Thursday, July 3, 2025

tom sito's animation almanac for july 3, 2025


Birthdays: King Louis XI of France "the Spider King"1423, Franz Kafka, Mr. Preserved Fish -New York Congressman 1819, Joel Chandler Harris “Uncle Remus”, Dave Barry, Leos Janacek, John Singleton Copley, Ken Russell, Tom Stoppard, George Sanders, Peter Fountain, Yeardley Smith, Tom Cruise is 63, Kevin Hart is 45


1931- The Cab Calloway Orchestra recorded 'The St. James Infirmary Blues."


1937- In California the Del Mar Racetrack opened.  Owner Bing Crosby personally welcomed the first customers to his track. Called “Where the Surf Meets the Turf.”


1943- Chuck Jones short Wackiki Rabbit debuted. Background design by Bernice Prolyfka were based on Hawaiian shirt patterns. The two castaways were caricatures of story people Ted Pierce and Mike Maltese, who provided their voices.


1969- Brian Jones, having been kicked out of the Rolling Stones just days before -- drowned in his swimming pool.  His home was once the estate of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne. 


1969- On the same day, John and Yoko Lennon were almost killed in a car crash, along with John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko.


1971- The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison, was found dead of a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris. He was 28. 


1971- In Sweden, the first laser eye surgery was performed.


1985- Robert Zemeckis’ film Back to the Future opened. 


1991- James Cameron’s Terminator 2 Judgement Day, premiered.


1996- Independence Day, by Roland Emmerich opened.



2002- Powerpuff Girls the Movie, premiered.




Wednesday, July 2, 2025

tom sito's animation almanac for july 2, 2025

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Valentinian III (419AD), Bishop Thomas Cranmer (1429) , Christoph Witobald Gluck, Herman Hesse, Medgar Evers, Patrice Lamumba, Thurgood Marshall, Andrez Kertesz, Richard Petty, Abe Levitow, Ken Curtis, Ahmad Jamal, Cheryl Ladd, Jose Canseco, Jerry Hall, Imelda Marcos, Ron Silver, Lindsay Lohan, Brock Peters, Margot Robbie is 35, Larry David is 78


1650- The first daily newspaper is published in the city of Leipzig. 


1723- Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorale Magnificat first performed in Leipzig.


1921- To prove what a neat new invention radio was, RCA chief David Sarnoff broadcast for free a live feed of the Jack Dempsey vs. George Carpentier championship prizefight. He had loud speakers set up in Times Square that attracted ten thousand listeners. As it happened, the live reports were a sham. An eyewitness to the fight relayed details via tickertape to a Manhattan studio. Then an announcer read them aloud over the radio as though he were there. No matter, the effect was electric. Suddenly everyone wanted a radio in their home. 


1927- The film Flesh and the Devil established a new star named Greta Garbo.


1934- Twentieth Century Fox signed a movie contract with child star Shirley Temple.


1945- In the July issue of The Atlantic Magazine, MIT Scientist Vanaevar Bush predicted some day in the future we would all be writing to each other on little electronic boxes on our desks. He didn’t have the name computer yet. He called it a “memex”. We would read stories, watch movies, have access to all the libraries of the world. We would send each other letters and pictures on it. In a Manila hospital, a young serviceman named Douglas Engelbart was recovering from war wounds. He read this article there and was inspired to study this new field. He eventually invented the computer mouse, hot keys, and coined the term "on-line."


1951- New Yorker cartoonist Sam Cobean was killed in a car accident. He was 38.The following year a collection of his work “The Cartoons of Cobean” was published by Saul Steinberg, with a forward by Charles Addams.


1955- The Lawrence Welk T.V. Show debuts. Wannaful, wannaful! 


1973-Art Babbitt began his animation lectures to Richard Williams London Studio. Dick took copious notes, and they became one of the most copied, underground how-to books in film history.


1980- the Abrahams-Zucker Bros comedy Airplane! Premiered. 



1982- Don Bluth’s The Secret of Nimh premiered.


1986- Walt Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective released in theaters. 


1986- John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China debuted.


Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 1, 2025


Birthdays: Louis Bleriot, Tommy Dorsey, George Sand, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Princess Diana of Wales, Twyla Tharp, Carl Lewis, Jamie Farr, Sidney Pollack, Wally "Famous"Amos, Estee Lauder, Debbie Harry (Blondie), Olivia De Haviland, Toshiyuki Sakata (Oddjob), Genevieve Bujold, Karen Black, David Prowse, Dan Ackroyd is 73. Andre Crouch, Pamela Anderson is 57, Liv Tyler is 48 


Welcome to July, named for Julius Caesar. Originally the Romans called it month number five- "Quintilicus Mensis". They had a ten month calendar that began with Mars (March) and ran out of names after Juno (June). After Caesar’s assassination, the Senate voted to change the name of Month Five to the month of the Divine Julius. So, thank Caesar that you don't have to celebrate The Fourth of Quintilicus.


1926- THE FIRST ANIMATED FEATURE. Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed premiered in Paris.  Ten years before Walt Disney’s Snow White.


1933- Mickey’s Gala Premiere, Mickey short with Joe Grant’s caricatures of famous Hollywood celebrities.


1940- Chuck Jones short Old Glory. Porky gets an American history lesson from no less than Uncle Sam himself.



1941- Animation director Tex Avery stormed out of the Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in his Bugs Bunny cartoon, THE HECKLING HARE. 40 feet was trimmed from the end of the cartoon by Leon Schlesinger who agreed with Mr. Warner it had one too many endings, involving Bugs and the Dog falling through space endlessly. Tex felt the run-on gag was the whole point of the joke. Leon put him on a four-week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a new directing gig at MGM.


1941- THE FIRST TV COMMERCIAL -During the live coverage of a Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies baseball game the first FCC sanctioned television commercial aired. It was for the Bulova Watch Company.


1944- Leon Schlesinger sold his animation and shorts company outright to Warner Bros Studio and took a less taxing post in merchandising until his death in 1949.


1945- With WWII in Europe over, Bill Mauldin's wartime comic strip "Willie and Joe' ended it's run along with the European front-line edition of Stars and Stripes magazine. Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame said no one could draw mud like Bill Maudlin. Mauldin was once chewed out by General Patton for making his GIs so slovenly and cynical. He felt it was a negative image of the American Fighting Man. Seesh...everybody’s a critic!


1945- NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the Sunday comics section aloud over the radio because of a newspaper strike.


1956- The film Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers premiered. Effects by Ray Harryhausen.


1958- Does She or Doesn’t She? Clairol hair dye introduced.


1963- U.S. post office introduced zip codes.


1966- The US Medicare Program began. The first Medicare card was given by LBJ to elderly former President Harry Truman. At the time it was felt there was no need to include prescription drugs in the program since their cost was so low. 


1970- Hanna & Barbera’s attempt at a primetime animated series "Where’s Huddles?"


1970- The Xerox Company of Connecticut were convinced to open a new computer science lab on the west coast near Stanford University. It was called Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC. In 9 years, PARC would develop laser-printing, color graphics, GUI’s- Graphics User Interface, windows, cursor point and click, and Ethernet. 


1972- Ms. Magazine started publication.


1979- Sony introduced the Walkman portable cassette player in the U.S.


1981- The Wonderland Murders. Overly endowed porn star Johnny Holmes (aka Johnny Wadd) was implicated in a gang murder. This day four drug dealers called The Wonderland Gang were found beaten to death in his home. Holmes was tried as an accomplice but acquitted. Johnny Holmes died in 1988, and his story became the basis for Mark Walhberg’s character in the film Boogie Nights. 


1996- The movie Dinosaur Valley Girls premiered.


1998- Barbara Streisand married James Brolin.




Monday, June 30, 2025

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for June 30, 2025


Birthdays: Buddy Rich, Lena Horne, Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Hayward, Deanna Durbin, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, William Goldman, Martin Landau, Essa-Pekka Salonen, David Alan Grier, Vincent D’Onofrio, Monica Potter, Mike Tyson is 59, Michael Phelps, Rupert Graves is 62 


1643- In Paris, the son of an upholsterer named Jean Coquelin signed a contract to establish The Ilustre Theatre. Jean also took on a stage name- Moliere.


1841- The never-explained Day It Rained Fish Over Boston.


1856- In London, Charles Dickens does his first public reading from his works.


1859- Daredevil Emile Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. The stunt was duplicated by Nick Wallenda in Spring 2014.


1864- Abraham Lincoln signed a bill protecting the Yosemite Valley in California as a natural preserve or “park” from developers and mining companies.


1894 - London Tower Bridge opened.


1908-A mysterious explosion occurred in remote Tunguska Siberia, with the estimated strength of several atom bombs. No meteorite remains were ever discovered. Soil at the epicenter had been turned to glass.  It was speculated as an ice comet impact or a UFO crash. But it has never been completely explained. 


1933- A group of actors met in secret at Frank (the Wizard of Oz) Morgan’s house and form the Screen Actors Guild. The secrecy was because studios threatened to blacklist anyone who so much as breathed the word union. Among the founding members that night is James Cagney, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Frederic March, Robert Montgomery and Boris Karloff. Karloff said every member carried pockets full of nickels so they could use the nearest payphone to talk. They feared the studios had gotten the police to tap their home and office phones. 


1936- Margaret Mitchell's bestseller “Gone With the Wind" first published.


1936- the 40 hour work week was made a federal law. 


1937- Congress voted to shut down the Federal Theater Project, the division of the government funded WPA that produced plays for Depression wracked poor people. The FTP produced cutting edge works of Orson Welles, Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neill and at its height reached 25 million people. But conservative senators thought it had been taken over by lefties. Theater actors working in L.A. on a hit production of Pinocchio held a mock funeral for the puppet. Over its casket was the headstone FTP: Born 1934, Killed by an Act of Congress, June 30th 1937.



1940- Dale Messick took over the Brenda Star comic strip and added the trademark sparkles. Born Dalia Messick, she used her nickname Dale to throw off publishers who would reject samples they knew came from a woman.


1948- Bell Laboratories announced the Transistor, a possible substitute for radio-vacuum tubes. So early computers can shrink from the size of a building to the size of a bus. In 1980 the silicon chip reduced the same computing power to the size of your fingernail.


1950- The Goofy short Motor Mania released.


1953- The first Chevy Corvette rolled off the assembly line. Only three thousand were made that first year, all white with red interior, selling for $3,500. 


1971 – the movie Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was released. Directed by Mel Stuart, adapted from the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (who wrote the screenplay) and starring Gene Wilder. The Oompha Loompha song titling was done by a very early digital CGI technique called Scanimate.


1975- Just 4 days after divorcing Sonny Bono, Cher married rocker Gregg Allman.


1996 - Margaux Hemingway, considered the first modern supermodel, committed suicide at 41. Her grandfather Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, and his father before him.


1989- Spike Lee’s movie Do The Right Thing opened. 





Saturday, June 28, 2025

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for June 28, 2025


Birthdays: King Henry VIII, Peter Paul Rubens, Luigi Pirandello, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dillinger, Richard Rogers, Herb Ryman, Gilda Radner, Cartoonist George Booth, Leon Panetta, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kathy Bates is 77, John Cusack is 59, Mel Brooks is 99


1868- Twenty-something artist Claude Monet was so broke and depressed he jumped in the Seine River. After splashing around for a while, he decided it’s silly to drown himself, so he swam to the riverbank and went for a drink. He outlived all the Impressionist painters of his generation, dying famous in 1926 at age 86.


1922- Twenty one year old Walt Disney started Newman's Laugh-O-Grams in Kansas City.


1928- Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines recorded West End Blues.



1955- Walt Disney sent a memo to his studio employees to please come to the grand opening day of Disneyland Park on July 17. He was concerned not enough people would show up the first day, and it would look bad on live TV.  He shouldn’t have worried. 100,000 people came that first day.


1969- THE STONEWALL UPRISING- New York City Police got a false tip about a stabbing at the mob-owned Stonewall gay bar in Greenwich Village. Others claim the cops were there to get their money kickbacks, and when it wasn’t paid, they started arresting patrons. But for once the patrons didn’t go quietly but began to fight back. 

As she was being loaded into a paddy wagon, A drag queen began by kicking a policeman, then the others rushed out. People on the street began pelting the policemen with pennies and nickels, symbolizing there being there for graft. When the cops formed a blue wall to advance, gays formed a wall and fought them, shouting:” WE ARE THE VILLAGE GIRLS! WE WEAR OUR HAIR IN CURLS!” In the 60’s era of social revolution, the incident caused three days of urban rioting, and The Gay Pride Movement was born.

1971- The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of prizefighter Mohammed Ali for draft evasion.


1975- Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling died during open heart surgery. He was 50. His last movie script was called The Man, about resistance of the Washington elite to the first black president of the United States. Twenty years later a black man was indeed president.


1997- Heavyweight prizefighter Mike Tyson was banned from boxing and fined $3 million for biting off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a match. 


Friday, June 27, 2025

tom sito's animation almanac for june 27, 2025

Birthdays: Swedish King Charles XII "the Madman of the North", Helen Keller, Norma Kamali, Charles Stuart Parnell," Captain Kangaroo" Bob Keeshan, Emma Goldman, Marine General Chesty Puller, Walter Johnson, Ross Perot, Isabella Adjani is 70, Lauren Hill, Alice McDermott, J.J. Abrams is 59, Tony Leung Chu Wai is 63, Toby McGuire is 50. Katherine Beaumont- the voice of Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and Wendy in Peter Pan 


1922 - Newberry Medal 1st presented for kids’ literature, the first winner was Hendrik Van Loon.


1935- Disney short Who Killed Cock Robin? Directed by Dave Hand. 


1949 - "Captain Video & His Video Rangers," debut on DUMONT-TV. The first Sci-Fi show made for TV.


1962- Daryl F. Zanuck showed up at the quarterly meeting of the exec board of 20th Century Fox, and in a celebrated corporate showdown, he wrested back control of the company he founded in 1935,  but had since lost control of.


1966- TV soap opera Dark Shadows premiered. Barnabas Collins was the first vampire to have issues with his job, and so became the ancestor of the modern neurotic vampires of True Blood, Interview With the Vampire, and Twilight.


1967- In London, Barclay’s Bank sets up an automated teller machine, which they called a Robot Teller, but we know today as the first ATM.


1973- Senior White House Counsel John Dean testified to the Watergate committee that President Richard Nixon maintained an Enemies List. The list ran from Senator Ted Kennedy and journalist Daniel Shore, to June Foray and Bill Scott, who did the cartoon voices of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose. 


1984- Hollywood introduced the PG-13 rating to indicate graphic violence, invented for the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.


1986 -Labyrinth as released, fantasy directed by Jim Henson, written by Terry Jones, with concepts by Brian Froud. With David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly. The animated owl in the opening is the first ever digitally created rendering of an organic animal. Done by Bill Kroyer.


1995- Boyishly proper British actor Hugh Grant is busted for soliciting sex from a Sunset Blvd. street hooker named Divine Brown. Grant had just released a film called “The Englishman Who went up a Hill and Came down a Mountain". Pundits had fun changing the title to "The Englishman who went to L.A. a Hugh and Came Back a John."


2007- British Prime Minister Tony Blair stepped down after ten years. While in office his security codename was Bambi.



2008- Pixar’s WALL-E opened in theaters.


2011- The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team filed for bankruptcy. The team owners, Mr. & Mrs. Frank McCourt wrecked the team’s finances and almost destroyed the team fighting over their own personal divorce. The Dodgers have been doing quite well without them. In 2017, Pres Trump appointed Mrs. Jaimie McCourt as U.S. ambassador to Belgium. In 2025 The Dodgers were sold for a record $10 Billion.




Thursday, June 26, 2025

Tom Sito's animation almanac for June 26, 2025


Birthdays: Peter Lorre- born Laszlo Lowenstein, Pearl Buck, Abner Doubleday, Babe Deidrickson-Zacharias, Willy Messerschmidt, Claudio Abbado, Woolie Reitherman, Gregg LeMond, Vittorio Storaro, Colonel Tom Parker, Pat Morita, Chris Isaak, Derek Jeter, Paul Julian, Chris O’Donnell, Wallace Tripp, Makeup man Dick Smith (the Exorcist), Sean Hayes is 54


1888- Scots writer Robert Louis Stevenson shipped out from San Francisco to wander the South Pacific, and finally settle in Samoa.


1906- The first Grand Prix automobile race was held at Le Mans, France. The winner was Hungarian Ferenic Szisz with a top speed of 63 miles an hour! Szisz also was sporting those newfangled rubber tires on rims, which change faster than regular wooden wheels.


1916- The Cleveland Indians baseball team began the custom of players wearing numbers on their uniforms.


1922- Montgomery’s Country House opened in the Los Feliz Area of LA. Started by Walter van de Kamp and Lawrence Frank. In 1926 it changed its name to The Tam O’ Shanter. For a time it was also called The Great Scot. In the 1930s it was the nearest bar to Walt Disney’s Hyperion Studio, so animators called it “the commissary”. It is still in business today. Walt Disney’s favorite table is marked.


1924 - The Ziegfeld Follies opened on Broadway.


1925- Charlie Chaplin has a lavish Hollywood premiere for his new film The Gold Rush.

He had edited the film in secret in an upstairs hotel room in Salt Lake City to keep away from his first wife’s bill collectors.


1925- From his Soho London flat, John Logie Baird invented an early form of television. The Boob Tube has no one single Tom Edison-like inventor, but many claimants. The Englishman joined the ranks of others who claimed to have invented TV first, including Philo Farnsworth, Bell Labs, Vladimir Zworkin, and Dr. Lee DeForrest.


1927- The Cyclone Rollercoaster ride debuted at Coney Island Amusement Park. It was built on the site of the Switchback Railway, the world's oldest rollercoaster. 


1945- The United Nations is born when 50 nations sign the U.N. Charter in War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. Young veteran John F. Kennedy was there, trying his hand as a journalist.


1949- Fred Allen’s last radio show was broadcast.


1959- Queen Elizabeth and President Dwight Eisenhower dedicated the Saint Lawrence Seaway- a system of locks and canals connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Saint Lawrence River to the Great Lakes in the interior of the North American Continent.


1959- Disney short Donald in Mathamagic Land premiered with the film Darbie O’Gill and the Little People.


1961- John F. Kennedy makes his "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech at the Berlin Wall. He electrified and inspires all Europe despite " ein berliner" really meant a local brand of jam donut. “ I am a little jelly donut!” The proper way to say I am a Berliner is "Ich bin Berliner”. The crowd smiled but was polite. Today in tourist shops on the Unter Den Linden, you can buy a plastic donut with JFK’s speech coming from a hidden computer chip. 


1964 - Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" album.


1964- Hollywood stars Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine got married. It was her fourth marriage and his third. They had a large reception at Chasen’s restaurant packed with celebrities like Lucille Ball, Dick Van Dyke, Bob Hope, Angie Dickinson, Jack Benny and the cast of McHales’s Navy. After their honeymoon they drove each other completely nuts and divorced one month later. Ethel Merman’s autobiography had a chapter titled, “ My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine.” It consisted of one blank page.


1965-"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man " by the Byrds hits number one on the US pop charts. Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics. William Shatners version became the most well known.


1977 - Elvis Presley does his last public performance, in Indianapolis.


1984- Campy singer Tiny Tim married Miss Vicky on the Johnny Carson show during a live broadcast.


1997- a novel called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the product of five years’ work by a new writer named J.K. Rowling with her own drawings, was published by Bloomsbury in the UK with an initial print run of five hundred copies. It became a worldwide phenomenon. In 5 years J.K. Rowling was the richest woman in England after Queen Elizabeth II and Madonna.


 25th Anniv 2000- THE GENOME- Scientists announce they had cracked the human gene code and now had a rough sketch of how our DNA is assembled. Custom drugs could now be developed matching the DNA of an individual patient. It is called the biological equivalent of the landing on the moon.