Walt often referred to Walt Disney Imagineering (then WED Enterprises) as his “laughing place.” There he could take a respite from his duties as head of a major company and go watch the Imagineers at work imagining fantastic things that could be added to Disneyland. When he had his backyard miniature railroad, he also found …
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Disney Legend Kevin Corcoran, best known for his role in Disney’s 1957 classic live-action film Old Yeller and for his portrayal of Moochie on the Mickey Mouse Club, passed away in Burbank, California, on October 6, 2015. He was 66. Born in Santa Monica, California, on June 10, 1949, Corcoran—the fifth of eight children—first appeared …
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Dean Jones, the star of such iconic Disney live-action films of the 1960s and 1970s as That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug, and The Shaggy D.A., passed away in Los Angeles on Tuesday, September 1, 2015. He was 84. A native of Decatur, Alabama, Jones moved to New Orleans as a 15-year-old to make a …
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A teen heartthrob who then became one of the biggest movie stars in the world star, Johnny Depp is a rarity among actors, willing and able to mix swashbuckling leading-man performances with eccentric character roles. Perhaps best known among these parts is the internationally-beloved Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Nothing, …
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“I always wanted to be a Disney animator, but it was somewhat of an exotic idea,” Andreas Deja says. Exotic because Andreas was born in Gdansk, Poland, and grew up in Germany. “You’d tell your friends and family that your life’s goal was to go to America and work for Disney, and the reaction was, …
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“I think I always knew that I’d be an artist,” Carson Van Osten says, “and although I was too young to remember it, my parents told me that I said I wanted to draw cartoons for Walt Disney when I grew up.” And since 1970, Carson Van Osten has done just that. He’s helped bring …
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For decades, Disney Ambassadors have been a constant presence around the globe, attending special events, supporting charitable causes, and spreading goodwill. But the long tradition began with a single individual—Julie Reihm Casaletto, the very first Disneyland Ambassador. a personification of Disneyland’s world-famous spirit of friendliness and happiness Julie was born in Galveston, Texas, but the …
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Few filmmakers, no matter how successful, can claim to have created an entire universe—much less one that defined generations of young filmgoers—but that’s exactly what George Lucas did with Star Wars, the biggest film phenomenon of its time, and one that continues to make new fans to this day. George Walton Lucas, Jr. grew up …
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Few actors prove so dominant a presence that they practically define an entire genre, but Susan Lucci did just that in her four decades portraying Erica Kane on ABC’s fabled soap opera All My Children. It is a role that TV Guide deemed unequivocally the most famous character in the history of daytime television—and it …
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Daniel Elfman grew up immersed in movie music. “I could listen to the scores of Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, and Erich Korngold and identify them. I was really proud.” “I could hear something and go, ‘That’s definitely Max Steiner,’ and Nino Rota was huge. I loved playing the game of tuning into a movie on …
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