Animation Fun Facts for Jan 31, 2014

Birthdays: Gouverner Morris, Zane Grey, James G. Blaine, Franz Schubert, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, Sir John Profumo, Phillip Glass, Johnny Rotten, Ernie Banks, Norman Mailer, Nolan Ryan, Susanne Pleshette, Anthony LaPaglia, Tallulah Bankhead, Jean Simmons, Justin Timberlake is 33, Portia DiRossi, Minnie Driver is 44, Carol Channing is 93.

Happy Chinese New Year, the Year of the Horse. Xīn Nián Kuài Lè. (Mandarin)

Happy National Dress up in a Gorilla Suit Day. First advocated by Don Martin, cartoonist for MAD Magazine.

1925- Scotch brand invisible tape introduced by the 3-M Company.

1978- Polish director Roman Polanski fled the U.S. for exile after being charged for having sex with a thirteen year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s house.

1999- The first episode of Seth McFarlane’s show Family Guy premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 30, 2014

Birthdays: Barbara Tuchman, Walt “Moose” Dropo, Olaf Palme, , Dick Martin, Louis S. Rukeyser, Dorothy Malone, Boris Spassky, John Ireland, Phil Collins, Vanessa Redgrave is 77, Gene Hackman is 84, Christian Bale is 40, Former VP Dick Cheney is 74

1931- Hollywood Premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. Later at a dance at the Biltmore Hotel writer Herman Mankewicz (Citizen Kane, Duck Soup) got into a drunken fistfight with producer David O. Selznick (Gone With the Wind, Rebecca). You’ll never eat turtle-soup in this town again!

1933- HI-YO SILVER!! The Lone Ranger debuted on radio. The Masked Man was invented by the WXYZ Detroit station owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker with absolutely no experience of cowboys or Indians. They just wanted a hero like Zorro with a strict moral code. He was later voiced by actor William Conrad who did the Rocky & Bullwinkle narration and the TV series Cannon.

1934- Artist Salvador Dali married Gala.

1960- For years after the making of Fantasia, critics had pondered Igor Stravinsky's cryptic reaction to Disney's portrayal of his "Rite of Spring".  Disney publicity said he was "speechless with admiration!" Today in a Saturday Review article, Stravinsky said Stokowski's editing of his music was 'execrable' and the visuals "an unresisting imbecility".  His opinion still didn't stop him from selling the studio film rights to several other of his pieces including "The Firebird' in 1942. He needed the cash.

1961-H-B's the Yogi Bear Show.

1963- MIT Grad student Ivan Sutherland published his thesis Sketchpad, the first animation software.  For the first time, a computer could draw lines instead of just numbers. When students at the University of Utah like Ed Catmull, Nolan Bushnell and Jim Blinn were learning about CG. The first thing they were asked to read was Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Everything from Avatar, Buzz Lightyear and Mortal Combat results.

Anim Fun Facts for Jan 29, 2014 weds

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Didius Julianus, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Paine, William Claude Dunkenfeld known as W.C. Fields, Victor Mature, Paddy Chayefsky, Tom Selleck is 68, Ed Burns, Bill Peet, Greg Louganis, John D Rockefeller Jr., Claudine Longet, John Horsely (1817) the inventor of the Christmas Card-1842, Oprah Winfrey is 60, Heather Graham is 44.

1813- Jane Austin’s novel Pride and Prejudice first published.

1845- Edgar Allen Poe's poem the Raven first published. Nevermore.

1920- Walt gets a job. Nineteen year old Walt Disney and his buddy Ub Iwerks were hired by a local Kansas City Slide Company to draw ads for newspapers and slides for theaters.

1957- Patsy Cline recorded "Walkin' After Midnight."

1959- Disney's " SLEEPING BEAUTY " opened. Despite earning the fifth highest box office for that year, it finished $5 million behind what it cost to make.  The animation staff had swollen to it's largest to finish the production. It’s disappointing box office soured Walt Disney on feature animation. After the film was finished the studio had a massive layoff, dropping from 551 to just 75. Staff level will not return to these same levels until 1990.

1964- Stanley Kubrick's nuclear comedy "DR STRANGLOVE –OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB." premiered. It's use of hand held camera for action sequences and cutting inspired by the European New Wave ushered in a new style in Hollywood cinema. So, who was Tracey Reed? She played Miss Scott, George C. Scott’s bikini clad secretary, and the only woman in the entire movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snTaSJk0n_Y

1977- Comic TV. star of "Chico and the Man " Freddy Prinze (23) blew his brains out. Some said he suffered from a survivor's depression about why he had succeeded in life while all his friends from the Barrio were dead from gang killings or drugs. Family members said that he was just stoned on Quaaludes and was clowning around with a gun.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 28, 2014

Birthdays: King Henry VII Tudor, Jose Marti, Colette, Jackson Pollack, Claus Oldenburg, Arthur Rubenstein, Ernst Lubitsch, animator Connie Rasinski, Susan Sontag,  Barbie Benton, General George Pickett, William Burroughs (1855) the inventor of the calculator, Mo Rocca, Alan Alda  is 78, Elijah Wood is 34

1926- Composer Kurt Weill married his Pirate Jenny- Lotte Lenya.

1930- Warner Brothers Cartoons Born.  Leon Schlesinger, the head of Pacific Art and Title, signed a deal with several unemployed Disney animators who had left Walt to form their own studio to draw Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but had been stiffed by their contacts. Schlesinger had connections with the Warner Bros. since he helped them get funding for the 'Jazz Singer'. They create Leon Schlesinger's Studio Looney Tunes, in imitation of Disney's Silly Symphonies. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and more result.

1949- The Admiral Broadway Review premiered on television. The one and a half hour comedy review starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The show was so popular Admiral was swamped for orders for new televisions and ironically was forced to cancel the show to focus on their production needs. The show was revived as Your Show of Shows, one of the great shows of early television.

1956- Young singer Elvis Presley first appeared to television audiences on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.

1978- Premiere of Hanna Barbera's the Three Robonic Stooges.

1989- At the Golden Globe Awards Who Framed Roger Rabbit edged out Working Girl for Best Picture Comedy, but Bob Hoskins lost best actor to Tom Hanks in Big.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 27, 2014

Birthdays-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is 259, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Charles Dodgson-better known as Lewis Carroll, Eduard Lalo, William Randolph Hearst, Samuel Gompers, Jerome Kern, Skitch Henderson, Donna Reed, Bridgette Fonda, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kate Wolf, Ross Bagdasarian a.k.a. David Seville- creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, James Cromwell, Mimi Rogers, Keith Olbermann, Frank Miller is 57, Patton Oswalt is 45

1918- Warner Bros. Pictures incorporated. The Brothers Warner- Sam Albert, Harry and Jack were the sons of Jewish immigrants who had moved from Poland in 1882 and set up a bicycle repair shop in Ohio. Their first movie was Five Years in Germany. Throughout the 1920’s their little studio survived making pictures with dog star Rin Tin Tin. They called him the Mortgage Lifter, because the profits from his pictures paid their bills. Later they bought Vitagraph and gambled with the new Sound technology. When they made the Jazz Singer with Jolson, Warner Bros became a major studio.

1926- Englishman John Logie Baird demonstrated his televisor system- the first true television image.

1927- Charlie Chaplin’s short comedy The Circus premiered. 

1944- WAS WALT A RED? Walt Disney donated money and may have attended a tribute to leftist cartoonist Art Young in New York who had died three weeks before. Art Young was a close friend of John Reed and Louise Bryant, founders of the American Communist Party. The F.B.I. noted the event was sponsored by the radical socialist newspaper The New Masses and other attendees included progressives like Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg.

   Walt was already a founding member of the Hollywood Society for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group of conservative Hollywood celebrities meant to counteract the rampant Hollywood Liberals. Disney later became an F.B.I. informant, but like Reagan, it may have been after the F.B.I. reminded him of his attendance at this little soiree'....

1948- The Wireway Company announced the first tape recorder for sale using the new magnetic tape. It cost $150.  

1997- First day shooting on the Cohen Bros. film The Big Lebowski- The Dude Abides.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 26, 2014

Birthdays: General MacArthur, Stephan Grappelli, Angela Davis, Maria Von Trapp, Wayne Gretsky "The Great One" is 52, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, Roger Vadim, cartoonist Jules Feiffer is 85, Henry Jaglom, Anita Baker, Edward Abbey, Gene Siskel, Scott Glenn, David Straitharn, Randy Rhodes, Ellen DeGeneres is 56

1911- Richard Strauss’ opera Die Rosenkavalier opens in Vienna. Kaiser Wilhelm was offended by the E.T. Hoffman story about aristocrats sleeping around with servants. He called it "A dirty little play".

1934- Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie.

1939- The first day of shooting on the film Gone With the Wind.

1979- The Dukes of Hazard TV show premiered.

1984-HELP ME TITO! During the filming of a Pepsi commercial at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, a magnesium flash ignited singer Michael Jackson’s Jeri curl hair gel causing him 3rd degree burns,

1988- Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Phantom of the Opera premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 25, 2014

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Birthdays: Genghis Khan,  Robert Burns, Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf, Vice Pres Charles “Goodtime Charlie” Curtis, Edwin Newman, Jean Image, Dean Jones, Ava Gardner, Etta James, Corazon Aquino, Anita Pallenberg, Tobe Hooper is 71

1864- Lewis Carroll invited Sir John Tenniel to illustrate his book Alice in Wonderland.

 1890- Newspaper reporter Nelly Bly ( Elizabeth Cochrane ) of the New York World is welcomed home after traveling around the World in 72 days. The stunt was inspired by the Jules Verne story Around the World in 80 days, which had become a hit stage play.

1938- Walt Disney attempted to head off the rising tide of unionizing workers in Hollywood by forming a dummy company union called the Federation of Screen Cartoonists. No other artists but Disney employees joined, and Disney's chief attorney Gunther Lessing could veto any vote they had.

1949- The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held at the LA Athletic Club. Five awards were given out for shows like Mabel’s Fables and Treasures of Literature. Rudy Vallee hosted. Mayor Fletcher Bowman declared it “ TV Day” in LA.

1961- Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians premiered. “ Cruella, Cruella da Ville,.. “

1970- Robert Altman’s groovy movie M*A*S*H premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 24, 2014

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Publius Hadrian AD117,  Farinelli the Castrato-1707, Pierre De Beaumarchais, Swedish King Gustavus III, Frederick the Great, Edith Wharton, German Field Marshal Model, Sharon Tate, Ernest Borgnine,  Mary Lou Rhetton, John Belushi, Disney director Wilfred Jackson, Warren Zevon, Yakov Smirnoff, Daniel Auteuil is 64, Orel Roberts, Natassia Kinski is 55

1874- Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Gudunov premiered in Saint Petersburg.

1875- Camille Saint-Saens orchestral work Danse Macabre premiered in Paris.

1927- The Pleasure Garden premiered, the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

1942- Producer David O. Selznick signed young star Jennifer Jones. He became infatuated with her and left his wife Irene, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer to marry Jones.

1961- Warner Bros. cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc had a terrible auto crash. He lingered in a coma for several weeks. The way the doctor brought him around was to say: “Hey Bugs Bunny! How are we today?” Blanc replied in character:” Ehhh…fine,doc!”

2006- The Walt Disney Company acquired CG animation studio Pixar. Apple and Pixar head Steve Jobs got a seat on Disney Board, Ed Catmull was named head of the studio and director John Lasseter became it’s creative head.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 23, 2014

Birthdays: Musio Clementi, Edouard Manet, Sergei Eisenstein, Derek Walcott, Ernie

Kovacs, Stendahl, Jean Moreau, Randolph Scott, Dan Duryea,  Rutger Hauer is 69, Warner Bros animator Manny Davis, Disney animation director Dave Hand, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Mariska Hargitay is 50, Sonny Chiba is 75. Animator Phil Mendez

1957- The Disneyland TV show premiered” Our Friend, the Atom.”

1968- THE PUEBLO INCIDENT- While America was watching the Battle of Que Sanh in Vietnam, a US Navy spy ship doing CIA intelligence work was captured in North Korean waters. The hostage ordeal mesmerized the public for weeks and the sailors were finally released after a long captivity and humiliating show-trials.  After his release,

the commander, Capt. Lloyd Bucher retired from the navy, went to Art Center in Pasadena and became an illustrator.

1978- In Woodland Hills Terry Kath, the lead singer of the group Chicago, killed

himself when he playfully put a pistol to his head. His last words were: "Don't

worry. It's not loaded, see...?"

1983- TV series The A Team, making a celebrity out of a Mohawk and bling wearing former bouncer named Mr. T.  “ I pity the fool!”

1989- Artist Salvador Dali’ died. Rushing to leave as much money as possible for

his family his agents had the ancient artist autograph reams of blank paper they intended to print Dali’ lithographs on later.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 22, 2014

Birthdays: Sir Francis Bacon, D.W. Griffith, Charles Gordon Lord Byron, August Strindberg, Andre Marie Ampere (electric Amps), 1960’s UN Secretary General U- Thant, Ann Southern, Sam Cooke, John Hurt is 73, George McManus, Joseph Waumbaugh, J.J. Johnson, Seymour Cassell,  Jim Jarmusch is 60, Linda Blair is 55, Piper Laurie is 81, Diane Lane is 48

1938- On a bare stage, Thorton Wilder’s play Our Town premiered.

1947- Hollywood first commercial television station KTLA went on the air for regular broadcasting. At the time in all of LA there were only 350 TV sets.

1949-Tex Avery’s cartoon "Bad Luck Blackie".

1968-T.V. comedy review show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In premiered. It launched the careers of Lilly Tomlin, Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan. You bet your sweet Bippy!

1975- Hollywood agents Ron Meyer and Michael Ovitz leave William Morris and form the Creative Artists Agency, or CAA.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 21, 2014

Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter), Thomas J."Stonewall" Jackson, J. Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo is 74, Wolfman Jack, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis is 58, Ken Leung is 44

1930- Ubb Iwerks quit the Walt Disney Company.

1935- Disney animator Ollie Johnston’s first day at the studio at $17 a week.

1938 -Max Fleischer tells his New York cartoon studio they are relocating to Miami Florida. 

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Special Effects, died selling chocolates in a Paris train station -Gare du Norde to be exact.

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1959- Former 'Our Gang' child star Charles 'Alfalfa" Switzer was killed in a bar in Mission Hills, Ca. He pulled a knife on a man over a $50 debt on a hunting dog. The man then shot him. He was 32. According to fellow Little Rascal Darla Hood, Switzer was a brute who bullied the other children, and bitter his adult career never blossomed.

1992- Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 20, 2014

Birthdays: King Charles III of Spain, Richard Henry Lee- signer of the Declaration of Independence, Frederico Fellini, Patricia O’Neal, Dorothy Provine, Mario Lanza, David Lynch, George Burns, DeForest Kelly, Edwin Buzz Aldrin, Arte Johnson, Lorenzo Lamas, Bill Maher is 58, Rainn Wilson is 48

1779- The English dramatic actor David Garrick died. Supposedly his last words were when asked “Is it hard to die?” Garrick replied:” Dying is not Hard. Comedy is Hard.”

1852- Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form. It had been released in magazine installments the year before, as was the custom of the time.

1936- Andriana Caselotti, just 19 years old, laid down the first voice tracks for Snow White.

1938-The first true animator, Emile Cohl, died while headed for the Paris premiere of Disney's" Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Cohl was so poor that the electricity in his flat had been turned off and the candles had ignited his beard. Angry he was never recognized in his time, he once said: "the French prefer their artists with marble and flowers on top.".

1949- FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave Shirley Temple a pen that shoots tear gas.

1982- SONY introduced the Camcorder, the personal video camera.

1986- The worlds first computer virus, Brain, was sent out over the internet.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 19, 2014

Birthdays:  Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Lee, Paul Cezanne', Janis Joplin would have been 71, Tipi Hedren is 84, Slobodan Milosovic’, radio star Ish Kabibble, Dolly Parton, Michael Crawford, Desi Arnez Jr., Chic Young, Guy Madison, Richard Lester, John H. Johnson publisher of Ebony and Jet Magazines, Jean Stapleton, Fritz Weaver, Sean Wayans, Robin MacNeill, Paul Rodriquez, Antoine Fuqua, Drea Di Matteo is 42, and Bart the Bear-1977 Bear who starred in movies like Clan of the Cave Bear, The Bear, White Fang and Legends of the Fall.

  

1829 Johann Von Goethe published Faust Part 1.

1940- The Three Stooges do their impression of Hitler and the top Nazis in the Columbia Pictures short comedy “You Natzy Spy”. Moe Howard was still the best Hitler impersonator. “Hail-Hail-Hailstone of Moronica! Waahoo!”

1949- Walt Disney's So Dear to My Heart premiered.

1961- The first episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 18, 2014 sat

Birthdays: Daniel Webster, A.A. Milne, Joseph Glidden, Oliver Hardy, Cary Grant- born  Archie Leech, Danny Kaye, Emmanuel Chabrier, Bobby Goldsboro, Pierre Roget (Roget’s Thesaurus), Ray Dolby (Dolby sound), John Boorman, Kevin Costner is 59, Jason Segel is 34

1919- American Society of Cinematographers formed (ASC).

1949- Look Magazine published a photo essay called "Prizefighter". The photographer was a young kid from the Bronx named Stanley Kubrick.  Mr  Kubrick said he now wanted to try filmmaking.

1953-The Hollywood Animation Guild chartered. Originally the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839, signatories included Disney legends Milt Kahl, Les Clark, John Hench and Ken Anderson.

1962- THE FRENCH CONNECTION- NYPD cracked a drug ring smuggling heroin from South East Asia into New York via Marseilles. The French Connection bust nabbed $3.5 million in dope and made heroes out of the two detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grazzo. Egan joked to Grazzo:" I’ll betchya Paul Newman will play me and Ben Gazzarra you!" Actually Gene Hackman played Egan and Roy Scheider Grazzo in the Oscar winning 1971 film. Both cops retired from the force to make careers in show biz. Ironically while the film was being made the real heroin from the case disappeared from the NYPD evidence lockup and was replaced with bags of corn starch. It was never recovered.

1977- The cult documentary PUMPING IRON premiered. Filmmakers George Butler and Rob Fiore maxed out his American Express card to the tune of $35,000 to bring this look at the little known world of professional body building to the screen. The film first brought to the public a charmingly confident Austrian body builder named Arnold Schwarzenegger who wanted to try acting someday. Also Lou Ferrigno who would also star in movies and as the TV Hulk. Many year later Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to buy the rights to the film so he could edit out the scenes of him puffin’ some ganja.

1987- National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition premiered.

1990- Rusty Hamer, who played Danny Thomas’ son in the TV show Make Room for Daddy, put a 357 Magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. He was 42.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 17, 2014

Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin, Max Sennett-1880, Al Capone,  Ethan G. Hodell 1883- the inventor of the Tow-Truck, Constantin Stanislavsky, Moira Shearer, Shari Lewis, James Earl Jones is 84, Vidal Sassoon, Disney animator Claude Coats, Denny Doyle, Kevin Reynolds, Muhammad Ali is 72, Jim Carrey is 52, Michelle Obama is 50, Zooey Deschanel is 34, Betty White is 92

1904- Chekov's The Cherry Orchard opened in St. Petersburg.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1929- First appearance of Popeye the Sailor in E.C. Seegar's comic strip the Thimble Theatre.

1994-The Great Northridge Earthquake rocked Los Angeles. 72 deaths and 20 billion dollars in damage.  It was officially listed as 6.8 on the Richter Scale, although many persist that in some areas it was as high as 7.2. The epicenter was in the San Fernando Valley, so the valleys two major industries, animated cartoons and pornography, were temporarily disrupted.

Animation Fun Facts for Jan 16, 2014

Birthdays: Yukon poet Robert Service, Andre Michelin 1853 the pneumatic tire inventor, Ethel Merman, Dizzy Dean, Peter Ustinov, Henry Mancini, A.J. Foyt, Marilyn Horne, Sade, Michael Wilding, Eartha Kitt, Debbie Allen is 64, John Carpenter is 66, Diane Fossey,  Kate Moss is 40, Tsianina Joelson

1942-Actress Carol Lombard and her mother died in a plane crash in the Sierra Mountains while returning from a war bond drive. Her husband movie king Clark Cable was so disconsolate that he joined an airforce combat squadron instead of doing USO work and took dangerous missions trying to get killed.

1954-THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kevfauver chaired a U.S. Senate subcommittee to study juvenile delinquency. They conclude that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books. The probe was sparked by the publication of a book called The Seduction of the Innocent. It charged among other things that Batman & Robin were gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounged around all day in silk pajamas with no women! Despite testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines 350 comic book companies including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label were driven out of business. The strict comics-code was established. The comic book industry, which had been selling one million books a month, never regained that level of prosperity in the US again.

1962- Television pioneer Ernie Kovacs died when he plowed his Corvair into a tree at Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Blvds. Kovacs had a fondness for all night poker and vodka parties.  Friend Jack Lemmon said Ernie was so fanatical for a good card game that once when over a friend's house no table large enough could be procured for a game, Kovacs ordered the front door taken off it's hinges and a tablecloth thrown over it so they could all play.

1962-First day of shooting on the film Dr No with a young actor named Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. Ian Fleming thought the casting of Connery would be a disaster, he wanted Cary Grant or David Niven.

1995- The UPN Network (Universal-Paramount Network) began telecasting.