Disney Trivia Guy

It saddens me to announce that Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump has passed away at the age of 93 yesterday. He was such a talented artist and Imaginer and was a kind person. He was nice enough to be a guest on my podcast and also wrote the foreword for my last book. I mentioned him about two dozen times throughout my last book because of all the work he did on the Haunted Mansion , Enchanted Tiki Room , and It’s a Small World . I also had the pleasure of appearing in a documentary with him called The Land Series: New Orleans Square , which was released in 2022. Order Here IMDb Info Rolly Crump became a Disney Legend in 2004. He has a window on Main Street U.S.A. that reads; Fargo’s Palm Parlor - Predictions That Will Haunt You – Bazaar, Whimsical & Weird – “Designs to Die For” – Roland F. Crump – Assistant to the Palm Reader In the Tencennial edition of 1965 on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1961–1969), season 11 episode 14, they visited the Imagineers working on their ...

Happy International Women's Day! Bambi (1942) holds great significance for female animators. Retta Scott (1916-1990) was an artist at Disney who drew storyboards for the film. She drew the vicious hunting dogs so well that the male animators couldn’t believe a woman drew them. She did such a good job at drawing them that Walt promoted her to animator and gave her the job of animating the hunting dog scene with the dogs chasing Faline and fighting Bambi. Retta Scott would become the first female animator to be given screen credit for her work on the film. Her previous uncredited work included Fantasia (1940) and Dumbo (1941). After Bambi , she worked on the Wind in the Willows segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). One short film she is known for was The Story of Menstruation (1946), which was an educational film shown at schools. She retired from animation to raise a family. She got back into animating and animated in the film The Plague Dogs (1982) alongside...

Today we lost one of the best and most important Disney Imagineers, Alice Davis. Wife to legendary Imagineer Mark Davis and Disney's top seamstress.  Alice attempted to get into the Chouinard Art Institute to learn how to be an animator since her passion was drawing; but, the Art Institute didn’t accept girls. They did, however, accept her to teach her to be a costume designer. Her first class was Fine Art, where they taught her about human anatomy and how muscles worked. The class instructor was Marc Davis. Alice began her career designing women’s lingerie and undergarments for the Beverly Vogue & Lingerie House in Los Angeles. It wasn’t until after she graduated and began working that she started up a friendship with Marc, whom she ended up marrying in 1956 at the age of 27. She quickly became the head designer. In the mid-1950s, Alice got a call from Marc requesting her to design a dress for Helene Stanley to wear as the live-action model for Briar Rose in Sleepi...

  In Turning Red (2022), on the front of Mei’s notebook, there is a bunny rabbit sticker. This is an Easter Egg for the rabbit from the Pixar SparkShort Burrow (2020).  She is even wearing her little backpack. If you liked this fun fact, you should check out my book which has over 3,700 fun facts in it about Disneyland, California Adventure, and Disney Movies. www.DisneyGuy.org

In Moana (2016), the first name listed under the Production Babies in the credits is the name, Sebastian. The name isn’t necessarily a direct reference to the Jamaican crab from The Little Mermaid (1989), but it is indirectly. The songwriter of the film was Lin-Manuel Miranda, later popularized for his musical writings and compositions for Hamilton (2020), Encanto (2021), and The Little Mermaid (2023). Lin-Manuel named his first-born son Sebastian in 2014 after everyone’s favorite crab. If you liked this fun fact, you should check out my book which has over 3,700 fun facts in it about Disneyland, California Adventure, and Disney Movies. www.DisneyGuy.org  

At 3’6” tall, Warwick Davis is one of the most famous little people that has appeared on the big screen. Warwick had auditioned for the role of an Ewok back in 1982 after his grandmother had heard on the radio that there was a casting call for people under 4’tall for a film. Warwick was only 11 years old and was 2’11” tall at the time. He made his first appearance in the Star Wars universe as Wicket, the inquisitive Ewok that was on-screen with Princess Leia. When Princess Leia crashes, she was supposed to be discovered by the Ewok known as Paploo. Kenny Baker was Paploo, along with R2-D2. On the day of filming, Kenny was sick, and George Lucas decided to put Wicket in the place of Paploo to befriend Leia. Warwick was just an 11-year old boy with very little acting experience outside of the little time spent in drama classes at Laine Theater Arts in Epsom. He approached his character of Wicket with the idea of being someone who lived a sheltered life in a forest and was inquisitive a...