Animation Fun Facts for Dec 31, 2017

Birthdays: Henri Matisse, General George C. Marshall, Odetta (real name Holmes Felicious Gordon), Simon Weisenthal, Virginia Davis, Pola Negri, Jules Styne, Sarah Miles, Donna Summer, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Arden, Tim Matheson, John Denver, Dianne Von Furstenberg, Ben Kingsley-born Khrishna Banji is 74, Anthony Hopkins is 80, Val Kilmer is 58, Gong Li is 52, Psy is 39

1879- Thomas Edison did a public demonstration of his new invention the Light Bulb. Special commuter trains brought people to Menlo Park New Jersey for the show.

1881- Los Angeles becomes the first U.S. city to be lit entirely by electricity.

1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the Chimes of Big Ben around the world.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp break into the Washington Square Arch in and declare Greenwich Village the Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy.

1941- A Warner Bros memo dated this day from producer Hal Wallis office announced that the movie to be made from a play by Murray Bennett called “Everybody Goes to Rick’s” has been renamed “Casablanca”. This was to capitalize on an already popular film title “Algiers” with Charles Boyer “come with me to ze Casbah” etc.. 

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in Times Square. OOHH FRANKIE !!

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Spielberg called it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here, was because Chuck Jones & Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for the cartoon.

1958-59- As Fidel Castro's guerrillas closed in on Havana, Cuban dictator Fulgensio Batista slipped out of a New Year's Party and boarded a plane for Miami, all arranged by the CIA. Fredo, ya broke my heart…

1962- Romanoffs closed. One of the premier hot spots on the Sunset Strip, it was the preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson it was said had been living on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snicker's bars.

1995- The last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterston.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 30, 2017

Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman, Russ Tamblyn, Tiger Woods is 42, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary, Douglas Engelbart the inventor of the computer mouse, Lebron James is 33, Eliza Dushku is 37

1884- Anton Bruckner’s 7^th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the first L.A. Freeway opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. Today called the Pasadena Freeway 110. (interstate U.S. route 66 was in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936., the Ventura freeway 101, in 1958

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her death in 1990.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

1988- the Pixar short Tin Toy released in theaters. The first CG short to win an Oscar. Until this win, Steve Jobs was resisting his animation team making films. He was focused on getting color graphics onto home computers. The film Toy Story began as an attempt to capitalize on the success of Tin Toy, as a TV special Tinny’s Xmas.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 29, 2017

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Flavius Titus, Pablo Casals, Madame de Pompadour, Andrew Johnson, Charles Goodyear, Gelsey Kirkland, Dina Merrill, Tom Bradley, Mary Tyler Moore, Jon Voight is 79, Ray Nitschke, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Flanders, Ted Danson is 70, Marianne Faithful, Paula Poundstone, Jude Law is 45, Patricia Clarkson, Animator Duncan Marjoribanks is 65.

1913- Cecil B. DeMille had been sent to the West by his New York partners to scout out a possible place to move to escape Edison's Patents Trust.

After scouting several cities with year round sunshine, this day C.B. telegraphed his partners back in New York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose. Have proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called Hollywood for $75 a month.” His partner Sam Goldwyn cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not make long commitment.” DeMille began shooting the Squaw Man, the first official Hollywood Film.

1916-James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” published.

1939- Scientist William Shockley first noted in his laboratory notebook that it should be possible to replace vacuum tubes with something called a semi-conductor. Eight years later he led the team that developed the transistor.

1941- Disney animator Bill Tytla tells Time Magazine in an interview about creating "Dumbo": "I don't know a damn thing about elephants!"

1964 – To create the first pilot of the TV series Star Trek, the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise was delivered by model maker Rick Datin, Jr, based on the design created by Star Trek production artist Walter “Matt” Jefferies.  The “miniature” was 11 feet long!

1965- First day shooting on Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was an indoor set at Elstree Studios in England, and the first setup was the inspection of the excavation of the Monolith in the moon crater Tycho.

1968- Animator Bill Tytla died at age 64, from complications of a stroke.

1972- LIFE Magazine ended publication.

1974- While staying at the Polynesian Village in Disneyworld Florida, John Lennon signed the last papers dissolving the Beatles. The band had broke up in 1970, but it took four more years to unravel all of their vast financial holdings. The other three members had already signed.

Animation Fun facts for Dec 28, 2017

 birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff, Edgar Winter, Stan “The Man” Lee is 95, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12), Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber, Denzel Washington is 63, Maggie Smith is 83, Sienna Miller is 36, animator Rick Farmiloe is 61

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capucines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in the front row jumped for fear of getting wet.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris. There really lived a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who helps another man romance his girlfriend Roxanne.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- On The Town, a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

1951- The British film A Christmas Carol with the memorable performance of Alastair Sim as Scrooge premiered in the USA.

1962- UPA’s Mr. Magoo’s Xmas Carol first premiered on TV.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one on the pop charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach Boys, but he had a pretty bad drinking and drug habit. He was once friendly with the Manson Family.

Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier.  Wilson recalled this very spot was where after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementos overboard. He wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “i.e.-diving holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned, he miscalculated the depth and drowned.

Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only one who liked to surf.

1987- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 27, 2017

Birthdays: Johannes Kepler, Linwood Dunn, Marlene Dietrich, Louis Pasteur, Oscar Levant, Sidney Greenstreet, Anna Russell, Dr. William Masters of Masters & Johnson, Leslie Maguire, John Amos, Tovah Feldshuh, Heather O’Rourke, Cokie Roberts, Bollywood star Salman Khan is 53, Gerard Depardieu is 70

1871- The world’s first cat show opened at the Crystal Palace in London.

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes story the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet favorite “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of opera star Adelina Patti.

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned children who laughed and cheered all night. Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter Pan. Mr Barrie is.” He committed suicide in 1960 at age 75. James Barrie once said to H.G. Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle your ears?”

1927-  "ShowBoat" debuted at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, the musical was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play made a star out of a tall black baritone named Paul Robeson.” Ol’ Man River..”

1935- Radio City Music Hall opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in the world, seating over 6,000.

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler announced their separation.

1943- The movie The Song of Bernadette premiered.

1947- The "Howdy-Doody Show” debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 26, 2017

Birthdays: Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Mao zse Tung, Charles Babbage, Admiral Dewey, Richard Widmark, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Carlton Fisk, Chris Chambliss, Alan King, Phil Spector, Fred Schepsi, Jared Leto is 45

1865- James Nason of Massachusetts invented the coffee percolator.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld had made his first caricature for the Broadway Stage. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend took it to The New York Tribune and sold it. He figured here's a nifty way to make a living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York Times. 

He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and became a legend himself. In the American Theater, a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2003 he died just shy of age 100, drawing to the end.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moved from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1941- Goofy cartoon, the Art of Self Defense, premiered.

1944- Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1956- The premiere of the Japanese monster movie Rodan. Released in Japan as Radon the Sky Monster.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first pro wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 25, 2017

Birthdays: Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus the Christ, 6-4 BC

Other Birthdays: Sir Isaac Newton, Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe’, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Anwar El Sadat. Larry Csonka, Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Maurice Utrillo, Kid Ory, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Clark Clifford, Annie Lennox is 65, Sissie Spacek is 69, CCH Pounder is 66

885AD- Pope Gregory I formalized what Christians had already been doing for 500 years, namely celebrating the birth festival of Jesus or "Christ’s Mass", on December 25th.

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgment was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian.

1815- At a Christmas concert in Vienna, Beethoven premiered his NameDay Overture.

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.

1870- Siegfried Idyll, written by Richard Wagner as a birthday gift to his wife Cosima, was first performed by a small ensemble outside her door as she awoke this morning at their home in Lucerne Switzerland.

1917-"Why Marry?" by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play to win a Pulitzer Prize.

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. An Arabian Nights-type fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.

1931-The first BBC World Service broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire".

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast. In the 1970s their studio space became the home of Saturday Night Live.

1940- Rogers & Hart’s musical Pal Joey opened on Broadway. It made a star out of a young dancer named Gene Kelly.

1946- Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67.  While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C., what are you doing with that? " Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

1957- Disney film Old Yeller premiered.

1962- The film of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird premiered with Gregory Peck, Brock Peters, and Robert Duval.

1963- Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone released. First animated feature directed by Wolfgang,” Woolie” Reitherman.

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland. He was 86.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He told his father he was inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 24, 2017

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Revolutionary Patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz, I.F. Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin, animator Glen McQueen, Ryan Seacrest

1818-the song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obersdorf, Austria. Its lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr and music by a teacher named Franz Gruber. Their church could not afford an organ, so this first singing of Silent Night was accompanied on a guitar.

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cuts off a piece of his left ear after an argument with fellow artist Paul Gaugin over the affections of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to the prostitute. She fainted. In 2009 historians theorized his ear was sliced off by Gaugin drunkenly waving an antique sword. The two men agreed to keep the secret to not get Gaugin in trouble.

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1925- The London Evening News published a story “In which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh, and some Bees.” By A.A. Milne. The first book of stories came out the following year.

1937- Disney short Lonesome Ghosts premiered.

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered on NBC TV..

1952- First draft script completed on the MGM film Terror Planet, changed to “ Forbidden Planet.”

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1966- Local New York City TV station WPIX premiered The Yule Log. They ran a loop of 6 minutes of a closeup of a log burning in a fireplace in Gracie Mansion. The loop ran from 11:00PM to 1:00AM with Christmas carols playing. It made the TV the symbolic family hearth. New Yorkers loved their kitschy Yule Log tradition, and when WPIX tried to replace it in 1989 hundreds of complaints forced them to put it back. The log was videotaped once more in 1970, and that’s been the film ever since.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in.  Japanese sections were directed by Kinji Fukusaku and Toshio Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime.

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.."