1981:
Walt Disney (a new version of the popular long-running
series that first started out on ABC in 1954 as Disneyland) premieres on CBS
with part one of the 1969 hit The Love Bug. It is the first time the series airs on a
Saturday. (This makes Disney's show the first prime-time series to have appeared on all three major networks!)
2004:
Walt Disney World's theme parks close for the day as Hurricane Jeanne strikes Florida! It is WDW's third closing in its history and second time in 2004. Jeanne is the 10th named storm, the 7th hurricane, and the 5th major hurricane of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season.
1924:
Cartoonist Tony Sgroi is born in Massachusetts. He will go on to create such Disney comics for Dell Publishing as Robin Hood, Stormy the Thoroughbred, Young Davy Crockett, Man in Space, Mars and Beyond and Spin & Marty. (He will also work as a storyboard artist, layout and model designer for Hanna-Barbera, UPA, Warner Bros., and Filmation.)
1936:
Disney's Silly Symphony cartoon Three Blind Mousketeers, directed by David Hand, is released. The trio of Mouseketeers must find different ways to escape the clutches of the devious Captain Katt.
1948:
Singer-actress Olivia Newton-John, whose version of "Part of Your World"
appears on the CD Disney's Music From The Park, is born in Cambridge, England.
(A four-time Grammy award winner, she co-starred with John Travolta in the 1978 film adaptation of the Broadway
musical Grease which became one of the most successful films and movie soundtracks in Hollywood history.)
1953:
Walt Disney phones artist Herb Ryman at his home on this Saturday
morning to inquire about the possibility of Ryman drawing some overall concept
sketches of a new theme park. (Walt's brother Roy is to leave for New York on Monday to meet with possible investors.) Although Ryman isn't a Disney employee at this time ... he agrees to meet Walt at the studio. When he arrives at the Disney lot - Walt is anxiously waiting out front! The work Walt and Herb will do together over the upcoming "lost weekend" will help define the look of Disneyland. (Ryman, a master artist and teacher - and later an Imagineer - will have a career spanning more than fifty years as a production designer, art director and illustrator at many top Hollywood studios.)
1956:
The Disneyland television series airs the episode "Searching for Nature's
Mysteries" (a part-preview, part-making-of the featurette Secrets of Life).
1967:
Compass East Corporation (made up of many dummy companies responsible for purchasing the Florida land for the new Disney World theme park) is renamed the Walt Disney World Company.
1984:
Disney World's Frontier Shooting Gallery changes its name to Frontierland Shootin' Arcade.
2000:
Wild Life, a Disney animated feature originally to be released in 2002, is put into turnaround (or canceled). Described as a retro-1960's New York version of My Fair Lady, some of the Disney staff believe the story is not strong enough.
Filming begins for the Lizzie McGuire episode "When Moms Attack" (which will air on Disney Channel January 26, 2001).
The Disney-owned Lyric Street Records releases Brand New Year, a Christmas album from country music trio SHeDAISY. A country music group founded in the late 1980s by sisters Kristyn Robyn Osborn, Kelsi Marie Osborn, and Kassidy Lorraine Osborn, their first album for Lyric Street was The Whole SHeBANG, issued in 1999 and later certified platinum in the United States. (SHeDAISY appeared on the Disney Channel television program So Weird in 1999 and the ABC Network program The Drew Carey Show in 2001.)
2001:
Disney's touring production of Beauty and the Beast opens at the Denver Center
for the Performing Arts in Colorado. (The show will run through October 7th.)
Disney World hosts the seventh annual Latin Rhythm Nights
Festival at Downtown Disney Pleasure Island.
It is reported that Richard W. Cook, chairman of The Walt Disney Motion Pictures
Group, has been elected (along with 4 others) to the Los Angeles Orthopedic
Hospital Foundation's board of trustees. The hospital is a recognized world leader in research,
teaching, and patient care in orthopedic medicine. (Cook began his career in 1970 as a ride operator at
Disneyland.)
1995:
Walt Disney Records releases The Music of Disney's Cinderella. Released in conjunction with the 1995 video release of Cinderella, this album is not the original soundtrack recording - but a contemporary version of the original music.
In its earliest stages of planning, Walt Disney World
was regarded as a top-secret project and was given
code names like
Project Winter and
Project X.
2006:
Acoustic Hearts of Winter, a Christmas album from Disney pop artists
Aly & AJ, is released on Hollywood Records. The first single from the album "Greatest Time Of Year" is being used as a promotion for the Tim Allen Disney feature The Santa Clause 3.
Also released on Hollywood Records is the album V, Vanessa Hudgens's debut album. The actress is the first High School Musical cast member to release an album.
1993:
Kraft ends its sponsorship of EPCOT's The Land pavilion. Nestle will take over the following day.
1962:
Actor Patrick Bristow is born in Los Angeles, California. Fans of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody know him for his role of Patrick the sarcastic maître d' for the Tipton Hotel's restaurant. Bristow also appeared in an episode of That's So Raven.
Almost Angels, a Disney film about a group of boys in the
Vienna Boys' Choir, is released.
2008:
The 13th annual Epcot International Food & Wine Festival begins a six-week run at Disney World. Big Bad Vood Doo Daddy kicks off the Eat to the Beat Concert Series.
Disney Channel's latest music-and-dance television movie hit Camp Rock premieres in New Zealand.
In the U.S., Disney Channel debuts The Suite Life on Deck
- a spinoff in which twins Zack and Cody Martin
are relocated to a cruise ship.
Touchstone Pictures releases Miracle at St. Anna.
Ed Catmull, president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, accepts the first Randy Pausch Prize from Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center and presents the keynote address at the 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing.
Actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast Paul Newman passes away at age 83 at his farmhouse near Westport, Connecticut, of complications arising from lung cancer. Disney/Pixar fans will know him as the voice of Doc Hudson
in the 2006 release Cars. (An Academy Award-winner, Newman will be remembered for his performances in such
features as The Long, Hot Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, and The Color of
Money. Newman was also a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity.)
1927:
Disney's seventh Oswald the Lucky Rabbit film The Ocean Hop premieres at the Colony Theater in New York City.
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THIS DAY MADE
IN THE
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SEPTEMBER 26
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1930:
Disney's Silly Symphony Monkey Melodies, directed by Burt Gillett, is released.
Monkeys and apes swing through the trees to the recent hit song "Abba Dabba Dabba" and other classical
tunes and standards.
"The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films." -Paul Newman
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SEASON 3 EPISODE 3
"No, I’m not. You’re not going to call me on Saturday morning at 10 A.M. and expect me to do a masterpiece that Roy could take and get the money. It will embarrass me and it will embarrass you. You know you’ve had this idea for a long, long time. Why did you wait for the Saturday morning before the Monday to come here and ask me to make a fool of myself?" -Herb Ryman's initial reaction to Walt Disney's request on September 26, 1953
1958:
"Davy Crockett at the Alamo" airs on the ABC-TV series Walt Disney Presents.
2003:
Touchstone Pictures releases Under the Tuscan Sun. Diane Lane portrays a just-divorced writer who buys a villa in Tuscany, hoping it will be the start of a change for the better in her life.
2010:
D23 holds the first public scavenger hunt at Disneyland.
1955:
The First Annual Horseless Carriage Day is held on Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A.
13th Food & Wine Festival begins
Hurricane Jean strikes Florida
SEPTEMBER 26
1965:
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color premieres a new 3-part
Gallegher serial The Further Adventures of Gallegher. Tonight's episode "A
Case of Murder," finds a newspaper reporter being suspected of murdering a British actor.
