Animation Fun Facts for Feb 27, 2021

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Constantine 280AD, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Steinbeck, Ralph Nader, Marion Anderson, Chelsea Clinton, Franchot Tone, William Demarest, James Worthy, Mirella Freni, Judge Hugo Black, David Sarnoff the founder of the NBC network, Joanne Woodward, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Smith-creator of comic Bone

 

1814- Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony premiered.

 

1883- Musical impresario Oscar Hammerstein patented the first practical cigar rolling machine.

 

1888- Prof. Edweard Muybridge traveled to Menlo Park NJ for a private meeting with inventor Thomas Edison. There they discussed the possibilities of combining his zoopraxiniscope with Edison’s sound recording machine to create sound movies.  It came to naught. Muybridge left, then Edison had his staff immediately try to copy their own version of Muybridge’s device. Edison concluded, “ I doubt Motion Pictures will have any commercial application beyond the science laboratory. “

1919- Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets first premiered in London.

 

1939- The US Supreme Court outlawed sit down strikes. This was accepted in the patriotic climate of war tension but like all restrictions on labor rights it is still in effect today.

 

1941-At the 13^th Academy Awards, for the first time a Walt Disney cartoon did NOT win Best Animated Short.  MGM’s The Milky Way won.

 

1956- Elvis Presley released song Heartbreak Hotel.

 

1958- Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn died of a heart attack at age 66. His ruthlessness was legend in Hollywood. He once said " I don't get ulcers, I give them!" Hedda Hopper said:' You have to get in line to hate him." The entire Columbia staff was ordered, not requested, to attend a memorial service. Looking at the large crowd around the coffin, Red Skelton quipped: "You see, like Harry always said, give the people what they want, and they'll show up."

 

1968- CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, called “The Most Trusted Man in America”, was so shocked by what he saw of the Tet Offensive, that he went on a tour of Vietnam to see for himself. This night on his national news program Cronkite said he felt the Vietnam War was at best a stalemate, and all this suffering was for an uncertain goal. As President Johnson watched the broadcast, he said to his aides dejectedly “ If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, then that means I’ve lost the Middle…”

 

1977- In Toronto, the Canadian Mounties busted Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg for heroin possession. The Stones agree to do two benefit concerts as punishment.

 

1991- The Mitchell Brothers were tops in the pornography business, producing blockbusters like Behind the Green Doorand running the O’ Farrell Theater in San Francisco. This day, after doing a lot of drugs, Jim Mitchell shot his brother Arnie to death with a rifle. The Mitchell Brothers Court case marked the first use of 3D computer animation as a crime scenario tool. Jim served three years in prison, and died at home in 2007. He was buried next to his brother. 

 

1994- Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan skipped the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer so she could begin her multi-million dollar endorsements with DisneyWorld. She blows it all later when she’s caught by a hot mike during a Disney parade saying: “This is all so corny. I can’t believe 

 

ANIMATION FUN FACTS for FEB 26, 2021

Birthday: King Wenceslas of Bohemia-1361, Frances Marion, Victor Hugo, Buffalo Bill Cody, Emma Destin, Levi Strauss, Jackie Gleason, Fats Domino, Betty Hutton, Johnny Cash, William Frawley, Robert Alda, Tony Randall- born Arthur Rosenberg, Erhyke Bahdu, Tex Avery

 

1854- Composer Robert Schumann went mad and jumped off a bridge into the Rhine River. He was fished out and institutionalized. His schizophrenia grew out of advanced syphilis. He said he was not committing suicide but had thrown his wedding ring into the river to free his wife Clara of him, Then he relented and leaped into the raging ice filled water to get it back.

1942- Walt Disney received the Irving Thalberg Award at the Academy Awards. Leopold Stokowski got a special Oscar for his work on Fantasia, Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace won Best Score for Dumbo. 

1962- First day shooting on the first James Bond film Dr. No. The scene was in M's office and featured Bernard Lee, Peter Burton and the new discovery, Sean Connery.

 

1965- First day of shooting on the Beatle's second film 'Help!"

 

1983- Michael Jackson’s album Thriller went to #1 in the pop charts and stayed for weeks. Twenty six year later, after Jackson’s death in 2009, Thriller again went to #1 around the world.

 

1990- Cornell Gunther, lead singer for the DooWop group the Coasters, was shot dead at a Las Vegas traffic intersection."Yakkety-Yak, Don't Talk Back!"

 

1991- At a meeting in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee introduced the first Web Browser.

1996- Silicon Graphics Corp (SGI) bought Cray Research.

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 25, 2021

Birthdays: Enrico Caruso, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Zeppo Marx, St. Louis (King Louis IX of France), Bobby Riggs, Carl Eller, Sir Anthony Burgess, Neil Jordan, Larry Gelbart, Tom Courtenay, Sean Astin is 49, Tea Leoni, John Foster Dulles, Neil Jordan is 70

 

1932- TOONTOWN SCANDALS. Former Australian prizefighter Pat Sullivan was the producer of the Felix the Cat cartoons, the first true animation star. Although animator Otto Mesmer actually created him, Sullivan's name is the only one on the titles. Felix was one of the top film stars of the 1920s.  While Mesmer quietly drew pictures Sullivan lived the fast life of a roaring twenties celebrity. 

Mrs. Marjorie Sullivan had been having an affair with her chauffeur. After a nasty scene when husband confronted wife and the chauffeur fled, Mrs. Sullivan mysteriously fell out of her window to her death. The scandal was front page news and Sullivan never got over it. He soon drank himself to death, which during Prohibition was difficult to do. Sullivan's death and his failure to get Felix into sound cartoons doomed his studio. Otto Mesmer went on to animate the first Broadway light signs but did not receive any recognition for his contributions to animation until he was re-introduced to the public at a Bob Clampett night at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975. Kid animators Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito were in the audience.

 

1955- Davy Crockett at the Alamo with Fess Parker premiered on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color TV show.

 

1956- Poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes met at a party in Cambridge England.

 

1956- Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short “ Broomstick Bunny” with Witchy Hazel, premiered.

 

1957- Buddy Holly and the Crickets record "That'll Be the Day."

 

1964- Young Cassius Clay, later renamed Muhammad Ali, defeated Sonny Liston in 2:14 minutes into the 6th round for the heavyweight boxing crown. The odds were on Liston 8-1 but Clay said he would "Float like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee! When asked to comment about his defeat, Sonny Liston said: "Life, a funny thing."

 

1971- Oh Calcutta, the first play with lots of actors shedding their clothes, premiered on Broadway at the Belasco.

 

1983- Famous playwright Tennessee Williams was found dead in a New York hotel room. He died when he choked on a nose spray bottle cap that fell into his mouth while he was using the spray. Others say it was a Pepsi bottle cap. He was 71.

 

1996- Dr Haing Ngor, the doctor who survived the Cambodian Killing Fields holocaust and won an Academy Award in a movie of the same name, was killed in a robbery attempt outside his Los Angeles home.

 

2004- Movie star conservative-Catholic Mel Gibson’s movie the "The Passion of the Christ" opened in North America. The film was criticized for its perceived anti-Semitism, it was the first movie in which Jesus spoke his real language –Aramaic. Pastors bought blocks of tickets for their congregations. The film earned nearly a billion dollars, most of the profit earned by Mel Gibson, who was the films sole investor. 

 

animation fun facts for feb 24, 2021

B-Dazes: Roman Emperor Hadrian, Winslow Homer, Arrigo Boito, Wilhelm Grimm (of the brothers Grimm), Honus Wagner- early 1900’s baseball player called the Flying Dutchman, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Edward James Olmos, Barry Bostwick, Michel Legrand, James Farentino, illustrator Zdzislaw Beskinski, Michael Radford, Billy Zane, Steve Jobs, Abe Vigoda. 

 

1711- Handel’s opera Rinaldo premiered in London.

 1852- Russian writer and hypochondriac Nicolai Gogol burned the second half of his masterpiece DEAD SOULS on advice of a religious mystic to atone for his sins. He died two weeks later of "brain fever".

 

1937- MGM studio announced it acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz, to be made into a movie for their new star Judy Garland. They won out over Walt Disney and Hal Roach.

 

1942- The radio service The Voice of America first went on the air.

 

1943- Fed up with the bad climate in the studio because of the Strike, master animator Bill Tytla resigned from the Walt Disney Studio and returned back east.

 

1987- US Robotics sold the first 56k modems.

 

1988- PARODY LAWS- The US Supreme Court upheld the right of public figures to be satirized, by throwing out a lawsuit Rev Jerry Fallwell brought against Hustler Magazine owner Larry Flynt. Flynt published a gag of Rev Fallwell describing having sex with his mother in an outhouse. Fallwell tried to sue for libel. The Court ruled a public figure can be lampooned, so long as it is not presented as factual.

 

1989- According to the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks this is the day Laura Palmer’s body was found and F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper came to town to investigate.

 

1996- Los Angeles Angel Flight reopened.

 

2008- Pixar’s Ratatouille won the Oscar for best animated feature.

 

 

Animation fun facts for feb. 23, 2021

Birthdays: George Fredrich Handel, Samuel Pepys (pronounced 'peeps'), Mayer Amschel Rothschild-1743- founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, Victor Fleming, W.E.B. DuBois, Johnny Winter, Peter Fonda, William Shirer, Allan MacLeod Cormack-inventor of the CAT Scan, Kelly MacDonald, Tom Bodet, Neal McDonough, Kristin Davis is 56, Dakota Fanning is 27.

 

1821- In a house in Rome’s Piazza de Espagna, 25 year old English poet John Keats died of tuberculosis. As he was dying he joked: ” I can feel daisies growing over me”. He instructed that his grave marker bear only the self-deprecating message” Here lies one Who’s Fame was Written in Water.”

 

1898- French writer Emile Zola was arrested and charged with libel for his J'Accuse newspaper article that exposed the cover up of the Dreyfus Scandal. He jumped bail and fled to England until the scandal brought down the government.

 

1927- animator Les Clark began work at the Walt Disney Studio. He was the first of Walt’s Nine Old Men. 

 

1935- Walt Disney cartoon "The Band Concert." This was the first color Mickey Mouse cartoon.

 

1939 - Walt Disney receives a special Oscar for his classic 83-minute animated film SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, at the 11th Academy Awards held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Eleven-year-old child star Shirley Temple presents Walt with one statuette and seven miniature statuettes for "a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon." (Film director Frank Capra came up with the idea of a full-sized Oscar statuette with seven smaller ones descending in a row.)

 

1942- A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, in the dead of night a Japanese submarine surfaced off the California coast and fired it's cannon at lights it thinks is a city.  In reality it's an oil refinery near Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara. The brief bombardment caused $150 dollars in damage. The sub breaks radio silence to report to Tokyo that " Enemy coast sighted. Los Angeles is in Flames." The incident fueled the panic Californians had that the West Coast was ripe for enemy invasion.  The incident was lampooned in the Steven Spielberg comedy "1941."

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 22, 2021

Birthdays: Hungarian King Ladislas the Posthumous-1440, Shah Tahmasp I-1514, George Washington, Frederic Chopin, Edward St. Vincent Millay, John Mills, Edward Gorey, Luis Bunuel, Ted Kennedy, Dr. J- Julius Erving, Dwight Frye- Renfield in Dracula, Sparky Anderson, Sheldon Leonard, Charlie O. Finley, Nicky Lauda, Don Pardo, Jonathan Demme, Jeri Ryan, Lea Salonga is 50, Kyle McLachlan is 60, Rachael Dratch, Steve Erwin, Drew Barrymore is 46

 

 

1805- Birth in England of Sarah Flowers Adams, whose poetry is in the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.”

 

1879- Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first Five & Ten Cent-store in Utica, New York. F.W. Woolworths became a major national chain of stores.

 

1911-The Kester Ranch in the San Fernando Valley became the town of Van Nuys, named for early settler Issac Newton Van Nuys.

 

1929- Grand Central Airport in Glendale dedicated. Los Angeles first major airport. 

 

1924- President Coolidge becomes first president to address the nation over the radio.

 

1946- Dr. Selman Abraham created Streptomycin, the first antibiotic drug. 

 

2002- Animator, director Chuck Jones passed away at age 89.

 

2009- Slumdog Millionaire won best picture and best cinematography at the 81^st Academy Awards. The first movie to win that was shot completely digital, with no celluloid film used.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 21, 2021

Birthdays: Leopold Delibes, C. Brancusi, Anais Ninn, W.H. Auden, Hubert de Givenchy, Era Bombeck, Sam Peckinpah, Nina Simone, Robert Mugabe, Joe Oriolo, David Geffen, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kelsey Grammar is 66, Jennifer Love Hewitt is 42, Alan Rickman, Ellen Page is 34. Pebbles Flintstone is 57. 

1838- The first telegraph message sent by Samuel Morse "What hath God wrought?" He strung electric cables up and down several floors of his art studio using wood stretchers normally used for oil paintings. Morse was an artist and never wanted to be an inventor, he just did it to finance his painting.

1980- Ukrainian astronomer Ludmila Karachkina named a main belt asteroid for Walt Disney, asteroid 4017 Disneya. ”

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 20, 2021

Birthdays: Honore' Daumier, Nancy Wilson, Ansel Adams, Cindy Crawford, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robert Altman, Roger Penske. Phil Esposito, Jennifer O’Neill, Ivanna Trump, Mike Leigh, Lili Taylor, Sidney Poitier is 94

 

1831- The Battle of the Cahuenga Pass.  Angry California rancheros led by Juan de Alvarado and Pio Pico clashed with the Mexican territorial governor Miguel de Micheltorena. The only casualty was a mule. Alvarado later become governor himself.

 

1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movie The Lost World premiered. Based on Conan-Doyles 1912 novel. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films. O'Brien later did King Kongand trained kids like Ray Harryhausen.

 

1936- The film “Follow the Fleet” premiered, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

 

1947- In a lecture to the London Mathematical Society, Computer pioneer Alan Turing said the best way to test the intelligence of a computer would be to teach it to play chess. Earliest reference to interactive gaming.

 

1980- Bon Scott, vocalist for the band AC/DC, was found dead in a friend’s automobile choked in his own vomit.

 

2005- First episode of Seth Green’s Robot Chicken premiered on TV.

 

2006- The animated film Wallace & Gromet: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, won the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for the best British Film of the year. It beat out the Constant Gardner, and Pride & Prejudice. 

 

 

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb. 19, 2021

Birthdays: Copernicus is 1542, Luigi Boccherini, Smokey Robinson, Andre Breton, Lee Marvin, Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Karen Silkwood, Paul Terry, Paul Krause, Merl Oberon, Amy Tam, John Frankenheimer, Jeff Daniels, Benicio Del Toro is 55

 

1725- The first recorded case of spontaneous combustion.

 

1736- Georg Frederich Handel’s oratorio Alexander’s Feast premiered at Covent Garden.

 

1878- Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

 

1913- Crackerjacks start putting toy prizes in every box. Legend has it the name Crackerjack for the caramel corn was named for the reaction of Teddy Roosevelt trying it for the first time- These caramel-corns are Crackerjack!

 

1915- L.A. Times publisher and land baron Harry Chandler was indicted with 8 other prominent Angeleanos for conspiring to start a new revolution in Mexico. The Mexican government had seized their large land holdings there for land redistribution, and this was their quaint little way of getting them back. 

 

1944- Writer John Steinbeck asked that his name be taken off of the credits for the Alfred Hitchcock film version of “Lifeboat”. “In view of the fact that my script for the picture was distorted in production.”

 

1951-Poet philosopher Andre Gide died in Paris. Several things were quoted as his last words, my favorite is " Before you quote me, please make sure I'm conscious."

 

1954- The prototype Ford Thunderbird auto completed.

 

1960- Bill Keane's "Family Circus" cartoon strip debuts. 

 

1963- The book The Feminine Mystique was published. Betty Freidan’s analysis of contemporary women’s issues is considered the first shot of the modern Women’s Movement. 

 

1968- “ It’s a beautiful day in the Neighborhood…” Mister Roger’s Neighborhood debuted on National Education Television, later called PBS. Ordained Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers had been doing children’s shows similar in Pittsburgh and Canada since the 50’s, but today was the start of his national show. It would run unchanged for thirty-five years.

 

1995- Shapely actress Pamela Anderson married rocker Tommy Lee. On their honeymoon they shot an explicit sex tape on Lake Powell, that leaked onto the internet, becoming the first viral video. By 2000, one sixth of everything viewed on the world-wide web was about Pamela Anderson.

 

1990- ILM VFX artist John Knoll helped his brother grad student Tom Knoll create a surfacing and paint system for home computer use. Adobe bought it, and this day released it as Photoshop.

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 18, 2021

Birthdays: Queen Mary I Tudor -Bloody Mary, Pietro Guarnieri the violin maker, Harry Grover- Seeley one of the founders of Paleontology, Louis Tiffany, Andre Segovia, Wendell Wilkie, Billy de Wolfe, Enzo Ferrari, Yoko Ono is 88, Jack Palance, Milos Forman, Bobby Bachman of the Bachman Turner Overdrive, Gahan Wilson, Johnny Hart, Matt Dillon is 57, John Travolta is 67, John Hughes, Dr. Dre

 

1564- Michelangelo Buonarotti died just 6 days before his 89th birthday. He was carving yet another Pieta a few days before his death. 

 

1885- Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' published.

 

1888- The Hotel Coronado in San Diego Cal. opened for guests. It remains one of the largest remaining wood structures in the U.S. Several presidents stayed there, the Duke of Windsor met Wallis Simpson there, and films like the Marilyn Monroe film Some Like it Hot and The Stuntman were shot there.

 

1950- First Mr. Magoo cartoon "Ragtime Bear".

 

1953- First 3-D stereoscopic movie, "B'wana Devil" starring Robert Stack.

 

1970- The Chicago 7, Yippie leaders of the anti-war rioting in front of the Democratic presidential convention of 1968 were found innocent of all charges. David Dillinger, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden, Lee Weiner, John Froines and Rene Davis. One of their offenses was trying to get a 250 pound pig onto the floor of the Convention so they could get it nominated for President. 

 There is currently a movie about this in Oscar contention.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 16, 2021

Birthdays: The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia, Henry Adams, Charles Taze Russell founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Edgar Bergen, James Baskett, Sonny Bono, John MacEnroe, Frank Welker, John Schlesinger, Faith Hubley, Katherine Cornell, John Corligiano, Kim Jong Il, Levar Burton is 64, Ice-T is 63

Happy Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras. Carnevale, from the Latin Carne-meat, vale-goodbye. So goodbye to meat for the Lenten Fast.

 

1848- Frederic’ Chopin played his last concert in Paris. Slowly dying from incurable tuberculosis, the 38 year old retired to the isle of Majorca, and died a year later.

 

1923- Bessie Smith made her first recording-"Downhearted Blues".

 

1978- The first computer bulletin board goes on live. Two guys from Chicago named Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss built a Computerized Bulletin Board System that was an S-100 motherboard and CP/M, and a Hayes 300 band modem. It still runs today, but the Internet has taken the place that BBS's used to have.

 

1982- In Houston, three friends from Texas Instruments, Rod Canion, Bill Murto, and Jim Harris got together and formed the company COMPAQ. They designed their first portable computer on a back of a House of Pies placemat. Made with off the shelf components, and compatible with all IBM programs, it was a tremendous success.

 

1987-"Family Dog" episode on Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories show. The first direction by Brad Bird.

 

1994- Apple announced the introduction of the Apple Quicktake digital camera, the first camera that needed no film but could load images directly into a computer. They added it to the iPhone in 2007. Within ten years Polaroid and Kodak were filing for bankruptcy.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 15, 2021

Birthdays: Galileo, French King Louis XV, Michael Praetorius, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Tiffany, John Barrymore, Jane Seymour, Cesar Romero, Gale Sondergard, Melissa Manchester, Chris Farley, Claire Bloom, Chris MacDonald, Marissa Berenson is 74, Matt Groening is 67

Animator, computer pioneer and animation educator Vibeke Sorensen

 

1947- During the anti-Communist witch hunts, the FBI revoked the visa of famed documentary filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada, John Grierson because they thought his politics were too lefty.

 

1950- Walt Disney’s Cinderella opened in general theater release.

 

1954- Future President and b-movie star Ronald Reagan tried doing a stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room with the "Honey Brothers", a comedy troupe similar to Abbot & Costello. 

 

1965- Canada first flew the Maple Leaf flag.

 

1984- Touchstone Pictures created, so the Walt Disney Company could do more adult PG movies. Their first film was Splash, starring a tastefully topless mermaid Darryl Hannah.

 

1994- After months of insane bidding, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone beat out QVC’s Barry Diller to buy Paramount Pictures. The cost was $20 billion, although the studio’s net worth was estimated at $8 billion. When asked, Diller replied: “What’s done is done. Next.”

 

 

 

 

Birthdays: Joshua Norton aka Joshua Ist Emperor of the United States 1819, Jack Benny- real name Benjamin Koubielsky, Frederick Douglas, Christopher Latham Scholes- inventor of the typewriter, George Washington Ferris inventor of the Ferris Wheel, Pier Francesco Cavalli, Jimmy Hoffa, Vic Morrow, Skeezix Wallet (character in Gasoline Alley comic strip), Gregory Hines, Ignaz Friedman, Thelma Ritter, Carl Andersen, Hugh Downs, Jim Kelly, Florence Henderson, Meg Tilly, Alan Parker, Simon Pegg is 50,

Margaret Knight the inventor of the flat bottom paper bag still in use in supermarkets today.  

The character Lara Croft, is 53.

  

 Happy Valentines Day!

 

This holiday was originally the Roman fertility festival LUPERCALIA, when the young men of Rome wearing nothing but olive oil, would run through the streets waving oak branches over the heads of young girls to inspire fertility. They also spanked each other with little whips. Then they would all go to the orgy. 

  Keeping with the custom of the early Church to sanctify pagan holidays with saints days, Pope Gelasius I decided to rename the holiday for St.Valentine, who was martyred by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus in 295 A.D.. The olive oil, whips and orgy were out, but tradition has it that Valentine in prison kept communicating with his flock by writing little notes and tossing them through the bars. The notes were written on little leaves (silphium) that are the familiar heart shape we use today (which looks nothing like a real heart.). These notes or "Valentines" fused with the romance notion of the old Roman party and became a custom for lovers as early as the 14th century.

 

1886- Los Angeles began to export its first trainload of oranges back east.

 

1887- Several leading French intellectuals including Guy De Maupassant, Honore’Balzac, and Charles Gounod published a letter to the President of the Republic begging him not to build the Eiffel Tower" A Useless Monstrosity, which even America with it's crazed passion for commerce has the sense to reject! And what if it lasts 20 years?" There were plans to pull down the Eiffel tower 1907, but by then it had a new value as a wireless radio antenna.

  Novelist Guy de Maupassant, hated the tower but still went to its restaurant every day. When asked why, he said, "Because it is the only place in Paris where I cannot see it".

 

1907- Golden Books incorporated. One of their artists was Gustav Tennegren, who would  become a stylist of Walt Disney's Pinocchio.

 

1927-Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense film “The Lodger” opened in London.

 

1931- Tod Browning's film of the play Dracula, starring Hungarian actor's union organizer and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi, premiered.

 

1946- John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert unveil the ENIAC, the first all electronic circuited computer, started up at the University of Pennsylvania.  ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator.

 

1962- First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave a tour to network television cameras of the private living quarters of the White House. It’s the first time most Americans had ever seen the inside of the Executive Mansion. She worked mostly without a script, adding her own details as she went along. The day after the broadcast, Pres. Kennedy called the FCC just to see how here Nielsen ratings were. They were much higher than his speeches ever were. 

 

1967- Former pinup model Betty Page married Harry Lear.

 

1979- Digital music composer Walter Carlos, who scored the film A Clockwork Orange, announced he had undergone a sex change and was now Wendy Carlos.

 

1990- As the Voyager 1 spacecraft was leaving our solar system, Dr. Carl Sagan had the spaceship look back and take a family photo of our planet system, 3.7 billion miles away. A few faint dots on a distant sunbeam.

 

1991-Meg Ryan married Dennis Quaid.

 

 

ANIMATION FUN FACTS FOR FEB 13, 2021

Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak is 88, George Segal is 87, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer is 75, Stockard Channing is 77, Kelly Hu, Mena Suvari

 

1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna. Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss. An anecdote from the time is that Strauss's stepdaughter approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. Brahms inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube," and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."

 

1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned in disgust his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art when he was criticized for having women students in his art class drawing male nudes. At that time the men still were not fully nude, but wore a kind of thong with a pouch for their naughty bits.

 

1914- ASCAP founded.

 

1917- Mata Hari, was arrested in Paris. Known in Berlin as agent H-21.

 

1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature Spanky MacFarland.r54fr

 

1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that the film needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Gable, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controlling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind. 

At the end Victor Fleming had one more tantrum when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor equal co- screen credit. Yet despite it all, Gone with the Wind became a box office success. For many years critics and polls declared the greatest Hollywood movie ever made. A decade after its release, Clark Gable went up to David O. Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star."

 

1937- Hal Foster's comic book hero Prince Valiant first appeared.  

 

1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE! Mattel introduced the plastic nymph, from a German doll named 'Bild Lilli" based on a character in a comic strip by Reinhard Beuthin. Mattel co-owner Ruth Handler had it re-designed and changed to 'Barbie" after the nickname of her daughter Barbara. 

 

1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.

 

1996- The off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson, premiered

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 12, 2021

BIRTHDAYS-Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin are born on the same day in 1809, although an ocean apart; Austrian Emperor Francis II, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Joe Garagiola, Luigi Boccherini, John L. Lewis, Bill Russell, Franco Zeffirelli, Lorne Greene, Joe Don Baker, Arsenio Hall, Christina Ricci is 41, Josh Brolin is 53.

 

1924- RHAPSODY IN BLUE- Band leader Paul Whiteman had commissioned a rhapsody for Jazz Band from the famous composer George Gershwin. Tonight at a concert at the Aeolian Hall in New York City it premiered in a long bill of "Modern Music". Also on the bill was jazz interpretations of "Yes We have no Bananas" and "Kitten on the Keys." Sergei Rachmaninoff, Fritz Kriesler, Igor Stravinsky and Leopold Stokowski were in attendance.

Interestingly enough, Gershwin’s orchestrator was Ferde Grofe’, the composer famous for the Grand Canyon Suite. It was Grofes’ idea to bring in a jazzman named Ross Gorman to do the opening clarinet solo. While rehearsing the piece, Gorman took Gershwin’s opening 17 note ascent and ‘smeared’ the riff to the long high note, creating the famous opening. Gershwin liked it so much he told him to play it always that way. 

Gershwin was originally going to call his piece Concert Rhapsody for Jazz Band & Piano or American Rhapsody but his brother Ira Gershwin was inspired by some Whistler paintings he saw recently at a museum called Nocturne in Blue and Green and Harmony in Grey and Green. He suggested Rhapsody in Blue. 

 

1947- THE BIRTH OF THE 'NEW LOOK' The Paris fashion show where designer Christian Dior defined the look for women of the 1950s into the early 60's: Wasp waists, gloves and patent leather accessories, pleated mid length skirts. 

 

1964- Miles Davis and his band played Carnegie Hall. 

 

1967- London police arrest Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Marianne Faithful for doing drugs and doin’the nasty. 

 

1976- actor Sal Mineo was killed outside his car port in West Hollywood. Marilyn Monroe and Shelley Winters once shared an apartment in the same building. Mineo's murder remained unsolved for many years and there were rumors that he was done in by a gay acquaintance, but the killer turned out to be a routine robber who wanted money.

 

1994-"WHY ME! WHY ME?!" The Winter Olympics at Lillehammer began, which are remembered mainly for figure skater Tanya Harding hiring a hit man to break her rival  Nancy Kerrigan's kneecaps with a steel pipe. Despite all the hub-bubb the gold was won by Ukrainian skater Oksana Baiyul who was arrested a year later for drunk driving.

Nancy Kerrigan signed a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Disney, which she succeeded in blowing within a month by making fun of Disneyworld during a parade. Within range of a microphone she whispered." This is all so corny! I can’t believe I’m doing this." When someone asked if Tanya Harding could get any commercial endorsements, it was pointed out that she's an asthmatic who smokes Marlboros.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb. 11, 2021

Birthdays: Thomas Edison, Leslie Nielsen, Eva Gabor, Tina Louise-Ginger on Gilligan’s Island is 87, Rudolph Firkusny, Joe Mankiewicz, Sidney Sheldon, Burt Reynolds, Sergio Mendes of the band Brazil 67, Al Eugster, Brandy Norwood, Bobby Picket -who recorded the Monster Mash, Jennifer Aniston is 52, Sheryl Crow is 59

 

1789- In Italy, American consul William Short wrote his friend Thomas Jefferson that as per his request he had obtained for him a pasta mold. The first known introduction of pasta in America. 

 

1933- 19 year old Japanese schoolgirl Kiyoko Matsumoto committed suicide by jumping into the thousand foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima. This act started a bizarre fashion in Japan, and in the ensuing months three hundred young girls did the same thing.

 

1936- Famed German Expressionist animator Oscar Fischinger escaped Nazi Germany for the U.S.

 

1948- Famed Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein died of a heart attack.

 

1963- Bell Jar author Sylvia Plath laid out bread and butter and two glasses of milk for her children, then stuck her head into an oven and committed suicide. Her poet-laureate   husband Ted Hughes was in bed with another woman when he got the news. Hughes wrote stories for his children like The Iron Giant to explain death and loss.

 

1975- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead the Tory Party in England. The green-grocers daughter from Finchley became the Iron Lady and dominated British politics until 1990.

 

1976- Chuck Jones TV special "Mowgli’s Brothers."

 

1995- Disney Studios planned neighborhood suburban community Celebration opened.

 

2000- Disney’s The Tigger Movie premiered. Directed by Jun Falkenstein one of the first animated features directed by a woman.

 

2005- Playwright Arthur Miller died at 90.

 

2012- Singer actress Whitney Houston was found dead in her bathtub. She was 48, She was preparing for the Grammy Awards when she had a heart attack and drowned in the water.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 10, 2021

Birthdays: Former British PM Harold Macmillan, Jimmy Durante, Bertholdt Brecht, Leontyne Price, Roberta Flack, tennis great Bill Tilden, Lon Chaney Jr., Stella Adler, Mark Spitz, Boris Pasternak, Dame Judith Anderson, Greg Norman, Donavan, Dr Alex Comfort author of the Joy of Sex, Michael Apted, Jerry Goldsmith, Robert Wagner, Laura Dern is 54

 

1862- After a hard night partying with fellow poet Swinburne, pre-Raphaelite Dante Rossetti returned home to find his wife dead of an opium overdose. 

 

1870- The town of Anaheim Cal founded. No Disneyland yet. The name means Ana, as in Santa Anna River, and Heim, the German word for home. So- Home of the Santa Anna Rover. Most of the settlers then were German immigrants.

 

1888- The City of Long Beach incorporated.

 

1920- Major League Baseball banned the spitball pitch, scuff ball, licorice ball, all attempts to effect a baseball by defacing its surface.

 

1929- Elsa Lanchester married Charles Laughton.

 

1938- RKO screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant “ Bringing Up Baby” premiered.

 

1940- MGM's "Puss gets the Boot" the first Tom and Jerry cartoon and the first collaboration of the team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

 

1949- The premiere of Arthur Miller’s play "Death of a Salesman".

 

1966- CBS co-ops broadcasting the senate Kennan Hearings on the conduct of the Vietnam War with reruns of "I Love Lucy'. CBS news division president Fred Friendly quit in protest. 

 

1966- Jaqueline Susanne’s novel The Valley of the Dolls first published. Although critics considered it cheap and trashy- Time Magazine called it “Dirty Book of the Month”, and Truman Capote called Susanne in her heavy sixties eye shadow, a “Truck Driver in Drag” Valley of the Dolls sold like wildfire.  Its frank portrayal of single women enjoying casual sex and taking drugs in suburbia was a big step in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.

1992- The children’s book- The Stinky Cheese Man debuted.

 

1996- IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess master Garry Kasparov. The first time a computer ever beat a human chess champion. 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 9, 2021

Birthdays: Constantine XI Paleaologus- the last Byzantine Emperor 1404, President William Henry Harrison, Samuel Tilden, Carmen Miranda, Alban Berg, Ronald Colman, Ernest Tubb, King Vidor, Mamie Van Doren, Roger Mudd, Alberto Vargas, Carole King, Bill Veeck, Fred Harman, Joe Pesci is 78, Zhang Zhu-Yi, Disney animator Bill Justice, Frank Frazetta, Mia Farrow is 76, Mena Suvari is 42, Ciaran Hinds is 68, Jerry Beck.

 

1914- “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” The Max Sennett Keystone short where Charlie Chaplin first donned his baggy pants, little mustache and derby to create The Tramp, one of the most beloved characters in film history. He was so popular, even young Adolf Hitler was advised to change his mustache, because he looked too much like Chaplin.

 

1927- Mae West caused a scandal by writing and staring in a play called “Sex”, and mounting a new production about homosexual life entitled “ Drag”. This day the NY Police raided her offices, shut down production and carted her off to jail. She emerged after 8 days in a work-house more popular than ever.

 

1964- Ed Sullivan introduced the English rock band the Beatles to a nationwide TV audience. It was a "Rrrreally Big Shewww!" (Sullivan’s signature line)

 

1968-"You did it! You Finally did it! Oh, Damn you all to Hell!!" the film The Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston premiered.

 

1971- The Sylmar Quake (6.8) rocks L.A.

 

1989- In testimony before the New Jersey State Senate World Wrestling Federation President Vince McMahon admit that the sport of wrestling is purely entertainment, and no one actually gets hurt. I’m shocked, shocked!

 

1990- Singer Del Shannon, who had a hit with the 1961 song Runaway, shot himself with a 22 rifle. 

 

1996- German World War II fighter ace Adolf Galland died peacefully at age 86. While other aces had skulls or dice painted on their planes, Galland had a Mickey Mouse on the tail of his Messerschmidt ME109F. Hey Adolf, is that the RAF on your tail? Worse, its the Disney Legal Department! Ach, Himmel!

 

2001- Actor Tom Cruise filed for divorce from Nicole Kidman.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb 8, 2021

Birthdays: St Proclus of Constantinople 412AD, Jules Verne, Dmitri Mendeleev- inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements, James Dean, William Tecumseh Sherman, animator Ivan Ivano-Vano, Lana Turner, Jack Lemmon, Alejandro Rey, Ted Koppel, Nick Nolte, Gary Coleman, Robert Klein, Seth Green, composer John Williams is 89

 

1864- Abraham Lincoln visited Matthew Brady's Photo Studio and posed for the photo's that would one day be on the Penny and Five-dollar bill. 

 

1865- Russian monk Gregor Mendel publishes his laws of heredity. The science of genetics is born.

 

1866- Elizabeth Cady-Stanton pleaded in the New York State legislature that neglect, abandonment and wanton cruelty on the part of a husband be made grounds for divorce. Her ideas became law, one hundred years later, in 1966.

 

1893- THE FIRST RECORDED STRIPTEASE - discounting Salome. At Paris' famed Moulin Rouge club an artist's model named Mona decided to get an edge in a beauty contest judged by art students by disrobing to music while walking up and down the stage. She was arrested and fined 100 francs and the students rioted. 

 

1910- Boy Scouts of America incorporated on the British model.

 

1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premiered as part of a vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by any living thing.  The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.

 

1915- THE BIRTH OF A NATION or The Clansman premiered at Clunes Auditorium in Los Angeles. Film pioneer D.W. Griffith's racist movie was considered for many years the first American feature length film. The discovery in 1999 of a 1913 Richard III film predates it. 

   D.W. Griffith in later years lost his fortune and became a drunken has-been. Watching him at Chasen's Restaurant in the 1940’s beg MGM studio head Dore Schary for work, inspired Billy Wilder to write SUNSET BLVD. 

 

1928- Englishman John Logie Baird transmitted a still television image across the Atlantic from England to Hartsdale New York. It was a still image of a woman. 

 

1960- Adolph Coors III the heir to the Coors beer empire was killed in a failed kidnapping attempt.  Joseph Corbett Jr was apprehended in Canada and charged with the crime. Ironically, Adolph Coors was reputedly allergic to beer.

 

1961- Nebraska teenager and future movie star Nick Nolte was busted for the first time. He was accused of selling fake Draft cards so his friends could buy alcohol. 

 

1966- The Vatican closed its office of censorship.

 

1967- Georgy Girl by the Seekers goes to #1 in pop charts.

 

1976 - TAXI DRIVER, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks, was released.

 

1994- Screaming, “You cut me off!” Jack Nicholson destroyed the windshield of a neighbor’s car with a golf club. He settled the matter out of court.

 

2001- Walt Disney’s park California Adventure opened.

 

2007- Anna Nicole Smith, centerfold, pole dancer, heiress and reality TV star, died from an overdose of prescription drugs. She was 39.

 

Animation Fun Facts for Feb. 7, 2021

Birthdays: St. Thomas Moore, Eubie Blake, Sinclair Lewis, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Laura Ingalls Wilder writer of Little House on the Prairie, Gay Talese, James Spader is 61, Chris Rock is 56, Eddie Izzard is 59, Ashton Kutcher is 43

 

 

1882- John L. Sullivan defeated top boxer Paddy Ryan in a ferocious bareknuckle brawl in Gulfport Mississippi. There were no official boxing championship belts yet, but John L. Sullivan boldly declared himself the Champion of the World. The title stuck. He’d travel from town to town, building his legend: "I’m John L. Sullivan and I can lick any man in the house!!” and he always did. 

 

1900- In Barcelona a new young talent named Pablo Picasso had his first show. 

 

1910- The Town of Hollywood was absorbed into the growing City of Los Angeles.

 

1931- Aviatrix Amelia Earhart married publisher George Putnam.

 

1939, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep was published. 

 

1940- Disney's second animated feature "Pinocchio" opened at the Central Theater in Manhattan. It cost a staggering $2.6 million to make. 

 

1964- THE BRITISH ROCK INVASION BEGAN. Thousands of screaming fans welcomed THE BEATLES to New York for their first U.S. Tour. The last music out of England to be taken seriously by Americans was The Lambeth Walk, now the UK announced itself as a powerhouse of rock & roll.

 

1964- The GI Joe action figure born. In 1974 it got the Kung-Fu Grip.

 

2014- The Lego Movie premiered. Directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord.