Animation Fun Facts for July 31, 2019

Birthdays: Liberace, General George H. Thomas the "Rock of Chickamagua", 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 57, and according to J.K. Rowling, this is the birthday of Harry Potter




1703- In London, writer Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was made to stand in the public 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. 



1966- Birmingham Alabama held a massed rally to burn Beatles records after John Lennon joked that the Beatle had become more popular than Jesus.



1992- Bebe’s Kidsreleased, the first animated feature directed by an African American, Bruce W. Smith.

1992- The Robert Zemeckis comedy Death Becomes Her opened. With Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. It is the first film that widely used the new digital matte technique to replace traditional optical printing.

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


20 Years Ago 1999- Premiere of Brad Bird’s first movie The Iron Giant.

Animation Fun Facts for July 30, 2019

History for 7/30/2019 Birthdays: Georgio Vasari, Henry Ford, Emily Bronte', Casey Stengel, Roy Williams, Vladimir Zworykin, Arnold Schwarzenegger is 72, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, Peter Bogdanovich is 80, Delta Burke, Henry Moore, Anita Hill, Lawrence Fishburne is 58, Jean Reno is 70, Hilary Swank is 45, Christopher Nolan, Lisa Kudrow is 56


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.

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 Thalberg. The "boy genius" Thalberg 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."

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

1988- The last Playboy Club in America closed. It was in Lansing, Mich. In 2006 Hugh Hefner opened a Playboy Club themed casino in Las Vegas.

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 genuine.

Animation Fun Facts for July 29, 2019

Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini, Clara Bow, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Sig Romberg, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dave Stevens cartoonist creator of the Rocketeer, Ken Burns is 66,  Booth Tarkington, David Warner, Steven Dorff, Professor Irwin Corey, William Cameron-Menzies, William Powell 

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

1931- George Bernard Shaw traveled to Moscow and met Josef Stalin.

1936 - RCA shows the first real TV program: dancing, a short 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 left Rio De Janiero after RKO fired him and stopped production of "It's All True". RKO also had “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes and fired the executive producer first who brought him to Hollywood.

1946- In Los Angeles, Jazz great Charlie Parker had learned of the death of his baby daughter back in New York. He showed up for a recording session so drunk and high his producer had to hold him up in front of the mike. Later that night he fell completely apart, ran naked down the street, set fire to his hotel room smoking in bed. The cops had to shake him violently to wake him, he fought with them and they beat him up and threw him in jail. He was committed to the Camarillo Mental Hospital. 

1948- Former Disney assistant-animator 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 choice, “ 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.

1989- Miyazaki’s film Kiki’s Delivery Servicepremiered in Japan.

Animation Fun Facts for July 28, 2019

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, and father of Weird Al Yankovic, Elizabeth Berkley, Earl Tupper the inventor of Tupperware, Hugo Chavez

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.

1896- Happy Birthday Miami! The City of Miami incorporated.

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. 

1933- The first singing telegram. It was delivered to singer Rudy Valee by Western Union operator appropriately named Lucille Lipps. 

1948- In honor of the death of D.W. Griffith, all Hollywood studios observed three minutes of silence.

1948- 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. 

1954- The film On The Waterfrontopened. Producer Sam Spiegel originally wanted Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly as the leads. But Kelly took Hitchcock’s Rear Window instead, and Marlon Brando and Eva Marie-Saint became available, much to the annoyance of Sinatra.

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.

1998- In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered mass destruction of television sets. They also forbade the Internet, and shaved the heads of their national soccer team for daring to wear shorts.

1999- Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco declared today Marilyn Chambers Day, in honor of the San Francisco native, and star of classic porn like Behind the Green Door.

Animation Fun Facts for July 27, 2019

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 47, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is 42.

1921- SHAKESPEARE & CO. opens in Paris. The English language bookshop on the Seine owned by Sylvia Beach was the most famous hangout for the U.S. expatriate intellectuals. Shakespeare & Co. championed writers like James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Carlos Santayanna, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sherwood Anderson and more. 

1940- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUGS BUNNY. Tex Avery’s 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 1934 Frank Capra film “It Happened One Night”. Interestingly, voice actor Mel Blanc was allergic to carrots, and kept a bucket nearby to spit them out after chewing. 

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 he was under 60 day notice to leave the country.

2007- The Simpson’s Movie debuted.

Animation Fun Facts for July, 26, 2019

 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 55, Kevin Spacey, Kate Beckinsdale, Mick Jagger is 76

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. 

1945- While the Big Three Potsdam conferences were going on, at home a British general election turned Winston Churchill out of office. He had to embarrassingly leave the conference and was superseded by Labor candidate Clement Atlee, who assumed a junior role in the talks. Churchill used to refer to Atlee as  “a sheep in sheep’s clothing”

1947- HAPPY BIRTHDAY CIA!  Pres. Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the CIA, the NSC, The Joint Chiefs and all those other groups that draw un-scrutinized federal budgets.

1948- President Truman issued Exec Order # 9981 to the U.S. military to ban all segregation. At the time the US Army was more segregated than it had been in 1865 or 1776.

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.

1984- Edward Gein died peacefully in a prison for the criminally insane. Gein was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to life for mass murder. Police found his farm in Wisconsin decorated with human body parts and heads in the freezer and in the stove, and the dried cadaver of his mother.  His story inspired "Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs".

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

1995- After a year of investigation, the General Accounting Office noted that all documents pertaining to the Rosswell UFO Incident of 1947 had disappeared or been destroyed. …Hmmm.

Animation Fun Facts for July 25, 2019

Birthdays: Bishop Theitmar of Merseberg- 975AD, 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, Illena Douglas, Estelle Getty, Matt LeBlanc, Louise Brown the first "test-tube" baby-conceived by invetro-fertilization is 41

1897- Young writer Jack London went to the Klondike to look for gold. He didn’t find much gold, but did get material for a lot of good stories.

1940- In Nazi occupied Paris, a Gestapo agent walked into the French offices of MGM studios and confiscated the six prints of "Gone With The Wind" sent from America. They were taken to Berlin for a screening for top Nazis officials. Gone with the Wind was one of Adolf 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".

1965 – Folk Music star Bob Dylan was booed off stage at the Newport Folk Festival for using an electric guitar. Alan Lomax, the great Smithsonian Folk Music historian got into a fistfight over it, and Pete Seeger threatened to pull the electric plugs.

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

1985- Movie star Rock Hudson publicly acknowledged that he had AIDS. The first major public figure to do so.

1990 - Roseanne Barr sang 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 very conservative town.

Animation Fun Facts for JUly 24, 2019

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 49

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

1934- Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film Cleopatrapremiered.  

1938 - Instant coffee invented.

1948- Warner's "Haredevil Hare" featuring the first Marvin the Martian.  Now where did I put my Pew Illudium Q 36 Explosive Space Modulator? 

1965- Bob Dylan released the song “Like a Rolling Stone”.

1966- Actor Montgomery Clift died of a heart attack at age 45. When his private nurse Lorenzo James said goodnight to him at 1:00AM, he asked him if he wanted to watch his old movie The Misfitson TV. Clift’s last words were-“Absolutely Not!” 

1969- After successfully landing on the moon and returning to Earth, Apollo 11 safely splashed down in the ocean.

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 Juy 23, 2019

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 59, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Edie McClurg, Daniel Radcliffe is 31

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

1886- This was the day Bowery saloonkeeper Steve Brodie claimed he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and lived to tell about it. 

1904 – The Ice Cream Cone created by Charles E. Menches during the LA Purchase Expo. Also introduced there was Dr. Pepper.

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 started the Frito-Lay Company.

1951-Thelonius Monk recorded the seminal jazz album Straight, No Chaser.

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

1968- Fred Blasie won an unprecedented fifth World Wrestling Championship belt. Blasie later gained more fame for recording the comedy song "Pencil Necked Geeks" and beating up comedian Andy Kaufman in the ring for calling wrestling a hoax.

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.

1984- Vanessa Williams the first black Miss America, resigned after a photo spread of her in a nude lesbian scenario in Penthouse magazine. She denied any impropriety until the photos were published widely. 

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 three years later.

Animation Fun Facts for July 22, 2019

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 56, Terence Stamp is 82, Danny Glover is 74, Alex Trebek, Bobby Sherman, Don Henley, Alan Mencken, Irene Bedard, William Dafoe is 64, John Leguizamo, Selena Gomez, Albert Brooks is 73- real name Albert Einstein, a nice name but already taken.

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

1893 –In Colorado, Katharine L. Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful".

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

1958- Plan 9 From Outer Spacedirected by Ed Wood, opened. It has the reputation as the worst movie ever made. Wood coaxed elderly moviestar Bela Lugosi to star in it, but half way though the film he died. Wood shot the remainder of Lugosi’s scenes with his dentist wrapped in a cape covering his face. 

1965- Cary Grant married Dyan Cannon.

1967- Jimi Hendrix quit as the 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. Nintendo loaded Tetris on to it and it became a worldwide phenomenon. Gunpei Yokoi was killed in a car accident outside Kyoto in 1997.

1996- The Daily Show premiered on Comedy Central. John Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn in 1999 and made it famous. 

Animation Fun Facts for July 20, 2019

Birthdays: Petrarch, Sir Edmund Hilary, Lord Elgin, Quaker Anne Hutchinson, Natalie Wood, Theda Bara the Vamp, Carlos Santana, Lord Reith- the first Director General of the BBC. Giselle Bunchen is 39, Sandra Oh is 48, Harrison Ellenshaw, Diana Rigg is 81

1869- Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and in the Holy Landfirst published. Twain had taken the Grand Tour abroad that was fashionable with the new American wealthy classes and thought he’d have some fun recounting his own trip” To cross the Sea of Galilee by boat, a big local Arab demanded eight dollars for use of his miserable conveyance. No wonder Christ preferred to walk.”

1879- Joel Chandler Harris published in the Atlanta Constitution "The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as Told by Uncle Remus". The first Uncle Remus stories. Harris collected most of the stories from interviewing African American storytellers.

1946-Bob Clampett's cartoon"the Great Piggy Bank Robbery" with Daffy Duck as Duck Tracy. "I'm gonna rrrrrrrrrrrubbb ya out, see !"

1964 –The first surfin' record to go #1-Jan & Dean's "Surf City"

1968 - Iron Butterfly's "In a-Gadda-da-Vida", reached #4 in the pop charts. Then it was called Psychedelic Rock, today it is considered the first Metal hit. The song was written as “ In the Garden of Eden” but singer Doug Ingle was so drunk and stoned, In a Gadda Da Vida was all he could mumble out. 

50 Years Ago 1969- Tranquility Base- The Eagle has Landed. Apollo11’s Lunar Module the LEM first landed humans on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out onto the Lunar Surface , “ That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind.” 

1973- Bruce Lee died of cerebral edema one month before his last film Enter the Dragonpremiered. The handsome Hong Kong movie star single-handedly made Chinese martial arts a world wide craze, and the Chop-Socky genre film a standard genre in world movie theaters. He was buried in his Enter The Dragon costume. Bruce Lee was 33.

1976-Warner\Lambert, makers of Trident sugarless gum, comes out with their famous slogan "Sugarless gum is recommended by four out of five dentists who chew gum". When people asked what gum did the fifth dentist recommend, they were brushed. 

Animation Fun Facts for July 19, 2019

Birthdays: Edgar Degas, Col. Samuel Colt, Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vicki Carr, Max Fleischer, Lizzie Borden, Ille Nastase, George McGovern, Brian Harold May of Queen, Atom Egoyan, Anthony Edwards, Campbell Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch is 42

1717- George Frederich Handel premiered his suite the Water Music for a procession of King George II on pleasure boats from Whitehall to Lambeth Palace. 

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.

1957- The film “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. “

Animation Fun Facts for July 18, 2019

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, Vin Diesel is 52

1877- Thomas Edison first recorded sound on tin foil cylinder `Mary Had a Little Lamb'

1925- The first volume of Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler was published. The original title was "My Four and a Half Years Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". But publisher Max Aman prevailed upon him to edit it down to My Struggle. 

1939- MGM tried a sneak preview of the film The Wizard of Oz. Afterward they debated cutting the song Somewhere Over the Rainbowas slowing down the story. 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 made a single film, and gave him complete freedom and final cut 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 for twenty years, 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.

1975- Famed underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode’ died of auto-asphyxiation while high. His last words were to his son, “ Mark, I’ve seen God four times, and I am going to see him again soon. “He was 33. 

1986-Aliens, the sequel directed by James Cameron, premiered. Game over, man!

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

t. 

Animation Fun Facts for July 17, 2019

Birthdays: James Cagney, John Jacob Astor I, 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, Phyllis Diller, Diane Carroll, David Hasslehoff is 67, Donald Sutherland is 84

1841 - British humor magazine Punchfirst 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. An assassin but still a professional artist, he actually completed the drawing before reaching 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.

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 hoped to get 10,000 visitors that first day.  He 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". But despite all, Disneyland became a huge success.

1959- Alfred Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwestpremiered.

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

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

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

2004- Katsuhiro Otomo’s film Steamboy premiered. Japanese interest in the idea of SteamPunk began to spread worldwide.

Animation Fun Facts for July 16, 2019

Birthdays: Andrea Del Sarto, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Ginger Rogers, Pinchas Zukerman,

Orville Redenbacher, Roald Amundsen, Sunny Tufts, Barbera Stanwyck, Reuben Blades, Mary Baker-Eddy the founder of Christian Science, Phoebe Cates, Will Farrell is 53

1769- Fra Junipero Serra founded his first Mission settlement in California- San Diego de Alcala, now present day San Diego. Called The Mother of the Missions. The master plan was to create a string of missions from San Diego to San Francisco one days ride apart- San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Anna, San Gabriel, Santa Maria Reina de Los Angeles, etc.

1932- Cecil B. DeMille shot the scene in his film Sign of the Cross where Claudette Colbert took a bath in asses milk. Legend has it that DeMille insisted on real milk in the bath and that by the second day the hot studio lights had curdled it to a smelly cheese. But production notes show the scene was all shot in one day. DeMille always got away with sexy semi-nude scenes by putting them in biblical settings. After all, who would criticize a morality tale from the Good Book? 

1951- J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" published.

1954- Groundbreaking for the construction of Disneyland.

1969- Congress passed Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their spacecraft.

Animation Fun Fact for July 15, 2019

Birthdays: Rembrandt van Rijn, Inigo Jones, Sir Thomas Bullfinch, Mother Cabrini, Clemont Moore, Julian Bream, Linda Rondstadt, Alex Karras, Jan Michael Vincent, Lola Davidovich, Forrest Whitaker is 58, Brigette Neilsen, Jesse Ventura, Terry O’ Quinn is 67

1938- Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon "With the Jeep"introduced Eugene the Jeep. The character was created in the Thimble Theater comic strip two years earlier. The funny little character later gave its name to the army’s new General Purpose Vehicle, the G.P. or Jeep.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt sent federal mediator Stanley White to try and solve the labor strike between Walt Disney and his cartoonists.

1953- The film Gentlemen Prefer Blondespremiered starring Marylyn Monroe and Jane Russell.

1971- Producer Steve Krantz announced the production of the first X-rated cartoon, Fritz the Cat, to be directed by newcomer Ralph Bakshi.

1982-Coca-Cola introduced Diet Coke. Coke officials are proud of the fact that within a year it's sales top that of Tab, but Tab was owned by Coke as well. ( duh..?)

1997- Famed clothing designer Gianni Versace was murdered outside his Miami mansion by a deranged serial killer on a spree since leaving Minnesota. The killer, Andrew Cunanan, was later found in a houseboat with a self-inflicted bullet in his head.

2011- Disney’s feature film of Winnie the Pooh, and short the Ballad of Nessieopened in theaters. 

 

Animation Fun Facts for JUly 14, 2019

Birthdays: Issac Bashevis Singer, Frederick Maytag, inventor of the electronic washing machine-1857, Emiline Pankhurst, Woody Guthrie, Gerald Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Jerry Rubin, Scott Rudin, Rosie Grier, Harry Dean Stanton, Polly Bergen, Gustav Klimt, Terry Thomas, Jimmy Hoffa, Dave Fleischer, Bill Hanna, Walt Stanchfield, Joel Silver, Vincent (Big Pussy) Pastore

1908- The Adventures of Dolliepremiered, the first movie of D.W. Griffith.

1917- Buster Keaton made his film debut in the Fatty Arbuckle comedy The Butcher Boy. 

1933- Well Blow Me Down!- Max Fleischer's first "Popeye the Sailor" cartoon debuted. The character was first created by Elzie Segar for his Thimble Theater comic strip. Vaudvillian Red Pepper Sam provided his salty mumbles throughout the post-sync track. When Sam asked for more money than Max Fleischer thought he was worth, he replaced him with assistant animator Jack Mercer, who was the voice ever after.

1946 – Dr. Benjamin Spock's "Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care" published

1951 - 1st color telecast of a sporting event (CBS-horse race)

1967 - The new band called The Who began a US tour as the opening act for Herman’s Hermits.

1969- The movie Easy Rider premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for July 13, 2019

Birthdays: French Admiral Bailly de Suffren, Cheech Marin, Father Flannagan, Cameron Crowe, Woye Solenka, Dave Garroway, Chef Paul Prudhomme, Michael Spinks, Film special effects artist Jim Danforth, Dr. Erno Rubik inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, Patrick Stewart is 79, Harrison Ford is 76, Tom Kenny the voice of Spongebob Squarepants is 58

1798- Poet William Wordsworth visited Tinturn Abbey and was inspired to write his famous elegy on the ruins.

1865- P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City burned down in a spectacular fire. Barnum rebuilt but after that one burned as well, he got the idea of getting into the circus business. In his American Museum , more a sitting menagerie and sideshow than a museum as we know it,  Barnum invented the idea of advanced hype and created kiddie matinees.

1925- Walt Disney and Lillian Bounds marry. Lillian was one of the first female animation ink & paint artists.

1930 – David Sarnoff the head of the NBC radio network said in the NY Times," The new invention of Television would be a theater in every home". Sounded crazy back then. Critics said it would require one room of the house be darkened, and they doubted people would just sit still that long.

1939- Frank Sinatra recorded his first album, this one with the Harry James Orchestra.

1949- Hollywood Studio exec David O. Selznick left his first wife Esther, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry actress Jennifer Jones.

1984- The film The Last Starfighterwith Robert Preston opened. The first movie where all the spaceships and effects were done with CGI instead of miniature models.

1985- Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldorf organized a massive live concert called LIVE AID. Televised and seen by 1.5 billion people, it raised money for African famine relief. Madonna, Santanna, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys and reunions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who and Led Zeppelin.

Animation Fun Facts for July 12, 2019

Birthdays: Gaius Julius Caesar, Henry David Thoreau, Impressionist painter Eugene Boudin, Oscar Hammerstein, Kirsten Flagstad, Andrew Wyeth, Pablo Neruda, George Eastman, Milton Berle, Cheryl Ladd, Van Cliburn, Buckminster Fuller, George Washington Carver, Josiah Wedgewood- of Wedgewood china and pottery, Michelle Rodriguez, Richard Simmons, Krysty Yamaguchi, Bill Cosby is 82, Ben Burt- George Lucas’ sound effects guru who created the sounds of Darth Vader and R2D2, is 71.

1870- Celluloid film patented. The inventor had been trying to find a substitute for ivory billiard balls. Inventor George Eastman later perfected the sprocket and hole system of roll film for cameras, replacing the large glass plates. 

1928 - 1st televised tennis match.

1937- The US Government passed the Marijuana Licensing Act, the first of many laws to try and regulate and eventually eliminate marijuana growing. The act was ruled unconstitutional in 1969, but by then marijuana was top on the list of illegal substances.

1960: The first Etch-a-Sketch goes on sale.  Frenchman Andre’ Cassagnes, invented it. He was the son of a Parisian baker born allergic to flour. Getting a job as an electrician, he noticed the properties of aluminum powder sticking to a glass. (he called it Telecran’, or L’Ecran Magique, or “The Magic Screen”). His first corporate sponsor had their accountant Arthur Granjean do the paperwork for the invention. Granjean wrote his own name in instead of Cassagnes, so in many books he gets the credit as the inventor. After failing to get some of the bigger toy companies to bite, They sold the invention to the Ohio Art Company.

1962 – The Rolling Stones 1st performance at the Marquee Club, London. One band member named Elmo Lewis, changed his name to Brian Jones.

1979- Disco Demolition Night. Disc jockey Steve Dahl of WLUP created an event where 

Chicago fans could get into Comisky Park for 98 cents if they each brought a Disco record to burn. Instead of the usual crowd of 5,000, they got 50,000 who rushed the field. Thousands of records were thrown at the players like Frisbees while they were trying to play, and the field torn up when they dropped a crate of records on the pitcher’s mound. The Chicago White Sox were forced to forfeit the game to the Detroit Tigers. 

1990- TV series Northern Exposurepremiered.

ANUIMATION FUN FACTS FOR THUR JULY 11, 2019

Birthdays: Robert the Bruce, John Quincy Adams, Sir Thomas Bowdler, E.B. White, Yul Brynner- born Tadjhe Khan, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leon Spinks, Tab Hunter, Giorgio Armani, Sela Ward, Kimberly “Little Kim’ Jones, Stephen Lang is 67

1855- An earthquake knocked down Los Angeles -again.

1937- George Gershwin died of a malignant brain tumor at age 38.

1938- The radio show The Mercury Theater of the Air with Orson Welles and John Houseman premiered.

1952- LA’s Randy’s Donuts, with its iconic giant donut sign on its roof, opened.

1962-The Tellstar I satellite transmitted the first television images from France to USA.

1969 – The Rolling Stones release "Honky Tonk Woman".

1970- “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night hits #1 in the pop charts. The song was written by young composer Randy Newman. 

1991- Disney announced it would enter into a deal with a bay area digital offshoot of Lucasfilm named PIXAR. Hit films including Toy Story, Monsters Inc. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, andCocowere the result.

1997- A lunatic named Jonathan Norman was arrested for trying to break into Steven Spielberg’s home. He believed Spielberg “wanted to be raped”, and had on him chloroform, duct tape and S&M paraphernalia.

2016- Nintendo released the Pokemon Go app for smart phones and it caused a sensation.