tom sito's animation almanac for July 31, 2025

Birthdays: Liberace, General George H. Thomas the "Rock of Chickamagua", Sebastian Sperling Kresge the founder of S.S. Kresge stores, Milton Friedman, Sherry Lansing, Geraldine Chaplin, Kurt Gowdy, Dean Cain, Leon “ Bull “Durham, Primo Levi, Fred Quimby, animator Ken Harris, Ted Cassidy who played Lurch in the Adams Family, Wesley Snipes is 63, and according to J.K. Rowling, today is the birthday of Harry Potter. George Jetson (see below), The Disney animator twin brothers Tony and Tom Bancroft are 57.

 

1703- In London, writer Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was made to stand in the public pillory for writing critical satires of the Her Majesties government and Church. 

 

1922- Ralph Samuelson invented water skis.

 

1930- Radio mystery show “The Shadow” premiered. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…heh, heh, heh.” Orson Welles did the voice of the crime fighting Shadow for a year in 1937 for $185 a week.

 

1931- Mickey short The Karnival Kid, directed by Walt Disney. Mickey spoke his first words, “ Hot Dogs!”

 

1948- President Truman dedicated New York City’s second major airport Idlewild Field. In 1963 it was renamed JFK Airport.

 

1954- Steve Allen married Jayne Meadows.

 

1966- Birmingham Alabama held a massed rally to burn Beatles records after John Lennon casually joked that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus.

 

 

1968- In the wake of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, a schoolteacher named Harriet Glickman wrote Charles Schulz that he needed to add a black child to his Peanuts characters. This day Charles Schulz introduced Franklin, the first black character into his Peanuts comic strip.

 

1970- Black Tot Day- The British Navy officially ended its centuries old custom of giving a ships crew a ration (tot) of rum. 

 

1971- Apollo 15 astronaut went for a drive on the surface of the moon in their land-rover.

 

1992- Bebe’s Kids released, the first animated feature directed by an African American animator, Bruce W. Smith.

 

1992- The Robert Zemeckis’ comedy Death Becomes Her opened. With Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. It is the first film that widely used the new digital matte technique to replace traditional optical printing.

1995- The Walt Disney Company bought the ABC Network, the Discovery Channel and ESPN.

 

1999- Premiere of Brad Bird’s movie The Iron Giant.

 

2020- The Twitter accounts of famous people like former Pres Obama, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk were hacked for a sophisticated bitcoin scam. The person arrested was not a foreign agent or terrorist, but a 17 year old High School student from Tampa, Fla., named Graham Clark.

 

2022- George Jetson of the 1960s TV show The Jetsons was born. The show is set in the year 2062, when George was age 40. 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for July 30, 2025

Birthdays: Georgio Vasari, Henry Ford, Emily Bronte', Casey Stengel, Roy Williams, Vladimir Zworykin, Arnold Schwarzenegger is 78, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, Peter Bogdanovich, Delta Burke, Henry Moore, Anita Hill, Lawrence Fishburne is 64, Jean Reno is 77, Hilary Swank is 51, Christopher Nolan is 55, Lisa Kudrow is 62

1889- Start of the Sherlock Holmes mystery, the Naval Treaty.

1929 -The Hollywood Bowl musicians go on strike.

1932-Walt Disney’s “Flowers and Trees” the first Technicolor Cartoon. Disney had worked out a deal with Technicolor creator Dr. Herbert Kalmus to use his technique exclusively for two years to demonstrate larger Hollywood studios its quality. The short premiered at Grauman's Chinese with the feature film Strange Interlude".

1932- The first Los Angeles hosting of the Olympic Games in their brand spanking new Coliseum. Gold medalists in swimming Larry Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller, who later became movie stars. Another medalist, the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, began to teach the Californians about a new sport- surfing!

1935- The first paperback book. Andre Maurois 'Ariel, a Life of Shelley', published in this new form by Penguin Books of London.

1936- Producer David O. Selznick bought the movie rights to the best-selling novel “Gone With The Wind” from an ailing Irving Thalberg. The "boy genius" Thalberg was hoping that Selznick would ruin himself in the process of making this film. Thalberg was convinced that GWTW would prove to be a massive flop because "Costume dramas are box office poison." It was a blockbuster hit.

1942- Walt Disney war time short "Out of the Frying Pan and into The Firing Line." Minnie Mouse is told to recycle bacon grease to be turned into glycerine for the war effort.

1948 - Professional wrestling premieres on prime-time network TV (DuMont)

1954 - Elvis Presley joins Local 71, the Memphis Federation of Musicians. 

1966 - BATMAN: THE MOVIE, and based on the 1966 BATMAN television series, opened. Directed by Leslie H. Martinson and starring Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, 

 

1972- John Boorman’s thriller Deliverance, with Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty.

 

1974- Flesh Gordon, the x-rated spoof of Flash Gordon adventure serials. Directed by Howard Zeim and Michael Beneviste.

1986- Walt Disney released “Flight of the Navigator”, directed by Randal Kleiser, featuring early photo-real CG VFX done by Canadian studio Omnibus. 

1988- The last Playboy Club in America closed. It was in Lansing, Mich. In 2006 Hugh Hefner opened a Playboy Club themed casino in Las Vegas.

1999- The Blair Witch Project opened in theaters. The low-budget indy became a huge hit due to an on-line grass roots campaign claiming that the footage of teenager encountering the supernatural was genuine. The first successful on-line publicity campaign. 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for July 29, 2025

Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini, Clara Bow, Sig Romberg, William Cameron Menzies, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dave Stevens creator of the Rocketeer, Booth Tarkington, David Warner, Steven Dorff, Professor Irwin Corey, William Cameron-Menzies, Peter Jennings, William Powell, Ken Burns is 71, Will Wheaton is 53

1920 - 1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF.

1922- In Kansas City, Walt Disney released his first Laugh-o-Gram short- Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Rudy Ising. 

1938- Three Missing Links- a Three Stooges comedy with the boys as cave men and Ray "Crash" Corrigan in a gorilla suit.

1942- Orson Welles left Rio De Janiero after RKO fired him and stopped production of "It's All True". RKO also had “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes and fired the executive producer who brought Welles out to Hollywood.

1948- Former Disney assistant-animator Hank Ketcham’s comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appeared.

1957-Happy Birthday NASA! President Eisenhower signed the bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA to oversee the space program, separate from the military. 

1957- The Tonight Show with Jack Paar as host premiered. 

1962- The film “Dr No” premiered, introducing the world to the suave spy James Bond 007.  They first considered Cary Grant, David Niven, Patrick McGoohan, and James Mason, who all turned them down. So, the producers chose young Scots actor Sean Connery. Ian Fleming wrote of the choice, “Disaster!!” Fleming always imagined Bond would resemble band-leader Hoagy Carmichael. Sean Connery had just starred as the villain in a Tarzan film, and the producers wanted him to film the sequel. He asked for a time off to go do, “a little spy picture.”

1965 - Beatles movie "Help" had its Royal World premiere at the London Pavilion in the West End. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon in attendance. The film actually opened a month later. People said the movie was filmed “in a haze of marijuana smoke” and most people on the film didn’t know what was next as they were writing it as they went along. 

1974- Mamas and the Papa's  singer Mama Cass Eliot died of a stroke, not as was widely believed from choking on a sandwich. She was 32.

1981- Prince Charles of England married Lady Diana Spencer.  The ill-fated fairy tale wedding was seen around the world on live television. Unknown to Di at the time was Prince Charles was already romantically involved with Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles.

1989- Miyazaki’s film Kiki’s Delivery Service premiered in Japan.

tom sito's animation almanac for July 28, 2025

Birthdays: Beatrix Potter, Jacqueline Kennedy, Richard Rogers, Ibn al’ Arabi- philosopher 1165, Marcel Duchamp, Rudy Vallee. Sally Struthers, Peter Duchin, Vida Blue, Joe E. Brown, Jim Davis the creator of Garfield, Frankie Yankovic the Polka King, Elizabeth Berkley, Earl Tupper the inventor of Tupperware, Hugo Chavez

 

 

1841- The body of Mary Cecilia Rogers was pulled out of New York Harbor. The sensational murder of the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”

 

1858- The French photographer Nadar went up in a balloon and took the first aerial photograph.

 

 

1896- Happy Birthday Miami! The City of Miami incorporated.

 

1932- The movie White Zombie with Bela Lugosi opened. 

 

 

1933- The first singing telegram. It was delivered to singer Rudy Valee by Western Union operator appropriately named Lucille Lipps.

 

1945-A B-25 Mitchell bomber flying in thick fog struck the 78th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. It killed a dozen people, including some when one of its 1,500 lb. engines shot through the building and down onto 33rd street. One woman in an elevator had the cables cut and fell 80 stories at 200 miles an hour to the basement. Miraculously she lived. 

Despite the devastation, the building did not collapse but stayed sound. As a result, US and World air traffic control standards were stiffened, air traffic controllers finally got the power to order planes down, and large planes are kept away from flying over large urban areas.  

 

1948- In honor of the death of D.W. Griffith, all Hollywood studios observed three minutes of silence.

 

1948- The Premiere of " Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" For you hardcore film trivia fans this film is the only other time than the original Tod Browning movie that Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula on film. 

 

1954- The film On The Waterfront opened. Producer Sam Spiegel originally wanted Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly as the leads. But Kelly took Hitchcock’s Rear Window instead, and Marlon Brando and Eva Marie-Saint became available, much to the annoyance of Sinatra.

 

1958- HAPPY LEGO! Danish toymaker Gotfried Kirk Christiansen patented the interlocking plastic bricks. His company had been working on the idea in wood since the 1930s. The LEGO empire began. Lego is from the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning "play well."

1971- Photographer Diane Arbus probed increasingly darker subject matter, circus freaks, severe birth defects. This day she committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, then slitting her wrists.

 

1978- National Lampoons Animal House directed by John Landis opened. 

 

1987- Disney's Oilspot and Lipstick premiered at Siggraph Anaheim. Directed by Michael Cedeno. It was an early experimental all CGI film.

 

1998- In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered mass destruction of television sets.  They also forbade the Internet and shaved the heads of their national soccer team for daring to wear shorts.

 

2061- The next predicted appearance of Halley’s Comet.

tom sito's animation almanac for July 27, 2025

Birthdays: Confucius, Alexander Dumas fils, Enrique Granados, Hillaire Belloc, Maureen McGovern, Keenan Wynn, Leo Durocher, Peggy Fleming, Bobby Gentry, Jerry Van Dyke, Vincent Canby, Betty Thomas, Ilya Salkind, David Swift –director of the Haley Mills Disney films like The Parent Trap, Maya Rudolph is 53, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is 48, Norman Lear 

 

 

1921- Two Toronto scientists, Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate the hormone Insulin to treat diabetes.

 

1921- SHAKESPEARE & CO. opened in Paris. The English language bookshop on the Seine owned by Sylvia Beach was the most famous hangout for the U.S. expatriate intellectuals. Shakespeare & Co. championed writers like James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Carlos Santayanna, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sherwood Anderson and more. 

During the liberation in 1944, the shop was liberated personally by Ernest Hemingway who shot snipers off its roof. After paying his respects to Sylvia, Hemingway and his G.I. buddies went on to liberate the Ritz hotel and its famous wine cellar.

Happy 85 Birthday BUGS BUNNY. 1940 Tex Avery’s short-"A Wild Hare”-There were several earlier prototypes of the famous rabbit, white with a different voice, but this is the short that is generally accepted as his birthday. 

In the late 30s, a fashion among some animators in LA was to spend the weekend up in the High Sierras hunting. Most of them were terrible at it, and when they came back with nothing, got a lot of razzing from their buddies. At Looney Tunes, a few guys did gag drawings of designer Ben Hardaway fruitlessly hunting a rabbit. His nickname was Bugs, because he originated from Chicago, like gangster Bugs Moran. Being Bugs or Bugsy was also slang then for crazy. The gag drawings were of Hardaway and " Bug's Bunny". Bob Givens created the first official model sheet of the character. 

In this short Bugs says “Whats Up Doc?” for the first time, co-opting a line uttered by Clark Gable while chewing a carrot in the 1934 Frank Capra hit “It Happened One Night”. 
Interestingly, voice actor Mel Blanc was allergic to carrots, and kept a bucket nearby to spit them out after chewing. He experimented with chewing other vegetables, but he claimed nothing sounded as good as raw carrots.

 

1946- Writer Gertrude Stein died at age 72. Her last words to Alice B. Toklas were:" What is the Answer?" When Alice said nothing, Gertrude said:" Well then, what is the Question?"

 

1953- THE KOREAN WAR ENDS- The Treaty of Panmunjom. After 170,000 Americans casualties and millions of Koreans & Chinese killed, the treaty fixed the border basically where it was in 1950. The South Korean Government was outraged and considered it a betrayal, because it accepted the permanent division of Korea in to two parts. South Koreans weren’t even allowed at the negotiations. But America and China were tired of the endless death and stalemate and wanted out.

Before the treaty went into effect, South Korean President Sygmun Ree opened all POW camps and let all the North Korean troops who didn’t want to return home, run free. South Korea never signed the treaty, so it is still technically at war with the North. 

 

1953- The Tonight Show debuted on NBC. Its first host was Steve Allen.

 

1965- The U.S. Government forced cigarette companies to print warning labels on their packages about the hazards of smoking. 

 

1977- John Lennon got his green card. Richard Nixon considered him a dangerous radical. Several times he was under 60-day notice to leave the country.

 

1977- Allegro Non Troppo opened in American theaters. Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto’s homage to Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

 

1986- Gregg Lemond became the first American to win the Tour de France bicycle race. 

 

1993- IBM announced it would eliminate 35,000 white-collar jobs. Downsizing becomes a popular sport in corporate America. The more workers laid off, the higher your stock rose. The chairman of General Electric Jack Welch, was nicknamed “Neutron Jack” after the neutron bomb that kills off people but leaves buildings intact. He was lionized as a hero in corporate America. He wrote op-eds in the NY Times defending his practice of outsourcing American jobs. 

 

1996- A bomb packed with nails goes off during Olympic celebrations in Atlanta Georgia. One woman was killed, and dozens injured. While hunting the bomber, the media decided to focus on Richard Jewel, an overweight security guard who lived with his mom. Ironically Jewel was the one who first alerted police to the suspicious package, and tried to evacuate the area, otherwise more people would have been killed. After weeks of humiliating hounding by the press, the FBI declared Richard Jewel completely innocent. In 2003 the police finally caught the real culprit, abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph.

 

2007- The Simpson’s Movie debuted.

 

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for July 25, 2025

Birthdays: Bishop Theitmar of Merseberg- 975AD, Arthur Balfour, Thomas Eakins, Maxfield Parrish, Stuart K. Hine 1899 missionary who wrote the hymn "How Great Thou Art", Woody Strode, Walter Payton, Walter Brennan, David Belasco, Adnan Khashoggi, Imam, Jack Gilford, Illena Douglas, Estelle Getty, Matt LeBlanc, Louise Brown the first "test-tube" baby-conceived by invitro-fertilization is 47

1871- Samuel Colt patented his first revolver in 1836. Today he patented the "peacemaker", his most iconic Western sixgun.  Gunfighters filed off the barrel sight so it wouldn't catch on your clothes during a quickdraw, and carried it “5 beans in the wheel" meaning while walking they kept it set at the one empty chamber, so it doesn't accidentally go off in the holster and shoot you in the foot, which was embarrassing. Most gunfighters carried it in their belts or a waist high holster. Wild Bill Hickock carried his 1860 Navy Colts backwards in a red sash. The familiar low-on-the-hip two gun holsters didn't become common until cowboys saw them in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in the 1880’s.  

   Colonel Colt got very rich from his invention and had an annoying habit of shooting his guns off in courtrooms and restaurants like Yosemite Sam. Yee-Hah!

1871- The electric carousel was patented by Wilhelm Schneider, Davenport, Iowa 

1897- Young writer Jack London went to the Klondike to look for gold. He didn’t find much gold but did get material for a lot of good stories.

1936- Orchard Beach opened in the North Bronx.

1935- Mickey Mouse short Alpine Climbers released.

1940- In Nazi occupied Paris, a Gestapo agent walked into the French offices of MGM studios and confiscated the six prints of "Gone With The Wind" sent from America. They were taken to Berlin for a screening for top Nazi officials. Gone with the Wind was one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite movies. For the entire period of the Occupation, Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française, hid a surviving print of Gone With The Wind under his bed. The day Paris was liberated, the Cinémathèque was reopened with the first public screening.

1943 - Benito Mussolini was overthrown as leader of Italy and imprisoned, while the Italian government tried to open negotiations with the allies. Hitler responded by sending commandos to rescue Mussolini, and militarily occupying Italy.

1944- Operation Cobra- The Allies break out of the Normandy beachheads and unleash Patton's fresh Third army into the French interior countryside. Between now and the Battle of the Bulge, the German Army can do little more than fall back to the Rhine.

1946- MARTIN & LEWIS- Singer Dean Martin had met young comedian Jerry Lewis the year before at a club in New York City. This day in Atlantic City’s 500 Club they debuted as a team when Lewis suggested to the club owner that Martin would be a good replacement for a singer who called in sick. They became a major sensation, with movies, records and TV shows. They hired young writer Norman Lear and Ed Simmons to write for them.

1951- CBS conducted the first television broadcast in color. NBC made color TV popular in the mid 1960's.

1953- Chuck Jones’ "Duck Dodgers in the 24 and 1/2 Century".

 

1953- New York City subway fares rise from 10 cents to 15 cents. Subway tokens were issued for the first time.

1956- Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis performed for the last time as a duo at NY’s Copacabana. Exactly ten years from their first appearance together.

1958- Jack Warner cheated his two surviving brothers Harry and Al out of their share of Warner Bros Studios. The three had agreed to all retire together and sell to an investor group led by a man named Sememenko. But by a pre-arranged deal with Sememenko, Jack then bought him out and named himself President of Warner Bros. When brother Harry read the news in Variety the next day, it gave him a heart attack. He lingered for a week then died this day. The family never spoke to their brother Jack again. His wife Rhea said “He didn’t die. Jack killed him.”

1959-"The Kitchen Debates" Vice President Richard Nixon traded catty comments with Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev at the American kitchen of the future exhibit in a Moscow Trade Show.    

1965- Folk Music star Bob Dylan was booed off stage at the Newport Folk Festival for using an electric guitar. Alan Lomax, the great Smithsonian Folk Music historian got into a fistfight over it, and Pete Seeger threatened to pull the electric plugs.

1975 - "A Chorus Line" premiered.

1984- Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became 1st woman to walk in space.

1984- The groundbreaking CGI film The Adventures of Andre and Wally-B premiered at the Siggraph convention in Minneapolis. Directed by Alvy Ray Amith and the computer designers who would eventually form Pixar. They were aided by new hire John Lasseter, who brought his traditional Disney animation skills to forming credible character animation on computer.

1985- Movie star Rock Hudson publicly acknowledged that he had AIDS. He had collapsed in France and he made the announcement while being treated at a French clinic. He was the first major public figure to acknowledge he had the mysterious new disease. People then were so afraid of AIDS and how it was transferred, everyone’s initial response was to shun the sufferer. The French-American hospital insisted Hudson leave, so he called his friends Pres. Ronald and Nancy Reagan for an airlift to a U.S. military hospital. They ignored him. Rock Hudson had to pay out of his own pocket to hire a 747 airliner to fly him directly home to LA. 

1989- Steve Rubell, the owner of Studio 54 died of HIVAIDS. He was 45.

1990 - Roseanne Barr sang the National Anthem at a San Diego Padre game. As a joke she impersonated ball players by spitting, grabbing her crotch and screeching during her rendition. It didn’t go over well with the more patriotically minded in that very conservative town.

2000- An Air France Concord supersonic jetliner exploded on takeoff, killing everyone on board. The investigation proved a piece of metal debris that fell off the previous Continental jetliner exploded one of the Concords tires and the resultant wreckage was sucked into the plane’s engine. Both Britain and France suspended SST flights for over a year and in 2003 discontinued them forever as being too expensive.

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Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 24, 2025

Birthdays: Simon Bolivar, Amelia Earhart, Alexander Dumas fils, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Graves, Pat Oliphant, Bela Abzug, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ruth Buzzi, Lynda Carter is 73, Chief Dan George, Robert Hays, Gus Van Sant, Anna Paquin, Patty Jenkins, Elizabeth Moss, J-Lo Jennifer Lopez is 55

  

1824- The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian published the results of the first ever US public opinion poll- a clear lead for Andrew Jackson for president.

 

1847 -Rotary-type printing press patented by Richard March Hoe, of New York.

 

1901- William Porter, also known as O. Henry, was released from jail after doing time for embezzlement. While in jail, he discovered he had a talent for writing.

 

1934- Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film Cleopatra premiered. 

 

1938 - Instant coffee invented.

 

1948- Warner's "Haredevil Hare" featuring the first Marvin the Martian.  Now where did I put my Pew Illudium Q 36 Explosive Space Modulator? 

 

1965- Bob Dylan released the song “Like a Rolling Stone”.

 

1966- Actor Montgomery Clift died of a heart attack at age 45. When his private nurse Lorenzo James said goodnight to him at 1:00AM, he asked him if he wanted to watch his old movie The Misfits on TV. Clift’s last words were, “Absolutely Not!” 

 

 

1969- After successfully landing on the moon and returning to Earth, Apollo 11 safely splashed down in the ocean.

 

1980- In London’s Dorchester Hotel, comedian and actor Peter Sellers died of a heart attack. He was 54. 

 

1983- George Brett of the Kansas City Royals had a second homerun he hit nullified after Yankee manager Billy Martin complains he had too much pine tar on his bat.

 

1985- Walt Disney's "The Black Cauldron" premiered. Billed as Walt Disney’s greatest animation feature in decades, its first week it came in third to PeeWee’s Big Adventure, and The Care Bears Movie. It’s failure almost ended Disney animation.

 

1998- Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan opened.

 

2005- American Lance Armstrong won the Tour du France bicycle race for an unprecedented 7^th time, even after surviving testicular cancer that had spread to his spine and brain. Steroids or not, it was still one hell of an achievement. After he confessed to juicing (using performance enhancing drugs like steroids), all his medals were taken away.