The Walt Disney Family Album - Jimmy MacDonald (1984)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This fourth episode focuses on Disney sound man and special effects wizard Jimmy MacDonald.

Jimmy was born in Scotland and his family legally immigrated to America when he was less than a month old. As an adult, he became a musician often working on the steamship circuit. Because the original cartoon sound effects artists were musicians with their instruments, Jimmy was called into the Walt Disney Studios in the mid 1930's to work on Walt's cartoon sounds. After he broke his leg, Walt asked him to come to the studio full time on staff to create a sound effects dept. (Because of radio, Sound Effects was a burgeoning field just perfect for animation and later spilled over into live action film.) Over the next five decades, that's what Jimmy did and remained with the studio the rest of his life.

Most of his sound effects devices were discovered or built by Jimmy himself. He was like the Ub Iwerks of Walt Disney audio. His innovative sound effects gave Walt's films and theme park attractions their distinctive sound. This episode showcases how Jimmy invented the devices for many of these sound effects. It's surprising how innovative was.

Jimmy also sometimes played instruments or provided voices for some of Walt's characters. He was the yodeling for the 7 Dwarfs, and was the voices for Chip & Dale, Pluto, the mice in Cinderella, the dormouse, Humphrey the Bear and various other animals including bears, mules, alligators, wolves, and others. He also created sound effects with personality when it came to providing the "voice" for several insects in Walt's films such as Spike/Buzz-Buzz the Bee. His achievement of this skill was Evinrude in The Rescuers.

Sometimes Jimmy had cameos in Walt's live action films, such as the Circus Band Drummer in Toby Tyler. He also played off and on with the band the Firehouse Five Plus Two for their entire run. This jazz band was made up of Disney artists.

When Walt became too busy to do the voice of Mickey Mouse, he gave the role to Jimmy. (Although Walt still occasionally still provided the voice of Mickey in special cases, just as Jimmy did after his formal retirement in 1976.)

We also get to see Wayne Allwine, Jimmy's successor. Allwine became the 3rd voice of Mickey Mouse but when the Eisner regime took over he no longer did sound effects. He remained Mickey's voice until he passed away in 2009.

Many of the sound effects Jimmy created are still used today, in sound effects libraries or have been released to CD. His final project was providing the sound effects for Splash Mountain.

In 1993 Jimmy MacDonald was named a Disney Legend. He passed away in 1991.

Original air date September 5, 1984

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.