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.