Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 28, 2023

Birthdays: Michel de Montaigne, The Marquis de Montcalm, Zero Mostel, Vasclav Nijinsky, Molly Picon, Gavin MacCleod, Bernadette Peters, Bubba Smith, Mario Andretti, Milton Caniff- the creator of Terry and the Pirates", Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel, Tommy Tune, Vincente Minelli, Linus Pauling, Dorothy Stratton, Frank Gehry, Sir John Tenniel, John Tarturro, Gilbert Gottfried, Bernadette Peters is 75.

1835- Dr. Elias Lohnnrot published the Finnish national epic poem Kalevala. It’s about the first man Vanjiamoimmen, who was born old and searched for the magical machine called The Samo, kept in a mountain with seven locks, guarded by seven wizards chanting Samo, Samo! Modern scholars cannot agree just what the samo was, or what it did.

1896- Robert Paul demonstrates a kinetograph to the Royal Institute. The British Cinema industry is born.

1920 Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin debuted.

1938- Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev toured the Walt Disney Studio, and performed his piece Peter and the Wolf for Walt and his music director Leigh Harline.

1940- At the Oscars ceremony Hattie McDaniel became the first black actress to win an Oscar for her supporting role in Gone With The Wind. 

1940- Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, about growing up black in America, first published.

1949- Bob Clampett’s live puppet show Time for Beanie premiered.  Albert Einstein was a fan. Ten years later it was revived as the popular animated series Beanie and Cecil.

1953- Chuck Jones “Duck Amuck” premiered. 

1968- Former teen idol singer Frankie Lyman OD’s on heroin.

1982- BP oil tycoon J. Paul Getty had died in 1976 the richest man on earth. Getty found his immediate family so annoying he left the bulk of his estate to his little Getty Museum in Malibu California. This day after all attempts of the family to challenge his will were exhausted, the Getty Museum was endowed with two billion dollars and immediately became the richest museum on earth. 

1983-The last episode of the television series M*A*S*H.  It was the single most watched TV episode in history.

1986- Disney animator Eric Larsen retired. Larsen had stayed on to train the next generation of animators who created the 2D Rennaissance of the 1990s.

2023- The last Worthington Ford car dealership closed. Oklahoman Cal Worthington began selling autos in Southern California in 1951, making distinctive commercials. He died at age 96. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 27, 2023

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Constantine 280AD, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Steinbeck, Ralph Nader, Marion Anderson, Chelsea Clinton, Franchot Tone, William Demarest, James Worthy, Mirella Freni, Judge Hugo Black, David Sarnoff the founder of the NBC network, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Smith-creator of comic Bone, Disney artist Rolly Crump is 93, Joanne Woodward is 93.

 

1814- Beethoven’s 8th Symphony premiered.

1827- The first Mardi Gras celebration was held in New Orleans. Mardi Gras parties were first held by the French colonists of Mobile Alabama in 1709. From there the custom spread to the Big Easy. 

   

1919- Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets first premiered in London.

1941-At the 13th Academy Awards, for the first time a Walt Disney cartoon did NOT win Best Animated Short.  MGM’s The Milky Way won.

1956- Elvis Presley released song Heartbreak Hotel.

1958- Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn died of a heart attack at age 66. His ruthlessness was legend in Hollywood. He once said " I don't get ulcers, I give them!" Hedda Hopper said:' You have to get in line to hate him." The entire Columbia staff was ordered, not requested, to attend a memorial service. Looking at the large crowd around the coffin, Red Skelton quipped: "You see, like Harry always said, give the people what they want, and they'll show up."

1977- In Toronto, the Canadian Mounties busted Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg for heroin possession. The Stones agree to do two benefit concerts as punishment.

2005- Brad Bird’s The Incredibles won then Academy Award for best animated feature.

Chris Landreth’s Ryan beat out Disney’s Lorenzo for best animated short.

2013- Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story III won best animated feature.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 26, 2023

Birthday: King Wenceslas of Bohemia-1361, Frances Marion, Victor Hugo, Buffalo Bill Cody, Emma Destin, Levi Strauss, Jackie Gleason, Fats Domino, Betty Hutton, Johnny Cash, William Frawley, Robert Alda, Tony Randall- born Arthur Rosenberg, Erhyke Bahdu, Fred “Tex” Avery

1854- Composer Robert Schumann went mad and jumped off a bridge into the Rhine River. He was fished out and institutionalized. His schizophrenia grew out of advanced syphilis. He said he was not committing suicide but had thrown his wedding ring into the river to free his wife Clara of him. He then relented and leaped into the raging ice filled water to get it back.

1929- Congress declared the Grand Tetons a national park.

1942- Walt Disney received the Irving Thalberg Award at the Academy Awards. Leopold Stokowski got a special Oscar for his work on Fantasia, Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace won Best Score for Dumbo.

1962- First day shooting on the first James Bond film Dr. No. The scene was in M's office and featured Bernard Lee, Peter Burton and their new discovery, Sean Connery.

1965- First day of shooting on the Beatle's second film 'Help!"

1983- Michael Jackson’s album Thriller went to #1 in the pop charts and stayed for weeks. Twenty-six year later, after Jackson’s death in 2009, Thriller again went to #1 around the world.

1986- Dragon Ball Z premiered in Japan

1990- Cornell Gunther, lead singer for the DooWop group the Coasters, was shot dead at a Las Vegas traffic intersection."Yakkety-Yak, Don't Talk Back!"

1991- At a meeting in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee introduced the first Web Browser.

1996- Silicon Graphics Corp (SGI) bought Cray Research. 

2017- Disney's Zootopia won best animated feature Oscar, and Pixar's Piper won best animated short.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb. 25, 2023

Birthdays: Enrico Caruso, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Zeppo Marx, St. Louis (King Louis IX of France), Bobby Riggs, Carl Eller, Dicky Jones the voice of Disney’s Pinocchio, Sir Anthony Burgess, Neil Jordan, Larry Gelbart, Tom Courtenay, Sean Astin is 53, Tea Leoni, John Foster Dulles, Neil Jordan is 73, Rashida Jones is 47

1932- TOONTOWN SCANDALS. Former Australian prizefighter Pat Sullivan was the producer of the Felix the Cat cartoons, the first true animation star. Although animator Otto Mesmer actually created him, Sullivan's name is the only one on the titles. Felix was one of the top film stars of the 1920s. Lindbergh supposedly had a Felix doll with him in the Spirit of St. Louis and his body shape was the prototype of Mickey Mouse and dozens of other characters. While Mesmer quietly drew pictures Sullivan lived the fast life of a roaring twenties celebrity. Mrs. Marjorie Sullivan had been having an affair with her chauffeur. After a nasty scene when husband confronted wife and the chauffeur fled, Mrs. Sullivan mysteriously fell out of her window to her death. The scandal was front page news and Sullivan never got over it. He soon drank himself to death, which during Prohibition was difficult to do. Sullivan's death and his failure to get Felix into sound cartoons doomed his studio. Otto Mesmer went on to animate the first Broadway light signs but did not receive any recognition for his contributions to animation until he was re-introduced to the public at a Bob Clampett night at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975. Kid animators Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito were in the audience.

1955- Davy Crockett at the Alamo with Fess Parker premiered on Walt Disney’s Disneyland TV show.

1956- Poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes met at a party in Cambridge England.

1956- Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short “ Broomstick Bunny” with Witchy Hazel, premiered.

1957- Buddy Holly and the Crickets recorded "That'll Be the Day."

1964- Young Cassius Clay, later renamed Muhammad Ali, defeated Sonny Liston in 2:14 minutes into the 7th round for the heavyweight boxing crown. The odds were on Liston 8-1 but Clay said he would "Float like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee!" When asked to comment about his defeat, Sonny Liston replied: "Life, a funny thing."

1983- Famous playwright Tennessee Williams was found dead in a New York hotel room. He died when he choked on a nose spray bottle cap that fell into his mouth while he was using the spray. Others say it was a Pepsi bottle cap. He was 71.

1996- Dr Haing Ngor, the doctor who survived the Cambodian Killing Fields and won an Academy Award in a movie of the same name, was killed in a robbery attempt outside his Los Angeles home.

Tom Sito's Animation Fun Facts for Feb 24, 2023

B-Dazes: Roman Emperor Hadrian, Winslow Homer, Arrigo Boito, Wilhelm Grimm (of the brothers Grimm), Honus Wagner- early 1900’s baseball player called the Flying Dutchman, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Edward James Olmos, Barry Bostwick, Michel Legrand, James Farentino, illustrator Zdzislaw Beskinski, Michael Radford, Billy Zane, Steve Jobs, Abe Vigoda, Bob Kinoshita who designed the robot from Lost in Space. 

1937- MGM studio announced it acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz, to be made into a movie for their new star Judy Garland. They won out over Walt Disney and Hal Roach.

1942- The radio service The Voice of America first went on the air.

1943- Fed up with the bad climate in the studio because of the Strike, master animator Bill Tytla resigned from the Walt Disney Studio.

1987- US Robotics sold the first 56k modems.

1988- PARODY LAWS- The US Supreme Court upheld the right of public figures to be satirized, by throwing out a lawsuit Rev Jerry Falwell brought against Hustler Magazine owner Larry Flynt. Flynt published a gag about Rev Falwell having sex with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell tried to sue for libel. The Court ruled a public figure can be lampooned, so long as it is not presented as factual.

1989- According to the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks this is the day Laura Palmer’s body was found and F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper came to town to investigate.

1996- Los Angeles Angel Flight reopened.

1997- The announcement of the first successful cloning of a mammal embryo, a sheep named Dolly in Scotland. To prove even though they're research scientists 'boys will be boys', They used cells from a mammary gland to do the cloning, so they named their creation after busty singer Dolly Parton. After a series of illnesses, the animal was put down in 2003, living half the life span of a normal sheep, but she mated and had healthy babies normally.

2008- Pixar’s Ratatouille won the Oscar for best animated feature.

2013- Pixar’s Brave won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

2019- Spiderman into the Spiderverse won the Oscar for best animated feature.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 23, 2023

Birthdays: George Fredrich Handel, Samuel Pepys (pronounced 'peeps'), Mayer Amschel Rothschild-1743- founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, Victor Fleming, W.E.B. DuBois, Johnny Winter, Peter Fonda, William Shirer, Allan MacLeod Cormack-inventor of the CAT Scan, Kelly MacDonald, Tom Bodet, Neal McDonough, Kristin Davis is 58, Emily Blunt is 40, Dakota Fanning is 29.

1927- Animator Les Clark began work at the Walt Disney Studio. He was the first of Walt’s Nine Old Men. 

1935- Walt Disney cartoon "The Band Concert." The first color Mickey Mouse cartoon.

1939 - Walt Disney received a special Oscar for his classic 83-minute animated film SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, at the 11th Academy Awards held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Eleven-year-old child star Shirley Temple presented Walt with one statuette and seven miniature statuettes for "a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon." (Film director Frank Capra came up with the idea of a full-sized Oscar statuette with seven smaller ones descending in a row.) A regular category for animated feature would not exist until 2001.

1942- In the dead of night a Japanese submarine surfaced off the California coast and fired its cannon at lights it thinks is a city.  In reality it was an oil refinery just north of Santa Barbara. The brief bombardment caused $150 dollars in damage. The sub broke radio silence to report to Tokyo that " Enemy coast sighted. Los Angeles is in Flames." The incident was lampooned in the Steven Spielberg comedy "1941."

1960 - The Day Brooklyn Cried'- After the Dodgers moved west to Los Angeles, Flatbush’s Ebbets Field baseball stadium went under the wrecking ball and became a low income housing project.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 22, 2023

Birthdays: Hungarian King Ladislas the Posthumous-1440, Shah Tahmasp I-1514, George Washington, Frederic Chopin, Edward St. Vincent Millay, John Mills, Edward Gorey, Luis Bunuel, Ted Kennedy, Dr. J- Julius Erving, Dwight Frye- Renfield in Dracula, Sparky Anderson, Sheldon Leonard, Charlie O. Finley, Nicky Lauda, Don Pardo, Jonathan Demme, Jeri Ryan, Lea Salonga is 52, Kyle McLachlan is 62, Rachael Dratch is 57, Steve Erwin, Drew Barrymore is 48

1879- Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first Five & Ten Cent-store in Utica, New York. F.W. Woolworths became a major national chain of stores.

1911-The Kester Ranch in the San Fernando Valley became the town of Van Nuys, named for early settler Issac Newton Van Nuys. His father-in-law was Issac Lankershim.

1929- Grand Central Airport in Glendale dedicated. Los Angeles first major airport. 

1924- President Coolidge becomes first president to address the nation over the radio.

1957- The Incredible Shrinking Man premiered, directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Richard Matheson.

1980- Underdog U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated Soviet team 4-3 for the gold medal. The summer games in Moscow were boycotted, not the winter. The two teams did not meet again until the 2002 games in Utah where they skated to a 2-2 tie.

2002- Animator, director Chuck Jones passed away at age 89.

2009- Slumdog Millionaire won best picture and best cinematography at the 81st Academy Awards. The first movie to win that was shot completely digital, with no celluloid film used.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 21, 2023

Birthdays: Leopold Delibes, C. Brancusi, Anais Ninn, W.H. Auden, Hubert de Givenchy, Era Bombeck, Sam Peckinpah, Nina Simone, Robert Mugabe, Joe Oriolo, John Lewis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kelsey Grammar is 68, Jennifer Love Hewitt is 44, Alan Rickman, Elliot Page is 36. David Geffen is 80, Jordan Peele is 44, 

1963- Pebbles Flintstone is 60. 

Happy Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday- The day before Ash Wednesday ushering in the Catholic season of Lent is the cause for wild parties in many cultures- Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Venice, Quebec and other cities. Carne-Vale is Latin for Carne-meat, Vale goodbye. So Goodbye to Meat, the Lenten fast.  The Mardi Gras custom in America started in Mobile Alabama in 1708, when explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived at a plot of ground 60 miles directly south of New Orleans and named it "Pointe du Mardi Gras" when his men realized it was the eve of the festive holiday. It then went to New Orleans. It died out in more somber Victorian times but was renewed after the Civil War- so-' Lesse Le Bon Temps Rolle’! “Let the Good Times Roll!” “ Have you seen the Voodoo King?”

1719- A London weekly announced “Mr Handel, a Famous Master of Music, is gone beyond the sea, by order of His Majesty, to collect a company of the choicest singers in Europe for the Opera in the Haymarket.” The London Opera is born. On his recruiting trip George Frederich Handel passed through his hometown of Halle. A few hours after he was gone another musician came to town, having walked 25 miles just to meet this great German composer who was the toast of England. He was Johann Sebastian Bach. But he was too late.  The two giants of classical music would never meet.

1958- THE PEACE SIGN. British graphic designer Gerald Holtom was creating signs for a nuclear disarmament protest in London. He wanted a visual that would stick in people’s minds. He created a symbol based on the naval semaphore flag designation for “N” nuclear, and “D” disarmament. It was adopted by the Anti-Vietnam War Peace movement in the late 1960s.

1977- Animation director John Hubley died suddenly on an operating table of an aortic aneurism during heart surgery. He was 62. 

1980- Ukrainian astronomer Ludmila Karachkina named a main belt asteroid for Walt Disney, asteroid 4017 Disneya. 

2014- The Wind Rises, directed by Hayao Miyazaki premiered in the US.

Tom Sito's History for Feb 20, 2023

Birthdays: Honore' Daumier, Nancy Wilson, Ansel Adams, Cindy Crawford, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robert Altman, Roger Penske. Phil Esposito, Jennifer O’Neill, Ivanna Trump, Mike Leigh, Lili Taylor, Sidney Poitier

1816- "Fee-Garr-Row! Fig-Ar- Roww- Figaro-Figaro, Figaro, Figaro"- Giacomo Rossini's opera 'The Barber of Seville' premiered. Rossini endured bad press and heavy criticism at the time because the another opera of the Marriage of Figaro had just been premiered by Paisiello, an inferior composer who then was more popular than him.

1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movie The Lost World premiered. Based on Conan-Doyles 1912 novel. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films. O'Brien later did King Kong and trained kids like Ray Harryhausen.

1936- The film “Follow the Fleet” premiered, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

1947- In a lecture to the London Mathematical Society, Computer pioneer Alan Turing said the best way to test the intelligence of a computer would be to teach it to play chess. Earliest reference to interactive gaming.

1958- Hercules premiered, starring body-builder Steve Reeves and Sylvia Koscina. It spawned a genre of muscle-man movies set in ancient Greece and Rome. Called in Hollywood jargon, “ sword & sandal flicks”.

2005- First episode of Seth Green’s Robot Chicken premiered on TV.

2006- The animated film Wallace & Gromet: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, won the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for the best British Film of the year. It beat out The Constant Gardner, and Pride & Prejudice. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 19, 2023

Birthdays: Copernicus is 1542, Luigi Boccherini, Smokey Robinson, Andre Breton, Lee Marvin, Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Karen Silkwood, Paul Terry, Frank Tashlin, Paul Krause, Merl Oberon, Amy Tam, John Frankenheimer, Ray Winstone is 66, Jeff Daniels is 68, Benicio Del Toro is 57

1736- Georg Frederich Handel’s oratorio Alexander’s Feast premiered at Covent Garden.

1847- “ARE YOU FROM CALIFORNIA OR ARE YOU FROM HEAVEN?” The Donner Party found at last.  The wagon train of settlers had been trapped in the High Sierra mountains of California near Lake Truckee in blizzard conditions with no food since last October 31st. Half the settlers were dead and the rest subsisting on cannibalizing the dead for food. This day a survivor named John Reed who got to safety returned with a rescue party from Sutter’s Fort. Of the 89 original settlers only 45 made it out alive. One opened a restaurant.

1878- Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1913- Crackerjacks start putting toy prizes in every box. Legend has it the name Crackerjack for the caramel corn was named for the reaction of Teddy Roosevelt trying it for the first time- These caramel-corns are Crackerjack!

1942- PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT signed Executive Order# 9066- The JAPANESE INTERNMENT ACT- All along the Pacific Coast first and second generation Japanese-Americans were uprooted from their homes and property and with what only they could carry were shipped off to camps in the desert. Many never got restitution for their lost property. 

 Although the F.B.I. kept tabs on German and Italian agents in U.S. and pro-Fascist groups like the American Bund flourished in the 30’s, nothing like what happened to Japanese Americans occurred to them.  Less than 10,000 Germans were rounded up as compared to over 100,000 Japanese-Americans. Canada and Mexico also interned some of their Japanese immigrant population. Few Japanese-Americans were interned in Hawaii however, because it would have seriously depleted the population. 

1944- Writer John Steinbeck asked that his name be taken off of the credits for the Alfred Hitchcock film version of “Lifeboat”. “In view of the fact that my script for the picture was distorted in production.” He didn’t much like the Grapes of Wrath screenplay either.

 

1951- Poet philosopher Andre Gide died in Paris. Several things were quoted as his last words, my favorite is " Before you quote me, please make sure I'm conscious."

1960- Bill Keane's "Family Circus" cartoon strip debuts. 

1963- The book The Feminine Mystique was published. Betty Freidan’s analysis of contemporary women’s issues is considered the first shot of the modern Women’s Movement. 

1964- Peter Sellers married actress Brit Ekland. His huffing amyl nitrate as a sexual stimulant probably contributed to a series of early heart attacks he had. They divorced in 1968.

1968- “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…” Mister Roger’s Neighborhood debuted on National Education Television, later called PBS. Ordained Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers had been doing children’s shows similar in Pittsburgh and Canada since the 50’s, but today was the start of his national show. It would run unchanged for thirty-five years.

1995- Sexy actress Pamela Anderson married sexy rocker Tommy Lee. On their honeymoon on Lake Powell they shot an explicit sex tape that was leaked onto the internet, becoming the first viral video. By 2000, one sixth of everything viewed on the world-wide web was about Pamela Anderson. 

1990- ILM VFX designer John Knoll and his brother Tom created a surfacing and paint system for home computer use. Adobe bought it, and this day released it as Photoshop.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Feb 18, 2023

Birthdays: Queen Mary I Tudor -Bloody Mary, Pietro Guarnieri the violin maker, Harry Grover- Seeley one of the founders of Paleontology, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Andre Segovia, Wendell Wilkie, Billy de Wolfe, Enzo Ferrari, Jack Palance, Milos Forman, Bobby Bachman of the Bachman Turner Overdrive, Gahan Wilson, Johnny Hart, Cybil Shepherd is 73, Matt Dillon is 59, John Travolta is 69, John Hughes, Dr. Dre, Yoko Ono is 90 

1564- Michelangelo Buonarotti died just 6 days before his 89th birthday. He was carving yet another Pieta a few days before his death. 

1842- Two hundred of New York City’s high society held a banquet in honor of the visiting English author Charles Dickens. Dickens spent the evening depressing everyone with talk about his tour of the cities prisons, slums and poorhouses.

1854- McSorley’s Ale House opened on 7th St in New York City. And it is still open, the oldest bar in the city. Abe Lincoln went for a beer there after declaring himself a candidate for president. 

1885- Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' published.

1888- The Hotel Coronado in San Diego Cal. opened for guests. It remains one of the largest remaining wood structures in the U.S. Several presidents stayed there, the Duke of Windsor met Wallis Simpson there, and films like the Marilyn Monroe film Some Like it Hot and The Stuntman were shot there. The script for the movie Blade Runner was written there.

 ashes.

1950- First Mr. Magoo cartoon "Ragtime Bear".

1953- First 3-D stereoscopic movie, "B'wana Devil" starring Robert Stack.

1972- President Richard Nixon and Pat Nixon land in China. 

1973- Richard Petty the Stock Car King won his first Daytona 500 race. He would go on to win 6 more and prove that NASCAR racing was one of America’s favorite though most underreported sports.

2001- Dale Earnhardt Sr, the reigning NASCAR racing car champion, died in a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. His eldest son Dale Jr. placed second.

Disney’s Onward premiered at the El Capitan. Written and directed by Dan Scanlon.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 16, 2023

Birthdays: The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia, Henry Adams, Charles Taze Russell founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Edgar Bergen, James Baskett, Sonny Bono, John McEnroe, Frank Welker, John Schlesinger, Faith Hubley, Katherine Cornell, John Corligiano, Kim Jong Il, Levar Burton is 66, Ice-T is 65, Elizabeth Olsen

1848- Frederic’ Chopin played his last concert in Paris. Slowly dying from incurable tuberculosis, the 38 year old retired to the isle of Majorca, and died a year later.

1923- Bessie Smith made her first recording-"Downhearted Blues".

1949- NBC premiered The Camel News Caravan with John Cameron Swayze, the first all news TV program. Camel Cigarettes was the sponsor. In 1956 NBC replaced it with the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

1978- The first computer bulletin board goes on live. Two guys from Chicago named Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss built a Computerized Bulletin Board System that was an S-100 motherboard and CP/M, and a Hayes 300 band modem. It still runs today, but the Internet has taken the place that BBS's used to have.

1982- In Houston, three friends from Texas Instruments, Rod Canion, Bill Murto, and Jim Harris got together and formed the company COMPAQ. They designed their first portable computer on a back of a House of Pies placemat. Made with off the shelf components, and compatible with all IBM programs, it was a tremendous success.

1987-"Family Dog" episode on Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories show. The first direction by Brad Bird.

1994- Apple announced the introduction of the Apple Quicktake digital camera, the first camera that needed no film but could load images directly into a computer. They added it to the iPhone in 2007. Within ten years Polaroid and Kodak were filing for bankruptcy. 

2018- The Black Panther opened in theaters. Directed by Ryan Coogler, and starring Chadwick Boseman.

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Question: Charles Perrault wrote stories under a more famous pen-name. What was it?

Answer: Mother Goose.

TOM SITO'S ANIMATION ALMANAC FOR FEB 15,2023

Birthdays: Galileo Galilei, Frederick Douglas, French King Louis XV, Michael Praetorius, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Tiffany, John Barrymore, Jane Seymour, Cesar Romero, Gale Sondergard, Melissa Manchester, Chris Farley, Claire Bloom, Chris MacDonald, Art Spiegleman is 75, Marissa Berenson is 76, Matt Groening is 69

1947- During the anti-Communist witch hunt, the FBI revoked the visa of famed documentary filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada, John Grierson because they thought his personal politics were too lefty.

1950- Walt Disney’s Cinderella opened in general theater release.

1954- Future President and b-movie star Ronald Reagan tried doing a stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room with the "Honey Brothers", a comedy troupe similar to Abbot & Costello. 

1973- Actor and animation voice Wally Cox was found in his LA apartment dead of a heart attack. He was 48.

1984- Touchstone Pictures created, so the Walt Disney Company could do more adult PG movies. Their first film was Splash, starring a tastefully topless mermaid Darryl Hannah.

1994- After months of insane bidding, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone beat out QVC’s Barry Diller to buy Paramount Pictures. The cost was $20 billion, although the studio’s net worth was estimated at $8 billion. When asked, Diller replied: “What’s done is done. Next.”

2002- Scientists announced the first discovery of fossilized dinosaur vomit.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Feb 14, 2023

Birthdays: Joshua Norton aka Joshua I Emperor of the United States 1819, Jack Benny- real name Benjamin Koubielsky, Frederick Douglas, Christopher Latham Scholes- inventor of the typewriter, George Washington Ferris inventor of the Ferris Wheel, Pier Francesco Cavalli, Jimmy Hoffa, Vic Morrow, Skeezix Wallet (character in Gasoline Alley comic strip), Gregory Hines, Ignaz Friedman, Thelma Ritter, Carl Andersen, Hugh Downs, Jim Kelly, Florence Henderson, Meg Tilly, Alan Parker, Simon Pegg is 52, Margaret Knight the inventor of the flat bottom paper bag. The character Lara Croft, is 55.

  

 Happy Valentines Day!

1886- Los Angeles began to export its first trainload of oranges back east.

1887- Several leading French intellectuals including Honore’ Balzac, and Charles Gounod published a letter to the President of the Republic begging him NOT to build the Eiffel Tower. "A Useless Monstrosity, which even America with it's crazed passion for commerce has the sense to reject! And what if it lasts 20 years?" There were plans to pull down the Eiffel tower 1907, but by then it had gained a new purpose as a radio antenna.

  Novelist Guy de Maupassant, hated the tower but still went to its restaurant every day. When asked why, he said, "Because it is the only place in Paris where I cannot see it".

1907- Golden Books incorporated. One of their artists was Gustav Tennegren, who would  become a key stylist of Walt Disney's Snow White and Pinocchio.

1927-Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense film “The Lodger” opened in London.

1931- Tod Browning's film of the play Dracula, starring Hungarian actor's union organizer and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi, premiered.

1941- Mickey Mouse cartoon The Little Whirlwind, was released. 

1962- First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave a tour to network television cameras of the private living quarters of the White House. It’s the first time most Americans had ever seen the inside of the Executive Mansion. She worked mostly without a script, adding her own details as she went along. The day after the broadcast, Pres. Kennedy called the FCC just to see how her Nielsen ratings were. They were much higher than his speeches ever were. 

1979- Digital music composer Walter Carlos, who scored the film A Clockwork Orange, announced he had undergone a sex change and was now Wendy Carlos.

1990- As the Voyager 1 spacecraft was leaving our solar system, Dr. Carl Sagan had the spaceship look back and take a family photo of our planet system, 3.7 billion miles away. A few faint dots on a distant sunbeam.

1991-Meg Ryan married Dennis Quaid. The divorced a few years later.

2005- Steve Chen, Chad Harley and Jared Karan started You Tube.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 13, 2023

Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak is 91, George Segal, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer is 77, Stockard Channing is 79, Kelly Hu, Mena Suvari

1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna. Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss. An anecdote from the time is that Strauss's stepdaughter approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. Brahms inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube," and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."

1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned in disgust his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art when he was criticized for having women students in his art class drawing male nudes. At that time the men still were not fully nude, but wore a kind of thong with a pouch covering their junk.

1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature Spanky MacFarland.

1933- comic strip character Blondie married Dagwood Bumstead.

1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that the film needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. 

1937- Hal Foster's comic book hero Prince Valiant first appeared. 

1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE! Mattel introduced the plastic nymph, from a German doll named 'Bild Lilli" based on a character in a comic strip by Reinhard Beuthin. Mattel co-owner Ruth Handler had it re-designed and changed to 'Barbie" after the nickname of her daughter Barbara. 

1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.

1972-“ Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome….” The movie Cabaret with Liza Minelli and Joel Grey opened in theaters.

1996- The off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson premiered. Lawson spent years working as a waiter, living in poverty in a cold water flat in lower New York. Hoping for his big break. 36 year old John Lawson died of an aneurism just three months before Rent opened. It made him world famous, earned Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, and made $250 million. His story was told in the 2022 Lin Manuel Miranda film tik-tik-Boom.

2016- Disney’s Zootopia premiered in Brussels. Directed by Rich Moore and Byron Howard. It opened un the U.S. on March 4. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 11, 2023

Birthdays: Thomas Edison, Leslie Nielsen, Eva Gabor, Rudolph Firkusny, Joe Mankiewicz, Sidney Sheldon, Burt Reynolds, Sergio Mendes of the band Brazil 68, Al Eugster, Brandy Norwood, Bobby Picket -who recorded the Monster Mash, Tina Louise-Ginger on Gilligan’s Island is 89, Jennifer Aniston is 54, Sheryl Crow is 61

1936- Famed German Expressionist animator Oscar Fischinger escaped Nazi Germany for the U.S. Paid for by Hollywood director Ernst Lubitsch. 

1938- Donald Duck cartoon Self Control was released.

1948- Famed Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein died of a heart attack.

1963- Bell Jar author Sylvia Plath laid out bread and butter and two glasses of milk for her children, then stuck her head into an oven and committed suicide. Her poet-laureate   husband Ted Hughes was in bed with another woman when he got the news. Hughes wrote stories for his children like The Iron Giant to explain death and loss.

1976- Chuck Jones TV special "Mowgli’s Brothers."

1995- Disney Studios planned neighborhood suburban community Celebration opened.

2000- Disney’s The Tigger Movie premiered. Directed by Jun Falkenstein, one of the first animated features written and directed by a woman.

2005- Playwright Arthur Miller died at 90.

2012- Singer actress Whitney Houston was found dead in her bathtub. She was 48, She was preparing for the Grammy Awards when she had a heart attack and drowned in the water.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 10, 2023

Birthdays: Former British PM Harold Macmillan, Jimmy Durante, Bertholdt Brecht, Leontyne Price, Roberta Flack, tennis great Bill Tilden, Lon Chaney Jr., Stella Adler, Mark Spitz, Boris Pasternak, Dame Judith Anderson, Greg Norman, Donavan, Dr Alex Comfort author of the Joy of Sex, Michael Apted, Jerry Goldsmith, Robert Wagner, Laura Dern is 56

1837- Russia’s greatest poet Alexander Pushkin died of wounds from fighting a duel defending his wife's honor. His last words were directed to his books "Farewell, my friends..." Pushkin was the great, great grandson of a black man Abram Gannibal, brought from Cameroon to serve Czar Peter the Great in his Moorish Guard.

1862- After a hard night partying with fellow poet Swinburne, pre-Raphaelite Dante Rossetti returned home to find his wife dead of an opium overdose.

1870- Anaheim California was founded. No Disneyland yet. The name means Ana, as in Santa Anna River, and Heim, the German word for home. So- Home of the Santa Anna Rover. The town was founded by 50 German immigrants families who wanted to raise grapes and build a socialist commune.

1888- The City of Long Beach incorporated.

1920- Major League Baseball banned the spitball pitch, scuff ball, licorice ball, all attempts to effect a baseball by defacing its surface.

1929- Elsa Lanchester married Charles Laughton.

1938- RKO screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant “Bringing Up Baby” premiered. Directed by Howard Hawks.

1940- MGM's "Puss gets the Boot" the first Tom and Jerry cartoon and the first collaboration of the team of Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera.

1943- DUCT TAPE- During WW2, Miss Vesta Stoudt worked at a defense plant in Illinois. She noticed the way ammunition boxes were sealed required some effort to open. This could cost precious time in battle. She suggested they develop a strong cloth tape that could be torn open without scissors. Her supervisors ignored her. So she wrote President Roosevelt this day. FDR loved the idea, and ordered it implemented. Because developers waterproofed the tape, they called it Duct Tape. G.I.s liked the tape so much, they began using it for everyday repairs, even to close wounds. I’m not sure when it was ever used on ducts. 

1949- The premiere of Arthur Miller’s play "Death of a Salesman”.

1960- Jack Paar was the star and host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. He pioneered the talk show format, the opening monologue and couch, that everyone uses today. He tried to tell one joke about a woman in a water closet (i.e. toilet) when the network censors cut the joke. Jack Paar was so angry, that in the middle of this show, he stood up, exclaimed “ There’s gotta be better ways to make a living,” and walked off the show.  A few weeks later he was convinced to return, but he left permanently in 1962. His celebrity status faded while his successor Johnny Carson became famous. Paar later admitted quitting was the biggest mistake of his life.

1966- CBS co-ops broadcasting the senate Kennan Hearings on the conduct of the Vietnam War with reruns of "I Love Lucy'. CBS news division president Fred Friendly quit in protest. 

1966- Jaqueline Susanne’s novel The Valley of the Dolls first published. Although critics considered it cheap and trashy- Time Magazine called it “Dirty Book of the Month”, and Truman Capote called Susanne in her heavy sixties eye shadow, a “Truck Driver in Drag” Valley of the Dolls sold like wildfire.  Its frank portrayal of single women enjoying casual sex and taking drugs in suburbia was a big step in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.

1992- The children’s book- The Stinky Cheese Man debuted.

1996- IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess master Garry Kasparov. The first time a computer ever beat a human chess champion. 

Feb 9, 2023

Birthdays: Constantine XI Palaeologus- the last Byzantine Emperor 1404, President William Henry Harrison, Samuel Tilden, Carmen Miranda, Alban Berg, Ronald Colman, Ernest Tubb, King Vidor, Mamie Van Doren, Roger Mudd, Alberto Vargas, Carole King, Bill Veeck, Fred Harman, Joe Pesci is 80, Zhang ZhuYi, Disney animator Bill Justice, Frank Frazetta, Mia Farrow is 78, Mena Suvari is 44, Ciaran Hinds is 70, Michael B. Jordan, animation historian Jerry Beck.

1540- First recorded horserace in England. Roodee Fields, Chester.

1856- An early tabloid The London Illustrated News reported a live Pterodactyl dinosaur popped out of a rock and flew away when workers were excavating a railroad tunnel in Culmont France. Believe it or Not!

1914- “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” The Max Sennett Keystone short where Charlie Chaplin first donned his baggy pants, little mustache and derby to create The Tramp, one of the most beloved characters in film history. He was so popular, even young Adolf Hitler was advised to change his mustache, because he looked too much like Chaplin.

1927- Mae West caused a scandal by writing and staring in a play called “Sex”, and mounting a new production about homosexual life entitled “ Drag”. This day the NY Police raided her offices, shut down production and carted her off to jail. She emerged after 8 days in a work-house more popular than ever.

1949- Howard Beckerman’s first day in animation at Terrytoons.

1959- The AFL and CIO unite.

1964- Ed Sullivan introduced the English rock band the Beatles to a nationwide TV audience. In a nation of 140 million it was estimated 73 million were watching that night. It was a "Rrrreally Big Shewww!" (Sullivan’s signature line.

1971- The Sylmar Quake (6.8) rocks L.A. 64 deaths.

1989- Animation director Osamu Tezuka, died of stomach cancer in Tokyo. He was 60. Called the God of Manga and the Walt Disney of Japan. His work helped give birth to what we today know as Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime). His dying words were to a nurse trying to take his pencils and paper away. “Leave me alone and let me work!”

1989- In testimony before the New Jersey State Senate World Wrestling Federation President Vince McMahon admit that the sport of wrestling is purely entertainment, and no one actually gets hurt. I’m shocked, shocked!

1990- Singer Del Shannon, who had a hit with the 1961 song Runaway, shot himself with a 22 rifle. Del Shannon was supposed to replace Roy Orbison in the Travelling Wilbury's, the group that featured Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynn.  Orbison had died the previous year of heart failure and the Wilburys were starting to rehearse with Del Shannon.  After Shannon's suicide, the group decided to disband.

1996- German World War II fighter ace Adolf Galland died at age 86. Galland was a good pilot but his opinions often got him into trouble. Once during a photo-op with Luftwaffe head Herman Goering, when Goering asked him “ Is there anything I could give you to help defeat the English?” Galland smiled, “ I could use a squadron of Spitfires.” While other aces had skulls or dice painted on their planes, Galland had a Mickey Mouse on the side of his Messerschmidt ME109F. Hey Adolf, is that the RAF on your tail? Worse, its the Disney Legal Department! Himmel!

2001- Actor Tom Cruise filed for divorce from Nicole Kidman.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb. 8, 2023

Birthdays: St Proclus of Constantinople 412AD, Jules Verne, Dmitri Mendeleev- inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements, James Dean, William Tecumseh Sherman, animator Ivan Ivano-Vano, Lana Turner, Jack Lemmon, Alejandro Rey, Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen in the 1950s TV Superman),Ted Koppel, Nick Nolte, Gary Coleman, Robert Klein, Seth Green, Sesame Street composer Joe Raposo, 

composer John Williams is 91

1864- Abraham Lincoln visited Matthew Brady's Photo Studio and posed for the photos that would one day be on the Penny and Five-dollar bill. 

1893- THE FIRST RECORDED STRIPTEASE - discounting Salome. At Paris' Moulin Rouge at the Bal de Quart’z Artes, an artist's model named Mona decided to get an edge in a beauty contest judged by art students by disrobing to music while walking up and down the stage. She was arrested and fined 100 francs, and the students rioted. 

1910- Boy Scouts of America incorporated on the British model.

1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premiered as part of his vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by any living thing. Giving the dinosaur the personality of a precocious kitten gave the character a new level above merely drawings that move. It was the first true character animation. The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.

1915- THE BIRTH OF A NATION or The Clansman, premiered at Clunes Auditorium in Los Angeles. Film pioneer D.W. Griffith's racist movie was considered for many years the first American feature length film. The discovery in 1999 of a 1913 Richard III film predates it. Son of a Confederate veteran, it’s been thought that Griffith was making a personal statement, truth is there was a flood of films to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War and the book the Clansman by Thomas Dixon was a national best seller. President Woodrow Wilson (another son of a Confederate soldier) endorsed the film, when he called it: "History written with a thunderbolt and I’m afraid all too true." Birth of a Nations’ inflammatory imagery and this politically incorrect Presidential endorsement helped a rebirth of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, and caused an increase in lynching.  But despite the film’s politics, it’s technique influenced world cinema. D.W. Griffith in later years lost his fortune and became a drunken has-been. Watching him at Chasens Restaurant pathetically beg MGM studio head Dore Schary for work, inspired Billy Wilder to write SUNSET BLVD. 

1928- Englishman John Logie Baird transmitted a still television image across the Atlantic from England to Hartsdale New York. It was a still image of a woman. 

1961- Nebraska teenager and future movie star Nick Nolte was busted for the first time. He was accused of selling fake Draft cards so his friends could buy alcohol to celebrate his birthday.

1967- Georgy Girl by the Seekers goes to #1 in pop charts.

1968- The Planet of the Apes, directed by Franklin Schafner, starring Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowell and Maurice Evans, premiered. 

1976 - TAXI DRIVER, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks, was released. It was the last score by composer Bernard Hermann, whose career began with Citizen Kane. Hermann died just before the film opened, at age 64.

1994- Screaming, “You cut me off!” Jack Nicholson destroyed the windshield of his neighbor’s car with a golf club. He settled out of court.

2001- Walt Disney California Adventure opened.

2007- Anna Nicole Smith, centerfold, pole dancer, heiress and reality TV star, died from an overdose of prescription drugs. She was 39.

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Tom Sito's animation almanac for Feb. 7, 2023

Birthdays: St. Thomas Moore, Eubie Blake, Sinclair Lewis, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Laura Ingalls Wilder writer of Little House on the Prairie, Gay Talese, animator Jim Tyer, James Spader is 63, Chris Rock is 58, Eddie Izzard is 61, Ashton Kutcher is 45

1882- John L. Sullivan defeated top boxer Paddy Ryan in a ferocious bareknuckle brawl in Gulfport Mississippi. There were no official boxing championship belts yet, but John L. Sullivan boldly declared himself the Champion of the World. The title stuck. He’d travel from town to town, building his legend: "I’m John L. Sullivan and I can lick any man in the house!!” and he always did. 

1900- In Barcelona a new young talent named Pablo Picasso had his first show. 

1910- The Town of Hollywood was absorbed into the growing City of Los Angeles.

1939, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep was published. Chandler was a 51-year-old ex-oil company executive who had taken up writing at the age of 45, after being fired for alcohol-soaked absenteeism. Over the previous five years he had published enough crime stories in the pulp magazines to survive, but this was his first novel, the first of seven featuring the inimitable detective Philip Marlowe.

1940- Disney's second animated feature "Pinocchio" opened at the Central Theater in Manhattan. It cost a staggering $2.6 million to make. 

1960- JFK PARTYS WITH THE RATPACK-Before he created the Peace Corps and Camelot, presidential candidate John Kennedy needed to relax and raise some hell.  So in total secret he helicoptered down to Las Vegas and spent this night at the Sands Hotel with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and his brother in law, actor Peter Lawford. These men were famous for their all-night Rat Pack parties, heavy drinking, girls, poker and more. Sinatra introduced Kennedy to a party girl named Judith Cambell Exner, who would claim JFK as a lover at the same time as she was sleeping with Sam Momo Giancana, the head of the Chicago Mafia. In the wee hours of dawn, Kennedy slipped away to continue his race for the White House.

1964- THE BRITISH ROCK INVASION BEGAN. Thousands of screaming fans welcomed THE BEATLES to New York for their first U.S. Tour. The last music out of England to be taken seriously by Americans was The Lambeth Walk, now the UK announced itself as a powerhouse of rock & roll. For a Brit to do Rock & Roll in America was as audacious as an American reciting Shakespeare in Stratford, but the welcome for the Beatles was so overwhelming that other bands like The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Herman’s Hermits soon followed. 

Local New York disc jockeys Cousin Brucie and Murray the K wiggled to the front of the crowds and got a national audience by following the young musicians around. The crowds of teenagers were so excited they mobbed a Rolls Royce in front of the Warwick Hotel where the Beatles were staying just because they figured a Rolls Royce would be something they drove in. They actually used taxicabs.

1964- The GI Joe action figure born. In 1974 it got the Kung-Fu Grip.

1974- Mel Brook’s classic comedy “Blazing Saddles” opened in theaters.

2014- The Lego Movie premiered. Directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 5, 2023

Birthdays: Sir Robert Peel founder of London’s police force- the Bobbies, outlaw Belle Starr, John Carradine, William Burroughs, Arthur Ochs Schulzburger, Hank Aaron, Tim Holt, Barbera Hershey, Charlotte Rampling, Roger Staubach, Michael Mann is 80, Bobby Brown, H. R. Giger, Red Buttons, Christopher Guest, Jennifer Jason Leigh is 62, Laura Linney is 59, Michael Sheen is 54, Bruce Timm, who created Harley Quinn.

1846- The Oregon Spectator, first English newspaper on the Pacific Coast, published.

1887- Verdi’s opera "Otello" debuted. Guiseppi Verdi had retired from composing after 1875, but was goaded by a new generation of composers like Arrigo Boito to take up his pen once more. 

1916- Enrico Caruso recorded O Solo Mio for the Victor Talking Machine Co.

1919- Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith sign papers to form the United Artists Studio. The press teased, “ The Lunatics have taken over the asylum!”

1921- The Loews State Theater in Chicago opened.

1922- The Reader’s Digest began publication.

1937- Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times opened in theaters. Chaplin was inspired to lampoon modern technological madness when he was invited to view the auto assembly production lines in Detroit and saw men moving like machines. 

1944- British scientists at Bletchley Park booted up the Colossus Mark I, a huge early computer used to decode Hitler’s secret messages. Eleven more Colossus computers were built. After the war, all but one were destroyed with sledgehammers, and the scientists put under a vow of secrecy for thirty years. 

1952- New York City is the first to adopt the three light traffic lights-red, yellow, green.

1953- Walt Disney’s "Peter Pan" opened in general release theaters.

1956- Darryl Zanuck resigned from 20th Century Fox, the studio he built into a powerhouse. He later won back the chairmanship in 1962 in the wake of the Cleopatra fiasco, and was ousted again in 1970 by a consortium led by his own wife and son, Darryl Zanuck Jr.

1957- Mel Lazarus’ comic strip Miss Peach debuted.

1972- After numerous airline hijackings, the U.S. institutes luggage inspection and metal detectors at airports.

1974- Hearst Publishing heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped at gunpoint by an underground radical group called the Symbianese Liberation Army.  She was kept in a closet, brainwashed, changed her name to Tania, did prison time for a bank job, and later appeared in several John Water’s movies. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac Feb 4, 2023

Birthdays: Francois Rabelais, Big Bill Haywood, Fernand Leger', Charles Lindbergh, the Agha Khan, Betty Friedan, Rosa Parks, Erich Liensdorf, Dan Quayle, Ida Lupino, Conrad Bain, McKinlay Kantor, George Romero, Lisa Eichhorn, boxer Oscar De La Hoya, Clyde Tumbaugh the astronomer who discovered the Pluto in 1930. Janet Waldo the voice of Judy Jetson, Alice Cooper (born Vincent Furnier) is 74

1826- James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Last of the Mohicans” was published. The character of wild frontiersman Natty Bumpo, called Hawkeye, has been called the first American superhero.

1938- After being in first run houses since Dec 21st, today Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opened in general release across the US.

1961- United Artists released The Misfits, the last film of stars Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. John Huston directed and Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay. The film flopped in its initial run but has since gained classic status.

1966- Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Disney’s first Winnie the Pooh film came out with the live action film The Ugly Dachshund.

(***Now stop what you are doing and sing the Winnie the Pooh Song!!)

1968- Old beatnik Neal Casady was found dead in Mexico. Casady was not an intellectual but his wild non-conformist lifestyle was the inspiration for his companion author Jack Kerouac to write his greatest novel " On the Road'. While Kerouac disliked hippies, Casady drove the first Hippie Bus filled with LSD advocates like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. 

1983- Pop singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia-nervosa. She was 32 and weighed only 77 pounds. Her death brought to national prominence how the societal pressure to stay thin could lead to this deadly condition. 

2004- Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes launched their social networking site called Facebook. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 3, 2023

Birthdays- French King Charles VI the Mad –1380, Felix Mendelson-Bartoldy, Horace Greely, Gideon Mantell 1790-pioneer British fossil hunter that named the Iguanadon, Pretty Boy Floyd, Gertrude Stein, Norman Rockwell, James A. Michener, Joey Bishop, Shelley Berman, Bob Griese, Fran Tarkenton, John Fiedler the voice of Piglet, Victor Buono, Blythe Danner is 80, Morgan Fairchild is 73, Nathan Lane is 67

1863- MARK TWAIN- It was a long custom in American newspapers for columnists and critics to publish under pseudonyms. Riverboat pilot turned writer Samuel Clemens first considered names like Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, and W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab. Today he borrowed from another riverboat pilot the idea for the pseudonym for which he would become famous. This day in the Virginia City Nevada Territorial Register newspaper was an article authored by someone calling himself - 'Mark Twain'. Mark Twain was the Mississippi River pilot's term for when a steamboat is in two fathoms of water or more, in other words, safely enough away from shallows to proceed at full speed.

1920- The play Beyond the Horizon premiered. The first hit of a young man who tried to drink himself to death, but instead became a playwright- Eugene O’Neill.

1930- Roy Disney signed a deal with M. George Borgfeldt Co. of New York to sell figurines of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney merchandising is born!

1945- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros opened in the USA. It had premiered first in Mexico City last Dec.

1953- Jacques Cousteau, inventor of the Aqua Lung, published The Silent World, and later made a film version of the book with Louis Malle.

1959 "The Day the Music Died" The first Rock & Roll tragedy. Top pop stars Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson died in plane crash. They were on tour and Holly chartered the small plane so they could get to Fargo, North Dakota in time to get his shirts cleaned. Waylon Jennings was supposed to join them but he gave up his seat to Richardson because Richardson was running a fever and didn’t want a long cold bus ride. As they left Richardson teased Jennings:” Hope your bus doesn’t freeze.” And Jennings joked:” Hope your plane doesn’t crash.” The plane was called the American Pie, which inspired a Don McClean’s hit song “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.”

1986- After three months of negotiations, Steve Jobs signed papers to acquire the Lucas Film Graphics Division, now under their new name- Pixar Inc.

1989- Swiss firm L'Oreal/Nestle bought LA animation studio Filmation (HeMan, SheRa) from Westinghouse, and shut it down laying off 229 artists the day before a new federal regulation requiring a company give it's employees 60 day notice before closing went into effect. 

2003-Legendary rock and roll producer Phil Spector killed his girlfriend B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his LA mansion. Spector had created the Wall of Sound concert technique and produced for the Beatles, Diana Ross The Ronnettes, and Lenny Bruce, among many others. 

The few days before, Phil Spector said to the British Daily Telegraph, “. I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent. I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. I have a bipolar personality, which is strange.”

Phil Spector died in prison of covid in 2021.

.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 2, 2023

Birthdays: Tallyrand, Charlie Halas a co-founder of the NFL, James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifitz, Abba Eban, Farrah Fawcett, Garth Brooks, Christie Brinkley, Tommy Smothers, Stan Getz, James Dickey, Liz Smith, Elaine Stritch, Brent Spinner is 74, Shakira born Isabelle Ripoli, is 46

Happy Groundhog Day. This morning if Paxatawney Phil sees his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter. 

1709- William Dampier was a reformed buccaneer who wrote books about his travels. This day while cruising the South Seas he rescued a man named Sir William Selkirk, who had been marooned on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez for four years. It seems Selkirk had gotten into an argument with the captain of a Chilean schooner who left him there. It was a wise move, because the captain was crazy and his ship was later lost with all hands. Upon returning to London, Capt. Dampier mentioned the incident to his friend, writer Daniel DeFoe. He used it to create his most famous novel- Robinson Crusoe.

1811- Russian fur traders established Fort Ross, just north of Spanish San Francisco. It was the deepest Russian settlement into North America. In 1845 the Russian Fur Trading Company sold it to American John Sutter. Today there is a reconstructed facsimile of Fort Ross on the site.

1852- London’s first public toilet was dedicated- near 95 Fleet St.

1870- Samuel Clemens also known as Mark Twain, married Olivia Langdon or Livy.

1870- The first international news agency. Reuters, Havas and Wolf News Agencies agreed to pool their resources for the shared expense of telegraphy.

1876- The National Baseball League founded.

1910- D.W. Griffith's' In Old California', sometimes called the first Hollywood film.

1913- New York’s Grand Central Station opened.

1922- the novel "Ulysses" is published. James Joyce had finished the book months earlier but delayed publishing until his birthday, when it would be 2/2/22, which he considered lucky.

1928- The pulp magazine Weird Tales published “ The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft.

1952- Chuck Jones cartoon short “Feed the Kitty”. When Chuck was young he witnessed a big dog kill a tiny kitten. It haunted him for years, so obviously this was how he hoped it should have ended.

1957- Elizabeth Taylor married producer Mike Todd. Todd was killed in a plane crash a year later. Despite her famous association with Richard Burton, Taylor later said Mike Todd was the only man she ever truly loved.

1961- In a little Greenwich Village nightclub called the Blue Angel a young stand up comic got his first debut. His name was Woody Allen

1963- In England, singer Helen Schapiro was on tour.  On the lower end of her program card was a new band called the Beatles.

1966- Woody Allen married Louise Lasser. They divorced four years later.

1971- Murakami-Wolf's TV special "The Point" with Dustin Hoffman narrating and Harry Nilsson's music. In 1973, Hoffman's track was re-recorded by Ringo Starr for some reason. “Me and my Ar-row…”

1979- Sid Vicious, lead singer for the punk band The Sex Pistols, was found dead of a drug overdose. He was awaiting trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. He was 21. 

1985- O.J. Simpson married Nicole Brown Simpson.

1997- Nationally known sportscaster Marv Albert allegedly had an evening of sex and porn with a prostitute. At one point he bit the lady on the back. He was tried for lewd behavior and his career tanked.

2006- The Cartoon Riots. A Danish newspaper printed a political cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with his turban shaped like a bomb. This so offended people in the Muslim world, that rioting broke out in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jakharta and European capitols. Grenades were thrown at Danish embassies and Danish nationals made to flee. Cartoonist Peter Westergaard dodged a Somali man who attacked him with an axe, and even today needs a bodyguard. 

2014- Actor Phillip Seymour-Hoffman died of a drug overdose.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 1, 2023

Birthdays: Victor Herbert, Langston Hughes, Renata Tebaldi, Clark Gable, John Ford, George Pal, Terry Jones, Jim Thorpe, Sherman Helmsley, Lisa Marie Presley, Garrett Morris, Boris Yeltsin, Billy Mumy is 68, Pauly Shore, Sherilyn Fenn is 58, Michael C. Hall is 52

1887- California land developer Harvey Wilcox took out a county deed for a new ranch he called 'Hollywoodland' after the name of an estate his wife admired back in Connecticut. It gave its name to the new Los Angeles town- Hollywood. The famous sign was put up in 1923.

1893- In New Jersey, Thomas Edison and his Canadian engineer W. K. Dickson built the FIRST MOTION PICTURE STUDIO.  It was covered with black tar paper and called "The Black Mariah" because that was the nickname of police paddy wagons that it resembled.  It's debatable how much of the inventing was more Dickson than Edison.  Edison was only marginally interested in the movies. He was more concerned with how to extract New Jersey iron ore from rocks using magnets. Dickson worked himself into the hospital to make the studio work, and resenting Edison’s apathy started experimenting on his own. When Edison found out, he fired him.

1896- Puccini's opera "La Boheme" debuted in Turin. It was based on Prosper Merimee’s popular book Bohemian Sketches. Puccini's old roommate Piero Mascagni (Cavalleria Rusticana) with whom Puccini and he once lived like Bohemian artists, tried to sue him, because he was writing a Boheme' also. The suit failed and Mascagni released his rival version, but it didn't hold up in comparison with Puccini's.

1915- The Fox Film Company formed (Later Twentieth Century Fox). Disney ended  them in 2020.

1964- Indiana Governor Matthew Walsh declares that the Rock & Roll song “Louie-Louie” by the Kingsmen was pornographic and should be banned. The FCC investigated and their conclusion was that the “lyrics are unintelligible at any speed”. The song remained a major hit.  In the 1980’s several schools in Northern Cal held Louie-Louie Marathons-96 straight hours of Louie-Louie played by Punk bands, polka bands, string quartets, water-glasses, and folk trios. Whoah whoah, Me gotta go, yo,yo yo yo.

1985- Walt Disney Feature Animation was moved from their 1939 building on the main lot, to some anonymous warehouses in Glendale near Disney Imagineering. One building was a repurposed casket factory. Many of the animators thought it presaged the unit’s eventual dissolution. Ten years later, after successes like Little Mermaid and The Lion King, they were moved back to a new building adjacent to the studio lot.

1990- Siegfried & Roy open their exclusive show at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas. They and their white tigers have performed for Hollywood stars, presidents and Pope John Paul II. One Vegas columnist noted: “When Elvis performed in Vegas there were some empty seats. But there were nothing but full houses when Siegfried & Roy performed.” The act was finally ended when Roy’s throat was slashed by a tiger in 2003.

Roy died of Covid in 2020, and Siegfried a few months later in Jan. 2021.