Animation Fun Facts for Sept. 8, 2012

Birthdays: Richard the LionHearted, Michel Caravaggio, Antonin Dvorak, Patsy Cline, Jimmy Rogers the Singing Brakeman, Peter Sellars, Sid Caesar is 90, Freddy Mercury, Lyndon LaRouche, Heather Thomas, David Arquette is 41, Jonathan Taylor-Thomas, Pink is 33, Martin Freeman is 41 1935-A vocal group called "4 Joes from Hoboken" get their first break on Major Bo's radio show. One of the singers is a young man named Frank Sinatra. 1939- British film director Alfred Hitchcock began shooting his first Hollywood picture- Rebecca, for David Selznick. 1954- Akira Kurosawa’s film The Seven Samurai premiered at the Venice Film Festival. 1965 - Dorothy Danridge, beautiful black actress (Island in the Sun), dies at 41 in Hollywood of sleeping pills overdose. 1966- T.V.'s STAR TREK debuts. That season it ranked 52nd in the Neilsen ratings, behind #1 "Iron Horse" starring Rory Calhoun and "Mr. Terrific". It was canceled after two seasons but a letter writing campaign won it a third season. Star Trek then found a new life in syndication. The cult fan base called Trekkies kept the memory of the show alive for ten years until Paramount felt compelled to revive to cash in on the Star Wars craze. First as an animated series and then from 1979 a series of feature films, then spin-offs. Frank Sinatra once said: "The only good thing to come out of the Nineteen Sixties was Star Trek." 1997- Bill Plympton's film I Married a Strange Person, premiered.