George Goepper - my 305th choice to be named a Disney Legend

George Goepper started at Disney in 1933, a time of great expansion and growth for the staff at the Disney studios. Snow White was going full swing into production and tons of talent the studio didn’t already have was needed to make such a daring production. Artists were recruited around the country to work on this once-in-a-lifetime project that would change the medium of animation and even the film industry in general forever. However hard work was nothing short of expected from everyone working in the studio. Years later George Goepper told Milt Gray that when inbetweening back then “We all worked our little fannies off because you never knew when you were going to be fired.” He became an assistant on the one and only Norman Ferguson, oftentimes called “Fergy”. Fergy was the first animator to put in great showmanship and thought process into his characters, most famously in his animation of the flypaper sequence in Playful Pluto. He wasn’t a great draftsman and drew very rough despite his great understanding of staging and accuracy in his drawings. This required Fergy to have many assistants. Among these assistants besides Goepper were Jack Hannah, later the director of many Donald Duck cartoons, and most notably John Lousnbery, who would later go on to be one of the best personality directing animators at the studio for decades. “Although Fergy put more work into held poses, he cared less about action extremes and therefore would leave them to his assistants to finish,” explained Goepper to Milt Gray in the same interview used above. Among the notable projects George worked on with Fergy included Pluto in the famous short the Pointer and the Dance of the Hours segment in Fantasia.

In the mid 40s leading Goepper to become the longtime assistant of Eric Larson, one of the humblest of the great Disney animators. According to Burny Mattinson in his interview on Animation Podcast Larson was relatively easy to follow up because he worked on fours and his structure wasn’t too complicated unlike the very particular demands and scenes on threes done with the assistants of Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl. Among the films George Goepper worked under him on included Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, and Sleeping Beauty.

He is my 305th pic to be named a Disney Legend.

Floyd Huddleston - my 304th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Song writer Floyd Huddleston is my 304th choice to be named a Disney Legend.


He wrote the music for "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat" from The Aristocats and the lyrics for "Love" from Robin Hood. He also co-wrote the song "Jungle Fever" from the album More Jungle Book. Huddleston would also produce unused songs for a proposed version of The Rescuers with songs performed by Louis Prima with Sam Butera and the Witnesses.

From 1965 until his death, he was married to Nancy Adams (who sang his song "Love" as Maid Marian's singing voice), with whom he had one child.

Bruce Bushman - my 303rd pick to be named a Disney Legend

Art director Bruce Bushman (born Francis X. Bruce Bushman) was born in New Jersey in 1911, the

In 1953 Bushman was assigned to help in the development of Disney's signature theme park, Disneyland. He helped to design Tomorrowland and Fantasyland--he designed the Fantasyland Castle, among other things--and the overall layout of the park itself. At the same time he worked as a sketch artist on the Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). After he finished with those projects, he was assigned as the Art Director for a new TV show Disney was developing: The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). He designed the look of the show and created the famous Mickey Mouse Club logo and the logos for all the T-shirts and caps for the The Adventures of Spin and Marty (1955) series. For "The Mickey Mouse Club" he also designed the shows's sets and props, including the famous clubhouse used for "Anything Can Happen Day".

Bushman left Disney in late 1959 or early 1960--sources differ--and went to work for producer Ivan Tors, where he worked as art director on three of Tors' series: Sea Hunt (1958), Bat Masterson (1958) and Gentle Ben (1967). After leaving Tors he went to Hanna-Barbera Productions as a layout artist, working on such series as Jonny Quest (1964), The Jetsons (1962) and The Flintstones (1960).
son of silent-film star Francis X. Bushman. He was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and later moved to Los Angeles, California, where he attended UCLA and the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute. In 1936 he was hired by Walt Disney Studios as a layout artist, but eventually worked his way up to art director; among the projects he worked on was Fantasia (1940). He married Mary Ena Cousineau, a fellow Disney employee, in 1945 and they had two children. He is my 303rd choice to be named a Disney Legend.

Chuck Keehne - my 302nd pick to be named a Disney Legend

Costume designer at the Walt Disney Burbank Studios Chuck Keehne is my 302nd pick to be named a Disney Legend.

After graduating high school he moved to California, and soon found work on a construction crew building movie sets. He was eventually hired by Western Costume Co. as a costumer, and became an expert on historical dress and costuming. He left Western Costume and went out on his own, being hired as a costumer for such films as The Fighting 69th (1940) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).

His career was interrupted by a hitch in the Army Air Corps during World War II, where he served as a combat cameraman in the Pacific Theatre. After his discharge in 1946 he returned to the film business, and the following year he was hired by Walt Disney as a costumer. He also freelanced as a costumer on such films as Captain from Castile (1947) and Fort Apache (1948).

In 1955 he was made Chief of the Wardrobe Department at Disney. Up to that time Disney didn't have a Wardrobe Department, so Keehne had to set up the entire operation himself. He was assigned to create costumes for the studio's new children's show, "The Mickey Mouse Club" (1955), and it was he who came up with the final design for the famous "ears" on the Mousketeers' caps.

Keehe stayed as head of Disney's Wardrobe Department until his retirement in 1979, during which time he created and designed costumes for such Disney series as "Zorro" (1957) and more than 70 feature films.

Bruce Smith - my 301st pick to be named a Disney Legend

My 301st pick to be named a Disney Legend is animator Bruce Smith.

He is best known as the creator of Disney's The Proud Family.

History

He studied animation in the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts.

One of the few black animators working in the industry, Smith got his start as an assistant animator for Bill Meléndez's 1984 Garfield television special Garfield in the Rough. He went on to animate for Baer Animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and in 1992 directed his first feature, Bébé's Kids. Other notable work for Smith during the mid-1990s included supervising the animation for The Pagemaster, serving as director and character designer for Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, designing the characters for A Goofy Movie and C Bear and Jamal, and co-directing the animated segments of Space Jam. He was also was the creator of Da Boom Crew along with John P. White and Stiles White.

In 1998 he joined Walt Disney Feature Animation, Smith served as a supervising animator on four of its films: Tarzan, The Emperor's New Groove, Home on the Range, and The Princess and the Frog. In 2000 when he still worked for Hyperion Pictures, he piloted his series The Proud Family to Nickelodeon, who passed on it. Disney Channel eventually picked the series up the following year and ran it until 2005. The series was the first to be produced by his production company, Jambalaya Studios.

Disney Filmography

Year     Film     Position

1988    Who Framed Roger Rabbit     Animator

1995    A Goofy Movie            Character Designer

1999    Tarzan Supervising Animator: Kerchak and the Baby Baboon

2000    The Emperor's New Groove    Supervising Animator: Pacha

2001    The Proud Family        Developer/Director/Writer

2004    Home on the Range    Supervising Animator: Pearl

2005    The Proud Family Movie         Director

2009    The Princess and the Frog       Supervising Animator: Dr. Facilier

2011    Winnie the Pooh         Supervising Animator: Kanga, Roo, and Piglet

2012    Wreck-It Ralph            Additional Visual Development Artist

2013    Frozen Additional Visual Development Artist

Dick Rickard is my 300th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Director and writer Dick Rickard rounds out my top 300 picks to be named Disney Legends. His work is sparse but on some big projects. He was a writer for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and he directed the short Ferdinand the Bull (a fan favorite). He also directed the Practical Pig.

Walter Brennan - my 299th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Veteran character actor Walter Brennan appeared in several Disney Live action films. He is my 299th choice to be honored as a Disney Legend.

He played Grampa Bower in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He played D.J. Mulrooney/Knobby in The Gnome-Mobile, one of the last films personally produced by Walt Disney himself. He also appeared in Those Calloways as Alf Simes.