Animation Fun Facts for June 4, 2017

Birthdays: King George III, Alvah Bessie, Rosalind Russell, Gene Barry, Dennis Weaver, Robert Merrill, Bruce Dern, Andrea Jaeger, Dr Ruth Westheimer, Freddy Fender, Rachael Griffiths, Noah Wylie is 46, Russell Brand is 42, Angelina Jolie is 42

1666- Moliere’s play "Le Misanthrope" premiered.

1938- Date of the infamous Walt Disney Studio Norconian crew party to celebrate the success of Snow White. The young single artists (average age 26), released of tension and filled with booze, swapped bedrooms and galloped horses through the Hotel Norconian sending Walt and Roy fleeing the scene for fear of bad publicity. Walt picked the resort because when he first held a party at the studio, the crew trashed the place. One animator drunkenly fell out of a window.

1942- Capitol Records opened for business.

1944- American armies at last enter Rome. An Allied beachhead had been established at Anzio last February only a few miles away and scouts had reported the Eternal City wide open, but the American generals Lucas and Clark hesitated until the Germans could bring up reinforcements and bog them down for weeks. But this day they entered the city to the cheers of the populace.  A NY animator turned G.I. named Johnny Vita solicited laughs from the troops by appearing on Mussolini’s balcony on the Via Del Corso and doing a mock imitation of Il Duce.

1947- The film "A Miracle on 34th St." opened. Starring Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwen and 8 year old Natalie Wood.

1951- Tony Curtis married Janet Leigh. The result was to produce Jamie Leigh-Curtis.

1965- The Rolling Stones release the single "Satisfaction".

1967- The television show "The Monkees" win the Emmy award for Best Comedy.

go figure... The producers of the Pre-Fab Four raise enough money and clout to fund later projects like the hit movie Easy Rider. This same ceremony saw Bill Cosby become the first African-American to win an Emmy, this for his role in the series I-Spy.

1977- The Apple II went on sale.

1982- The film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, premiered. Besides Ricardo Montalban as the badguy with the great pectorals, it features the Genesis Effect. This one minute sequence was a landmark of computer graphics effects. Done by the Lucas Graphics Group, who four years later would break off and become Pixar.

1990- The New York Daily News quietly discontinued its long running comic strip Ching Chow. Besides being unbelievably racist and offensive, the little one panel strip of a stereotype  Chinese man with a long hair queue saying silly Confucian platitudes, also was the source of racetrack and numbers racket tips.

2003- Martha Stewart, the self-made millionaire leader of a home recipe empire, was indicted for insider trading.