Tom Sito's Animation almanac for March 31, 2023

Birthdays:  Rene' Descartes, Franz Josef Haydn, Serge Diaghilev, Harald von Braunhut 1926- the inventor of Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs, Richard Chamberlain, Cesar Chavez, Herb Alpert, Gordie Howe, Liz Claiborne, Gabe Kaplan, Rhea Perlman, Shirley Jones is 89, Richard Kiley, Volker Schlondorf, William Daniels, Lucille Bliss the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Christopher Walken is 80, Colin Farrell is 45, Ewan McGregor is 52, Al Gore is 75, Ed Catmull is 78.

1836- Charles Dickens first work published "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club."

1905- THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous sleuth in a new series of adventures. Conan Doyle had created Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in 1887 but by 1893 he had tired of the characters, he wanted to write more serious fiction like his novel The White Company. So he killed him off. Holmes fell to his doom fighting Prof. Moriarity at the Reichenbeck Falls. The reaction of the public was astonished outrage. It seemed whenever Conan Doyle went out inevitably someone would stop him and say "You Blackguard! How Could You ?!" He did a speaking tour in America, but all anybody wanted to know was how Holmes and Watson were doing?  Finally, Conan-Doyle bowed to public pressure and resumed the career of the inhabitants of #221B Baker Street. He would later refer to Holmes success as “his monstrosity.”

1930- Floyd Gottfredson began drawing Disney’s Mickey Mouse comic strip after Ub Iwerks quit. He continued to do the strip uninterrupted for 45 years, until his retirement in 1975.

1930 -Reacting to charges that the movies had become too naughty, Hollywood producers accept the MOTION PICTURE CODE. It was regulated by Will Hays, former Republican Party Chairman. The regulation wouldn't really start to have strength until 1935-36 when pressure groups like the Catholic League of Decency went after Mae West and the Tarzan pictures. 

The Hays Code forbade open sex and obscenity:

  - twin beds only in a bedroom, nightclothes buttoned to the neck. 

  - if a couple were seated together on a bed they must have at least one foot touching the floor,

  -"kisses with a duration of no longer than 3 seconds, parting with lips closed."

-  One other little known clause was the forbidding of members of different races from kissing on camera. So Anna Mae Wong, the greatest Chinese-American actress of her time, could not play a Chinese heroine if her co-star was a Caucasian made up to look Asian.

   Lots of jokes were spawned like: "Give him the bird!" "If the Hays Commission would let me, I'd give him the bird!"

1931- ITT transmits the first message by microwave, from Dover to Calais.

1932- Ford introduces the V-8 Engine.

1933- Max Fleischer's short cartoon "Snow White" (starring Betty Boop) premiered. Cab Calloway singing the "St. James Infirmary Blues" is a highlight.

1943- Rodger & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" debuts.  Despite the opinion of producer Mike Todd -"No legs, No Laughs, No Chance", the musical becomes one of the great hits of American musical theater.

1950- Thor Heyderthal's book of his exploits Kon Tiki published. This was an account of his 4,200 mile voyage which proved ancient mariners could have traveled from Peru to Polynesia on boats made from tied reeds.

1962- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened on Wilshire Blvd. No, it didn’t display customized surfboards or the ideal tuna melt with sprouts, but an exhibit of paintings by Bonnard. 

1967- In a small London nightclub, rising young rock & roller Jimmy Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time. Rock luminaries like Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Pete Townsend sat in the audience stunned at the technical brilliance of this unknown former paratrooper who played left handed. The pieces of his guitar were purchased by Microsoft chairman Paul Allen and today are in his Seattle Rock Museum.

1973- Comic strip hero Smilin' Jack gets married, the strip concludes next day.

1991- Former child star Danny Bonaduce arrested for a fist fight with a trans prostitute.

1995- In Corpus Christy Texas legendary Tejana singer Selena Perez was shot and killed by an obsessed fan. The woman Yolanda Saldivar was president of the Selena Fan Club. “The gun just went off, I didn’t mean to shoot anybody.” 

1999- The movie The Matrix opened in theaters. Whoah!

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 30, 2023

Birthdays:  Maimonides- Moses Ben Maimon, Anna Sewell (the author of Black Beauty), Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco Goya, John Astin, Peter Marshall, Warren Beatty is 86, Eric Clapton is 77, Arthur Lee Harrington the designer of the first Jeep, Tracey Chapman, Robby Coltrane, Paul Reiser, Celine Dion, Nora Jones is 44, Disney animator Marc Davis

1858- The pencil eraser patented. The Eraser, or Rubber outside the U.S., was developed in 1770, but Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia first put it on the top of a pencil.

1918- Thomas Edison sold his studio and got out of the movie business. He fired W.K.L. Dickson, inventor of the movie studio set, Edwin Porter the inventor of the narrative film, Willis O’Brian, and J. Stuart Blackton, the inventor of cartoon animation, for annoying him too much about filmmaking. Edison was more interested then in finding a way to extract iron ore from rocks using magnets. 

1939- Detective Comics # 27, the first Batman, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, appeared on newsstands. It was called the May issue, but came out today.

1968- In New York City’s Bowery district two children find the dead body of a homeless drug addict. He is later identified as Bobby Driscoll, 31, Walt Disney child star, and the voice of Peter Pan.

1988- Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton.

2000- Dreamworks animated feature the Road to El Dorado premiered.

2007- Disney’s Meet the Robinsons.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 29, 2023

Birthdays: President John Tyler, Sir William Walton, Eric Idle is 80, former English P.M. John Major, Bud Cort is 75, LaToya Jackson, Eugene McCarthy, Jennifer Capriati, M.C. Hammer, Walt "Clyde" Frazier, Cy Young, Christopher Lambert is 68, Jimmy Dodd, Disney animator Jack Kinney, Brendan Gleeson is 68, Lucy Lawless, Elle MacPherson, Amy Sedaris is 62

1886- COCA-COLA invented. Atlanta Pharmacist and liver pill salesman John Pemberton developed the carbonated drink, originally with Cocaine in it. His bookkeeper Francis Robinson penned the famous script logo, still in use today. Advertising for the drink claimed it cured everything from hysteria, cholic and the common cold.

The formula is still a secret. During World War II the Nazis openly worried how a break with the United States would affect their supply of Coca Cola, so Reichminister Goebbels arrested Coke execs in Germany and forced them to develop a substitute. This became Fanta Cola. 

1891- Impressionist painter George Seurat died at age 31. Before he died, he told his parents that he had a mistress named Maureen Knobloch, and had a child by her. Surprise!

1936- Republic Pictures formed.

1939- Moviestars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard marry. 

1951- 'The King and I' debuted on Broadway with Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner, who shaved his head for the first time for the role.

1971- First day of shooting on the film The Godfather. 

50th Anniv.1973- The last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam. President Nixon announced that night " We have Peace with Honor". Communists conquered South Vietnam two years later.

1974- Mariner 10 was the first satellite to reach the planet Mercury.

1974- A Chinese farmer digging a well discovered the huge, terracotta army buried with Chinas’ first emperor at XIAN.

1989- As part of one of the silliest Oscar telecasts in history, actor Rob Lowe had to dance and sing 'Proud Mary" with a Las Vegas showgirl named Eileen Bowman dressed as Disney’s Snow White.  Rob Lowe had just been embarrassed by the publication of a videotape shot in a hotel room of him having sex with two teenage girls. The Walt Disney Company immediately threatened a lawsuit. The Academy apologized and replaced director Alan Carr with Gilbert Cates.

1993- At the 65th Academy Awards, Disney’s Aladdin won two Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Track. Best Animated Short was Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase by Joan Gratz.

2018- A Buzzfeed article detailed how animator John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren & Stimpy, preyed on underage girls, promising them careers at his studio.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 28, 2023

Birthdays: Paul Whiteman, Pearl Bailey, Freddy Bartholomew, Dirk Bogarde,

Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton, pianist Rudolph Serkin, Swifty Lazar, Marlin Perkins, Diane Weist, Reba McEntire, Vince Vaughn is 53, Julia Stiles is 42, Lady Gaga (born Stefani Germanetta) is 37

1881- P.T. Barnum formed a partnership with his chief competitor James Bailey to create Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. He proclaimed it the Greatest Show on Earth!

1920- Silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford married.

1928- Via radio broadcast, the public heard the voice of Charlie Chaplin for the first time.

1929- Disney short The Opry House was released. The first short where they changed Mickey Mouses’ design to give him white gloves. 

1935- Leni Reifenstahl’s hypnotic movie paean to Nazism- Triumph of the Will, premiered.

1941- English writer Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex. Her body was never found. 

1942- Albert Hurter, Swiss designer for Walt Disney's "Snow White' and 'Pinocchio", and called the first inspirational artist in animation, died of rheumatic heart disease. He was 59.

1987- The first Disney Store opened at the Glendale Galleria in California. Selling Disney themed merchandise outside of the parks.

1999- Matt Groening’s cartoon series Futurama debuted.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 27, 2023

Birthdays: French King Louis XVII –the boy during the Revolution who died in prison after his Royal parents were guillotined, Patty Smith Hill 1868- The composer of the song Happy Birthday to You, Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson, Sarah Vaughn, Maria Schneider, Mies Van der Rohe, Snooky Lanson, Wilhelm Roentgen the discoverer of X-Rays, Nathaniel Currier of Currier & Ives, Donald Duck artist Carl Barks, cellist Mtisislav Rostropovich, Michael York is 79, Quentin Tarantino is 58, Mariah Carey is 51

1790- The invention of modern shoelaces.

1908- Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuted.

1940- “Rebecca,” the first Hollywood movie by Alfred Hitchcock opened.

1952- U.P.A.’s cartoon “Rooty-Toot-Toot” premiered. Its music score was by jazzman Phil Moore, the first African American to receive a screen credit for scoring a movie.

1952- “Singing in the Rain” starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor premiered.

1958- At the 30th Academy Awards, the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay went to Pierre Boule for The Bridge on the River Kwai. But Boule was not there. He wrote the novel it was based on, but the actual screenplay was written by two Blacklisted writers in exile- Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Boulle’s name was entered as a cover.

1964-THE ANCHORAGE, ALASKA EARTHQUAKE- The largest in the western hemisphere in the Twentieth Century, 9.2 on the Richter Scale. It created a tsunami tidal wave that hit the coastlines of Alaska, British Columbia and Hawaii with a 100 foot wall of water. 164 people died.

1973- In one of the more celebrated stunts in Hollywood history, when Marlon Brando won an Oscar for his role in The Godfather, he sent a buckskin clad model named Sashin Littlefeather to refuse the award and delivered a protest about treatment of Indigenous Americans. 

1978- The first draft script of the film Norma Rae completed. The film dramatized the life of Christa Lee Jordan, a mill worker who was blackballed by the J.P. Stevens millworks for wanting a union. 

1989- Who Framed Roger Rabbit earned four Oscars at the Academy Awards. Sound Effects, Visual Effects, Film Editing and a special one for Richard Williams for the animation. At that same ceremony, Pixar’s Tin Toy won best animated short. The first Pixar short to win.

2022- At the Academy Awards, Best Actor winner Will Smith slapped and cursed out comedian Chris Rock on camera in front of the whole world for making a joke about his wife Jada Pinket Smith.

Tom Sito's Animation Fun Facts for March 26, 2023

B-Days: Robert Frost, Chico Marx, Conde Nast, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Houseman, Leigh Harline, Joseph Campbell, Gen. William Westmorland, Erica Jong, Duncan Hines, Bob Woodward, Leonard Nimoy, Alan Arkin, James Caan, Diana Ross is 79, Sandra Day-O’Connor, Martin Short, Bob Elliot of Bob & Ray would be 100, T. Hee, Michael Imperioli is 58, Keira Knightley is 38, Alan Silvestri, Steven Tyler, Chris Bailey, John Pomeroy is 72.

1832- Artist George Catlin began his first trip to the West.  He traveled up the Missouri River on the American Fur Trading steamer The Yellowstone. Catlin’s portrait paintings of Plains Indians became famous.

1900- The Happy Hooligan comic strip.

1920- This Side of Paradise, the first novel published by a young Minnesota writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, writer of the Star Spangled Banner.

1937- A statue of Popeye the Sailor unveiled at the Crystal City Texas Spinach Festival.

1955- The song The Ballad of Davey Crockett, went to number 1 in the U.S. pop charts. 

1960- THE MOULIN ROUGE AGREEMENT- Las Vegas gambling casinos finally integrate. Before this stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald could headline in the clubs but had to exit via the kitchens and sleep across town in the colored section. Singer Nat King Cole was requested to keep his eyes on his piano keys for fear if he looked up he would seduce young white girls. Frank Sinatra played a big part in lobbying the Vegas Mob guys to change with the times. Marlene Dietrich grabbed Lena Horne by the arm and stormed into a casino bar defying any reaction. None came. The Moulin Rouge was the first completely integrated casino.

1969- The western movie 100 Rifles premiered. It broke taboos, because it featured sexy Raquel Welch making love to sexy black actor Jim Brown.  And Burt Reynolds as the bandito Yaqui Joe Hererra.

1969- On this day a frustrated young writer named John Kennedy Toole committed suicide. When his mother went through his things, she found the manuscript of a novel in an old shoebox. She forced the manuscript on novelist Walker Percy to read. He was stunned by what he read. That lead to it being published by Louisiana State University Press. The book the "Confederacy of Dunces” went on to be a critically acclaimed bestseller and win a Pulitzer Prize.

1970- Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary admitted to having sex with a 14 year old girl.  

1973- The Young and the Restless soap opera premiered. 

1975 - The Who¹s rock opera "Tommy" premiered in London.

1976- USC sophomore Levar Burton screen tested for the role of Kunta Kinte in the landmark TV miniseries Roots. The role made him a star.

1976 - Wings release "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album .

1977 - Elvis Costello releases his first record "Less Than Zero" 

1982 - Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder release "Ebony & Ivory" in the UK

1990- The Little Mermaid’s composers Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken won two academy awards. For Best Score and the song “ Under the Sea”. 

1997- Turner Animation's film 'Cat's Don't Dance", Directed by Mark Dindal, featuring the last movie work of Gene Kelly. He was a consultant on the dance sequences.

2008- Arnold Schwarzenegger fired Clint Eastwood. No, it’s not a movie plot line. The former actor turned Republican Governor, objected to a position the actor/director and former Republican mayor took on the California State Parks Commission. 

2228-According to Star Fleet records- James T. Kirk, captain of Federation Star Ship Enterprise (Star Trek) was born. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 25, 2023

B-Days: King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gutzon Borglum, David Lean, Mary Flannery-O’Connor, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia, Jerry Livingston (writer of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo), Simone Signoret, Gloria Steinem is 89, Sarah Jessica Parker is 59.

In ancient times this was the feast of Thalia, the goddess of comedy, one of the Nine Muses. In Latin she was called Hilaria. According to the historian Pausanias there was a town that was sacred to Thalia. When you arrived, you had to tell a joke to the locals or they would kill you.

1928- Young American composer George Gershwin first arrived in Paris.

1931- Shortly after the invention of automobiles, there were automobile races. This day in the dry lake beds of Muroc California saw the first race car speed trials sanctioned by the American Automobile Assoc. It was the beginning of NASCAR. 

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., tried starting a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they won't try to unionize). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls. The forum quickly devolved into a screaming free for all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was quickly abandoned. Workers continued to organize into craft unions. 

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offered famed director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bags for Hollywood.

1943 - The first Japanese anime film premiered " Momotarō no Umiwashi (桃太郎の海鷲,

Momotaro's Divine Sea Eagles" by director Mitsuyo Seo. Momotaro or Peach Boy, was a popular character with children. It ran only 37 minutes. 

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile, 12 inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem, he was arrested.

1960- Thirty-five years after it was written and published in Europe an American judge ruled that D.H. Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not pornography and could finally be sold in the U.S. Whaddaya think of that, John-Thomas?

1960- The Moulin Rouge Agreement. After a lot of agitation and arm twisting from Frank Sinatra, the owners of the Las Vegas casinos agreed to integrate. It was so named for the Moulin Rouge Casino, which up to then had been the only casino that allowed black and white patrons to mix freely.

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls & butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today" album, It was later pulled.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 24, 2023

Birthdays: Steve McQueen, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Ub Iwerks (the first Disney animator), John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weisz, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Jesus Alou, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera, Cal Howard, R. Lee Ermey, Peyton Manning, Kelly LeBrock, Sir Elton John is 76, Jessica Chastain is 46

1882 -In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the dreaded pandemic of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin, Henry Clay, Doc Holliday, Aubrey Beardsley, to Mimi in La Boheme. 

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. Conan Doyle was inspired when he in 1905 he attended a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, when an Amazon explorer described finding dinosaur bones. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories. In 1925, Willis O'Brien made the Lost World into the first dinosaur monster movie.

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search, American Idol and The Voice.

1939- The film The Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. They became famous interpreters of the characters, and went on to make a dozen more films.

1945- Warners Life With Feathers, the first Sylvester the Cat.

1949- MGM’s The Little Orphan won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat, and Burl Ives was " Big Daddy".

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army. G.I. Blues!

1973- In Buffalo, a drunk fan bit singer Lou Reed on the ass.

1987- Michael Eisner and Premier Jacques Chirac sign the protocol to build Euro-Disney, later called Disneyland Paris.

2006- 13 year old Miley Cyrus debuts on TV as Disney’s Hanna Montana.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 23, 2023

Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr. Werner Von Braun, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman, Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Eric Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Catherine Keener is 63, Hope Davis is 58

1909- Two weeks after leaving the presidency, Teddy Roosevelt disembarked from New York, bound for a big game hunt in Africa. Banker J.P. Morgan said,” Every American hopes the African lions will do their duty.” 

1936- Ollie Johnston got his first job at the Walt Disney Studio, as Fred Moore’s assistant.

1957- Art Clokey's Gumby Show. Clokey created the green clay fellow for his USC college thesis film Gumbasia.

1976- Panamanian middleweight Roberto Duran was being honored in Havana. Fidel Castro casually remarked to Duran “Hey, what do you think would happen if my fighter Teofilo Stevenson met Muhammad Ali?” Duran laughed,” Him? Ali would kill him!” Duran was on a plane home that night.

1977- The first Richard Nixon-David Frost interview. 

1987- After meeting creator Matt Groening, animators David Silverman, Wes Archer and Bill Kopp began animating the very first Simpson’s short for the Tracy Ullmann Show. 

1990- President George Bush Sr. banned broccoli from the White House. 

He joked; "Read My Lips ! I hate Broccoli !"

2003- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, Beating out Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet. 

Tom Sito's Animation Alamanc for March 22, 2023

Birthdays: Anthony Van Dyck, Marcel Marceau, Stephen Sondheim, Karl Malden, Werner Klemperer- Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes, George Benson, James Gavin, Allen Neuharth, Milt Kahl, Mort Drucker, Fanny Ardant is 74, Lena Olin is 68, Bruno Ganz, Reese Witherspoon is 47, Keegan Michael-Key is 52, William Shatner is 92.

1894- First Stanley Cup Game- Montreal 3, Ottawa I.

1913- Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild) wrote fellow writers HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill, and asked them how much do they get paid? He was unsure what to charge.

1935- Walt Disney Silly Symphony “ The Golden Touch”. 

1935- TV SHOWS-The first regular electronic television service began in Berlin as Deutscher Fernseh Rundfunk. Broadcasting from the Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, it used a 180-line system, and was on air for 90 minutes, three times a week. Very few receivers were ever privately owned, and viewers went instead to Fernsehstuben (television parlors). During the 1936 Summer Olympics, broadcasts, up to eight hours a day, took place in Berlin and Hamburg.

1958- Hollywood producer Mike Todd was killed in a small plane crash. He produced hit movies like Around the World in 80 Days and romanced starlets like Gypsy Rose Lee and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Todd had been married for one year and she was devastated by the accident. Years and many marriages later Taylor said Mike Todd was the only man she ever really loved.

1960- Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes patented the laser beam. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER. Pussycats rejoice!

1970- The Beatles broke up. Paul McCartney filed papers in a London court for a formal dissolving of the Fab Fours partnership.

1972- Concluding a five-year study, the National Commission on Drug Abuse recommended ending all penalties and laws prohibiting marijuana. No one in authority listened to them.

1976- In Tunisia, George Lucas’ first day filming Star Wars. 

1978- Karl Wallenda, 73 year old scion of the daredevil family the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death from a tightrope between two resort hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1995- First day of shooting on that utterly classic film- Dinosaur Valley Girls!

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 21, 2023

Birthdays: Plato, Johann Sebastian Bach, Benito Juarez, Modest Mussorgsky, Fats Waller, Josef Pulitzer, Florenz Ziegfeld, Bronco Billy Anderson, Rev Ralph Abernathy, Armand Hammer, Harold Robbins, Matthew Broderick is 59, Gary Oldman is 63, James Coco, Timothy Dalton is 75, Rosie O’Donnell is 59, animator Kathy Zielinski.

1617-Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, died at Gravesend, England after being taken off her homeward bound ship, too ill with smallpox to continue. She was 21. Her children with John Rolfe became the beginnings of one of the largest families in Virginia, with many scions of the Old Dominion tracing their ancestry to Pocahontas.

1740- Composer Antonio Vivaldi - Il Prete Rosso- the Red Priest, conducted his last concert at the Ospedale Della Pietra in Venice. It was a home for orphaned girls so it was an all-girl orchestra. The 64 year old Vivaldi went to Vienna to see if he could get any commissions from the Austrian Emperor, but caught an illness on the way and died.

1859- The first public zoo opened in the U.S.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson hosted a private screening of D.W. Griffith’s film “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House. 

1917- Buster Keaton first stepped in front of a movie camera.

1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas left Washington and set up in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the movies. They began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later move to the federal building downtown. 

Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member, your dossier would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself for embezzlement.  

1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of the new pop music in Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it was the very first Rock Concert.

1961- The Beatles first performed at the Cavern Club in Hamburg Germany.

1963- Barbara Streisand married Elliot Gould. 

1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for cable and videocassette income. 

2006- The first Tweet sent on the new format Twitter. Scientist Jack Dorsey tweeted his friends “Setting up my twttr…” Twitter went public that July. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 20, 2023

Birthday: Roman poet Ovid 43BC, Napoleon’s son Napoleon II "l'Aiglon" The eaglet, Henryk Ibsen, Lauritz Melchior, Ray Goulding, Mr. Rogers, Bobby Orr, B.F. Skinner, Pat Riley, Sir Michael Redgrave, Edgar Buchanan, Holly Hunter is 67, William Hurt, Sheldon "Spike" Lee is 66, Carl Reiner, David Thewlis, Chris Wedge is 66

1345- Noted scholars and scientists assembled at the University of Paris to debate the origin of the Black Plague then decimating Europe. “Hmm.., is it witchcraft, or the left-handed?”

1841- Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder's in the Rue Morgue first published in Graham’s Magazine. Called the first true detective novel. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin was inspired by a real French sleuth named Jules Vinquoc who used disguises and scientific technique to solve crimes the Paris police could not solve. Dupin was the inspiration for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

1852- Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" first published. It sold one million copies within six months. Based on the story of escaped slave Josiah Henson, the book was the first to treat the horrors of slavery directly. It portrayed slave families not as dumb brutes or happy minstrels, but victimized human beings. Because of this book, Yankee soldiers referred to Southerners as women-whippers, and baby sellers. Mrs. Stowe said modestly: “I didn’t write it, God did. I just took dictation.” When she visited the White House President Lincoln met her with, ”So here’s the little lady who started the big war.”

1903- Henri Matisse first exhibited at the Salon des Independents in Paris.

1931- Cantors Kosher deli opened in the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles.

1943-MGM's "Dumb Hounded" directed by Tex Avery. the first Droopy Cartoon.

1969-John Lennon married Yoko Ono on the Rock of Gibraltar.

1985- Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Alaskan Iditarod dog-sled race. She would win it a total of four times.

1991- In 1955 Walt Disney recorded Peggy Lee to sing “He’s a Tramp” for the film Lady and the Tramp. For that she was paid $3,500. In 1991, a judge ordered The Walt Disney Company to pay Peggy Lee $3.8 million for the songs she wrote and performed in the film. This additional income was from videocassette sales for a re-issue of the soundtrack. 

1992- Basic Instinct opened. Noir thriller directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Sharon Stone, and Michael Douglas.

1999- After years of attempts and failures involving millionaires like Richard Branson, Rocky Aoki and Malcolm Forbes, Dr Bertrand Picard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of the UK became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a balloon. It was named the Breitling Orbiter 3. Dr Picard said: “I am with the Angels and completely happy.” Mr Jones said: First thing I’ll do is phone my wife, then like a good Englishman I’ll have a cup of tea.”

1999- Legoland opened in Carlsbad Cal.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 19, 2023

Birthdays: George De La Tour, Wyatt Earp, Dr. David Livingston, William Jennings Bryan, Sir Richard Burton (The African explorer), Charles M. Russell, Jacky Moms Mabley, Adolf Eichmann, Phillip Roth, Adolf Galland, Ursula Andress, Patrick McGoohan, Ornette Coleman, Holly Hunter, Richard Williams, Bruce Willis is 68, Glenn Close is 76

1799- Franz Josef Haydn’s oratorio The Creation premiered. Haydn was inspired when he heard Handel’s The Messiah in London.

1847- THE MORMON BATALLION reached Los Angeles. Brigham Young, in order to quiet Federal suspicions that his Utah commune didn't want to be loyal to the U.S., formed a volunteer battalion to aid in the War with Mexico. This troop makes one of the longest infantry marches in U.S. history, across the arid desert, and arrived in El Pueblo de Los Angeles in time to interrupt a fiesta. They tell the startled locals that they were now Americans, whether they liked it or not!

1853- Charles Dicken’s novel Bleak House first appeared in magazine installments. It is the first novel to ever mention dinosaurs-" It would be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill…"

1859- Charles Gounod's opera 'Faust" premiered. 

1874- Mexican-Californio bandido Tirbucio Vasquez was hanged. His last words were “Pronto!” The wild hills north of Newhall California where he hid out are today named in his honor-Vasquez Rocks. They are the site of numerous film shoots like original Star Trek episodes.

1875- Mark Twain admitted in a letter to a friend that he now likes to use a typewriter, a new technology accused of ruining the art of writing.

1895- The Lumiere Brothers filmed their first movie, employees leaving their dad’s factory.

1914- A fire in the negative vaults of the Eclair Studios in New Jersey destroyed forever all the American work of pioneer French animator Emile Cohl. He had come to the U.S. to animate the first cartoon series, George McManus’ "The Newlyweds" later to be renamed in comic strip form "Life With Father".

1918- As a wartime measure, the Congress created Daylight Savings Time separate from Standard Time

1931- Nevada legalized gambling.

1942- St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, across the street from the Disney Studio, was dedicated. Walt Disney owned the land and gave it to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Sisters of Providence. It would be the place where Walt, Roy, and many other a Disney employee would end their life’s journey.

1953- First T.V. broadcast of the Oscar ceremony broadcast simultaneously from LA and NY. That utterly memorable circus film "The Greatest Show on Earth" won best picture, beating out High Noon, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man and Ivanhoe. It was Cecil B. DeMille’s only Oscar of his career. Gary Cooper won best actor and Shirley Booth best actress. Before TV, the Oscars ceremony included a dinner and an hour of dancing before the awards were presented.

1954- On a desert freeway, singer Sammy Davis Jr. lost an eye in an auto accident. He was left lying bleeding unattended in a hallway in Riverside County Hospital. This was because he was black and it was a segregated facility. Finally, actor Jeff Chandler found him and forced the doctors to treat him. Friend Frank Sinatra urged Davis out of his depression and got him out on stage again. That first night at Ciro’s nightclub the entire Ratpack- Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford each preformed on stage wearing a black eye patch similar to Davis’.

1957- Elvis Presley purchased an estate outside Memphis Tennessee called Graceland from Ruth Moore for $100,000.

1959- Disney released The Shaggy Dog, their low budget live action comedy hit.

1962- The first Pillsbury Doughboy commercial.

1964- IBM gave the green light to plans for the 360 series. The first compatible computers.

1964- First day shooting on the James Bond film Goldfinger. 

1974- The band Jefferson Airplane changed its name to Jefferson Starship.

1979- C-Span cable channel started broadcasting live from the floor of Congress. The first Congressman to speak on camera was Al Gore.

1982- Randy Rhoads, the lead guitarist for Ozzy Ozbourne died when he playfully flew his plane buzzing the bands traveling bus and smacked into a farmhouse. 

1984- I’LL BE BACK- James Cameron began shooting the film the Terminator. He first considered casting O.J. Simpson for the cyborg killer before settling on Austrian weightlifter Arnold Schwarzenegger.

1993- Monkey-cam debuted on the David Letterman Show.

2004- Brian Maxwell, the inventor of the Power Bar nutrition snack, died of a heart attack at age 51.

2004- The Florida unit of Walt Disney Feature Animation was shut down. Originally set up as an attraction at Walt Disney World theme park, they grew into a viable studio in their own right. They created hits like Trail Mixup, Mulan, Lilo & Stitch, and Brother Bear.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for March 18, 2023

Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, John Calhoun, Nicholai Rimsky-Korsakov, Neville Chamberlain, Wilson Picket, Edgar Cayce, John Updike, Grover Cleveland, Edward Everett Horton, Vanessa Williams, F. W. DeKlerk, George Plympton, Peter Graves, Irene Cara, Luc Besson, Queen Latifah (born Dana Elaine Owens) is 52

1902- BIRTH OF THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. The RCA Victrola company sent its engineers to Milan to record ten discs of the young singer Enrico Caruso. He became a world celebrity and the phonograph went from being a scientific curiosity to something every home had to have.

1910- Rosie O’Neill invented the Kewpie Doll.

1924-The film “The Thief of Baghdad” starring Douglas Fairbanks released. Directed by Raoul Walsh and designs by William Cameron Menzies. It is considered one of the first great special effects blockbusters.

1942- Paramount’s “The Lost Dream” Little Audrey cartoon. The short was directed by Bill Tytla for Famous Studios. He designed Little Audrey based on his own daughter Tammy.

1965- Cosmonaut Sergei Leonov became the first human to walk in space.

1965- The Rolling Stones were fined 5 English pence for urinating on a wall in Stratford at ABC recording studio Romford.

1967- The Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened at Disneyland, designed by master animator Marc Davis.  

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Match 17, 2023

Birthdays: Jim Bridger the mountain man, Nat King Cole, film composer Alfred Newman, Mercedes McCambridge, Leslie Ann Down, Patrick Duffy, Rudolph Nureyev, Gary Sinise, Kate Greenaway, John Sebastian, Ben Washam (Warner Bros. animator), Ken Anderson (Disney animator), Stormy Daniels (porn star), John Wayne Gacy, Kurt Russell is 72, Rob Lowe is 59

461AD- HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY - St. Patrick was a Romanized Gaul named Patricius Magonus Sucatus who as a boy was taken as a slave to Ireland by raiders, then escaped and became a Christian Bishop at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland in 432. Patrick converted the daughters of Irish King Laoghaire and cast down the great pagan idol of Crom Cruach in Letrim. As far as snakes go, some say that was a metaphor for the pagans.  He died on this day in Ireland 461AD. 

  The holiday was a religious festival in Ireland but in America the feast day of Ireland's patron saint became a chance to show ethnic pride and political strength in the face of anti-Irish prejudice. 

1394- FREE LANCERS - Sir John Hawkwood died. During a time-out in the Hundred Years War in France Hawkwood formed a company of unemployed English knights and went to Italy to become “condottierie”-mercenaries, fighting for money in the feuds between all the little Italian city-states. Their distinctive brightly polished silver armor gave them the name “The White Company”. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle wrote a novel by that name about them. 

This is around the time the term 'free lance' had been coined, meaning a knight who was free of any Shield-Oath to a noble lord.

1845- Rubber Bands invented.

1879- New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace stopped work on his novel Ben Hur long enough to meet face-to-face outlaw Billy the Kid to discuss an amnesty.

1884- To quiet the fears of New Yorkers that the Brooklyn Bridge was too dangerous to cross, circus-master P.T. Barnum led a herd of his circus elephants led by Jumbo the Elephant across the bridge safely.

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1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.

1941- The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington D.C.

1965- Chicago began the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green.

1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group called AWAG (American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by publically condemning Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award. 

As a result Ed Asner’s hit TV show “Lou Grant” lost sponsors and was cancelled, and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond speaking at NRA events, and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times that Ben Hur wasn’t gay.

1983- On trial for libel, and refusing to name sources, wheelchair bound porn publisher Larry Flynt showed up in a US Federal court wearing a diaper made from an American flag. This was calculated to mock a conservative demand for a Constitutional amendment against burning the flag.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 16, 2023

Birthdays: James Madison, Conrad Nagel, Dr. Josef Mengele the Nazi Angel of Death, Teresa Berganza, Christa Ludwig, Pat Nixon, Alice Bonheur, Harper Goff, Gore Verbinsky, Jerry Lewis, Bernardo Bertolucci, Eric Estrada, Kate Nelligan, Isabelle Huppert is 70, Lauren Graham is 56, Flava-Flav born William Drayton Jr.

1778- In Paris, Benjamin Franklin first met Voltaire.

1850- Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter published.

1898- Artist Aubrey Beardsley died of tuberculosis at 25. Having a religious conversion at the end of his life, but still the stickler for detail, his last words were:" Destroy all my erotic drawings...all the bad ones too...." Luckily for history his friends did neither.

1934- Disney’s short The Three Little Pigs won an Oscar for best animated short.

1961- Walt Disney comedy The Absent Minded Professor with Fred MacMurray premiered. 

1994- Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding was arrested for obstructing the prosecution of the case of the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan.

2005- Old actor Robert Blake was acquitted of the murder of his wife Bonnie Lee Blakeley. She was shot in the head while in their car after having dinner together. Blake claimed he had returned to the restaurant to retrieve his gun. (?) Another suspect has never been found. Blake himself died of old age a fe weeks ago.

2020- Los Angeles, including Hollywood, ordered all theaters closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

2020- Agatha Christies play The Mousetrap, the longest running play in history, running continuously since 1952, was closed due to the Covid pandemic.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 15, 2023

Birthdays: Andrew Jackson, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg is 80, Eva Longoria is 48, David Silverman

1909- Harry Gordon Selfridge, formerly manager of Chicago’s Marshal Fields, opened Selfridges, London’s first Department Store. Selfridge invented the Bargain Basement, the Annual Sale, and coined the motto “ The Customer is Always Right.”

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that poet Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Faemmele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as its birthday.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes cartoon studio. He was made a director in 1938. 

1941- The daughter of Cecil B. DeMille, Katherine DeMille, had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate, the couple’s three year old son Christopher wandered off into neighbor W.C. Fields’ yard where he fell into his unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterward. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no reminder of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge ruled actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals, and studios could lend them out to other studios for higher fees, and keep the money.  

If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio, without pay, and the penalty time tagged onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. The DeHaviland Case broke that system and allowed actors to make their own deals. Olivia DeHaviland died in 2020 at age 104.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s musical "My Fair Lady" premiered. 

1956- The film Forbidden Planet premiered in theaters. Considered the granddaddy of Sci-Fiction blockbusters A lot of the films effects were done by freelancing Disney effects animators like Joshua Meador.

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.

1964- The book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan first published. The first major book to point out women were unhappy with their second class roles. And it coined the term Feminist. 

1969- Two young heirs to the Polydent false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show? 

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered private domain site on the Internet. 

2002- Blue Sky’s hit animated film Ice Age premiered. The studio was being scaled down to be actioned off when the film was a massive hit. Out doing the Best Picture Oscar winner A Beautiful Mind. 

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia, the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 14, 2023

Birthdays: Georg Phillip Telemann, Johann Strauss Sr., Albert Einstein, Casey Jones,  astronaut Frank Borman, Les Brown, Hank Ketcham, Wolfgang Petersen, Diane Arbus, Chris Klein, Michael Cain born Maurice Mickelwhite is 90, Billy Crystal is 75, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, Quincy Jones is 90

1885- Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Mikado premiered in London.

1903- President Teddy Roosevelt established Pelican Island as the first Federal Wildlife Preserve. 

1930- Mickey’s Barn Dance premiered.

1932- Inventor GEORGE EASTMAN shot himself- The inventor of the Roll-film camera, who named his celluloid strips 'film' and founded Eastman/Kodak. He had been suffering from a long painful spinal illness and left the note: " To my friends: The End is near. My work is done. Why wait? " He was 77.

1941- Xavier Cugat and his orchestra recorded "Babalu".

1943- Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" premiered. George Szell conducting.   

1991- Lyricist Howard Ashman (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) died of HIV/AIDS. He was 40. 

1992- The official Soviet newspaper Pravda- Truth, ceased publication. 

1998- The epic disaster movie Titanic surpassed Star Wars and Jurassic Park as the greatest money earning film (until Avatar). It cost over $200 million to make but it earned at least $1 billion in box office alone. Quote director James Cameron: I’m King of the World!!

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 13, 2023

Birthdays: Hugh Walpole, Charles 2nd Earl Grey 1764- English Prime Minister whom the tea blend 'Earl Grey Tea " is named for, Pope Innocent XII (1615), Abigail Powers Filmore- First Lady of Millard Filmore, Hugo Wolf, Ted Sears, Sammy Kaye, Danny Kaye, Neil Sedaka, L. Ron Hubbard, William Macy is 72, Dick Katz, Annabell Gish, Joe Ranft, Mad Magazine artist Al Jaffee is 102!

1928- In New York City, Walt Disney sent a telegram to his brother Roy back in California, informing him of his disastrous meeting with producer Charles Mintz. That Mintz had exercised a clause in their contract to take the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit away from them. He cabled “ Leaving Tonight, stopping over KC. Arrive Sunday Morning. Don’t Worry. All Will be Well.” Later on the train home, Walt with Ub Iwerks, Les Clark and his wife Lillian came up with a new character named Mickey Mouse.

1939- Hollywood recognized the Screen Director’s Guild, later called he DGA. After a nasty battle lasting several years Guild President Frank Capra signed the contracts representing 80% of movie directors. They also contractually ensured the custom of the director’s credit being the last one seen at the opening title sequence of a film. 

1943- Radio station WNYC goes on the air.

1944- Abbot & Costello copyrighted their baseball routine ‘Who’s on First?"

1947- MGM Tom & Jerry’s Cat Concerto won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1965- Guitarist Eric Clapton quit the band The Yardbirds. 

1969- Disney’s comedy about a Volkswagen beetle, "The Love Bug" premiered. The reason the Volkswagen has the race car number 53 painted on it was because producer Bill Walsh was a big fan of LA Dodger hitter Don Drysdale. His player number was 53.

1983- The Larry King Show debuted on HBO, later moving to CNN. King retired that show in 2010, but kept doing cable shows until his death from covid in 2020.

1986- Microsoft made its first public stock offering. A share went for $21.

1987- Raising Arizona, directed by the Cohen Bros opened.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 12, 2023

Birthdays: Jack Kerouac, Billy "Buckwheat "Thomas, Darryl Strawberry, Edward Albee, Andrew Young, Joan Kennedy, Eugene Ormandy, Gordon McCrae, Liza Minelli is 79, Courtenay Vance, James Taylor, Frank Welker, Al Jareau, Maurice Evans, Barbara Feldon- agent 99 in Get Smart is 90, Frank Welker, DeWitt Bodeen- writer of the 1942 film Cat People. Aaron Eckart is 55

1928- THE SAINT FRANCIS DAM DISASTER- The second worst disaster to hit California after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. 

Following up his triumph bringing water to Southern California by aqueduct, William Mulholland had designed several dams and reservoirs north of Los Angeles in the Santa Clarita Valley. On this night at midnight the largest of them exploded from structural weakness, and sent a wall of water 30 feet high across the rural towns of Santa Paula and Fillmore down to Oxnard and the Pacific. 400 people drowned in their beds without any warning.  

Mulholland took full responsibility for the disaster and resigned all his city offices. "I envy the dead", he said.  He died a few years later. Today when driving around the Valencia-Newhall area you can still see huge boulders with steel retaining rods sticking out of them. They are not natural rocks, but chunks of the dam carried miles by the raging torrent of water.

1932- Disney short "Mickey’s Revue" featuring Dippy Dog, now turned into a new character named "the Goof" or Goofy.

1945-THE WAR OF HOLLYWOOD BEGAN-Throughout the 1930’s and 40’s several national unions battled studios and each other to represent Hollywood film workers. The Teamsters, the FWPC, the Brotherhood of Electricians. By 1945 only two remained, the IATSE and the CSU.(International Alliance of Theater and Screen Engineers and the Conference of Studio Unions) IATSE had a reputation of gangsterism and making cozy deals with the studio heads. The CSU, a much more militant group with past ties to communist organizations, was headed by a charismatic scenery painter named Herb Sorrell who had helped win the Disney strike for the cartoonists in 1941. Sorrel called several citywide strikes that paralyzed Hollywood in 1945, 46 and 47. President Richard Walsh of IATSE fought them and rioting in front of the studios was commonplace. 

1951- Former Disney assistant animator Hank Ketcham was trying his hand as a print cartoonist. He had some success selling gags to the New Yorker Magazine. His baby son Dennis was a precocious infant. Once after she caught the child smearing the contents of his diaper around the house, his mother exclaimed to Hank-“ Your son is a Menace!” That gave Ketcham an idea. Today the first Dennis the Menace comic strip was published.

1955- BIRD DIED- Innovative Jazz great Charlie "Bird" Parker had a chemical addiction since getting out of the army. After the death of his infant daughter earlier that year, his drug use spiraled out of control. He was sleeping on the couch in the NY apartment of the Baroness du Rothschild-Konigswarter, a jazz supporter. He awoke to watch TV. While laughing at a juggler on the Dorsey Brothers Variety Show, he died. The coroner said death was by heart failure, cirrhosis and pneumonia. He estimated Parker’s age at 65. He was really 34. When his band heard of his death they paused between sets to shoot up with heroin in his honor. "Seems silly now, come to think of it." Said one musician later.

1969- Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson –a song written by two young folk singers named Simon & Garfunkel, won a Grammy award.

1969- Paul and Linda McCartney married.

1989- Tim Berners-Lee flicked a switch and the World Wide Web became operational, connecting several regional web systems into a global network.

1992- Warren Beatty married Annette Benning.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 11,2023

Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Marius Pretipa, Raoul Walsh, Charlie Ruggles, Lawrence Welk, Samuel “Shemp” Howard, British PM Harold Wilson, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Bobby McFerrin, Sam Donaldson, Antonin Scalia, Jerry Zucker, Vannevar Bush- MIT scientist who in 1945 predicted the personal computer. Joey Buttafuco, Jules Engel, Douglas Adams, Rupert Murdoch is 92, Rob Paulsen is 67, Terence Howard is 54

1889- The California Legislature split Orange County from LA County.

1918- THE GREAT SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC- This day the first noticeable rise in a strange new flu occurred at Camp Funston Kansas.  It was called the Spanish flu because even though it broke out all around the world, Spain was did not have wartime press censorship, so they reported it first.  

In only one year this new flu virus killed 21 million people around the Earth, 640,000 in the U.S. alone- everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to young Walt Disney got sick. In places as far away as China, India and Russia thousands died. The epidemic killed as many people as the just concluding Great War. Then it disappeared as rapidly as it appeared. Experts believed it mutated into less lethal versions. Covid-19 which emerged in 2020 has killed 6 million, in the USA is over one million deaths. 

1927- The first Roxy Theater opens at 50th st. & Seventh Ave. in New York. Roxy was a nickname of theater owner Samuel L. Rothafel who pioneered the movie palace and is called the father of De-Luxe presentation. There were soon Roxy theaters in cities from Hollywood to Sydney Australia.

1943- The Broadway musical team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened their first collaboration “Away We Go!”

1971- Philo Farnsworth died of pneumonia at 64. The young Utah native in 1922 had invented the television set, but by the 1960’s he was forgotten, broke and addicted to painkillers. The only recognition he got was as a contestant on the quiz show I Got a Secret. He won a check for $80 and a carton of Winston cigarettes. Today Farnsworth is considered one of the true inventors of television, along with John Logie-Baird.

1971- THX 1138- Frances Ford Coppola convinced Warner Bros to release a fleshed-out feature version of a USC college thesis film by a young guy named George Lucas.

1977- Film director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home after he got her stoned on quaaludes. Polanski was charged with statutory rape. He jumped bail and fled Hollywood for exile in Paris. LA courts have been trying unsuccessfully to get him extradited ever since.

1984 - NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, adapted and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released in Japan. When the Walt Disney company agreed to distribute the film, they released it in Europe with time cuts, about ten minutes. Miyazaki sent the studio a beautiful antique samurai sword. On the blade he engraved, “ No Cuts”.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 10, 2023

Birthdays: Lorenzo da Ponte -librettist of Mozart's operas, Barry Fitzgerald, Claire Booth Luce, Heywoud Hale Broun, James Herriot, Pablo de Sarrasate, Osama Bin Laden,  Robert Abel, Chuck Norris is 83, Shannon Tweed, Sharon Stone is 65, John Hamm is 52

1926- The First Book of the Month Club – The Lovely Willows by Sylvia Townshend Warner.

1933- The LONG BEACH EARTHQUAKE. There had not been a serious quake in LA since 1857, so everyone thought it a thing of the past. Today the buildings swayed and brick walls collapsed. It was the last big shift in the San Andreas Fault. 200 people were killed, and if the schools had not been empty for Easter break, the casualties could have been much worse.

Actors convening early SAG union meetings in the El Capitan Theater moved out into a parking lot because of the aftershocks. The quake sparked the first serious earthquake building codes.

1935- The First Smokey Stover comic strip (notary sojac).

1944- Goofy short How to Play Golf, directed by Jack Kinney, premiered.

1947- Ronald Reagan becomes President of the Screen Actor's Guild after President George Montgomery and V.P. Franchot Tone resigned to become independent producers. In the violent gangster-ridden atmosphere of Hollywood unions Reagan took to wearing a .32 Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster under his coat.

1948- Zelda Fitzgerald, the socialite wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died in a fire at the mental hospital where she had been committed for more than a decade. 

1954- In a letter to studio heads director Elias Kazan worried that young actor James Dean was “too odd” and unpredictable to star in his movie “Rebel Without a Cause”.

1954- First day of shooting on Stage 3 of the Giant Squid battle on Walt Disney’s production of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The director was Richard Fleischer, the son of Walt Disney’s onetime competitor Max Fleischer.

1969- The Godfather, a novel by Mario Puzo was first published. The book about a NY mafia family was a huge hit and spawned three successful movies.

1972- Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern and directed by Douglas Trumble opened.

1988- Andy Gibb of the BeeGees died at age 30. It was reported he died of a drug overdose, but he actually died of heart failure brought on by years of heavy drug abuse.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 9, 2023

Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, Eddie Foy, Yuri Gargarin, Samuel Barber, chess master Bobby Fischer, Mickey Spillane, Vita Sackville-West, Raul Julia, Vacheslav Molotov, Juliet Binoche is 59, Linda Fiorentino is 65, Lil’ Bow-Wow is 36

1888- While strolling through his garden, writer Jules Verne was shot by an emotional deranged nephew Gaston.  He recovered, but walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

1907- Former Edison animator J. Stuart Blackton started "Moving Picture World" an early movie fanzine.

1913- Virginia Woolf completed her first novel The Voyage Out

1954- Edgar R. Murrow does his "See It Now" television broadcast detailing the life of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the commie-chaser. The obvious contradictions and gross opportunism in McCarthy's record when laid out before a nationwide audience, destroyed his career and took the steam out of the "Red Scare" of the 50's. It is probably television journalism's finest moment. For the lowest? Well, what's on tonight? 

1955- Actor James Dean’s last film, East of Eden, premiered today,

1959-The first "Clutch Cargo" show.  An attempt to do a tv show cheaply by matting in a real mouth on an animation character.

1984- Roy E. Disney Jr., Walt’s nephew, resigned from the central board of the Walt Disney Company, setting in motion a series of takeover bids and maneuvering that by August would wrest control of the company from Ron Miller, Walt’s son-in-law.

1984- Touchstone pictures Splash premiered, featuring Tom Hanks, John Candy and a tastefully topless Daryl Hannah.

1989- Artist-photographer Robert Maplethorpe died of AIDS.

1997- Gangsta-rap singer Christopher Wallace, who was known as the Notorious B.I.G. and also called Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed by a gangsta-style drive by. His last album was entitled Life After Death. Notorious BIG could never shake the accusation that he was involved in the similar murder of singer Tupac Shakur.

2007- Zack Snyder’s film “300” opened. This is Sparta!

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 8, 2023

Birthdays: Sophocles, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, Hannah Hoes Van Beuren- the First Lady for Martin Van Beuren, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Alan Hovhannes, Kenneth Grahame the author of the Wind in the Willows, Cyd Charisse, Charlie Pride, Mickey Dolenz, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Rice, Aiden Quinn is 65, Freddy Prinze Jr is 49, Jim Bouton- baseball player, author, inventor of Big League Chew bubble gum, animator Don Hall

1886- A Scottish doctor in Portsmouth England, named Arthur Conan-Doyle had been trying his hand at writing fiction. He sold a few stories to magazines and tried to publish a historical novel about an insurance company, “The Firm of Girdlestone”, with lackluster results. 

This day he began a new novel “A Tangled Skein” which had a new character named at first Sheridan Hope, then Sheringford Holmes. By the time he finished his story, month later, he had changed the title to “A Study in Scarlet” and the main protagonist name had become SHERLOCK HOLMES. 

Arthur Conan Doyle was an admirer of the American writer Oliver Wendel Holmes who was touring Britain that year. Like him, Holmes was a doctor who turned writer. No one is sure where he got the name Sherlock. It may have been a neighbor. Conan Doyle’s professor in Edinburgh college Dr Joseph Bell excelled at deductive reasoning and had an assistant named Dr. Watson.

1933- As a result of President Roosevelt's Nationwide Bank shutdown, Hollywood Studios go into a cash panic. MGM, RKO and the others ask for 30-50% salary cuts from their stars and artists. At one point they announced the salary cuts at the Oscar banquet ( betchya that made for a real fun party!)

 Louis B. Mayer, tearful and unshaven pleaded his case to his contract-stars, who reluctantly accepted the cuts. Lionel Barrymore called out "We're with ya. L.B. !"  Afterwards Mayer winked to his secretary and giggled:” So how’d I do?”  A week later Mayer hired his new son-in-law David Selznick as a producer at $4,5000 a week. Production chief Darryl Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over the employee salary cuts and went on to build Twentieth Century Fox. 

1941- Writer and playwright Sherwood Anderson dies from periarteritis- internal bleeding- after swallowing a toothpick at a cocktail party.

1941- The National Television System Committee set up by the FCC to standardize television technology recommended an industry standard of 525 scan lines at 30 frames a second- what we now call after their name- NTSC. England later adopted the PAL (Phase Alternation Line) of 625 lines, 25 frames per second and France the SECAM System (Systeme Electronique Couleur Avec Memoire), which is also a 625 line, 25fps system.  This is why British TV shows like The Prisoner always looked so grainy on American sets and American shows look so garish on British sets. By garish I mean the color, not the content. 

It also speeds up the film during video from 24 frames to 25fps (i.e. 4%)...which is why in England and the rest of Europe, all Hollywood movies are 4% shorter and the voices of the actors all sound a little squeaky. The way to remember NTSC is "Never-The-Same-Color'. DVD and BluRay went to a thousand- scan lines. The invention of digital screens made most of this irrelevant.

1956- Chuck Jone's Robin Hood Daffy premiered. Yoiks and Awaaay!" 

1961-The Frito Company merges with potato chip makers H.L. Lay to form Frito-Lay. The recipe for Fritos corn chips was bought by milkshake salesman Elmer Doolin from a Mexican fry cook in South Texas.

1966- London gangster Ronnie Kray entered the Blind Beggar Pub on Whitechapel Road  and shot gangster George Cornell in the head. Ronnie and his identical twin brother Reggie ran rackets in London as well as a West End nightclub that booked performers like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. The Krays were finally imprisoned in 1968.

1973- Paul McCartney was fined 100 pounds for growing marijuana on his farm Mull of Kintyre.

1977- Ralph Bakshi’s film Wizards premiered.

1994- Don Ku invented the ubiquitous little rolling wheeled black suitcase with collapsible handle that bumps into your legs at airports today.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 7, 2023

Birthdays: Maurice Ravel, Piet Mondrian, Roman Emperor Geta, Luther Burbank, Tammy Fae Baker, Willard Scott, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris, Daniel D. Travanti, Rachel Weisz is 53, Michael Eisner is 81, Wanda Sykes is 59, Peter Saarsgard is 52, Bryan Cranston is 67.

1877- Bill Reed, a Union Pacific Railroad worker discovered a vast field of dinosaur fossils at Como Bluff Wyoming. "The bones extend for seven miles and are by the ton!"

1945- Tom & Jerry short Quiet Please won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1955- The 7th Emmy Awards, the first to be nationally televised. Steve Allen hosted. Held at the Moulin Rouge nightclub.

1985- Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson released “ We Are The World” a song recorded by many of the top names in pop music at the time, all proceeds going to help starving children in Africa. Bruce, Springsteen, Madonna, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and more. It became the 8th most popular single of all time.

1988- 300 pound female impersonator Harris Milstead, better known as Divine in the John Waters films, died of sleep apnea. He was 42.

1999- Film director Stanley Kubrick died of a heart attack in his sleep, just five days after screening his final film Eyes Wide Shut. He was 71.

2010- The Pixar film UP won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was also nominated for Best Picture, the only other animated film to be so honored since Beauty and the Beast.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for March 6, 2023

Birthdays: Michelangelo Buonarotti, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Phil Sheridan, Lou Costello, Ivan Boesky, Ring Lardner, Gabriele Garcia-Marquez, Valentina Tereschkova the first woman in space, Tom Arnold, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rob Reiner is 75, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz is 75, Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal is 51

1841-American John Goff Rand working for the Winsor & Newton Company of London patented artists oil paints premixed in collapsible metal tubes. Before this, artists (or their apprentices) had to mix their own pigment from ground stones and egg, then stored the mix in pig bladders. 

1912- Happy National Oreo Cookie Day! The Oreo cookie debuted on store shelves.

1921- The film Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse premiered. The first Hollywood film to earn over one million dollars, and it made a major star out of Rudolf Valentino.

1933- Two days after inauguration Eleanor Roosevelt became the first First Lady to hold her own separate press conference. She insisted only female journalists could attend.

1978- Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot and crippled by a lunatic. 

1979- The film The China Syndrome premiered. It was about an accident at an American nuclear power plant. Three weeks later the real Three Mile Island accident occurred, boosting the box office. " It's spooky, it's enough to make you religious" said star Michael Douglas.

1981- CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite retired.  Dan Rather succeeded him after CBS learned ABC was offering Rather big bux to jump networks. Roger Mudd, who was thought to be the real successor to Cronkite, left the network to anchor the History Channel. Dan Rather was the CBS anchor until 2004.

1989- Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to become Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. They were bought by AOL in 2000 but AOL proved to be dead weight and they resumed control as TimeWarner in 2003.

1992- The film The Lawnmower Man premiered. It featured early motion-capture CGI imagery, and claimed to have the first virtual reality sex scene. 

1998- The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides…

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 4, 2023

Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini, Patsy Kensit, Katherine O’Hara is 70, James Ellroy, Mykleti Williamson. Ward Kimball, Vicky Jenson, Ken Duncan

1922- F.W. Murnau’s classic film Nosferatu, the Vampire, opened in Berlin.

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refused the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as a protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon Blvd. in L.A. William Holden was their best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1960- American opera baritone Leonard Warren dropped dead on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London, actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died, had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants baseball team would stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada. 

1982- The Abrahams/Zucker Bros TV comedy Police Squad! premiered. 

1994- Basketball legend Michael Jordan went to bat for the first time in a Chicago White Sox Baseball uniform. Jordan gave up baseball after one season and returned to the NBA. 

1994- 375 pound comedian John Candy died of sleep apnea. He was 43.

1997- The senate of Brazil finally allowed women to wear slacks to work.

2000- The Japanese launch of Sony Playstation 2. It was designed to compete with Segas Dreamcast and Nintendo’s Cube. The Playstation 2 was the most anticipated videogame launch in history. 600,000 units were sold. One store in Tokyo’s Ginza had 4,000 people lined up at their door.  It remained hot for 13 years.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t actually work.

2008- The first Simon’s Cat short cartoon appeared on YouTube. English commercial animator Simon Tofield wanted to teach himself Adobe Flash, a 2D computer animation program. He decided to make a cartoon of his cat, and his quirky behavior. He took the results and posted it on YouTube for a laugh. It got thousands of views and made him famous. Now he has a staff, sells merchandise and is working on longer films.

2016- Disney’s Zootopia, directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush.

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