Animation Fun Facts for March 25, 2015

B-Days: English King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gudson Borglum, David Lean, Gloria Steinem is 81, Mary Flannery-O’Connor, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia, Anita Bryant, Simone Signoret, Elton John is 67, Sarah Jessica Parker is 50.

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., started a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they won't ask to unionize ). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls, mostly from his writers. The forum quickly devolved into a shouting, screaming free for all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was abandoned.

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offered famed director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bag for Hollywood.

1944- During World War II a British pilot bailed out of burning plane and when his chute failed to open. He fell 18,000 feet. In a freak occurrence he hit a wet beach that broke his fall. He suffered only a broken ankle. English film director Michael Powell made the strange incident the basis of a fantasy film with David Niven called "A Matter of Life and Death", released in the US as "The Big Staircase"

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile  -$1,000, 12 inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem he was arrested.

1960- Thirty five years after it was written and published in Europe an American judge rules that D.H. Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not pornography and could finally be sold in the U.S.. Not porn ? Whaddaya think of that, John-Thomas ?

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls & butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today" album, It was later pulled.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.