Bill Walsh

Known for WritingBorn 1913-09-30Died 1975-01-27New York City, New York, USA

Bill Walsh was born in New York to immigrant parents (father from Canada, mother from Ireland). In his teen years he lived with relatives in Cincinnati, OH, and later attended the University of Cincinnati. In 1933 he joined the stock touring company of husband / wife team Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay as a writer, but the couple divorced the next year and Walsh found himself stuck in Hollywood with no job and no prospects. He wound up working as an agent for a publicity agency, one of his clients being ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Walsh joined Walt Disney Studios in 1943, working for both the Publicity and Story departments. One of his jobs was to write jokes for the syndicated Mickey Mouse comic strip (he continued doing that on a voluntary basis for more than 20 years, long after he left those departments). Walsh brought his former client Edgar Bergen to Disney to narrate some cartoons and TV shows. Walt Disney, who at first saw television as basically a tool to promote his films, was impressed with Walsh's publicity savvy and chose him to head the studio's television division. His first few projects were resounding successes, and when Disney made a deal with ABC Television to invest in its Disneyland amusement park in exchange for Disney developing a TV series, Walsh was named the series' producer. The show turned out to be The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). Walsh developed the show basically by himself, with little input from Disney, who was more concerned with developing Disneyland. He hired both the child performers and adult hosts on the show, came up with the basic format--rotating "theme" days, animated opening and closing sequences and recurring live-action series, among other innovations--and even helped to develop the famous Mousketeer "ears" each performer wore. After several seasons on "The Mickey Mouse Club", Walsh wanted to get out of television production and left the show to produce live-action films. He produced quite a few of Disney's comedies and adventure films, the most famous being Mary Poppins (1964), which was one of the studio's biggest successes and pleased critics as much as it did fans. Most of the films he produced, however, were derided by critics as dull and low-quality and helped to cement Disney's reputation for turning out unimaginative, repetitive, assembly-line pap. The films made money for the studio, though, and Walsh and Walt Disney remained close until Disney's death in 1966. Bill Walsh died of a heart attack in 1975.Read more

Movies & web series

Along the Mohawk Trail

Davy Crockett Goes to Congress

The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Ghost Farm

The Hardy Boys

Further Adventures of Spin and Marty

Adventure in Dairyland

The Disneyland Story

Mary Poppins

Disneyland '59

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

The Best Doggoned Dog in the World

Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race

Blackbeard's Ghost

One Hour in Wonderland

That Darn Cat!

The Love Bug

The Misadventures of Merlin Jones

The Absent-Minded Professor

Scandalous John

The Adventures of Spin and Marty

Corky and White Shadow

The Mickey Mouse Club

Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter

Herbie Rides Again

Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with a Circus

Davy Crockett and the River Pirates

The Shaggy Dog

Son of Flubber

The Love Bug

Flubber

One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing

The Adventures of Clint and Mac

The New Adventures of Spin and Marty

Lt. Robin Crusoe U.S.N.

Westward Ho, The Wagons!

The Walt Disney Christmas Show

The Littlest Outlaw

The World's Greatest Athlete

Bon Voyage!

The Shaggy Dog

The Shaggy Dog Kids

The Riddle of Robin Hood