Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 31, 2022

Birthdays: Jan Vermeer, John Keats, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Gen. Chiang Kai Shek, John Candy, Dale Evans, Jane Pauley, David Ogden Stiers, Dan Rather, Lee Grant, Ethel Waters, Juliet Low-founder of the American Girl Scouts, Ollie Johnston, Vanilla Ice, Stephen Rea, Rob Schneider, Animator Randy Cartwright, Peter Jackson is 62. 

HAPPY ALL HALLOWS EVE- The night before the Feast of All Saints, beginning the Christian season of Advent, was confused in Medieval custom with one of the four Druid fire festivals, All Hallows. In Ireland it was called Samhein. At this time, all hearth fires in the land are extinguished then re-lit from the fire at the Druids sacred grove. Add to this the early Church's attempt to eradicate the pagan custom of giving food to departed spirits -Greek Anthesterion in Feb., Roman Feralia and Lemuria in May- by moving the date to honor the dead to the Feast of All Souls on November 2nd.  It was considered a good day for pagans to be baptized. Many cultures had customs of putting food offerings on doorsteps so the spirits would leave you in peace. So today is the last night for the devil and other

1892- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle gathered all his Holmes mystery stories into its first collection to be published in book form- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was said to be the only book King Edward VII ever read all the way through.

1926 –The great magician Harry Houdini died. His real name was Eric Weiss but he had seen a French magician named Houdin who had inspired him.  Some college boys in Detroit asked the great magician if it was true he could withstand any punch. When he said yes while reading his mail, a large student unexpectedly punched him hard in the abdomen, rupturing his already aggrieved appendix. Peritonitis set in and he died on this day. No antibiotics yet. Houdini was 52. He was buried in a coffin he had used for his escape acts. He promised his wife if there really was an afterlife, he would contact her somehow. She held a seance on every Halloween hoping for a message, but none ever came. She gave up after ten years.

1936- The Disney short The Country Cousin released. Directed by Dave Hand, Art Babbitt’s animation of the country mouse drunk was a standout performance. The Country Cousin won an Oscar at the 9th Academy Awards.

1941-the sculpture group of U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore completed. Instead of just their heads artist–designer Judson Borglum wanted the sculpture to go down to the figures waists but he died in early 1941, and with war on the horizon, his son and chief engineer rushed to complete the heads as is.  

 1945- The "War of Hollywood" Ends. The CSU union strike, the film business's longest and ugliest, falls apart and many of the former members drift into IATSE locals. 

1964- Barbara Streisand single “People, People who need People..” goes to number one.

1993- Young movie star River Phoenix (the brother of Joaquin Phoenix) overdosed and died on the street in front of the Viper Room night club in LA after partying with Johnny Depp, his girlfriend Samantha Mathis, and Christina Applegate. The club was owned by Depp. It was once the Melody Room owned by mobster Bugsy Siegel. River Phoenix was 23.  Ironically, as Phoenix was thrashing spasmodically, people walked by unconcerned, because it’s a common enough occurrence on The Sunset Strip. 

2000- The first working crew blasted off from Kazakhstan to occupy the International Space Station. A NASA spokesman said ‘If all goes well today will mark the first day of Mans permanent colonization of Space. Yesterday was the last day that the cosmos would be completely devoid of human beings.”

2001- The acting Governor of Massachusetts officially overturned the convictions of the last six people executed in the Salem Witch Trials 300 years ago in 1692.

Tom Sito' Animation Almanac for Oct 30, 2022

 Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,

Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler is 75, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon, 

Claude Lelouche, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, Ivanka Trump is 41

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published. 

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

1936- London publishers George Allen & Unwin had received a manuscript from an Oxford ancient languages professor named J.R.R. Tolkein.  The publisher gave it to his ten-year old son Rayner Unwin, to read. Rayner read it and made a report, “This book will be a very good read for children from ages 5-7.” For his troubles, the young lad was paid a shilling. Based on his recommendation, they published “The Hobbit”. 

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast on CBS a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, one million people across the U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New Jersey.  Interestingly enough, the broadcast was only #2 in the ratings. More people listened to the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show. 

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air.  I can’t write them because Facebook would put me in jail, but you all know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.

2005- The Disney feature Chicken Little premiered.

2012- The Walt Disney Company announced it was buying out George Lucas holdings (including the Star Wars franchise) for $4.05 billion.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct.29, 2022

Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Mauldin, Akim Tamiroff, Rufus Sewell, Neal Hefti-composer of the theme song for TV shows like Batman and the Odd Couple. Richard Dreyfus is 75, Ralph Bakshi is 84, Dan Castellenata, the voice of Homer Simpson.

1764-The Hartford Current debuts. The U.S.'s oldest continuously running newspaper.

1787- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera DON GIOVANNI premiere in Prague. 

1796- The SS Otter out of Boston under Captain Ebeneezer Dorr entered Monterrey Bay, the first American visitor to Spanish Alta-California.

1956- NBC TV upgraded its evening news show The Camel News Caravan with the Huntley-Brinkley Report. President Eisenhower disliked the change.

1957- Louis B. Mayer died. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." 

1959- Goscinny and Uderzo’s comic character Asterix first appeared in Pilote magazine.

1969- THE INTERNET- After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Defense Department asked the Rand Corporation to create a communication system that could survive Russian atomic bombs. They developed an idea by British scientist Paul Baran of a “net” of computers all in communication with another around the world. Because there was no center, a bomb could not knock out the entire system. 

At 10:30PM In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, J.C. “Lick” Licklider, Leonard Kleinrock, Vin Cerf, Robert Kahn, Larry Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. “ We typed the “L” and we asked on the phone “ Did you see the “L”? “Yes, we see the “L,” was the response. Then we typed O and asked Did you see the O?” Yes, we see the O” was the response. Then we typed G, and then the system crashed!” But when they rebooted, and the system sprung to life again. The people at UCLA were able to type in LOG, to which the Stanford folks replied IN.

They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NET, a few years later Internet. By 1978 the Defense Department didn’t want to run the thing anymore so they offered to turn over the entire Internet to AT&T for free. AT&T said no thanks, we just don’t see the value in it. In 1992 the US government made the Internet public and the gold rush was on.

1993- Tim Burton’s fantasy A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, opened across the US.

2012- Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph premiered. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 28, 2022

Birthdays: Elsa Lanchester, Cleo Lane, Charlie Daniels, Evelyn Waugh, Jonas Salk, Joan Plowright, Edith Head, Chef August Escolfiere the great French Chef who created Peche Melba and moved French cuisine to the front rank of world cooking, Charles Grovesnor the founder of National Geographic magazine, Joaquin Phoenix is 48, Dennis Franz, Jack Soo, Julia Roberts is 55, Bill Gates is 67, Disney animator Don Lusk.

1726- Jonathan Swift published "Gulliver's Travels"-"To Vex the World rather than Divert it."

1886-THE STATUE OF LIBERTY DEDICATED- Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was originally asked by Ferdinand de Lesseps to create a huge statue of a woman to welcome Europeans sailing into the Suez Canal at Port Said. After that deal didn’t work out Bartholdi revamped the design for the Americas. The face looks like a classic Greek beauty although some insist it’s the artist’s mother. Bartholdi’s masterpiece, held up by Gustav Eiffel's superstructure, was supposed to be unveiled at the American Centennial celebrations in 1876, but was a little over deadline, about ten years.  President Cleveland had started giving his opening remarks when the curtain revealing the statue was dropped early and he was drowned out by cheers, boat whistles, cannon salutes and fireworks. Women suffragettes rented a boat and floated alongside the parade bearing a large banner "She's beautiful, but she cannot vote!" 

1929- Composer Irving Berlin scolded George Gershwin for his lack of patriotism that he unloaded his stocks and bonds. The Great Stock Market Crash the following day bankrupted Irving Berlin but Gershwin escaped unscathed. Stick to music, Irv...

1949- Kay Kamen, Walt Disney Studios merchandising mastermind, was killed in a plane crash in the Azores. For almost two decades the Baltimore-born ad man was the mastermind behind the creation of Disney merchandising, including the wildly successful Mickey Mouse watch. By the time of his death, Disney merchandising was earning the studio $100 million a year.   

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 27, 2022

B-Days: Captain James Cook, Theodore Roosevelt, Dylan Thomas, Nicolo Paganini, Gerhard Von Gneisenau, Sylvia Plath, Roy Lichtenstein, John Cleese is 83, Freddy De Cordova, Ruby Dee, Roberto Benigni, Bernie Wrightson, Dr. Stamen Grigorov 1878, Bulgarian microbiologist who discovered the bacillus that made natural yogurt.

1886- Musical fantasy "A Night on Bald Mountain" premiered in Russia. Composer Modest Mussorgsky worked as a florist during the day and wrote music at night. He was convinced he couldn’t make a living otherwise.

1947- The "You Bet Your Life" quiz show premiered on radio. "Say the Secret Word and Win Fifty Dollars". Comedian Groucho Marx had struggled after his brothers act the Marx Brothers broke up. During a live radio program with Bob Hope at one point Hope dropped his script. Before he could pick it up Groucho stepped on the pages, threw his own away and the two improvised their conversation. The result was much funnier that anything anybody had written. The producer of the show was so impressed he hired Groucho and built a quiz show around him.

1954- The" Disneyland" television show premieres. Up until then the major Hollywood Studios were all boycotting the new upstart medium of television, then mostly done in New York by blacklisted stage actors and writers. MGM Production head Dori Schary called TV “ the Enemy”. Walt Disney is the first to break ranks with the major film studios and get into television production.  He even filmed the show in Technicolor, figuring television will develop color broadcasting eventually.

1964- Sonny & Cher married. I got you babe!

1964- The “You Choose” speech. Actor, SAG President, and TV pitchman Ronald Reagan made his maiden political speech at a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. He had made political speeches in the past, but this one marks his shedding his acting and union careers to become a full time conservative politician. 

1966- Bill Melendez's Peanuts TV special "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown'. 

1986- The NY Mets defeated the Boston Red Sox to win the baseball World Series.

1989 - World Series play resumes between Oakland and San Francisco after a ten day delay from the 1989- Loma Pietra Earthquake. 

2004- After not winning it for half the history of baseball, since 1918, this day the Boston Red Sox swept the Saint Louis Cardinals to finally win a World Series. They go on to win several more. 

2018- The LA Dodgers defeated the Boston Red Sox 3-2 in the longest World Series game in history. 18 innings, 7 ½ hours, ending at 12:30am. 

Tom Sito's Animation Fun Facts for Oct. 25, 2022

Birthdays: Pablo Picasso, George Bizet, Johann Strauss Jr., Bobby Knight, Helen Reddy  Minnie Pearl, Whit Bissell, Lyle Lovett. Leo G. Carroll, Bill Barty the famous Little Person actor, John Matusak, Tyrus Wong, Katie Perry is 38, Nancy Cartwright the voice of Bart Simpson is 65.

1903- New York’s New Amsterdam Theater opened with a gala performance of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The New Amsterdam boasted all Art Nouveau decoration, the first theater in a steel girder building and a new style of floating balcony that didn’t obstruct the view with support pillars, an effect to be copied by movie houses throughout the world. The Great Ziegfield staged his great Follies there, and in the rooftop garden theater for only the cream of New York society. The theater fell into decay and in the 1970’s was a porno house, but the Walt Disney Company restored it to its Gilded Age glory in 1996.

1917- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in a lecture announced his firm belief in spiritualism, divination, and communication with the dead. He called it The New Revelation. “The chasm between this life and the next is not insurmountable.” Other British intellects thought Sir Arthur had gone a bit potty.

1921- Bat Masterson, Quebec born gunfighter, marshal of Dodge City, gambler, Indian fighter and outlaw, died of a heart attack over a typewriter as a sports reporter for the New York Morning Telegraph, while covering a championship prize fight. He was 67.

1946- President Harry Truman declared a postwar “Housing Emergency” that led to the development of the suburban track house.

1960- The Bulova Acutron Watch went on sale today. The first watch using an electronic power cell instead of a wound mainspring.

1971- The grand dedication of Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 24, 2022

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Domitian, Bob Kane the creator of Batman, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek- the founder of Microbiology, Moss Hart, Jiles Perry Richardson better known as the Big Bopper, F. Murray Abrahams is 84, Enkwase Mfume, Y.A. Tittle, Sara Josepha Hale 1788- who wrote the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb", animator Preston Blair, Kevin Kline is 75

1937- At Piping Springs NY, composer Cole Porter suffered an accident while horseback riding that broke both his legs. Even after 26 operations he never regained their full use. One leg was amputated in 1958. He died in 1964 at age 73 of kidney failure.

1938- The Fair Labor Standards Act established the 40 hour workweek as the law of the land. The 40 hour week, that thing few of us see nowadays.

1946- KUSC, Southern California’s classical music station, started up.

1947- Walt Disney testified to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) as a friendly witness. He accused leaders of the Cartoonists Guild and the League of Women Voters –which he mistakenly called the League of Women Shoppers, as being infiltrated by Communists "Seeking to subvert the Spirit of Mickey Mouse”.

1959- The TV program Playboy’s Penthouse premiered. Hugh Hefner hosted a variety show designed to look like a cocktail party in a swinging bachelor’s pad. It was a success despite many stations in the South refusing to show it. That was because they dared to have black celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Nat King Cole laughing and partying alongside white ones like Tony Bennett and Lennie Bruce. 

1962- UPA’s Gay Puree, animated film starring Judy Garland and Robert Goulet, and directed by Abe Levitow.

1969- Godfather Producer Robert Evans married young actress Ali McGraw.

1975- The musical play A Chorus Line opened.

1994- Disney TV series Gargoyles premiered.

2003- Walt Disney’s Brother Bear, directed by Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 23, 2022

Birthdays; Johnny Carson, Adlai Stevenson, Pele, Zioniev, Weird Al Yankovic, Dwight Yoakham, Michael Crichton, Chi-Chi Rodriquez, Phillip Kaufman, porn star Jasmine St. Claire, Gummo Marx, Ang Lee is 68, Ryan Reynolds is 46, Sam Raimi is 63

1930- The first Miniature Golf tournament held in Chattanooga Tenn.

1940- Shooting on the film Citizen Kane wrapped.

1941- Walt Disney’s Dumbo premiered. 

1971-Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida opened.

1983- Jessica Savitch was one of the first women journalists to break the barrier for women getting the top anchor jobs in network news broadcasting. This day she died in a car accident.

2001- Apple Computers launched the ipod. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 22, 2022

Birthdays: Sarah Bernhardt, Timothy Leary, Franz Liszt, Doris Lessing, Joan Fontaine, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lloyd is 84, Annette Funicello, Brian Boitano, Jerry “Curly” Howard of the Three Stooges, Catherine Deneuve is 79, Spike Jonze is 54. Jeff Goldblum is 71.

1883- First performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. It was Gounod’s Faust with soprano Christine Nillson and tenor Italo Campanini.  

1934- The comic strip Terry and the Pirates by Milt Caniff first appeared in newspapers.

1938-THE BIRTHDAY OF THE XEROX COPY- Chester Carlson working with an amateur chemistry set behind a beauty parlor in Astoria Queens, created the first photo copy. He took his invention to Edison, G.E., RCA and IBM who all rejected it. Finally a little firm that produced photographic paper for Kodak called the Haloid Company bought it. They later changed their named to Xerox.  

1939-The first televised football game-The Brooklyn Dodger's 23 Philadelphia Eagles 14.

1962- Twentieth Century Fox chief Daryl Zanuck fired long suffering director Joe Mankiewicz off of the editing of the spectacle Cleopatra. Mankiewicz had shot a 6 hour movie he wanted shown as two films. Zanuck wanted one big movie at half that size. After a lot of embarrassing feuding in the press, Zanuck rehired Mankiewicz and he recut Cleopatra, When Elizabeth Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up. 

Cleopatra became one of the biggest flops in Hollywood History.  

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 21, 2022

Birthdays: Dizzy Gillespie, Whitey Ford, Alfred Nobel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Blair, Carrie Fisher, Patty Davis (Reagan's daughter), Benjamin Netanyahu, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Manfred Mann, Sir Georg Solti, Angus McFadyen, Ken Watanabe is 63, Kim Kardashian is 42.

1879- Thomas Edison announced the invention of the Light Bulb. After experimenting with dozens of different type filaments in a vacuum, Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb with carbonized cotton. He and his crew stared at the glowing bulb for 40 hours to make sure it was really worked.

     

1932- The film Red Dust premiered. It made stars out of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

1939- Walt Disney sent a confidential memo to his legal team: Everything we do in the future should include television rights. There might be a big angle on television for the shorts we have already produced. At this time, television was still mostly experimental. 

1941- WONDER WOMAN, Elizabeth Holloway Marston was a niece of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. She was married to Psychologist William Moulton Marston who was an educational consultant for Detective Comics, Inc. (DC Comics). Elizabeth saw that the DC line was filled with images of super men like Green Lantern, Batman, Superman. She wondered why there was not a female hero? On her urging, Dr. Marston brought this up to DC head Max Gaines. Gaines was intrigued by the concept and told Marston that he should create a female hero – at first “Amazon Woman”, then "Wonder Woman." Marston's 'good and beautiful woman' made her debut in All Star Comics #8. 

1956- The last trolley cars in Flatbush Brooklyn shut down.

1959- Six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright his last creation the Guggenheim Museum in New York City opened.

1969- Beat Generation author of On the Road- Jacques Kerouac died of alcoholism and stomach bleeding, a pencil and pad on his lap. 

1972- Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack theme to the movie “Superfly” debuted at Number #1 in the Billboard charts.

1975- The Cincinnati-Boston World Series-Carleton Fisk's 12th inning homer keeps the Boston Red Sox hopes alive against Johnny Bench and the 'Big Red Machine".

2003- The Great California Brush Fires. Hot dry wind and a lost hunter ignited the worst brush fires in California history. Ten fires from Ventura County north of Los Angeles to Tijuana Mexico burned hundreds of thousands of acres for two weeks, destroyed 3000 homes and killed 20. The smoke clouds were visible from space.

2015- According to Robert Zemeckis 1989 film Back to the Future II, all the events Marty McFly and Doc Brown experience in the future occur on this date. Did you ever get your hoverboard?

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct 19, 2022

Birthdays: Martha "Patsy" Jefferson, Auguste Lumiere, Tor Johnson, John Le Carre', Peter Tosh, Amy Carter, Jack Anderson, Peter Max, John Lithgow is 77, Robert Reed of the Brady Bunch, Evander Holyfield, Patricia Ireland, Michael Gambon is 82, John Favreau is 56, Trey Parker of South Park is 52

1845- Richard Wagners’ opera Tannhauser premiered.

1945- Near his Chadd’s Ford home, N.C. Wyeth, artist and father of Andrew Wyeth, was killed by a train that struck his car. His grandson was in the car with him and was also killed. He was 62. 

1953 – Arthur Godfrey had one of the more popular TV variety shows at the time. One of his headliners was the singer Julius LaRosa. But Godfrey was seen to act more and more imperiously with his cast and crew. This day after a song, Godfrey put his arm around LaRosa and said gently. "Julie lacks humility, So, Julie, to teach you a lesson, you’re fired." La Rosa and the audience first thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. He had fired LaRosa live, nationwide on the air.

1957- Montreal Hockey great Maurice Rocket Richard became the first player to score 500 goals.

1964- Doo Wah Diddy Diddy hit the pop charts.

1985- Take on Me by Aha hit number one on the pop charts.

1990- Kevin Costner’s film Dances With Wolves premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 18, 2022

Birthdays: Cannaletto, Lotte Lenya, Wynton Marsalis, George C. Scott, Pierre Trudeau, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mike Dytka, Peter Boyle, Inger Stevens, Violetta Chamorro, Wendy Wasserstein, Wynton Marsalis, Martina Navratilova, Zack Efron is 31, Jean Claude Van Damme, The Muscles from Brussels- is 62. 

1776- Cato’s Road House, a colonial tavern New York City decorated with birds opened. The owner was a free black man named Cato Alexander. Customers ordered a favorite drink he created, called a "Cocks Tail" or cocktail. The origin of the name.

1896- Joseph Pulitzer's N.Y. Journal American created the first Sunday Color Comics supplement.

1922- The British Broadcast Corp or BBC formed.

1924- College football star Red Grange scored four long yardage touchdowns in one game.

1926- In Hollywood Sid Grauman's Egyptian Theater opens.

1931- Thomas Edison died peacefully at age 84. His last words were-

"It's beautiful over there..."

1946- Walt Disney premiered The Story of Menstruation.

1950- In a heated and emotional showdown in the Directors Guild all motions were defeated by C.B. DeMille and Frank Capra to extend the Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist. Billy Wilder, John Huston, John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy supported President Joe Mankiewicz who blocked the Blacklist Motions, and they also blocked a recall vote on Mankiewicz' s presidency.

1954- Hi & Lois comic strip debuted.

1967- Walt Disney's last cartoon done under his supervision "the Jungle Book." premiered. Disney had died the previous December. 

1974- Tobe Hooper's low budget cult film Texas Chainsaw Massacre first opened. Despite one film critic calling it " a bunch of sick crap" it became a huge hit. 

1977- New York Yankee batter Reggie Jackson earned the name Mr. October by slugging three home runs in a World Series Game against the LA Dodgers.

1982- President Reagan said during a radio address:" My Fellow Americans, the economy is in a helluva mess....this microphone isn't on, is it?.." 

1984- Handsome young television star John Eric Hexum died after shooting himself with a prop pistol.  Even though it was loaded with blanks the concussion of compressed air at close range cracked his skull. He was playing at mock- Russian Roulette. His last words to his friends were "Lets see if I can do myself in this time!"

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac For Oct. 17, 2022

Birthdays: Arthur Miller, Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur, Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Breslin, Tom Poston, Gary Puckett, Margot Kidder, Evil Knievel, Jerry Siegel (Superman co-creator), Virgil 'Vip' Partch, Charles Kraft the sliced cheese king, Beverly Garland- star of Attack of the Alligator People, George Wendt, Cameron Mackintosh, Mike Judge is 60, Eminem is 50

1904- In San Francisco, Amadeo & Giovanni Giannini opened the New Bank of Italy, which in 1930 became the Bank of America. Among the 40 or so independent banks in California, Giannini’s bank grew because they encouraged immigrants to put their money in, when Anglo bankers refused to deal with foreigners. After the great San Francisco earthquake, they buried the banks total assets in a strongbox in their garden until their building could be rebuilt. The Bank of America grew from that garden to become the largest bank in the U.S. and a major Hollywood financier.

1928- Duke Ellington recorded The Mouche, the Fly.

1938- The radio show Captain Midnight premiered on WGN Chicago. In 1940, sponsor Ovaltine dropped its decade old show Little Orphan Annie in favor of making Captain Midnight a nationwide broadcast.

1943- The Burma Railway was completed by occupying Japanese forces using British prisoners of war as laborers, the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. Contrary to the David Lean movie, the bridge was never blown up, and is still in use today.

1965- After a two-year run, the New York Worlds Fair in Flushing Queens officially closed.

1967- The Hippy musical “Hair” opened at the Anspacher Theatre on Broadway. 

1989- In the late afternoon, the BAY AREA EARTHQUAKE- called the Loma Prieta Quake, shook San Francisco and vicinity. For the first time since 1906, fires were seen in the Mission District. The epicenter was a little town called Watsonville. 67 people were killed. California was planning to relieve traffic pressure by building upper levels onto existing freeways systems. When one of these new double deckers, the Cypress Freeway, collapsed, crushing motorists, all such plans were abandoned. 

  There was a World Series baseball game under way in Candlestick Park, but miraculously no one was hurt. National TV audiences amazed that local fans laughed at the danger. They chanted to the TV cameras: "Welcome to California!".

1990- William Stieg published his children’s book Shrek.

1990- IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base started up. 

2005- A spinoff from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, The Colbert Report with Steven Colbert premiered on Comedy Central.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 16, 2022

Birthdays: Lord Cardigan, Eugene O'Neill, Noah Webster, Dave DeBusschere, David Ben-Gurion, Disney animator Ham Luske, Angela Lansbury, Gunter Grass, Linda Darnell, Charles Colson, Susanne Somers is 76, David Zucker, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim Robbins is 64.

1847- Jane Eyre, an Autobiography first published. Writer Charlotte Bronte’ did it under the pen-name Currier Bell. 

1860- Olivia Bedel, a little girl from NY, wrote a fan letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, where she suggested that he grow a beard. Abe took her advice.

1923- Walt Disney Studios Born. 22 year old Walt and his older brother Roy signed a deal with M.J. Winkler for six "Alice in Cartoonland" short cartoons. Budget-$1,500 each. At first called The Disney Bros. Studio. 

1952- Charlie Chaplin’s film "Limelight" premiered in London. Chaplin had shot the film in Hollywood but released it in Europe because he had been driven into exile by McCarthyite Red Baiters.

1955- Ann Landers published her first column.

1969- The Miracle Mets. The New York Mets, then possessing some of the worst records in baseball history, defied all 100-1 odds and won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in 5 games. 

1976- Disco Duck by Rick Dees became #1 on the pop charts.

1997- According to the writers of the 1965 television show 'Lost in Space', this was the date the Jupiter-2 with Will, Penny, Dr. Smith and the Robot took off to colonize deep space. "Danger! Danger! Spare me your insolence, you mechanical ninny..."

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Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct.15, 2022

Birthdays: Quintus Virgilius-Virgil 70 BC, Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great 1542, Oscar Wilde, Fredrich Nietszche, Mikail Lermontov, John L. Sullivan, Jane Darnell, Burt Gillett, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Trout, Klaus Barbie the Butcher of Lyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Penny Marshall, Mario Puzo, Sarah Ferguson-Fergie' the former Duchess of York, Chef Emeril LeGasse, Chuck Berry  

1880- Vitorio, a leader of the Chiracua Apaches as famous as Geronimo, was finally hunted down and killed south of El Paso by a combined force of US and Mexican Army troops.  1905- First Little Nemo comic strip by Winsor McCay premiered in the NY Herald. McCay modeled the child on his own son Robert, and name Nemo came from a Latin root meaning no one.

1905- Premiere of Claude Debussy’s tone poem La Mer- the Sea. 

1930- Duke Ellington first recorded Mood Indigo.

1940- Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator premiered.

1951- THE FIRST I LOVE LUCY SHOW- The successful family sitcom began its pilot episode this night. CBS and sponsor Phillip Morris had wanted Lucille Ball to transfer her popular radio show-“My Favorite Husband” to television. The story of the family life of Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban immigrant nightclub bandleader, his daffy wife Lucy, and their landlord friends Fred and Ethel Murtz became an overnight sensation. 

The show was shot on film instead of live TV, and it was produced in Los Angeles instead of New York City because Lucy and Desi Arnez refused to relocate back east. Lucy also refused the networks request that Desi be replaced with a more Anglo husband. The show also pioneered the three camera shooting system for sitcoms, still used to this day. Developed by Desi and Karl Freund, the cameraman behind Metropolis and The Mummy. When Lucille Ball was off being pregnant, the show proved re-runs could be just as popular as first time showings. The January 1953 episode of little Ricky’s birth drew more viewers than the inauguration of President Eisenhower.

1959- Twentieth Century Fox signed Elizabeth Taylor to star in their new movie Cleopatra. The first time an actor was paid a million dollars for one movie. By the time production wrapped, she had earned $7 million. 

1969- The musical Paint Your Wagon opened. Lerner & Lowe, Paddy Chayevsky, Andre Previn, Jean Seberg, Nelson Riddle, Josh Logan, with Clint Eastwood singing!

1976- What’s Love got to do with it? Ike and Tina Turner break up.

1988- Bottom of the 9th, old, injured, Kirk Gibson came off the bench and hit the game winning home run to give the LA Dodgers victory over the Oakland A’s.

1989- Wayne Gretsky surpassed Gordie Howe’s all time record of scored points in hockey-1,850. The Great One went on to set a new record of 2,837 points before his retirement.

2018- Sears Roebuck, once the largest store chain in America, declared bankruptcy.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 14, 2022

B-Days: William Penn-1644, King James II Stuart, Joseph Plateau, Sword master Masoaka Shiki 1867, Dwight Eisenhower, Lillian Gish, Ralph Lauren, Eamon De Valera, e.e. cummings, Mobutu Sese Seko, C. Everet Koop, John Dean III, Cliff Richards, Jack Arnold the director of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ralph Lauren- real name Ralph Lifshitz, Roger Moore. 

1873- MY NAME IS MUYBRIDGE.  One night a carriage drove up from San Francisco to the Yellow Jacket Mine near Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. A man asked for the foreman Major Harry Larkyns. When Larkyns answered the door the man quietly said to him: ”Good Evening, Major. My name is Muybridge.  Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife earlier. “ He drew a pistol and shot Larkyns through the heart, killing him instantly. He then dropped his weapon and waited for the sheriff.

The murderer was the famous Photographer and Motion Picture Pioneer Edweard Muybridge. Muybridges’ young wife Flora had been having an affair while he was working on his Motion Studies Series in Palo Alto. Muybridge discovered the son she bore him was not his. They were even calling him Little Harry behind his back. 

The jury that convened in Napa did not hang the artist-inventor. In the Code of the Old West, proven adultery was considered a justifiable homicide. Plus, Governor Leyland Stanford was paying for Muybridge’s experiments. So, he was acquitted. Flora Muybridge divorced him in 1875 and after her early death two years later, Muybridge gave Little Harry to a San Francisco Orphans Asylum and refused to pay for his upkeep.'

1926- A.A. Milne’s first book of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin debuted this day.

1934- The Lux Radio Theater premiered.

1950- The LAPD raided a house party of gay men, which was illegal back then. One of the men arrested was future movie star Tab Hunter. This was kept secret until in 1955, when an angry agent Hunter dumped leaked the story to Confidential Magazine.  “ Tab Hunter Busted at Limp-Wristed Pajama Party!” It soon blew over and Tab Hunter went on to have a full movie career.

1954- First day of shooting on Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of the Ten Commandments staring Charlton Heston out in the Egyptian desert. It was so brutally hot that Anne Baxter joked to Vincent Price “ Vin, who do I have to sleep with to get OFF this movie?”

1955- Actor Zero Mostel testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Zero made jokes at the committee’s expense, and even made some of them laugh, but was still blacklisted. In a playful mood, he told the Committee that he was employed by "19th Century-Fox." Zero denied he was a Communist, but refused to name names. He told the Committee that he would gladly discuss his own conduct, but was prohibited by religious convictions from naming others. Consequently, he was blacklisted during the 1950s. Shut out from the movies, he also lost many lucrative nightclub gigs, and he had to make due by playing gigs for meager salaries and by selling his paintings until the mid 1960s.

1959- Errol Flynn died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Exhausted by overindulgence in his favorite vices, doctors said the 50 year old movie star had the body of a 70 year old. A descendant of one of the Bounty mutineers, the Tasmanian born actor's last film was ' Cuban Rebel Girls'.  

1964- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1972 - KUNG FU, starring David Carradine, premiered on ABC TV.

In her memoirs, Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, asserts that Lee created the concept for the series. There is circumstantial evidence for this in a December 8, 1971 television interview that Bruce Lee gave on The Pierre Berton Show. In the interview, Lee stated that he had developed a concept for a television series called THE WARRIOR, meant to star himself, about a martial artist in the American Old West (the same concept as KUNG FU, which aired the following year), but that he was having trouble pitching it to Warner Brothers and Paramount. Show creator and producer Ed Spielman denied taking Bruce Lees idea. He claimed he had been working on it on the East Coast long before. The show’s star David Carradine was a “ gweilo”-Cantonese for white foreigner,  pretending to be Chinese.

1972- Joe Cocker and his backup band were busted in Australia for drug possession.

1978- Lover Scott Thorsten “outs” pianist Liberace by filing a palimony suit.

1979- Wayne Gretsky scored his first goal.

Tom Sito's ANimation Almanac for Oct. 12, 2022

Birthdays: King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII called God’s Imp”, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil 1798, Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti, animator Izzy Klein, animator Corny Cole, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Susan Anton, Kirk Cameron, Hugh Jackman is 54

1762- Catherine the Great got vaccinated for smallpox in front of her entire court, to prove to them there was nothing to be afraid of. 

1886- Beginning of Sherlock Holmes story:” Adventure of the Second Stain”.

1920- Champion racehorse Man O’ War won his last race.

1928- The Winnie the Pooh stories featuring Tigger are first published.  

1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signed the first animation union contract and settled the cartoonist strike begun May 8th. A year later Fleischer tried to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, where the governor bragged “ All the union organizers here are hanging from trees.” The additional expense and poor box office helped ruin his studio.  

1940- Retired movie star Tom Mix “The King of the Cowboys” died in auto crash outside of Florence, Arizona. The 60 year old actor ignored signs that a bridge was out and drove into a dry gulley. A large overpacked suitcase popped out of his back seat, hit him in the back and broke his neck. The “Suitcase of Death” is preserved along with Tony the Wonder Horse at the Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

1942- Louis Armstrong married his second wife, singer Lucille Watson. She made a home for him in a suburban neighborhood in Queens New York that Satchmo always returned to after traveling the world.  

1966- Sammy Davis Jr. appeared on the Batman TV Show. Sock-it-to-me!

1971-Weber & Rice’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger theater. 

1977- Script completed for the classic film comedy Animal House.  1994- Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce their new studio  would be named Dreamworks SKG. 

1997- 53 year old singer John Denver died when he crashed his ultra-light Long E-Z plane into the ocean near Monterrey California. Later reports showed he was flying inebriated.  An open sixpack of beer was found next to him. The impact was so great his body had to be identified by fingerprints.

2005- Chinese archaeologists near the Yellow River discover the world’s oldest bowl of noodles. Someone’s fossilized noodle lunch from a bowl that tipped over in 2,000BC, and remained that way for 4,000 years.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct.11, 2022

Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Ben Vereen, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Sig Ruman– the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies.

1944-“ To Have and to Have Not,” written by Ernest Hemingway premiered. The movie paired Humphrey Bogart with a sultry Harpers model turned actress Betty-Lou Persky, now renamed Lauren Bacall. Bacall originally had a higher voice, but director Howard Hawks told her every day to go behind the soundstage and scream for an hour, to bring her voice down to a dusky, sexy alto. It worked on Bogart, who fell in love and married her despite his being 44 and she 20 years old. They called each other Slim and Steve after the characters in the film. “If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

1956- The Muppets first appeared on national TV, on the Steve Allen Show.

1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premiered on TV. “Overture, Curtain, lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”

1967- The NY Times printed an image of a nude by Bell Lab artists-in-residence Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton.  Titled Study in Perception I, It was done on a computer as a digital mosaic of thousands of numbers. It was an early breakthrough image in CGI.

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 1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for the Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. Featuring the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Mike O’Donaghue. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while stoned.

Albert Brooks did a short film and Andy Kaufman did his Mighty Mouse lip sync bit. 

Paul Shaefer conducted the music and the show was held in NBC’s Studio 8H, which was built originally for Maestro Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony of the Air. At the last moment a sketch by young Billy Crystal was cut from the show. 

The show also revived the career of announcer Don Pardo, who had trouble finding work since the original Jeopardy quiz show was canceled. He was the announcer for the show until his death in 2014 at age 96.

1987- The AIDS Quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in Washington.

1991- Comedian Redd Foxx was famous for doing bits like faking a heart attack. This day on the set of his new TV series the Royal Family, while joking with Della Reese, he clutched his chest and fell over. Everyone thought he was faking and laughed. He died at the hospital an hour later.

2001- V.S. Naipul won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 8, 2022

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Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine, Art Babbitt -the creator of Goofy would be 115, Chevy Chase is 79, Paul Hogan, Ruben Mamoulian, Edward Zwick, Johnny Ramone, Bruno Mars, Sigourney Weaver is 73, Matt Damon is 52

 

1929- British Imperial Airways shows the first in-flight movie.

 

1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTORS FIRST MASS PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion Picture rates and fees. The catch was the rates were drafted with the advice of friends of the studio heads. 

The actors went ballistic when they saw new rules, such as a cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year (the producers had no such cap), restriction of actors independent agents, and terms of an old salary contract could stay in effect even after the contract expired, until it was renegotiated.

This night, at the El Capitan theater, hundreds of actors met to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Bettie Davis, Groucho Marx and Boris Karloff. Earth tremors from the Long Beach Earthquake made the actors move across the street to Graumans Chinese parking lot . 

SAG president Ralph Morgan the brother of Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) was considered politically too left to face FDR, so he stepped down in favor of comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize. Cantor went to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition, and had the hated articles taken out of the code.

1935- Ozzie Nelson married Harriet.

1945- "Bloody Monday" During a big strike three hundred and fifty armed thugs club their way through picketing Warner Bros. film workers. Jack Warner had stationed sharpshooters behind the studios billboards. A logo on the studio wall said:" Better Movies through Better Citizenship", which the union folk changed to "Better Movies through Better Marksmanship". Similar scenes were happening in front of Fox and MGM.

1945- Percy Spencer was a researcher working on military radar for the Raytheon Corp. One day he accidentally walked through a beam of electronic microwaves, and noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued, he placed some corn kernels near the beam and watched them pop. This day he filed a patent for the first microwave oven.

 

1957- Walter O'Malley announced the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.

1957- Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his hit Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire.

1968- The movie Romeo & Juliet premiered. Director Franco Zeffirelli caused a sensation by casting young people to play the young people! Olivia Hussey was barely 16, and Leonard Whiting was 17. In the play she was supposed to be 13. Great score by Nino Rota (the Godfather). Romeo & Juliet was the last time a film version of a Shakespeare play was ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. 

1971- John Lennon first released the song Imagine.

2004- Home decorating guru Martha Stewart began serving her 5 month prison term for perjury and insider trading. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 9, 2022

Birthdays: Camille Saint Saens, E. Howard Hunt, Jacques Tati, Alastair Sim, Bruce Catton, Joe Pepitone, cartoonist Mike Peters, Savannah, John Lennon would be 81, his son Sean Lennon, E. Howard Hunt, Scott Bakula, Peter Tosh, Charles Rudolph Walgren-the inventor of the modern Drugstore, Guillermo Del Toro is 57, Tony Schaloub is 69, Pete Doctor is 54.

 

1609- Invalid Captain John Smith is put on a ship back to England. Smith had earlier gotten stung by a stingray and almost died. This time a powder horn exploded on his hip and blew out part of his side. While Smith was leader of the Jamestown Colony, he had many enemies among the jealous gentry. Some don't think it was an accident. Opinions also differ as to why the Jamestown settlers put Smith through a two-month Atlantic crossing that would kill even healthy men. Some say they were hoping he wouldn't make it. 

He did survive, but never returned to Jamestown. Nobody told Pocahontas, and when she visited the camp, the men told her he was dead and forget about him.  She would meet him ten years later in England when she was a wife and mother of the children of settler John Rolfe. Eyewitnesses said he was “shocked” when she ran into Smith alive and well.

1855- James Stoddard patents the steam calliope. 

1899- Chicago writer L. Frank Baum noted he had just finished a new book called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. “It is the best thing I’ve written, so they tell me. We’ll see if the queer and fickle public will like it.” It became a huge bestseller.

1905- The World Series resumes after a one year haggle between the owners of the American and National leagues. A best of seven contest between the N.Y. Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics. It would continue undisturbed until 1994 with the players strike.

1938- Eugene O'Neill's play 'The Iceman Cometh' opened.

1951- RKO Pictures asked Marilyn Monroe to please wear panties while working, She was upsetting the film crew.

1981- Sir Hugh Hudson’s movie Chariots of Fire, about British Olympians at the 1924 Paris Olympics became a sleeper hit. The decision to let Greek composer Vangelis score the period film with an all-electronic synthesizer soundtrack became a sensation. Soon most of the movies of that time had synthesizer tracks. People said symphony orchestras, Jazz quintets and garage bands would all be obsolete.

1986- People said there would never be more than three networks. Today the first show of the fourth network, The Fox Network's the Late Show with Joan River's, premiered. That show failed, but future hits like The Simpson's, Married With Children and the X-Files made Fox a major network within ten years.

Tom Sito's Animation almanac for Oct. 7, 2022

Birthdays: Hans Holbein, Heinrich Himmler, Caesar Rodney, Joe Hill, Andy Devine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Henry Wallace, June Allyson, Al Martino, Neils Bohr, Ameil Buraka, Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, Toni Braxton, Yo Yo Ma, Vladimir Putin is 69. 

1927- Sam Warner, the Warner Brother most responsible for committing the studio to gambling on a talking picture process, died just as the 'Jazz Singer 'opened and made Warner-Vitaphone a major Hollywood power. Jack Warner had earlier said "Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?"

1947- The Actor's Studio opened, teaching the Stanislavski Method, sometimes called Method Acting. The movement later suffered a feud between it’s two top teachers-Lee Strassberg and Stella Adler and Sandy Meisner. Ask any actor if they were with Lee or Sandy, odds were they sided with one and hated the other.

1957-Dick Clark’s T.V. show American Bandstand debuts.

1960- The movie Spartacus opened. Producer/star Kirk Douglas had been using blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for the script, smuggling him in and out of the lot for story meetings. Finally Douglas got fed up and ordered Trumbo to be brought out in the open as the movie's true author. This was considered the official end of the Hollywood Blacklist era, which had been going on since 1947. After director Anthony Mann left the project, Douglas hired Stanley Kubrick, who had such a hard time he left Hollywood afterward, never to return.

1965- The film, The Agony and the Ecstasy opened in theaters. Sir Carol Reed adapted Irving Stone’s historical novel about the painting of the Sistine Chapel, with Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II, and Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. For the first time movie makers were allowed to film in the Vatican and Sistine.

1971- Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks premiered in London. 

1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.

1993- Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" earned $ 712 million dollars just in North American box office. 

1996- Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel began.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 6, 2022

Birthdays: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale, George Westinghouse, Janet Gaynor, Carol Lombard, Karol Szymanowski, Thor Heyderthal, wrestler Bruno Sammartino, Britt Eklund, Le Corbusier, Elizabeth Shue is 59, Sean William Scott, Jeremy Sisto is 48, Ioan Guffrudd is 49

1847- Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre first published.

1860 First telegraph linking L.A. and San Francisco.

1880- First classes at University of Southern California or USC. 

1889- Paris' naughty nightclub the Moulin Rouge opened.

1911- The first transpacific telephone conversation, between Tokyo and San Francisco.

1921- In London the society known as PPEN established, for Poets, Playwrights, Editors and Novelists.

1927-"THE JAZZ SINGER" with Al Jolson debuts. Okay, somebody made a sound picture in 1924, and also something called "Footlights of New York" from 1926 but hey, you know what?- who cares!  THIS was the movie that made "Talkies" a reality. The success of this film turned Warner Bros from a minor film company into a major Hollywood studio. Within a year of this opening, only a handful of movie theaters were still showing silent movies. 26 year old Walt Disney was in the audience at that opening day, and it made him realize he needed to put sound in his next cartoon about that mouse.

1959- “Pillow Talk” premiered, the first romantic comedy pairing Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Stanley Shapiro won a best screenplay Oscar for it. The film typified the wink-wink attitude about sex before the 1960’s Sexual Revolution and defined Doris Day’s reputation as the wholesome, girl-next-door archetype. 

1966- California became the first state to officially declare LSD illegal.  Hippies in San Francisco celebrated by rallying in Golden Gate Park in the thousands, and all taking a tab together.

1971- William Freidkin’s gritty cop movie the FRENCH CONNECTION premiered. The film won best picture, director and actor Oscars, made a major star out of Gene Hackman. One unforeseen result was the movie stimulated interest in pursuing the investigation of the real French-Corsican Mafia heroin trafficking in the US. That mob was soon broken up. The two real life detectives the film was based on- Eddie Egan and Sonny Corso, both retired from the NYPD and pursued careers in show biz.

2002- The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delaune was stabbed in the stomach at an all-night Nuit Blanche rock concert. He recovered and remained mayor until 2014.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 5, 2022

Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the mastermind of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges" , Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana, Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynnis Johns is 99, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Bernie Mac, Karen Allen is 71, Kate Winslet is 47,  Guy Pearce is 55, Jesse Eisenberg is 39

According to Mike Mignola, today is the birthday of Hellboy, born in Hell -1617.

1858- An arsonist burned down NY's Crystal Palace Museum.

1880- John J. Loud patented the first ball-point pen. The modern ballpoint was developed by a Laszlo Biro in 1938.

1905- Happy Birthday T-Rex! Prof. Henry Osborne published a paper on the new bones found in Montana of a sleek hunter-killer dinosaur. He originally called it Dynamosaurus Imperiosis, but changed it to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

1932- Talking pictures now in vogue, MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.

1933- Warner Bros musical Footlight Parade with James Cagney premiered.

1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. One of the strike leaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then arrested by police for incitement to riot. 

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River.

1961- There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!” The Underdog Show premiered.

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska, a huge bear attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. When Treadwell appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year, Letterman joked:" Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" Werner Herzog did a film about his life. Grizzly Man.

2011- Steve Jobs died at age 56 of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET) that spread to his liver. As he faded away, he looked straight ahead as if he was seeing something and murmured "oh wow....oh....wow...."

2017- The Me-Too Movement. Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and later the Weinstein Company was one of the most powerful movie producers in Hollywood. This day the NY Times broke the story of his history of sexually abusive conduct towards women. He was first fired from his company, then ejected from the Motion Picture Academy, and is now serving time in prison.  Soon more women and men began to come forward with their stories of sexual abuse. All across Hollywood, celebrities’ dark secrets were exposed and careers collapsed, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Garrison Keillor, Les Moonves, John Lasseter, Maestro James Levine, opera star Placido Domingo, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and more.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 4, 2022

Birthdays: French King Louis X The Stubborn 1314, Richard Cromwell “Tumbledown Dick, “ Rutherford Hayes, Frederick Remington, Jean Millet, Buster Keaton, Englebert Dolfuss, Charlton Heston, Susan Sarandon is 76, Armand Assante, Damon Runyon, Alvin Tofler author of Future Shock, Anne Rice, Alicia Silverstone is 46, Christoph Waltz is 66, Liev Schreiber is 55, Melissa Benoist is 34.

1931- Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" comic strip debuts.

1943- Actor Clark Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying combat missions over Germany. It was said Gable took these deliberately dangerous missions instead of doing USO shows out of a death-wish he had in grief for his wife Carole Lombard, who was killed in a plane crash the year before. She had been urging Gable to volunteer shortly before her death.  Adolf Hitler offered a cash reward of $5,000 to anyone who could bring Gable in alive. Adolf was a movie-fan, and loved Gone With the Wind. 

1950- The first Peanuts comic strip introducing Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy.

1955- The Brooklyn Dodgers a.k.a. "Da Bums" win the World Series for the first time, and the only time they ever won it while inhabiting the precincts of Flatbush. The name Dodgers came from the fact that several main trolley car lines intersected in front of Ebbets Field on Atlantic Avenue. To get into the ballpark you had to cross this area dodging the traffic. So they were known as the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers, then Dodgers.

1957- SPUTNIK- Russia inaugurates the Space Age and first shoots an object into space orbit. A basketball sized satellite called" Sputnik-1". Sputnik means Satellite and the word spawned pop words like Beatnik, Nudnik and Peacenik. Americans used to thinking of themselves as the leaders in all technology reacted with shock. Why weren’t we first?  We were losing the space race! Senate leader Lyndon Johnson complained “I don’t want to sleep under a Commie Moon!”

 The gov't reaction caused the creation of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funneled Defense Dept money into research through leading universities. Besides space, DARPA oversaw the development of computer graphics and the Internet.

1957-"Leave it to Beaver' debuts on CBS.

1969- Diane Linkletter, the daughter of television personality Art Linkletter got stoned on LSD and leapt out of a window to her death. Her boyfriend snatched at the belt loops of her dress in an attempt to save her, but they tore away. Art Linkletter became a livelong crusader against drug abuse. 

1970- Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. Room 105. She was 27. Her song “Me and Bobby McGee” was as yet unreleased but soon topped the pop charts. Joplin left a considerable sum in her will for a party for her friends. The invitation read “ The Drinks are on Pearl”, her nickname.

1998- Rolie Polie Olie premiered on The Disney Channel. The French-Canadian Nelvana production, designed by William Joyce, is today considered one of the earliest animated TV series done completely on computer.  

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 3, 2022

Birthdays: Gore Vidal, Mikail Lermontov, Harvey Kurtzman, Chubby Checker, James Herriot, Eleanor Duse, Emily Post, Leo McCarey the director of the Marx Brothers classic film Duck Soup, and many Laurel & Hardy shorts, Steven Reich, Tommy Lee, Neve Campbell, Clive Owen is 58

1855- American James McNeill Whistler arrived in Paris to study painting. He had gotten into West Point for a military career, but dropped out after a year. Later, he joking told friends "If I hadn't identified phosphorous as a gas, I'd be a major general by now!'

1910- English comedians Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel first arrive in the U.S. with a touring British vaudeville company, the Fred Karno Troupe.

1941- Warner Bros. THE MALTESE FALCON "premiered. Screenwriter John Huston asked if he could direct an adaptation of this old Dashell Hammett story, which had been already made into movies twice. This version became the most famous. The name was kept despite producer Hal Wallis wanting to change it to THE GENT FROM FRISCO. 

1951- The Shot Heard Round the World- Bobby Thompson's bottom of the ninth, last out, home run which enabled the N.Y. Giants to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League Pennant.

1955- 'Good Morning, Captain.' The Captain Kangaroo kid show debuted on television. 

1955- The Mickey Mouse Club TV show premiered. “Who’s the leader of the Band that’s Made for you and me…?”

1957-Walter Lantz's The Woody Woodpecker TV Show debuted.

1957- Jayne Mansfield met Greta Garbo and asked for her autograph.

1961- The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered. It made stars of Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore and was written by ex-Sid Caesar writer Carl Reiner and Rocky & Bullwinkle writer Alan Burns. Carl Reiner originally was going to be the star, but after a few takes, producer Sheldon Leonard told him, “We’re going to find a better actor to play you.” And in came Dick Van Dyke. The show was a favorite of Orson Welles.

1967- Folksinger and union activist Woodie Guthrie died of Huntington’s Chorea. He was 55. His family scattered his ashes in New York Harbor, then went to Nathans on the Coney Island Boardwalk for hot dogs, Woody’s favorite.

1992- Bald Irish pop star Sinead O’Connor caused a fuss by tearing up a picture of the Pope on the show Saturday Night Live. She was later booed off stage during a concert at Madison Square Garden.

2003- The Siegfried and Roy magic show in Las Vegas came to an end after a large Bengal Tiger attacked Roy Horn and tore his throat out in front of an audience. Most thought it was part of the act. Roy Horn survived, but they wisely decided to retire. He died in 2020 at age 75 from covid.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 2, 2022

Birthdays: King Richard III, Nat Turner, Mahatma Ghandi, Claus Von Hindenburg, Ferdinand Foch, Spanky MacFarland, Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Moses Gunn, Graham Greene, LeRoy Shield (composer of the music in the Hal Roach comedies), Donna Karan, Gordon Sumner known as Sting is 71, Lorraine Bracco is 58, Tiffany, Kelly Ripa 

1920 - The only triple-header in baseball history was played on this day, as the

Cincinnati Reds took two out of three games from the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1928 - This was a busy day at Victor Records Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. DeFord

Bailey cut eight masters. Three songs were issued, marking the first studio recording

sessions in the place now known as Music City, USA.

1933- Library of Congress musicologist John Lomax met with an Arkansas chain gang

convict named Hudlan Ledbetter, who everyone called Leadbelly.  He recorded a cotton picking work song of his called "the Rock Island Line' and “The Midnight Special”. 

1937 - Ronald Reagan, just 26 years old, made his acting debut this day

with Warner Brothers release of "Love is in the Air".

1950- Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip debuts. Good ol' Charlie Brown was the name of a post office worker Schulz knew that all the guy's liked to play jokes on.  Schulz's idea 'Little Folks' was initially rejected by all the major comic syndicates. When it was finally accepted, a syndicate editor suggested he change the name to Peanuts, after the children’s Peanut Gallery in the popular Howdy Doody TV Show. Three months before the strip was accepted his girlfriend broke off their engagement. She was convinced he would never amount to anything. 

At the time of his death Charles Schulz had mountains on the moon named for his characters, and he was arguably the richest visual artist on earth.

1954- Elvis Presley was fired from Nashville's Grand Ol' Opry Show after 

one performance. He was told: "Son, you ain't a' going no where. Go

back to driving a truck!"

1955 - "Good Eeeeeeevening." The master of mystery movies, Alfred

Hitchcock, presented his brand of suspense to millions of viewers on CBS

on this night.

1957- Raintree County, the first film in Panavision.

1957- The Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, premiered. 

1959- The television show The Twilight Zone debuts. Producer/writer Rod Serling 

had fought network execs for months that a mystery-suspense show could compete with

all the Doctor and Cowboy shows on TV.  He originally wanted Orson Welles to be 

the host of the show, but when Welles asked for too much money, Serling decided to

do it himself. He wrote 90 episodes. He said he got the name Twilight Zone from a 

term airline pilots used for the area when both the clouds and ground are invisible 

from view and you lose your bearings.

1967- San Francisco Police raid the Haight-Ashbury home of the rock band the Grateful

Dead, busting everyone for possession of narcotics.

1977 - Following a foiled attempt to steal the body of Elvis Presley from

Forest Hill Cemetery, both Presley's and his grandmother's bodies were moved

to Graceland.

1978- Future TV star Tim Allen was busted in Kalamazoo Michigan for selling cocaine.

1982- Godfrey Reggio’s haunting documentary Koyaanisqatsi premiered at Radio City Music Hall. No dialogue, no narration, just amazing music by Phillip Glass.

1985- Actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS, just 3 ½ months since he announced he had contracted it. He was 59. The first major celebrity to die of the disease.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for October 1, 2022

Welcome to Month Number 8, Octubrius to the Romans. In 138AD the Roman Senate wanted to rename month Faustina, after the wife of the Emperor Antonius Pius.  But she being a rare modest empress, declined the honor. 

Birthdays: Vladimir Horowitz, Walter Matthau, Richard Harris, Phillipe Noiret, James Whitmore, Everett Sloane, Rod Carew, Stanley Holloway, Tom Bosley, Randy Quaid, Cindy Margolis, Zack Galifanakis is 53, R.O. Blechman is 92, Brie Larson is 33, Julie Andrews is 87, Pres. Jimmy Carter is 98.

1945- Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin left the cartoon business to work full time as a screenwriter at Paramount on live action movies. He wrote for the Marx Brothers and later directed the Dean Martin Jerry Lewis comedies. 

1952- This Is Your Life TV show hosted by Ralph Edwards premiered.

1955- The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason, Jayne Meadows and Art Carney premiered on TV.

1957- Los Angeles outlawed garbage incineration to try and cut down smog levels. Even though Los Angeles has reduced it's pollution levels by 30% in ten years it still had the worst air in the United States until surpassed by Houston in 1999.

1962- Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show, after host Jack Paar walked off the set in a rage and resigned. Paar was annoyed the network censors cut a comedy sketch that featured a joke about a WC (water-closet). At first, people were cool to Carson. Even his own mother in Nebraska wasn’t impressed. But by years end Johnny Carson became the king of late night TV, and ruled it for 32 years. Jack Paar later said quitting was the worst mistake of his life.

1968- George Romero's film "Night of the Living Dead' premieres. Despite one film critic describing it as,” A bunch of sick crap”, it went on to become a cult hit.

1971-Walt Disney World Florida opened to the public.

1982- Disney's EPCOT opens.

1987- The Whittier Earthquake rocks L.A. 5.9 on the Richter Scale, it killed 8 and caused millions in damage.

1992 -The Cartoon Network started.

2009- The Walt Disney Family Museum opened in San Francisco.