Tom Sito's Animation Fun Facts for Nov 5, 2024

Birthdays: Gen. Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Eugene V. Debs, Art Garfunkel is 83, Roy Rogers, Tatum O'Neill, Elke Sommer- born Baroness Elke von Shletz is 84, Ike Turner, Vivien Leigh. Will Durant, Joel McCrea, Sam Shepard, Yoshiyuki Tomino, John Berger, Robert Patrick is 67, Tilda Swinton is 64, Marvel artist Jim Steranko, Disney animator Mike Gabriel

 

 

1699- According to Jonathan Swift, this is the day Lemuel Gulliver was shipwrecked on the isle of Lilliput. 

 

 

1872- Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined again for trying to vote in a presidential election.

 

1937- Disney's silly symphony The Old Mill debuted. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique.

 

1938- Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings premiered.

 

 

1955- This is the date in 1955 that Marty McFly travels to in the film Back to the Future.

 

 

1975- Mormon lumberjack Travis Walton was abducted by aliens and experimented on for five days, then returned to his home in Snowflake, Arizona. The encounter was seen by seven adult men, who were his co-workers. Walton published a bestseller Fire in the Sky, that was made into a movie.

 

1979- National Public Radio’s news show Morning Edition started.

 

 

1994- 45-year-old fighter George Foreman capped off an amazing comeback by becoming the oldest person ever to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World. 

 

1999- A man was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing and keeping 150 shopping carts in his apartment.

 

2004- Pixar's The Incredibles, directed by Brad Bird premiered. 

 

Tom Sito's animation fun facts for Nov. 4, 2024

Birthdays: Will Rogers, Art Carney, T.S. Sullivant, Disney director Ben Sharpsteen, Treg Brown, Loretta Swit, Martin Balsam, Gig Young, Darla Hood, Joe Neikro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ralph Maccio, Andrea McArdle, Walter Cronkite, Matthew McConnaughy is 54, Laura Bush, Kathy Griffin, Aardman animator Peter Lord is 71.

 

 

1927- HOWARD CARTER OPENED THE TOMB OF KING TUT. Other royal tombs had been opened before but they had always been cleaned out centuries ago by grave robbers. King Tut-Ankh-Amon’s was the first unspoiled Pharoah's tomb to be discovered in modern times. The site was discovered under a house built for workers excavating the tomb of King Ramses IV. 

 

1931- One of the pioneering trumpet innovators of the new music called Jazz was Buddy Bolden. He was one of the first soloists to improvise within the body of a song, and so doing paved the way for the greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But by 1931 Bolden was forgotten. This day he died broke in the Louisiana Home for the Insane. His family couldn't even afford a Dixieland Band to play at his funeral.

 

1945- Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld first inserts his daughter Nina’s name into one of his cartoons. It was for a Broadway musical review “ Are You With It?” with Johnny Roberts.

 

1952- UNIVAC, the first business computer, accurately predicted Dwight Eisenhower would win in a landslide. This when regular polling showed a strong lead for Adlai Stevenson. The first computer projected results for an election.

 

1955- In Arizona, Willie Bioff, union official who tried to hijack the Hollywood unions (Including the Disney cartoonists) for Frank Nitti's gang, had turned informer and was in the federal Witness Protection plan. This day he got into his car, turned the key in his Ford pickup and exploded. 

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1963- The Beatles were part of the Queens Royal Command performance in London. John Lennon told the audience: " Will the people in the cheap seats clap their hands? And the rest of you, would you please just rattle your jewelry."

 

 

1977- The Incredible Hulk TV show starring Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby, first premiered as a made for TV movie.

 

 

1980- Yomiuri Giants baseball great Saduharu Oh retired after hitting 868 homeruns in his 22-year career. 

 

1989- Grand Day Out, introduced the world to Wallace and Gromit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 3, 2024

Birthdays: The Roman writer Lucan 39AD, John Montague the Earl of Sandwich, Jubal Early, Walker Evans, William Cullen Bryant, Stephen Austin, Bronco Nagurski, Andre' Malraux, Vincenzo Bellini, Bob Feller, Karl Baedeker author of the guidebooks, Ken Berry, Michael Dukakis, Gustav Tennegren, Lulu, Osamu Tezuka, Jim Cummings is 71.

 

 

1888- Jack the Ripper killed his last victim, a prostitute named Mary Reilly.

 

 

 

1956- The movie The Wizard of Oz, with Judy Garland, was released in theaters in 1939, it did lackluster box office. This day it was first broadcast on television. Almost 40 million people tuned in that night. It has been run every year since. Possibly the most viewed TV movie ever. 

 

1957-SPACE DOG- The first living thing sent into orbit, a Russian dog named Laika. She was a stray found on a Moscow street. She never came back but died in space, but she probably was satisfied knowing she made history- woof. 

1971- The first UNIX manual released. 

 

1971- Carly Simon married James Taylor.

 

1974- Hello Kitty created by Yukio Shimizu for Sanrio Prod.

 

1976- Carrie starring Sissy Spacek opened in theaters.

 

1977- Disney's Pete's Dragon starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons. 

 

1979- T.V. sitcom Different Strokes premiered.

 

1981- WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty girls like Sally Forth. He drew EC Comics, the Mars Attacks series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that was so good, people assumed it was done by a rogue Disney animator. But hard living and deadlines took their toll. Suffering from a stroke, and failing kidneys, Wally Wood put a 44-cal pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Today police found his remains. The bullet had passed completely through his head and was in the pillow on the other side.

 

1982- Britain’s Channel 4 goes on the air.

 

 

2006- Dreamworks/Aardman film Flushed Away, directed by David Bowers.

 

2023- the Netflix series Blue-Eyed Samurai premiered in the U.S. Created by Amber Noizumi and Michael Green and director Jane Wu. Animated in France.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov. 2, 2024

Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Ray Walston, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d. lang, David Schwimmer is 58

 

Today is the traditional day for Dio de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are now living is a dream. When you die, you awake to your real life.

 

 

1904- The London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

 

 

1920- The first US radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

 

1928- The Little Carnegie Theater in New York opened. Until its closing in 1982, it was one of the premiere art-house cinemas.

 

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore. 

 

 

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the Hughes H-1 Hercules, known as “The Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War II, but was not ready to fly until long after the war was over. Today it is in an air-space museum in Oregon. 

 

1950- 94 year old writer George Bernard Shaw died of injuries sustained from falling out of an apple tree he was pruning. His dying words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience, anyway." 

 

 

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

 

1966- Walt Disney stopped into St. Joseph’s Hospital for pre-op x-rays for an old polo injury to his neck. Examining the x-rays doctors discover a cancerous tumors covering most of his left lung. They recommend immediate surgery, but Walt left to work at the studio a few more days. 

 

1966- What’s Up Tiger Lily? Opened. Producer Henry Saperstein (UPA) was stuck with a James Bond style movie with an all Japanese cast called International Secret Police: Key of Keys. He approached Lenny Bruce to redub the entire film as a comedy. Bruce turned it down because he would not be allowed to use four letter words. He suggested a new kid he saw in the Village clubs named Woody Allen. This became Allen’s first movie work. The Japanese stripper at the end credits was China Lee, the first Asian woman to be a Playboy centerfold. She was then dating comedian Mort Sahl.

 

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying, President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.

 

2001- Pixar’s Monsters Inc. opened.

 

2012- Walt Disney’s Wreck it Ralph opened in theaters. Appearing in front of it was the short Paperman, by John Kahrs.

 

2016- Ending decades of frustration, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in ten innings to win one of the more exciting World Series of baseball. The last time the Cubs won a world series was in 1908.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov. 1, 2024

Welcome to November, Roman Month #9-Novembrius Mensis.

 

Birthdays: Marie Antoinette, President Warren Harding, Stephen Crane, Edward van Sloan (Van Helsing in Dracula), Marcel Ophuls, Benevento Cellini, Larry Flynt, Walter Matthau, Fernando Valenzuela, Lyle Lovett, Willie D, Rick Allen of Def Leppard, animator Retta (Scott) Davidson, Jenny McCarthy is 52, Toni Collette is 52, animator Will Finn, director Brenda Chapman-Lima

 

 

1512- Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling was open to the public for the first time.

 

 

1604- William Shakespeare's play "Othello the Moor of Venice" first performed. 

 

1835- Davey Crockett, after losing his bid for re-election to Congress, told his Tennessee voters, "Y’all can go to Hell, I'm going to Texas!"

 

1895- Emil and Max Skladowsky set up a Bioscope projector in Berlin's Wintergarden. The Birth of German Cinema.

 

1913- Notre Dame quarterback Gus Doreias threw the first "Forward Pass" to center Knute Rockne. The forward pass was the solution to a request to the coach of Notre Dame from Teddy Roosevelt to do something to make the game more mobile and less bone crunching. Parents were complaining to him about the injuries to their sons.

 

1920- The first issue of American Cinematographer.

 

1925- Gabriel Leuville, called Max Linder, was the first international movie star. Before the Great War, audiences flocked to see his suave debonair character. Before Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton, Max Linder created the style of cinema slapstick comedy. When WWI broke out, he patriotically enlisted in the army. He survived the war, but the experience left him chronically depressed with PTSD. This day in Austria, Max Linder and his 18-year-old wife Corrine committed suicide together, leaving a 16 month old daughter. 

 

1938- At Pimlico in Maryland, this day was the famous horse race between War Admiral and Sea Biscuit, the two finest thoroughbreds of the age. War Admiral was sleek and aristocratic, sired from the blood of the great champion Man of War. Sea Biscuit by contrast looked ungainly and lame. But in the end The Biscuit won the race by three lengths. The race was heard live on nationwide radio by one in three Americans.

 

1939- Rockefeller Center in New York City opened.

 

1946- THE FIRST NBA BASKETBALL GAME- The first professional game was the New York Knickerbockers 68, the Toronto Huskies 66. The first basket was scored by Ozzie Sheckmann.

 

 

1959- Hockey goalie Jacques LaPlante became the first to wear a face mask during play. Before this many young hockey goalies were missing their front teeth.

 

 

1967- Ever since the Congressional Hearings into EC comics in the 50s, comic books were regulated by a strict comics code. This day in San Francisco hippy cartoonists Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and others bought their own printing press and began work on an underground comic book series called Zap Comix. Mr. Natural, Wonder Warthog and others result. They began selling them in Feb 1968. Zap Comix began the craze for Underground Comix, part of the Hippy Counterculture. 

 

1968- To replace the outmoded Hays Commission Production Code, the Motion Picture Ratings System was introduced-"G, M, R, and X"- Later PG, PG-13, R and NC-17".

 

 

1978- The movie version of the bestselling book “Watership Down” premiered. Martin Rosen and John Hubley directing. John Hubley died after only completing the first ten minutes of the film.

 

1988- Jeff Goldblum married Gena Davis. They divorced several years later. They are both over 6 feet tall. 

 

2003- Walt Disney’s feature Brother Bear opened in theaters.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 30, 2024

 Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,

Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler is 78, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon, 

Claude Lelouche, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Herschel Bernardi, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, Ghibli animator Isao Takahata

 

 

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published. 

 

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

 

1936- London publishers George Allen & Unwin had received a manuscript from an Oxford ancient languages professor named J.R.R. Tolkein.  The publisher gave it to his ten-year old son Rayner Unwin, to read. Rayner read it and made a report, “This book will be a very good read for children from ages 5-7.” For his troubles, the young lad was paid a shilling. Based on his recommendation, they published “The Hobbit”. 

 

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast on CBS a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, one million people across the U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New Jersey.  Interestingly enough, the broadcast was only #2 in the ratings. More people listened to the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show. 

 

 

1943- Future movie director Frederico Fellini married actress Giulietta Masina. They were hiding in his aunt’s apartment from being drafted into Mussolini’s army. By a lucky chance, allied bombing blew up the building containing his registration records. 

 

1947- Bertoldt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and The Threepenny Opera,

testified to the Hollywood HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole

session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he fled the U.S. and resettled in East Germany.

 

 

1963- The first Lamborghini 350GTV went on sale.

 

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air.  I can’t write them because Facebook would put me in jail, but you all know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

 

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.

 

2005- The Disney feature Chicken Little premiered.

 

2012- The Walt Disney Company announced it was buying out George Lucas holdings (including the Star Wars franchise) for $4.05 billion.

 

 

Tom Sito Animation Almanac for Oct. 29, 2024

Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Mauldin, Akim Tamiroff, Rufus Sewell, Neal Hefti-composer of the theme song for TV shows like Batman and the Odd Couple. Richard Dreyfus is 77, Ralph Bakshi is 86, Dan Castellenata, the voice of Homer Simpson, is 68.

 

1923- The musical Running Wild opened on Broadway, introducing the dance craze the Charleston. The tune was written by composer James P. Johnson. Some people say the dance moves were based on a native African dance called the Juba.

 

1929- BLACK TUESDAY-THE STOCK MARKET CRASH AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS. The falling stock crisis which had been gaining momentum since early September finally culminated in the greatest ever one day collapse of the U.S. Economy. Millions of people who weren't ruined by last Thursday’s crash were ruined today.  One third of all U. S. banks failed- 2,500. 

 

 

1956- NBC TV upgraded its evening news show The Camel News Caravan with the Huntley-Brinkley Report. President Eisenhower disliked the change.

 

1957- Louis B. Mayer died. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." The head of MGM Studios lorded over Hollywood like a monarch, made and broke moviestars, ordered Judy Garland fed a steady stream of narcotics and had his office redesigned all white to resemble Mussolini’s, whom he admired. Humphrey Bogart was at the funeral. When asked if he was close to Mayer, Bogie replied: Nah, I'm just here to make sure he's dead!

 

1959- Goscinny and Uderzo’s comic character Asterix first appeared in Pilote magazine.

 

1968- The Lion In Winter, with Katherine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Hopkins opened. When filming wrapped on this movie, Hepburn said to O’Toole: When I started off in this business my agent said to me, never act with children or animals. But you Peter, are both.” 

 

 

1969- THE INTERNET- After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Defense Department asked the Rand Corporation to create a communication system that could survive Russian atomic bombs. They developed an idea by British scientist Paul Baran of a “net” of computers all in communication with another around the world. Because there was no center, a bomb could not knock out the entire system. 

At 10:30PM In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, J.C. “Lick” Licklider, Leonard Kleinrock, Vin Cerf, Robert Kahn, Larry Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. 

They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NET, a few years later the Internet. 

 

1993- Tim Burton’s fantasy A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, opened across the US.

 

2012- Superstorm Sandy –a late season hurricane the size of Europe collided with a storm front coming from the west, and a cold front from Canada, and it all slammed into the mid Atlantic coastline. 233 killed, 6 million without power and the Wall St area flooded, The Atlantic City boardwalk, Asbury Park and the Jersey Shore were destroyed. 

 

2012- Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph premiered.