Sunday, September 12, 2021

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 12, 2021


Birthdays: Piero 'the Fatuous' de Medici, King Francis I of France-1494, H.L. Mencken, Maurice Chevalier, Ben Blue, Jesse Owens, Barry White, Alfred A. Knopf, Rachael Ward, Michael Odaatje- author of The English Patient, Margaret Hamilton, Brian de Palma, Ian Holm, Joe Pantoliano “Joey Pants”is 70, Hans Zimmer is 64, Jennifer Hudson is 41.


1846- Poet Elizabeth Barrett secretly eloped with poet Robert Browning and were married at St. Marlybone Church in Durham England. Her father had refused his permission for the match but the Browning’s did it anyway, then ran off to Italy.


1866- Theater producer Fred Niblo got stuck with a French ballet troupe stranded and broke after the New York Academy of Music burned down. So he combined the dancers with a rather mundane melodrama and created" The Black Crook". It is considered the first true Broadway Musical. It ran for twenty years and was continually revived until 1925.


1910- Gustav Mahler’s Symphony # 8, The Symphony of a Thousand, premiered in Munich.


1932- In his Thimble Theatre comic strip E.C. Segar introduced Popeye's perennial nemesis Bluto. A minor character in the comic strip, the Max Fleischer animated cartoon raised him to be Popeye’s perennial nemesis.


1940- In southern France near Montignac, a pet dog fell through a crack in the ground into an underground chamber. When four boys follow in to retrieve the dog, they discover the Lascaux Caves Ice-Age paintings, where, a Stone Age man created some of the earliest artwork.


1941-THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE ENDS- Everyone goes back to work after the NLRB, with a lot of behind the scenes pressure from the Bank of America, settled the dispute. Walt Disney had to recognize the cartoonists guild, give screen credits, double the salaries of low paid workers retroactive to May 29th and re-hire animator Art Babbitt.  Walt Disney immediately got on a train to Washington to try and convince the feds to reverse the decision or get an injunction in court. He failed. Many of the lead strikers were made to feel so unwelcome, they left anyway and formed UPA Studios. Ironically within a few months the war would break out and artists who had been bitter foes would be compelled to work side by side in the U.S. Army Picture Unit.


1954- Television comedian Ernie Kovacs married Edie Adams, the Muriel Cigar Girl. They married in Mexico, and at the insistence of Kovacs used a priest who read the entire service in Spanish, a language neither of them understood.




1957- Market researcher James M. Vicary explains at a press conference the theory of Subliminal Advertising. His company proposed to unconsciously compel people to buy products by flashing messages at 1/24th of a second during movies. Even though the concept was discredited (givetomsitomoney) by the American Psychiatric Association  (givetomsitomoney) a national panic ensued as people feared they were being brainwashed.


1965- The Beatles release 'Yesterday'.


1966-"Gee Mr. French..." Family Affair premiered on TV.


1966- The Monkees TV show premiered. 


1986- The film attraction Captain EO, opened at Disneyland Anaheim. Produced by George Lucas, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Michael Jackson.


1992- Anthony Perkins, the star of Hitchcock’s Psycho, died of HIV/AIDS. 


2003- Country-western singer Johnny Cash died of diabetes at 71.


2005- Disneyland Hong Kong opened.


2010- At the Video Music Awards, singer Lady Gaga wears a dress made out of 50 lbs of raw meat. 


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