Brice Mack - my 205th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Background artist Brice Mack is my 205th choice to be named a Disney Legend.

Mack painted backgrounds for “Fantasia,” “Pinocchio” and other Disney films including “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Peter Pan,” “Song of the South” and “Lady and the Tramp.”  Other works include The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Pluto's Fledgling, Pluto's Sweater, Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill.

He also painted backgrounds for short subjects including the 1942 Academy Award winning “Lend a Paw.” He also went to work on Walt Disney's television series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color as a background painter and writer in the late 1950s. His last credit for Disney was in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He continued to consult for Disney until his retirement in the early 1990s.

Bill Novey - my 204th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Imagineer Bill Novey is my 204th pick to be named a Disney Legend . Created the special effects business when he built the special effects department of Walter Elias Disney (WED) Enterprises. Unofficially dubbed “Illusioneering” (to complement Imagineering), at its peak the department numbered between 100-200 people, brought on board to develop effects for Epcot Center and Tokyo Disneyland which opened in 1982 and 1983 respectively. After the completion of the latter two projects, Novey had the melancholy job of helping to dismantle his own department in the massive layoffs that sent hundreds of Disney-trained people out to try their luck in the world.


Novey was Head of Special Effects at Walt Disney Imagineering in the 1970s, and co-founder of Art and Technology, Inc. with Disney executive Joe Garlington in the 1980s. At Disney, Novey was tasked with overseeing 6000 special effects in the Epcot Center and Tokyo Disneyland. He invented over 300 projectors and helped inspire a new wave of special effects and technological innovations including the first use of holograms and vector-scanning laser projections in a theme park

Tony Virginia - my 203rd pick to be named a Disney Legend

Tony Virginia was Superintendent of Grounds Maintenance for Walt Disney World during its earliest years and he is my 203rd pick to be named a Disney Legend. there is not much information about him, but he oversaw the team that prepared all the grounds for the Magic Kingdom and resorts that opened in 1971. He also helped extensively with Epcot Center. According to Mouseplanet.com - "For the China pavilion, Tony Virginia who was Walt Disney World Director of Horticulture, acquired a 100-year-old weeping mulberry he found in New Jersey. The tree was 15-feet tall and very wide and distorted, the "look" sought for the area."

In an article in Eyes and Ears publication -

"Tony Virginia, Walt Disney World's Director of Horticulture, explained that the planning for Epcot Center's landscape began simultaneously with the planning of its buildings, due to the enormous amount of lead time required for ordering exotic trees and shrubs and then allowing them to acclimate to a  new environment. "

Bud Luckey - my 202nd pick to be named a Disney Legend

William Everett "Bud" Luckey was an American animator, cartoonist, singer, musician, designer, composer, artist, and voice actor who is a Pixar story artist who most notably designed Woody for Toy Story. He performed the voice of Eeyore in the 2011 Winnie the Pooh film, taking over from Peter Cullen.He is my 202nd pick to be given the Disney Legend honor.

He is also credited with creating the character of Woody form the Toy Story franchise. He provided the voice of Agent Rick Dicker in The Incredibles and the mysterious and woeful Chuckles the Clown in Toy Story 3. He also received an Oscar nomination in 2004 for the animated short Boundin’, where he provided the voice for the Jackalope. Early in his career, he created cartoons and songs with lyricist Donald Hadley for Sesame Street including the memorable “The Lady Bug Picnic” which showcased the number 12.

Luckey’s curiosity was piqued by plans for a computer-generated film at Pixar, the Bay Area studio that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had helped establish in 1986. He was soon hired as the studio’s fifth animator.

Mr. Luckey was “one of the true unsung heroes of animation,” John Lasseter, who directed “Toy Story” and went on to become the studio’s chief creative officer, said in a 2004 Pixar documentary on the animator.

Filmography

Animation Department

    Toy Story (1995): animator, character designer, story artist

    A Bug's Life (1998): additional character designer, story artist

    Toy Story 2 (1999): character designer: new characters, story artist

    Monsters, Inc. (2001): character designer, story artist

    Cars (2006): character designer 

     Ratatouille (2007)

Art Department

    A Bug's Life (1998): Sketch artist

    Cars (2006): conceptual artist

Director

    Boundin' (2003)

John Debney - my 201st pick to be named aDisney Legend

Composer John Debney is my 201st pick to be named a Disney Legend. According to a an article with Variety magazine - "Debney, who has worked on approximately 100 films, earning an Oscar nomination for “The Passion of the Christ” and creating music for box office hits like “Iron Man 2” and “The Princess Diaries,” practically grew up on the Disney backlot.

“I was a Disney brat,” he says with a laugh. His father, Louis Debney, worked there for more than 40 years, starting as a clapperboy on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and eventually becoming a producer on TV shows such as “Zorro” and “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”

As a boy, John Debney hung out with legendary Disney songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman, and his first job out of college was in the Disney music department."
A partial list of his Disney work includes:

Compositions for Disney Feature Films

1987    Sport Goofy in Soccermania   Music   Walt Disney Animation Studios

1993    Hocus Pocus    Walt Disney Pictures

1999    My Favorite Martian

1999    Inspector Gadget

2000    The Emperor's New Groove    Score Composed and Conducted       

2001    The Princess Diaries    Music   Walt Disney Pictures

2002    Snow Dogs

2004    The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

2005    The Pacifier

2005    Chicken Little       Score Composed and Conducted       

2009    Hannah Montana: The Movie             Music   

2016    The Jungle Book

Compositions for Disneyland

Song

Splash Mountain

Haunted Mansion Holiday

Phantom Manor

It's a Small World (Disneyland Paris)

George Sanders - my 200th pick to be named a Disney Legend

George Sanders sits at the 200th spot of my list for people deserving to be named Disney Legends. He was a Russian-born English film actor who voiced Shere Khan in The Jungle Book and played the villainous gun salesman from In Search of the Castaways, Thomas Ayerton. He got the role through Walt Disney himself as he was a good friend of Walt's and after Walt saw him in the drawings of Shere Khan by animator Ken Anderson. Sanders is the brother of actor Tom Conway who voiced the narrator in Peter Pan and both the Collie and the quizmaster in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

The fact that Sanders was the voice of the villain in one of the most iconic Disney films of all time, Jungle Book, yet he is not a Disney Legend, and he is number 200 on my list, shows just how many influential and amazing people have not been named to this list.

Now give me a moment to gripe, but it is amazing to me that people like Dick Clark, Oprah Winfrey and Regis Philbin have been named legends. Not exactly the first people to jump to your mind when you think Walt Disney Studios or theme parks.

Lee Unkrich - my 199th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Pixar animator, writer, producer and director Lee Unkrich is my 199th choice to be named a Disney Legend. Unkrich is Vice-President of Editorial and Layout at Pixar.

Feature Film Filmography

Pixar

Year     Film     Position           Subsidiary

1995    Toy Story         Editor Pixar

1998    A Bug's Life

1999    Toy Story 2      Co-Director/Editor/Additional Story Material/Voice Actor (Red Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot)

2001    Monsters, Inc.             Co-Director/Additional Editor/Additional Voices

2003    Finding Nemo Co-Director/Supervising Editor/Additional Voices

2006    Cars     Additional Editor

2007    Ratatouille

2009    Up        Senior Creative Team: Pixar

2010    Toy Story 3      Director/Story/Additional Voice/Senior Creative Team: Pixar

2012    Brave   Senior Creative Team: Pixar

2013    Monsters University   Executive Producer/Senior Creative Team: Pixar

2015    Inside Out        Senior Creative Team: Pixar

The Good Dinosaur     Executive Producer

2017    Coco    Director/Story

2019    Toy Story 4      Story

Animated Shorts Filmography

Year     Film     Position           Subsidiary

2000    For the Birds   Thanks             Pixar

2002    Mike's New Car           Special Thanks

2008    Presto

2011    Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation

2013    The Blue Umbrella

Toy Story of Terror!    Extra Special Thanks

2014    Lava     Special Thanks

Toy Story That Time Forgot    Extra Special Thanks

2015    Sanjay's Super Team   Special Thanks

2016    Piper

Disney Pixar Voice acting Roles

Rock em Sock em Robot in Toy Story 2 and Jack in the Box in Toy Story 3