Ludwig Von Drake and Walt Disney

Did You Know? 8 Genius Facts About Ludwig Von Drake

By Jim Fanning Hello there, you kooky people, you! Are you in for a treat! 60 years ago—on September 24, 1961—the egotistical, erudite, eccentric professor Ludwig Von Drake made his debut on the premiere episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. The only major animated character Walt created especially for television, Professor Von Drake …

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Ward Kimball

Jiminy Cricket and the Nine Old Men

By Jim Fanning The Yuletide season encompasses many an enchanting tradition, and, as no less an authority than Jiminy Cricket pointed out in the beloved Disney TV episode “From All of Us to All of You,” originally telecast in 1958, “one of the nicest things that can happen this time of the year is to …

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D23 2017 Gold Member Gift: Walt Disney's Nine Old Men

Animation Artifacts: The Nine Old Men Take the Spotlight

By Jim Fanning Stars. They are meant to shine. And even when these bright lights are not necessarily noticed or significantly celebrated, their brilliance continues to sparkle. So it is with the true luminaries of animation as produced by Walt Disney, his top team of elite animators he affectionately nicknamed the Nine Old Men. This …

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Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, and Bambi

Get to Know the Animators Behind Your Favorite Disney Films

Celebrate some of the most legendary artists behind classic Disney animated films with this year’s D23 Member Gift. By Greg Ehrbar The first “nine old men” were Supreme Court justices—all more than 90 years old—who were trying to block President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the mid-1930s. When Walt Disney selected his first-string supervising animators, …

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Here Comes Tomorrow

The secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space known only as “Tomorrowland” won’t be revealed until the film opens this Friday, May 22. But in the meantime, we’ve put together this list of things Disney fans might not know about Tomorrowland and its talented team of filmmakers and actors.

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