Profile of Wally Boag on Famous Like Me

Wallace Vincent Boag was born 13 September 1920 in Portland, Oregon to Wallace B. and Emlyn G. Boag. He joined a professional dance team at age nine, later established his own dance school, and by the age of 19 had turned to comedy. He toured the world's vaudeville stages, and at the London Hippodrome brought a young 12-year-old girl on stage to help with his balloon act. The girl, a young Julie Andrews, astonished the audience with her voice and was kept in the show. In 1945, Boag signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and appeared in films such as "Without Love" and "The Thrill of a Romance", albeit uncredited.

In 1955 he heard of an opportunity to audition for a new show at Disneyland called Golden Horseshoe Review (although the show itself spelled it "Revue"). He became one of Walt Disney's favorite performers and gave an astonishing 40,000 performances with cast regulars Fulton Burley and Betty Taylor, earning him a mention in the Guinness Book of Records as the performer who played the greatest number of performances in a single show. In 1963, Julie Andrews once again performed with Boag on the Golden Horseshoe stage along with the Dapper Dans at a special press-only event to promote the next year's release of Mary Poppins. Together, Andrews and Boag recreated their act of long ago and sang "By the Light of the Silvery Moon".

Boag's Pecos Bill/Traveling Salesman character was a fast-paced comedy routine featuring slapstick humor, squirt guns, a seemingly endless supply of broken teeth which he would spit out throughout the routine, and his signature balloon animals (Boagaloons).

While Walt Disney was alive, he did everything he could to further Wally's career. Boag voiced Jose in Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room and also wrote much of the script for the attraction, participating also in the development of The Haunted Mansion. The 10,000th performance of the Golden Horseshoe Revue was featured on NBC's The Wonderful World of Disney. Disney had small roles written for Wally in The Absent Minded Professor and "Son of Flubber". It was Disney's intention to use Wally as the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh, but Disney died in 1966 and the role ultimately went to Paul Winchell.

In 1971, Wally took his Pecos Bill character to the newly-opened Walt Disney World and re-crafted the saloon show into a faster, funnier "Diamond Horseshoe Revue". Three years later he returned to Disneyland and finished his career there, entertaining adoring crowds at the Golden Horseshoe, retiring when the Revue closed in 1986. Wally was was given the Disney Legends award in 1995, and has his own window on Main Street in Disneyland above the Carnation Company. The inscription reads "Golden Vaudeville Routines - Wally Boag - Prop."

Wally's performances have influenced many later performers and comedians, most notable of whom is Steve Martin, who studied Boag's humor and timing while working at Disneyland as a teenager. Boag's performance appears on Week One of the Mickey Mouse Club DVD collection, and the soundtrack of the Golden Horseshoe Revue has been published on CD.

Wally currently lives in California with his wife, Ellen Morgan Boag.

This Disney article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Wally Boag