Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 31, 2019 Halloween

Birthdays: Jan Vermeer, John Keats, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, John Candy, Dale Evans, Jane Pauley, David Ogden Stiers, Dan Rather, Lee Grant, Ethel Waters, Juliet Low-founder of the American Girl Scouts, Ollie Johnston, 

Vanilla Ice, Stephen Rea, Rob Schneider, Animator Randy Cartwright, Peter Jackson is 58. 

HAPPY ALL HALLOWS EVE- The night before the Feast of All Saints, beginning the Christian season of Advent, was confused in Medieval custom with one of the four Druid fire festivals, All Hallows. In Ireland it was called Samhein. At this time, all hearth fires in the land are extinguished then re-lit from the fire at the Druids sacred grove. Add to this the early Church's attempt to eradicate the pagan custom of giving food to departed spirits -Greek Anthesterion in Feb., Roman Feralia and Lemuria in May- by moving the date to honor the dead to the Feast of All Souls on November 2^st.  It was considered a good day for pagans to be baptised. Many cultures had customs of putting food offerings on doorsteps so the spirits would leave you in peace. So today is the last night for the devil and other ghosties to romp before the Holiday Season (Advent) begins. 

1892- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle gathered all his Holmes mystery stories into its first collection to be published in book form- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1941-the sculpture group of U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore completed. Instead of just their heads artist–designer Judson Borglum wanted the sculpture to go down to the figures waists but he died in early 1941, and with war on the horizon, his son and chief engineer rushed to complete the heads as is.  

 1945- The "War of Hollywood" Ends. The CSU union strike, the film business's longest and ugliest, falls apart and many of the former members drift into IATSE locals. 

1964- Barbara Streisand single “People, People who need People..” goes to number one.

1993- Young movie star River Phoenix the brother of Joaquin Phoenix, overdosed and died on the street in front of the Viper Room night club in LA after partying with Johnny Depp and Alicia Silverstone. The club is owned by movie star Depp. It was once the Melody Room owned by mobster Bugsy Siegel. Ironically, as Phoenix was thrashing spasmodically, people walked by unconcerned, because it’s a common enough occurrence on the Sunset Strip. 

2001- The acting Governor of Massachusetts officially overturned the convictions of the last six people executed in the Salem Witch Trials 300 years ago in 1692.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 30, 2019

 Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,

Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler is 72, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon, 

Claude Lelouche, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, Ivanka Trump is 38

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published. 

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

1936- London publishers George Allen & Unwin had received a manuscript from an Oxford ancient languages professor named J.R.R. Tolkein.  The publisher gave it to his ten-year old son Raynar Unwin, to read. Raynar read it and made a report, “This book will be a very good read for children from ages 5-7.” For his troubles, the young lad was paid a shilling. Based on his recommendation, they published “The Hobbit”. 

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast on CBS a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, one million people across the U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New Jersey.  

In Hollywood, famed actor John Barrymore, drunk as usual, went over to his

kennel of prize winning racing greyhounds and open their cage doors, saying: "Fend

for yourselves!" Interestingly enough, the broadcast was only #2 in the ratings. More people listened to the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show. 

In 1949 Ecuador, and 1969 Buffalo NY, radio stations did updated versions of the broadcast, and they also started panics. 

1947- Bertoldt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and The Threepenny Opera,

testified to the Hollywood HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole

session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he now fled the U.S. and resettled in East Germany.

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air.  I can’t write them because children read this column but you all know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.

2005- Disney feature Chicken Little premiered.

2012- The Walt Disney Company announced it was buying out George Lucas holdings (including the Star Wars franchise) for $4.05 billion.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct 29, 2019

Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Mauldin, Akim Tamiroff, Rufus Sewell, Neal Hefti-composer of the theme song for TV shows like Batman and the Odd Couple. Richard Dreyfus is 72, Ralph Bakshi is 81, Dan Castellenata, the voice of Homer Simpson.

1936- Ella Crawford-Smith was a real estate magnate whose first husband was killed in a gangland hit. She had the Hollywood bungalow where the murder occurred torn down, and brought in Arte-Moderne architect Robert Derrah to create something unique. Today the project, Crossroads of the World, was dedicated. It was an early form of open-air mall, designed to look like an ocean liner coming into port. It’s still there today.

1957- Louis B. Mayer dies. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." The head of MGM Studios lorded over Hollywood like a monarch, made and broke moviestars, ordered Judy Garland fed a steady stream of narcotics and had his office redesigned all white to resemble Mussolini, whom he admired. Humphrey Bogart was at his funeral. When asked if he was close to Mayer, Bogie replied: Nah, I'm just here to make sure he's dead!

1959- Goscinny and Uderzo’s comic character Asterix first appeared in Pilote magazine.

Happy 50th Birthday THE INTERNET.

Oct. 29, 1969- After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Defense Department asked the Rand Corporation to create a communication system that could survive Russian atomic bombs. They conceived of a “net” of computers all in communication with another around the world. Because there was no center, a bomb could not knock out the entire system. 

At 10:30PM In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, Lick Licklider, Leonard Kleinrock, Vin Cerf, Robert Kahn, Larry Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. “ We typed the “L” and we asked on the phone “ Did you see the “L”? “Yes, we see the “L,” was the response. Then we typed O and asked Did you see the O?” Yes, we see the O” was the response. Then we typed G, and then the system crashed!” But when they rebooted, and the system sprung to life again. The people at UCLA were able to type in LOG, to which the Stanford folks replied IN.

They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NET, a few years later Internet. By 1978 the Defense Department didn’t want to run the thing anymore so they offered to turn over the entire Internet to AT&T for free. AT&T said no thanks, we just don’t see the value in it. In 1992 the US government made the Internet public and the gold rush was on.

1993- Tim Burton’s fantasy A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, opened across the US.

2012- Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph premiered. 

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 28, 2019

Birthdays: Elsa Lanchester, Cleo Lane, Charlie Daniels, Evelyn Waugh, Jonas Salk, Bruce Jenner, Joan Plowright, Edith Head, Chef August Escolfiere the great French Chef who created Peche Melba and moved French cuisine to the front rank of world cooking, Charles Grovesnor the founder of National Geographic magazine, Joaquin Phoenix is 45, Dennis Franz, Julia Roberts, Bill Gates is 64, Don Lusk.

1726- Johnathan Swift published "Gulliver's Travels"-"To Vex the World rather than Divert it."

1929- Composer Irving Berlin scolded George Gershwin for his lack of patriotism that he unloaded his stocks and bonds. The Great Stock Market Crash the following day bankrupting Irving Berlin but left Gershwin unscathed. Stick to music, Irv...

1949- Kay Kamen, Walt Disney Studios merchandising mastermind, was killed in a plane crash in the Azores. For almost two decades the Baltimore-born ad man was the mastermind behind the creation of Disney merchandising, including the wildly successful Mickey Mouse watch. By the time of his death, Disney merchandising was earning the studio $100 million a year.  

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 27, 2019

B-Days: Captain James Cook, Theodore Roosevelt, Dylan Thomas, Nicolo Paganinni, Gerhard Von Gneisenau, Sylvia Plath, Roy Lichtenstein, John Cleese is 80, Freddy De Cordova, Ruby Dee, Roberto Benigni, Bernie Wrightson

1886- Musical fantasy "A Night on Bald Mountain" premiered in Russia. Composer Modest Mussorgsky worked as a florist during the day and wrote music at night. He was convinced he couldn’t make a living otherwise.

1916- The entertainment trade magazine Variety has the blurb: "Chicago has added recently to it’s number of so-called Jazz bands." Now jazz had been around in black neighborhoods for years, but the form was labeled Ragtime or Syncopation. This is the earliest known use in print of the word Jazz.

1947- The "You Bet Your Life" quiz show premiered on radio. "Say the Secret Word and Win Fifty Dollars". Comedian Groucho Marx had struggled after his brothers act the Marx Brothers broke up. During a live radio program with Bob Hope at one point Hope dropped his script. Before he could pick it up Groucho stepped on the pages, threw his own away and the two improvised their conversation. The result was much funnier that anything anybody had written. The producer of the show was so impressed he hired Groucho and built a quiz show around him.

1954- Benjamin O. Davis became the first black general in the US Army.

1954- The" Disneyland" television show premieres. Up until then the major Hollywood Studios were all boycotting the new upstart medium of television, then mostly done in New York by blacklisted stage actors and writers. MGM Production head Dori Schary called TV “ the Enemy”. Walt Disney is the first to break ranks with the major film studios and get into television production.  He even filmed the show in Technicolor, figuring television will develop color broadcasting eventually.

1964- Sonny & Cher married. I got you babe!

1966- Bill Melendez's Peanuts TV special "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown'. 

1967- the Worlds Fair in Montreal called Expo 67 closed.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 26, 2019

Birthdays: Danton, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir “Bill” Tytla - Disney animator who gave life to Dumbo, Grumpy and the Devil from Bald Mountain, Francois Mitterand, Domenico Scarlatti, Charles W. Post of Post Cereals, Bob Hoskins, The last Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Mahalia Jackson, Clive Barker, Bootsie Collins, Marla Maples, Count Helmuth von Molkte the Elder -German strategist of the Franco-Prussian War, Dylan McDermott, Cary Elwes, Jaclyn Smith, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Seth McFarlane is 46, and Pat Sito!

1947-HOLLYWOOD FIGHTS BACK- Members of Hollywood's progressive elite tried to answer the McCarthy hearings and the blacklist with a nationwide radio broadcast "Hollywood Fights Back” -Starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, John Huston, Gene Kelly and Edward G. Robinson. 

 The event was a public relations fiasco. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann used his airtime to launch into a longwinded intellectual defense of Communism. When word reached them that some of the Hollywood writers they were defending really were communists Bogart and Bacall felt they had been hoodwinked. "As politicians we stink!" quote Bogie. 

1952- David Wolper’s documentary Victory at Sea, first premiered ,with its majestic score by Richard Rogers.

1955- The Greenwich Village Voice, later called simply The Voice, first published. It ended in 2018. 

1957- Vatican Radio began broadcasting.

1965- The rock band the Beatles received MBEs ( most excellent Member of the British Empire ) medals at Buckingham Palace.  John Lennon later returned his as a protest.

1970- Doonesbury born. Yale law graduate Gary Trudeau was convinced by Jim Andrews his classmate now an editor at Universal Press syndicate, to recreate his funny comic he did in the campus newspaper. Its original name was 'Bull Tales". 

1984-" I’LL BE BACK…" James Cameron’s sci-fi thriller THE TERMINATOR first released. Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a Hollywood joke before this film made him a major star.  An interesting what-if, was that before Arnold was cast in the role of the cyborg assassin, the producers were first considering O.J. Simpson. 

1985- The original date Marty McFly time travels from in the film Back to the Future.

2015- The Supergirl TV show staring Melissa Benoist premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 24, 2019

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Domitian, Bob Kane the creator of Batman, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek- the founder of Microbiology, Moss Hart, Jiles Perry Richardson better known as the Big Bopper, F. Murray Abrahams is 78, Enkwase Mfume, Y.A. Tittle, Sara Josepha Hale 1788- who wrote the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb", animator Preston Blair, Kevin Kline is 71

1902- Author Arthur Conan-Doyle was knighted by King Edward VII. He received the honor not for his literary accomplishments but for his doctor volunteer services during the just concluded Boer War. It was also said the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was one of the few books King Edward ever managed to read from cover to cover.

1937- At Piping Springs NY, composer Cole Porter suffered an accident while horseback riding that broke both his legs. Even after 26 operations he never regained their full use. One leg was amputated in 1958.

1938- The Fair Labor Standards Act established the 40 hour workweek as the law of the land. The 40 hour week, that thing few of us see nowadays.

1947- Walt Disney testified to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) as a friendly witness. He accused members of the Cartoonists Guild and the League of Women Voters –which he mistakenly called the League of Women Shoppers, as being infiltrated by Communists "Seeking to subvert the Spirit of Mickey Mouse'.

1948- In & Out Burgers, the first drive-through restaurant opened in Baldwin Park California. Created by Harry and Esther Snyder, Its still in business today, selling only burgers, shakes, and fries, pretty much like they did back then. Their grandchild Lynsi is CEO. 

1959- The TV program Playboy’s Penthouse premiered. Hugh Hefner hosted a variety show designed to look like a cocktail party in a swinging bachelor’s pad. It was a success despite many stations in the South refusing to show it. That was because they dared to have black celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Nat King Cole laughing and partying alongside white ones like Tony Bennett and Lennie Bruce. 

1969- Godfather Producer Robert Evans married young actress Ali McGraw.

1975- The musical play A Chorus Line opened.

25 years ago- 1994- Disney TV series Gargoyles premiered.

Animation Fun Fact for Oct. 23, 2019

Birthdays; Johnny Carson, Adlai Stevenson, Pele, Zioniev, Weird Al Yankovic, Dwight Yoakham, Michael Crichton, Chi-Chi Rodriquez, Phillip Kaufman, porn star Jasmine St. Claire, Gummo Marx, Ang Lee is 65, Ryan Reynolds is 43, Sam Raimi is 60

1928- A financial consortium led by Wall St. banker-bootlegger Joseph Kennedy Sr. buys the Keith Albee theater circuit and merged it with the Radio Company and the Orpheum theaters to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum or RKO pictures.  Kennedy made a quick killing then got out of the picture business in 1930, just before the Depression dropped his studios stock value. RKO made films like King Kong, Fort Apache and Citizen Kane before merging into Desilu in 1957.

1940- Shooting on the film Citizen Kane wrapped.

1941- Walt Disney’s Dumbo premiered. 

1971-Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida opened.

1983- Jessica Savitch was one of the first women journalists to break the barrier for women getting the top anchor jobs in network news broadcasting. This day she died in a car accident.

2001- Apple Computers launched the ipod.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 22, 2019

Birthdays: Sarah Bernhardt, Timothy Leary, Franz Liszt, Doris Lessing, Joan Fontaine, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lloyd is 81, Annette Funicello, Brian Boitano, Curly Howard of the Three Stooges, Catherine Deneuve is 76, Spike Jonze is 50.

1883- First performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. It was Gounod’s Faust with soprano Christine Nillson and tenor Italo Campanini.      

1938-THE BIRTHDAY OF THE XEROX COPY- Chester Carlson working with an amateur chemistry set behind a beauty parlor in Astoria Queens, created the first photo copy. He took his invention to Edison, G.E., RCA and IBM who all rejected it. Finally a little firm that produced photographic paper for Kodak called the Haloid Company bought it. They later changed their named to Xerox.  

1962- Twentieth Century Fox chief Daryl Zanuck fired long suffering director Joe Mankiewicz off of the editing of the spectacle Cleopatra. Mankiewicz had shot a 6 hour movie he wanted shown as two films. Zanuck wanted one big movie at half that size. After a lot of embarrassing feuding in the press, Zanuck rehired Mankiewicz and he recut Cleopatra, When Elizabeth Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up. 

Cleopatra became one of the biggest disasters in Hollywood History.  

1962- At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis a stand up comic named Vaughn Meador recorded a comedy album called The First Family. It made lighthearted fun of John F. Kennedy and his White House. The record became the fastest selling hit of the pre-Beatles era, 7.5 million copies. Jackie called Meador a rat, but JFK thought it was funny and gave out copies as Christmas presents. He said Meador’s impersonation sounded more like his brother Teddy than him.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct 21, 2019

Birthdays: Dizzy Gillespie, Whitey Ford, Alfred Nobel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Blair, Carrie Fisher, Patty Davis (Reagan's daughter), Benjamin Netanyahu, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Manfred Mann, Sir Georg Solti, Angus McFadyen, Ken Watanabe is 60, Kim Kardasian is 39.

1879- Thomas Edison announced the invention of the Light Bulb. After experimenting with dozens of different type filaments in a vacuum, Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb with carbonized cotton. He and his crew stared at the glowing bulb for 40 hours to make sure it was really worked.

     

1932- The film Red Dust premiered. It made stars out of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

1959- Six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright his last creation the Guggenheim Museum in New York City opened.

1969- Beat Generation author of On the Road- Jacques Kerouac died of alcoholism and stomach bleeding, a pencil and pad on his lap. He grew bitter about how his call for youth rebellion had been reinterpreted by the 60's generation as hippies and flower power. When he came upon a gathering of kids at an anti-war rally distributing American flags to burn, Kerouac collected them all and folded them neatly.

1972- Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack theme to the movie “Superfly” debuted at Number #1 in the Billboard charts.

2003- The Great California Brush Fires. Hot dry wind and a lost hunter ignited the worst brush fires in California history. Ten fires from Ventura County north of Los Angeles to Tijuana Mexico burned hundreds of thousands of acres for two weeks, destroyed 3000 homes and killed 20. The smoke clouds were visible from space.

2015- According to Robert Zemeckis 1989 film Back to the Future II, all the events Marty McFly and Doc Brown experience in the future occur on this date. Got your hoverboard, yet?

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 20, 2019

Birthdays: Sir Christopher Wren, Bela Lugosi (born Bela Blasgow from Lugosz), Charles Ives, Arthur Rimbaud, Daniel Sickles, Black Panther Bobby Seale, Juan Marichal, Tom Petty, Art Buchwald, Arlene Francis, Grandpa Jones, Mickey Mantle, Frank Churchill, Thomas Newman, Jerry Ohrbach, Rex Ingram, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Michael Dunn, Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Broadus Jr) is 48, Danny Boyle is 63, Viggo Mortensen is 61

1921- Rudolf Valentino starred in The Sheik, which premiered today.

1939- Frank Capra’s film “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” opened.

1947- 'ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN...' Judge J. Parnell Thomas banged the gavel opening the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation into Communist infiltration into the Motion Picture Business. HUAC was set up in 1938 as the Dies Committee to keep an eye on pro-Nazis groups operating in German and Italian immigrant organizations, but by 1944 it's emphasis had switched to Communist espionage. Investigations of the army or top civil servants like Dean Acheson was dull stuff, New Deal hating conservatives knew investigating Hollywood would yield the big headlines and jazz up public interest. 

Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney were the first in line to name names. Lucille Ball, Sterling Hayden, Zero Mostel, Ginger Rogers, Ed Wynn, Howard da Silva, and Lloyd Bridges admitted they had once held communist party memberships. The anti-commie hysteria turned Hollywood inside out and the bitter feelings remained for the rest of their lives. 

1951- the CBS Eye logo made its debut. Creative director Bill Golden was inspired when he drove through Pennsylvania Dutch country. He became intrigued by the hex symbols resembling the human eye that were painted on Shaker barns. In show biz slang CBS is still referred to as The Eye.

1955- Harry Belafonte recorded the Banana Boat Song, that made him a star. “ Come Mister Tally-Man, tally me bananas…Dayo!”

1955- J.R.R. Tolkein’s last book of the Lord of the Rings published. The Return of the King.

1973- The Six Million Dollar Man with Lee Majors premiered.

1977- Lynyrd Skynyrd band members Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines died when their plane crashed into a swamp while en route to a concert at Louisiana University.

1991- The Oakland California Firestorm. Drought and Diablo wind conditions fanned a blaze in the East Bay hills that destroyed 3,000 buildings and killed 25 people.

2013- Saving Mr. Banks with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, premiered.

Animations Fun Facts for Oct. 19, 2019

Birthdays: Martha "Patsy" Jefferson, Auguste Lumiere, John Le Carre', Peter Tosh, Amy Carter, Jack Anderson, Peter Max, John Lithgow is 74, Robert Reed of the Brady Bunch, Evander Holyfield, Patricia Ireland, Michael Gambon is 79, John Favreau is 53, Trey Parker of South Park is 49

1845- Richard Wagners’ opera Tannhauser premiered.

1945- N.C. Wyeth, artist and father of Andrew Wyeth, was struck and killed by a train.

1953 – Arthur Godfrey had one of the more popular TV variety shows at the time. One of his headliners was the singer Julius LaRosa. But Godfrey was seen to act more and more imperiously with his cast and crew. This day after a song, Godfrey put his arm around LaRosa and said gently. "Julie lacks humility, So, Julie, to teach you a lesson, you’re fired!" La Rosa and the audience first thought he was kidding but he wasn’t. He had fired LaRosa live, nationwide on the air.

1957- Montreal Hockey great Maurice Rocket Richard became the first player to score 500 goals. 

1964- Doo Wah Diddy Diddy hit the pop charts.

1968- RUPERT MURDOCH INVADED ENGLAND. Never mind the Vikings or William the Conqueror, on this day the little Australian landed at Heathrow to begin a takeover war for his first English newspaper, the News of the World. Until now the Fleet Street press barons were a closed club of rich old gentlemen. Murdoch used Sir Robert Caro as his cover to get in and defeat a hostile takeover bid from Robert Maxwell. He then demoted Caro out of his leadership of the paper. He soon bought the London Times. Rupert Murdoch later became a U.S. citizen so he could build the Fox News and cable TV empires.

1985- Take on Me by Aha hit number one on the pop charts.

1990- Kevin Costner’s film Dances With Wolves premiered.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 18, 2019

FEAST OF ST. LUKE. According to ancient sources Luke was actually a physician, but Medieval tradition made him the protector of artists. This is because John of Damascus claimed to have seen Luke draw paintings of the Madonna. In Rome during the Renaissance Titian, Michelangelo, Rubens and El Greco were members of the Guild of St. Luke and paid union dues.

1896- Joseph Pulitzer's N.Y. Journal American created the first Sunday Color Comics supplement.

1922- The British Broadcast Corp or BBC formed.

1926- In Hollywood Sid Grauman's Egyptian Theater opens.

1931- Thomas Edison died peacefully at age 84. His last words were-

"It's beautiful over there..." 

1946- Walt Disney premiered The Story of Menstruation.

1950- In a heated and emotional showdown in the Directors Guild all motions by C.B. DeMille and Frank Capra to extend the Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist to include expulsion from the Director's Guild were defeated. Billy Wilder, John Huston, John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy supported President Joe Mankiewicz who blocked the Blacklist Motions, and they also prevented a recall vote on Mankiewicz' s presidency.

1954- Hi & Lois comic strip debuted.

1967- Walt Disney's last cartoon done under his supervision "the Jungle Book." premiered. Disney had died the previous December. If you remember the film the end sequence Mowgli meets four vultures who talk like the Beatles but sing barbershop quartet. That’s because the characters were supposed to sing a Beatles parody song but Walt felt the group would soon be forgotten so he didn't want to date the film.

1974- Tobe Hooper's low budget cult film Texas Chainsaw Massacre first opened. Despite one film critic calling it " a bunch of sick crap" it became a huge hit. 

1982- President Reagan said during a radio address:" My Fellow Americans, the economy is in a helluva mess....this microphone isn't on, is it?.." 

1984- Handsome young television star John Eric Hexum died after shooting himself with a prop pistol loaded with blanks. The concussion of compressed air shattered his skull at close range. He was playing at mock- Russian Roulette. His last words were "Lets see if I can do myself in this time!"

Animation Fun Facts for Oct 17, 2019

Birthdays: Arthur Miller, Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur, Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Breslin, Tom Poston, Gary Puckett, Margot Kidder, Evil Knievel, Jerry Siegel (Superman co-creator), Virgil 'Vip' Partch, Charles Kraft the sliced cheese king, Beverly Garland- star of Attack of the Alligator People, George Wendt, Cameron Mackintosh, Mike Judge is 57, Eminem is 47

1904- In San Francisco, Amadeo & Giovanni Giannini opened the New Bank of Italy, which in 1930 became the Bank of America. Among the 40 or so independent banks in California, Giannini’s bank grew because they encouraged immigrants to put their money in, when Anglo bankers refused to deal with foreigners. After the great San Francisco earthquake they buried the banks total assets in a strongbox in their garden until their building could be rebuilt. The Bank of America grew from that garden to become the largest bank in the U.S. and a major Hollywood financier.

1928- Duke Ellington recorded The Mouche, the Fly.

1965- After a two-year run, the New York Worlds Fair in Flushing Queens officially closed.

1967- The Hippy musical “Hair” opened at the Anspacher Theatre on Broadway.

 1989- In the late afternoon, the BAY AREA EARTHQUAKE- called the Loma Prieta Quake, shook San Francisco and vicinity. For the first time since 1906, fires were seen in the Mission District. The epicenter was a little town called Watsonville. 67 people were killed. California was planning to relieve traffic pressure by building upper levels onto existing freeways systems. When one of these new double deckers, the Cypress Freeway, collapsed, crushing motorists, all such plans were abandoned.
  There was a World Series baseball game under way in Candlestick Park, but miraculously no one was hurt. National TV audiences amazed that local fans laughed at the danger. They chanted to the TV cameras: "Welcome to California!".

1990- IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base started up.

2005- The Colbert Report with Steven Colbert premiered on Comedy Central. ---------------------------

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 16, 20019

Birthdays: Lord Cardigan, Eugene O'Neill, Noah Webster, Dave DeBusschere, David Ben-Gurion, Angela Lansbury is 93, Gunter Grass, Linda Darnell, Charles Colson, Susanne Somers is 73, David Zucker, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim Robbins is 61.

1847- Jane Eyre, an Autobiography first published. Writer Charlotte Bronte’ did it under the pen-name Currier Bell. 

1923- Walt Disney Studios Born. 22 year old Walt and his older brother Roy signed a deal with M.J. Winkler for six "Alice in Cartoonland" short cartoons. Budget-$1,500 each. 

1952- Charlie Chaplin’s film "Limelight" premiered in London. Chaplin had shot the film in Hollywood but released it in Europe because he had been driven into exile by McCarthyite Red Baiters.

1955- Ann Landers published her first column.

1969- The Miracle Mets. The New York Mets, then possessing some of the worst records in baseball history, defied all 100-1 odds and won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in 5 games. Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Nolan Ryan. Rusty Staub. Thousands of fans at Shea went crazy and danced and partied on the field with the players. My brother recalled in the parking lot cars were covered with turf because the fans had stolen the bases and ripped up the sod for souvenirs. 

1976- Disco Duck by Rick Dees became #1 on the pop charts.

1992- The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson filed a $1.4 million dollar lawsuit against a French tabloid for publishing photos of her topless and her boyfriend Texas millionaire John Bryan sucking her toes. 

1997- According to the writers of the 1965 television show 'Lost in Space', this was the date the Jupiter-2 with Will, Penny, Dr. Smith and the Robot took off to colonize deep space. "Danger! Danger! Spare me your insolence, you mechanical ninny..."

Animation Fun Facts for Oct 15, 2019

Birthdays: Quintus Virgilius-Virgil 70 BC, Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great 1542, Oscar Wilde, Fredrich Nietszche, Mikail Lermontov, John L. Sullivan, Jane Darnell, Burt Gillett, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Trout, Klaus Barbie the Butcher of Lyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Penny Marshall, Mario Puzo, Sarah Ferguson-Fergie' the former Duchess of York, Chef Emeril LeGasse, Chuck Berry

1764- While wandering through the ruins of ancient Rome, British writer Edward Gibbon is inspired to write "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".

1843- Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens opened to the public. One of the oldest amusement parks in the world and an inspiration to Walt Disney for Disneyland.

1905- Premiere of Claude Debussy’s tone poem La Mer- the Sea.

1930- Duke Ellington first recorded Mood Indigo.


1940- Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator premiered.

1946 Walt Disney’s film Make Mine Music premiered.

1951- THE FIRST I LOVE LUCY SHOW- The successful family sitcom began its pilot episode this night. CBS and Phillip Morris had wanted Lucille Ball to transfer her popular radio show-“My Favorite Husband” to television. The story of the family life of Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban immigrant nightclub bandleader, his daffy wife Lucy, and their landlord friends Fred and Ethel Murtz became an overnight sensation.
The show was shot on film instead of live TV and it was produced in Los Angeles instead of New York City because Lucy and Dezi Arnez refused to relocate back east. The show also pioneered the three camera shooting system for sitcoms, still used to this day. When Lucille Ball was off being pregnant, the show proved re-runs could be just as popular as first time showings. The January 1953 episode of little Ricky’s birth drew more viewers than the inauguration of President Eisenhower.

1959- Twentieth Century Fox signed Elizabeth Taylor to star in their new movie Cleopatra. The first time an actor was paid a million dollars for one movie.

1969- The musical Paint Your Wagon opened. Lerner & Lowe, Paddy Chayevsky, Andre Previn, Nelson Riddle, Josh Logan, with Clint Eastwood singing!

1976- What’s Love got to do with it? Ike and Tina Turner break up.


2018- Sears Roebuck, once the largest dept. store chain in America, declared bankruptcy.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 14, 2019

B-Days: William Penn-1644, King James II Stuart, Joseph Plateau, Sword master Masoaka Shiki 1867, Dwight Eisenhower, Lillian Gish, Ralph Lauren, Eamon De Valera, e.e. cummings, Mobutu Sese Seko, C. Everet Koop, John Dean III, Cliff Richards, Jack Arnold the director of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ralph Lauren- real name Ralph Lifshitz, Roger Moore.


1670-At a performance before King Louis XIV the Sun King at the Chateau of Chambord Moliere’s satire “Le Bourgeouis Gentilhomme” premiered. Lully wrote the music.

1873- MY NAME IS MUYBRIDGE.  One night a carriage drove up from San Francisco to the Yellow Jacket Mine near Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. A man asked for the foreman Major Harry Larkyns. When Larkyns answered the door the man quietly said to him:”Good Evening, Major. My name is Muybridge.  Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife earlier. “ He drew a pistol and shot Larkyns through the heart, killing him instantly. He then dropped the weapon and waited for the sheriff.
The murderer was the famous Photographer and Motion Picture Pioneer Edweard Muybridge. Muybridges’ young wife Flora had been having an affair while he was working on his Motion Studies Series in Palo Alto. Muybridge discovered the son she bore him was not his. They were even calling him Little Harry behind his back.
The jury that convened in Napa did not hang the artist-inventor. In the Code of the Old West, proven adultery was considered a justifiable homicide. Plus Governor Leyland Stanford was sponsoring Muybridge’s experiments. So he was acquitted. Flora Muybridge divorced him in 1875 and after her early death two years later, Muybridge gave Little Harry to a San Francisco Orphans Asylum and refused to pay for his upkeep.

1926- A.A. Milne’s first book of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin stories debuted this day.

1934- The Lux Radio Theater premiered.

1950- The LAPD raided a house party of gay men, which was illegal back then. One of the men arrested was future movie star Tab Hunter. This was kept secret until in 1955, when an angry agent Hunter dumped leaked the story to Confidential Magazine.  “ Tab Hunter Busted at Limp-Wristed Pajama Party!” It soon blew over and Tab Hunter went on to have a full movie career.

1954- First day of shooting on Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of the Ten Commandments  out in the Egyptian desert. It was so brutally hot that Anne Baxter joked to Vincent Price “ Vin, who do I have to sleep with to get OFF this movie?”

1955- Actor Zero Mostel testified in front of HUAC about his being a communist. Zero made lots of jokes and the committees expense, and even made some of them laugh, but was still blacklisted.

1959- Errol Flynn died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Exhausted by overindulgence in his favorite vices, doctors said the 50 year old movie star had the body of a 70 year old. A descendant of one of the Bounty mutineers, the Tasmanian born actor's last film was ' Cuban Rebel Girls'.

1972 - KUNG FU, starring David Carradine, premiered on ABC TV.
In her memoirs, Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, asserts that Lee created the concept for the series. There is circumstantial evidence for this in a December 8, 1971 television interview that Bruce Lee gave on The Pierre Berton Show. In the interview, Lee stated that he had developed a concept for a television series called THE WARRIOR, meant to star himself, about a martial artist in the American Old West (the same concept as KUNG FU, which aired the following year), but that he was having trouble pitching it to Warner Brothers and Paramount. Show creator and producer Ed Spielman denied taking Bruce Lees idea. He said he had been working on it on the East Coast long before.

1972- Joe Cocker and his backup band were busted in Australia for drug possession.


1978- Lover Scott Thorsten “outs” pianist Liberace by filing a palimony suit.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 13, 2019

Birthdays: Revolutionary War heroine Mary Ludwig nicknamed Molly Pitcher, Lily Langtry-the Jersey Lilly, Lenny Bruce, Larraine Day, Nipsy Russell, Cornel Wilde, Margaret Thatcher, Herblock, Yves Montand, Nancy Kerrigan, Sammy Hagar, Marie Osmond, Kelly Preston, Chris Carter, Paul Simon is 79, Sascha Baron-Cohen is 48


1903- Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland premiered.

1904- Sigmund Freud's book 'The Interpretation of Dreams" first published.

1938- RKO Pictures was having a salary dispute with their singing cowboy Gene Autry. So they cast around for another handsome cowpoke. Today they signed a dentist from a vocal group called the Sons of the Pioneers named Leonard Slye. He became a star with the film “Under Western Skies” under his new name- Roy Rogers.

1947- Kukla, Fran & Ollie debuted on television. Burt Tillstrom was the creator and puppeteer and Fran was his wife.

1978- Mickey Mouse gets his star on Hollywood Blvd Walk of Fame.

1982- The computer spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3 introduced.

1993- The Nightmare Before Christmas premiered. Directed by Henry Selick. Based on a three page poem Tim Burton wrote in the 80s while a Disney staff animator.

2016 – Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 12, 2019

Birthdays: "God's Imp"King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil 1798, Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti, animator Izzy Klein, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Susan Anton, Kirk Cameron, Hugh Jackman is 51

1886- Beginning of Sherlock Holmes story:” Adventure of the Second Stain”.

1928- The Winnie the Pooh stories featuring Tigger are first published.

1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signed the first animation union contract and settled the Cartoonist strike begun May 8th. A year later Fleischer tried to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, but the additional expenses and poor box office ruined his studio.

1940- Retired movie star Tom Mix “The King of the Cowboys” died in auto crash outside of Florence, Arizona. The 60 year old actor ignored signs that a bridge was out and drove into a dry gulley. A large overpacked suitcase popped out of his back seat and broke his neck. The “Suitcase of Death” is preserved along with Tony the Wonder Horse at the Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

1942- Louis Armstrong married his second wife, singer Lucille Watson. She made a home for him in a suburban neighborhood in Queens New York that Sachmo always returned to after traveling the world.

1966- Sammy Davis Jr. appeared on the Batman TV Show. Sock-it-to-me!

1971-Weber & Rice’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger theater. 

1977- Script completed for the classic film comedy Animal House.

25 years ago 1994- Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce their new studio would be named Dreamworks SKG.

1997- 53 year old singer John Denver died when he crashed his ultra-light Long E-Z plane into the ocean near Monterrey California. Later reports showed he was flying inebriated.  An open sixpack of beer was next to him. The impact was so great his body had to be identified by fingerprints.

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Animation Fun Facts for Oct 11, 2019

Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Ben Vereen, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Sig Ruman– the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies.

1944-“ To Have and to Have Not,” written by Ernest Hemingway premiered. The movie paired Humphrey Bogart with a sultry Harpers model turned actress Betty Persky, now renamed Lauren Bacall. 

1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premiered on TV. “Overture, hit the lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”

1967- The NY Times printed an image of a female nude by Bell Lab artists-in-residence Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton.  Titled Study in Perception I, It was done on a computer as a digital mosaic of thousands of numbers. It was an early breakthrough image in CGI.

1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for the Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. Featuring the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Mike O’Donaghue. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while stoned.

1978- Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sid was too stoned to explain why he had killed the love of his life. It’s assumed they had a suicide pact. Vicious died of an overdose before his trial.

1991- Comedian Redd Foxx was famous for doing bits like faking a heart attack. This day on the set of his new series the Royal Family, while joking with Della Reese, he clutched his chest and fell over. Everyone thought he was faking and laughed. He died at the hospital an hour later.

2001- V.S. Naipul won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 10, 2019

Birthdays: Martin Luther, Giuseppe Verdi, Henry Cavendish 1731- the chemist who discovered Hydrogen, Helen Hayes, Mary Blair, Louis Lumiere, Thelonius Monk, Rod Scribner, Early female animator LaVerne Harding, Boer leader Paul Kruger, Ed Wood Jr., Alberto Giacometti, Tanya Tucker, Harold Pinter, Richard Tucker, James Clavel, Jodi Benson the Little Mermaid, David Lee Roth, Bradley Whitford is 61, Sharon Osbourne is 67

1953- "Winky Dink and You" show. Children were invited to place a piece of celluloid acetate on their t.v. screens from a kit and help Winky Dink through numerous adventures by drawing on their TV screens. Of course, many kids didn’t wait for the acetate but just drew on their family TVs with indelible markers. The birth of Interactive T.V. 

1957- RKO Studios, who produced King Kong, The John Ford Westerns and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, was sold to Desilu- the television production company owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez.

1957- Walt Disney’s TV show Zorro starring Guy Williams premiered.

1962- The BBC banned on air play of a novelty record The Monster Mash, by Bobby Picket. For some reason they considered it offensive. 

1968- Jane Fonda does her zero-gravity striptease and runs into a kinky organist Duran-Duran, the film Barbarellapremiered.

1980- Actor William 'Billy" Thomas, also known in the Our Gang kiddie comedies as Buckwheat, died at 49. His last words weren't "O' Taay !"

1985- Orson Welles and Yul Brynner die one hour apart. They were both 70. Welles had just finished taping yet another appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Brynner had a furious smoking habit, supposedly leaving one lit cigarette in every room of his house as he paced around thinking. When he knew he was dying of the stuff, he recorded several television spots to be aired after his death. He looked squarely at camera and said: " I smoked. -Don't."

Animation Fun Facts for Oct 9, 2019

Birthdays: Camille Saint Saens, E. Howard Hunt, Jacques Tati, Alastair Sim, Bruce Catton, Joe Pepitone, cartoonist Mike Peters, Savannah, John Lennon would be 79, his son Sean Lennon, E. Howard Hunt, Scott Bakula, Peter Tosh, Charles Rudolph Walgren-the inventor of the modern Drugstore, Guillermo Del Toro is 54, Tony Schaloub is 66, Pete Doctor is 51.

1938- Eugene O'Neill's play 'The Iceman Cometh' opened.

1951- RKO Pictures asked Marilyn Monroe to please wear panties while working, She was upsetting the film crew.

1981- Sir Hugh Hudson’s movie Chariots of Fire, about British Olympians at the 1924 Paris Olympics became a sleeper hit. The decision to let Greek composer Vangelis score the period film with an all-electronic synthesizer soundtrack became a sensation. Soon most of the movies of that time had synthesizer tracks. People said orchestras and bands would all be obsolete.

1986- People said there would never be more than three networks. Today the first show of the fourth network, The Fox Network's the Joan River's Show, premiered. That show didn't last, but future hits like The Simpson's, Married With Children and the X-Files made Fox a major network within ten years.

1989- First edition of Penthouse Magazine in Hebrew. Oy Vey!