Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne; the first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh, this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner. Milne included a poem about the bear in the children's verse book When We Were Very Young and many more in Now We Are Six. All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard; the Pooh stories have been translated into many languages, including Alexander Lenard's Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the only Latin book to have been featured on The New York Times Best Seller list. Hyphens in the character's name were omitted by Disney when the company adapted the Pooh stories into a series of features that would become one of its most successful franchises. In popular film adaptations, Pooh has been voiced by actors Sterling Holloway, Hal Smith, Jim Cummings in English, Yevgeny Leonov in Russian. A. A. Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, on whom the character Christopher Robin was based.
The rest of Christopher Robin Milne's toys – Piglet, Kanga and Tigger – were incorporated into Milne's stories. Two more characters and Rabbit, were created by Milne's imagination, while Gopher was added to the Disney version. Christopher Robin's toy bear is on display at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library in New York City. Christopher Milne had named his toy bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear he saw at London Zoo, "Pooh", a swan they had met while on holiday; the bear cub was purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. He named the bear "Winnie" after his adopted hometown in Manitoba. "Winnie" was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot. Colebourn left Winnie at the London Zoo while his unit were in France. Pooh the swan appears as a character in its own right in. In the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne offers this explanation of why Winnie-the-Pooh is called "Pooh": But his arms were so stiff... they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off.
And I think – but I am not sure – that, why he is always called Pooh. The American writer William Safire surmised that the Milnes' invention of the name "Winnie the Pooh" may have been influenced by the haughty character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado; the Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set in East Sussex, England. The forest is an area of tranquil open heathland on the highest sandy ridges of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty situated 30 miles south-east of London. In 1925 Milne, a Londoner, bought a country home a mile to the north of the forest at Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield. According to Christopher Milne, while his father continued to live in London "...the four of us – he, his wife, his son and his son's nanny – would pile into a large blue, chauffeur-driven Fiat and travel down every Saturday morning and back again every Monday afternoon. And we would spend a whole glorious month there in the spring and two months in the summer." From the front lawn the family had a view across a meadow to a line of alders that fringed the River Medway, beyond which the ground rose through more trees until "above them, in the faraway distance, crowning the view, was a bare hilltop.
In the centre of this hilltop was a clump of pines." Most of his father's visits to the forest at that time were, he noted, family expeditions on foot "to make yet another attempt to count the pine trees on Gill's Lap or to search for the marsh gentian". Christopher added that, inspired by Ashdown Forest, his father had made it "the setting for two of his books, finishing the second little over three years after his arrival". Many locations in the stories can be associated with real places around the forest; as Christopher Milne wrote in his autobiography: "Pooh’s forest and Ashdown Forest are identical". For example, the fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" was in reality Five Hundred Acre Wood; the landscapes depicted in E. H. Shepard's illustrations for the Winnie-the-Pooh books were directly inspired by the distinctive landscape of Ashdown Forest, with its high, open heathlands of heather, gorse and silver birch punctuated by hilltop clumps of pine trees. Many of Shepard's illustrations can be matched to actual views, allowing for a degree of artistic licence.
Shepard's sketches of pine trees and other forest scenes are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The game of Poohsticks was played by Christopher Milne on a footbridge across a tributary of the River Medway in Posingford Wood, close to Cotchford Farm; the wooden bridge is now a tourist attraction, it has become traditional to play the game there using sticks gathered in the nearby woodland. When the footbridge had to be replaced, the engineer designed a new structure based on the drawings of the bridge by Shepard in the books, which were somewhat different from the original structure. Christopher Robin's teddy bear, made his character début i
Disney Television Animation
Disney Television Animation is an American animation studio that creates and produces animated television series, films and other projects. It is a division of the Disney Channels Worldwide owned by The Walt Disney Company. Established in 1984 during the reorganization and subsequent re-incorporation of The Walt Disney Company following the arrival of then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, the entity was known as the Walt Disney Pictures Television Animation Group before being shortened to Walt Disney Television Animation in 1987, was shortened again in 2011 to Disney Television Animation; the Walt Disney Company first ventured into the television industry as early as 1950, beginning with the one-hour Christmas special, One Hour in Wonderland. This was followed by the 1951 Christmas special, The Walt Disney Christmas Show, the long-running anthology series, The Wonderful World of Disney, the children's variety show The Mickey Mouse Club, the 1957-1959 adventure series, Zorro. However, one element was missing from Disney's expansion into television: An original animated television series.
Until the early 80's, the studio had never produced its own original animated shows in-house, because Walt Disney felt it was economically impossible. Nearly all pre-1985 TV animation was wrap-around segments made to bridge the gaps on existing theatrical material on The Wonderful World of Disney. Osamu Tezuka met Walt at the 1964 World's Fair, at which time Disney said he hoped to "make something just like" Tezuka's Astro Boy someday, but nothing came of it. With the hiring of a new CEO for Disney Production in 1984, Michael Eisner, lead him to push to expand Disney into new areas thus the establishment of a television animation division that year; the cartoon would be shop to all markets: Disney Channel and syndication. Eisner held a meeting at his home in which he brought up the concept of doing a series on Gummi bear as his kids like the candy; the staff was told that they could not use the principal Disney cartoon characters in the new shows. The Walt Disney Television Animation department was started in November 1984 with Gary Krisel as president and Michael Webster as senior vice president.
This was considered a risky move, because animated TV series were considered low-budget investments for most of the history of TV cartoons up through the 1980s. Many critics say that Disney's own animation studio had lost most of its luster during the period from Walt Disney's passing through the 1980s. However, the studio took a number of risks; the studio gambled on the idea that a larger investment into quality animation could be made back through both network television and over-the-air in syndication, as well as cable. The final result is a string of higher budgeted animated television productions which proved to be profitable ventures and raised the standard for the TV medium; the Disney television animation cycle began in mid-1985, with The Wuzzles and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, both which are based upon funny animal-based conceptions. The final third series in the incidentally so-called "magic animal"-based "trilogy" of original character sets was going to be Fluppy Dogs, itself loosely based a series of children's books and line of toys about a race of anthropomorphic pastel-colored dimension-hopping alien dogs.
It was not a successful hit however, as the proposed series was not picked up after it never went beyond that one pilot episode, the studio instead fell into a routine of adapting its old properties into the new use, which Disney coincidentally did. In 1987, Disney unveiled the newest series yet in its cycle, the first in their successful long-time line of syndicated animated shows, DuckTales; the show was successful enough to spawn a feature film, DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, two spin-off series: Darkwing Duck and Quack Pack. 1990 release Treasure of the Lost Lamp was the first movie from TV Animation's Disney MovieToon unit. Disney Television Animation hired a director of specials, Sharon Morrill, in 1993; the success of DuckTales paved the way for a new wave of high-quality animated TV series, including Disney's own The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1988. Early that spring, Chip'n Dale Rescue Rangers debuted on March 4, 1989, was paired with DuckTales in an hour-long syndicated show through the 1989-1990 television season.
In the 1990-1991 season, Disney expanded the idea further, to create The Disney Afternoon, a two-hour long syndicated block of half-hour cartoons, which premiered much on September 10, 1990. DuckTales was one of the early flagship cartoons in the block. On August 24, 1994 with Jeffrey Katzenberg's resignation, Richard Frank became head of newly formed Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications, which included WDTA, from units of The Walt Disney Studios. Morrill was in charge of the first Aladdin DTV film launching Disney Video Premiere/Direct to Video unit. Three overseas Disney studios were set up to produce the company's animated television series. Disney Animation Australia was started in 1988. In 1989, the Brizzi brothers sold Brizzi Films to Disney Television Animation and was renamed Walt Disney Animation France; that year, Disney Animation Japan was started. Walt Disney Animation Canada was opened in January 1996 to tap Canada's animator pool and produce direct-to-video; as direct-to-video increased in importance, the overseas studios moved to making feature films.
WDTT chair Frank left D
Paul Winchell
Paul Winchell was an American ventriloquist, actor, voice artist and inventor whose career flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. From 1950 to 1954, he hosted The Paul Winchell Show, which used two other titles during its prime time run on NBC, The Speidel Show, What's My Name?. From 1965 -- 1968, Winchell hosted Winchell-Mahoney Time. Winchell made guest appearances on Emmy Award-winning television series from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s, such as Perry Mason, The Dick Van Dyke Show, McMillan & Wife, The Donna Reed Show, two appearances as Homer Winch on The Beverly Hillbillies in 1962. In animation, he was the original voice of Tigger, Dick Dastardly and other characters. Winchell, who had medical training, was an inventor, becoming the first person to build and patent a mechanical artificial heart, implantable in the chest cavity, he has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television. He retired from acting in 1999. Winchell was born Paul Wilchinsky in New York City on December 21, 1922, to Solomon Wilchinsky and Clara Fuchs.
His father was a tailor. Winchell's initial ambition was to become a doctor, but the Depression wiped out any chance of his family's ability to afford medical school tuition. At age 13, he contracted polio. Back at school, he asked his art teacher, Jero Magon, if he could receive class credit for creating a ventriloquist's dummy. Mr. Magon was agreeable, Winchell named his creation Jerry Mahoney, by way of thanks. Winchell went back to reading magazines, gathering jokes from them and putting together a comedy routine, which he took to the Major Bowes Amateur Hour in 1938, winning first prize. A touring offer, playing various theaters with the Major Bowes Review, was part of the prize. Bandleader Ted Weems saw the young Winchell while on tour. Winchell accepted and became a professional at age 14. Winchell's best-known ventriloquist dummies were Knucklehead Smiff. Mahoney was carved by Chicago-based figure maker Frank Marshall. Sometime Winchell had basswood copies of Jerry's head made by a commercial duplicating service.
One became the upgraded Jerry Mahoney, seen throughout Winchell's television career. The television versions of Jerry and Knucklehead featured Winchell's innovation of actors slipping their hands into the sleeves of the dummies, giving the visual effect of gesturing with their hands while "conversing" with each other, he modified two other copies to create Knucklehead Smiff. The original Marshall Jerry Mahoney and one copy of Knucklehead Smiff are in storage at the Smithsonian Institution; the other two figures are in the collection of illusionist David Copperfield. Winchell's first show as a ventriloquist was on radio with Jerry Mahoney in 1943; the program was short-lived, however. Winchell created Ozwald, a character that resembled Humpty Dumpty; the effect was accomplished by painting eyes and a nose on his chin adding a "body" covering the rest of his face, electronically turning the camera image upside down. In 1961, Berwin Novelties introduced a home version of the character that included an Oswald body, creative pencils to draw the eyes and nose and a "magic mirror" that automatically turned a reflection upside down.
In 1948, Winchell and Joseph Dunninger were featured on Floor Show on NBC. Recorded via kinescope and replayed on WNBQ-TV in Chicago, the 8:30-9 p.m. Central Time show on Thursdays was the station's first mid-week program. During the 1950s, Winchell hosted children's and adult programs with his figures for NBC Television, for syndication; the NBC Saturday morning program, sponsored by Tootsie Roll, featured a clubhouse motif and a theme song co-written by Winchell and his longtime bandleader and on-air sidekick, Milton DeLugg. The theme song was entitled "HOORAY, HOORAH" which featured the secret password "SCOLLY WALLY DOO DOO". An ending song entitled "Friends, Friends" was sung by the children in the audience. In October 1956 Winchell moved to ABC, hosting Circus Time on Thursday evening for one season before returning to Winchell-Mahoney on Sunday afternoons. On one episode, The Three Stooges appeared on the show to promote their joint feature film venture, Stop and Laugh, in late 1959, he made an appearance on Nanny and the Professor as a "mean old man".
In 1996, Winchell contracted with figure maker Tim Selberg to construct a more contemporary version of Jerry Mahoney, which Winch described as "Disney-esque". Winchell used the new figure version to pitch a new TV series idea to Michael Eisner. In 2009 Winchell was featured in the comedy documentary I'm No Dummy, directed by Bryan W. Simon. Winchell's career after 1968 included various voice roles for animated television series. For Hanna-Barbera, he played the character Dick Dastardly in multiple series, he provided the voice of Bubi Bear in Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch! in 1971, the voice of Revs on Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, as Moe on The Robonic Stooges (a role he played on The New Scooby Doo Movi
John Fiedler
John Donald Fiedler was an American actor and voice actor, slight and bespectacled, with a distinctive, high-pitched voice. His career lasted more than 55 years in stage, film and radio. Among his best-known roles are the nervous Juror #2 in 12 Angry Men. Fiedler was born in Platteville, Wisconsin, a son of Donald Fiedler, a beer salesman, his wife Margaret, he was of Irish descent. His family moved to Shorewood, Wisconsin in 1930, where he graduated from Shorewood High School in 1943, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served until the end of World War II. After his discharge from the Navy, Fiedler began acting in Manhattan, New York City, appearing on the radio comedy The Aldrich Family as Homer Brown, he appeared on early television and played Cadet Alfie Higgins on the 1950s show Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, he made his film debut in 1957 in 12 Angry Men, as Juror #2. Most of his roles were playing gentle or nervous individuals, though he appeared as the lawyer J. Noble Daggett in True Grit and in the original Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold" as Mr. Hengist, a Chief Administrator possessed by the spirit of Jack the Ripper.
Fiedler was in the original cast of A Raisin in the Sun as housing committee representative Lindner, a role he played in both the 1961 film version and the 1988 TV version. He appeared in the 1968 film The Odd Couple as poker player Vinnie, he appeared in the films Harper Valley PTA and The Cannonball Run. He appeared three times in a recurring role on Kolchak: The Night Stalker as morgue attendant Gordy "The Ghoul" Spangler, he played Mr. Peterson, one of Bob's regular patients, on The Bob Newhart Show, Mr. Dundee in the 47th episode of the Twilight Zone, "The Night of the Meek", his many other guest appearances on TV included Columbo, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, My Favorite Martian, Get Smart, A Touch of Grace, The Rockford Files, Quincy, M. E; the Golden Girls and Cheers. He appeared in The Munsters. Fiedler's voice was heard or appears in the Disney features The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood, The Emperor's New Groove, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Tigger Movie, Piglet's Big Movie, Pooh's Heffalump Movie and The Shaggy D.
A. in Disneyland Records' Winnie the Pooh for President, in the Square Enix/Disney video game Kingdom Hearts. His last film was a voice appearance in Kronk's New Groove. Fiedler was the narrator of several McDonaldland commercials during the 1980s, including when Birdie the Early Bird learns to fly and how the Hamburglar got his stripes. Fiedler died of cancer on June 25, 2005 in Englewood, New Jersey, at the Lillian Booth Actors Home, a residence for retired entertainers sponsored by the Actors' Fund of America. Fiedler's friend and Winnie-the-Pooh co-star, Paul Winchell, who voiced Tigger, died the previous day due to natural causes.. Fiedler was cremated and his ashes were scattered from Long Island, New York. Travis Oates has since replaced Fiedler as the voice of Piglet; the Book of Pooh: A Story Without A Tail as Piglet Kingdom Hearts as Piglet Piglet's Big Game as Piglet Winnie the Pooh's Rumbly Tumbly Adventure as Piglet John Fiedler on IMDb John Fiedler at the Internet Broadway Database John Fiedler at the Internet Off-Broadway Database John Fiedler at Memory Alpha
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a 1977 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It is the 22nd Disney animated feature film and was first released on a double bill with The Littlest Horse Thieves on March 11, 1977, its characters have spawned a franchise of various sequels and television programs, books, an attraction of the same name at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Hong Kong Disneyland in addition to Pooh's Hunny Hunt in Tokyo Disneyland. The film's content is derived from three released animated featurettes Disney produced based upon the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. Extra material was used to link the three featurettes together to allow the stories to merge into each other. A fourth, shorter featurette was added to bring the film to a close made during production of Blustery Day; the sequence was based on the final chapter of The House at Pooh Corner, where Christopher Robin must leave the Hundred Acre Wood behind as he is starting school.
In it, Christopher Robin and Pooh discuss what they liked doing together and the boy asks his bear to promise to remember him and to keep some of the memories of their time together alive. Pooh agrees to do so, the film closes with The Narrator saying that wherever Christopher Robin goes, Pooh will always be waiting for him whenever he returns. Six years after the release of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Disney commissioned a fourth featurette based on the stories. Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore premiered in theaters on March 11, 1983, but was not connected to the preceding films in any manner, it has since been added to home video releases of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh, voiced by Sterling Holloway Christopher Robin, voiced by Bruce Reitherman, Jon Walmsley and Timothy Turner Piglet, voiced by John Fiedler Eeyore, voiced by Ralph Wright Roo, voiced by Clint Howard and Dori Whitaker Kanga, voiced by Barbara Luddy Tigger, voiced by Paul Winchell Rabbit, voiced by Junius Matthews Owl, voiced by Hal Smith Gopher, voiced by Howard Morris Narrated by Sebastian Cabot The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was the last film in the Disney canon in which Walt Disney had personal involvement, since one of the shorts was released during his lifetime and he was involved in the production of Blustery Day.
It was always Walt Disney's intention to create a feature film, but he decided to make shorts instead — after production had begun — to familiarize U. S. audiences with the characters. All three shorts, as well as future feature films, boast classic songs by the Sherman Brothers including "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers". For the character Piglet, hand gestures and other movements were used by the animators to create expressiveness, since he had the appearance of dolls or stuffed animals with simple button eyes; the scene where Rabbit deals with Pooh's rump being part of the "decor of his home" was not in the original book, but was contemplated by Disney when he first read the book. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh holds a unanimous critic approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 12 reviews; the website's critical consensus reads "Perhaps the most faithful of Disney's literary adaptations, this cute, charming collection of episodes captures the spirit of A.
A. Milne's classic stories." Film critic Leonard Maltin called the original Pooh featurettes "gems". The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10: Nominated Animation Film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was first released on VHS, Betamax, CED videorecord, laserdisc in the early 1980s. In 1996, it was re-released on VHS as part of the Masterpiece Collection and included video footage of the making, shown before the movie starts, it was released on DVD for the first time in 2002 as a 25th Anniversary Edition, with digitally restored picture and sound. The individual shorts had been released on their own on VHS in the 1990s; the 25th anniversary edition DVD includes, among other bonus features, "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: The Story Behind the Masterpiece", which documents the history of the books and their initial film adaptations. It features interviews with animators Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, Burny Mattinson, as well as the Sherman Brothers, Paul Winchell, others.
Digital Media FX reviewer Shannon Muir stated that the audio and video quality of the film on this DVD was high. The "Friendship Edition" DVD was re-released on June 19, 2007. All of the special features from the previous "25th Anniversary Edition" DVD were recycled; the DVD re-release coincides with the 30th anniversary of the release of the film. The Blu-ray version was released for the first time along with the third DVD release on August 27, 2013; the bonus features included a Mini Adventures of Winnie the Pooh segment, "Geniuses" and the only bonus feature, kept from the pre
Robert B. Sherman
Robert Bernard Sherman was an American songwriter who specialized in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman. According to the official Walt Disney Company website and independent fact checkers, "the Sherman Brothers were responsible for more motion picture musical song scores than any other songwriting team in film history." Some of the Sherman Brothers' best known songs were incorporated into live action and animation musical films including: Mary Poppins, The Happiest Millionaire, The Jungle Book, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Slipper and the Rose, Charlotte's Web. Their best-known work, remains the theme park song "It's a Small World". According to Time.com, this song is the most performed song of all time. Robert Bernard Sherman was born on December 19, 1925, in New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Rosa and Al Sherman. Al Sherman, a songwriter, paid for Robert's hospital delivery costs with a royalty check that had arrived that day for the song "Save Your Sorrow".
His brother and songwriting partner, was born in 1928. Sherman's father became a well known Tin Pan Alley songwriter; as a youth, Robert Sherman excelled in intellectual pursuits, taking up the violin and piano and writing poetry. Following seven years of frequent cross-country moves, the Shermans settled down in Beverly Hills, California; some of the primary schools Robert attended in Manhattan included PS 241 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. Throughout his years at Beverly Hills High School, he wrote and produced radio and stage programs for which he won much acclaim. At age 16, he wrote Armistice and Dedication Day, a stage play centered on contemporary 1940s Americans that showed how their lives were inextricably changed following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor; the play yielded thousands of dollars for War Bonds and earned a special citation from the War Department. In 1943, Sherman obtained permission from his parents to join the army a year early, at age 17. On April 12, 1945, Sherman was shot in the knee, forcing him to walk with a cane for the rest of his life.
For being wounded during battle, Sherman was awarded the Purple Heart medal. Other medals received by Sherman for service to his country were the Combat Infantryman Badge, two Battle Stars for his European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, a Good Conduct Medal. In addition, Sherman was awarded several Army Weapons Qualifications badges. While recuperating from his knee injury in Taunton and Bournemouth in England, Sherman first became curious about British culture, reading anything he could find on the subject. Once back on his feet, Sherman met and became friends with many British citizens, attaining first-hand knowledge of the United Kingdom, its customs and people. Years Sherman credited this time in his life as the origin of his fascination with England, believing that it proved an invaluable resource to his songwriting career. Many of his best-known works center around English stories and subject matter. During World War II Robert B. Sherman received these awards: On his return to the United States, Sherman attended Bard College in upstate New York where he majored in English Literature and painting.
Sherman served as the editor-in-chief of The Bardian, the campus newspaper. At Bard, Sherman completed his first two novels, The Best Estate and Music and Painted Eggs, he graduated in the class of 1949. On May 12, 1990, Sherman received an honorary doctorate from Lincoln College. Within two years and his brother Richard began writing songs together on a challenge from their father, Al Sherman, a successful popular songwriter in the "Tin Pan Alley" days. In 1958, Sherman founded the music publishing company, Music World Corporation, which worked with Disney's BMI publishing arm, Wonderland Music Company; that same year, the Sherman Brothers had their first Top Ten hit with "Tall Paul", sung by Annette Funicello. The success of this song attracted the attention of Walt Disney who hired the Sherman Brothers as Staff Songwriters for Walt Disney Studios. While at Disney, the Sherman Brothers wrote what is their most recognized song: "It's a Small World" for the 1964 New York World's Fair. In 1965, the Sherman Brothers won two Academy Awards for Mary Poppins – Best Original Score, which included "Feed The Birds", "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".
Since Mary Poppins' premiere, Robert B. Sherman subsequently earned 9 Academy Award nominations, 2 Grammy Awards, 4 Grammy Award nominations and 23 gold and platinum albums. Robert and Richard Sherman worked directly for Walt Disney until Disney's death in 1966. After leaving the company, the brothers worked freelance as songwriters on scores of motion pictures, television shows, theme park exhibits and stage musicals, their first non-Disney assignment came with Albert R. Broccoli's motion picture production Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968 which garnered the brothers their third Academy Award Nomination. In 1973, the Sherman Brothers made history by becoming the only Americans to win First Prize at the Moscow Film Festival for Tom Sawyer for which they authored the screenplay; the Slipper and the Rose was picked to be the Royal Command Performance of the year and was attended by Queen Elizabeth. A modern musical adaptation of the classic Cinderella story, Slipper features both song-score and screenplay by the Sherman Brothers.
That same year the Sherman Brothers received their star on the Hollywood "Wa
Peter Cullen
Peter Claver Cullen is a Canadian voice actor. He is best known as the voice of Optimus Prime in the original 1980s Transformers animated series, most other incarnations of the character, he has voiced several other characters, including Eeyore in the Winnie the Pooh franchise, Monterey Jack in Chip'n Dale Rescue Rangers, KARR in Knight Rider. In 2007, Cullen returned to the role of Optimus Prime in various Transformers media, starting with the first live-action film. Cullen was born on July 28, 1941 in Montreal, Quebec, to Muriel Cullen, he has three siblings: Michaela and Larry. Cullen attended Regiopolis-Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School, he is a member of the first graduating class of the National Theatre School of Canada, which he graduated in 1963. His brother, Larry Cullen, was a retired Captain in the United States Marine Corps, helped inspire the voice of Optimus Prime. In 1968, he and Joan Stuart appeared as "Giles" and "Penelope" in L'Anglaise, a recurring segment about a French-Canadian man with an English-Canadian wife, on the CBC Radio comedy series, Funny You Should Say That.
Cullen played a French-Canadian astronaut character named Commander Bi Bi Latuque alongside Ted Zeigler for the 1969 children's show, The Buddies on CFCF-TV in Montreal. He honed his voice skills by working as a radio announcer, notably in his home town of Montreal on MOR station CKGM doing the overnight and weekend swing shifts. From 1967–69, he was the announcer for Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. From 1971 -- 74, he, Zeigler and Billy Van were series regulars on The Cher Comedy Hour. In 1974, Cullen was a series regular on The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, he lent his voice to a character in the album "The Story of Halloween Horror" in 1977. Cullen recalls auditioning for the role of the robot superhero Optimus Prime at a casting house in Burbank, explaining that as he read Prime's character breakdown, he saw that it was "the opportunity of the year", heeded his brother Larry's advice: "Peter, don't be a Hollywood superhero, be a real superhero. Real superheroes don't act tough. Cullen learned from his agent, Steve Tisherman, that he not only won the part of Prime, but to his surprise, the role of Ironhide as well, which he saw as a "home run".
He has stated that Optimus is his favorite voice role, that he based the voice of the Autobot leader on his older brother Larry, who served in Vietnam. "When he came home, I could see a change. He was quieter and he was a man and a superhero to me," says the actor. "I listened to him. I'd never had an opportunity to do a superhero, when that came, just came right out of me and I sounded like Optimus." He has stated that he had no idea of Prime's popularity until the character's controversial death in the 1986 animated film, as the studio had never given him fan letters from children addressed to Optimus. The public backlash over Optimus's death surprised producers greatly. Children were leaving the theaters because of the character's death; the writers temporarily revived the character for a single episode in Season 3 called "Dark Awakening". This was intended to be his final appearance, but after fan requests continued, "The Return of Optimus Prime", a two-part episode was produced; the original ending of "Dark Awakening" was altered in reruns to include a teaser about the return of the character.
Cullen reprised the role of Optimus Prime in the 2007 Transformers live-action film, in its sequels Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction, The Last Knight, the spin-off Bumblebee film, the video games based on the film series. Cullen is contractually obligated to voice Optimus in at least one more sequel. Cullen again reprised his role as Optimus Prime in the video games Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Transformers: Devastation, in the recent television series Transformers: Rescue Bots, Transformers Prime and Transformers: Robots in Disguise, his performance in the premiere season of Transformers: Prime earned him a nomination for a 2011 Daytime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program category. In the 1980s and the 1990s, Cullen appeared on a number of television shows, he has played Coran, Stride the Tiger Fighter, King Alfor in the Lion Voltron series, the transforming spaceship/robot Ramrod in the 1980s anime series Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, Commander James Hawkins in the Vehicle Voltron series, Eeyore in the Winnie the Pooh franchise, KARR in Knight Rider and Bomba, Gunner, in Dino-Riders, Nemesis Enforcer and Zandar in G.
I. Joe, He played Mantor/Mantys in Coleco's 5 episode mini-series Sectaurs in 1986, he had a voice part in the 1984 motion picture Gremlins, as a gremlin, the first season of the 2008 Knight Rider series as KARR. He did voicework in The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible series, notably as Japheth, one of Noah's sons in the "Noah's Ark" episode, the King of Nineveh in the "Jonah" episode, he was well known by some as the main villain Venger in the animated series of Dragons. He played the evil sorcerer Renwick in the lesser known series Little Wizards and played Cindarr in the short-lived series Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light. Among many other television series and films, he has lent his basso voice to many film trailers and television commercials, including announcing for the Toonami and You Are Here blocks on the Cartoon Network. Cullen spent some o
