Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 31, 2021

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 78, Anthony Hopkins is 84, Val Kilmer is 62, Gong Li is 56 

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.

1881- Los Angeles becomes the first U.S. city to be lit entirely by electricity.

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 in 1942 and 1943 for World War II blackouts. 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.

1931- NY gangster Larry Fay was a business partner of speakeasy hostess Texas Guinan and Cotton Club co-owner Big Frenchy DeMange. But the Depression was hitting everyone hard. This day Larry cut the salary of the doorman of his club. He responded by shooting Larry in the back as he walked by.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp broke into the Washington Square Arch and declared 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”. This was to capitalize on an already popular film title “Algiers” with Charles Boyer “come with me to ze Casbah” etc.. Humphrey Bogart got the lead after George Raft first turned it down. Bogie told a friend about his new project: “Aw….It’s just some more sh*t like Algiers.” 

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. OOHH FRANKIE!!

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.

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. He just decided one day to end it, before it became stale.

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 tabloid media whipped up fear 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.

Tom Sitos Animation Almanac for Dec 30, 2021

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 37, Eliza Dushku is 41

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 7th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

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. "When I was just a little child, as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds … don't like many people." She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her death in 1990. Friends said she watched a lot of television and loved The Flintstones, and Hollywood Squares.

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.) Pixar’s 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.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for De. 29, 2021

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Titus, Pablo Casals, Madame de Pompadour, Andrew Johnson, Charles Goodyear, Gelsey Kirkland, Dina Merrill, Tom Bradley, Mary Tyler Moore, Jon Voight is 83, Ray Nitschke, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Flanders, Ted Danson is 74, Marianne Faithful, Paula Poundstone, Jude Law is 49, Patricia Clarkson, Animator Duncan Marjoribanks is 68.

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.

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.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac

 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 67, Maggie Smith is 87, Sienna Miller is 40, 

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.

1941- Paramount Pictures called Max Fleischer to their business offices in New York. There they told him his contract with his own studio would not be renewed and he was fired. Paramount had seized direct control of Max Fleischer Productions in May and put Max and Dave on notice. Dave Fleischer took the hint and left around Thanksgiving. Max was probably holding out that if Hoppity Goes to Town was a hit he might still work out an accommodation. But such was not to be.

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-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

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.

1987- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 27, 2021

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 74

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1900- Temperance crusader Carrie Nation staged her first public axe attack on a saloon, the bar at the Carey Hotel in Witchita, Kansas. She shattered a large mirror behind the bar and threw rocks at a titillating picture of Cleopatra nude bathing. She called her actions not vandalism, but “hatchetation”.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet standard “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, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse.

1951- The Crosley car goes into service for the post office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the funny little jeep with the steering wheel on the right side, so the mail deliverer didn’t have to get out of his vehicle to reach every curbside mailbox.

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 stopped breathing 15 minutes to landing. The coroner’s report said it was cardiac arrest/deferred. She was 60.  Her mother Debbie Reynolds had a stroke and died the next day at age 84.

Dec. 26, 2021

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 49

XIX Century England- Today was Boxing Day, a Victorian tradition where you boxed up the leftovers of your Christmas dinner and gave them to the poor. 

1909- Famous Western artist Frederick Remington died from an acute appendicitis operation that went badly. Today operations like that are routine and handled by anti-biotics, but back then no such drugs existed. He was 40.

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. In the American Theater, a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. 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 young 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.

1946- The Gala Opening day of the Flamingo Casino, the birth of modern Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel's million dollar gamble in the desert. Despite booking top talent like Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat, the promised Hollywood bigshots failed to materialize. The hotel part of the casino wasn't ready for guests yet, so the high rollers couldn't see making the long trip. A violent rainstorm kept still more people away. Also the casinos formal dresscode discouraged the locals who liked to gamble in cowboy hats and bluejeans. Bugsy had to close down until the hotel was completed in March, $4 million in the red. The Flamingo Casino eventually made a profit but not before the Mob riddled Bugsy Siegel with bullets, and cut the throat of the hotel’s manager, Moe Greenberg.

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!

2003- As part of a promotion for a NJ Islanders-NY Rangers Hockey Game the Nassau Coliseum invited all the fans dressed as Santa Claus to parade on the ice. As the hundreds of Santas marched on to the rink several opened their coats to reveal they were actually Rangers supporters. The Islander Santas objected, some shoving ensued and pretty soon the Nassau Coliseum was packed with fist-fighting Santas.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 25, 2021

Other Birthdays: 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 67, Sissie Spacek is 72, CCH Pounder is 69, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Animation educator Howard Beckerman is 91.

Merry Christmas!

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. 

1914- During World War I, German and Scottish soldiers facing each other across the Western Front held a spontaneous Christmas truce. After midnight the German guns ceased and the sounds of Christmas Carols drifted over the barbed wire. The British and French responded with serenades from their regimental bands. At dawn without any official sanction or orders the soldiers of both sides came out of their trenches. In the middle of No-Man's Land they exchanged laughter, schnapps, scotch, tobacco and even played a good-natured soccer game. Next morning the killing resumed, and the officers who allowed the fraternization were reprimanded.

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," not only arguably the best Batman animated film, but some say one of the best Batman feature films of any kind.

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

2020- Pixar’s film Soul premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 24, 2021

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, Dr. Anthony Fauci is 82. 

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. 

1652- In England the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell forbade any celebration of Christmas. Their brethren the Puritans of Massachusetts would arrest anyone found making merry and fine them three shillings. But after the restoration of King Charles II ten years later, the partying came back.

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 little 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.

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

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. Other places have picked playing the Yule Log like You Tube.

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. Borman sent a message to Earth, Christmas night, by reading from Genesis, as they sent back the very first images of the Earthrise, our planet seen from another world. A little blue gem in a black cosmos. Borman read: " Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.…”

To a world exhausted by the riots, wars, political polarization and assassinations, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in.  Japanese sections were directed by Kinji Fukusaku and Toshio Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime. 

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman.

1997- The first Hanukkah menorah lit in Vatican City.

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.." They have stayed happily married ever since. 

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 23, 2021

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, Carla Bruni, Harry Shearer is 78

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. In 2000, a literary-forensic specialist challenged Clement Moore’s authorship. He said a Revolutionary War veteran from Poughkeepsie named Major Henry Livingston was really the author of the poem. He said the poetry style of Livingston was much closer to the poem than anything Rev Moore ever wrote. But we may never know.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. 

Leaving cookies and milk out for Santa comes from an old Danish Viking custom at Yuletime to leave food out at night for Odin the Wanderer and his 8 legged horse Sleipnir. 

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. Because of residual anger from the Civil War claiming Santa was a Yankee or came from old Dixie, in 1867 Nast ended the argument by declaring Claus’s true address to be the North Pole! The Santa we all recognize was created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in 1934.  

1834- In London, Joseph Hansom patented Hansom cabs. This is the one horse, two wheeled cab with the driver in back. Cab is shortened from Cabriolet.

1857- In St. Louis, ex-army officer, failed businessman, and town drunk Ulysses Grant pawned his watch so he could buy Christmas presents for his wife and son. From this rock bottom he would eventually rise to win the Civil War, become President of the United States and the most celebrated American of his time.

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.

1954- Walt Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, opened. Directed by Richard Fleischer, Max’s son.

1971- “Go Ahead, Make My Day.”Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry premiered.

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.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 22, 2021

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 58.

1808- DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5th 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!

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

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.

“ Ah, am a man of constant sorrow….”

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 21, 2021

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 84, Paul Winchell born Pinkus Wilchinski, Keifer Sutherland is 55, Samuel L. Jackson is 73, Jane Kaszmarek, Judy Delphy is 52, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 71

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.

1909- The first Junior High School or Middle School set up in the US in Berkeley Cal.

1913- THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE- Journalist Arthur Wynne created the word game, which included 32 clues and ran 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. Russian director Sergei Eisenstein called it “The greatest movie ever made.”

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner of the Three Stooges, was killed in a bar fight, while celebrating the birth of his son. No one is really sure what happened. One legend has it that actor Wallace Beery and some gangsters did the fatal pounding. Another rumor is one of the gangsters was young Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who forty years later would produce the James Bond movies and win an Irving Thalberg Award at the 1982 Oscars. Healy originated the violent comedy schtick of the Stooges. But by this time The Three Stooges had parted ways with Ted Healy and were doing much better.

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. 

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.

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 landed on the Original Planet.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 20, 2021

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 38. 

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. Polite society sought to emulate its ideas of chivalry and courtly love. During the US Civil War, one Confederate General complained that his contemporaries, Southern Gentlemen, had been raised on “…too much Walter Scott.”

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- Nazi 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. Mussolini’s family loved “Topolino” cartoons. (Mickey Mouse in Italian). 

1940- Captain America first appeared in a comic book.

1940- Wabbit Twouble, Bob Clampett's first outing with Bugs Bunny.

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 was overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

1971- Roy O. Disney, Walt Disney’s older brother who took over running the company after Walt’s death, died of a stroke. He was 78. 

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

1996- Beavis and Butthead Do America, directed by Mike Judge, premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Dec 19, 2021

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 58, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Mel Shaw, Alyssa Milano is 49, Jake Gyllenhaal is 41

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 book 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, except in Japan, where some traditional paint continues.

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.

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts began. Originally called Empire Broadcasts. The sound of the chimes of Big Ben heard around the world. 

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.

1986- Frank Oz’s movie version of the Ashman-Mencken musical Little Shop of Horrors.” This film convinced Disney to hire them to write the music for Little Mermaid.

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.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 18, 2010

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 79, Leonard Maltin is 71, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario, Ray Liotta is 67, Katie Holmes is 43, Brad Pitt is 57, Steven Spielberg is 75

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.

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.

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 walking 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.

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.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 17, 2021

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 68, Eugene Levy is 75, Giovanni Ribisi is 47, Armin Mueller-Stahl is 91, Wes Studi is 74, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mila Jovovich is 46, Bart Simpson is 32.

 

 

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 US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

 

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. 

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 16, 2021

 Birthdays: Ludwig Van Beethoven, 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 83, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Miranda Otto is 54.

1871- BOSS TWEED INDICTED- William Marcy Tweed as New York City Commissioner of Public Works was behind one of the most corrupt city governments in U.S. history. Tweed mobilized poor and immigrant voters into political power and bought and sold city building projects. The cost overruns to build a simple courthouse cost more than the total cost to build the British Parliament in London- $13 million dollars. For example he once billed the city $14,000 for 11 thermometers. 

The press tried to expose him, but it was really Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly who helped bring the Tweed Ring down. Boss Tweed said: "I don’t mind the newspaper articles since most of my voters can’t read, but those damn pictures!" Tweed once offered Nast half a million dollars to go to Europe and "study art". Nast refused. Boss Tweed ended his life in the Ludlow Street Jail, which he himself built.

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- When his lead actor quit, Max Sennett recalled a young English music hall actor he saw back east. He wrote,“I think his name was Carson, or Caslon, or Chaplin?” This day Charlie Chaplin signed a contract at Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Hollywood. $150 a week. In 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- The premiere of Dreamworks The Prince of Egypt. Nicknamed The Zion King.

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 great animation resurgence of the 1990s. 

- 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 15, 2021

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nero, Roman Emperor Lucius Verus who was known for little else but his really swell haircut, Gustav Eiffel, J. Paul Getty, Jeff Chandler, Alan Freed, Ernie Pintoff, Tim Conway, Helen Slater, Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, Don Johnson is 72, Julie Taymor is 69

 

1790- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart held a farewell dinner for Franz Josef Haydn, who was going to London for two years.  Amadeus said:" Farewell Papa, I think we shall not see each other again in life. " Mozart was 34 and Haydn was 67, so he probably assumed Haydn would go first. Mozart died a year later at 35, and old Haydn lived another fifteen years, dying in his 80s.

 

1815- Giacomo Rossini received the commission to write a new opera based on Beaumarchais’ play The Marriage of Figaro- The Barber of Seville.

 

1893-Czech composer Anton Dvorak premiered a symphony he wrote while living in the Minnesota. The New World Symphony.

 

1939- The gala premiere of Gone with The Wind at the Loews Grand Theater in Atlanta Georgia. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh flew out from Hollywood and the Governor of Georgia declared it a state holiday. Clark Gable called Margaret Mitchell “ The most fascinating woman I ever met.” Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar for her portrayal, was not invited to the premiere.

 

1941- Lena Horne recorded her signature tune “Stormy Weather.”

 

1943- In Harlem jazz great Fats Waller died of alcoholism and heart failure. He was 39.

 

1944- Band Leader Glen Miller's plane disappeared over the English Channel. In 1988, a retired RAF engineer admitted he may have jettisoned some leftover bombs above the entertainer's plane while returning home from a bombing run. Other experts claim it may have been a faulty carburetor or icing in the fuel lines.

 

1954- “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” starring Fess Parker was featured on The Walt Disney TV show for the first time. The show created a mania for little kids all wanting coonskin caps. “Born on a mountaintop in Tenn-Ah-See..”

 

1966- Walt Disney died at age 65. He was alone in the room at Saint Joseph's when he died. His brother Roy had been in earlier rubbing his legs. On his desk, scribbled on a piece of paper the name- Kurt Russell. A heavy cigarette smoker- his favorites were Malboro and French Gitanes- he suffered from lung cancer and respiratory failure. Contrary to the legend that he's cryogenically frozen in a room in the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, he was cremated and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn. 

 

1973- The American Psychiatric Association reverses its earlier position and announced the homosexuality was not a form of mental illness. Before that, being gay meant your family could legally have you institutionalized, lobotomized or electro-shocked against your will.

 

1974- Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein opened.

 

1985- Sylvester Stallone married model Birgit Nielsson. This was after he divorced his first wife Sasha who had shared his years of privation up to stardom. She worked as an usher at the Crown movie theater in NY to support Sly while he went to acting school.

 

2008- Outgoing President George W. Bush made a farewell tour of Iraq, ostensibly to receive the thanks of the Iraqi people for freeing them.  During a speech in Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Muntather Zaidi rose up and threw his shoes at the presidents’ head, shouting “Here’s your thanks, you dog!”  He made Bush duck twice. 

 

NY Yankees owner Glen Steinbrenner commented” His first throw was low and inside, the second a bit high, but both were pretty good.”

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 14, 2021

Birthdays: 1553-King Henry IV, Tycho Brahe, Nostradamus -Michel de Notre Dame-1503, English King George VI- 1895, Spike Jones the bandleader, Morey Amsterdam, Charlie Rich, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, Lee Remick, Patty Duke, Adult film star Ginger Lynn, Clark Terry- trumpeter. Cecil Pay, Saxophonist, Jane Birkin "Je t'aime moi non plus" is 74.

1871- Verdi's opera "Aida" debuts in Cairo.

1901- The first Ping-Pong tournament held in London.

1918- Cartoonist Johnny Gruelle entertained his dying daughter Marcella, by making up stories involving her rag dollies. After her passing, friends urged Gruelle to publish them. The RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY stories are born.

1924- Ottorino Respighi ‘s rhapsody The Pines of Rome premiered.

1934- March of the Wooden Soldiers, the Hal Roach version of Babes in Toyland with Laurel & Hardy opened. 

1944- The film National Velvet premiered, making a star out of 12 year old Elizabeth Taylor.

1957- Hanna Barbera's first TV cartoon "Ruff and Ready" premiered.

1970- George Harrison’s single My Sweet Lord went gold.

1974- Irwin Allen’s disaster film The Towering Inferno, opened.

1977- DISCO! The movie Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta and the music of the Bee Gees make the Disco dancing scene a national craze.

1979- STUDIO 54 RAIDED- The Internal Revenue Service busted the worlds most famous disco club. Formerly the hangout of Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote and other “Beautiful People”, now the Feds were on to them. The IRS seized doctored account books, cocaine and undeclared cash, landing the owners in jail and bringing the celebrity playlands days to an end. 

1983- Disney Studio released the short film Frankenweenie, done by a weird young artist named Tim Burton. He was promptly fired upon its completion for wasting company resources.

1984- David Lynch’s version of Dune, with Kyle McClanahan.

2015- Hollywood premiere for J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars the Force Awakens. 

2017- Rupert Murdoch sold off much of the Twentieth Century Fox Studio to Walt Disney for $66 billion.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 12, 2021

Birthdays: Frank Sinatra, Roman Emperor Alexander Severus, Edvard Munch, Gustav Flaubert, Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie, John Jay, Edward G. Robinson, Marshal von Rundstedt-the Black Knight of Germany, Ed Koch, Zack Mosley –the cartoonist of “Smilin' Jack", Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Rigby, Tracy Austin, Bill Nighy is 71, Tom Wilkerson is 72, Jennifer Connelly is 51, Mayim Bialik is 46

1897-The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip by Rudolph Dirks appears in the Hearst’s New York Journal. The first comic where characters spoke in word balloons. When Dirks took a vacation without Hearst’s permission, Hearst got another artist to draw the strip. Dirks went to rival paper The New York Sun, and recreated the strip as the Captain & the Kids, leading to the first artistic plagiarism lawsuit. 

In Paris, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas had a problem whenever they bought the American newspapers, because Picasso and Fernande Oliver would fight over who got to read the Katzenjammer Kids first.

1899- George Grant of Boston invented the Golf Tee.

1901-First transatlantic wireless signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi. The letter “S” was sent electronically from Newfoundland to Cornwall. This finally ended the frustrating hoopla over laying transatlantic telegraph cables and have them break down almost constantly since the 1850s. The pioneers of radio broadcasting like Armstrong, Lee Deforest and David Sarnoff got their start working for the Marconi Wireless Company. 

1913- The Mona Lisa, which had been stolen out of the Louvre in 1911, was recovered. It was found in a hotel room in Florence, kept by waiter Vincenzo Peruggia, who had stolen it.  He had worked at the Louvre, so he knew the back room passages. He and his accomplices dressed as janitors to avoid suspicion

1952- The first Screen Actors Guild Strike. President Walter Pidgeon -Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet- had the movie stars hit the bricks to win television and commercial residuals. The final deals were settled by then SAG president Ronald Reagan in 1960. Ronnie compromised with the studio heads (many who later backed his bid for the governorship of California) that only residuals for films released after 1955 would be paid. 

Actors who made their big hits in the 30's and 40s like Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and The Little Rascals were left out. Mickey Rooney, who's Andy Hardy movies were the top box office of the mid-1940's put it mildly: "Reagan screwed me !!" 

1967- the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” opened. The first American movie about an interracial relationship. 

1980- The song “Whip It” by Devo won a gold record.

1991- Actor Richard Gere married supermodel Cindy Crawford.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Dec 10, 2021

Birthdays: English King Edward VII “Bertie”, Emile Dickinson, Ada Lovelace, E. H. Shepard the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh. Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaughlin, Dan Blocker, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 61, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 69, Michael Clarke Duncan

1607- Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes.  Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600.   Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white mans powers to his side. 

No one knows for sure. John Smith is the only source for the story, and he didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.

1905- O. Henry’s short story “A gift from the Magi” first published.

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, destroying sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntleroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand-ins.

1941-The Hollywood Victory Committee formed. Top Hollywood agents like Abe Lastfogel, Lou Wasserman and Myron Selznick (David's brother) start signing up movie stars for bond drives and touring shows for the troops. 

 The committee later created the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen on Ivar near Sunset.  A soldier or sailor could come in for a free meal served by Tyrone Power or Red Skelton and have a dance with celebrities like Rita Hayworth or Dina Shore. 

One animation painter who worked in the kitchen told me the only celebrity who would stay until closing, even mopping up, and washing dishes was Marlena Dietrich. While Janey Gaynor and Rhonda Fleming were working in the kitchen, Bette Davis would burst in and announce, “ Okay you Haus-Fraus! We need some glamour out front!” 

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly for the duration. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. He was 26. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

1978- The world premiere of Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. The incomparable Christopher Reeve with Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman.

1994- The Unabomber sent an explosive device that killed Thomas J. Mosser, an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam who handled the public relations spin for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.

2013- Richard Williams unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler received its premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun 40 years earlier in 1972 and never completed. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 9, 2021

Birthdays: Sappho, John Milton, Jean De Brunhoff, Emil Waldteufel the composer of the Skaters Waltz, Admiral Grace Hopper 1906 who wrote the earliest computer language, Hermoinie Gingold, Dalton Trumbo, John Cassavettes, Broderick Crawford, Dick Butkus, Red Foxx, Cesar Franck, John Malkovich is 68, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Buck Henry, Felicity Huffman, Mario Cantone, Judy Dench is 87, Kirk Douglas

1641- Famed Flemish portrait artist Sir Anthony van Dyck died of a fever at his home in Blackfriars, London. He was 42. 

1854- Albert Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" published.

1889- The Chicago Auditorium dedicated. The landmark building’s architect Louis 

Sullivan had hired a new assistant to help with the drawings-Frank Lloyd Wright.

1905- Richard Strauss’s opera Salome premiered in Dresden. The lead role demands

a soprano with big Wagnerian lungs but also a flat stomach to do the strip tease

the Dance of the Seven Veils. When the opera debuted in New York, old millionaires

like J.P. Morgan were shocked at its’ blatant sexuality. They threatened to cut 

off funding until Sal and her skimpy veils was banished from the schedule. 

1931- Disney short Mickey’s Orphans debuted.

1936- The first cookery show appeared on British television.

1946- Damon Runyon died, the writer whose characters the musical "Guys and 

Dolls' are based. His philosophy:  "All life is six to five against."

1948- Actor Ossie Davis married actress Ruby Dee.

1960- Coronation Street premiered on British ITV.

1964- John Coltrane recorded his landmark jazz album “A Love Supreme”. Late on 

foggy nights Trane liked to take his saxophone out onto the middle of San Francisco’s 

Golden Gate Bridge in the night fog, and practice by himself.  

1965- Bill Melendez's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" the first half hour animated TV special featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi.  Producer Lee Mendelson had heard Guaraldi's jazz combo perform in San Francisco. He never scored a film before:" How many yards of music do you want? At the preview screening for CBS executives, the show was met with deathly silence; when the show concluded, one executive said to the director Bill Melendez, "Well, you gave it a good try." CBS hated its religious message, the idea of actual kids voicing the characters, not having a laugh track and having jazz as the soundtrack, and only aired it out of obligation for the specials sponsor, Coca-Cola. Out of fear, It was not screened for any critics sans one Time Magazine critic (who ironically gave it a positive review). 

Estimates are that 15,490,000 households and 36 million people watched Charlie Brown and his friends that night. A Charlie Brown Christmas won an Emmy and has run every year for 54 years. 

1967- At a Doors concert lead singer Jim Morrison was sprayed with mace and arrested

by Miami police for “lewd behavior” on stage, but probably more for referring to

the cops as pigs.

1968- The MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS- In San Francisco, Dr Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the first computer workstation. He showed how people would use hot keys, a printer and scanner, cut and paste text. And he had a real time internet hookup to another work station at Stanford Univ, 120 miles away.  

1

1992-Britains Prime Minister John Major announced the separation of Prince Charles

and Diana of Wales.

1994- Disney Animators in California move into their new Animation building designed

2004- Mia Hamm and the stars of the Women’s National Soccer Team played their last

game, defeating Mexico 5-0. 

.

2340- Mr Worf, the Klingon officer of Star Trek Next Generation was born.

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