Jim Crouch - my 139th pick as a Disney Legend

Jim Crouch, Principal Color and Paint Specialist at Walt Disney Imagineering, is my 139th choice to be named a Disney Legend. A gifted artist, Jim's work is evident throughout the parks, including the paintings of infamous Pirates along the attractions interior queue walls. Crouch is also responsible for the portraits of Captains Jack Sparrow and Barbossa that appear in the attraction queue. Jim's likeness makes a cameo appearance as one of the doomed bridegrooms in the Haunted Mansion's Attic Scene.

His significant contributions can be seen in all of the Disney Parks in regards to paint and sculptures. His production paintings in the park include the Ghost Host in the Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion and paintings of infamous pirates along the Disneyland attractions queue walls, among others. He recently led a team of artists who did a complete makeover of Peter Pan's Flight at some of the theme parks.

Phil Dike - my 138th pick as a Disney Legend

Phil Dike was an artist, teacher, and story scenario developer who worked for the Disney studios from 1935 to 1945. He is my 138th pick to be named a Disney Legend. At the Walt Disney Studios he taught art and color theory while working on animated films. Among the many classic films he worked on were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia and The Three Caballeros. In 1938, Dike served as president of the California Water Color Society.

After World War II, Dike left Disney and went back into teaching and painting full time.

Alan Silvestri - my 137th choice to be named a Disney Legend

Composer and conductor Alan Zilvestri is my 137th pick to be named a Disney Legend.

For Disney, Silvestri has scored the music for Flight of the Navigator, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Parent Trap, Lilo and Stitch, Stitch! the Movie, A Christmas Carol, The Wild, The Avengers, Captain America: the First Avenger and the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War. He has also composed the scores of several Miramax, Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures films such as Super Mario Brothers, Judge Dredd, Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride II, Outrageous Fortune, Holy Man, and Reindeer Games.

Ellen Woodbury - my 136th choice to be named a Disney Legend

Animator Ellen Woodbury is my 136th choice to be named as a Disney Legend. She was an animator on many of the Disney Decade classics that Generation X and Millennials grew up. She attended the Experimental Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts under the mentorship of Jules Engle.

Her Disney Filmography

1986    The Great Mouse Detective                 Assistant Animator

1988    Oliver and Company                       Animation Assistant

1989    The Little Mermaid                        Character Animator

1990    The Rescuers Down Under             Character Animator

1991    Beauty and the Beast                 Animator: Maurice

1992    Aladdin                            Animator: Abu

1994    The Lion King             Supervising Animator: Zazu

1995    Pocahontas               Additional Animator

1996    The Hunchback of Notre Dame         Additional Animator

1997    Hercules                             Supervising Animator: Pegasus

1999    Tarzan                  Additional Animator

1999    Fantasia 2000                  Animator: Rhapsody in Blue segment

2002    Treasure Planet                        Supervising Animator: Silver's Crew

2004    Home on the Range                 Animator: Mrs. Caloway

2005    Chicken Little                   Animator

2007    Meet the Robinsons                    Animator

Slim Pickens - my 135th pick as a Disney Legend

Actor Slim Pickens is my 135th pick to be named a Disney Legend.

He acted in several Disney movies: The Great Locomotive Chase as Pete Bracken, Tonka as Ace, Never a Dull Moment as Cowboy Schaffer, The Apple Dumpling Gang as Frank Stillwell, and famously The Black Hole as the voice of Old B.O.B.. He also played Ewald Plunkett in the Swamp Fox, Old Bill Williams in The Saga of Andy Burnett, Newt Pribble in  Bristle Face, and other roles, appearing in at least 19 episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. He was Rafe Jeffers in Wagon Train and Wiley Crup in Savage Sam. He played Bucky Steele in the television film Runaway on Rogue River.

Robert "Bud" Washo - my 134th pick as a Disney Legend

Robert "Bud" Washo was a senior designer for WED Enterprises or Imagineering. He is my 134th pick to be named a Disney Legend. He headed the Disneyland Staff Shop, where he supervised concrete and plastic modeling.
He was hired in 1954 as the superintendent of the Staff and Plaster shop for Disney Land Park. He and his crew were responsible for the molding, casting, and finishing of a vast array of unique Disney Park elements including Autopia cars, Jungle Cruise elephants, Primeval World dinosaurs, fiberglass stone archways, plaster rock battlements, and golden castle turrets. To create the mountain for the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Bud and his team laid four acres of plaster. In Orlando, he used an old fertilizer storage shed as the initial workshop for molding and creating the components for Cinderella castle in Walt Disney World Resort.

Bud Washo would go on to manage the Architectural Ornamentation Department at Walt Disney World. Washo and his departments were responsible for modeling pieces used for Animatronics, building facades and sculpting details for specific attractions. His father Bill Washo worked with him.
In addition to the theme parks he helped make exhibits for Disney's projects in the 1964 World's Fair. He was a member of the Disney Golden Years Club.

Washo has a window in his honor on Main Street (which he shares with father Bill) in the Magic Kingdom and at Disneyland (as seen above).

Cornett Wood - my 133rd pick as a Disney Legend

Animator Cornett Wood is my 133rd pick to be named a Disney Legend. He served as an animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo and Fantasia for Walt Disney. He worked on several shorts such as The Old Mill, Donald's Nephews, Polar Trappers, The Whalers, The Brave Little Tailor, Donald's Lucky Day, Society Dog Show, Tugboat Mickey, The Little Whirlwind, and Gentleman's Gentleman.    

After his time with Disney he transferred to animating for Warner Brothers and worked on many Looney Tunes cartoons.  He evidently left Disney after the animator's strike.

Pete Crimmings - my 132nd pick as a Disney Legend

Pete Crimmings, an executive for the Disney Theme Parks is my 132nd choice to be named a Disney Legend. He worked for the company for many years in several different capacities. He has a window at the Magic Kingdom near the Crystal Arts store, along with Bob Allen, Dick Evans, Bill Hoelscher, Bob Mathieson and Bill Sullivan. Allen, Sullivan and Mathieson are already Disney Legends. Crimmings was, along with these gentleman, an initial member of the Park Operating Committee. He was in charge of the transportation department for some time at Walt Disney World.

At Disneyland he was in charge of Tomorrowland for some period of time as well. He was mentor to Disney Legend Tom Nabbe as well.

He is a difficult guy to get any research done. I would love to know more about him, but I figure he was part of the opening day management team at WDW and he is on the Main Street window with a bunch of current Legends. He is mentioned often is memories of Legends like Bill Sullivan and Marty Skylar, so he must be rather deserving of this honor.

Eleven Disney Legends announced - only three of them were on my list

The Disney Company recently announced their 2017 Disney Legends. They are:

• Mark Hamill || Luke Skywalker in Star Wars 
• Carrie Fisher* || Princess Leia in Star Wars 
• Stan Lee || Marvel Publisher 
• Wayne Jackson || Walt Disney Imagineer (Audio-Animatronics and construction) 
• Clyde “Gerry ” Geronimi* || Animator, 1931-1959; Supervising Director of Sleeping Beauty 
• Manuel Gonzales* || Animator and Comics Artist, 1936-1981 
• Garry Marshall* || Film Director (Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries) 
• Julie Taymor || The Lion King Broadway Director 
• Oprah Winfrey || Because why not?

*deceased at the time of the announcement

UPDATE - Later additions were made to this list and they include actress Whoopi Goldberg and Marvel creator and writer Jack Kirby. Goldberg was on this list at the time of the announcement. Kirby was not, but he was on my radar. He is a great pick to go in with Stan Lee.

The names marked in red are the only names I have included on my list thus far. I had anticipated in including Manuel Gonzales and Wayne Jackson in the top 250. I do have a list of nearly 10,000 names I put together as I put together this blog. All of these names were on the the "Big List." I am going to leave Stan Lee and Gerry Geronimi and just edit them to include the fact they have been "chosen." It will be interesting to see once I get my 250 done, how many get chosen over the years. I will not be including Gonzales or Jackson in the blog now however.

Terrell Stapp - my 131st choice as a Disney Legend

Terrell Stapp was an animator for Disney on several classic animated films. Stapp is my 131st choice to be named a Disney Legend. He worked as the art director on four classic films, Dumbo, Fantasia (segment "Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria"), Pinocchio  and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He was a layout artist for the shorts Mother Goose Goes Hollywood, The Old Mill, Woodland Café and The Band Concert.

He also was a layout artist for the episode The Plausible Impossible on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. His daughter, Nancy Stapp also worked in the art department at Disney for awhile.

Andrew Stanton - my 130th pick as a Disney Legend

Andrew Stanton is my 130th choice to be named a Disney Legend. Stanton joined Pixar in January 1990 and was the second animator (John Lasseter being the first) and ninth overall employee hired at the studio. He has been an animator, writer, director, producer and vocie actor for the studio. In addition to his direction and writing work for Pixar, he voiced Crush, the laidback turtle in Finding Nemo.

His film work includes writing and directing Finding Nemo and WALL-E; both films earned him the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He directed his first Live-Action Disney film, John Carter, in 2012.

According to the Pixar Talk website "Finding Nemo‘s roots back to a 1992 visit to Six Flags Marine World and started Andrew thinking about the amazing possibilities of capturing an undersea world in computer animation. The film was inspired by a fleeting moment of realization in which Stanton observed that his overprotective fatherly instincts were preventing him from properly bonding with his son. It tells the tale of a young clown fish who is whisked from the ocean to a dentist-office aquarium and his father’s quest to bring his son back home safely. As with Stanton’s other writing efforts, Finding Nemo focused on character development and provided an emotional resonance and heart rarely seem in animation."

1995    Toy Story               Story/Screenplay/Additional Voices

1998    A Bug's Life          Co-Director/Story/Screenplay/Voice Actor (Fly Near a "Bug Zapper")

1999    Toy Story 2                 Story/Screenplay/Voice Actor

2000    Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins   Voice Actor

2001    Monsters, Inc.           Executive Producer/Screenplay

2003    Finding Nemo            Director/Story/Screenplay/Voice Actor

2004    The Incredibles           Additional Voices

2006    Cars     Voice Actor

2007    Ratatouille        Executive Producer

2008    WALL-E                  Director/Writer/Additional Voices

2009    Partly Cloudy           Executive Producer

2009    Up                      Executive Producer

2010    Toy Story 3     Story/Screenplay

2012    Brave                     Story

2012    John Carter     Director/Story/Writer

2015    Inside Out       Executive Producer

2016    Finding Dory   Director/Story/Screenplay/Voice Actor

2018    Toy Story 4     Story/Screenplay

Alan Young- my 129th pick as a Disney Legend

Alan Young is my 129th choice to be named a Disney Legend. One of his best known TV roles being that of Wilbur Post on Mister Ed. For Disney, he provided the voice of Scrooge McDuck from 1974 to 2016. He voiced this famous duck in many Disney movies and television shows including: Ducktales, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Disney Sing-Along-Songs: The Twelve Days of Christmas , Mickey Mouse Works , Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas, The House of Mouse, Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, Mickey's Around the World in 80 Days and several video games and albums. He also voiced Hiram Flaversham in The Great Mouse Detective, and Doctor Cooper in the TaleSpin episode "The Old Man and the Sea Duck". He also played Dr. Winger in The Cat from Outer Space.

He also voiced Mickey Mouse and Merlin in the Disneyland record album An Adaptation of Dickens' Christmas Carol, performed by The Walt Disney Players, which would be the first and only time that Young voiced them. The album also marked Young's first performance as Scrooge McDuck.