Wayne Allwine

Wayne Anthony Allwine was born in Glendale, California, on February 7, 1947.^[2] He is a graduate of John Burroughs High School, where he was particularly active in the school's musical theater department.^[2] His father was a barbershop quartet singer.^[2]

While in high school, he formed his own acoustic music group, The International Singers, which performed in clubs and colleges throughout the state.^[2] After graduating, he briefly toured with the instrumental rock band Davie Allan & the Arrows. In addition to playing rhythm guitar, he can also be heard on harmonica and sax mouthpiece on the 1968 track "Cycle-Delic".^[4] He later became an accomplished Dixieland jazz drummer, occasionally sitting in with Firehouse Five Plus Two alumni George Probert's Monrovia Old Style Jazz Band.^[5]

In 1966, Allwine started work in the mailing room at the Disney studios, before working in the sound effects department with Jimmy MacDonald.^[2]

After working in the sound effects department for seven years, Allwine got a call from Disney for an open audition for the role of Mickey Mouse in late 1976, after a previous actor failed to show up.^[2] Upon auditioning for the role, Allwine became the third official voice of Mickey Mouse in 1977.^[3][2] He replaced Jimmy MacDonald, who in 1947 had taken over from Walt Disney himself, who had performed the role since 1928 as well as supplying Mickey's voice for animated portions of the original The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC.^[3]

Allwine's first appearance as Mickey was voicing the animated lead-ins for The New Mickey Mouse Club in 1977.^[2] His first appearance as Mickey for a theatrical release was in the 1983 featurette Mickey's Christmas Carol.^[2] In the same film, he voiced a Santa Claus on the street appealing for charity donations at the start of the movie, Moley (who appears with Ratty) "collecting for the poor", and one of the two weasel undertakers in the Christmas future scene.

He also starred in films such as The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Prince and the Pauper (1990) and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004), and the TV series Mickey Mouse Works (1999–2000), House of Mouse (2001–2003), and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006–2012).^[2] He has provided Mickey's voice in the popular Kingdom Hearts series of video games prior to Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, which was done in collaboration with Japanese video game company Square Enix. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, which was released several months after Allwine’s death, was the last game that used his voice (mainly with Mickey as a playable character in Mission Mode), and was dedicated to his memory in North American releases.

In addition to his voice work, Allwine spent much of his career as a sound effects editor and foley artist for Disney films and TV shows, including Splash (1984), Three Men and a Baby (1987); as well as Innerspace (1987), Alien Nation (1988), and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier for other studios. In 1986, he was awarded a group Primetime Emmy Award for his sound editing contributions to Steven Spielberg's anthology television series Amazing Stories.

In 1988, Allwine met his wife Russi Taylor, during a recording session of Totally Minnie.^[6][7][8][9] They married in 1991 and remained married up until his death in 2009.^[3][2][10] They were both named Disney Legends in 2008.^[2][3] Allwine fathered three biological children and one adopted child from previous marriages.^[2][3]

Allwine died of complications from diabetes at the age of 62 on May 18, 2009, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. His understudy, Bret Iwan, assumed the role of voicing Mickey Mouse.^[2][11][12] Allwine was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.^[2]