DISNEY HONORS 7 PIONEERING WOMEN.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Staff Writer

BURBANK - Seven of the pioneering women who helped build Walt Disney Studios into an animation and theme park leader were honored Thursday for dedication to the company.

The women were among 10 people honored with this year's Disney Legends Award, including a man born on the site on which Disneyland was built and two actors who provided voices for the animated film ``Pinocchio.''

Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and Vice Chairman Roy E. Disney handed out the awards during a ceremony at the studio's Legends Plaza. For the most part, the honorees began working at the animation studio in the 1930s and '40s, and in the theme parks in the 1950s and 1960s.

Retired Imagineer Harriet Burns had a hand in designing the Mouse Clubhouse, as well as Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln and The Carousel of Progress.

She said she fondly remembered working with the others who helped build the theme parks, adding in an aside to 58-year-old Eisner that he was too young to remember those workers.

``Working with all those artists at Disney, their creativity, their wittiness, their kooky ideas - those were the real bunch of Disney characters,'' she said.

Others honored were the late Grace Bailey, who was head of the ink and paint department; Joyce Carlson, a retired animator and Imagineer who helped create the It's a Small World attraction; and Becky Fallberg, also a manager of the ink and paint department.

Dodie Roberts, a former supervisor for the paint lab; the late Retta Scott, an animator whose first assignment was on ``Bambi''; and Ruthie Tompson, an animation photographer and scene planner, round out the list of women.

Other honorees were Ron Dominguez, whose family sold their Anaheim orange grove to the company and who worked there from 1954 to 1994; the late Cliff Edwards, the voice of Jiminy Cricket and other animated characters; and Dick Jones, an actor and the voice of the wooden puppet Pinocchio.

In addition to receiving statuettes, the 10 will have their names and handprints placed on a plaque along with those of others chosen since the award was established in 1988.

Disney said he enjoyed the annual awards presentation because it honored many of the people he grew up knowing when his father, Roy O. Disney, and his uncle, Walt, were building the company.

``We established the Legends program not to create a dusty museum of the past but to create a dynamic foundation on which this company will be built in the future,'' Disney said.

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Photo:

Disney Legends Award winners Becky Fallberg, Ron Dominguez and Dodie Roberts, from left, make handprints for plaques on Thursday morning.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer