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).
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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 "Ballad of Davy Crockett," is born in Harvey, Illinois. During the Davy Crockett craze in 1955, three recorded versions of "Ballad of Davy Crockett" were in the top 30. Hayes' version was the most popular, and reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks. He also had a minor follow-up hit with "Wringle Wrangle" (written by Stan Jones who was also born on this day but in 1914), from the 1956 Disney movie Westward Ho, The Wagons. (Hayes is best known for his long-running role as Doug Williams on the NBC 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 1990s 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.
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. As president, he attended a second Inaugural Celebration at America Gardens at Epcot on May 27, 1985. (This was due to extremely cold weather having canceled many of the originally planned events in Washington, D.C., in January.) In 1990, he returned to Disneyland, with his co-emcees Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings, for its 35th anniversary. 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 and Toy Story 4, is born in Chicago, Illinois. He also voiced Otis for
Cars 2, appeared in an episode of Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place, and played the role of Agent Reese
in Disney's 1995 TV remake of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. As of 2013, fans of the ABC-TV sitcom The Goldbergs know Garlin as Murray. (Garlin may be 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.
Today is World Environment Day
JUNE 5
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.)
As an actor he portrayed Doc Slocum in 1961 Disney episodes of "Daniel Boone," and Wilson Brown
in the 1956 feature The Great Locomotive Chase.
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, Magic Kingdom guests are taken through a giant storybook featuring Pooh and all his friends.
2009:
Disney's Hollywood Studios hosts the third (of 4) Star Wars Weekends.
Celebrity guests include Jeremy Bulloch, David Prowse, and Matt Lanter.
2011:
So Random!, a new Disney Channel sketch series, premieres. The series stars the cast from Disney Channel's Sonny with a Chance (minus Demi Lovato).
2012:
Science fiction author and Disney fan Ray Bradbury, who helped design Epcot's
Spaceship Earth (and pen the original story of the attraction), passes away at
the age of 91 in Los Angeles. Born in 1920, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated among 20th
century American writers of speculative fiction. The 1998 film The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, released by
Touchstone Pictures and co-produced by Roy E. Disney, was written by Bradbury. In a career spanning
more than seventy years, he inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create.
Bradbury loved to tell the story of his lunch with Walt Disney when he asked him to run for Mayor of Los
Angeles. Walt's reply: "Why should I run for Mayor when I’m already King of Disneyland?"
The Man Who Dreamed The Future
"If we can borrow some of the concepts of Disneyland and Disney World and Epcot, then indeed the world can be a better place." -Ray Bradbury
June 5
This Day in Disney History - THE FIRST - THE ORIGINAL
Traveling in time since 1999!
2010:
SpectroMagic, which debuted on October 1, 1991 and temporarily left the Magic Kingdom for a couple years beginning in May 1999, ends its run forever at Walt Disney World. A nighttime parade, it was first introduced in 1991 as part of the park's 20th-anniversary celebrations, replacing the Main Street Electrical Parade. Its secondary run began in April 2001. The parade was about Mickey Mouse, along with the SpectroMagic Spectromen, who together created the power of SpectroMagic. After the first part of the parade with Mickey Mouse and the SpectroMagic Spectromen, the parade progressed through five different themes.
1967:
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Coast-To-Coast Personal Appearance Tour"
kicks off in Dallas, Texas. Scheduled to visit 18 cities through June 24, the tour promotes the
re-release of Disney's classic animated feature to U.S. theaters. The troupe (made up of mostly cast
members from Disneyland) travels aboard Walt Disney's private turbo jet, a Grumman G-159 Gulfstream 1.
Snow White (played by Lisa Binney) and her seven friends will make live appearances at children's hospitals,
movie theaters and shopping centers.
2018:
Disney and Pixar roll out the superhero red carpet on this night in Hollywood to
celebrate the premiere of Incredibles 2. In attendance are the film's stars Holly Hunter, Samuel L.
Jackson, Craig T. Nelson, Sophia Bush, Sarah Vowell, Bob Odenkirk and Huck Milner, along with director
Brad Bird and Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger. The animated film will open in theaters June 15.
On the same day the 2004 The Incredibles is released on 4K Ultra Blu-ray.
1970:
Voice actor, animator, film director and screenwriter Stephen J. Anderson is born in
Georgia. First joining Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1999 as a story artist on Tarzan, Anderson made his feature-
film directorial debut with the 2007 Meet the Robinsons. His credits include The Emperor's New Groove (story's artistic supervisor, voice), Brother Bear (story's artistic supervisor), James and the Giant Peach (co-director with Henry
Selick), Winnie the Pooh (co-director with Don Hall), and Frozen (additional story artist, voice of Kai).
1971:
Actor, producer, businessman, model, rapper, and singer/songwriter Mark Wahlberg is born in Boston, Massachusetts. He played quarterback Vince Papale in the 2006 Disney biographical sports film, Invincible and Private Tommy Lee Haywood in the 1994 Touchstone Pictures film, Renaissance Man.
1990:
Actress Sophie Lowe is born in Yorkshire, England. She portrayed Alice on the short-lived ABC-TV series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
2005:
The 2005 Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival ends.
1965:
Musician, producer, and composer for film, television & video game scores Tyler Bates is born in Los Angeles, California. Much of his work is in the action and horror film genres, with films like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017). His television credits include 26 episodes of The Punisher.
