Animation Fun Facts for Nov 29, 2012

Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Vin Scully, Gary Shandling is 63, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen is 58, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee, Anna Faris is 36 1915- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything. This day John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, creating positions of layout, background painters, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. After 1919 Bray shifted his studio’s focus from entertainment to technical and training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's. 1942- U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential defense worker, police & fire, so they had unlimited access to gasoline. A cards were the least important.Lots of Looney Tunes and Popeye 1940s jokes are about A-cards and rationing. 1963- After the Kennedy assassination, comic Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the dead president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies in 1962, but now it wasn’t funny anymore and Meaders career collapsed. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!” 1969- Atari announced Pong, the first mass-marketed interactive game.