Animation Fun Facts for June 30, 2021

Birthdays: Buddy Rich, Lena Horne, Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Hayward, Deanna Durbin, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, William Goldman, Martin Landau, Essa-Pekka Salonen, David Alan Grier, Vincent D’Onofrio, Monica Potter, Mike Tyson is 55, Michael Phelps, Rupert Graves is 58

1856- Charles Dickens does his first public reading from his works in London.

1859- Daredevil Emile Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. The stunt was duplicated by Nick Wallenda in Spring 2014.

1933- A group of actors met in secret at Frank (the Wizard of Oz) Morgan’s house, and form the Screen Actors Guild. The secrecy was because studios threatened to blacklist anyone who so much as breathed the word union. Among the founding members that night are James Cagney, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Frederic March, Robert Montgomery and Boris Karloff. Karloff said every founding member carried pockets full of nickels so they could use the nearest payphone to talk. They feared the studios had gotten the police to tap their home and office phones. 

1936- Margaret Mitchell's bestseller “Gone With the Wind" first published.

1936- the 40 hour work week was made a federal law. Animation won't admit it until 1941.

1937- Congress voted to shut down the Federal Theater Project, the division of the government funded WPA that produced plays for Depression wracked poor people. The FTP produced cutting edge works of Orson Welles, Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neill and at it’s height reached 25 million people. But conservative senators thought it had been taken over by lefties. Theater actors working in L.A. on a hit production of Pinocchio held a mock funeral for the puppet. Over it’s casket was the headstone FTP: Born 1934, Killed by an Act of Congress, June 30th 1937.

1940- Female Cartoonist Dale Messick takes over the Brenda Star comic strip and adds the trademark sparkles. Born Dalia Messick, she used her nickname Dale to throw off publishers who would reject samples they knew came from a woman.

1948- Bell Laboratories announced the Transistor, a possible substitute for radio-vacuum tubes. So early computers can shrink from the size of a building to the size of a bus. In 1980 the silicon chip reduced the same computing power to the size of your fingernail.

1950- The Goofy short Motor Mania released.

1953- The first Chevy Corvette rolled off the assembly line. Only three thousand were made that first year, all white with red interior, selling for $3,500. 

1971 - WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY was released. Directed by Mel Stuart, adapted from the 1964 novel CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY by Roald Dahl (who wrote the screenplay) and starring Gene Wilder. The Oompha Loompha song titling was done by a very early CGI technique called Scanimate.

1975- Just 4 days after divorcing Sonny Bono, Cher married rocker Gregg Allman.

1996 - Margaux Hemingway, considered the first modern Supermodel, committed suicide at 41. Her grandfather Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, and his father before him.

1989- Spike Lee’s movie Do The Right Thing opened. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 29, 2021

History for 6/29/2021

Birthdays: Bernard Hermann, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Slim Pickens, Nelson Eddy, Gary Busey, John Hench, Little Eva, Harmon Killabrew, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Anna Sophie-Mutter, Leroy Anderson, Maria Conchita Alonso, Robert Evans, Matthew Weiner, Brett McKenzie, Ray Harryhausen, Roger Allers

1801- Ludwig van Beethoven confessed to a friend that he was going deaf.

1935- Disney short Who Killed Cock Robin? Directed by Dave Hand. 

1936- Pope Pius XI published an encyclical warning of the evils of Motion Pictures. “They glorify Lust and Lascivious behavior.”

1940 – ROBIN THE BOY WONDER- According to Batman Comics, this day mobsters rubbed out a circus highwire team known as the Flying Graysons, leaving their son Dick an orphan. He was taken in by millionaire Bruce Wayne so Batman could have his Robin.

1940- First day shooting on the film Citizen Kane.

1950- The Hollywood 10 were given jail sentences for contempt of Congress.

1956- Marilyn Monroe married author Arthur Miller.

1967- At 2:30AM outside of Biloxi, Mississippi, actress Jane Mansfield and her dog were killed in a car crash when their car slammed into the rear of a parked truck. Her children including Marisa Hargitay were in the back seat but unhurt.  Ever since then, high chassis trucks have to have Mansfield bars in the back. 

1968 - "Tip-Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Tiny Tim peaks at #17.

1978- Actor Bob Crane, best known as the star in the television series Hogan’s Heroes, was found beaten to death with an electric cord wrapped around his neck in a Scottsdale Arizona hotel room. Around his room were piles of his homemade porn tapes. He was 49. Years later his sons gathered all of the tapes, had them digitized and posted on an online paysite, where you can watch the videos of their dad having sex. The killer was never found. 

2007- Pixar’s Ratatouille premiered, directed by Brad Bird.

2007- Steve Jobs introduced the iphone, initiating the age of the smartphone. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 28, 2021

Birthdays: King Henry VIII, Luigi Pirandello, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dillinger, Richard Rogers, Gilda Radner, Cartoonist George Booth is 95, Leon Panetta, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kathy Bates is 73, John Cusack is 55, Mel Brooks is 95

  

1868- Twenty something artist Claude Monet was so broke and depressed he jumped in the Seine River. After splashing around for a while, he decided it’s silly to drown himself, so he swam to the riverbank and went for a drink. He outlived all the Impressionist painters of his generation, dying famous in 1926 at age 86.

1928- Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines recorded West End Blues.

1955- Walt Disney sent a memo to his studio employees to please come to the grand opening day of Disneyland Park on July 17. He was concerned not enough people would show up the first day, and it would look bad on live TV.  He shouldn’t have worried. 100,000 people came that first day.

1975- Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling died during open heart surgery. He was 50. His last movie script was called The Man, about resistance of the Washington powerful to the first black president of the United States.

Animation Fun Facts for June 26, 2021

Birthdays: Peter Lorre- born Laszlo Lowenstein, Pearl Buck, Abner Doubleday, Babe Deidrickson-Zacharias, Willy Messerschmidt, Claudio Abbado, Woolie Reitherman, Gregg LeMond, Vittorio Storaro, Colonel Tom Parker, Pat Morita, Chris Isaak, Derek Jeter, Paul Julian, Chris O’Donnell, Sean Hayes is 51, Wallace Tripp

1870- Atlantic City inaugurated its ocean side boardwalk; the first of it's kind in the US.

1888- Scots writer Robert Louis Stevenson shipped out from San Francisco to wander the South Pacific, and finally settle in Samoa.

1906- The first Grand Prix automobile race was held at Le Mans, France. The winner was Hungarian Ferenic Szisz with a top speed of 63 miles an hour! Szisz also was sporting those newfangled rubber tires on rims, which change faster than regular wood wheels.

1916- The Cleveland Indians baseball team began the custom of players wearing numbers on their uniforms.

1922- Montgomery’s Country House opened in the Los Feliz Area of LA. In 1926 it changed its name to The Tam O’ Shanter.  In the 1930s it was the nearest bar to Walt Disney’s Hyperion Studio, so animators called it “ the commissary”. It is still in business today. Walt Disney’s favorite table is marked.

1924 - The Ziegfeld Follies opened on Broadway.

1925- Charlie Chaplin has a lavish Hollywood premiere for his new film The Gold Rush.

He had edited the film in secret in an upstairs hotel room in Salt Lake City to keep away from the public and his wife’s bill collectors.

1925- From his Soho London flat, John Logie Baird invented an early form of television. The Boob Tube has no one single Tom Edison-like inventor, but many claimants. The Englishman joined the ranks of others who claimed to have invented TV first, including Philo Farnsworth, Bell Labs, Vladimir Zworkin, and Dr. Lee DeForrest.

1927- The Cyclone Rollercoaster ride debuted at Coney Island Amusement Park. It was built on the site of the Switchback Railway, the oldest rollercoaster. 

1959- Disney short Donald in Mathmagic Land premiered with the film Darbie O’Gill and the Little People.

1964 - Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" album.

1965-"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man " by the Byrds hits number one on the US pop charts. Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics. William Shatners version became the most well known.

1977 - Elvis Presley does his last public performance, in Indianapolis.

1984- Campy singer Tiny Tim married Miss Vicky on the Johnny Carson show during a live broadcast.

1997- a novel called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the product of five years work by a new writer named J.K. Rowling with her own drawings, was published by Bloomsbury in the UK with an initial print run of five hundred copies. It became a world wide phenomenon. I

Animation Fun Facts for June 25 , 2021

Birthday: George Orwell, Marc Charpentier, Lord Louis Mountbatten, General Hap Arnold, Cajun musician Clifton Chenier, Sidney Lumet, Walter Brennan, Willis Reed, George Abbott, Carly Simon, June Lockhart, Alex Toth, Peyo (the creator of the Smurfs), Jimmy Dyne-o-Mite Walker, George Michaels, Justice Sonya Sotomayor, Mike Myers is 58, Ricky Gervais is 60

1870- Richard Wagner's opera Die Walkure premiered in Munich. 

1910- First performance of Stravinsky's ballet "Firebird" by Diagheilev and his Ballet Russe.  Stravinsky used to refer to the dancers as "A bunch of knock-kneed Lolitas".

1910- Congress passed the Mann Act, sometimes called the White Slave Trafficking Act. It stated you couldn’t coerce a woman across state borders for immoral purposes. Penalties are doubled for legal minors, but the law says nothing about boys.

1934- Milt Kahl's first day at the Walt Disney Studios. It was said he was the first artist to ever show Walt a real portfolio of drawings to get hired.

1940- Young actor, and liberal labor activist Ronald Reagan married his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.

1949- Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short “ Longhaired Hare” premiered.

1951- After losing a power struggle to Dory Schary, Louis B. Mayer announced he was stepping down as head of MGM. Mayer in his time was the most powerful man in Hollywood. He kept an all white office modeled after Mussolini’s in Rome. 

1951 - 1st color TV broadcast-CBS' Arthur Godfrey from NYC to 4 cities.

1953- The film Robot Monster premiered. It has attained cult film status as being one of the worst motion pictures ever made. The director later killed himself.

1967- The "Our World" Beatles concert, the first television event to attempt a worldwide satellite linkup. They sing and record "All You Need is Love" live in front of an audience of 400.

1978- The Rainbow Flag, symbolizing LGBT rights first flown.

1981- Bill Gates and Paul Allen file papers to incorporate their company Microsoft.

1982- Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film Blade Runner opened.

1980- Disney’s film Herbie Goes Bananas, premiered.

1997- Disney's animated film Hercules opened in theaters.

2009- Michael Jackson, called the King of Pop, died after his personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray administered a powerful sedative named Propofol to help him sleep and it stopped his heart instead. He was 50, and been performing on stage since the age of 5.

Animation Fun Facts for June 24, 2021

Birthdays: Earl Kitchener, the Sirdar of Omdurman, Roy O. Disney, E.I. Dupont, Ambrose Bierce, Jack Dempsey, John Ciardi, Mick Fleetwood, Phil Harris- singer and voice of Baloo in Disney’s Jungle Book, Billy Casper, Michelle Lee, Claude Chabrol, Chief Dan George, Pete Hamill, Peter Weller, Sherry Springfield

1901- The first exhibit in a Paris salon on the Rue Lafitte of a Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso.

1945- Meet the Press debuted on radio. Two years later it moved to television and it remains TV’s longest running program.

1949 - "Hopalong Cassidy" becomes the1st network western on television-NBC.

1963 - 1st demonstration of a home video recorder, at BBC Studios, London

1970 – The Mike Nichols movie "Catch 22" opened in movie theaters.

1994- Disney's The Lion King goes into regular release in theaters.

1997- Brian Keith, actor (Family Affair, The Parent Trap), shot himself at 75. He was suffering from incurable emphysema and lung cancer and tired of fighting the disease.

2011- Cars 2.

Animation Fun Fact for June 23, 2021

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Augustus, Josephine Bonaparte, Alan Turing, Bob Fosse, James Levine, Dan Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Mather, Joss Whedon, Dr. Alfred Kinsey the sex researcher, Edward VIII, aka the Duke of Windsor, Selma Blair, Justice Clarence Thomas, Frances MacDormand is 64

1868- Christopher Latham Scholes patents the typewriter. In 1873, he sold his patent to the Remington Company, who had made rifles. 

1963- In Disneyland the Enchanted Tiki Room opened with the first animatronics (the birds).

1979- The Knack released the single My Sharona.

1989- Tim Burton’s film " Batman" opened.

1989- Disney’s Honey I Shrank the Kids opened with the Roger Rabbit short Tummy Trouble.

Animation Fun Facts for June 22, 2021

Birthdays: Captain George Vancouver, Eric Maria Remarque, John Dillinger, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Mike Todd, Billy Wilder, Joe Papp, Bill Blass, Oskar Fischinger, Pistol Pete Maravich, Klaus Maria Brandauer is 78, Ed Bradley, Emmanuelle Seigner, Prunella Scales, Meryl Streep is 72, Konrad Zuse, Kris Kristofferson, Matt Doherty, Floyd Norman is 86.

1894 - Harry Houdini marries Bessie Rahner. She remained devoted to him even after his death. Every Halloween for twenty years she held a séance to try and contact him.

1933- Max Fleischer promoted Lillian Friedman to be the first woman animator in American commercial animation. She animated a test, drawing Betty Boop and with the connivance of a camera woman, had it filmed without a name slate. Then she had it screened in front of the crew at dailies. Dave Fleischer said "Hire that guy!" "It's a girl", he was told. And so Lillian Friedman (Astor) was hired at 25 dollars a week when the male animators were making up to $125.00. I asked her about this and she said "It was the Depression and I was supporting my husband who was out of work. I wasn't angry then, but I am angry now."

1941- Walt Disney assistant animator Bill Hurtz married Mary Whitney, one of Walt Disney’s secretaries. Hurtz later went on to become an award winning director at UPA.

1966 – The Mike Nichols film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened. Based on the play by Edward Albee and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the first American movie to use four letter cuss words. Just a year before comedian Lenny Bruce had gone to jail for saying the same words, although everyone including President Johnson swore in everyday parlance.

1969- Singer actress Judy Garland OD’s on sleeping pills. She was 47. Whether it was an accident or a suicide we will never know. A pillhead from early age, she had gotten hooked when MGM chief Louis B. Mayer ordered studio nurses to put her on amphetamines so she would have the energy to finish the Wizard of Oz.  

1977- Walt Disney’s The Rescuers opened in theaters.

Animation Fun Facts for June 21, 2021

Birthdays: Martha Washington, Alexander Pope, Berkeley Breathed, Al Hirschfeld, Al Martinez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judy Holliday, Benazir Bhutto, Jane Russell, Mariette Hartley, Bernie Koppel, Rick Sutcliffe, Maureen Stapleton, Joe Flagherty, Juliet Lewis, Tony Scott, Chris Pratt is 42, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge is 39. 

1907 - E W Scripps founded United Press Agency.

1939- Eugene O’Neill’s wife Carlotta wrote in her diary- “Gene kept me up all night talking about his outline for a new play about his family”- The Long Days Journey into Night. It took him two years to write, and it almost killed him.

1947- To silence a jeering crowd of racists at a Brooklyn Dodgers-Cincinnati game, Kentucky native PeeWee Reese put his arm around Jackie Robinson. 

1948- Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3-rpm long playing record, the LP.  RCA and David Sarnoff tried to compete with the 45-rpm record, but all it was good for was singles. The 33 1/3 dominated recording until replaced by the Compact Disc in the 1980’s.

1965- The Byrds release record Hey Mr. Tambourine Man. 

1978 - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's musical "Evita," premieres in London.

1988- Who Framed Roger Rabbit? premiered at Radio City Music Hall.  It opened generally three days later.

1996- Walt Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame released generally.

1998- Paleontologists in Canada announced the discovery of the largest Tyrannosaurus turd ever found. The search intensified for a T-Rex with a relaxed look on his face.

Animation Fun Facts for June 20, 2021

Birthdays: Wolf Tone, Jacques Offenbach, Lillian Hellman, Errol Flynn, Audie Murphy,

Andre Watts, Cyndee Lauper, Bob Vila, Chet Atkins, Stephen Frears, Brian Wilson, Robert Rodriquez, John Goodman, Martin Landau, John Mahoney, Nicole Kidman is 53

 

1936- Mickey short Moving Day premiered.

1940- Thirty thousand people gather at the Hollywood Bowl for an America First rally. There they listened to isolationist celebrities like Lillian Gish and Charles Lindbergh protest President Franklin Roosevelt’s plans to help Britain.”  It is obvious that Britain will lose the war…. It is not freedom when one fifth the country can drag four fifths into a war it does not want!” Students like future President Gerald Ford were in the audience.

1940- Artist Alberto Vargas signs a contract with Esquire Magazine to paint the ‘Vargas Girls’ pin ups that made the magazine famous. He replaced artist George Petty who was demanding $1,500 a week. Vargas was paid $75 a week. Today an original Vargas goes for $350,000.

1941-Walt Disney's "the Reluctant Dragon" premiered, with cartoonist's pickets around the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Police actually have to close part of Hollywood Blvd. out of concern for what the rampaging animators might do. Future UPA producer Steve Bosustow drove up in a limo and picketed in tuxedo and top hat. His chauffeur was Maurice Noble, the designer of the Road Runner cartoons. Ironically the movie was part documentary about how wonderful life was working at the Disney studio.

1947- Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, the gangster creator of modern Las Vegas, was murdered while reading his evening paper in his Beverly Hills home. He had bought the mansion from opera singer George London for his girlfriend actress Virginia Hill. The order to whack Bugsy was probably given by his old friend Mayer Lansky. The Mob was fed up with Bugsy’s cost overruns to build Las Vegas. The second owner of his Flamingo casino, Gus Greenbaum, had his throat cut with a butcher knife. Despite all, the Flamingo and the Las Vegas Strip went on to become a great success.

1948- The TV show "Toast of the Town" later to be “the Ed Sullivan Show” premiered. Sullivan's show was the showcase that brought new acts like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Signor Wences and the Rolling Stones into the average American living room. 

1975- Steven Spielberg’s movie Jaws opened, bringing back the monster-hit event movie. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 19, 2021

Birthdays: Euclid, Blaise Pascal, King James I Stuart, Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor, Moe Howard, Kathleen Turner, Lou Gehrig, Guy Lombardo, Mildred Natwick, Charles Coburn, Pat Butram, Louis Jourdan, Pauline Kael, Salman Rushdie, Dame Mae Whitty, Lucie Sloane, Ang Sung Soo Chi, Paula Abdul is 59, Zoe Saldana is 43, Gena Rowlands

1619- THE OLD GLOBE THEATER FIRE. During a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a prop cannon fired a salute that set afire the straw thatch on the roof. Soon the blaze consumed the old theater. Shakespeare, as a partner in the company that owned the Globe, paid to rebuild it.  He soon retired home to Stratford. Fifty years later, during Cromwell’s Puritan rule, the Globe was pulled down because the Puritans frowned on theatrical entertainment as ungodly.

1865- HAPPY JUNETEETH- Although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had declared all slaves free in 1863, and the Confederacy surrendered that April, it took this long for the entire country to admit it.  Texas simply preferred not to tell any of their slaves about it.  After the surrender, the Southern States were occupied and put under military rule. 12 weeks after Lee surrendered to Grant, Yankee Gen. Gordon Granger assumed command of the Dept. of Texas, and this day published GENERAL ORDER #3,  that all slaves were finally, unconditionally, free. Black Texans celebrated this day every year as Juneteenth-Jubilee Day. White Texans refused to acknowledge the holiday until 1979. Juneteeth became a National Holiday just two days ago,

1889- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, the Man with the Twisted Lip.

1921- Distributer Amadee van Beuren announced production of a new series of "Aesop’s Fables" cartoons to be done by former Bray director Paul Terry. Terrytoons studio is born.

1923 - "Moon Mullins," a Comic Strip, debuts.

1934-The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, created.

1941 - Cheerios Cereal invented. Originally called Cheery-Oats, it was changed to Cheerios in 1945.

1951- Devil May Hare, short by Bob McKimson, introduced the Tasmanian Devil.

1952 - "I've Got A Secret" debuts on CBS-TV with Garry Moore as host.

1956- The comedy team of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis announce their breakup.

1960- Freedomland amusement park opened in the north Bronx, New York. 

1963- The Ray Harryhausen fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts premiered.

1963- The Canadian Football Hall of Fame formed.

1973- The Rocky Horror Show stage show opened in London. The film version became a midnight cult classic. Writer Richard O’Brien himself played the bald doorman Riff-Raff. Let’s do the Time Warp Again.

1978 – Garfield the Cat, created by Jim Davis, 1st appeared as a comic strip.

1983- Don Bluth’s video arcade game Dragons Lair debuted.

1987 - Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream & Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce a new Ice Cream flavor, Cherry Garcia. Jerry is gone, but Cherry Garcia rocks on.

1987 –David Geffen Records signed their 1st artist -Donna Summer.

Animation Fun Facts for June 18, 2021

Birthdays: M C Escher, Charles Gounod, James Montgomery Flagg, Kay Kayser, William Lassell 1799- English astronomer who discovered Neptune's moon Triton,  Richard Boone,  Jeanette MacDonald, Key Luke, Isabella Rosselini, E.G. Marshall, Roger Ebert, Eduard Daladier, Carol Kane, Sammy Kahn,  The Quay Brothers, Paul McCartney is 79

1178- According to the chronicler Gervase of Canterbury, on this evening five monks sitting near the town witnessed a "flaming torch" spring up from the upper horn of the crescent moon. In 1976 it has been theorized that this was a lunar meteor impact that created the Giordano Bruno Crater. Others think it was an exploding comet in our atmosphere aligning with the moon.

1898 - 1st amusement pier opens in Atlantic City, NJ

1913- composer Cole Porter graduated from Yale.

1931- The Metropolitan Museum of NY had in its collection a little blue statue of a Hippo from the tomb of the Egyptian Steward Senbi from the Twelfth Dynasty. People nicknamed it Willie and this day an article about it with a color picture appeared in Punch Magazine. Soon museum craftsmen made little replicas of Willie that they gave as gifts to donors and eventually started s elling to the public. The massive retail business in museum reproductions and merchandise we have today, all began with little Willie the Hippo.

1959 - 1st TV telecast transmitted from England to US.

1967- At the Monterey Pop Rock festival Jimi Hendrix electrified the audience then finished his set by burning and smashing his guitar on stage. Until then musicians didn’t behave in such a way towards their instruments. Ravi Shankar was particularly shocked.

1980 –"We are on a mission from God." John Landis movie " The Blues Brothers" with Dan Ackroyd & John Belushi premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for June 17, 2021

Birthdays: King Edward I "Longshanks", John Wesley the founder of the Methodists, , Wally Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, Joe Piscopo is 70, Newt Gingrich, Martin Bormann, Jason Patric, Ken Loach, Greg Kinnear is 57, Venus Williams, Thomas Haden Church is 61, Will Forte is 51

1885- The pieces of the Statue of Liberty arrive from France. Some assembly required...

1893- Cracker Jacks invented by RW Reuckheim. Their name came from Teddy Roosevelt sampling the caramel corn, and exclaimed “These are Crackerjack!”- popular slang back then for something very good.

1919 - "Barney Google" cartoon strip, by Billy De Beck, premiered.

1964- The first Universal Studios tram car tour. Carl Laemmle had been inviting tourists in for a nickel to sit in bleachers and watch movies be filmed as early as 1915.

1968- Ohio Express’ single “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my Tummy” went gold.

Animation Fun Facts for June 16, 2021

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Birthdays: Stan Laurel, Willy Boskovsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Nelson Doubleday, Brian Eno, animator Pete Burness, Martha Graham, Erich Segal, Jack Albertson, Helen Traubel, Ron LeFlore, Laurie Metcalf, Sonia Braga is 72, John Cho is 49.

1884 - On Coney Island Amusement Pier the Switchback Railway, the first roller coaster began operating.

1902- A musical play of L Frank Baum’s fantasy story the Wizard of Oz premiered at Chicago’s Grand Opera House. When Baum was writing down the stories at one point he was stuck for a name for the magical kingdom. He looked down at his desk files that were labeled A-N and O-Z. 

1903 – The Pepsi Cola Company formed.

1932- Broadway star Mae West heads west for Hollywood to make movies.

1943- 54 year old actor Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18 year old Oona O’Neill. In Hollywood, Chaplin’s nickname in Hollywood was “Chickenhawk Charlie” for his fondness for underage girls. Oona did remain his wife until the end of his life in 1971.

1947 –The 1st regular broadcast network news show began-Dumont's "News from Washington”.

1951- Chuck Jones short, “ Chow Hound”. Don’t forget the gravy.

1952- The CBS television comedy My Little Margie premiered. It starred Gale Storm and Charlie Farrell. 

1955- Disney’s Lady and the Tramp premiered.

1959- Actor George Reeves, who played the 1950s television Superman, went upstairs during a dinner party and shot himself with a Luger pistol.  Actor Gig Young, who was a friend of Reeves, said the actor 's career was going well, he was getting his first directing jobs, and his love life was fine. He never believed the actor would shoot himself. Gig Young shot himself in 1981. 

1960- Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Psycho" premiered. “ Oh Mother! What have you done?”

2018- Brad Birds’ The Incredibles 2 opened in theaters.

Animation Fun Facts for June 15, 2021

Birthdays: Edward the Black Prince of England, Rachael Donelson Jackson- Andy Jackson’s First Lady, Edvard Grieg, Saul Steinburg, Mario Cuomo, Jim Varney, Wade Boggs, Waylon Jennings, Xaviera Hollander the Happy Hooker, Jim Belushi, Roger Chiasson, Michael Barrier, Ice Cube is 52, Neil Patrick Harris is 48, Courtenay Cox is 57, Helen Hunt is 58

1300- Poet Dante Alighieri got a job as one of the governing priors of Florence, sort of a city council. We don’t know if it says something about his abilities at municipal governing, but he was run out of town in 1302.

1938- The Fair Labor Standards Act passed. 

1945- Judy Garland married director Vincente Minnelli. Lisa Minnelli was one result.

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce married a stripper named Honey Stuart.

1977- Everybody Disco! KC and the Sunshine band release “I’m your Boogie Man”.

1990- Warren Beatty’s movie version of Dick Tracy opened accompanied by the second Roger Rabbit short Roller Coaster Rabbit.

1994- Walt Disney’s The Lion King premiere party. 

2002- Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was knighted.

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Animation Fun Facts for June 14, 2021

Birthdays: Tomaso Albinioni, Fighting Bob LaFollette, Margaret Bourke-White, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sam Wanamaker, Cliff Edwards the voice of Jiminy Cricket, Dorothy McGuire, Burl Ives, Gene Barry, Jerzy Kosinski, Diablo Cody is 42, Donald Trump is 75.

1816- Writers Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were spending the summer at the Villa Deodati on Lake Geneva. This day among the revels, drinking, partner swapping and opium taking, Byron suggested they all write a ghost story. They all failed except for 19 year old Mary, who invented a story of a Swiss scientist who created an artificial man. She called it Frankenstein.

1846-THE GREAT BEAR REBELLION- U.S. citizens living in Spanish California led by a school teacher named William Ide and Ezekiel Merritt declared themselves an independent country, not knowing that back east the U.S. government had already declared war on Mexico and annexed California to the U.S. Remember information took months to get back East across Indian territory and burning deserts. The Anglo-Californians seized a Sonoma military post and arrested the owner of the largest hacienda in the area, a retired Mexican General named Mariano Vallejo. Ironically Senor Vallejo himself desired AltaCalifornia to have independence from Mexico City.  

They chose as their flag for the new republic the grizzly bear and the polar star, which is now the state flag.  US Col. John Freemont took over the Great Bear settlers and raised the US flag over the Presidio in San Francisco July 1st.

1865- A group of Englishmen climb the Materhorn Mountain in Switzerland, inventing the sport of mountain climbing. 

1934- Hitler meets Mussolini for the first time for a conference in the city of Padua. They didn't trust any interpreters and neither could speak the others language, so it wasn't much of a meeting. Il Duce's first impression of the German Chancellor wasn't impressive. He called Adolf  " A comical little monkey."

1959- Three new rides are debuted at Disneyland in Anaheim. The first monorail the Disneyland-Alweg Monorail System, Matterhorn Mountain, and the Submarine Voyage, today called the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. Back then the submarines were named and painted to be the US Navy nuclear submarines Nautilus, Triton, Skipjack, Skate, Patrick Henry, Sea Wolf, George Washington and Ethan Allen. The ride took visitors for an adventure under the North Pole, an achievement which the real USN Nautilus had just accomplished the previous year. The subs were repainted the more peaceful yellow color after the Vietnam era.

1977- Skinny Carnaby Street fashion model Twiggy got married to Michael Whitney.

1983- The Pioneer 10 space probe left its orbit around Jupiter and headed off into deep space. NASA lost all contact in 1997. Pioneer 10 is expected to reach the solar system of the star Ross 246 in the Constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 AD. 

1989- Elderly actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman who was writing her a traffic ticket.

2001- The Oxford English Dictionary admitted the slang expletive of Homer Simpson "DOH!" into its august pages.

Animation Fun Facts for June 13, 2021

Birthdays: Gnaeus Agricola- 40AD, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.B. Yeats, Red Grange, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Sayers, Ralph Edwards, Paul Lynde, Tim Allen, Darla Hood, Ally Sheedy, Simon Callow, Christo, Malcolm McDowell is 78, Stellan Skarsgard is 70, the Olsen Twins are 35. 

1905- The workers of the Russian city of Odessa go on strike and the Czar's troops shoot them down on the Odessa steps. This causes the Battleship Potemkin's sailors to mutiny.   Twenty years later Sergei Eisenstein made a famous film of the incident.

1941-The American Federation of Labor the AF of L called for a nationwide boycott of all Disney products and films. This was to support the Disney Cartoonists strike.

1958- Frank Zappa graduated Antelope Valley High School.

2010- Pixar’s Toy Story III premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for June 12, 2021

Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Sir Anthony Eden, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, David Rockefeller, Irwin Allen, Marv Albert, Arthur Fellig-better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield, George Herbert Walker Bush, Anne Frank, Clyde “Jerry” Geronimi, Richard Sherman of the Sherman Bros is 93

1616- Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, landed in England with her husband and son Thomas. 

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

1952- Chief auto designer for Chevrolet Maurice Olley completed work on a sports car originally code-named the Opel, but later released as the Corvette.

1956- Singer/activist Paul Robeson testified to The House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He was called in after he refused to sign an affidavit that he was not a Communist.  Robeson told the committee,” My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part of it, just like you. And no Fascist-minded people, just like you, will drive me from it. Is that clear?” 

1962- In Modesto California, a teenage film student named George Lucas was almost killed in a car accident.

1963- Twentieth Century Fox premiered the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million, $400 million in modern money, four times more than the average film, it remains in comparable dollars the costliest disaster in movie history. Director Joe Mankewicz said "Cleopatra was the toughest three pictures I ever made!" When Liz Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up. 

Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be the Fox backlot before Cleopatra. 

1981- Steven Spielberg’s movie Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered.

1999- Disney’s Tarzan premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for June 11, 2021

Birthdays: Ben Johnson, Richard Strauss, Jacques Cousteau, Nelson Mandela, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Joe Montana, John Constable, Gustav Courbet, Vince Lombardi, Adrienne Barbeau, William Styron, Chad Everett, race car driver Jackie Stewart, Gene Wilder, Hugh Laurie is 62, Shia LeBoeuf is 35, Peter Dinklage is 52

1878- At a small track at the Palo Alto Stock Farm, English photographer Edweard Muybridge did the first of his Animal Motion Studies. He lined up 25 cameras and filmed California Governor Leyland Stanford’s favorite mare Sallie Gardner at a full gallop. He invited the press, so none could accuse him of doctoring the photos later. They proved that when a horse was in full gallop, all four hooves leave the ground.

1927- Charles Lindbergh Day. After his historic flight, the young aviator was welcomed home to America by President Coolidge and huge throngs of well-wishers at Washington’s Navy Yard. Battleships boomed, bands blared and two dirigibles floated overhead. The radio announcer covering the event did one of the very first coast-to-coast broadcasts. He reached thirty million people. 

1928 - Alfred Hitchcock's 1st film, "The Case Of Jonathan Drew," is released

1934- the first Mandrake the Magician comic strip.

1936- Shy, quiet, 30 year old Texas writer Robert E. Howard had created the powerful warriors Conan the Barbarian, Kull and single-handedly defined the genre we now call Sword & Sorcery. This day after he learned his mother was dying and would never regain consciousness, he went into his garage and blew his brains out. Some say he had an Oedipal fixation, others that he always intended to end his life and was waiting to spare his mother the pain. On his typewriter he left a short message: "All fled, all done, so lift me upon the pyre. The feast is over and let the lamps expire."

1937 –" Getta’ yu tutsie-frutsie Ice-a Creem!" the Marx Brothers' "A Day At The Races" premiered. 

1959 – The US Postmaster General banned D H Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover as pornography. He was overruled by US Court of Appeals in March 1960. 

1964 - Chicago police break up a Rolling Stones press conference.

1964 - Manfred Mann recorded Do Wah Diddy Diddy.

1966 - "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones peaks at #1

1966 - Janis Joplin played her 1st gig in San Francisco.

1977 - Main Street Electrical Parade premiered at Disneyland.

1979- John Wayne died after a long struggle with cancer. Many believed his condition began as a result of filming the movie "The Conqueror" near the Nevada Atomic Test site. Half the crew of that film including all the stars and director died of cancer.  When Wayne made a final appearance at the Academy Awards two months earlier he had purchased a small size tuxedo to hide his emaciated frame, but he was still too thin even then so he filled it out by wearing a scuba wetsuit underneath. He was 73.

1984- In the freewheeling economy of the 1980’s tycoons conducted hostile takeovers of companies by buying a majority of their stock on margin. When Wall Street corporate raider Saul Steinberg announced he intended to target the ailing Walt Disney Company for takeover, CEO Ron Miller paid him $23 million just to make him go away. The Disney shareholders are outraged at this payment of "greenmail’ and demanded Miller’s resignation, which some say was exactly what Roy Disney had planned.

1993 –Steven Spielberg’s  "Jurassic Park" opened. The film set a box office record of $931 million. It was begun with modelers and puppeteers about to do the dinosaurs with go-motion and clay. But after seeing tests using the new 3D CGI –computer graphic imaging software, Steven ordered all of ILM to do it digitally. Jurassic Park was the Jazz Singer-type event that clinched the digital takeover of Hollywood and set the standard for future special effects.

2002- Fox TV’s show American Idol premiered.

2002- Lilo & Stitch premiered.

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Animation Fun Facts for June 10, 2021

Birthdays: Charles James Stuart the Old Pretender, Yamaoka Tesshu (1832- Japanese swordsman), Saul Bellow, Judy Garland, Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loew (of Lerner & Loew), Howlin’ Wolf, Maurice Sendak, Gina Gershon is 59, Leilee Sobieski is 38, Jean Triplehorn is 58, Jurgen Prochnow, Elizabeth Hurley is 55, Britain’s Prince Phillip

1776- The great English actor David Garrick went on stage for the last time, playing in a benefit for The Decayed Actor’s Fund.

1847 –The Chicago Tribune begins publishing   

1860- The Comstock Lode- Near Virginia City Nevada, Old Pancake McGaughlin hit a vein of silver so big and pure that it will eventually yield $300 million dollars worth of ore and make millionaires of men like William Randolph Hearst's father.

1865- Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich. 

1910- The first Krazy Kat comic strip- Cartoonist George Herriman was doing a strip for Hearst called "The Family Upstairs". He was amused at the idea of a friendship between a cat and a mouse. So Herriman put them in the corner playing marbles while the family quarreled. First an office boy and later editor Arthur Brisbane suggested they have their own strip. The immortality of the denizens of Coconino County follows, loved by the likes of H.L. Mencken, e.e.cummings, and Jacques Kerouac. Krazy herself explains:" It's wot's behind me that I am."

1921- Babe Ruth became top HR champ with #120 runs passing then champ Gavvy Cravath. But the Bambino was just getting started. 

1926- Artist Antonio Gaudi was run over by a streetcar while crossing in front of his famous cathedral in Barcelona. Construction begun in 1886, The Cathedral Sacreda Familia is still scheduled for completion- in the year 2035.

1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character, by MGM, debuts

1944- A USO troop was entertaining soldiers in Normandy from the back of a truck but they lacked a piano player. They called out to the G.I. audience if anyone could play. A shy cattle rancher’s son from Modesto California came up and played. He did so well his colonel ordered him out of the line and told him to form his own G.I. band. 

Dave Brubeck’s jazz career began.

1957- “Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog” cartoon debuted on the Captain Kangaroo show.

1980- Comedian Richard Pryor had been doing so much cocaine even his dealers were worried about him. This day, while trying to freebase he exploded, and ran screaming down his street on fire. Another version of the story said he tried to commit suicide by pouring tequila on himself and setting it alight. He recovered, but suffered from Muscular Dystrophy until he died in 2005.

1995-110,000 people jam Central Park in New York to see Disney's Pocahontas, the largest audience ever to attend an animated movie premiere.