On this day in 1936, Sharon Mae Disney was born and adopted by Walt and Lillian Disney. Sharon went on to be elected to the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company. Additionally, Sharon was a trustee of the California Institute of the Arts, the Marianne Frostig Center of Educational Therapy and the Curtis School Foundation. She was also quite active with the Los Angeles County Music Center. A few years after her death, the Sharon D. Lund Foundation made a large donation to the California Institute of the Arts, an organization that her father, Walt, also generously supported, and the school of dance was renamed to the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance.
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Tin Toy, a short by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by John Lasseter, has its world premiere at Siggraph. The first testing of PhotoRealistic RenderMan, it will win the 1988 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. Running just 5 minutes, the film stars Tinny, a tin one-man-band toy, attempting to escape from Billy, a destructive baby. The third short film produced by the company's small animation division.
While staying at Disney World's Polynesian Village Resort John Lennon signs the paperwork that officially dissolves The Beatles. He, along with his son Julian and friend May Pang are spending the Christmas holiday in Florida. Although The Beatles had stopped existing as a band in 1970, it has taken some 4 years to draw up legal paperwork to divide their massive earnings. The voluminous documents have been brought down to Florida for Lennon to approve... as the other 3 Beatles have already signed. And that’s how Walt Disney World bore witness to rock history.
Imagineer and Disney veteran Don Edgren passes away at the age of 83. He was an engineer who led the team building the first Space Mountain and had a role in building various Disney parks. Edgren supervised construction of the Matterhorn and original Pirates of the Caribbean attractions.
Walt Disney appears on the cover of TIME. The publication profiles Disney the week Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is released, calling the film "the most ambitious animated cartoon ever attempted."
Disney staff begin the move from the old studio at Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake to a new one in Burbank. The success of the 1937 Snow White has allowed Disney to build the new modern campus on some 51 acres of land. It is designed around the animation process, with the large animation building in the center of the campus, and adjacent buildings for the story department, the music department, the ink-and-paint departments, and the other various functions of the studio. (The move will take a little over a week
Disney's 18th animated film The Sword In The Stone is released. Merlin the Magician (voiced by Karl Swenson) teaches a young boy (voiced by Rickie Sorensen) who is destined to be King Arthur. The film marks Wolfgang Reitherman's first solo directional effort for a feature film.
The Disney short Lonesome Ghosts, featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck & Goofy, is released. Mickey and his pals become ghosts exterminators when they are lured to a haunted house by four funny ghosts named Jasper, Grubb, Boo and Moss, in this classic short directed by Bert Gillety.
La Nouba, the Cirque du Soleil show, opens at Downtown Disney, Florida. With an international and diverse cast of 65 talented performers, the show features funambulists, dancers, tumblers, trapeze performers, a juggler, clowns, actors, acro-gymnasts, cyclists, musicians, vocalists, skippers and circus artists. La Nouba, which comes from the French phrase "faire la nouba," and means to live it up, has been created exclusively for Walt Disney World. Design teams from Cirque du Soleil and Walt Disney Imagineering worked together to create the show’s unique freestanding theatre – the first ever to be built for a Cirque show.
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Walt Disney Studios Park (the second theme park of Disneyland Paris) opens to guests. The fourth Disney park to have the attraction, it is based on the same designs as the version at Disney California Adventure Park. Although not referenced at the attraction, the ride's official French name is La Tour de la Terreur - Un Saut dans la Quatrième Dimension; literally "a jump into the fourth dimension." Strangely, the original American television series always referred to it as the fifth dimension!
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