Animation Fun Facts for Nov 30, 2015

Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guiliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, Luther Ingram, Ridley Scott is 79, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark, Ben Stiller is 50, Henry Selick

1886- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, Bricktop, and Maurice Chevalier.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do."

1940-Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Dezi Arnez. Together they pioneered the new art of Television. They divorced in 1960.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS TV show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into SONY Pictures.

1985-Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the mandatory retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. So Roy built a successful grass roots stockholders campaign SaveDisney.com. In 2005 Eisner was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 29, 2015

Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Vin Scully, Yakima Canutt, Gary Shandling is 66, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen is 61, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee, Anna Faris is 39

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 the job positions of layout, animator, inbetweener, background painter, 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.

1959-The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darins’ rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1972- Atari announced Pong, the first mass-marketed interactive game.

1981- Actress Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and

drowned. Her husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 28, 2015

Birthdays: Jean Baptiste Lully, William Blake, Frederick Engels, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Roehm, Brooks Atkinson, Berry Gordy the founder of Motown Records, Anton Rubinstein, Gary Hart, Vern Den Herder, Paul Warfield, Hope Lange, Ed Harris is 65, Paul Schaefer, Joe Dante, Michael Ritchie, Anna Nicole-Smith, Randy Newman, John Stewart is 53

1907- Russian-Canadian scrap metal dealer Lazar Meir, now renamed Louis B. Mayer, bought an old burlesque house in Haverhill Massachusetts to show the new moving picture shows. He renamed it The Orpheum and the first film he showed was “ From the Manger to the Cross”. L.B. Mayer grew his film business to become MGM, and at the time of his death in 1950 was the most powerful man in Hollywood. The Motion Picture Academy was his idea.

1925- First radio broadcast from the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville.

1947- Disney's cartoon "Chip and Dale".

1948- Hopalong Cassidy premiered on television.

1953- Cartoonist & writer Milt Gross died.

  

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 27, 2015

Birthdays: Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jimi Hendrix would have been 75, Bruce Lee-original name Lee Jun Fan would have been 75, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is 58, James Agee, Chaim Weizmann, Mafia Don Vito Genovese, Czech leader Alexander Dubcheck, David Merrick, Marshal Thompson, Robin Givens, Judd Nelson, Buffalo Bob Smith, William Fichtner, Kathryn Bigelow is 64

1924- The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marvel of the parade were large displays that moved down the street thanks to small automobiles concealed under them. They seemed to "float", so they are called parade floats today.  The huge balloons were added in 1927. Originally after the parade the balloons were let go to float away into the sky. Macy’s offered a bounty to people who found them after they landed, sometimes in rural New Jersey.

1933- Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Walt Disney's, writes to fellow animator Bill Tytla encouraging him to move to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon!"

1936- Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor".

1963- The Beatles release the single “ I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

1967- The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour.

1973- According to the X-Files this was the night Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted by aliens.

1985- Steven Speilberg married actress Amy Irving. They divorced a few years later.

2002- Disney’s animated feature Treasure Planet opened in theaters.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 26, 2015

Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Marian Mercer, Tina Turner, Charles Schulz, Cyril Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Wendy Turnbull, Robert Goulet.

HAPPY U.S. THANKSGIVING - Since the earliest recorded times societies have had harvest festivals to give thanks to the appropriate deities that they're not going to starve that winter. A letter written in 1621 by pilgrim Edward Winslow described how Pilgrim Gov. Bradford and Miles Standish invited Massacoit and his Wampanoag Indians to a feast to celebrate their first successful harvest. The custom of Thanksgiving was a New England custom for decades thereafter.

In 1789 George Washington had called for a thanksgiving celebration in late November to celebrate the new Constitution. But Pres. Thomas Jefferson thought Thanksgiving ” was the most ridiculous idea” he ever heard. He considered it a violation of the separation of church and state, as did Andy Jackson and Zachary Taylor. So the holiday didn’t really become an annual custom until the Civil War. Sarah Hale the editor of the Ladies Magazine, the Martha Stewart of her time, had been lobbying the US Government to make the New England tradition a national one.

In 1863 after the great union victory at Gettysburg, President Lincoln issued a decree that the last Thursday of November be set aside as a feast of national Thanksgiving. As blue clad troops chowed down on their turkey and chicken dinners, the Confederates withheld their fire in honor of the new Yankee holiday. To this day Thanksgiving is still declared by Presidential decree.

1865- Lewis Carroll sent a copy of the completed manuscript of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland to his 12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. Carroll later published the book with his own money. This is one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate or discipline them.

1940- The first Woody Woodpecker Cartoon, "Knock-Knock.’

1945- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded KoKo, the first bebop Jazz single. Instead of big bands as was the fashion, they used a smaller quintet. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card so after his solo, Dizzy dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”. Jazz critic Ira Gitler picked up on the witty interplay between musicians, and began wrote of the new sound as BeBop.

1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.

1990- Acting on the example of Sony’s purchase of MGM-Columbia studios, Matushita (Panasonic) bought MCA- Universal studios for $6.6 billion. After a few fruitless years they sold it to the Bronfmans group, the distillers of Seagram’s Whiskey.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 25, 2015

Birthdays: Lope de Vega, St. Pope John XXIII, Andrew Carnegie, Tina Turner, Joe Dimaggio, Carl Benz of Mercedes Benz, Virgil Thompson, Jeffrey Hunter, John Kennedy,Jr., Percy Sledge, Ben Stein, Ricardo Montalban, Bob Matheson, John Larroquette, Gloria Steinem, General Augusto Pinochet, Christina Applegate, Bucky Dent, Bill Kroyer

1929- Alfred Hitchcock’s film Blackmail opened in London. It was the first full length talkie in Britain.

1949- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sung by Gene Autry hit number one on the musical charts.

1960- CBS canceled its remaining five radio soap operas, most of them now on television.

1975- According to the first movie Rocky, this was the date of the first prizefight portrayed in the film where we meet Rocky Balboa.

1992- Disney’s Aladdin opened wide in theaters.

1997- Pixar’s A Bugs Life and Geri’s Game premiered.

2009- Disney’s Princess and the Frog released.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 24, 2015

Birthdays: Spinoza, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Scott Joplin, Zachary Taylor, Carrie Nation, Dick Powell, Garson Kanin, Cass Gilbert-the architect of the first skyscraper, Alvan Barkley-Truman’s VP, William F. Buckley, John Lindsay, Dale Carnegie- author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, Steve Yeager, Denise Crosby, Billy Connolly is 73

1933- The RKO movie Flying Down to Rio opened, originally as a starring vehicle for Dolores Del Rio, but what we remember is it is the first pairing of the famous dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

1937- The Andrew Sisters record their Boogie-Woogie version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon”, an old Yiddish song that was updated by Bennie Goodman.

1938- LENI DOES TINSELTOWN -Hitler's top filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl arrived in Hollywood to meet the film community and show off her new documentary 'Olympia". Nazis charges de’ affaires in L.A. Gerhard Gyssling had bragged to the press that all Hollywood was dying to meet Germany’s top film artist. But Hollywood had different ideas. Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, Fox and Goldwyn refused to speak to her and picketers hounded her every step. Well known Conservatives like Louis B. Mayer and Gary Cooper were polite but begged off the bad publicity.

 The only studio heads who would meet Leni Reifenstahl were Hal Roach and Walt Disney. Uncle Walt gave her a tour of the studio but begged off running her film, saying the union projectionist would make trouble. ( uh-huh....) Years later Disney said he didn't really know who she was. ( uh-huh......) Leni told LA historian Robert Nudleman years later that she thought Walt met her because his professional curiosity got the better of him. That he wanted to see Olympia, because it was the only film to beat his Snow White at the Venice Film Festival, then the world’s most prestigious.

1941- After suffering a strike and declining revenue because of the war in Europe, Walt Disney’s studio was in trouble.  Animator Ward Kimball noted in his diary for this day: “ 100 layoffs announced. Studio personnel from 1600 down to a Hyperion level of 300. Geez, It this the writing on the wall?” Disney saved itself with doing training films for the Army, and after limping through the 1940’s, with Cinderella was back on top.

1947- THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST- 50 Hollywood moguls like Harry Cohn, Jack Warner and Dori Charey meet at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to formulate a group response to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee anti-commie hearings that were targeting Hollywood. Besides the heat from the feds their stockholders were clamoring for them to get the Reds out! They agreed to enforce an industry-wide blacklisting of anyone refusing to cooperate with the HUAC Committee. Nothing was ever officially written down or published, if you were blacklisted you suddenly were unable to find any work.

1950- The musical Guys & Dolls opened. “ I got da horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, I know a jock who tells me Never Fear, Can Do- Can Do..The Jock sez da horse can –do ”

1958- The musical film Gigi opened, music by Lerner & Lowe. Based on the writings of French author Collette, Collette herself had insisted young unknown Dutch actress Audrey Hepburn play the lead.

1968- Hey Jude by the Beatles topped the pop charts while Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man headed the Country & Western listing.

1991- Freddy Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, died of HIV/AIDS.

1998- America On Line bought their chief competitor Netscape.

1999- Pixars Toy Story 2. in theaters.

2000- Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas.

2010- Disney’s Tangled released.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 23, 2015

Birthdays: German Emperor Otto Ist- 972AD, Edward Rutledge –Declaration of Ind signer, President Franklin Pierce, Krystoff Penderecki, Manuel DeFalla, William Henry Pratt better known as Boris Karloff, William Bonney better known as Billy the Kid, Susan Anspach, Victor Jory, Vincent Cassel is 49, Joe Esterhaus is 73, Miley Cyrus is 23.


1874- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy first published.

1897-First Royal performance for Queen Victoria of a Cinematograph moving picture, at Windsor Castle. Also on the program was Monsieur Taffary's Calculating Dogs.

1938- Bob Hope recorded his signature tune “Thanks for the Memory” for the movie The Big Broadcast..

1942- PLAY IT AGAIN SAM- The movie CASABLANCA premiered. Based on an never produced musical, “Everybody Comes to Ricks’, Howard Koch and the Epstein Brothers adapted the play into one of the most memorable Hollywood movies ever. It was never expected to be more than a rehash of the popular Charles Boyer film Algiers. Humphrey Bogart acted opposite Ingrid Bergman, although he had to stand on apple boxes to appear taller than his Swedish leading lady.

1952- Animator Fred Moore, who drew Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and the Brave Little Tailor, died from cerebral injuries incurred in an auto accident in the Big Tujunga Canyon area of Los Angeles. He was 41.

1960- The Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated, featuring over 1,500 names- but not Charlie Chaplin, who was banned until 1972 because of his lefty political views.

1963- The very first episode of Dr. Who premiered on the BBC TV. William Hartnell played the first Dr. Who. There have been eleven doctors since.

1966- The film “ Spinout “ premiered. Elvis Presley pioneered the genre movie of bored male movie stars who use their studio muscle to make us watch movies of them racing cars. James Garner in Grand Prix-arguably the best one, Steve McQueen in LeMans, Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Sly Stallone in Driven, etc.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 22, 2015

Birthdays: French explorer Sieur de LaSalle, George Elliot- pen name for Mary Anne Evans, Benjamin Britten, Charles DeGaulle, Andre Gide, Wiley Post, Billy Jean King, Boris Becker, Geraldine Page, John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, Hoagy Carmichael, Rodney Dangerfield, Terry Gilliam is 76, Robert Vaughn, Tom Conti, Mark Ruffalo, Victoria Paris- porn star of such classics like Bimbo Bowlers from Buffalo, Stevie Van Zandt is 64, Jamie Lee Curtis is 57, Scarlett Johanssen is 31

1888- According to Edgar Rice Burroughs this is the birthday of the boy who would become Tarzan.

1928- Ravel’s Bolero Suite premiered in Paris.

1957- The Miles Davis Quintet debuted.

1963- ONE DAY IN DALLAS- At 12:30 Central time, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. Whether you believe the assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald, The Military Industrial Complex, Vice President Johnson, the Mafia, Corsican contract killers, The C.I.A., Fidel Castro, Anti-Castro Cubans, space aliens, or all of the above, it remains one of the traumatic moments of US History.

1963- Aldous Huxley died. The author of Brave New World had inoperable cancer so his wife kept him high on LSD,

1965- The musical The Man of La Mancha opened on Broadway. “ To Dream, the Impossible Dreaaammm…”Brings back memories of middle school band practice.

1985- Apple ended a long lawsuit with Microsoft and Hewlett Packard that allowed them to share the visual characteristics of the Macintosh displays in their Windows software.

1993- Sir Anthony Burgess died. The author of A Clockwork Orange had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he had one year to live, back in 1959.

1995- Pixar’s Toy Story opened, the first all CG movie, and the first true CG hit.

2005- Microsoft Xbox 360 goes on sale.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 21, 2015

Birthdays: Francios Arouet called Voltaire, Marlo Thomas is 77, Adolphe Marx called Harpo, Colman Hawkins, Stan ' The Man' Musial, Tom Horn, Pope Benedict XlV, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Harold Ramis, Rene Magritte, Goldie Hawn is 70, Dr. John (born Malcolm Rebennack), Mariel Hemingway, Troy Aikman, Bjork is 50

1933- Film director Frank Capra went to Claudette Colbert’s home to talk her into delaying her holiday vacation long enough to star with Clark Gable in “It Happened One Night”. Colbert said she would only do it for double her normal salary and if they would be done by Dec 23rd so she could spend Christmas with friends at Squaw Valley Idaho.

 They made the picture on a rush, and Colbert later told her friends:” I just finished the worst picture in the world!” It Happened One Night” became a big hit for Capra, Columbia and is one of Colbert’s most memorable performances.

1934- Cole Porter's musical 'Anything Goes!' opened on Broadway. Ethel Merman starring, In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked upon as somewhat shocking. Now Heaven knows- Anything Goes!”

1942- Warner's "A Tale of Two Kitties" the first Tweety Pie. I tawt I taw a puddy cat !

1959- The day after he was fired WABC radio, DJ Alan Freed refused to sign a statement that he never received cash payments or payola to run Rock & Roll records on the air, which is exactly what he did.

1980-  “The Who Shot J.R.?” episode of the TV show Dallas.

1980- Australian Olivia Newton John’s disco anthem to aerobic exercise “Let’s Get Physical ” goes to number one of the pop charts and stays there for ten weeks.

2008- Walt Disney’s film Bolt premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov. 20, 2015

Birthdays: Robert F. Kennedy, Joe Biden, Maya Plisetskaya, Gene Tierney, Dick Smothers, Bo Derek is 60, Sean Young is 50, Richard Dawson, Estelle Parsons, Barbera Hendricks, Duane Allman, Joe Walsh, Chester Gould the creator of Dick Tracy, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis the first baseball commissioner, Alastair Cooke, Ming Na -the voice of Muhlan

1895- Beethoven’s opera Fidelio premiered. He rewrote the overture four times and still wasn’t happy with it. So he rewrote it once more and published the other four as the Leonore Overtures.

1820- In the Pacific Ocean the Nantucket whaling ship Essex was sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Only six men survived floating on driftwood for ninety days, resorting to cannibalism before being rescued. This incident is thought to have been one of the inspirations for Herman Melville to write his novel Moby Dick.

1947- The longest running television show in history- Meet the Press, premiered. And it is still on today.

1994- Rock & Roll star David Crosby received a new liver.

1998- Several state governments and the US tobacco industry reach a landmark settlement arising from lawsuits over smoking illnesses. The trial also killed off once and for all ads featuring The Marlboro Cowboy and Joe Camel, a cartoon character that at one point was as recognizable to children as Donald Duck.

1998- Pixar’s film A Bugs Life was generally released.

Animation Fun Facts for Thurs Nov 19, 2015

Birthdays: King Charles Ist of England, President James Garfield, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Roy Campanella, Tommy Dorsey, Ted Turner, Calvin Klein, Indira Ghandi, Dick Cavett, Larry King, Kathleen Quinlan, Alan Young -Mr. Ed’s friend, Ahmad Rashad, Allison Janey is 56, Meg Ryan is 54, Jodie Foster is 53, Terry Farrell

1959- Jay Ward's television show 'Rocky and his Friends' debuts.

1998- Film Director Alan J. Pakula was one of the Hollywood community who preferred living in New York City. This day he was driving on the Long Island Expressway when he was killed in a freak accident. A large truck kicked up in its tires a discarded piece of steel pipe. It flipped it through Pakula’s windshield, killing him instantly.

2007- Disney film Enchanted premiered.

2013- Disney film Frozen premiered. Let it Go! Let it Go!

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Animation Educators Panel at CTN

EDUCATORS! If you are going to attend CTN eXpo this weekend, meet your colleagues this FRIDAY Nov 20th at the Marriott Boardroom at 1:30PM for a group discussion. Animation Educators from across North American will be there to discuss new technologies like VR.

Animation Fun Facts for Nov 18, 2015

Birthdays: Armelita Galli-Curci, Karl Maria Von Weber, W.S. Gilbert, Johnny Mercer,

Astronaut Alan Shepard, Louis Daguerre, Brenda Vaccarro, Eugene Ormandy, George Gallup, Warren Moon, Pam Dawber, Rocket Ishmail, Delroy Lindo, Kevin Nealon, Owen Wilson is 47, Chloe Servigny is 41

1718- Francois Voltaire’s first play Oedipe, premiered in Paris.

1865 Mark Twain's first story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' published.

1928- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICKEY MOUSE- At Universal’s Colony Theater in New York, Walt Disney’s cartoon "Steamboat Willie" debuted before a movie called Gang War. The first major sound cartoon success and the official birth of Mickey Mouse. Two earlier silent Mickey's had been done, but when Walt saw Jolson talk in the Jazz Singer, he held those two back so the sound experiment could go ahead.

1963-The first push button telephones go into service. By 1980 they pretty much replaced the rotary dial phones.

1970- At the Lakeside School in Seattle, a young kid named Bill Gates was first shown computer programming.

1985- Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin & Hobbs debuted.

1988- Disney’s Oliver & Company released.