The Fabulous Disney Babe
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Ever wonder what happens to Disney props when the film's finished? Nowadays, they're more likely to go to eBay than not, but before there was eBay, some of these pieces of Disney history found themselves in the most unusual places. I had a chance to do an online "interview" with Steve Lee, Cybercurator of HollywoodLostandFound.net.
Fab: Steve, you've worked on quite a few Disney Films. How did you get into this business?
SLee: "I grew up as a kind of 'studio brat,' following my Dad to various meetings and screenings. He was a writer and consultant, and produced a bunch of short films. And I would hang out on studio lots and screening rooms and dub stages, learning how movies were made.
"My Dad compiled one of the first reference books on science fiction and fantasy films, so I grew up watching all these great monster movies and space films. And I'd hang out at these places with these incredible collections of movie memorabilia, like Forry Ackerman's house. That was a lot of fun -- but not really a normal childhood, I guess -- growing up playing with the real Robby the Robot and Tracy the Gorilla isn't your average kid's activity, is it?"
Fab: No, but it explains the origin of some of the stories on your site! How did you first become a Disney nut? Did you go to the Park when you were a kid? You lived pretty close.
SLee: "I also remember meeting and hanging out with people who's names I'd grow up hearing again and again. I remember one particular trip to Disneyland my family made when I was a kid. We went with John Landis, a friend of ours, and I just had a blast. I was maybe 10 at the time. But I could tell he was as much a fan of the park as I was. Not much later, he would go on to direct all these great films -- 'An American Werewolf in London,' 'Animal House,' 'Trading Places.' And he also directed the Disneyland 35th Anniversary TV special with Charles Fleisher -- and when I watched it, I remembered a lot of what we did at the park that one day, what we talked about, you know, the history of the place. And now, years later, I was watching a film he got to make there. He shot this amazing sequence inside the Haunted Mansion, and I was just thinking back to when we rode it together - and how exciting it must have been for him to make a movie there."
Fab: I would have called up and asked to work on it there! I remember reading about Castle Thunder on your site, which can be heard inside the Haunted Mansion. Some of those stories are classic; I'm so glad you finally started to put them up.
SLee: "HollywoodLostAndFound.net was created as a place for me and my friends to share some of these stories, and maybe spread some of that enthusiasm that lead us to the silly business of making moves in the first place.
Fab: You grew up in the film community, and have worked as an actor, writer, performing character voices, and as a sound effects designer. You're also "A Keeper of the Wilhelm", which has got to be my favorite thing to "spot" in Disney (and other) movies. Talk about trivia! Please, give us the backstory behind the Wilhelm.
SLee: "One of the things that fascinated me when I was growing up, watching old movies, was that some of the same sound effects were re-used over and over again. I learned a lot about radio when I was growing up, and how a lot of the sounds were performed live for those shows -- but I realized that with films, sounds that were recorded for one movie were put into libraries and would often turn up again and again in more films later. It was fun to learn to spot them.
"The 'Wilhelm' is a scream that was recorded for an old Warner Brothers film called 'Distant Drums.' They needed a scream for a guy in the film who was bitten by an alligator and dragged underwater, so they got someone to scream later, and recorded it. But that scream was archived into the Warner's sound effects library, and was used many many times since. We call it a 'Wilhelm' because that was the name of a character who let out the same scream in an old Western called 'Charge at Feather River.' Ben Burtt, the Sound Designer for all the 'Star Wars' and 'Indian Jones' films, tracked it down and started using it in most of the films he worked on. At one time, I believe he tried to track down the person who may have originally did it, but never discovered who it was."