2003:
Epcot's 8th International Food and Wine
Festival kicks off in Florida. The festival takes place around World
Showcase and includes a month-long concert series called "Eat to the Beat!" Sister Sledge opens the
series with three half-hour concerts daily (throught October 22) on the America Gardens Theatre stage.
Golf great Tiger Woods (a Florida resident) visits Walt Disney World and takes his turn on Epcot's Mission:SPACE.
1913:
Evelyn Venable, the original model for the Columbia Pictures logo and the voice of the Blue Fairy in Disney's Pinocchio, is born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1926:
Disney's Alice Comedy Alice the Fire Fighter is released. Alice (played by Margie Gay) and
Julius attempt to put out a fire at a local hotel.
1927:
Actor George C. Scott, the voice of McLeach in Disney's 1990 film The Rescuers Down Under, is born in Wise, Virginia. (Scott is best remebered for his 1970 role of General George Patton in the Academy Award-winning Patton.)
1946:
Disney's animated educational film The Story of Menstruation is delivered to the
International Cellu-Cotton Company. It will be a popular Disney film for schoolgirls for several decades.
1955:
Mickey Mouse Club airs on ABC-TV. Today is Guest Star Day with
comedian and Disney voice actor George Givot (the voice of Tony in Lady and the Tramp).
1964:
The World's Fair in Flushing, New York (which includes 4 Disney attractions)
closes for the 1964 season. It will re-open the following spring for its second and final season.
NBC airs Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, featuring part one of "The
Tenderfoot." A three-part comedy Western, "The Tenderfoot" stars Brian Keith and Brandon de Wilde
who search for buried treasure in 1865 Arizona.
1967:
Disney's 19th animated feature film The Jungle Book
has its general release. Rudyard Kipling's classic tale of
the jungle is the last animated feature personally
supervised by Walt Disney (who passed away during the film's production). Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, the film features the voices of Phil Harris as Baloo, Sebastian Cabot as Bagheera, Louis Prima as King Louie, George Sanders as Shere Khan, Sterling Holloway as Kaa, Bruce Reitherman as Mowgli and Clint Howard as Junior. The song "Bare Necesseties," written by Terry Gilkyson, will be nominated for an Academy Award.
Also released is the live-action feature film Charlie the Lonesome Cougar. About a cougar raised by a group of loggers in the Pacific Northwest who reverts to its natural instincts, it is directed by Rex Allen (who also narrates) and Winston Hibler.
1971:
TIME magazine features an article on a newly opened
theme park - "Disney World: Pixie Dust Over Florida".
U.S. President Nixon visits Walt Disney World for a special showing of The Hall of Presidents, so he can view his Audio-Animatronic double. (Nixon had hoped to attend the opening ceremonies of WDW later in the month, but due to the difficulty in getting the proper amount of security, plans had to be canceled.)
1987:
Actor Zac Efron, the star of Disney Channel's 2006 High School
Musical, and its sequels, is born in San Luis Obispo, California.
1990:
Imagineer Roger Broggie is among those honored at the Disney Legends Awards. Company Chairman Michael Eisner states, "Any mechanical things you had to do, what you said was, 'Call Roger, he'll know how to fix it.' Without him, Disneyland wouldn't have happened."
2001:
Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party premieres in
Disney World for the first time this season.
2002:
The Disneyland Resort salutes the American League pennant-winning Anaheim Angels
with a pep rally at Downtown Disney.
2006:
The upcoming Disney World musical version of "Finding Nemo," receives a short preview presentation on the stage of Broadway’s Palace Theatre in New York City. Finding Nemo - The Musical is the first major musical produced for the Walt Disney World Resort by Disney Creative Entertainment.
1935:
Emmy Award-winning actor Peter Boyle is born in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He portrayed Mr. Whittle in Disney's live-action The Santa Clause, and Father Time in both The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3. (Boyle's best known roles include Frank Barone on the hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and the Monster in Mel Brooks' comedy feature Young Frankenstein.)
King Louie (the orangutan
voiced by Louis Prima) was
one of the characters created especially for Disney's 1967
The Jungle Book.
Louie doesn't appear in Rudyard Kipling's original
1894 story.
Bagheera: "You wouldn't marry a panther, would you?"
Baloo: "I don't know. Come to think of it, no panther ever asked me."
2007:
An annual holiday tradition kicks off at the El Capitan Theater with the re-release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. The El Capitan offers a special opening-night filmmakers' panel with guests producer Don Hahn, feature producer Denise Di Novi, director Henry Selick and supervising animator Mike Belzer. Nightmare will open to theaters in Disney Digital 3-D the following day (and run through November 18).
The Best of Both Worlds Tour, a 54-date North American run starring Miley Cyrus as both herself and in character as Hannah Montana, kicks off in St. Louis, Missouri. Hollywood Records recording artists Jonas Brothers also appear. (Tour tickets for each date have sold
out in record time.)
1995:
Final paving for the track at the new Walt Disney World Speedway takes place.
Despite 1995 being the wettest June-July in Orlando on record (75 inches of
rain), including Hurricane Erin, the construction has been completed on-time!
The Jungle is JUMPIN'!
1997:
The Wonderful World of Disney airs "Sabrina The Teenage Witch: The Movie" on ABC-TV.
1965:
Pixar character designer, writer and art director Ralph Eggleston is born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He directed the Academy Award-winning short For the Birds, which premiered alongside Monsters Inc. - which he also co-wrote. Eggleston's credits include WALL-E, Finding Nemo (which earned him an Annie Award), The Incredibles and the original Toy Story (which also won him an Annie Award for Best Art Direction).
2008:
Radio Disney hosts the "planet premiere" of the High School Musical 3: Senior Year soundtrack. The album (to be released on October 21 in the U.S. - 3 days before the film's release) is played on the air in its entirety. "Now or Never" the opening musical number had its world premiere on Radio Disney last July.
The first foreign-language production of Mary Poppins opens in Göteborg, Sweden at the Göteborgs Operan.
OCTOBER 18
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THIS DAY MADE IN THE USA
OCTOBER 18
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1979:
A production of Snow White Live! debuts at New York City's Radio City Music
Hall. A popular but limited-run stage show version of Disney's animated classic, it stars Mary Jo Salerno - in her professional debut - as Snow White. "Snow White" is produced by Disney veteran Robert F. Jani (also the creative mind behind Disneyland’s original Main Street Electrical Parade). The show will later embark on a national tour with stops in Washington D.C. (including a special performance for U.S. President Jimmy Carter) and Chicago, Illinois (hometown of Salerno). Popular demand will bring the production back to Radio City before permanently closing in March of 1980.
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Peter Boyle born
1989:
"21 Men and a Baby," the fourth episode of the new sitcom The Nutt House
(co-created by Mel Brooks for Touchstone/Disney) debuts.
The series stars Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman.
1960:
Disney's adventure film Ten Who Dared is released. The story of United States Army officer John Wesley Powell, who was the first to travel up the Colorado River, with other nine men in 1869, to make a map of the region, the film stars Brian Keith, John Beal, James Drury, and David Stollery (who as a youn teen was first known for his role as Marty Markham on Disney's The Adventures of Spin and Marty).
1970:
The Wonderful World of Disney airs on NBC with part one of "The Wacky Zoo of Morgan," starring Hal Holbrook, Joe Flynn, Anne Seymour and Wally Cox. Mayor Philbrick (Flynn) tries to help Maggie Hargrove (Seymour) push through a proposed art museum ... which will be built where a zoo currently stands. Hoping the zoo will fail, Philbrick assigns accountant Mitch Collins (Holbrook) the task of running it. To everyone's surprise Collins turns the zoo around!
