Animation Fun Facts for July 31, 2014


Birthdays: Liberace, Sebastian Sperling Kresge the founder of S.S. Kresge stores, Milton Friedman, Sherry Lansing, Geraldine Chaplin, Kurt Gowdy, Dean Cain, Leon “ Bull “Durham, Primo Levi, Ted Cassidy who played Lurch in the Adams Family, Wesley Snipes is 52, and according to J.K. Rowling, this is the birthday of Harry Potter



1620- The Pilgrims set sail for America. They were aiming for Virginia but washed up in Massachusetts instead. Comedian Eddie Izzard noted:” The Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth and landed in…. Plymouth…how convenient for them!”



1703- In London writer Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was made to stand in pillory for writing critical satires of the Her Majesties government and Church. The pamphlet was The Shortest Way with Dissenters.



1930- Radio mystery show “The Shadow” premiered. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…heh, heh, heh.” Orson Welles did the voice of the crime fighting Shadow for a year in 1937 for $185 a week.



1954- Steve Allen married Jayne Meadows. 



1995- The Walt Disney Company bought the ABC Network, the Discovery Channel and ESPN.

 


1999- Brad Bird’s first movie The Iron Giant released.

Animation Fun Facts for July 30, 2014 weds.

History for 7/30/2013
Birthdays: Georgio Vasari, Henry Ford, Emily Bronte', Casey Stengel, Roy Williams, Vladimir Zworykin who invented the television picture tube, Arnold Schwarzenegger aka the Governator is 68, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, Peter Bogdanovich is 76, Delta Burke, Henry Moore, Anita Hill, Lawrence Fishburne is 53, Jean Reno is 66, Hilary Swank is 40, Christopher Nolan, Lisa Kudrow is 51

1889- Start of the Sherlock Holmes mystery, the Naval Treaty.

1929 -The Hollywood Bowl musicians go on strike.



1932-Walt Disney’s “Flowers and Trees” the first Technicolor Cartoon. Disney had worked out a deal with Technicolor creator Herbert Kalmus to use his technique exclusively for two years to show larger Hollywood studios its quality.



1932- The first Los Angeles hosting of the Olympic Games in their spanking new Coliseum. Gold medalist in swimming Larry Buster Crabbe later became a movie star. Another medalist, the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, began to teach the Californians about a new sport- surfing!



1935- THE FIRST PAPERBACK BOOK- Andre Maurois 'Ariel, a Life of Shelley', published in this new form by Penguin Books of London.



1936- Producer David O. Selznick buys the movie rights to the best selling book “Gone With The Wind” from an ailing Irving Thallberg. The "boy genius" Thallberg was hoping that Selznick would ruin himself in the process of making this film. Thalberg was convinced that GWTW would prove to be a massive flop because "Costume dramas are box office poison." D’oh!



1948 - Professional wrestling premieres on prime-time network TV ( DuMont )



1954 - Elvis Presley joins Local 71, the Memphis Federation of Musicians.

1959- Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor patented the integrated circuit.



1986- Disney released “Flight of the Navigator”, featuring early photo-real VFX done by Canadian studio Omnibus.

1999- The Blair Witch Project opened in theaters. The low-budget indy became a monster hit due to an early on-line campaign claiming the footage was real.

Animation Fun Facts for July 29, 2014

Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini,, Clara Bow, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Sig Romberg, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Dave Stevens cartoonist creator of the Rocketeer, Ken Burns is 61,  Booth Tarkington, Professor Irwin Corey is 100!, David Warner, Steven Dorff,

1922- In Kansas City, Walt Disney released his first Laugh-o-Gram short- Little Red Riding Hood.

1936 - RCA shows 1st real TV program: dancing, a film on locomotives, a Bonwit

Teller fashion show & monologue from the Tobacco Road radio comedy show.

1938- Three Missing Links- a Three Stooges comedy with the boys as cave men and Ray Crash Corrigan in a gorilla suit.

1942- Orson Welles leaves Rio De Janiero after RKO fires him and stops production of "It's All True". They also have “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes. One of his last hires was animator Oskar Fischinger, who had left Disney.

1948- Former Disney animation assistant Hank Ketcham’s comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appeared.

1962- The film “Dr No” premiered, introducing the world to the suave spy James Bond 007.  They first considered Cary Grant, David Niven and Patrick McGoohan, James Mason, who all turned them down. So the producers picked young Scots actor Sean Connery. Ian Fleming wrote of the decision “ Disaster!!”

1965 - Beatles movie "Help" premiered, Queen Elizabeth attends.

1972- Mamas and the Papa's chubby singer Mama Cass Eliot dies of a stroke, not as was widely believed from choking on a sandwich.

1987- Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry announce the flavor Cherry Garcia, named for rock singer Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

Animation Fun Facts for July 28, 2014

Birthdays: Jacqueline Kennedy, Richard Rogers, Ibn al’ Arabi- philosopher 1165, Marcel Duchamp, Rudy Vallee. Sally Struthers  Peter Duchin, Vida Blue, Joe E. Brown, Jim Davis the creator of Garfield, Frank Yankovic the Polka King, Elizabeth Berkley, Earl Tupper the inventor of Tupperware, Hugo Chavez, Bud Luckey- Disney animator and voice of Eeyore. 

1586 - Sir Thomas Harriott first introduced potatoes to Europe. At first people thought they were poisonous because their blossom resembled that of toxic nightshade.

1655- Poet, playwright and duelist Cyrano de Bergerac died in Paris. The famous play about him and his big nose was written by Edmond Rostand in 1895.

1788- Master British portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds visited the other master British portrait painter Sir Thomas Gainsborough, who was dying or cancer. They had been enemies for years, but now at the end they made up.  When Reynolds left him, Gainsborough said "Goodbye until we meet in the Hereafter, Van Dyck in our company."

1841- The body of Mary Cecilia Rogers was pulled out of New York Harbor. The sensational murder of the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write “ The Mystery of Marie Roget.”

1858- The French photographer Nadar went up in a balloon and took the first aerial photograph.

1882- Parsifal, the last opera of Richard Wagner was produced at Bayreuth. As a way to ensure its financial solvency Wagner left instructions to never tour Parsifal but it should stay at Bayreuth. This lasted a few decades.

1948- The Premiere of " ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN." For you hardcore film trivia fans, this film is the only other time than the original Tod Browning movie that Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula on film.

1971- Photographer Diane Arbus probed increasingly darker subject matter, circus freaks, severe birth defects. This day she committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, then slitting her wrists.

Animation Fun Facts for July 27, 2014

Birthdays: Confucius, Alexander Dumas fils, Enrique Granados, Hillaire Belloc, Norman Lear, Maureen McGovern, Keenan Wynn, Leo Durocher, Peggy Fleming, Bobby Gentry, Jerry Van Dyke, Vincent Canby, Betty Thomas, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Ilya Salkind, David Swift –director of the Haley Mills Disney films like The Parent Trap, Maya Rudolph is 42, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is 37.

1940- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUGS BUNNY. Warners short-"A Wild Hare”-There were several earlier prototypes of the famous rabbit, white with a different voice, but this is the short that launched his career. Bugs says “Whats Up Doc?” for the first time, co-opting a line uttered by Clark Gable while chewing a carrot in the Frank Capra film “It Happened One Night”.

1946- Writer Gertrude Stein died. Her last words to Alice B. Toklas were:" What is the Answer?" When Alice said nothing, Gertrude said:" Well then, What's the Question?"

1953- The Tonight Show debuted on NBC. It's first host was Steve Allen.

1977- John Lennon got his green card. Richard Nixon considered him a dangerous radical. Several times in 1972 he was under 60 day notice to leave the country.

2007- The Simpson’s Movie debuted.

Animation Fun Facts for July 26, 2014

 Birthdays: Salvador Allende, Serge Koussevitsky, George Bernard Shaw, Gracie Allen,

 Carl Jung, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards, George Grosz, Pearl Buck, Jason Robards Jr,  Aldous Huxley, Jean Shepard, Vivian Vance, Emil Jannings, Sandra Bullock is 50, Kevin Spacey is 53, Kate Beckinsdale, Mick Jagger is 71

1656– Rembrandt van Rijn declared bankruptcy.

1861- Mark Twain left St. Jo Missouri to go west and sit out the Civil War. He went with his brother Oren Clemens who had been appointed to administer the Nevada territory.

1951- Charlie Chaplin driven into exile by red-baiters. He was on a holiday to Britain when he learned his visa had been revoked by the U.S. government. He didn't return until 1972. Despite his immense achievements in Hollywood History, when the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated later that year, Chaplin’s name was deliberately excluded.

1959- KPFK , Los Angeles lefty alternative radio of the Pacifica Network, starts up.

1991 – Children’s comic Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman was arrested in Florida for masterbating in an adult movie theater. The film was Naughty Nurse Nancy.

Animation fun facts for July, 25, 2014

Birthdays: Arthur Balfour, Thomas Eakins, Maxfield Parrish, Stuart K. Hine 1899 missionary who wrote the hymn "How Great Thou Art", Walter Payton, Walter Brennan, David Belasco, Adnan Khashoggi, Imam, Jack Gilford, Illeana Douglas, Estelle Getty, Matt LeBlanc, Louise Brown the first "test-tube" baby-conceived by invetrofertilization-1978

1940- In Nazi occupied Paris a Gestapo agent walks into the French offices of MGM studios and confiscates the release prints of "Gone With The Wind." They are taken to Berlin for a screening for top Nazis officials. Gone with the Wind was one of Hitler’s favorite movies.

1943- The Birth of L.A. Smog! A newspaper headline from this date mentions a 'gas-attack' of exhaust and haze that reduced visibility to three short blocks.

1951- CBS conducts the first broadcast of color television. NBC made color tv popular in the mid 1960's.

1953-Chuck Jone's "Duck Dodgers in the 24 and 1/2 Century".

1969 - 1st performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at the Fillmore East in NYC.

1975 - "A Chorus Line," longest-running Broadway show (6,137), premiered.

1985- Movie star Rock Hudson publicly acknowledged that he had AIDS.

1990 - Roseanne Barr sings the National Anthem at a San Diego Padre game, joke- impersonating ball players by spitting, grabbing her crotch and screeching during her rendition. It didn’t go over well with the more patriotically minded in that conservative town.

Animation fun facts for July 24, 2014

Birthdays: Simon Bolivar, Amelia Earhart, Alexander Dumas fils, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Graves, Pat Oliphant, Bela Abzug, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ruth Buzzi, Lynda Carter, Chief Dan George, Robert Hays, Gus Van Sant, Anna Paquin, Michael Richards, J-Lo Jennifer Lopez is 44

1901- William Porter, also known as O.Henry, was released from jail after doing time for embezzlement. While in jail he found he had a talent for writing.

1934- Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film Cleopatra premiered.  It starred Claudette Colbert wearing skimpy metal lingerie that Lady Gaga could envy.

1938 - Instant coffee invented.

1948-HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARVIN THE MARTIAN- Warner's "Haredevil Hare" featuring the first Marvin the Martian.

1966- Actor Montgomery Clift died at age 45.

1980- In London’s Dorchester Hotel, comedian and actor Peter Sellers died of a heart attack. He was 54.

1985-Walt Disney's "The Black Cauldron" premiered.

Animation fun facts for July 23, 2014

Birthdays: Ethiopian Emperor Rastafari Halie Selassie "the Lion of Judah", Raymond Chandler, Raymond Booth, Don Drysdale, Gloria DeHaven, Arthur Treacher, Pee Wee Reese, Bob Fosse, Harry Cohn, Don Imus, Slash, Marlon Wayans, Monica Lewinsky, Woody Harrelson is 54, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Edie McClurg is 64, Daniel Radcliffe is 26

1599- Michel Caravaggio received his first commission for a painting.

1904 – The Ice Cream Cone created by Charles E. Menches during the LA Purchase Expo.

1932-The Birthday of Fritos. Texas ice cream maker Elmer Doolin buys a recipe for corn chips from a Mexican fry cook for $100 dollars and starts the Frito-Lay Company.

1966- The comedy song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha, Ha!" released. The singer was Napoleon XIV.

1982- Actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed by a stunt helicopter while filming "Twilight Zone, the movie". The last scripted line before his death was "I’ll Keep you safe kids, I swear to God!" The children were being worked into the early morning hours without a caretaker supervisor in defiance of the Coogan Laws. Director John Landis was investigated but exonerated. The only filmworker to dare to testify against Landis, the wardrobe supervisor, was blacklisted and never worked in Hollywood again.

2004- Two armed men enter the Munch Museum in Norway and steal Edvard Munch’s masterpiece The Scream at gunpoint. It was recovered with some water damage in 2007.

Animation Fun Facts for July 22, 2014 tues.

History for 7/22/2014

Birthdays: Emma Lazarus, Eduard Hopper, Gregor Mendel, Alexander Calder, James Whale, Oscar De La Renta, Rose Kennedy, Stephen Vincent Benet, Jason Robards, Bob Dole, David Spade is 50, Terence Stamp is 76, Danny Glover is 68, Alex Trebek, Bobby Sherman, Don Henley, Disney musical composer Alan Mencken, Irene Bedard to voice of Disney's Pocahontas, William Dafoe is 59, John Leguizamo, Selena Gomez, Albert Brooks is 67- the voice of Marlin in Finding Nemo

1598- William Shakespeare lists on the Stationers Register, a sort of copyright registry, his new play The Merchant of Venice.

1921- Artist Man Ray arrived in Paris determined to go Dada!

1965- Cary Grant married Dyan Cannon.

1967- Jimi Hendrix quit as opening act for the Monkees.

1977- Walt Disney’s film "The Rescuers" featuring the last work of Disney

master animator Milt Kahl.

1989- Nintendo released in America the Gameboy. Designer Gunpei Yokoi designed it and the unique cross shaped directional fingerpad to replace a joystick control.  Yokoi in 1997 was killed in a car accident outside Kyoto.

Animation Fun Facts for July 21, 2014

 

 Birthdays: Ernest Hemingway, Issac Stern, Marshal McCluhan, Norman Jewison is 87, Don Knotts, Janet Reno, Gary Trudeau the creator of Doonesbury, Ernst Shuftan- inventor of the "Shuftan Effect", a cheap way of combining actors with miniatures by shooting through mirrors. All those "Lost World" Cesar Romero fighting the giant Iguanas were done that way. Edward Herman, Robin Williams is 62, Josh Harnett is 36

Happy National Zippo Lighter Day.  Smoking is bad but Zippos are cool- another one of life’s mysteries.

1954- The Fellowship of the Rings, first book of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, first published. C.S. Lewis said the book “came forth like thunder on a summers day..”

1959- Judge Frederick van Pelt-Bryan ruled that Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence was not pornography and therefore could be sent through the postal system.

1969- “That’s One Small Step for Man..” Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon.

1980- SAG went on strike for actor's residuals from video cassette and cable TV sales.

The actors hit the bricks twice more, in 1988 and 2000.

Animation Fun Facts for July 19, 2014

Birthdays: Edgar Degas, Col. Samuel Colt, Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vicki Carr, Max Fleischer, Lizzie Borden, Ille Nastase, George McGovern is 92, Brian Harold May of Queen, Atom Egoyan, Anthony Edwards, Campbell Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch is 38

1913 - Billboard Magazine publishes earliest known "Last Week's 10 Best Sellers among

Popular Songs" Malinda's Wedding Day is #1

1932- writer Daphne du Maurier married General Frederick Browning.

1941 - British PM Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign. By coincidence the letter "V" in morse code corresponded with the opening notes of Beethoven ‘s 5th symphony "Dit-Dit-Dit Daaah." making it the musical theme of the BBC overseas radio service war news. If you ever lived in England you would know that reversing the two fingers sign is an insult akin to flashing someone the middle finger.

1957- I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF starring Michael Landon premiered.

1966- 50 year old Frank Sinatra married 21 year old Mia Farrow. Frankie’s ex Ava Gardner commented:” Hah! I always knew Frank would one day wind up in bed with a little boy. “ Two years later when Mia Farrow was offered the lead role in Roman Polanski’s film “Rosemary’s Baby” Frank gave her an ultimatum "Baby, it's either me or your career”. She took the part and he served her with a divorce suit on the set. Mia got an Oscar nomination and Frank recorded “Strangers in the Night”.

Animation Fun Facts for July 18, 2014. Fri.

Birthdays: William Makepeace Thackeray, Chill Wills, Nelson Mandela, James Brolin, Elizabeth McGovern, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Hume Cronyn, Red Skelton, Hunter H. Thompson, Clifford Odets, Paul Verhoeven, John Glenn is 93, Vin Diesel is 47.

1939-MGM tried a sneak preview of the film The Wizard of Oz. Afterward they debated cutting the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow as slowing down the pace. Finally they decided to leave it in. The film debuted in August to wild success and acclaim.

1939- RKO pictures signed Orson Welles to direct movies in Hollywood. That Hollywood signed a 24 year old radio star who never directed a movie, and gave him complete freedom was an amazing deal.

1950- Walt Disney’s live action film Treaure Island Premiered, with Robert Newton as Long John Silver, Capt Jack Sparrow’s role model. Arrrr-mateys!

1964- Bob McKimson’s "A False Hare", the last Bugs Bunny theatrical short for Warner Bros until 1985.

1966- Bobby Fuller who made the hit song "I fought the Law and the Law Won" was found in LA in his mothers Oldsmobile beaten and dead from "forcible inhalation of gasoline"- huffing.

1998- Pokemon the First movie released in Japan, stoking the Pokemon craze.

Animation Fun Facts for July 17, 2014

Birthdays: James Cagney, John Jacob Astor Ist, Hyacinth Rigaud, Bernice Abbott, Chill Wills, Brian Trottier, Phoebe Snow, Daryl Lamonica, Prof. Peter Schickele a.k.a. PDQ Bach, Earl Stanley Gardner the creator of Perry Mason, Art Linkletter, Diane Carroll, David Hasslehoff is 62, Donald Sutherland is 79, Phyllis Diller

1841 - British humor magazine "Punch" 1st published.

1893- Representatives of fourteen stage unions meet to form IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical & Screen Engineers of the U.S. & Canada.

1928- President of Mexico Alvaro Obregon was at a large banquet for former veterans of the Mexican Revolution. Part of the party was having an artist stroll about making caricatures of the guests. Obregon said to cartoonist Leon Toral: "Make sure you make me look good." Toral responded "Oh, I will.." and pulled a gun and shot the President to death. A true professional, he actually completed his drawing before his reached for his pistol. Gotta watch them cartoonists….

1935 - Variety's famous headline "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" meaning audiences in rural areas were not attending movies with a rustic theme.

1937- the Nazis open an art exhibit of banned artworks and artists called Entartete Kunst- Degenerate Art.- Works of Dali and Duchamp, Grosz, Lippschitz, Kandinsky and Miro, with appropriate insults underneath. The next day Hitler dedicated the Great German Art Collection, having cleansed the German art world for National Socialist art, mostly bad deco-greco nudes and dumb Nordic medieval fantasy scenes.

1955 DISNEYLAND OPENED- Walt Disney's dream of a perfect family amusement park, called 'The Happiest Place on Earth" was declared open with movie celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter and the Mouseketeers in attendance. Walt Disney expected to get 10,000 visitors that first day.  They got 100,000. Facilities broke down from the huge crowds and the haste with which the park was built.  Concrete pavement which was poured the night before was still soft under people's feet, there were no working water fountains and the car parking was a nightmare. To the Disneyland workers opening day was nicknamed 'Black Sunday". Despite all, Disneyland became a huge success.

1967 – The Monkees performed at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix was their opening act.

1968- The Beatles musical cartoon feature The Yellow Submarine premiered in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Look Out ! It’s the Blue Meanies!!

1988- A home video tape was released of actor Rob Lowe making whoopee with two underage girls in his hotel room.