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Harrison Ford, Angela Bassett, Miley Cyrus and More Honored as Disney Legends at Ceremony 

Honorees Angela Bassett, David Cameron, Joe Rhode, Miley Cyrus, Frank Oz, Harrison Ford, Mark Henn, Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, Kelly Ripa, Colleen Atwood and Martha Blanding pose onstage at the 2024 Disney Legends Awards during Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, US, August 11, 2024. (Reuters)
Honorees Angela Bassett, David Cameron, Joe Rhode, Miley Cyrus, Frank Oz, Harrison Ford, Mark Henn, Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, Kelly Ripa, Colleen Atwood and Martha Blanding pose onstage at the 2024 Disney Legends Awards during Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, US, August 11, 2024. (Reuters)
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Harrison Ford, Angela Bassett, Miley Cyrus and More Honored as Disney Legends at Ceremony 

Honorees Angela Bassett, David Cameron, Joe Rhode, Miley Cyrus, Frank Oz, Harrison Ford, Mark Henn, Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, Kelly Ripa, Colleen Atwood and Martha Blanding pose onstage at the 2024 Disney Legends Awards during Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, US, August 11, 2024. (Reuters)
Honorees Angela Bassett, David Cameron, Joe Rhode, Miley Cyrus, Frank Oz, Harrison Ford, Mark Henn, Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, Kelly Ripa, Colleen Atwood and Martha Blanding pose onstage at the 2024 Disney Legends Awards during Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, US, August 11, 2024. (Reuters)

Disney bestowed "legends" status on 14 artists, including Harrison Ford, Angela Bassett and Miley Cyrus, who have shaped the company.

The honorees, who the company says have had a "significant impact" on Disney’s legacy, include director James Cameron, iconic film composer John Williams, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Ripa, among several others.

This year's class of Disney Legends was inducted into the company's version of the hall of fame in a ceremony Sunday at The Honda Center in Anaheim, California, as a part of the D23 fan convention. Ryan Seacrest hosted the show, which will be available to stream Monday on Disney+.

Ford, who was the first to accept the award, called himself an "assistant storyteller," noting the many contributions of his collaborators to his career. He got emotional as he thanked Disney CEO Bob Iger, who presented him with the award, for his professional guidance and friendship.

The "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" actor will have his signature and handprints done up again more than 20 years after he was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The revered actor is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the upcoming "Captain America: Brave New World."

Cyrus got emotional as she accepted the award after country singer Lainey Wilson warmed the crowd up with a rousing performance of "The Best of Both Worlds" from Cyrus' breakout show, "Hannah Montana."

"Legends get scared, too. I'm scared right now, but the difference is we do it anyway. All of you can do that every single day. It's legendary to be afraid and do it anyway," Cyrus said. "There's no such thing as failure when you try."

The "Flowers" singer, who rose to fame after starring as the titular popstar in "Hannah Montana" in 2006, is the youngest recipient of the Legends honor. Following her time on the sitcom, Cyrus has had a long-running career in music, winning her first Grammy Award in February.

Bassett, who appeared in "Black Panther" and "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," reunited with the film's director, Ryan Coogler, who presented her with the honor. Bassett also stars in ABC’s "9-1-1."

"To the fans, you are the magic," Bassett said. "There are not enough words to let you know how much I appreciate you, how much I love you. I stand here today because you bought the tickets, you have watched the television shows, you have cheered me on my best days and lifted me up on the more difficult ones."

Lindsay Lohan and Jodie Foster joined forces to present Curtis with her award. Foster said her "bestie" was "inventive, fearless and full of surprises" before bestowing old-fashioned Mickey Mouse ears upon Curtis.

"Legends aren't born, they're created," Curtis said. "They're created and nurtured and taught and educated and then they make art and then we connect."

Curtis has appeared in her share of projects under The Walt Disney Studios banner, from "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" to "You Again." She is set to reprise her role in the upcoming sequel of the fan-favorite movie "Freaky Friday," opposite Lohan. Curtis and Lohan surprised fans at Friday’s D23 presentation and shared a first look at "Freakier Friday."

Ford stepped back out on stage to honor Williams, who created the iconic scores of Ford's "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" movies, as well as "Jurassic Park" and "Jaws," among several others. Williams has created the "soundtrack of our lives," Ford said.

The Pacific Symphony performed a medley of music Williams, who was not in attendance, composed specially for the occasion.

Kate Winslet and Zoe Saldana, the stars of "Titanic" and "Avatar," respectively, teamed up to celebrate James Cameron.

"It’s a dream come true," Cameron said of being in a group with his fellow honorees. "There’s just such an incredible display of creativity and imagination here tonight and I’m just happy to be in this crowd, to be part of this club and part of the Disney family tonight."

ABC talk show host and mainstay Ripa reunited with her former co-host Seacrest as he introduced her to accept her honor. Her career at the television network spans over 30 years and she now hosts "Live with Kelly and Mark" with her husband, Mark Consuelos.

"It is a very rare thing, anybody can tell you in this industry, to be employed consistently in this industry, but to be employed by the same company for 34 years is my great good fortune," Ripa said. "I owe everything to Disney."

Danny DeVito, one of director James L. Brooks’ long-running collaborators and friends, presented the "Simpsons" and "Mary Tyler Moore Show" creator with the award, calling him a "genius."

"There will never be another writer, director, producer, like my dear friend," DeVito said.

Disney also honored six behind-the-scenes creatives who have contributed to groundbreaking films, art and Disney experiences.

Those honorees include Colleen Atwood, an Oscar-winning costume designer; Mark Henn, a prominent animator known for his work animating several Disney princesses; Steve Ditko, the late comics artist known for characters such as Spider-Man and Doctor Strange; Frank Oz, a noted puppeteer of "Muppets" characters and a filmmaker; Martha Blanding, a longtime manager at The Walt Disney Company and Disneyland, and Joe Rohde, a former Disney Imagineer.

Previous Disney Legends include Elton John, Steve Jobs, Betty White, Dick Van Dyke, Robert Downey Jr. and Whoopi Goldberg. They are among more than 300 honorees since the program’s inception in 1987.

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Entertainment

New York City's Freewheeling Era of Outdoor Dining Has Come to End

People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
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New York City's Freewheeling Era of Outdoor Dining Has Come to End

People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Outdoor tables saved thousands of New York City restaurants from ruin when they were forced to close their dining rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But four years into an experiment that transformed New York’s streetscape — briefly giving it a sidewalk cafe scene as vibrant as Paris or Buenos Aires — the freewheeling era of outdoor dining has come to an end.
Over the weekend, restaurants hit a deadline to choose between abiding by a strict set of regulations for their alfresco setups or dismantling them entirely — and thousands chose to tear down the plywood dining structures that sprouted on roadways in the pandemic's early days.
Fewer than 3,000 restaurants have applied for roadway or sidewalk seats under the new system, a fraction of the 13,000 establishments that participated in the temporary Open Restaurants program since 2020, according to city data.
Mayor Eric Adams said the new guidelines address complaints that the sheds had become magnets for rats and disorder, while creating a straightforward application process that will expand access to permanent outdoor dining.
But many restaurant owners say the rules will have the opposite effect, dooming a vestige of the pandemic that gave them unusual freedom to turn parking spaces into rent-free extensions of their dining rooms with minimal red-tape.
“They’ve found a middle ground to do one thing while saying another thing,” said Patrick Cournot, the co-founder of Ruffian, a Manhattan wine bar. “They’ve managed us out, essentially.”
Ramshackle plywood dining structures seemed to sprout from New York City’s streets almost overnight in the early days of the COVID pandemic.
With its crowded sidewalks and traffic-choked streets, the city had never really been known previously for an outdoor dining scene. But with customers banned from congregating indoors for months, the city gave restaurants a green light to expand dining areas onto public sidewalks and roadways.
Simple sheds for outdoor seating were soon replaced or expanded into more elaborate constructions, which have remained standing long after the days of social distancing and disinfected groceries. Restaurants added planters, twinkling lights, flowers and heating lamps so people could dine outdoors well into the cold weather. Other outside dining spaces appeared inside heated igloos, or with open fire places and under tiered rooftops.
Now, these structures must conform to uniform design standards, with licensing and square footage fees that could total thousands of dollars a year, depending on size and location.
But the most significant change, according to many restaurants, is a requirement that the roadside sheds be taken down between December and April each year.
That's a deal-breaker for Blend, a Latin Fusion restaurant in Queens that once won an Alfresco Award for its “exemplary” outdoor set-up.
“I understand they want to keep it consistent and whatever else, but it’s just too much work to have to take it down every winter,” said manager Nicholas Hyde. “We’re not architects. We’re restaurant managers.”
Blend's 60 outdoor seats “kept us alive” during the pandemic and remained well-used with diners who “since COVID just want to be able to enjoy themselves outside,” Hyde said. But after looking over the application, they decided to remove the curbside structure, opting instead to apply for sidewalk seating that can remain year-round.
Of the 2,592 restaurants that have applied for the new program, roughly half will forgo roadway set-ups in favor of sidewalk-only seating, according to the city.
Karen Jackson, a teacher, was going to lunch indoors Tuesday at Gee Whiz diner in Tribeca, one of the restaurants that took its outdoor shed down ahead of the deadline.
Jackson said she has mixed feelings, recalling how having coffee outside in a shed was one of the few entertainment options available early in the pandemic, The Associated Press reported.
“Some of them were really cute,” but others were unattractive and rat-infested, Jackson said.
“Unfortunately I think the places with more money were able to build the cute sheds and the places that were struggling couldn’t,” she said.
Andrew Riggie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, said the city should examine why so few eligible restaurants have applied, and consider how costly it will be to take down, store and rebuild the structures each year.
Applications for roadway dining structures must also undergo a review from local community boards, where some of the fiercest debates over outdoor dining have played out. Opponents have complained that the sheds eliminate parking, contribute to excessive noise and attract vermin.
On the Lower East Side, a row of sheds owned by a sushi counter, a coffee shop, a Mexican eatery and a Filipino restaurant stand side-by-side.
Paola Martinez, a manager at Barrio Chino, the Mexican restaurant, acknowledged the trash headaches and neighborhood conflict — on one particularly busy night, an angry neighbor hurled glass at the structure from an upstairs window, she said. But her restaurant has applied to stay in the roadway.
“It attracts a lot more people to the area,” she said. “It’s been great for business.”
City officials say restaurants who missed the deadline are welcome to apply in the future, while those that haven't will soon be fined $1,000 each day their set-ups remain.
Watching contractors take a crowbar to his once-vibrant dining shed, Cournot described a sense of relief. He said the sheds had come to symbolize an incredibly challenging period when a coworker died from the virus and a drop in sales nearly ended his East Village wine bar.
“When people say it’s the end of an era, I think it’s the end of a uniquely awful era for restaurants in New York,” Cournet said. “Like going through any kind of extended group trauma, the positives that we feel collectively are a little bit of a mirage.”