, and Disney's House of Mouse.
1920:
Novelist Eleanor H. Porter, best known for her 1913 "Pollyana," passes away at age 51 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Considered a classic of children's literature, the book's success led to Porter writing a sequel two years later, "Pollyanna Grows Up." Walt Disney released its film Pollyanna in 1961, starring Hayley Mills. Born Eleanor Emily Hodgman in Littleton, New Hampshire, today there is a statue in historic downtown Littleton to honor her and her beloved character.
