Famous Cast Members
A while ago I posted a forum topic about Disney Cast Members who had gone on to bigger and better things, more especially in the world of entertainment. From there I have been looking around the net for traces of other famous faces who have worn a Disney Nametag in the past.
I don't think however we'll need to cover the Mouseketeers as they are well represented and listed elsware and perhaps not Cast Members as we would define them.
If you can add to the list Let me know on this forum post.
Mr Pixar – Man of a thousand shirts, each of them more florid than the last was once – or should that be twice a captain on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise long before he became head of Pixar.
John Lasseter founded Pixar Animation with Steve Jobs (Mr Apple/Mac). He directed Toy Story, as well as A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, and Cars, as well as being exectuive producer of the rest of Pixar's feature films. When bought in 2006 by Disney Pixar named Lasseter 'Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Feature Animation' and 'Creative consultant to Walt Disney Imagineering'. Before all of that, though, he was a Jungle Cruise skipper...
The details of this screen icon’s time in the Parade department are hard to come by. The general consensus of opinion is that she portrayed Alice in the first years of the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland.
They say Alice is a 'Classic' look, well There was a study done of the faces of beautiful women, quantifying the ratio of the width of the mouth to the width of the nose, attempting to find the perfect proportions for the perfect face of feminine beauty (the ratio turns out to be something like 1.7). The movie star with the most perfect proportions for feminine facial beauty, based on this measure, turns out to be Michelle Pfeiffer.
Actor/comedian, Steve Martin worked at the Disneyland Park in his free time. He sold guidebooks at the gate, and spinning lassos in Frontierland.
Then Steve spent three years at the old Merlin's Magic Shop in Fantasyland. There, he sold and demonstrated the magic tricks and practical joke items on sale. Legend has it he learned all the tricks, and collected all the jokes. He also learned to juggle from the Park's Court Jester, Christopher Fair and studied the comedy timing of Wally Boag at the Golden Horseshoe Revue.
From such acorns comedy oaks grow…
Richard, one half of of The Carpenters, During the summer of 1967, he performed at Disneyland with John Bettis as a banjo and piano duo.
That partnership ultimately led to a long-time song writing and producing collaboration between Bettis and Carpenter. During a period in the 1970s when louder and wilder rock was in great demand, Richard and his sister Karen produced a distinctively soft musical style that made them one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
The Orlando sentinel called her “One of the finest screen comediennes of the 70s and 80s”.
Oscar nominee for Tootsie, and she was in Oh God!, Young Frankenstein, Let It Ride, and Star Trek, the original series. During her time at the Magic Kingdom was parade dancer and a compatriot of Steve Martin with whom she was to work later on.
American lyricist who has co-written many famous popular songs over the years Madonna's Crazy for you.
He started out at Disneyland in a piano and banjo duet with Richard Carpenter, with whom he continued his career as a member of the band Spectrum and as lyricist of many of The Carpenters hits.
Whilst in the US you have American Idol, here in the UK over the spring months we had “I’d do anything” (which isn’t as suspicious as it sounds) on the BBC. The show is based around finding a new talent to star in the forthcoming West End version of the musical Oliver. The judging panel, was led by legendary composer Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, and included Dr Who and Torchwood star John Barrowman.
The eventual winner, was Jodie Prenger, - according to her agent was She spent eight months aboard the Disney World Cruise Ship, in one of six principal roles in a team of 19 entertainers.
She was declared winner by public vote on Saturday 31st May. Her stint in Oliver! she'll star alongside Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bear, Blackadder...) in the role of Fagin, and Burn Gorman as Bill Sikes.
Starting her career at Disneyland, where she played Pocahontas and the Little Mermaid in stage shows before going on to make her Broadway debut in the original company of Stephen Schwartz's musical Wicked, where she also served as Idina Menzel's understudy. At one point, Espinosa continuously performed in Menzel’s role for a month before leaving Wicked in August, 2004
"Disney was great for me... It kind of was my college…It's made me who I am," she said in an interview with Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times.
Personally I as an ex Cast Member, find it gratifying that a performer who started out in the Disney Parks pays such generous credits to the Disneyland entertainment team.
Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys is a former Walt Disney World cast member. He apparently used to play the role of "Aladdin" and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Disney World.
It was also where he also met his wife Kristin Richardson who was playing "Belle" in "Beauty and the Beast".
He worked at Disney World until he joined the Backstreet Boysin 1993.
Tony Nomination for her portraial of Liza Minelli in Boy From Oz on Broardway and also havong taken leading rolls in Wicked (Elphaba), Pirate Queen (Grace O'Malley), 9 to 5 (Judy) Stepanie has come along way since her time as the original Belle in the Disneyland production of "Beauty and the Beast."
Again it is nice, if all too rare, to see a former Cast Member paying their dues to their start at Disney now that their careers have taken off.
"He use[sic] to be a Jungle Cruise Skipper back in the haydays when he worked at DLR (obviously before he became famous.) Then back I want to say late 90's he was in MK to promote a movie or something. He talked to some CM and Disney allowed him to do the Jungle Cruise Skipper thing. They only let a few selected people to be in the few boat rides while Robin Williams was the Skipper. They let mainly CMs on the boat."
This is a persistent rumour that you see in some forums, though his profile on Wikipedia makes no mention of it what so ever.
If however you have any more concrete proof one way or the other please let me know.