Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 19, 2024


Birthdays: George De La Tour, Wyatt Earp, Dr. David Livingston, William Jennings Bryan, Sir Richard Burton (The African explorer), Charles M. Russell, Jacky Moms Mabley, Adolf Eichmann, Phillip Roth, Adolf Galland, Ursula Andress, Patrick McGoohan, Ornette Coleman, Holly Hunter, animator Richard Williams, Bruce Willis is 69, Glenn Close is 77


1799- Franz Josef Haydn’s oratorio The Creation premiered. Haydn was inspired when he heard Handel’s The Messiah in London.


1853- Charles Dicken’s novel Bleak House first appeared in magazine installments. It is the first novel to ever mention dinosaurs-" It would be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill…"


1859- Charles Gounod's opera 'Faust" premiered. It was so popular that after a while in New York wags nicknamed the Metropolitan Opera the "Faustspeilhaus" ( it's a pun on Wagner's theater in Bayreuth being called a Festspeilhaus, so Faustspeilhaus..heh-heh,.get it ?....look, don't blame me...its a Gilded Age opera joke....)


1874- Mexican-Californio bandido Tirbucio Vasquez was hanged. His last words were “Pronto!” The wild hills north of Newhall California where he hid out are today named in his honor-Vasquez Rocks. They are the site of numerous film shoots like original Star Trek episodes.


1875- Mark Twain admitted in a letter to a friend that he now likes to use a typewriter, a new technology accused of ruining the art of writing.


1895- The Lumiere Brothers filmed their first movie, employees leaving their dad’s factory.


1914- A fire in the negative vaults of the Eclair Studios in New Jersey destroyed forever all the American work of pioneer French animator Emile Cohl. He had come to the U.S. to animate the first cartoon series, George McManus’ "The Newlyweds" later to be renamed in comic strip form "Life With Father".


1918- As a wartime measure, the Congress created Daylight Savings Time separate from Standard Time.


1928- the Amos & Andy radio show debuted. NBC Blue Network, WMAQ in Chicago.


1931- Nevada legalized gambling.


1935- Harlem riots. When the rumor spread that a young shoplifter had been beaten to death by police in the basement of a Kress department store, 10,000 Harlem residents rioted in the streets and burned shops. Two people were killed. The child made an appearance and in fact had never been harmed.


1942- On St. Josephs Day, St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, across the street from the Disney Studio, was dedicated. Walt Disney owned the land and gave it to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Sisters of Providence. It would be the place where Walt, Roy, Roy Jr. and many other Disney employees would end their life’s journey.


1950- Writer Edgar Rice-Burroughs died at his LA ranch Tarzana. Today the town of Tarzana. He was 74. He had always hoped Walt Disney would have made a movie of his character Tarzan. Disney did produce an animated Tarzan in 1999. 


1953- First T.V. broadcast of the Oscar ceremony broadcast simultaneously from LA and NY. The circus film "The Greatest Show on Earth" won best picture, beating out High Noon, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man and Ivanhoe. It was Cecil B. DeMille’s only Oscar of his career. Gary Cooper won best actor and Shirley Booth best actress. Before TV, the Oscars ceremony included a dinner and an hour of dancing before the awards were presented. 


1954- On a freeway outside rural San Bernadino, singer Sammy Davis Jr. lost an eye in an auto accident. He was left lying bleeding unattended in a hallway in Riverside County Hospital. This was because he was black and it was a segregated facility. Finally, actor and friend Jeff Chandler found him and forced the doctors to treat him. Friend Frank Sinatra urged Davis out of his depression and got him out on stage again. That first night at Ciro’s nightclub the entire Ratpack- Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford each preformed on stage wearing a black eye patch similar to Davis’.


1957- Elvis Presley purchased an estate outside Memphis Tennessee called Graceland from Ruth Moore for $100,000.


1957- Skiing aficionado Pete Seibert was wounded in both legs during World War II, and it was feared he would never walk again. He not only walked, but he got back on skis and by 1950 made the US Olympic skiing team. This day, he hiked with a friend up to an isolated Valley in Colorado named Vail. He exclaimed:" My God Earl, we’ve climbed all the way to Heaven!” Pete Seibert built Vail into a world-class ski resort and town. 


1959- North Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh declared a war of unification against the Republic of South Vietnam.


1959- Disney released The Shaggy Dog, their first low budget live action comedy hit.


1962- Vasily Stalin, near-do-well son of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, died of acute alcoholism at age 40. After his father died, he was imprisoned in Siberia, but in 1958 he was allowed to retire to obscurity with a small pension.


1


962- The first Pillsbury Doughboy commercial.


1964- IBM gave the green light to plans for the 360 series. The first compatible computers.


1964- First day shooting on the James Bond film Goldfinger. 


1974- The band Jefferson Airplane changed its name to Jefferson Starship.


1979- C-Span cable channel started broadcasting live from the floor of Congress. The first Congressman to speak on camera was Al Gore.


1982- Randy Rhoads, the lead guitarist for Ozzy Ozbourne died when he playfully flew his plane buzzing the bands traveling bus and smacked into a farmhouse. 


1984- I’LL BE BACK- James Cameron began shooting the film the Terminator. He first considered casting O.J. Simpson for the cyborg killer before settling on Austrian weightlifter Arnold Schwarzenegger.


1993- Monkey-cam debuted on the David Letterman Show.


2004- Brian Maxwell, the inventor of the Power Bar nutrition snack, died of a heart attack at age 51.



Monday, March 18, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation Fun Facts for March 18, 2024


Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, John Calhoun, Nicholai Rimsky-Korsakov, Neville Chamberlain, Wilson Picket, Edgar Cayce, John Updike, Grover Cleveland, Edward Everett Horton, Vanessa Williams, F. W. DeKlerk, George Plympton, Peter Graves, Irene Cara, Luc Besson, Drew Struzan, Queen Latifah (born Dana Elaine Owens) is 54


1852- New York City steamboat skipper Henry Wells and mailman William Fargo form the Wells Fargo Company. In 1873 they went into a joint venture with several other freight shipping companies they called American Express.


1902- BIRTHDAY OF THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. The RCA Victrola company sent its engineers to Milan to record ten discs of the young singer Enrico Caruso. He became a world celebrity and the phonograph went from being a scientific curiosity to something every home had to have.


1910- Rosie O’Neill invented the Kewpie Doll.


100th Anniversary 1924-The film “The Thief of Baghdad” starring Douglas Fairbanks released. Directed by Raoul Walsh and designs by William Cameron Menzies. It is considered one of the first great special effects blockbuster.


1931- Schick, Inc. introduced the electric razor.


1942- Paramount’s “The Lost Dream” Little Audrey cartoon. The short was directed by Bill Tytla for Famous Studios. He designed Little Audrey based on his own daughter Tammy.



1962- President DeGaulle of France and Algerian FLN sign an accord giving Independence to Algeria.



1964- The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, the final direction of George Pal. With Tony Randall and Barbara Eden. 


1965- Cosmonaut Sergei Leonov became the first human to walk in space.


1965- The Rolling Stones were fined 5 English pence for urinating on a wall in Stratford at ABC recording studio Romford.


1967- The Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened at Disneyland, designed by master artists Marc Davis, Alice Davis, Rolly Crump and Claude Coates. 


1986- The New York Times reported that a 17-year-old student in New Jersey had tracked the launch of the new Soviet space station, Mir, before the Soviet government formally announced it. Using a shortwave scanner attached to his home computer, Phillip Naranjo tracked transmissions between space vessels and control centers on Earth. Just before the Russians announced Mir on February 20, the teen had picked up their Cyrillic code.


2011- The first space probe went into orbit around Mercury.



Sunday, March 17, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 17, 2024


Birthdays: Jim Bridger the mountain man, Nat King Cole, film composer Alfred Newman, Mercedes McCambridge, Leslie Ann Down, Patrick Duffy, Rudolph Nureyev, Gary Sinise, Kate Greenaway, John Sebastian, Ben Washam (Warner Bros. animator), Ken Anderson (Disney animator), Stormy Daniels (porn star), John Wayne Gacy, Kurt Russell is 74, Rob Lowe is 61


461AD- HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY - St. Patrick was a Romanized Gaul named Patricius Magonus Sucatus who as a boy was taken as a slave to Ireland by raiders, then escaped and became a Christian Bishop at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland in 432. Patrick converted the daughters of Irish King Laoghaire and cast down the great pagan idol of Crom Cruach in Letrim. As far as snakes go, some say that was a metaphor for the pagans.  He died on this day in Ireland 461AD. 

  The holiday was a religious festival in Ireland but in America the feast day of Ireland's patron saint became a chance to show ethnic pride and political strength in the face of anti-Irish prejudice. 




1394- FREE LANCERS - Sir John Hawkwood died. During a time-out in the Hundred Years War in France Hawkwood formed a company of unemployed English knights and went to Italy to become “condottierie”-mercenaries, fighting for money in the feuds between all the little Italian city-states. Their distinctive brightly polished silver armor gave them the name “The White Company”. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle wrote a novel by that name about them. 

This is around the time the term 'free lance' had been coined, meaning a knight who was free of any Shield-Oath to a noble lord.



1811- The first sidewheel Mississippi riverboat The New Orleans was launched.


1845- Rubber Bands invented.


1879- New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace stopped work on his novel Ben Hur long enough to meet face-to-face outlaw Billy the Kid to discuss an amnesty.


1884- To quiet the fears of New Yorkers that the Brooklyn Bridge was too dangerous to cross, circus-master P.T. Barnum led a herd of his circus elephants led by Jumbo the Elephant across the bridge safely.


1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.


1906- Teddy Roosevelt in a speech to the Gridiron Club coins the term "Muckraker".


1912- The Camp Fire Girls created.



1939- The Walt Disney short cartoon “Goofy and Wilbur” released. The character Goofy had been in Mickey shorts since 1932, but this was his first as a solo star.


1941- The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington D.C.


1944- As if Naples wasn’t already having a tough year with WW2 fighting all around it, this day Mt. Vesuvius erupted as well.


1949- The first car show for Porsche sportscars.


1965- Chicago began the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green.


1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group called AWAG (American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by publically condemning Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award.  As a result Ed Asner’s hit TV show “Lou Grant” lost sponsors and was cancelled, and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond speaking at NRA events, and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times that Ben Hur wasn’t gay.



Saturday, March 16, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for March 16, 2024


Birthdays: James Madison, Conrad Nagel, Dr. Josef Mengele the Nazi Angel of Death, Teresa Berganza, Christa Ludwig, Pat Nixon, Alice Bonheur, Harper Goff, Gore Verbinsky, Jerry Lewis, Bernardo Bertolucci, Eric Estrada, Kate Nelligan, Isabelle Huppert is 71, Lauren Graham is 57, Flava-Flav born William Drayton Jr.


1850- Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter published.


1898- Artist Aubrey Beardsley died of tuberculosis at 25. Having a religious conversion at the end of his life, but still the stickler for detail, his last words were:" Destroy all my erotic drawings...all the bad ones too...." Luckily for history his friends did neither.


1926 -Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket in Auburn Massachusetts. In later years he was invited to join Cal Tech and the Galcit group in forming the embryonic Jet Propulsion Lab. Goddard refused because at such a government facility he would no longer be the center of attention but just another scientist. Goddard also set up the first testing grounds in Rosswell New Mexico.



1934- Disney’s short The Three Little Pigs won an Oscar for best animated short.


1961- Walt Disney comedy The Absent Minded Professor with Fred MacMurray premiered. 


1994- Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding was arrested for obstructing the prosecution of the case of the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan.


2007- Author Michael Crichton was the author of classics like The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. He had been called the H.G. Wells of modern times. But today he shocked the scientific community by denouncing the theory of Global Warming.


2005- Actor Robert Blake was acquitted of the murder of his wife Bonnie Lee Blakeley. She was shot in the head while in their car after having dinner together. Blake claimed he had returned to the restaurant to retrieve his gun. (?) Another suspect has never been found. Robert Blake died of old age in March 2023.


2020- Los Angeles, including Hollywood, ordered all theaters closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Broadway and Walt Disneyworld closed down as well.


2020- Agatha Christies play The Mousetrap, the longest running play in history, running continuously since 1952, was closed due to the Covid pandemic.



Friday, March 15, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 15, 2024


Birthdays: Andrew Jackson, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg is 82, Eva Longoria is 49, animator David Silverman is 67


1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming.  Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as its birthday.


1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes cartoon studio. He was made a director in 1938. 


1956- Lerner & Lowe’s stage musical "My Fair Lady" premiered. 


1956- The film Forbidden Planet premiered in theaters. Considered the granddaddy of Sci-Fiction blockbusters


1962- The discovery of anti-matter.


1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.


1964- The book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan first published. The first major book to point out women were unhappy with their second class roles. And it coined the term Feminist. 


1969- Two young heirs to the Polydent false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.


1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.


1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show? 


1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered private domain site on the Internet. 



2002- Blue Sky’s hit animated film Ice Age premiered. The studio was being scaled down to be actioned off when the film was a massive hit. Out doing the Best Picture Oscar winner A Beautiful Mind. 



Thursday, March 14, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 14, 2024


Birthdays: Georg Phillip Telemann, Johann Strauss Sr., Albert Einstein, Casey Jones,  astronaut Frank Borman, Les Brown, Hank Ketcham, Wolfgang Petersen, Diane Arbus, Chris Klein, Michael Cain born Maurice Mickelwhite is 91, Billy Crystal is 76, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, Quincy Jones is 91


1885- Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Mikado premiered in London.


1903- President Teddy Roosevelt established Pelican Island as the first Federal Wildlife Preserve. 


1923- President Warren Harding became the first President to file an Income Tax Return.


1930- Mickey’s Barn Dance premiered.


1932- Inventor GEORGE EASTMAN shot himself- The inventor of the Roll-film camera, who named his celluloid strips 'film' and founded Eastman/Kodak. He had been suffering from a long painful spinal illness and left the note: " To my friends: The End is near. My work is done. Why wait? " He was 77.



1941- Xavier Cugat and his orchestra first recorded "Babalu". It later became popular in the U.S when sung by a young man from Cuba named Desi Arnez. In the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon, Quick Draw’s sidekick is a Mexican donkey named Baba Looey.


1943- Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" premiered. George Szell conducting.  


1967- Julie Newmar first appeared as Catwoman on the Batman TV show.


1991- Lyricist Howard Ashman (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) died of HIV/AIDS. He was 40. 


1992- The official Soviet newspaper Pravda- Truth, ceased publication. 


1998- The epic disaster movie Titanic surpassed Star Wars and Jurassic Park as the greatest money earning film (until Avatar). It cost over $200 million to make but it earned at least $1 billion in box office alone. Quote director James Cameron: I’m King of the World!!


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for March 13, 2024


Birthdays: Hugh Walpole, Charles 2nd Earl Grey 1764- English Prime Minister whom the tea blend 'Earl Grey Tea " is named for, Pope Innocent XII (1615), Abigail Powers Filmore- First Lady of Millard Filmore, Hugo Wolf, Ted Sears, Sammy Kaye, Danny Kaye, Neil Sedaka, L. Ron Hubbard, Dick Katz, Annabell Gish, Joe Ranft, Al Jaffee, William Macy is 73 .


1639- Richard Burbage died. Burbage was the famed Elizabethan actor and friend of William Shakespeare. On his tombstone was a simple epitaph- EXIT BURBAGE.


1781- The discovery of the planet Uranus by British astronomer William Herschel. The first planet discovered since prehistoric times.  Galileo and Kepler used their early telescopes to spot the rings and Saturn and moons of Jupiter, but no other planets. Herschel wanted to call his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III, but other astronomers convinced him to keep to the pattern of naming planets after Roman gods.  Hershel emigrated from Germany and played violin in several symphony orchestras before becoming interested in astronomy. He brought his sister over, and she became an opera singer, as well as observing and naming 5 comets.


1884- Chester Greenwood of Maine invented ear-muffs.



1928- In New York City, Walt Disney sent a telegram to his brother Roy back in California, informing him of his disastrous meeting with producer Charles Mintz. That Mintz had exercised a clause in their contract to take the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit away from them. He cabled “ Leaving Tonight, stopping over KC. Arrive Sunday Morning. Don’t Worry. All Will be Well.” Later on the train home, Walt with Ub Iwerks and his wife Lillian came up with a new character named Mickey Mouse.


1939- Hollywood recognized the Screen Director’s Guild, later called he DGA. After a nasty battle lasting several years Guild President Frank Capra signed the contracts representing 80% of movie directors. They also contractually ensured the custom of the director’s credit being the last one seen at the opening title sequence of a film. 


1943- Radio station WNYC goes on the air.


1944- Abbot & Costello copyrighted their baseball routine ‘Who’s on First?"


1947- MGM Tom & Jerry’s Cat Concerto won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.


1969- Disney’s comedy about a Volkswagen beetle, "The Love Bug" premiered. The reason the Volkswagen has the race car number 53 painted on it was because producer Bill Walsh was a big fan of LA Dodger hitter Don Drysdale. His player number was 53.


1983- The Larry King Show debuted on HBO, later moving to CNN. King retired that show in 2010, but kept doing cable shows until his death from covid in 2020.


1986- Microsoft made its first public stock offering. A share went for $21.


1987- Raising Arizona, directed by the Cohen Bros opened.