To finance Disneyland,
Walt Disney sold a vacation
home and
even borrowed
against his
life insurance.
1881:
Dr. Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren, industrialist, financier, and philanthropist, is born in Uddevalla, Sweden. Financier of the Alweg monorail system, his company will develop the original Disneyland monorail. The Alweg name is an acronym of Dr. Wenner-Gren's name (Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren).
1905:
Character actor John Abbott - the voice of Akela the Wolf in Disney's 1967 classic The Jungle Book - is born in London, England.
1925:
Actor-singer Bill Hayes, who earned a gold record for "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," is born in Harvey, Illinois. He also had a minor follow-up hit with "Wringle Wrangle" (written by Stan Jones), from the 1956 Disney movie Westward Ho, The Wagons. (Hayes is best known for his long-running role as Doug Williams on the television soap Days of Our Lives, a character he first played in 1970.)
1934:
Walt Disney Productions is granted a trademark of "Mickey Mouse" for use in books and newspaper comic strips.
1961:
Voice artist Mary Kay Bergman, whose talents can be heard in Disney's Beauty and
the Beast, Mulan and Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, is born in Los
Angeles. From 1989 until her early death in 1999, she was Disney's official voice for Snow White. (She also
gained popularity for voicing most of the female characters on the animated TV series South Park.)
1972:
Walt Disney World's If You Had Wings attraction, sponsored by Eastern Airlines (the official airline of Walt Disney World) opens. It is located in Tomorrowland across from the Mission To The Moon attraction. If You Had Wings takes guests on a journey through some of Eastern's tourist destinations, such as Mexico City, New Orleans and the Bahamas. The attraction will entertain millions of visitors for the next 15 years.
1976:
Actor Marc Worden, a member of the 90s television series MMC (The Mickey Mouse Club) for seasons 3-7, is born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
1989:
Today is Music Day on Disney Channel's MMC.
1995:
Walt Disney World formally announces its newest project ...
Animal Kingdom. Construction will begin in August.
1998:
Disney's 36th animated feature film Mulan premieres at the Hollywood Bowl in California. The film is the first (of three) produced primarily at the animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios in Florida. Loosely based on various versions of the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, Mulan features the voices of Ming-Na, Eddie Murphy, June Foray, Pat Morita, and George Takei. Also featured are the singing voices of Lea Salonga, Donny Osmond, and Matthew Wilder. (The film will open across the U.S. June 19.)
2000:
The 3 1/2 minute Disney/Pixar short For The Birds is released
at the Annecy Film Festival in France.
Disney's Touchstone Pictures releases the action film Gone in Sixty Seconds
starring Nicolas Cage.
2001:
Disney's 1988 animated Oliver & Company is released on VHS and DVD as is the 1948 live-action film So Dear to My Heart.
2004:
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performs the score to Plane Crazy (a 1928 Mickey Mouse short) live at UCLA's Royce Hall. It is preceded by a screening of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr. (the film that influenced Walt's first talking Mickey short Steamboat Willie).
Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. President, passes at the age of 93 at his Bel Air, California home. An actor and governor of California (for 2 terms), Reagan took part in the TV broadcast of Disneyland's grand opening in July 1955. At 4:30 on this day, the American flag in Disneyland's Town Square is lowered to half mast.
Johnny Depp is awarded Best Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards for his role in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
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2007:
Disney Legend Charles Ridgway appears at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to promote his book Spinning Disney's World. The
event is hosted by Jeff Pepper, webmaster of 2719 Hyperion.
Diane Disney Miller (daughter of Walt Disney) rededicates the Walt Disney
Elementary School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It's been fifty years since her dad Walt first
came to the school (the first to ever bear his name).
JUNE
1962:
Comic actor Jeff Garlin, the voice of Captain McCrea in Disney/Pixar's WALL-E and Buttercup in Toy Story 3, is born in Chicago, Illinois. He also appears in an episode of the Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place. (Garlin is best known for his role of Jeff Greene, Larry David's manager on the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm.)
1930:
Disney's Silly Symphony cartoon Arctic Antics is released. Directed by Burt Gillett, polar bears (including a cub who looks like an albino Mickey Mouse) cavort in the midnight sun, joined by walruses, seals, and penguins.
1999:
Disney's newest stage musical Der Glöckner von Notre Dame
opens at the Musical Theatre Berlin in Berlin, Germany. Based on
the 1996 Disney animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the musical features
American Drew Sarich as Quasimodo.
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Today is World Environment Day
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JUNE 5
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JUNE 5
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1987:
Disney marks the 50th anniversary of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a reunion of performers who had assisted in the portrayal of Snow White at the theme parks. Nearly 100 past and present Snow Whites gather in both Disneyland and Disney World on this day. (Tokyo Disneyland, which had 17 Snow Whites since it opened four and a half years prior to this reunion, had to cancel its scheduled event because none of the women, all American, could attend.)
THIS SITE MADE
IN THE
USA
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." -Ronald Reagan
1957:
The Disneyland television series airs its final episode
"Antarctica: Operation Deepfreeze," of the season.
SEASON 3 EPISODE 26
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1914:
Songwriter and actor Stan Jones is born in Douglas, Arizona. A rodeo cowboy, miner,
logger, firefighter, and park ranger, Jones found true success as a songwriter and worked off and on for Disney from
1955 up to his death in 1963. Jones wrote all the songs sung by the Triple R campers throughout the first two
seasons of Disney's serial The Adventures of Spin and Marty - including "The Triple R Song." He penned "Wringle
Wrangle" for the film Westward Ho the Wagons and worked on the soundtracks for The Searchers and The Great
Locomotive Chase. (His most famous song, "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky", was written in 1948 when he worked for the
National Park Service in Death Valley, California. In 1997 Jones was inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame.)
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh opens to the public at Disney World.
A dark ride based on the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne, guests are taken through a giant storybook
featuring Pooh and all his friends.
