2005:
Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida welcomes
its one-millionth athlete Desirre Wilkerson, a 13-year-old girls'
volleyball player from the Kentucky Indiana Volleyball Academy.
1892:
Actor Basil Rathbone is born to English parents in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the narrator of the "The Wind in the Willows" segment of Disney's 1949 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. (Sherlock Holmes fans know Rathbone for the dozen mystery features he starred in during the 1940s. Horror fans know him as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein in the 1938 Son of Frankenstein.)
1910:
Popular character actress Mary Wickes is born in
St. Louis, Missouri. She was the animators' live-action model
for Cruella DeVil in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians and
the voice of wisecracking gargoyle Laverne in The Hunchback of
Notre Dame (her last film). Wickes also appeared in the live-action Disney features Snowball Express and
Napoleon and Samantha. She was Sister Mary Lazarus in the 1992 Touchstone Pictures comedy Sister Act
and the 1993 follow-up Sister Act 2. (A veteran of 50 feature films, 27 major Broadway productions, and 10
television series, Wickes was a longtime personal friend of Lucille Ball.)
1920:
Actor Rex Everhart, the voice of Maurice (Belle's father) in
Disney's 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast, is born in
Watseka, Illinois. (Fans of Friday the 13th know him as Enos the truck driver.)
1926:
Comedic character actor Paul Lynde, who played the sportscaster in Disney's 1963 Son of Flubber, is born in Mount Vernon, Ohio. (TV fans will remember him for his many appearances on the sitcom "Bewitched" and the game show "The Hollywood Squares.")
1931:
Disney's 8-minute Mickey Mouse cartoon The Delivery Boy, directed by Burt Gillett, is released. Mickey delivers a wagon full of musical instruments when he stops to sing and dance with Minnie.
1949:
Stage, film, and television actor Simon Callow, the voice of the Grasshopper in Disney's 1996 James and the Giant Peach, is born in London, England.
1953:
Comedian-actor Tim Allen is born in Denver, Colorado. First rising to fame as a stand-up
comedian, his first major role was playing Tim Taylor on the Disney/ABC-TV sitcom Home Improvement. Allen is
best known to Disney/Pixar fans as the voice of Buzz Lightyear for all 4 of the Toy Story animated features. He
also starred in all 3 of Walt Disney Pictures The Santa Clause films, as well as Jungle 2 Jungle, The Shaggy
Dog, and the Touchstone releases Wild Hogs and Big Trouble. Allen was named a Disney Legend in 1999.
1989:
Comedic actress (and future Disney Legend) Betty White appears on Disney Channel's MMC. Today is Guest Day!
2000:
The Broadway cast album of Disney's Aida is released. (It will win best
Musical Show Album in 2001 at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards.)
2002:
Academy Award-winning singer-songwriter Randy Newman (who wrote the music for Disney's Monsters, Inc. and the song "You've Got a Friend in Me" for the 1995 classic
Toy Story) is inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame during a dinner and ceremony
in New York City. Other inductees include Sting, Ashford & Simpson, and Barry Manilow.
President Bush assembles corporate America heavyweights (including Disney Chairman Michael Eisner) at the White House to encourage businesses that foster volunteerism among their workers. Eisner tells Bush: "We're all committed to showing what corporate America can do to lead
and show by example that not only it is good business, it's good for the community, it's fun, it's rewarding and it is unbelievably helpful to the country."
2003:
Bering Strait (the Grammy-nominated Russian group) kick off a lineup of global performers for the Epcot World Music Concert Series.
The Lizzie McGuire episode "The Gordo Shuffle" debuts on the Disney Channel.
The series Even Stevens concludes with the Disney Channel Original Movie The Even Stevens Movie. Based on the popular Disney Channel original series that's been running since 2000, the movie will draw an audience of 5.1 million viewers!
Disney-MGM hosts the fifth (and final) Star Wars Weekends of the season. Celebrity guests include Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) and Michonne Bourriague (Aurra Sing).
2006:
Disney's Broadway hit The Lion King reopens at the Minskoff Theater a week after leaving the New Amsterdam Theater (the show's original home). The New Amsterdam will be the home to Mary Poppins next fall.
Actor Basil Rathbone (born on this
day in 1892) can be heard in
Disney's 1986 animated The Great Mouse Detective. Though he had
passed away in 1967, a 25-second
dialogue taken from one of
Rathbone's old Sherlock Holmes
radio shows was used in the
animated
feature as
the voice of
... Sherlock
Holmes!
1986:
Legendary jazz clarinetist and big band leader Benny Goodman passes away at age
77 in Chicago. Disney's 1946 animated film Make Mine Music featured Goodman and his orchestra performing
the song "All The Cats Join In." In Spring 1961, Goodman and his band performed many times at Disneyland! Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in the United States, in the mid-1930s. His sold-out concert at New York's Carnegie Hall on the evening of January 16, 1938 is regarded as one of the most significant in jazz history. The show signified that jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences.
Actress Kat Dennings is born Katherine Victoria Litwack, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
First known for her starring role as Max Black in the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls (2011–2017), she portrayed Darcy Lewis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013), and the Disney+ miniseries WandaVision (2021).
JUNE
1948:
Film executive, producer, and film director Joe Roth is born in New York City. He acted as chairman of Walt Disney Studios between 1994-2000.
JUNE 13
JUNE 13
THIS SITE MADE
IN THE
USA
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1960:
Life Magazine features actress Hayley Mills "A Pert and Perfect Pollyana" on its cover.
Disney Legend Tim Allen born
"I love playing good comedy with a heart, comedy which touches the audience." -Mary Wickes
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2010:
The tenth episode of "Good Luck Charlie" - "Take Mel Out to the Ball Game" - airs for the first time on Disney Channel. When Teddy (Bridgit Mendler) realizes that she has a great-uncle named Mel (played by guest star Blake Clark) through her father, she learns that they do not speak to each other any more. Feeling guilty, she and best friend Ivy (Raven Goodwin) decide to take Uncle Mel to a baseball game, where he proceeds to cause quite the ruckus!
Toy Story 3 premieres in Hollywood at the El Capitan Theatre.
The Pixar animated film will be generally released June 18.
"Toy Story 3 is a big massive adventure that has you constantly on the edge of your seat. It’s part Great Escape, with the same kind of excitement as Dorothy escaping from the Wicked Witch of the West." -Tom Hanks
1984:
Disneyland Grad Nite '84 takes place featuring the live sounds of Sparks, Dwight Twilley, Dazz Band, Matthew Wilder, Jason and the Scorchers, and Krash.
Actor Phillip Van Dyke is born in San Francisco, California. He's best known for his role as the goblin Luke in the first two installments of Disney's Halloweentown film series.
2008:
The second (of 4) Star Wars Weekends takes place at Disney's Hollywood
Studios. Celebrity guests include fan favorites Peter Mayhew and David Prowse.
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2011:
A large family gets a backyard fashioned after Disney's Animal Kingdom in the second episode of My Yard Goes Disney, hosted by Brandon Johnson.
2012:
An expanded and spruced-up Carnation Café debuts on Main Street, U.S.A.,
in Disneyland park.
A 4.1 earthquake in Yorba Linda that shake parts of Southern California on this
evening adds a little extra unexpected excitement to the star-studded red carpet opening of the new Cars Land at the Disneyland Resort. Some of the actors and singers behind the scenes of Cars and stars of the ABC network and Disney Channel walk the red carpet for the premiere party for Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. Cars Land is a major part of the $1 billion makeover designed to create
an excitement and allure of a comparable caliber to that of the theme park's sibling, Disneyland Park. The new and expansive attraction will open to the public Friday, June 15. (A 2.4 magnitude aftershock is reported a few minutes after the main quake.)
"It's an amazing feeling I have right now to see the world we created actually come to life." -John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar studios
June 13
This Day in Disney History - THE FIRST - THE ORIGINAL
Traveling in time since 1999!
1981:
Actor Chris Evans is born Christopher Robert Evans in Boston, Massachusetts.
He is best known for his superhero role of Steve Rogers / Captain America in such films as Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), and Avengers: Infinity War (2018). In 2022, Evans voiced Buzz Lightyear for the animated sci-fi adventure film Lightyear.
1951:
Actor Stellan Skarsgård is born in Gothenburg, Sweden. His roles include Bootstrap Bill Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) & Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), Dr. Erik Selvig in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Thor (2011), The Avengers (2012), Thor: The Dark World (2013), & Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and The Grand Duke in Cinderella (2015).
1978:
Actor Ethan Embry is born in Huntington Beach, California. His credits include the Touchstone film Sweet Home Alabama (2002) as Bobby Ray, Disney's Hercules: The Animated Series (1998) as Melampus, a 2012 episode of Grey's Anatomy, and the ABC series Once Upon a Time (2013) as Greg Mendell. (Fans of the 1996 film That Thing You Do! will recognize him as The Bass Player.)
1932:
Singer and host Bob McGrath, a fixture on TV's Sesame Street for over
38 years, is born in Ottawa, Illinois. During the summers in the mid-1980s, Epcot hosted the
All-American College Orchestra. McGrath appeared many times as one of the celebrity guests on the
America Gardens Stage with the orchestra.
1999:
Actor, producer, and director Douglas Seale passes away at age 85 in New York City.
He provided the voice of Krebbs the koala in The Rescuers Down Under (1990) and, two years later, the Sultan in Aladdin (1992). Seale also appeared in Touchstone's Ernest Saves Christmas (1988) playing the role of Santa Claus and Touchstone's Mr. Destiny (1990) as Boswell.
1943:
Actor Malcolm McDowell is born in England. His live-action Disney/Touchstone credits include Mr. Magoo, Princess of Thieves, Just Visiting, Star Wars Rebels, and Hidalgo. His voice credits include Bolt, the Aladdin TV series, Phineas and Ferb, and Jake and the Never Land Pirates. (McDowell is probably best known for the controversial roles of Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and the title character in Caligula.)
2021:
Actor Ned Beatty passes away at age 83 in Los Angeles, California. One of the top character actors in film, he was the voice of Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear in Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 3: The Video Game. Beatty also played Ed Conner (Dan's father) in 6 episodes of the ABC sitcom Roseanne (1989-94), and Sheriff Abe McConnell in Disney's family adventure Where the Red Ferns Grow (2003). Appearing in more than 160 films, his credits included Deliverance (1972), All the President's Men (1976), Network (1976), Superman (1978), Hear My Song (1991), Rudy (1993), and Baggage Claim (2013).
1977:
Child actor Matthew Garber, best known for playing Michael Banks in the 1964 film Mary Poppins, passes away at age 21 in England. (Sadly, Garber contracted hepatitis, which later affected his pancreas.) He appeared in only two other films, The Three Lives of Thomasina and The Gnome-Mobile, all three times appearing alongside actress Karen Dotrice. Garber will be posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2004.
1987:
Actress Geraldine Page, who earned critical recognition as a stage actress on Broadway as well as in feature films and television, passes away at age 62 in New York City. She played Mrs. Dune in the 1967 musical The Happiest Millionaire and voiced Madam Medusa in the 1977 animated The Rescuers.
