Tommy Walker Death
Tommy passed away on October 20, 1986 at the age of 63.
When did Tommy Walker die?
October 20, 1986How old was Tommy Walker when died?
63
Tommy Walker Birthday and Date of Death
Tommy Walker was born on November 8, 1922 and died on October 20, 1986. Tommy was 63 years old at the time of death.
Birthday: November 8, 1922
Date of Death: October 20, 1986
Age at Death: 63
Tommy Walker - Biography
Thomas Luttgen Walker (November 8, 1922, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – October 20, 1986) was an American producer of live entertainment events who was director of entertainment at Disneyland during its first twelve years of operation, and later produced spectacular events at celebrations including three Olympic Games and the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. He was the composer of the six-note "Charge!" fanfare.It is a shame. Before the Dos Equis guy, Tommy Walker might have been the most interesting man in the world. In 1934 he performed in Berlin as an 11-year-old trumpet soloist and drum major in his father’s American Legion band. Later, while starring in three sports at Black-Foxe Military Institute in Hollywood, he remained active in the academy’s band but still found time to act in a handful of MGM productions. That’s Tommy playing the drum major in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He joined the Army in 1942, scouting behind enemy lines, earning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. At USC, after the war, he was the Spirit of Troy drum major—in addition to kicking extra points. Tommy the Toe would descend from the stands, shedding his band uniform, replacing his tall shako with a football helmet. The Redskins offered him a tryout.A born showman, at age 11 Tommy Walker was playing trumpet in his father’s American Legion band in Berlin. He was a three-sport star in high school, while appearing in several MGM films. After earning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in World War II, he enrolled at USC. Dubbed Tommy the Toe, he was drum major and also kicked extra points for the Trojans. After graduation he became the school’s band director and produced his first halftime shows.Courtesy of Lucille WalkerInstead, Walker became USC’s band director. His peppy, whimsical halftime shows, featuring card stunts and pigeon releases, caught the eye of Walt Disney, who hired him in 1955 to stage the opening ceremonies for a theme park in Anaheim. Walker stayed for 12 years at Disneyland, and many of its iconic flourishes—fireworks above the castle; Tinker Bell descending along a wire from the Matterhorn—were his creations.A master of pageantry and sworn enemy of subtlety, Walker was also a charismatic man whose wide circle of friends included Pete Rozelle. Before the first title game between the AFL and NFL champions, in 1967, Walker urged the young commish to cough up a few bucks for a glitzy halftime show. “Why would we spend all that money?” Rozelle shot back. “That’s when everybody goes to the bathroom.”Walker was adamant that he could craft a spectacle so engaging that viewers would gladly postpone the call of nature. In the end he produced three such extravaganzas, for Super Bowls I, IV and VII. Even though those galas made up a mere fraction of his oeuvre—like the sonnets of Shakespeare or the skateboarding medals won by Shaun White—Walker can still be described, accurately, as the Father of the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Considering the overhyped and often incoherent monstrosity into which that event has evolved, he almost certainly would have preferred that you not.In the tense moments before the armies of Sauron storm the fortress of Helms Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it is the dashing archer Legolas who offers this advice to the bow-wielding battalion around him: “Their armor is weak at the neck.”“The halftime show is the neck of the Super Bowl,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse. “It’s where the broadcast is most vulnerable.” He is speaking of the show’s susceptibility to counterprogramming, such as in 1992, when Fox hijacked 20 million CBS viewers from Super Bowl XXVI’s saccharine “Winter Magic” halftime with a riotous episode of In Living Color.Thompson, who calls Super Bowl Sunday the most successful national holiday “since Lincoln gave us Thanksgiving,” regards the big broadcast as “three parallel programs.” The first is the game. The second is the “film festival put together by the advertising industry.” Which leaves the neck. While the Super Bowl halftime may be the most-watched musical performance in the world most years, Thompson says, “it is certainly not the most beloved.”David Hill, the longtime CEO of Fox Sports, describes the halftime show as “America’s multigenerational entertainment for the year.” Precisely. For the NFL, the conundrum of annually choosing the performer is similar to a family—grandparents, parents, kids—trying to agree on one Las Vegas act to see. Don Rickles? Blue Man Group? The Mac King Comedy Magic Show?“The aim is to engage as many generations as you can,” says Mark Quenzel, Senior VP of Programming and Production for NFL Network. “Entertaining everybody is a challenge, no doubt about it.”Actually, clarifies Thompson, it’s impossible. “If Tom Petty makes some people deliriously happy, plenty of other people are asking, ‘Tom who?’ ”Petty was one in a series of six consecutive safe and familiar old-fart ensembles booked by a league still traumatized by the R-rated finale to the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, in 2004. The camera that captured Janet Jackson’s right br**st that night after it was exposed by costar Justin Timberlake did so from a football field away. The offending boob was on air for all of a second. Yet that was long enough for CBS to get slapped with a $550,000 fine from the FCC (later voided by the courts); long enough to stoke the outrage of politicians concerned about the moral decline in America. It was long enough to entice 35,000 new subscribers to TiVo, to inspire YouTube and to make “Janet Jackson” the most searched name in Internet history.
