Goodby to Mickey : Friends Pay Last Respects to Disney’s Sound Effects Master

The oak leaves overhead rustled softly. A sparrow chirped perkily from a nearby clump of pines. Distant freeway traffic made a whooshing sound resembling a restful mountain stream.

James Macdonald, the connoisseur of audio effects who for 40 years helped bring Walt Disney cartoons and movies to life, would have appreciated the sounds Thursday at his funeral in Glendale.

He would have especially like the words of his friends, who remembered him as the man who put words in Mickey Mouse’s mouth--and much more.

“He could make 20,000 sounds on order,” said Oscar-winning music conductor Irwin Kostal, who worked with Macdonald to re-record the soundtrack to “Fantasia” when that film was restored frame-by-frame a few years ago.

Macdonald would bring hundreds of gadgets--empty coconut shells, bedsprings and homemade contraptions--when he showed up to work on a cartoon’s soundtrack, recalled retired animator Xavier Atencio.

“If he couldn’t get the particular sound he wanted from one of those gizmos, Jimmy would do it with his mouth,” Atencio said.

“He was important to every picture we made,” agreed Bob Jackman, who for 38 years headed Disney Studios’ music department. “He would surprise me on every picture. He was such a clever man.”

Macdonald, who was 84 when he died last week, had been the voice of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters until he retired in 1974. But he was often called out of retirement for special projects. Last week, he had been asked to work on Disney’s new Splash Mountain attraction at the Tokyo Disneyland, said Howard Green, Disney’s director of studio communications.

“Jimmy enjoyed his last day on the job as much as his first,” said Al Jones, a retired studio negative cutter who remembered listening to Macdonald play drums with other studio workers during impromptu lunchtime jazz jam sessions.

“He was always making sounds--incredible sounds. Little toots. Big deep rumbles,” film editor Ray de Leuw said with a laugh.

Macdonald carried a small suitcase around containing his favorite sound devices, recalled Arlene Ludwig, Disney’s West Coast publicity director. “He’d spring things on people. He’d put BBs in a balloon for the sound of tires going over a cliff. He’d blow into a hurricane lamp to make growling bear sounds.”

Wayne Allwine, a free-lance voice-over artist who took over as the voice of Mickey Mouse when Macdonald retired, sat next to Roberta Macdonald during her husband’s brief graveside rites.

Besides learning Mickey’s famous high-pitched cartoon voice, Allwine learned how to operate most of Macdonald’s thousands of sound-effects gadgets during a seven-year apprenticeship with Macdonald.

As the crowd of about 65 drifted away after the service, Allwine--and Mickey--lingered to quietly say a final goodby.

“Well-a, so long!” he said in the mouse’s trademark falsetto sign-off. “See you real soon!”