Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov. 30, 2022

Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, William Enos Berkeley aka Busby Berkeley, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guilliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark, Ridley Scott is 86, Ben Stiller is 57, Kaley Cuoco is 37, Henry Selick is 70

1869- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, Bricktop, and Maurice Chevalier.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. He was 46. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do.”

1922- The great actress Sarah Bernhardt made her last performance in Turin Italy. She was still considered sexy despite advanced age and a wooden leg.

1923- Max Fleischer moved his animation studio to big new offices in 1600 Broadway. 

1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

1940- Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz. Together they pioneered the new art of Television Situation Comedy. They divorced in 1960 but remained lifelong friends.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS TV show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into Sony Pictures.

1985- Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

1987- John Lasseter’s Pixar short Red’s Dream released.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was made to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the standard retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he himself hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. Roy built a successful grass root stockholders’ campaign SaveDisney.com. In 2005 it was Eisner who was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.

2010- Don Hahn’s doc Waking Sleeping Beauty was released on DVD.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 29, 2022

Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis), Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Yakima Canutt, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen is 66, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee, Chadwick Boseman, Anna Faris is 46, Vin Scully

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

1914- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything alone, and may have hired a cameraman or assistant. This day, John Randolph Bray's cartoon "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, today known as the Production Pipeline. He created the job classifications of layout, animator, inbetweener, background painter, inker, blackeners (cel painters), and camera. In the 1920s the job of gag man (storyboarder), cleanup and checkers. After 1919, Bray shifted his studio focus from entertainment to technical and training films. J.R. Bray started the careers of Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer, Dick Heumer, and Shamus Culhane. 

1932- Cole Porter’s musical The Gay Divorcee’ opened on Broadway.

1935- Physicist Edwin Schrodinger published his thought experiment “ Schrodinger’s Cat”.

1959- The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darin’s rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1963- A week after the Kennedy assassination, comedian Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the slain president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies and won a Grammy in 1962, but now it just wasn’t funny anymore. Meader’s career faded, and he ended up managing a bar in Maine. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened his set with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”. 

50th Anniv.1972- Atari announced Pong, the first popular mass-marketed interactive game. 

1981- Actress Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and 

drowned. She was 43. Her husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning. 

1995- Pixar’s IPO stock offering after the success of Toy Story made Steve Jobs a billionaire.

2001- Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer. He was 58.

2017- Matt Lauer, the celebrity host of NBC’s Today Show, was fired after allegations of sexual misconduct with staffers.

2018- Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns opened. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov. 28, 2022

Birthdays: Jean Baptiste Lully, William Blake, Frederick Engels, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Roehm, Brooks Atkinson, Berry Gordy the founder of Motown Records, Anton Rubinstein, Gary Hart, Vern Den Herder, Paul Warfield, Hope Lange, Paul Schaefer, Joe Dante, Michael Ritchie, Anna Nicole-Smith, Randy Newman is 79, Ed Harris is 73, John Stewart is 60

1870- Painter Jean Bazille was shot and killed while serving in the French Army fighting the Prussians. He was only 29. He had been one of the early leaders of the new movement called Impressionism. Had he lived he might have been as famous as Monet or Cezanne.

1895- The Chicago Times-Herald Race- the first American auto race. Two electric and four gas powered cars raced from Chicago to Evanston and back, 54 miles despite several inches of snow on the ground. The winner Car # 5 driven by inventor Charles Duryea reached a top speed of 7 miles an hour! Only one other car finished, the rest broke down. Duryea won $2,000, and caught a cold. 

1907- 23 year old Russian-Canadian scrap metal dealer Lazar Meir, now renamed Louis B. Mayer, bought an old burlesque house in Haverhill Massachusetts to show the new moving picture shows. Originally called The Gem, it was such a dump locals called it The Germ. Mayer renamed it The Orpheum, and on Thanksgiving Day opened with the film “ From the Manger to the Cross”. L.B. Mayer grew his film business to become MGM, and at the time of his retirement in 1950 was the most powerful man in Hollywood. The Motion Picture Academy was his idea.

1922- The first skywriting display. Former RAF pilot Cyril Turner wrote HELLO USA, CALL VANDERBILT 7-200 in the skies above New York City. 47,000 people immediately telephoned the number.

1925- First radio broadcast from the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville.

1926- California oil tycoon Edward Doheny went on trial for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal. That he and Harry Sinclair had bribed the Secretary of the Interior to lease them U.S. Navy strategic oil reserves. And like most millionaires, he was acquitted.

1942- THE COCONUT GROVE FIRE-The U.S. public was distracted for awhile from war news by reports of a terrible disaster in Boston. A fire broke out at a popular nightclub called the Cocoanut Grove and killed 492 people in only twelve minutes. The clubs decorations caught fire and created carbon monoxide gas and there were only two exits. Among the dead was western movie star Buck Jones. The tragedy created the first mandatory laws requiring public buildings to have fire exits opening outwards and safety testing of decorative materials.

1942- Fleischer Paramount cartoon short “Superman and the Mechanical Monsters” opened in theaters. For the first time we see Clark Kent change into Superman in a phone booth. In 2004 the cartoon was the inspiration for Kerry Conran’s scifi epic “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” With Jude Law, Gwynneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie.

1946- During the traditional Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in NYC,  Hollywood cameras filmed the Macy Parade scenes for the movie “The Miracle on 34th St.”Star Edmund Gwenn posed as Santa.  At this time, Hollywood movies were rarely filmed on location. But the studio had little faith the film would be a success, and did not want waste a lot of money building big sets on their lot. 

1947- Disney's cartoon "Chip and Dale".

1948- Hopalong Cassidy premiered on television.

1953- Cartoonist & writer Milt Gross died.

1989- Opposites Attract, Paula Abdul dancing with cartoon MC Skat Kat, was released. It became one of the most popular R&B & dance-pop singles of 1990 and won a Grammy. 

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

Birthdays: Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jimi Hendrix would have been 80, Bruce Lee-original name Lee Jun Fan, would have been 82, James Agee, Chaim Weizmann, Mobster Vito Genovese, Czech leader Alexander Dubcheck, David Merrick, Marshal Thompson, Robin Givens, Judd Nelson, Buffalo Bob Smith, William Fichtner, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is 65, Kathryn Bigelow is 71

1932- Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Walt Disney, wrote to fellow  animator Bill Tytla, encouraging him to come out to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon!"

1936- Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor".

1953- Playwright Eugene O'Neill died of pneumonia, Parkinson's Disease, and alcoholism at 65. He had been writing on cardboard laundry shirt boards because he needed something large to write on because his hands trembled so violently. When O’Neill realized his end was near he tore up six plays he was writing because he wanted no one else to complete them. He was staying at the Shelton Hotel in Boston. As his father was an actor his family traveled frequently. O'Neill's last words were: "I knew it! Born in a hotel room, and goddammit, I'm dying in a hotel room! "

1957- The Hollywood Reporter announced NBC had purchased a season of cartoons especially made for TV by former MGM animators Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. They will be called “Ruff and Ready” and will debut in a half hour slot on Saturday Mornings.

1960 – Gordie Howe became the first NHL player to score 1,000 goals.

1963- The Beatles release the single “ I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

1967- The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour.

1973- Conjunction Junction, by Jack Sheldon, first played on the TV show Schoolhouse Rock.

1973- According to the X-Files this was the night Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted by aliens.

2002- Disney’s animated feature Treasure Planet opened in theaters.

2013- Disney film Frozen premiered. Directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. Let it Go! Let it Go!

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov. 26, 2022

Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Marian Mercer, Charles Schulz would be 100, Cyril Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Sister Wendy Turnbull, Robert Goulet, Don Hahn.

1832- In New York, the John Mason started service, a streetcar pulled along iron rails by a team of horses. This replaced horse pulled wagons. It went from Princes Street to 14th St. A ticket cost 12 pennies.  The last horse car tram stopped in 1926.

1865- Lewis Carroll sent a copy of the completed manuscript of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland to his 12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. Carroll later published the book with his own money. This is one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate or discipline them.

1868- At first baseball games were played in a convenient cow pasture. Today the first baseball game was played in an enclosed field. It was in San Francisco at Folsom & 25th St..

1926- Potato chips, or crisps in the UK, were invented in the 1880’s and served in restaurants and fairgrounds. This day Mrs. Laura Scudder was the first to put potato chips in a bag and sold them as a handy snack food. She sold them out of the back of her pickup truck until the business picked up. She ran her own company until 1959. 

1938- Walt Disney was raised in a hard-scrabble, struggling family. He promised his parents if he ever made good, he would take care of them. After Snow White made him rich and successful, he moved his parents out to Los Angeles and gave them a beautiful home in North Hollywood. This night faulty furnace leak filled their bedroom with carbon monoxide. The housekeeper found them in the morning and dragged them out onto the lawn. Walt Disney’s father Elias barely survived but his mother Flora died. This left Walt so shattered he could never talk about it after.

1940- Woody Woodpecker first appeared in an Andy Panda cartoon "Knock-Knock.’

1945- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded KoKo, the first bebop Jazz single. Instead of big bands as was the fashion, they used a smaller quintet. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card, so after his solo, Dizzy dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The song was from chord variations of an old Ray Noble song “Cherokee” that Bird and Dizzy knew. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”. Jazz critic Ira Gitler picked up on the witty interplay between musicians, and wrote of the new sound as BeBop.

1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.

1990- Acting on the example of Sony’s purchase of MGM-Columbia studios, Matushita (Panasonic) bought MCA- Universal studios for $6.6 billion. After a few fruitless years they sold it to the Bronfman’s group, the distillers of Seagram’s Whiskey.

Nov 25, 2022

Birthdays: Lope de Vega, St. Pope John XXIII, Andrew Carnegie, Tina Turner, Joe Dimaggio, Carl Benz of Mercedes Benz, Virgil Thompson, Jeffrey Hunter, John Kennedy,Jr., Percy Sledge, Ben Stein, Ricardo Montalban, Bob Matheson, John Larroquette, Gloria Steinem, General Augusto Pinochet, Christina Applegate, Bucky Dent,  animator Bill Kroyer

1817- First sword swallower performed in the US.

1864- In a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at New York’s Winter garden Theater the three Booth brothers- John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius Booth appeared together for the only time. Other famous acting families of the time included the Powers, whose descendant was the movie star Tyrone Power, and the Barrymores, who’s line continues down today from John to John Drew to Drew Barrymore.

1869- Ned Buntline was a hack dime novelist who understood that selling stories about gunfighters of the west would be easier if you could occasionally produce one in the flesh. So on a trip to Nebraska he found among the cavalry scouts an accommodatingly colorful rogue named William Cody, who everybody called Buffalo Bill. This day Ned Buntline announced in the New York Weekly the first installment of a serial series “Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen”. Buntline and Cody collaborated to make Buffalo Bill the first true American media star, entertaining millions, from crowned heads to street kids, until his retirement in 1916.

1929- Alfred Hitchcock’s film Blackmail opened in London. It was the first full length talkie in Britain.

1949- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sung by Gene Autry hit number one on the music charts. The TV program by Rankin/Bass premiered in 1964.

1952- The stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery the Mousetrap opened in London’s West End and became one of the longest running plays in history.

1960- CBS canceled its remaining five radio broadcast soap operas, most of them now on television. 

1975- According to the movie Rocky, this was the date of the first prizefight portrayed in the film where we first meet Rocky Balboa.

30 Years ago. 1992- Walt Disney’s Aladdin opened in theaters.

1995- Legendary Corporate CEO Akio Morita retired as the leader of Sony. Under his guidance Sony went from a little postwar maker of electric rice cookers to the largest electronics company in the world. His official reason was he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while playing tennis. Some insiders said he was tired of dealing with the stress of managing Sony's Hollywood studios -MGM, Columbia, TriStar losing $2 billion. By the time Morita died in 1999, the Sony movie studios had pulled out of their slump and were on top with movies like Titanic and Men in Black.

2009- Disney’s Princess and the Frog, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, opened.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Nov 24, 2022

Birthdays: Spinoza, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Scott Joplin, Zachary Taylor, Carrie Nation, Dick Powell, Garson Kanin, Cass Gilbert-the architect of the first skyscraper, Alvan Barkley-Truman’s VP, Forrest J. Ackerman, William F. Buckley, John Lindsay, Dale Carnegie- author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, Steve Yeager, Denise Crosby, Billy Connolly is 81

HAPPY THANKSGIVING (U.S.)  Since the earliest times societies had harvest festivals to give thanks to the appropriate deities that they're not going to starve that winter. A letter written in 1621 by pilgrim Edward Winslow described how Pilgrim Gov. Bradford and Miles Standish invited Massasoit and 90 of his Wampanoag people to a feast to celebrate their first successful harvest. The Indians brought several deer they hunted. Gov. Bradford, who later wrote a detailed history of the Plymouth colony, does not mention the event. The custom of Thanksgiving was a New England custom for decades thereafter. In 1789 George Washington called for a thanksgiving celebration in late November to celebrate the new Constitution. But Pres. Thomas Jefferson thought Thanksgiving was the most ridiculous idea he ever heard of. He considered it a violation of the separation of church and state, as did Andy Jackson and Zachary Taylor. So, the holiday didn’t really become an annual custom until the Civil War. Sarah Hale the editor of the Ladies Magazine, the Martha Stewart of the mid 1800s, had been lobbying the US Government to make the New England tradition a national one. 

In 1864 after the great union victory at Atlanta, President Lincoln issued a decree that the last Thursday of November be set aside as a feast of national Thanksgiving. As blue clad troops chowed down on their turkey and chicken dinners, the Confederates withheld their fire in honor of the new Yankee holiday. Thanksgiving was declared by Presidential decree, usually a notice buried in back of a newspaper until made an official holiday in 1941. The first Macy’s Parade in NY was in 1924, the big balloons debuted in 1927.

1789- The first issue of France’s national newspaper Le Moniteur.

1859- Charles Darwin published his book on evolution, The Origin of the Species.

1904- Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Steichen opened 291, the first art gallery dedicated exclusively to the art of photography.

1922- Irish writer Erskine Childers was the writer of the Riddle of the Sands, one of the first true spy novels, but he was also a leader of the IRA, and after Irelands Treaty with Britain he sided with the anti-treaty rebels in the Irish Civil War. This day Erskine Childers was shot by an Irish Army firing squad. His son became President of Ireland in 1973.

1933- The RKO movie Flying Down to Rio released, meant as a starring vehicle for Dolores Del Rio, but what we remember is it is the first pairing of the famous dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

1937- The Andrew Sisters record their Boogie-Woogie version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon”, an old Yiddish Klezmer song that was updated by Bennie Goodman.

1938- LENI DOES TINSELTOWN -Hitler's top filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl arrived in Hollywood to meet the film community and show off her new documentary 'Olympia". Nazis charges de’ affaires in L.A., Gerhard Gyssling, had bragged to the press that all Hollywood couldn’t wait to meet Reich’s top filmmaker. But Hollywood had different ideas. Sam Goldwyn said,” I’m not going to greet that N*zi bitch!” Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, Fox refused to speak to her and picketers hounded her every step. Well known Conservatives like Louis B. Mayer and Gary Cooper were polite but begged off the bad publicity. The only studio heads who would meet Leni Reifenstahl were Hal Roach and Walt Disney. Uncle Walt gave her a tour of the studio but begged off running her film, saying the union projectionist would make trouble. ( uh-huh....) Years later Disney said he didn't really know who she was. (uh-huh......) In her 90s, Leni told LA historian Robert Nudleman that she thought Walt met her because his professional curiosity got the better of him. That he wanted to see Olympia, because it was the only film to beat his Snow White at the Venice Film Festival, then the world’s most prestigious film festival.

1941- After suffering a strike and declining revenue because of the war in Europe, Walt Disney’s studio was in trouble.  Animator Ward Kimball noted in his diary for this day: “ 100 layoffs announced. Studio personnel from 1600 down to a Hyperion level of 300. Geez, It this the writing on the wall?” 

1947- THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST- 50 Hollywood moguls like Harry Cohn, Jack Warner and Dore Shary met at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to formulate a group response to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee anti-commie hearings that were targeting Hollywood. Besides the heat from the feds their stockholders were clamoring for them to get the Reds out! They agreed to enforce an industry-wide blacklisting of anyone refusing to cooperate with the HUAC Committee. Nothing was ever officially written down or published, if you were blacklisted you suddenly were unable to find any work. 

   Eric Johnston, spokesman for the Motion Pictures Assoc. said on this day: "As long as I live, I will never be party ot anything as unAmerican as a blacklist!”.

 Two days later on Nov. 26th he said: " We will forthwith discharge and never again knowingly employ a Communist. Loyalty oaths for the Entertainment Industry are now compulsory." Many Hollywood artists signed Communist Party cards in the 1930's when it was chic' to be lefty, and the Communists were the only open opponents of segregation and Hitler. Writer Bud Schulberg’s excuse was CP parties had the prettiest girls. Out of an estimated 15,000 entertainment workers only around 300 were ever actually proven to be Communists. Famous blacklist victims included Zero Mostel, Lillian Hellman, Lloyd Bridges, Dashell Hammett, Gale Sondergaard, Edward G. Robinson, Howard Da Silva, Ed Wynn, Sterling Hayden & Dalton Trumbo. Sidney Poitier was blacklisted for no other reason than he was friends with black activist-actor Canada Lee; 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' composer Yip Harburg was blacklisted for writing a song: “Happiness is a thing called Joe" which the committee took to mean Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 

1950- The musical Guys & Dolls opened. “ I got da horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, I know a jock who tells me Never Fear, Can Do- Can Do..The Jock sez da horse can –do ”

1958- The musical film Gigi opened, music by Lerner & Lowe. Based on the writings of French author Collette, Collette herself had insisted young unknown Dutch actress Audrey Hepburn play the lead.

1963- To complete the surreal drama that shocked America into the Sixties, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot on live nationwide T.V. by smalltime gangster Jack Ruby. He was taken to the same hospital and had the same doctors as Kennedy but still died. Ruby, real name Jacob Rubenstein, always hung around the Dallas police station, so no one thought it was unusual to see him around.

1968- Hey Jude by the Beatles topped the pop charts while Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man headed the Country & Western listing.

1991- Freddy Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, died of AIDS. He was 45.

1988- Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered.

1998- America On Line bought their chief competitor Netscape.

1999- Pixar’s Toy Story 2. in theaters. 

2000- Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas. 

2010- Disney’s Tangled released.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 23, 2022

Birthdays: German Emperor Otto I-972AD, Edward Rutledge, President Franklin Pierce, Krystoff Penderecki, Manuel DeFalla, William Henry Pratt better known as Boris Karloff, William Bonney better known as Billy the Kid, Roman Petrovich Tyrtof better known as Erte’, Arthur Marx better known as Harpo, George O’Hanlon the voice of George Jetson, Susan Anspach, Victor Jory, animator Ray Patterson, Vincent Cassel is 55, Joe Esterhaus is 79, Miley Cyrus is 29.

1874- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy first published.

1889- The first Juke Box installed at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. Created by Louis T. Glass and William Arnold, it used Edison cylinders instead of records and cost 5 cents a play. Juke comes from Juke Joint, a slang term then for a cheap dance hall.

1897- Windsor Castle saw the first performance for Queen Victoria of a cinematograph moving picture. Her Majesty watched footage of the procession of her Diamond Jubilee taken in June. Also on the program was Monsieur Taffary's Calculating Dogs.

1903- Italian tenor Enrico Caruso made his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in Verdi’s Rigoletto. The great singer loved drawing caricatures, collecting police badges, pinching ladies bottoms and doing practical jokes, like filling your hat with flour. Painter Norman Rockwell recalled when he was paying his way through school by being a Met stagehand, Caruso liked to talk art with him and he asked about George Bridgeman’s class, the great anatomy teacher.

1923- During Prohibition, off the coast of New Jersey, the Coast Guard finally apprehended the most famous of the gentlemen Rum-Runners, Bill McCoy. McCoy had been a Florida yacht builder until Prohibition showed him a new way to make a living. He sailed his speedy yacht The Arethusa to Nassau in the Bahamas or French Labrador, fill up with commercial booze, and sell it in the New York City area. When much unregulated ersatz alcohol could make you sick, bathtub gin, McCoy was known to sell only high-quality labels. It is where the term “The Real McCoy” came from.  

1936- The first florescent lighting tubes are installed in the U.S. Patent office.

1936- Time Magazine owner Henry Luce launched LIFE Magazine. The first picture on the cover was a dam photographed by Margaret Bourke-White. The second picture was a doctor slapping a newborn baby with the caption: “Life Begins!”

1938- Bob Hope recorded his signature tune “Thanks for the Memory” for the movie The Big Broadcast..

1942- PLAY IT AGAIN SAM- The movie CASABLANCA premiered. Based on a never produced musical, “Everybody Comes to Ricks’, Howard Koch and the Epstein Brothers adapted the play into one of the most memorable Hollywood love stories ever. It was never expected to be more than a rehash of the popular Charles Boyer film Algiers. (Come with me to zee Casbah…”). Humphrey Bogart told a friend about his new project “ Aw, its just some more shit like Algiers.” Bogie acted opposite Ingrid Bergman, although he had to stand on apple boxes to appear taller than his Swedish leading lady.

During the famous scene where the French exiles drown out the singing Germans with a stirring rendition of le Marseillaise the Germans are singing Watch On the Rhine. The director wanted them to sing the Nazi Party anthem the Horst Wessel Song but the Warner Legal Dept discovered it was copyrighted! We’re fighting them Nazis, but we don’t want them to sue us!

1952- Animator Fred Moore, who drew Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and the Brave Little Tailor, died from cerebral injuries incurred in an auto accident in the Big Tujunga Canyon area of Los Angeles. He was 41.

1960- The Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated, featuring over 1,500 names- but not Charlie Chaplin, who was banned until 1972 because of his political views. 

1963- The very first episode of Dr. Who premiered on the BBC TV. William Hartnell played the first Dr. Who. There have been thirteen doctors since.

1966- The film “Spinout “ premiered. Elvis Presley pioneered the genre movie of bored male movie stars who use their studio muscle to make us watch movies of them racing cars. James Garner in Grand Prix-arguably the best one, Steve McQueen in LeMans, Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Sly Stallone in Driven, etc.

1985- The first commercial compact discs (CDs) go on sale.

1990- 37-year-old baseball catcher Bo Diaz was crushed to death by a large satellite dish he was trying to install.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 22, 2022

Birthdays: French explorer Sieur de LaSalle, George Elliot- pen name for Mary Anne Evans, Benjamin Britten, Charles DeGaulle, Andre Gide, Wiley Post, Billy Jean King, Boris Becker, Geraldine Page, John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, Hoagy Carmichael, Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Vaughn, Tom Conti, Mark Ruffalo, Victoria Paris- porn star of such classics like Bimbo Bowlers from Buffalo, Stevie Van Zandt is 71, Jamie Lee Curtis is 64, Terry Gilliam is 82, Scarlett Johanssen is 38

1888- According to Edgar Rice Burroughs, this is the birthday of the boy who would become Tarzan.

1916- Author Jack London died at 40 in Glen Ellen California of kidney disease. The author of White Fang and Call of the Wild was a lifelong radical socialist and supporter of the labor movement. In 1919 radical Emma Goldman eulogized him in an article in The Masses: “It’s a pity that brother Jack never lived long enough to see the Red Flags of Freedom flying over the Kremlin!”

1928- Ravel’s Bolero Suite premiered in Paris.

1935- The First Pan Am China Clipper service began from San Francisco to Honolulu and Manila. Captain Edwin Musik took off with 20,000 people waving bon voyage.

1950- The Lowest Scoring Basketball game in NBA history. The Fort Wayne Pistons defeated the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18. They later became the Detroit Pistons and Los Angeles Lakers.

1955- Shemp Howard, one of the Three Stooges, died of a heart attack while driving home with friends from a prizefight. No one noticed he was gone until they saw his lit cigar had fallen into his lap. He was just turned 60.  Born Samuel Horvitz, he got the name Shemp from his mother attempting to say his name Sam in her thick Yiddish accent.

1957- The Miles Davis Quintet debuted.

1963- Aldous Huxley died. The author of Brave New World had inoperable cancer so his wife kept him high on LSD,

1980- Screen goddess Mae West died at 87. He apartment suite at the Ravenswood in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles has been lovingly restored, since the owner claims her ghost nagged him to put her furniture back!

1985- Apple ended a long lawsuit with Microsoft and Hewlett Packard that allowed them to share the visual characteristics of the Macintosh displays in their Windows software.

1993- Sir Anthony Burgess died. The author of A Clockwork Orange had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he had one year to live, back in 1959, 34 years ago.

1995- Pixar’s Toy Story opened, the first all CG movie, and the first true CG hit.

2005- Microsoft Xbox 360 goes on sale.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 21, 2022

Birthdays: Francios Arouet called Voltaire, Marlo Thomas is 82, Colman Hawkins, Stan “The Man” Musial, Tom Horn, Pope Benedict XlV, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Harold Ramis, Rene Magritte, Goldie Hawn is 77, Dr. John (born Malcolm Rebennack), Mariel Hemingway, Troy Aikman, Bjork is 57 

1916- During World War I, the hospital ship HMS Britannic struck a German mine in the Aegean Sea, and sank killing 30 people. What makes this sinking stand out, is that Britannic was the sister ship of HMS Titanic, that sank in 1912.

1933- Film director Frank Capra went to Claudette Colbert’s home to talk her into delaying her holiday vacation long enough to star with Clark Gable in “It Happened One Night”. Colbert said she would only do it for double her normal salary and if they would be done by Dec 23rd so she could spend Christmas with friends at Squaw Valley Idaho.

 They made the picture on a rush, and Colbert later told her friends:” I just finished the worst picture in the world!” It Happened One Night” became a big hit for Capra, Columbia and swept the Oscars including one for Colbert’s most memorable performance.

1934- Cole Porter's musical 'Anything Goes!' opened on Broadway. Ethel Merman starring, In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked upon as somewhat shocking. Now Heaven knows- Anything Goes!”

1942- Happy 80th Tweety. Warner's "A Tale of Two Kitties" the first Tweety Pie. 

1959- The day after he was fired WABC radio, DJ Alan Freed refused to sign a statement that he never received cash payments or payola to run Rock & Roll records on the air, which is exactly what he did.

1980-  “The Who Shot J.R.?” episode of the TV show Dallas.

1980- Australian Olivia Newton John’s disco anthem to aerobic exercise “Let’s Get Physical ” goes to number one of the pop charts and stays there for ten weeks.

1986- Don Bluth’s An American Tale opened.

2007- Disney film Enchanted opened generally. 

2008- Walt Disney’s Bolt premiered.

2017- John Lasseter, the creative head of Walt Disney Animation and Pixar, responsible for Pixar’s string of successful films like Toy Story, stepped down from all his duties because of accusations of inappropriate behavior with his female employees.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 20, 2022

Birthdays: Robert F. Kennedy, Maya Plisetskaya, Gene Tierney, Dick Smothers, Bo Derek is 66, Sean Young is 56, Richard Dawson, Estelle Parsons, Barbera Hendricks, Duane Allman, Chester Gould the creator of Dick Tracy, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, Benoit Mandlebrot, Alastair Cooke, Ming Na Wen, President Joe Biden is 80  

1875- Henry James published his first novel Rockwell Hudson.

1894- Prince Ananias premiered, the first operetta of Victor Herbert.

1947- The longest running television show in history- Meet the Press, premiered. And it is still on today.

1958- On the TV show Playhouse 90, John Frankenheimer presented “The Old Man” the first show shot and edited completely on videotape. Videotape had been around since 1951 but was used primarily for in-studio live news shows and variety segments.

1994- Rock & Roll star David Crosby received a new liver. 

1998- Several state governments and the US tobacco industry reach a landmark settlement arising from lawsuits over smoking illnesses. The trial also killed off once and for all ads featuring The Marlboro Cowboy and Joe Camel, a cartoon character that at one point was as recognizable to children as Donald Duck.

1998- Pixar’s film A Bugs Life was generally released.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 19, 2022

Birthdays: King Charles I of England, President James Garfield, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Roy Campanella, Tommy Dorsey, Ted Turner is 84, Calvin Klein, Indira Ghandi, Dick Cavett, Larry King, Kathleen Quinlan, Alan Young -Mr. Ed’s friend, Ahmad Rashad, Allison Janey is 63, Meg Ryan is 61, Jodie Foster is 60, Terry Farrell

1703- The "Man in the Iron Mask" died in Pignerole prison. Louis XIV had him locked up for forty years. He was first mentioned in Voltaire's History of the Age of Louis XIV as having a velvet mask, which writer Alexandre Dumas changed to iron for dramatic effect. No one ever discovered who he was or why his face was covered. Speculation was that he was everyone from an Italian diplomat, to the son of Oliver Cromwell, to a twin brother of King Louis XIV himself. It made for great literature, but he remains a mystery.

1828- Composer Franz Schubert died of complications of venereal gonorrhea at age 31.

1941- Princess Iron Fan, by Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming, opened . Considered the first Asian animated feature film. 

1942- In a concentration camp in Poland, author-artist Bruno Schulz was executed. The author of “Street of Crocodiles” last act was being forced by a Gestapo officer to paint images from Brothers Grimm fairytales on his son’s bedroom wall before he was shot.

1959- Jay Ward's television show 'The Adventures of Rocky and his Friends' debuts. 

1969- The great soccer champion Pele scored his 1,000 goal.

1998- Film Director Alan J. Pakula was one of the Hollywood community who preferred living in New York City. This day he was driving on the Long Island Expressway when he was killed in a freak accident. A large truck kicked up in its tires a discarded piece of steel pipe. It flipped it through Pakula’s windshield, killing him instantly.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 18, 2022

Birthdays: Armelita Galli-Curci, Karl Maria Von Weber, W.S. Gilbert, Johnny Mercer,

Astronaut Alan Shepard, Louis Daguerre, Brenda Vaccarro, Eugene Ormandy, George Gallup, Warren Moon, Pam Dawber, Rocket Ishmail, Delroy Lindo, Kevin Nealon, Owen Wilson is 56, Chloe Servigny is 50

It’s hand drawn animation day! See below- 1928.

1602- In Transylvania, 22 year old English soldier of fortune John Smith killed three Turkish warriors in single combat. Such single bouts were normal before large armies clashed. The Duke of Transylvania, Sigmund Bathory, granted the commoner Smith his own coat of arms, three Turkish heads. This is the same John Smith who will go to Virginia and meet Pocahontas in 1607. 

1718- Francois Voltaire’s first play Oedipe, premiered in Paris. 

1865 Mark Twain's first story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' published.

1889- Richard Strauss completed his orchestral tone poem Tod und Verklarung, Death and Transfiguration. The 29 year old created a musical illustration of what it felt like to die and the soul ascend to glory. Fifty-nine years later in 1949, as elderly Richard Strauss was dying, he said to his wife, “Yes! It is exactly the way I saw it…”

1902- THE TEDDY BEAR BORN-The Washington Evening Star published a story of how President Teddy Roosevelt while hunting couldn't bring himself to shoot a grizzly bear cub. Cartoonist Cliff Berryman illustrated the incident with one of his signature “dingbat” bear cubs in a gesture of  “oh no!” Brooklyn toymaker Morris Mitchcolm sewed a doll from the illustration in the newspaper and sent the first one to the White House. Mitchcolm did so well with the sale of Teddy Bears he founded the Ideal Toy Company.

1928- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICKEY MOUSE- At Universal’s Colony Theater in New York, Walt Disney’s cartoon "Steamboat Willie" debuted before a movie called Gang War. The first major sound cartoon success and the official birth of Mickey Mouse. Two earlier silent Mickey's were being completed, but when Walt saw Al Jolson speak in The Jazz Singer, he held those two shorts back so the sound experiment could go ahead. At this The Disney Brothers Company had just 11 employees. 

1963-The first push button telephones go into service. By 1980 they pretty much replaced the rotary dial phones.

1968- Mattel introduced Hot Wheels toy cars in stores.

1970- At the Lakeside School in Seattle, a young kid named Bill Gates was first shown computer programming.

1985- Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin & Hobbs debuted.

1988- Disney’s Oliver & Company released.

1988- Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time was released.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov. 17, 2022

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vespasian 9 A.D, Il Bronzino, August Ferdinand Moebius-1790 the inventor of the Moebius Strip. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Rock Hudson- real name Roy Sherer, Peter Cook, Lorne Michaels is 78, Isamu Noguchi, Lauren Hutton, Tom Seaver, Gordon Lightfoot, Les Clark, Lee Strassberg, Shelby Foote, Sophie Marceau, Martin Scorcese is 80, Danny deVito is 78

1839- Oberto premiered, an opera written by a new composer named Guisseppi Verdi. ( Joe Green). The great composer would go on to write Rigoletto, Aida and La Traviata.

1853- San Francisco passed a law to put up street signs at the intersections of major streets.

1876- Peter Tchaikovsky’s musical rhapsody the Marche Slav premiered.

1891- Polish pianist Ignaz Paderewski made his American debut at Carnegie Hall. Paderewski created the cliché image of the temperamental classical musician with long flowing hair combed straight back. Classical music became known as longhair music.

1933- The Marx Bros classic Duck Soup premiered.

1973- In a televised press conference about the expanding Watergate Scandal held at Walt Disney World, President Richard Nixon uttered the famous phrase:” People want to know if their president is a crook, well, I am not a crook!”

1978- This night, our world was rocked by a disturbance in The Force more powerful than the destruction of Alderon, It was "The Star Wars Holiday Special", a two-hour comedy variety show on CBS, with Harrison Ford, Beatrice Arthur and Nelvana’s animated cartoon. To this day, even Mark Hamill jokes about how dumb it was.

1989- Don Bluth's animated film All Dogs Go to Heaven premiered. 

1994- The Sony Corporation posted a $2.7 billion dollar loss from its first year owning a Hollywood movie studio. By 1996 the studio was on top with blockbusters like “Men in Black”

2002- Premiere of Disney’s Treasure Planet.

2019- The first reported case of CoVid 19 was reported in Wuhan China. It grew to become a global pandemic not unlike the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. So far it has killed 6.6 million people around the world, 1,120,000 in the USA.

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

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius 42BC, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 45

1801- The first issue of the New York Post. Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists wanted a paper to print their views. Editor James Coleman once had to kill a man in a duel that morning and get back to the office to get the afternoon edition out. 

1906- Opera star Enrico Caruso was charged for pinching a ladies bottom while visiting the Bronx Zoo. Caruso claimed a monkey did it.

1915- BIRTH OF THE COKE BOTTLE- The owners of Coca Cola were concerned that the success of their soft drink was being subverted by all the various cheap imitations. They decided if they had a distinctive bottle people would recognize genuine Coca Cola.  This day the first Coca-Cola appeared in their distinctive curved little green bottles, created by the Ross Glass Co. of Indiana.

1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE- Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner whose property later became the site of MGM studios. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests was Charlie Chaplin and Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked Thomas Ince was dead and everyone very upset. The official cause of death was a heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies in flagrante-delicto, and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came between them. We’ll never know for sure. 

1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts- singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue, many would say it was this date, when the New York Palace Theater on Broadway, a premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live acts to purely Movies. 

1946- The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said:  "We call television a Medium, because nothing on it is Rare, or Well Done."

1952- The first time in a Peanuts comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting to kick it. It became one of Schulz’s best recurring jokes.

1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59 year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion.  He had told his agent that the unprofessional antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting. Ten days later, while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, Clark  was sitting up in bed, joking with the nurse and reading a magazine. Suddenly he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the pillow, and died. Clark Gable was 59.

He composed his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."

1977- Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in theaters.

1981- Actor William Holden died. The handsome star of such classics as Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17 and Network, was told as a young actor to take a few drinks to calm the pre-camera jitters. But by now he was a hopeless alcoholic. This night, at home alone and drunk, he fell and cracked his head on a table edge. Too inebriated to call for help, he dabbed his forehead with bunches of Kleenex tissues until he bled to death. He was 63.

1990- Disney’s feature film the Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer. With it was the short Mickey’s Prince and the Pauper, the last Disney theatrical done with acetate cels and paint at the Burbank ink & paint dept. 

1996- Warner Bros Space Jam, where Bugs Bunny met NBA star Michael Jordan.

2001- The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the dole, now she was one of the richest women in the world. In England second only to Madonna and the Queen.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 15, 2022

B-Days: Georgia O'Keefe, Bill Melendez, Irvin Rommel the "Desert Fox", Avrial Harriman, Daniel Barenboim, George Bolet, William Pitt the Elder, Veronica Lake would be 100, Beverly D'Angelo is 71, Mantovanni, Ed Asner, Sam Waterson is 82, Otis Armstrong, Petula Clark is 90

1754- First use of the modern trombone. It was played at a child's funeral.

1828- Author Victor Hugo signed a contract with Gosselin's Publishing House to write a story about the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris. He was paid 4,000 francs in advance; The HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was the result. 

1907- The comic strip A. Mutt by Harry “Bud” Fisher debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle. The name was later changed to Mutt & Jeff. It was the first 6 day consecutive daily newspaper strip. The strip was so popular that its creator Harry “Bud “ Fisher became a celebrity, and negotiated the first large backend deal. 

1926- FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooked up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein.  It came from the Steinway building penthouse on 57th St. in Manhattan.

1934- Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.

1958- Movie star Tyrone Power was filming a sword duel with George Sanders on the film Solomon and Sheba. He paused and told the director “ I have to stop, I don’t feel well”. He then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 44. His father Tyrone Power Sr. had also died on a Hollywood movie set in 1931 of a heart attack,

1965- Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this one in Orlando Florida.

1977- The Bee Gees soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever came out. 

1979- ABC news announced they would broadcast a daily update of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The late night show became Nightline.

1989- Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid opened. 

1990- It was revealed that the Grammy winning pop group Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their own album, but lip-synced to the music. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 14, 2022

Birthdays: Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith, 

Louise Brooks, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Yanni,

 P.J. O'Rourke, George Petrovic' called KaraGeorge "Black George" Serbian nationalist 1762, Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, William Stieg, Laura San Giacomo is 60, Patrick Warburton is 58, Zhang Yimou is 71, King Charles III is 74

1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. 

1883- Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, or, the Mutiny on the Hispaniola, first published. He wrote a friend,” It's quite silly and horrid fun – and what I want is the best book about Buccaneers that can be had"  Stevenson gave us our image of a typical Pirate of the Spanish Main. His book told us about peg legs, pet parrots, skull and crossbones flag, treasure maps, and the song “ Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest. Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!”  

1922- Happy 100th Birthday B.B.C.! the British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results. 

1937- SPAM introduced! Shoulder-Pork And HaM.

1943- When Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic, 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein became an overnight sensation.

1959- In Holcomb Kansas, two men broke into a farm home and murder four people. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.

1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren with her pre-collagen Lips.

1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sold his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts. 

1968- Frank Sinatra announced that the smog and air pollution in Los Angeles had gotten so bad that he was moving out to the desert in Palm Springs. 

1991- At ILM, the creation of the dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park were going to be done in traditional stop motion animation, like Ray Harryhausen used to do. Two CGI animators, Steve “Spaz” Williams and Walter Dippe’ did a quick test of a moving T-Rex on their own time and this day left it out for review as Spielberg’s producers chanced by. They loved the test and showed it to Steven who declared it all had to be done in CGI. The resultant success of Jurassic Park was the turning point in the digital revolution in modern media.

1998- Pixar’s A Bugs Life Premiered.

1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 13, 2022

Birthdays: Saint Augustine 354 AD, King Edward III of England, Robert Louis Stephenson, actor Edwin Booth, Oskar Werner, Jean Seberg, Jack Elam, Judge Louis Brandeis (the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Alexander Scourby, Hermoine Badderly, Eugene Ionesco, Garry Marshall, Mel Stottlemyre, Joe Mantegna is 75, Jimmy Kimmel is 55, Gerald Butler is 54, Whoopi Goldberg- born name Caryn Johnson is 67

1789- Ben Franklin wrote " Nothing is certain except Death and Taxes." 

1842- Today Lewis Carroll noted in his diary:" Began writing the fairy tale of Alice. Hope to be done by Christmas..."

1868- Giacomo Rossini died at 68. He retired at 37 from performing and lived on royalties. It was said he became so lazy he laid about in bed all day. One day when writing a concerto his score dropped to the floor as he leaned over to fill his glass. Rather than bend down to pick it up, he took a fresh sheet and wrote a sonata. He still could do a nice piece on occasion, like The Fantastic Toy Shop. Born on leap day Feb 29, at 68, he listed his age as 16.

1874 -At the sesquicentennial celebrations of the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Green invented the Ice Cream Soda.

1940- Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' premiered at the Broadway Theater in NYC. As Walt put it, "this'll make Beethoven!"  Frank Lloyd Wright's opinion was, 'I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?" 

1953- An Indiana judge ordered his local school district to remove any school books with references to the character Robin Hood. All the "take from the rich and give to the poor" it was obvious to the judge that the medieval rogue of Sherwood Forest was a Communist.

1971- ABC TV. movie "the Duel" premiered. It starred Dennis Weaver as a hapless motorist on a lonely freeway menaced by an anonymous, unseen truck driver. The movie was directed by a young protégé of Lew Wasserman, named Steven Spielberg.

1971- Walt Disney’s The Aristocats opened.

1978- Mickey Mouse got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1986- Directors John Huston, Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen denounced the fad promoted by Ted Turner of computer colorizing classic Black & White films like the Maltese Falcon. Supposedly one of the last things Orson Welles said on his deathbed was "Keep Ted Turner and his crayons away from my movies!" Ted got the message and shifted his money to digital restoration and building channels like TCM.

1991- Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast opened, the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

1997- Julie Taymor’s staging of The Lion King musical had its official Broadway debut. It had opened earlier in Minneapolis for a trial run.  She became the first woman director to win a Tony award for it.

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 12, 2022

Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Grace Kelly, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Nadia Comenici, Tanya Harding, Wally Shawn, Megan Mullally is 63, Anne Hathaway is 40, Ryan Gosling is 42, animator David Brain is 81.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The act caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion named in his honor- Jules Leotard.

1912- Mayor of New Orleans Martin Behrman shut down the brothels and shady establishments of the red light district Storyville. The place where American Jazz originated.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1936- The Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge dedicated. Engineer Charles Purcell went on to design LA Freeways. 

1937- Alan Turing delivered his famous paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" at Kings College, Cambridge. 

In it he postulated on the ability to create a "universal machine" that used numbers to solve problems and could be re-programable for different tasks. In his day they were called Turing Machines, but we know them now as Computers.

1939- Actor Bela Lugosi spent the day at the Walt Disney Studio posing for their animators as the Devil in Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia. Despite the good publicity shots, lead animator Bill Tytla was dissatisfied with his performance and used fellow artist Ham Luske as his model instead.

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with James Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1970- The town of Florence Oregon found a large dead gray whale on its beach. City fathers decided it would be easier to dispose, if they blew it up. As an audience watched, they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by falling 50 pound chunks of smelly blubber and guts. The film of it has been called the first viral video.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 11, 2022

Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gen. George Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnegut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Stanley Tucci is 72, Demi Moore is 60, Leonardo di Caprio is 48

1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom.

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale.  The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package their cookies.

1937- Animation production wrapped on Disney’s first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chanteuse Kate Smith. Irving Berlin had written the song in 1918 for a Broadway show Yip,Yap, Yaphank, but it didn’t fit in. So, he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later, he revived the song as a peace hymn faced with the growing threat of WW2.  This day at an Armistice Day radio concert it was sung by Kate Smith.  It became a huge hit. Every few years there is a call to make it the national anthem. 

1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule so L.B. Mayer ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a popular character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1951- In Los Angeles, the Bing Crosby Enterprises gave the world’s first demonstration of a videotape recorder. Developed by John T. Mullins and Wayne Johnston.

1953- Disney short Ben and Me, directed by Ham Luske.

1954- Tolkein’s second book of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, first published.

1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar flop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."

30th Anniv. 1992- The premiere of Walt Disney’s Aladdin, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. Starring Robin Williams doing the voice of the Genie. 

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 10, 2022

Birthdays: Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Carl Stalling, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho Marx’s TV announcer, Enrico Morricone,Tracey Morgan is 53, Neil Gaiman, Animator educator Sue Kroyer

1880- Old Civil War general and New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace got his first novel published, and it came out pretty good- Ben Hur.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

1953- Disney’s short “ Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom” released.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 1970's folk song to happen.

1981- Pioneering French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen 1925 epic movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many hits like Terminator 2 Judgement Day, Rambo, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 9, 2022

Birthdays: English King Edward VII, Hedy Lamarr- born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler,

Confederate Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, Stanford White, Marie Dressler, Ed Wynn, Ann Sexton, Spiro Agnew, Tommy Dorsey, Dr. Carl Sagan, Whitey Herzog, Dorothy Dandridge, Dr. Herbert Kalmus the inventor of Technicolor film, Lou Ferrigno is 70, Sisqo

1911-The first Neon sign illuminated.

1964- First "Wizard of Id" comic strip published.

1953- Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning and liver failure in New York City, after downing 18 straight shots of whisky. He was 39. There's actually some debate as to whether or not Dylan Thomas intended to drink himself to death.  Scholars have recently suggested that he was a diabetic and died of hypoglycemia.  Whatever the actual agent of Thomas' demise may have been, the coroner wrote on his death certificate under the cause of death, "Insult to the brain."

1966- In London, John Lennon went to an art exhibit and first met a Japanese avant-garde artist named Yoko Ono.

1979- National Public Radio goes on the air. The first US national news show with women as anchors. It was also the first news program in stereo.

2003- Looney Tunes, Back in Action, directed by Joe Dante, released. 

2004- The Jones Soda Pop Company of Seattle announced its new creation – Mashed Potato Flavored Soda. This was to follow up on their success last year of Roast Turkey and Gravy Soda.

2004- Mozilla-Firefox 1.0 started up.

2012- Steven Spielberg’s’ film Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 7, 2022

Birthdays: Francesco Zubaran, Madame Curie, Rev. Billy Graham, Leon Trotsky –real name Lev Bronstein, Albert Camus, Al Hurt, Dean Jagger, Joni Mitchell, Joan Sutherland, Judy Tenuda, Clive Barnes, Lindsay Duncan, Morgan Spurlock, Lucille LaVerne, the voice of the Wicked Queen in Disney’s Snow White.

1899-The play Uncle Yanya, by Anton Chekov, premiered at the Imperial Art Theatre in Moscow, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski.

1937- Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels sent an emissary to Paris to talk Marlene Dietrich into coming home. But Germany’s greatest movie star hated the Nazis and all they stood for.

1951- Frank Sinatra left his wife to marry hot moviestar Ava Gardner.

1956- Eugene O’Neill’s biographical masterpiece play “Long Days Journey into Night” first premiered.

1963- The movie “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” premiered at Hollywood’s new Cinerama Dome theater.

1965- the first Pillsbury Doughboy commercial debuted. ‘Tee-hee-hee!” 

1980- Movie star Steve McQueen died of an aggressive cancer at age 50. 

1991- “Even Me” Basketball star Ervin “Magic” Johnson revealed he had HIV. 

2007- Walt Disney Pictures Enchanted premiered in London.

2014- Walt Disney’s Big Hero 6 opened.

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

Birthdays: Sophocles 495 BC, Joanna La Loca (Crazy Joanie 1479), John Phillip Sousa, Joseph Smith the founder of LDS, Ignacz Paderewski, Charles Dow of Dow Jones, Adolphus Sax inventor of the Saxophone, James Naismith the inventor of Basketball, Mike Nichols, Edsel Ford, animator Eddie Rehberg, Ray Coniff, John Olsen of the comedy duo Olsen & Johnson, Harold Ross the founder of the New Yorker magazine, Jonathan Harris, Maria Shriver is 66, Rebecca Romjin is 50, Thandie Newton, Sally Field is 77, Emma Stone is 34

1869- Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first college football game.

1893- Famed Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died at age 53. Just a few days before the premiere of his 6th Symphony. The cause of death for the composer was declared to be cholera from drinking un-boiled water in a local St Petersburg restaurant. Recent scholarship floated a different theory. Tchaikovsky was a closeted gay man afraid of being exposed. He had tried marriage to a woman, and hated it so much he tried suicide two weeks later. By this time he had formed an infatuation over his nephew. This allegedly caused a secret "Court of Honor" of alumni of his old civil service academy to confront him and threatened him with exposure and scandal. They threatened to even go directly to the Czar to expose him. So he may have taken poison and it was blamed on cholera which was prevalent in the city then. Fellow composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov though the inquest more oddly rushed and confused than usual. We may never really know. 

1916- Elderly Buffalo Bill Cody made his last public appearance in El Paso Texas. El Paso had been as wild a frontier town as Deadwood or Tombstone, but now it was a quiet modern city. Telephone and electricity wires crisscrossed overhead and streetcars clattered down the streets where gunfighters once shot it out. Buffalo Bills parade seemed to make plain to all the final passing of the Old West to the New. The wild cheering brought tears running down the old scout's white mustaches. It was a fitting final bow. Bill Cody died of prostate cancer a few weeks later.

1936-The Screen Children's Guild chartered.

1975- First appearance of the band the Sex Pistols.

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

Birthdays: Gen. Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Eugene V. Debs, Art Garfunkel is 82, Roy Rogers, Tatum O'Neill, Elke Sommer- born Baroness Elke Von Shletz is 83, Ike Turner, Vivien Leigh. Will Durant, Joel McCrea, Sam Shepard, John Berger, Robert Patrick is 65, Tilda Swinton is 62

1699- According to Jonathan Swift, this is the day Lemuel Gulliver was shipwrecked on the isle of Lilliput. 

1937- Disney's silly symphony The Old Mill debuted. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique.

1938- Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings premiered.

1940- President Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented 3rd term. His defeated Republican opponent- Wendell Wilkie, who became the butt of jokes in many Looney Tunes.

1955- The date in 1955 that Marty McFly travels to in the 1985 film Back to the Future. 

1975- Mormon lumberjack Travis Walton was abducted by aliens and experimented on for five days, then returned to his home in Snowflake, Arizona. The encounter was seen by seven adult men, who were his co-workers. Walton published a bestseller Fire in the Sky, that was made into a movie.

1979- National Public Radio’s news show Morning Edition started..

1994- 45 year old fighter George Foreman capped off an amazing comeback by becoming the oldest person ever to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World. 

1999- A man was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing and keeping 150 shopping carts in his apartment.

2004- Pixar's The Incredibles , directed by Brad Bird premiered. 

Tom Sito's Animation Alamanac for Nov 4, 2022

Birthdays: Will Rogers, Art Carney, Illustrator T.S. Sullivant, Disney animation director Ben Sharpsteen, Loretta Swit, Martin Balsam, Gig Young, Darla Hood, Joe Neikro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ralph Maccio, Andrea McArdle, Walter Cronkite, Matthew McConnaughy is 52, Laura Bush, Kathy Griffin is 21, Aardman animator Peter Lord is 69.

1913- William Mulholland's great aqueduct starts bringing water 200 miles from Northern California to L.A. by the force of gravity alone. Without the extra water L.A. would never have grown any larger than 180,000 people. (L.A.Times estimate.)

1918- Wilfred Owen, one of the great English poets, was killed in combat in World War I, only six days before the final armistice.

1927- HOWARD CARTER OPENED THE TOMB OF KING TUT. Other royal tombs had been opened before but they had always been cleaned out centuries ago by grave robbers. King Tut Ankh Amon’s was the first unspoiled Pharoah's tomb to be discovered in modern times. The site was discovered under a house built for workers excavating the tomb of King Ramses IV. 

1931- One of the pioneering trumpet innovators of the new music called Jazz was Buddy Bolden. He was one of the first soloists to improvise within the body of a song, and so doing paved the way for the greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But by 1931 Bolden was forgotten. This day he died broke in the Louisiana Home for the Insane. His family couldn't even afford a Dixieland Band to play at his funeral.

1945- Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld first inserts his daughter Nina’s name into one of his cartoons. It was for a Broadway musical review “ Are You With It?” with Johnny Roberts.

1955- In Arizona, Willie Bioff, union official who tried to hijack the Hollywood unions (Including the Disney cartoonists) for Frank Nitti's gang, had turned informer and was in the federal Witness Protection plan. This day he got into his car, turned the key in his Ford pickup and exploded. 

1963- The Beatles were part of the Queens Royal Command performance in London. John Lennon told the audience: " Will the people in the cheap seats clap their hands? And the rest of you, would you please just rattle your jewelry."

1977- The Incredible Hulk TV show starring Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby, first premiered as a made for TV movie.

1989- Grand Day Out, introduced the characters Wallace and Gromet.

2005- Disney's Chicken Little was released in theaters.

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

Birthdays: The Roman writer Lucan 39AD, John Montague the Earl of Sandwich, Jubal Early, Walker Evans, William Cullen Bryant, Stephen Austin, Bronco Nagurski, Andre' Malraux, Vincenzo Bellini, Bob Feller, Karl Baedeker author of the guidebooks, Ken Berry, Michael Dukakis, Gustav Tenngren, Lulu, Osamu Tezuka, voice actor Jim Cummings is 70.

1503- MONA LISA- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by a Florentine senator Francesco del Giocondo to paint a portrait of his third wife Madonna Elizabetha or Lisa. He fussed over the painting for four years and never gave it to Francesco. He said it was still unfinished and kept it for himself. Eventually he needed money so he sold it to the King of France and today it sits in the Louvre. Was her enigmatic smile because she had lost a child earlier that year and Leonardo was trying to cheer her up? He used to have musicians playing in the room when she posed. Or is she emblematic of Woman smiling at all the foibles of Men? One historian called Mona Lisa, “The Face that Launched a Thousand Reams Upon a Sea of Ink.

1956- The 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, with Judy Garland, was first broadcast on television. Almost 40 million people tuned in that night. It has been run every year since. Possibly the most viewed on TV movie ever. 

1966- President Lyndon Johnson signed the Truth in Packaging Act, which required all packaged foods to print their real ingredients on the label.

1971- The first UNIX manual released. 

1971- Carly Simon married James Taylor.

1974- Hello Kitty created.

1976- Carrie starring Sissy Spacek opened in theaters.

1977- Disney's Pete's Dragon starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons. 

1979- T.V. sitcom Different Strokes premiered.

1981- WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty girls like Sally Forth. He drew EC Comics, the Mars Attacks series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that was so good, people assumed it was done by a rogue Disney animator. But hard living and deadlines took their toll. Suffering from a stroke, and failing kidneys, Wally Wood put a 44 cal pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Today police found his remains. The bullet had passed completely through his head and was in the pillow on the other side. 

2006- Dreamworks/Aardman film Flushed Away, directed by David Bowers.