Animation fun facts for Dec. 31, 2020 New Years Eve.

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, Psy, Ben Kingsley-born Khrishna Banji is 77, Anthony Hopkins is 83, Val Kilmer is 61, Gong Li is 55 

 

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.

 

1890- The new immigration facility on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened.

 

1901-Los Angeles Angel's Flight cable tram opened. It closed down in the 1980's but was restored in 1996, then broke down a few years later.

 

1906-07- THE FIRST BALL DROPPING CEREMONY- Since the 1700s Newspaper services like Reuters and the London Times would post important headlines and on large signboard in front of their offices for businessmen on the street to see. Sometimes they would mark an important event like the death of a monarch by raising a flag, ringing a bell, or firing a cannon.  Lowering a lantern was something ships in harbor did to synchronize their time keeping. The old Western Union building used to drop a ball at precisely noon for the same reason. 

In 1905 The New York Times hosted a giant news years party from their new office tower at #1 Longacre Square, now renamed in their honor Times Square. Midnight was signaled to the crowd by the lowering of a lantern on its roof. 

 

In 1907 an ironworker created a large ball covered with electric light bulbs that was lowered from a flagpole. The Ball-dropping ceremony was only interrupted twice for World War II blackout rules. The Times Building was later sold and renamed the Allied Chemical Building, the Sony Building, Time/Warner, the Newsday building, and now One Time Square. 

 

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

 

1929- Guy Lombardo and his big band the Royal Canadians first played Auld Lang Syne at midnight for New Years. Lombardo and his band became synonymous with New Years until his death in the 1980s.

 

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”. 

 

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in Times Square. It was his debut as a solo performer. 

 

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.

 

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

 

1967- The Ice Bowl- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 for the NFL championship ( the Superbowl had not been invented yet). It was nicknamed the Ice Bowl because the game was played in Green Bay in the out doors in below zero weather, with a wind chill of 40 below zero. Referees whistles froze to their lips.

 

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

 

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

 

1997- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett marry.

 

1999-2000 - The Y2K MANIA. While the world prepared to celebrate the new century and the Third Millennium, the American media whipped up paranoia over a theory that the change from 1999-2000 would cause most computers to crash. Planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles would launch themselves and marauders would rule the streets like something out of Mad Max. The US Government spent $65 million to prepare for the crisis.  

But at midnight absolutely nothing happened. Even older less sophisticated computers were unaffected, and everything ran normally. Meanwhile many of the US public shivered at home and watched the rest of the world have fun on television.

 

2001-2002- The European Union currency exchange went into effect. Adieu, Adios and Ciao to the French Franc, Belgian Franc, Italian Lire, German Deutschmark, Austrian Schilling, Dutch Gulden, Greek Drachma, Irish Pound, Portuguese Escudo and Spanish Peseta. Welcome the Euro.

 

2019-The World Health Organization issued a global warning about the coming Coronavirus CoVid 19. 

Happy New Year!

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 30, 2020

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 45, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary, Douglas Engelbart the inventor of the computer mouse, Lebron James is 36, Eliza Dushku is 40

 

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to royalty, or noble pension, but to the general paying public. 

 

1689- The opera Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell premiered in London.

 

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Mary Wollenstonecraft. Mary wrote Frankenstein two years later.

 

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

 

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

 

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571. After the tragedy building codes were enforced that public buildings have exit doors that always open outwards, and some form of fire fighting equipment be on the premises. The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

 

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. (Luxo Jr was nominated but did not win.) The first feature film Toy Story initially 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, 2020

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 82, Ray Nitschke, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Flanders, Ted Danson is 73, Marianne Faithful, Paula Poundstone, Jude Law is 48, Patricia Clarkson, Animator Duncan Marjoribanks 

 

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!"

 

1946- Milt Caniff published his last Terry and the Pirates comic strip. Caniff moved on to begin his Steve Canyon strip, which he had better ownership of. 

 

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.

 

1967- The Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles first aired.

 

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, 2020

 birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff, Edgar Winter, Stan “The Man” Lee, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12), Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber, Denzel Washington is 66, Maggie Smith is 86, Sienna Miller is 39, Rick Farmiloe is 64

 

1598- The troupe of actors called The Lord Chamberlains Men was tired of negotiating with their landlord who held the lease on Edward Burbage’s theatre at Blackheath. Burbage was dead and they suspected the landlord had other plans for the property. So this night the actors moved through the snow and slowly dismantled the theatre and reassembled the pieces on the Southbank of the Thames. The completed theatre was christened the New Globe Theatre, where many of William Shakespeare’s greatest works premiered. And he was one of those actors.

 

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. 

 

1963- In the first season of the BBC TV show Dr. Who, this day Dr. Who first met the Daleks.

 

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

 

1973- Pres. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. It saved animals like Bald Eagles, Buffalo, Grizzly Bears and Gray Whales from extinction.

 

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.

 

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 27, 2020

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, Gerard Depardieu is 73

 

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.” 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 Smith, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse.

 

2016- Actress-screenwriter Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia in Star Wars), died of cardiac arrest due to sleep apnea while flying from London to Los Angeles. She was 60.  Her mother Debbie Reynolds died the next day at age 84.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 26, 2020

Birthdays: Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Mao Zedong, Charles Babbage, Admiral Dewey, Richard Widmark, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Carlton Fisk, Chris Chambliss, Alan King, Phil Spector, Fred Schepsi, Jared Leto is 48

 

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. Al figured here's a nifty way to make a living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York Times. 

Al would keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and became a legend himself.  His style influenced the look of Walt Disney’s animated classic Aladdin. At age 94 Al remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2003 he died just shy of age 100, drawing to the end.

 

1935- The premiere of the Warner Bros swashbuckler Captain Blood, starring a debonair rogue from Tasmania named Errol Flynn. The first teaming of Flynn, 19 year old Olivia deHaviland, director Michael Curtiz. Music by Eric Wolfgang Korngold. 

 

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 hit 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.

 

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate African-American culture.

 

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

 

1985- Gorillas in the Mist author and ape anthropologist Diane Fossey was murdered by machete in her lab in Africa.

 

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec. 25, 2020

Birthdays: Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus, 6-4 BC (est), 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 71, CCH Pounder is 68, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

885- 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.

 

1855- Ice hockey first played in North America at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

 

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 1975, their studio space, Studio 8H, became the stage 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.

 

1993-The release of the animated "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm," 

 

1999- Galaxy Quest, Dreamworks spoof of Star Trek with Tim Allen, Alan Richman and Sigourney Weaver, opened.

 

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 24, 2020

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, Pixar animator Glen McQueen, Ryan Seacrest

 

1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died.  Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell. 

 

1818- the song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obernsdorf, Austria. Its lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr set to 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 most 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. 

 

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.."

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 23, 2020

Birthdays; Joseph Smith, Paul Hornung, Ruth Roman, Otto Soglow -cartoonist of 'the Little King', Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz actor) Jose Greco, Elizabeth Hartmann, Harry Guardino, Claudio Scimone, Vincent Sardi of Sardi’s restaurant, Bob Barker, Frederick Forrest, Japanese Emperor Akihito is 87, Carla Bruni, Simpson's voice Harry Shearer is 77

 

1823- SANTA CLAUS BORN. This day the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in The Troy Sentinel, a New York newspaper. Several years after the authorship was claimed by a Bronx Bible teacher, the Reverend Clement Clarke Moore. He was celebrated in his time as the father of Santa Claus until his death in 1863.

The poem completed the synthesis of English and Dutch folk traditions that were merging in New York into our modern concept of Santa. The British had Father Christmas, or Saint Nicholas, who was a big fat jolly bishop with a white beard in a red suit. He merged with the Dutch Kris Kringle, or SinterKlaas, who was an elf who climbed down chimneys to give children toys. 

In an 1859 reprint of the famous poem famed cartoonist Thomas Nast (who created the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey) drew the first likeness of Santa Claus. The Santa we all recognize was created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in 1934.

 

1893- Humperdinck's opera "Hansel und Gretel" debuts in Weimar Germany.

 

1894- Claude DeBussey’s “Afternoon of a Faun” premiered in Paris.

 

1912- France’s leading literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise rejected a new novel by an author named Marcel Proust “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu” “Remembrance of Things Past”. One critic wrote: “Maybe I’m dead from the neck up, but I can’t see why the author needed 20 pages to describe how he got out of bed in the morning!” Remembrance of Things Past became one of the great literary works of the Twentieth Century.

 

1912- The Max Sennett short comedy “Hoffmeyer’s Release” premiered, the first comedy featuring the Keystone Cops.

 

1913- Young Italian Rudolph Valentino arrived in America to seek his fortune. He was so poor, that after a year he sent his parents a photo of himself in a borrowed tuxedo to show he was doing well. He worked as a nightclub dancer and gigolo until becoming a Hollywood film star in 1921.

 

1930- Young actress Betty Davis signed her first contract with Universal Studio.

 

1935- Walt Disney sent a detailed memo to art teacher Don Graham outlining his plans for retraining his animators to do realistic feature films.

 

circa-1935- This was the traditional day for Republic Pictures to fire all their employees and hire them back after New Years so they wouldn't have to pay them holiday pay. Republic billed itself on its business cards as The Friendly Studio.

 

1972- The Immaculate Reception. Football’s Pittsburgh Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7-6 with one second to go, when QB Terry Bradshaw unloaded a Hail-Mary pass across the field to Franco Harris. The feared and brutal Oakland DB Jack Tatum batted the ball away back towards the Steelers, and Harris (still running upfield) made a shoestring catch (around the 20 yard line) and weaved through the stunned and basically unaware Oakland defenders into the end zone to win.

 

1973- Soap Opera “the Young and The Restless” premiered.

 

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 22, 2020

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Diocletian 245AD, Josef Stalin-born Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 57.

 

1808- DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5^th Symphony.

 

1861- Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was ordained a deacon in the Church of England.

 

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

 

1932 – The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan and Arthur Byron was released.

 

1937- The day after the triumphant premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, animator Woolie Reitherman ran into Walt Disney at the studio. Instead of complimenting Woolie and telling him to kick back and relax a bit, Walt launched into a detailed analysis of the problems facing the next picture, and how they need to get started right away!

 

1938- Memo from Dave Fleischer’s casting director to Paramount rep A.M. Botsford, asking if they might offer the role of Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels to Gary Cooper!

 

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car crash in L.A.

 

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

 

1964- In Chicago, Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed out loud. Lenny complained about the policeman’s delivery. After Lenny Bruce no one has ever again been convicted in the U.S. for telling jokes.  

 

2000- The Cohen Bros. Depression Era comedy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Opened.

 

Animation Fun FActs for Dec 21, 2020

Birthdays: Benjamin Disraeli, Josh Gibson- the Home Run King of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Pat Weaver-TV exec who created the Today Show and father of Sigourney Weaver, Frank Zappa, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner, Chris Evert, Phil Roman, Jane Fonda is 83, Paul Winchell born Pinkus Wilchinski, Keifer Sutherland is 54, Samuel L. Jackson is 72, Jane Kaszmarek, Judy Delphy is 51, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 70

 

Happy Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year.

 

1375- The writer Boccaccio died, not of the plague, and not during a wild party like in his book the Decameron.

 

1913- THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE-The first Crossword Puzzle appeared in the New York World.

 

1914- The premiere of the first feature length film comedy- Tilly’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and a young Charlie Chaplin.

 

1925- Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin premiered in Moscow. The films pioneering use of montage and allegorical imagery intercut inspired a generation of filmmakers.

 

1933- Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year old Shirley Temple to a seven year contract.

 

1937- Walt Disney's " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" had its grand premiere at the Carthay Circle Theater. The first feature length American cartoon, it became the box office champ of 1938, earning 4 times more than any other film that year.

 

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner of the Three Stooges, was killed in a bar fight, while celebrating the birth of his son.

 

1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) died of a heart attack at Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham's house.  She had just left the house to buy him some candy.  She left him thumbing through his Princeton alumni newsletter.  His last words to her were 'Hershey bars will be fine..."

 

1944- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City. It opened in the US in February.

 

1959- Joe Oriolo’s TV remake of Felix the Cat debuted on TV.

 

1968- The Apollo 8 spacecraft was launched to the Moon. Besides winning the Space Race, and doing the famous Christmas Night reading of Genesis from lunar orbit, Apollo 8 had one board one of the very first mini-computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was one cubic foot in size, had stored memory of 5 bytes, a language (DSKY) and a digital display. It’s the forerunner of the personal computer.

 

1969- Famed football coach Vince Lombardi coached his last game- Dallas beat Washington 20-10.

 

1971- Richard William's animated TV special "A Christmas Carol" with Alastair Sim reprising his Scrooge.

 

1973- Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad premiered.

 

1979- Disney’s Sci-Fi film The Black Hole opened in theaters.

 

1982- Thom Riley, one of the stars of the TV cop show ChiPS was busted for driving stoned on Quaaludes.

 

1989- Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 official Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled- beakon. In 2007 President George W. Bush sent out Hanukkah cards featuring the White House Christmas tree.

2012- The Walt Disney Company spent $4.06 billion to buy Lucasfilm, ILM and the Star Wars rights. George Lucas retired to do philanthropic pursuits.

 

2089- According to Ridley Scott, today the good ship Prometheus lands on the Original Planet.

 

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 20, 2020

Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey, George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Agutter, Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, animator Amby Paliwoda, Charlie Callas, John Spencer, Elsie De Wolfe, Jonah Hill is 37. 

 

1819- The novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott was published in Edinburgh. The novel caused a sensation in Europe and was one of the great influences on Victorian England. It created our modern perception of Richard Lionheart, Prince John and Robin Hood. 

 

1860- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his most famous poem- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. “Oh, listen my children and you shall here, of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere. “ Although he got most of the facts wrong, it was a great success. Longfellow intended it to rouse Americans of his day to the threat of Southern Secession and Slavery. 

 

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days this was the day Phileas Fogg returned to London to complete his trip.

 

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Townes became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

 

1937- Nazis Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolf Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey ‘vermin’ but privately he enjoyed their animated antics.

 

1940- Captain America first appeared in a comic book.

 

1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit. 

 

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

 

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

 

1962- The Osmond Brothers premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

 

1957- Elvis Presley received his draft notice. G.I. Blues!

 

1968- Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day premiered.

 

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges. A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so prescription medicines he was on while Nixon was naming him honorary chairman of the War on Drugs.

 

1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blames his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fires him. This sets off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby throws her support against the mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck is overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

 

1974- Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too came out with the film Island at the Top of the World.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 19, 2020

Birthdays: King Phillip V of Spain (1683), Edith Piaf, Edwin Stanton, Tip O'Neil, Cicely Tyson, Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Urich, Robert Sherman, Jennifer Beals is 57, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Mel Shaw, Alyssa Milano is 48, Jake Gyllenhaal is 40

 

 

1686- According to Daniel Defoe, this was the day Robinson Crusoe was rescued from his deserted island. 

 

1732- The Pennsylvania Gazette announced the publication of a new enterprise by Dr. Benjamin Franklin writing under the penname Richard Saunders. The work was Poor Richard’s Almanac, an international best seller that made Franklin famous.

 

1914- Earl Hurd patented animation 'cels' (celluloids) and backgrounds. Before this cartoonists tried drawing the background settings over and over again hundreds of times or slashed the paper around the character and tried not to have it walk in front of anything. By the late 1990’s, most cels & cel paint were been replaced by digital imaging.

 

1918- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It Or Not" column in the New York Globe.

 

1919- The character Olive Oyl first appeared in the comic strip The Thimble Theater. Popeye appeared ten years later.

 

1926- The U.S. government passed a law that women authors can only legally copyright their works under their husband's names.. 

 

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts begin.

 

1957- The musical ‘The Music Man’ starring Robert Preston first debuted. "Seventy Six Trom-bones in the Big Parade…"

 

1958- First airing of the Disneyland TV holiday special “ From All of Us, to All of You.”

 

1971- Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ premiered. Based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. In America the film received an X Rating, more for the violence than the sexual situations. The sensation over the film caused so many incidents of urban violence, that with Kubrick’s permission, it was banned in England for three decades.

 

1974- The first personal computer went on sale. The Altair 8800, named for the planet in the 1955 sci-fi movie classic Forbidden Planet. The computer came in a kit that you had to build and it cost $397. The next year, two kids at Harvard named Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a programming language for it called BASIC.

 

1997- MTV dropped airing the rap song Smack My Bitch Up, by Prodigy.

 

2001- Peter Jackson’s film ‘The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring’ first opened.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 18, 2020

 

Birthdays: Antonio Stradivari, Karl Maria Von Weber, Ty Cobb, George Stevens, Ozzie Davis, Diane Disney-Miller, Anita O’Day, Paul Klee, Betty Grable, Willy Brandt, Keith Richards is 78, Leonard Maltin is 70, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario, Ray Liotta is 66, Katie Holmes is 42, Brad Pitt is 56, Steven Spielberg is 74

 

1812- The first volume of stories Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm came out. The world learns of Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.

 

1917- Universum-Film AG (UFA) was founded as a consolidation of private film companies in Berlin.

 

1919- in France, composer Cole Porter married divorcee Linda Thomas. They stayed together all their long lives even though she knew that he preferred male companions.

 

1931- Gangster Jacky "Legs" Diamond had a penchant for recovering after being shot repeatedly by pistols and shotguns. It was said he had so much lead in him he could attract a magnet. Today someone finally shot him down and he didn't get up.

 

1937- Mae West does a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam and Eve that was considered so racy CBS banned her from their network.

At the same time she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long!"

 

1939-Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels”.

 

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Killgallen as panelists.

 

1960- A young, eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walk away. He had been AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army, Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco. In 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

 

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night…a winoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts.

 

1962- UPA’s Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol directed by Abe Levitow, premiered on NBC.

 

1964- DePatie-Frelengs The Pink Phink, the first Pink Panther cartoon short.

 

1966- Chuck Jones 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered.

 

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces, for a solo singing career.

 

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again for residuals. (again...)

 

1983- Jean Shephard’s A Christmas Story opened to tepid acclaim and weak box office, but soon became an annual holiday classic. On Christmas Day many TV stations play it 24 hours straight.

 

1984- Christopher Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

 

1984- Pixar’s first short The Adventures of Andre and Wally-B released in theaters. Directed by Alvy Ray Smith and animated by John Lasseter.

 

1997- Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the John Hancock Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 31-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me.” Farley idolized the late John Belushi, who had also died of drugs and hard living at age 31. One writer recalled a drunken Farley once turned to him and asked:" Do you think Belushi is in heaven?"

 

1988- Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time opened.

 

1998- Dreamworks the “Prince of Egypt”, opened, or, as it was known in Hollywood "The Zion King".

2009- A massive blizzard buried the U.S. east coast. Washington D.C. got 24 inches, the most December snow since the 1920s.

 

2015- Star Wars VII, The Force Awakens opened. J.J. Abrams reboot of the old Star Wars franchise became a box office phenomenon. It earned $247 million in its opening weekend, and ended way over a billion and a half dollars.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 17, 2020

Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr., Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Pope Francis I, Bill Pullman is 67, Eugene Levy is 74, Giovanni Ribisi is 46, Armin Mueller-Stahl is 90, Wes Studi, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mila Jovovich is 45, Bart Simpson is 31.

 

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more resembling Mardi Gras. 

The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate observance centered on the family. Charles Dickens said he wrote the book to make some money. Had two flops and wanted to capitalize on the new fashion for family Christmas celebrations from by the example set by the royal family of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received it's world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo), then forgot about it when he died in 1828. A friend kept the manuscript in a closet for 43 years.

 

1892- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze- later American choreographer George Balanchine.

 

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously, especially when sung by Elvis Presley” Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

 

1963- Americans began to hear on their transistor radios a new sound from a band in England named the Beatles. “I wanna hold your hand” becomes a big hit and heralds the British rock invasion in 1964. 

 

1969- Tiny Tim, the campy, ukulele strumming crooner, married his Miss Vicky, or Victoria Budinger live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

 

1969- The Walt Disney Studio re-released Fantasia, and it was embraced by hippy stoners who liked to get high during screenings, Disney did a black-lite poster for it. It was the first time the 1940 film had ever made a profit. . 

 

1989- After appearing in some interstitial shorts on the variety Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons first premiered as a regular TV series.

 

1999- The film Stuart Little premiered. 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec. 16, 2020

 Birthdays: Ludwig Van Beethoven is 250, Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII's wife # 1), Marshal Gerbhard von Blucher, Lenoid Brezhnev, Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George Santayanna, Liv Ullmann is 82, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Miranda Otto is 53..

 

1900 -EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a lightning-drawing act on the vaudeville circuit. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison, then Edison engaged him to make a film of his act. He created this and several other trickfilms. It doesn’t move much more than his vaudeville act, His 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is considered the first animated cartoon.

 

1905- Variety magazine born. 

 

1913- Young English music hall actor named Charlie Chaplin got a job at Keystone Studios in Hollywood. His first film he would play a villain.

 

1935- Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who starred with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. She loved to party so much, she was nicknamed "Hot Toddy". She knew New York mobster Lucky Lucciano. Was she done in by the mob, her jealous director boyfriend, was it a suicide or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor running? The mystery’s never been answered.

 

1966- New York Police raid the offices of Bernard Spindle, a freelance surveillance expert who bugged the phones of the rich and powerful. They carted off all his tapes and records; including tapes he claimed proved Marilyn Monroe’s sexual hijinks with President John Kennedy. He was later informed all his tapes were lost. Spindle’s career was the inspiration for the movies The Conversation and the Enemy of the State.

 

1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey Joe’.

 

1966- Sergio Leone’s epic Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly premiered in Rome. The last of the Man with No Name trilogy. Clint Eastwood never worked with Leone again. 

 

1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song ‘American Pie’.

 

1973- O.J. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.

 

1978- The Disney short The Small One, directed by Don Bluth. 

 

1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, died.

 

1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.

 

1993- Producer Aaron Spelling fired star Shannon Dougherty off the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.

1998- Dreamworks The Prince of Egypt premiered.

 

1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice during a routine throat operation. 

 

2009- Roy E. Disney died, the Walt Disney nephew who oversaw the animation resurgence of the 1990s.