Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 2, 2015

Birthdays: King Richard III, Nat Turner, Mahatma Ghandi, Claus Von Hindenburg, Ferdinand Foch, Spanky MacFarland, Julius Marx known as Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Moses Gunn, Graham Greene, LeRoy Shield (composer of the music in the Hal Roach comedies), Donna Karan, Gordon Sumner known as Sting is 64, Lorraine Bracco is 51, Tiffany, Kelly Ripa

1937 - Ronald Reagan, just 26 years old, made his acting debut this day

with Warner Brothers release of "Love is in the Air".

1950- Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip debuts. Good ol'

Charlie Brown was the name of a fellow post office worker all the guy's liked

to play jokes on.  Schulz's idea 'little folks' was initially rejected

by all the major comic syndicates. Three months before the strip was accepted his

girlfriend broke off their engagement. He had left his job at the post office and

she was convinced he would never amount to anything.

At the time of his death Charles Schulz had mountains on the moon named for his characters, and he was arguably the richest visual artist on earth.

1954- Elvis Presley is fired from Nashville's Grand Ol' Opry Show after

one performance. He was told: "Son, you ain't a' going no where. Go

back to driving a truck!"

1955 - "Good Eeeeeeevening." The master of mystery movies, Alfred

Hitchcock, presented his brand of suspense to millions of viewers on CBS

on this night. The famous caricature of Hitch was done by Hitchcock himself. He was a pretty good cartoonist.

1957- Raintree County, the first film in Panavision.

1958- The Huckleberry Hound show.

1959- The television show the Twilight Zone debuts. Producer/writer Rod Serling

had fought network execs for months that a mystery-suspense show could compete with

all the Doctor and Cowboy shows on TV.  He originally wanted Orson Welles to be

the host of the show but when Welles asked for too much money, Serling decided to

do it himself. He wrote 90 episodes. He said he got the name Twilight Zone from a

term airline pilots used for the area when both the clouds and ground are invisible

from view and you lose your bearings.

1967- San Francisco Police raid the Haight-Ashbury home of the rock band the Grateful

Dead, busting just about everyone for possession of narcotics.

1977 - Following a foiled attempt to steal the body of Elvis Presley from

Forest Hill Cemetery, both Presley's and his grandmother's bodies were moved

to Graceland.

1978- Future TV star Tim Allen was busted in Kalamazoo Michigan for selling cocaine.

1982- Godfrey Reggio’s haunting documentary Koyaanisqatsi premiered at Radio City Music Hall. Music by Phillip Glass.

1985- Actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS. The first major celebrity to die of the disease.