Ray Huffine - my 173rd pick to be named a Disney Legend

Animator and artist Ray Huffine is my 173rd pick to be named a Disney Legend. He worked on some of the greatest Disney Classic of the Golden Age of Disney.

His work with Disney includes the following films and shorts:

1960 Fowled Up Falcon (Short) (background artist)

 1960 Southern Fried Hospitality (Short) (background artist)

 1960 Fish Hooked (Short) (background artist)

 1960 Hunger Strife (Short) (background artist)

 1956 In the Bag (Short) (background artist)

 1955 Bearly Asleep (Short) (background artist)

 1955 Lady and the Tramp (backgrounds)

 1955 No Hunting (Short) (background artist)

 1954 The Flying Squirrel (Short) (background artist)

 1954 Grin and Bear It (Short) (background artist)

 1954 Dragon Around (Short) (background artist)

 1954 Spare the Rod (Short) (background artist)

 1953 Canvas Back Duck (Short) (background artist)

 1953 Rugged Bear (Short) (background artist)

 1953 Peter Pan (background artist)

 1952 The Little House (Short) (background artist)

 1952 Two Chips and a Miss (Short) (background artist)

 1952 Lambert the Sheepish Lion (Short) (background artist)

 1951 Fathers Are People (Short) (background artist)

 1951 Get Rich Quick (Short) (background artist)

 1951 Alice in Wonderland (backgrounds)

 1951 Plutopia (Short) (background artist)

 1951 Chicken in the Rough (Short) (background artist)

 1950 Morris the Midget Moose (Short) (background artist)

 1950 The Brave Engineer (Short) (background artist)

 1950 Cinderella (backgrounds)

 1949 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (backgrounds)

 1949 The Wind in the Willows (Short) (background artist)

 1948 So Dear to My Heart (background artist)

 1948 Melody Time (background artist)

 1947 Bongo (short) (background)

 1947 Mail Dog (Short) (background artist)

 1947 Fun and Fancy Free (background artist)

 1947 Crazy with the Heat (Short) (background artist)

 1946 Song of the South (background artist)

 1946 The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met (Short) (background artist)

 1946 In Dutch (Short) (background artist)

 1946 Make Mine Music (backgrounds)

 1945 The Legend of Coyote Rock (Short) (background artist)

 1945 African Diary (Short) (background artist)

 1944 The Three Caballeros (background artist)

 1943 Victory Through Air Power (Documentary) (background artist)

 1942 Bambi (backgrounds)

 1941 The Reluctant Dragon (background artist)

 1940 Fantasia (background artist - segment "The Pastoral Symphony")

 1940 Pinocchio (backgrounds)

Bob Mattey - my 172nd pick to be named a Disney Legend

Bob Mattey is my 172nd choice to be named a Disney Legend. Below is an article for the D23 website which details his fantastic career with Disney.

By Becky Cline

Legendary mechanical effects man Robert A. Mattey Jr. began his Hollywood career in the late 1920s, while visiting his father, a costume jeweler who created the faux coins used in the 1927 epic film The King of Kings. The 16-year-old Bob was fascinated by the production process, and was hooked for life.

Shortly after, Bob began working in motion pictures himself, most notably for RKO and Universal Studios in films such as King Kong (1933) and Tarzan and His Mate (1934). Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Bob did uncredited work for some of the best special effects supervisors in the industry, building werewolves, carnivorous plants, and much more.


In the early 1950s, Disney art director Harper Goff saw the giant mechanized octopus that Bob had created for the John Wayne film Wake of the Red Witch (1948) and knew that he had found just the man to help him through production troubles in Disney’s new epic adventure 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Harper was having a difficult time with the film’s giant “puppet” squid, which had been fabricated but was not working properly, so he hired Bob to mechanize a new more robust squid, sculpted by Disney artist Chris Mueller.

The film and its monster squid was such a hit that Walt Disney quickly offered Bob a permanent position at the studio as head of the Mechanical Effects Department, and Bob was soon hard at work building a host of mechanical figures for the soon-to-open Disneyland. Bob animated hippos, elephants, and other exotic animals for Jungle Cruise; populated the Rivers of America with lifelike deer, elk, and bears; balanced rocks and made mud baths bubble for the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland; and even worked mechanized magic in Fantasyland where he animated the charming figure of Timothy Mouse high atop the Dumbo the Flying Elephant attraction and gave guests severe sensory overload in the finale of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bob continued to work his magic on attractions at Disneyland, including the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea walk-through attraction, the earliest mock-ups of Haunted Mansion, and he provided special mechanical effects for multiple Disney feature films including The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), The Happiest Millionaire (1967), Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968), and The Love Bug (1969). But it was in a non-Disney film of the 1970s that Bob’s greatest mechanical “monsterpiece” appeared to terrify audiences around the world—Bruce the Shark in Steven Spielberg’s megahit Jaws (1975).


When Disneyland opened in 1955, Bob was one of the pioneering artists who was given “screen credit” by Walt on the windows of Main Street, U.S.A. The firmly tongue-in-cheek tribute credited him with the title “Taxidermist,” a nod to his ability to create such lifelike dimensional creatures. In the 1970s, the window was moved and altered, but today it has been returned to its original state, to pay homage to Walt’s wonderful wizard of mechanical effects, Bob Mattey.

Eva Gabor - my 171st pick to be named a Disney Legend

Hungarian-born American socialite and actress. She was widely known for her role on the 1965 to 1971 television sitcom, Green Acres as Lisa Douglas, the wife of Eddie Albert's character, Oliver Wendell Douglas. She portrayed Duchess in the 1970 Disney film The Aristocats, and Miss Bianca in Disney's The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. Gábor had success as an actress in film, Broadway and television; she was also successful in business, marketing wigs, clothing, and beauty products. Her older sisters, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Magda Gabor, were also American actresses and socialites.

She is my 171st pick to be named a Disney Legend

Bob Iger - my 170th choice to be named a Disney Legend

I really like focusing in on the overlooked people on this blog, but at some point I have the name the obvious ones, and Bob Iger will one day be named a Disney Legend, barring any unforeseen scandal. He is my reluctant 170th pick to be given this honor. He will probably be named shortly after he retires, which he said will be in 2019, but has since changed his mind

From his Wikipedia page:

He is chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company. Before Disney, Iger served as the president of ABC Television from 1994 to 1995 and the president and chief operating officer (COO) of Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. from 1995 until Disney's acquisition of the company in 1996.He was named president and COO of Disney in 2000, and later succeeded Michael Eisner as CEO in 2005, after a successful effort by Roy E. Disney to shake up the management of the company. As part of his yearly compensation, Iger earned $44.9 million in 2015.

During Iger’s tenure, Disney broadened the company's roster of intellectual properties and its presence in international markets; Iger oversaw the acquisitions of Pixar in 2006 for $7.4 billion, Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for $4 billion, and Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.06 billion, as well as the expansion of the company's theme park resorts in East Asia, with the introduction of Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and Shanghai Disney Resort in 2005 and 2016, respectively. Iger was also a driving force behind the reinvigoration of Walt Disney Animation Studios and the branded-release strategy of its film studio's output. Under Iger's control, Disney has experienced increases in revenue across its various divisions, with the company's market capitalization value increasing from $48.4 billion to $163 billion over a period of eleven years. As a result, Disney has been recognized as one of the "World's Most Reputable Companies" by Forbes (2006–2015), one of "America's Most Admired Companies" by Fortune Magazine (2009–2015), one of the “World's Most Respected Companies" by Barron’s (2009–2014), a “Best Place to Launch a Career” by BusinessWeek Magazine (2006–2010), and a "Company of the Year" by Yahoo Finance (2013).

Tony Fucile - my 169th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Tony Fucile is an animator who worked at Disney and Pixar. He is my 169th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Filmography
Year Film Position
1987 Sport Goofy in Soccermania Animator
1988 Oliver and Company Character Animator
1989 The Little Mermaid Character Animator
1992 Aladdin Animator: Aladdin
1994 The Lion King Supervising Animator: Mufasa
1996 The Hunchback of Notre Dame Supervising Animator: Esmeralda/Character Designer/Visual Development
2004 The Incredibles Supervising Animator/Character Designer
2007 Ratatouille Supervising Animator/Voice of Health Inspector
2008 Bolt Character Development Artist: Bolt(uncredited)
2009 Partly Cloudy Voices
2015 Inside Out Animation Sketch Artist/Additional Voices
2015 The Good Dinosaur Additional Voices

Stanley "Mickey" Steinberg –my 168th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Stanley "Mickey" Steinberg, former CO of Walt Disney Imagineering, is my 168th choice to be named a Disney Legend. From 1989 to 1994, Mr. Steinberg served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Walt Disney Imagineering, responsible for the development, design and construction of all Disney theme parks.

Disney Legend Marty Skylar wrote this about Steinberg

“Everything’s a lobby!”

—Stanley “Mickey” Steinberg, Senior Advisor, The Portman Holdings Companies; former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Walt Disney Imagineering

Mickey Steinberg was my favorite “partner” at Imagineering in the development of Disney parks. From a management standpoint, no one was more responsible for the successful launch of Disneyland Paris, the foundation for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and the organization of Imagineering’s 140 disciplines into its most efficient working team.

Coming to Imagineering from the respected and successful John Portman Architectural firm in Atlanta, Mickey was initially taken aback by the difference between designing a hotel—a Portman specialty—and Disney park projects. “In the hotels,” he said, “we concentrated on making the lobby the focus of our best design. After all, it’s the one-of-a-kind feature in a hotel. But in a Disney park, everything’s a lobby! You have to treat every design as an important feature, because that’s how our guests experience them.”

So you think your little piece of the project—your part in the storytelling—is insignificant? Don’t tell that to Mickey Steinberg!