Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 30, 2023

Birthdays: Elector Johann-Frederich the Magnanimous, Franz Lehar, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Max Skladanowsky, Jaroslav Hasek, Eve Arden, Jill Clayburgh, Alice B. Toklas, Isaiah Thomas, Cloris Leachman, Jane Campion, Al Lewis, Animator Bill Plympton is 76, Lars von Trier, Burt Young is 83, Kirsten Dunst is 41, Gal Gadot is 38. 

WALPURGISNACHT- In the Hartz Mountains of Germany the eve the Feast Day of St. Walpurga the demon chaser is a Halloween kind of party, when the Devil can romp for a night. 

1902- The first ice cream cone was served at the St. Louis Worlds Fair.  Los Angeles claims it was first.

1905- At Evansville Illinois, future baseball umpire Cy Rigler began the practice of raising his right arm to indicate strikes, so that friends in the outfield could distinguish calls. 

1916- The Chicago Cubs played their first game in Wrigley Field, then called Weegman Park. 

1939- The 1939 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows, NY. The Trylon & Perisphere presided over the gleaming Art-Deco paean to optimism, even as the world waited nervously for Hitler’s next move.  With President Franklin D. Roosevelt in attendance the NBC network began regular television broadcasting. It only went to a few homes.  Experts were not optimistic." It requires a darkened room and constant attention." one said.

1945- "Arthur Godfrey Time" debuts on CBS radio. Godfrey was a local Washington D.C. deejay who gained nationwide fame for his emotional coverage of the funeral of FDR. He then went from radio to television, hosting the first regularly successful television entertainment program. Godfrey in later life got increasingly hard on his employees and in an infamous incident actually fired star singer Julius LaRosa live on the air. 

1952- Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. Over one million kits were be sold in the first year. Originally invented by George Lerner in 1949 to stick faces on real vegetables, Mr. Potato Head was sold to brothers Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld in 1951 (the creators of the toy company Hasbro, Hass-Bros, get it?). In 2000 Rhode Island declared itself the Mr. Potato Head State. The Hasbro Toy Company is headquartered in Pawtucket, a city just outside of Providence.

1953- Frank Sinatra did his first session at Capitol Records with Nelson Riddle. This is the first recording of crooner Sinatra’s mature style. 

1976-  After completing his work on the Rescuers, Disney animator Milt Kahl retired. 

1988- Tom Hanks married actress Rita Wilson.

1992- BERN, the Geneva particle lab where the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, declared that WWW, aka The Web, would be open and free to all with no restrictions or royalties to be paid to them.

1993- The Walt Disney Company announced its’ purchase of top independent film producer Miramax. They produced films like The Crying Game. Ten years later a feud with Michael Eisner caused Miramax founders the Weinstein brothers to leave and form The Weinstein Company. By the time Miramax was sold off in 2010, it was a shadow of its former self.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 28, 2023

Birthdays: English King Edward IV (1442), President James Monroe, Lionel Barrymore, Oskar Schindler, Carolyn Jones-aka Morticia Addams of the TV Addams Family, Ann Margret is 82, Jay Leno is 73, Saddam Hussein, Jean Redpath, James Baker III, Penelope Cruz is 49, Jessica Alba is 44, Godzilla is 69- see below.

1789- THE MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. The HMS Bounty had been sent around the world to bring back breadfruit samples to see if the plant could be a nutritional supplement for slave laborers in Jamaica and Bermuda.  During the return voyage from Tahiti the crew led by first mate Fletcher Christian, set upon Captain William Bligh, and set him adrift in a rowboat to die. They then sail with their Tahitian families to settle permanently on an island. 

They choose Pitcairn Island because of its remoteness. Squabbles arose among the British and natives and their leader Fletcher Christian was killed while tending his sweet potatoes. Today a majority of the island’s inhabitants claim ancestry from the Bounty mutineers. 

Captain Bligh got to safety after navigating his little longboat 3,600 nautical miles to East Timor with almost no food, an unparalleled feat of seamanship. He was cleared by an Admiralty board and served with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars, although another ship mutinied on him. On top of everything else, when Bligh got home he discovered his wife had been made pregnant by the nephew of the Duke of Wellington -'Wicked Willy' Wellesley.  

Like many 'famous' incidents, this passed by its time with little or no notice. What made the Mutiny on the Bounty world famous was a best-selling novel written in the 1920's by two Americans, Charles Nordoff and James Norton Hall, who met when pilots in the World War I Lafayette Escadrille. Then it became a popular movie with Clark Gable. James Hall’s son , Conrad Hall, grew up to be a famous cinematographer in Hollywood, who won Academy Awards for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Road to Perdition.

1828- English monarchs kept a menagerie of exotic animals at the Tower of London. Most were gifts from foreign rulers. Lions, apes, giraffes, canaries, a polar bear and an elephant. By the XIX Century the crown allowed tourists to visit, and it became quite the attraction. When old soldier the Duke of Wellington became Constable of the Tower, he found all the animals and the tourists annoying. The Tower should be a military bastion, not a bloody tourist attraction!

This day all the animals were moved to a new spot in Regents Park, and the London Zoo was created. 

1897- The first distress signal sent by wireless at sea. The S.O.S. (Save Our Ship) code wasn't invented until 1912.

1925- T.S. Elliot landed a job at Faber & Faber Publishing. His enabled the poet to quit his job as a bank teller at Lloyds and get serious about his literary career.

1937- Italy’s movie studio Cinecitta’ was dedicated.

1947- Thor Heyderthal set out on a balsa wood raft called Kon Tiki to prove ancient Peruvians could have used the ocean current to reach Polynesia.

1954- Happy Birthday Godzilla! The original kaiju movie by Ichjiro Honda was inspired when a Japanese fishing boat was fatally exposed by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test. He was also inspired by the Harryhausen movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and King Kong. Godzilla is an Anglicized version of the Japanese Kohjira, which is a combination of Gorilla and Whale. The famous roar was done by rubbing a resin-covered glove down some bass fiddle strings. The film was later released in the U.S. with American actor Raymond Burr (actually, Canadian actor.) acting in inserted scenes. The intact Japanese version of the film was not seen in North America until 2004.

1961-At La Scala, When tenor Guiseppi Di Stefano took ill, a young schoolteacher from Modena took the lead role in the opera La Boheme. Lucciano Pavarotti debuted.

2019- The Marvel superhero movie Avengers Endgame earned $1.2 billion worldwide in its opening weekend.  $350 million North America, and $850 million worldwide. A record shattering opening. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for APril 27, 2023

Birthdays: Ulysses S. Grant, King Edward IV, Samuel Morse, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Edward Gibbon, Anouk Aimee, Sheena Easton is 64, Sandy Dennis, Coretta Scott King, Kasey Kasem, Jack Klugman

1667- Blind poet John Milton sold his masterpiece "Paradise Lost" to publisher Samuel Simmons for ten pounds. Ten years earlier under Oliver Cromwell’s patronage Milton was getting over a thousand pounds each for his poems

1784- Over the protests of King Louis XVI, Pierre de Beaumarchais’ play The Marriage of Figaro premiered at the Opera Comique in Paris. It was the first play to openly criticize the nobility for being no better than anyone else except for being born with money. This concept alone was radical, and it caused a sensation. Napoleon described Figaro as "The Revolution already in action". 

1884- The British government declared that Christopher Wrens 1675 observatory at Greenwich would be the central meridian point for calculating time zones. This would aid in calculation of longitudes, which is crucial in navigating the world’s oceans. Starting at Greenwich, they divided the world into 24 time zones each 15 longitudinal degrees apart.

1964- The John Muir National Wilderness created.

1970- THE FIRST ATM- Automatic bank teller machine, opened at the Surety National Bank in downtown Los Angeles.

1975- Monty Python and the Holy Grail opened in US theaters.

1981- Ringo Starr married Barbera Bach, his costar on the film 'Caveman'. UngaBunga!

2005- Maiden flight of the world's largest passenger plane- the Airbus A-380.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 26, 2023

Birthdays: Marcus Aurelius, French Queen Marie De Medicis, Pasquale Paoli, John James Audubon, Frederick Law Olmstead, Eugene Delacroix, Syngman Rhee, Dr. Lee DeForrest, John Grierson founder of the National Film Board of Canada, Rudolf Hess, Bobby Rydell, Anita Loos, I. M. Pei, Carol Burnett is 90, Eyvind Earle, Giancarlo Esposito is 67, Kevin James, Amos Otis, Joan Chen is 61, Jimmy Giuffre, Rocker Duane Eddy- 83, Jet Li- born Li Lian jie is 60, Victor Perrin 1916, voice actor who did the Control Voice in The Outer Limits. He also was Dr Zin in Johnny Quest., Melania Trump is 53

1928- Los Angeles City Hall dedicated. 

1937- GUERNICA- In Spain the Stuka bombers of the German Condor Legion, Nazi subcontractors for Franco, bombed an innocent Basque village, killing 5,000 and provoking an international outcry and a painting by Picasso. Attacking at the height of the market time, for three hours the planes bombed and strafed the helpless civilians with no military target in sight. Combatants in WWI tried to avoid harming civilians, but this act and the simultaneous Japanese attacks in China signaled a new tactic, sowing terror by treating civilians as targets.  

1941- An organ is played for the first time at a baseball game in Chicago.

1942- The last Little Orphan Annie radio program ran on WGN Chicago. After 12 years, Ovaltine replaced it with Captain Midnight.

1965- Fred Smith, a student at Yale, got his economics paper back with a "c'" and a note stating the idea he espoused was impractical. The idea was an overnight air-freight service which he founded six years later as Federal Express.

1977- In New York City, Studio 54, the mecca of 70’s Disco culture opened.

1986- Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Conan the Republican, married Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy. 

1993- NBC announced former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live comedy writer Conan O’Brien would take David Letterman’s old Late Show spot. After a few years he moved on to replace the retiring the retiring Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. But soon Leno decided he did not want to retire just yet and bounced Conan.

2004- Michael Eisner of Disney named to Forbes list of the Worst CEOs in America.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 25, 2023

 

Birthdays: Roman emperor Otho -32AD, English King Edward II-1284, Oliver Cromwell-1599, Giuseppe Marconi, Edward R. Murrow, Ella Fitzgerald, Albert Uderzo, Al Pacino is 82, Jason Lee is 53, Meadowlark Lemon, Talia Shire, Paul Mazursky, Hank Azaria is 58, Rene Zellwellger is 54,  Ron Clements is 70

1684- The thimble invented.

1719- The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe first published.

1850- Baron de Reuter used 40 carrier pigeons to carry stock market prices between Paris and London. He went on to form Reuters, the first international news agency. 

1886- In the Gilded Age, most American workers worked a 10-12 hour day, seven days a week. This day The New York Times attacked the demand from union workers for an 8-hour workday as: “…a seditious, riotous notion that would collapse the American economy and lead to sloth, drunkenness and debauchery. It was probably the idea of foreign extremists." 

The eight-hour day doesn’t become a norm in America until 1913 (in animation until 1941) and is still under attack today.

1926- Giacomo Puccini's last opera Turnadot premiered in Milan. Puccini died before its completion, so students had to finish the work based on his notes. Conductor Arturo Toscanini put down his baton at the beginning of the Third Act, turned to the audience and said:" Here is where the Maestro died." He then left the podium and let someone else finish it. 

1938- The German shepherd named Buddy became the first seeing-eye dog for the blind.

1956- Elvis Presley’s song Heartbreak Hotel goes to #1 in the pop charts.

1961- The US Patent office awarded a patent to Robert Noyce for the integrated circuit. This enabled computers to replace transistors with integrated circuits, and greatly reduce the size of computers while increasing their power.

1972- Witty, urbane actor George Sanders (All About Eve, Samson & Delilah, Sher Khan in Jungle Book) had turned age 65. He complained he had been famous and rich, and was not looking forward to old age, and having a nurse wipe his bottom. So he committed suicide and left a witty, urbane note. "Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored. Adieu, I leave you with your worries in this sweet cesspool."

1981- Dixie, the world’s oldest living mouse, died at age 6 1/2.

1996- "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk" opened on Broadway.

2021- Pixar's Soul won best animated feature at the Academy Awards.

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for APril 23, 2023

Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, John Muir, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Senator Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 83, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Tony Esposito, Michael Sporn, Michael Moore is 69, Herve Villechais, John Oliver is 46.

1616- After a night out partying with Ben Johnson, John Draydon and other old buddies from Ye Old Mermaid Tavern, William Shakespeare caught a fever and died on his fifty third birthday.

“Souls of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?”

1867- William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures..

1896- THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Paris would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines.  The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively jump to keep from getting wet.

1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.

1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened. 

1931- Warner Bros movie The Public Enemy was released. Starring Jean Harlow and a Broadway dancer with a strong lower east side accent named James Cagney. 

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.

1985- Coca Cola introduces New Coke. They decided to make the basic formula slightly sweeter to appeal to younger people. Its reception by the public was so overwhelmingly bad that the company returned to the original formula just 90 days later. The chairman of rival Pepsi Cola exulted: " We've been eye to eye for decades and I think the other guys just blinked! New Coke became a symbol for large-scale executive incompetence, 

1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed- Doh!

2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me at the Zoo.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 22, 2023

Birthdays: Queen Isabella I of Castille, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Immanuel Kant, Madame De Stael, Alexander Kerensky, Aaron Spelling, Eddie Albert, Glen Cambell, Betty Page would be 100, Marilyn Chambers, Rondo Hatton, Charlie Mingus, Peter Frampton, John Waters is 77, Jack Nicholson is 86

1741- Georg Frederich Handel dipped his quill into ink and began to write the Messiah.

1811- Last of the Parthenon Marbles pried off their walls in Greece and sent back to England on a British frigate. Lord Byron was on board and called Lord Elgin, the supervisor of this act, "The Spoiler". Today the Elgin marbles are still at the British Museum and the Greeks are still mad about it.

1876- Composer Peter Tchaikovsky completed his score for the ballet Swan Lake.

1940- Writer Ernest Hemingway cabled his editor Max Perkins from Havana about a new novel he was writing.-" Title is "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from passage John Donne Oxford Book of English bottom page seventy one STOP Please register immediately."

1942- Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Saboteur” premiered in Washington.

1952- The first nuclear bomb test shown on network TV -Tommy Turtle says duck and cover!

1964- The opening day of the New York World’s Fair. It was in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, built on the site of the 1939 World’s Fair.

1970- The first Earth Day. The idea was started by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin "The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy," Senator Nelson said, "and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda."

1972- Magnavox announced the Magnavox Odyssey. Created by Ralph Baer in his spare time, it was the first mass retail home videogame console.

1978- Comic actors Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi debut two new characters on the Saturday Night Live TV show, Joliet Jake and Ellwood Blues. The Blues Brothers are born. On that same broadcast, host Steve Martin did his King Tut Song. “Now when I die, now don’t think I’m a nut. Don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like Old King Tut.”

1996- Christopher Robin Milne died at age 75. The young boy whose fascination with a bear in the London Zoo called Winnie inspired his father A.A. Milne to write the Winne the Pooh stories. Christopher Robin wasn’t always appreciative of all the attention. He said of his father: "Someday I’ll write some verses about him and see how He likes it!"

2001- Dreamwork’s Shrek opened in theaters. I’m making waffles! 

2021- The Mars Perseverance probe successfully collected oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 21, 2023

Birthdays: Queen Elizabeth II, Edwin S. Porter, Charlotte Bronte', John Muir, Freiderich Froebel the inventor of kindergarten-1782, Anthony Quinn, Patti Lupone, Charles Grodin, Anna Magnani, Andie MacDowell is 64, Tony Danza, Elaine May, Iggy Pop is 76, James McAvoy is 44, Rob Riggle is 53 

1910- Mark Twain died of congenital heart failure at 75 as Haley's comet appeared overhead. He once wrote: " When arriving in Heaven feel free to ask all the questions you want of Saint Peter. You may ask for his autograph, however don’t take any Kodak photos or bring your dog. Admittance to Heaven is based on favor, not merit, else the dog would be allowed to go in and you kept out."

1918- THE RED BARON SHOT DOWN- 

1921- The Coconut Grove nightclub opened in Hollywood.

1938- Disney animator Bill Tytla married artists model Adrienne LeClerc.

1961- Two British teenage rock bands meet each other for the first time- The Beatles met the Rolling Stones. They partied together often, and wrote songs for each other.

1964- British TV viewers double their pleasure- BBC 2 goes on the air. Their first program is Play School.

1973- The pop song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn became a number one hit on the US, Canadian and UK pop charts. The song spawned the custom of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of remembering a soldier overseas, which reached its’ peak during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That in turn spawned variations like the red AIDS ribbon, the pink breast cancer ribbon, and so on.

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a live primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. Called THE MYSTERY OF AL CAPONE’S SECRET VAULT. After wasting two hours speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room, sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles, trash and a few dollar bills.

1997-The first Intergalactic Funeral.  The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960's LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary were shot into space.

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 20, 2023

Birthdays: Harold Lloyd, Juan Miro', Adolf Hitler, Tito Puente, Nina Foch, Gregory Ratoff, Ryan O'Neal, Daniel Day Lewis, Jessica Lange, Luther Vandross, Don Mattingly, Rosalyn Summers, Crispin Glover, Betty-Lou Gerson the voice of Cruella da Vil, George Takei is 86, Clint Howard, Carmen Electra is 48, Andy Serkis is 60, animator Bob Kurtz

1859- " It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times..." Charles Dicken's novel "A Tale of Two Cities" began to be published in magazine form.

1909- Mary Pickford, the first Movie Star, goes in front of a camera for the first time.

1912- The first baseball game played at Fenway Park. The Boston Red Stockings, defeated the New York Highlanders (Yankees), 6-1.

1914- Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs opened. Commuters on the “El” could see how their cubbies were doing by looking for the W or L flag flying.

1912- A London West End theater manager and failed author named Abraham “Bram” Stoker died. He was 65. If anyone noticed him, it was because he managed the Lyceum theater where famed actor Henry King performed. Bram Stoker’s seven books and several plays made little money in his time. But a decade later a play adapted from one of his novels made him world famous. Dracula.

1925- The Warner Bros. Moving Picture Company merged with Vitagraph, and began experimenting with fixing sound on to film.

1935- Radio program “Your Hit Parade” premiered.

1938-For Hitler’s birthday was the Berlin premiere of Leni Reifenstahl’s film Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 

1939- RCA president David Sarnoff dedicated RCA pavilion at World's Fair in New York City. First U.S. news event filmed on television. Sarnoff predicted that one day everyone would have a television in their home!

1946- Walt Disney’s Make Mine Music premiered in NY. It opened in wide release in August.

1971, Five students at San Rafael High School would meet at 4:20 p.m. by the campus’ statue of chemist Louis Pasteur to smoke some grass. They chose that specific time because extracurricular activities had usually ended by then. This group — Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich — became known as the “Waldos” because they met at a wall. They would say “420” to each other as code for marijuana. Reddix later got a job as a roadie to the influential rock band The Grateful Dead. They took up the designation and made it a pop icon and now everyone lights up and tokes at 4:20PM.

1974 - Paul McCartney and Wings releases "Band on the Run" .

1976 - At a stage performance at City Center NYC, George Harrison secretly slipped in and sang the Lumberjack Song with the Monty Python comedy troop. John Cleese recalled: “George was wonderful. He came up on stage with us as a Mountie and sang the 'Lumberjack Song’ impeccably, and I don’t suppose 10 percent of the audience knew he was up there."

1977- Woody Allen & Diane Keaton starred in the film “Annie Hall”. Young Christopher Walken did an early cameo as Annie’s weird brother. 

Tom Sito's AnimationAlmanac for April 18,2023

Birthdays: Lucretzia Borgia, Franz Von Suppe’, Haley Mills is 76, Leopold Stokowski, Miklos Rosza, Herb Sorell, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Conan O’Brien is 59, James Woods is 75, Eric Roberts, Rick Moranis is 71, Maria Bello is 55, David Tennant is 51, America Ferrerra is 38, Disney animator Phil Young 

1906- THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE. 3,500 deaths and the city destroyed in the most frightening earthquake in U.S. History. Writer Jack London wrote:” Never has a modern Imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone!” Enrico Caruso was in town with the Metropolitan Opera on tour. He later sat on his suitcase in front of the ruined Palace Hotel and said- "Helluva Place! Ah’ma ’never coming back!"

 Amadeo Gianini, founder of the Bank of America, then called the Bank of Italy, gathered up his bank's papers and stocks and buried them in his garden under the begonias until his new office could be set up. He soon set up for business again on a pier.  City government was set up in the undamaged St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street and a large mahogany bar was moved out to the street to serve free drinks to calm nerves. San Franciscans dusted themselves off and rebuilt. By 1913 they were doing well enough to host the World’s Fair. A little ditty of the time said: 

            "They say God spanked the town, for being rather frisky.

                  Then why'd He knock all the churches down, yet leave up

                           Hotaling's Whiskey?"

1914-. The full feature length movie premiered in Turin, Italy. "Cabiria" directed by Giovane Patrone. It was believed to be the first full length movie ever until the discovery of a 1912 version of Quo Vadis.  D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic the Birth of a Nation popularized the format for feature films.

1923- The first Yankee Stadium dedicated. Yankees win the opener against Boston, 4-1 in front of over 72,000 fans, Babe Ruth hit the park's first home run. The new $2.5 million ballpark is the first to feature three decks.  This Yankee Stadium was replaced in 2009.

    

1955- Scientist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 75. As he fell in and out of a coma, his last words were in German. Since no one around his bed could speak German, we don't know what his last words were. 

1958- At the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 78,672, the Dodgers play their first game in the City of Angels, defeating the new San Francisco Giants, 6-5.     

1967- Jonathan Frid first appeared as the vampire Barnabas Collins in the TV series Dark Shadows.

1994- Disney’s first theatrical musical based on one of their animated films, Beauty and the Beast: A New Musical, opened on Broadway. It would run for over thirteen years and became the 4th highest earning show on Broadway.

2000- Earlier that spring some of the world’s biggest internet companies –e-Bay, Amazon and CNN were paralyzed by a virus spread by a hacker. Today the FBI made an arrest. The culprit was a Canadian High School student who went by the domain name of Mafia Boy. He received probation, and a promise to use his computer only for schoolwork for two years.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 17, 2023

Birthdays: Tobias Stummer-1539, Duke Maximillian I of Bavaria, Nikita Khrushchev, Thorton Wilder, Clarence Darrow, Arthur Schnabel, Olivia Hussey is 72, Gregor Piatigorsky, Don Kirschner, William Holden, Harry Reasoner, Boomer Eiseason, Sean Bean is 64, Victoria Beckham, Martha Sigall, Ron Miller, Jennifer Garner is 51, Rooney Mara is 38.

1792- British Captain Vancouver explored Puget Sound. He founds a settlement and names it for then Prime Minister Granville. In 1886 Granville (sometimes called Gastown after Gassy-Jack a  saloon keeper) was renamed Vancouver.

1770- At a dinner party in Versailles, Madame Necker, the wife of France¹s first minister,  suggested a subscription be held for the great artist Pigalle to make a statue of old philosopher Francois Voltaire. Rousseau and King Frederick the Great of Prussia donated money. The bust of the smiling old cynic became one of the well-known images of the XVIII Century.

1869- The first professional baseball game ever played saw the Cincinnati Reds defeated the rival Cincinnati Amateurs, 24-15.

1875- The billiard game Snooker was invented by Sir Joseph Chamberlain, the uncle of the future British Prime Minister.

1924- Metro Pictures, Goldwyn and Mayer Films all merged to become Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. By 1940 MGM was the largest studio in Hollywood.

1929- Baseball great Babe Ruth married Ziegfeld Follies dancer Marge Colson in a morning ceremony. Then he drove to Yankee Stadium and hit a home run.

1937 "Porky's Duck Hunt" The birth of Daffy Duck. One legendary story is that voice actor Mel Blanc designed Daffy’s distinctive lisp to be his impression of the Looney Tunes boss Leon Schlesinger. When they screened this cartoon all the artists stood in dread of how Leon would take the joke. Leon never made the connection that the Ducks voice was an imitation of him:" Gee Fellers, dat Duck iz pretty Ffffunny!"

1960- Cleveland Indians traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers.

1971- The song "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night tops the pop charts. 

1987- Comedian Dick Shawn ­the Hippy-Hitler in the original Mel Brooks film the Producers- was doing his one-man show The Second Funniest Man in the World at UC San Diego. After one particularly funny punch line he fell over dead from a heart attack. The audience laughed and clapped for several more minutes because they thought it was part of the act.

2011- The first episode of Game of Thrones premiered in the U.S. on HBO. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 16, 2023

birthdays: King John II “The good” of France (1319), Elisabeth Vignee-Lebrun, Wilbur Wright, Charlie Chaplin, J.P. Morgan, Kingsley Amis, Anatole France, Henry Mancini, Peter Ustinov, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bobby Vinton, Spike Milligan, John Halas, Edie Adams, Hans Sloane, Disney artist Victor Haboush, Pope Benedict XVI, Martin Lawrence, John Cryer is 58, Ellen Barkin is 70, Claire Foy is 40 

1260- Chartres Cathedral completed. Art history lecturers rejoice!

1787- What some consider the first professionally produced American play- Royall Tyler’s The Contrast- debuted at New York City’s John Street Theater. It was a comedy that poked fun at aristocracy. Gen. George Washington was in the audience. At this time the Broadway theater district and Times Square was a quiet forest clearing.

1828- Spanish artist Francisco Goya died at 82 in Bordeaux, France. Years later when his remains were moved to Madrid, it was discovered Goya wasn't alone in his grave. His friend Martin Goesochea's remains were in there with him.

1905- Andrew Carnegie established the Carnegie Foundation to distribute his philanthropy. The former Scottish orphan coal miner Carnegie renounced his robber baron career and dedicated himself to donating the bulk of his fortune to building libraries and hospitals.  He claimed: “A man who dies rich dies disgraced!” When Mark Twain wrote him letters, he addressed them “To Saint Andrew from Saint Mark”

1912- Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

1926- The Book-Of-The-Month-Club distributed its first selection-Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. 

1933- Dick Huemer’s first day working at Walt Disney. Huemer became a senior story artist, and writer. He and Joe Grant developed Dumbo, Fantasia, Lady and the Tramp, Saludos Amigos and more.  

1935- Fibber McGee & Molly debut on radio.

1940- On Baseball Season’s opening day President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ceremonial first pitch smashed a Washington Post camera. The Chief Executive was not charged with a wild pitch. Red Sox hurler Lefty Grove blanked the Washington Senators, 1-0. 

  

1947- The Zoom Lens patented.

1956- Season 5, episode 23 of I Love Lucy aired. Where Lucy has the fight in the wine making vat.

1959- John McCarthy of MIT invented the computer language LISP. 

1962- Walter Cronkite took over the job of anchor at the CBS Evening News, building a reputation for journalistic integrity almost equaled to Edward R. Murrow. Nicknamed the Most Trusted Man in America, many credit Cronkite for breaking the news to America that the U.S. was not going to win The Vietnam War. President Lyndon Johnson said: If I lost Cronkite then I’ve lost middle America.” 

1983- Disney Channel debuted.

1988- Grave of the Fireflies, by Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli, was released in Japan.

Tom Sitos animation almanac for April 15, 2023

Birthdays: Leonardo DaVinci, composer Domenico Gabrieli, Nanak I the founder of the Sikh religion 1469, Charles Wilson Peale, Theodore Rousseau, Henry James, Bessie Smith, Heinrich Klee, Kim Il Sung, Claudia Cardinale is 84, Roy Clark, Emma Thompson is 62, Hans Conried, Olympic runner Evelyn Ashford, Alice Braga is 38, Seth Rogen is 40, Emma Watson is 32

1850- The townships of Yerba Buena- Good Herbs, incorporated as the City of San Francisco.

1874- IMPRESSIONISTS. In Paris, a group of young modernist painters, fed up with being rejected by mainstream galleries and salons, banded together to mount their own show, Le Societie Anonyme Artistes, at photographer Nadar’s old studio. One franc, and a one flight walk up got you to see works by Cezanne, Degas, Pizarro and Monet. The critics hated it all. One writer Louis Leroy said,” These people are not artists, they are just Impressionists.” The name stuck.

1924- The Rand McNally Company published the first automobile road atlas or North America.

1927- First Hollywood star's footprints in cement ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater. Called Hollywood's most enduring publicity stunt. Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman himself are the first to leave their prints. Grauman also invented the classic Hollywood premiere with spotlights, red carpet runways and chauffeured limousines.

1933- Chief of production Darryl F. Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over an argument about employee salary cuts, to take over a struggling little movie studio called Twentieth Century Fox, which he turned into a giant.

1935- Kodachrome film developed. First as motion picture film, later for home photography.

1940- Franklin Roosevelt covertly gave permission for American volunteers (mostly Army and Navy fighter pilots) to join General Claire Chennault to fight the Japanese invasion of China as part of a freelance foreign corps serving in the Chinese air force. The Flying Tigers are born. The famous toothy grimace painted on their planes was created by Walt Disney artist Hank Porter.

1947- Jackie Robinson takes the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers. First black player to join the Major Leagues. Up until then the Brooklyn Dodgers in their history had never won more than 2 pennants. After Robinson and Campanella and other Negro league players were added they won 6 in 7 years and a World Series. At one game after a particularly nasty barrage of boos and catcalls from the crowd, Dodger stars Duke Snyder and Pee Wee Reese (a Southerner) went over to Robinson and publicly put their arms around him.

1950- Chuck Jones short The Hypo-chondri-Cat.

1952- The Franklin Savings Bank issued the first credit card in the U.S. 

1953- Famed illustrator Charles R. Knight died peacefully in a Manhattan hospital. The man who first showed us what dinosaurs looked like and inspired the lush look of such films as 1933 King Kong. His last words were to his daughter Lucy, “Don’t let anything happen to my drawings.”

1955- The First McDonald's Restaurant franchise opened in Des Plains, Ill.  Ray Kroc, a traveling milkshake machine salesman, buys into a franchise restaurant idea cooked up in 1948 by two brothers named McDonald from Santa Bernadino. He urged the brothers to go national with their pre-prepared food system, but the brothers wanted to stay local. So, he offered them 1 million bucks for their idea and name, (would you go to" Kroc’s?”). The rest is history. The oldest surviving McDonald’s from 1953 in Downey California was recently destroyed despite the efforts of historians and replaced with a plastic plaque. 

1962-AUNTIE EM! 80 yar old actress Clara Blandick, the Auntie Em of the Wizard of Oz, took an overdose of sleeping pills and tied a plastic bag around her head.

She had been retired for several years and was suffering from bad arthritis and failing eyesight. 

So she said,” It is time to embark on the Great Adventure.” She left out on a table her resume and press clippings so the newspapers would get her obituary right. 

1964- Walt Disney sent attorney Robert Foster to Orlando Florida to quietly start buying up land for a planned new Disneyland Park.

1983- Tokyo Disneyland opens.

1990- Kennan Ivory Wayans comedy show In Living Color premiered on FOX TV. The show made stars of Marlon Wayans, Damon Wayans, Jamie Fox, Jim Carrey and the Fly-Girls, Jennifer Lopez and Rosie Perez.

1994- English ice skater John Curry who created the concept of Ice Dancing, died of HIV/AIDS at age 44.

2019- A terrible fire gutted Notre Dame Cathedral, which had stood for 856 years.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 13, 2023

Birthdays: St. Thomas Becket, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Lord North, Samuel Beckett, Dame Eudora Welty, Al Green, Jack Cassidy, Butch Cassidy, Franklin W. Woolworth, Howard Keel, Don Adams, Ricky Schroeder, Peabo Bryson, Ron Perleman, Stanley Donen, Alfred Butts the inventor of Scrabble, animator Glen Keane

1387- A party of 29 English pilgrims assemble to travel to the shrine of Canterbury. The trip was immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. The first great work in English literature.

1612- Date of the famous duel on Ganryu island between Japanese swordsmen Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kohjiro. Musashi defeated Kojiro with a wooden sword. 

1846- After the first Yanqui garrison was expelled by a rising of the native Mexican Californios, U.S. Commander Stockton and General Freemont and their army returned to recaptured Los Angeles.

1870- New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.

1902- J.C. Penny opened his first store in Kemmerer Wyoming.

1928 - THE MULHOLLAND TRIAL ENDED – William Mulholland, the genius engineer who created the great aqueducts that brings water down to Los Angeles was on trial for the St. Francis Dam Disaster. When a dam near Newhall burst sending a 30 foot wall of water careening down on sleeping suburbanites. 400 perished. On this day, the jurors of the Los Angeles County Coroner's inquest into the disaster emerged from their two weeks of deliberations. They named William Mulholland responsible, although innocent of criminal negligence. Deputy D.A. Asa Keyes trumped the ruling a "victory for the people", despite his earlier promise to have Mulholland convicted of manslaughter. 

Though he was free of jail, but William Mullholland was a broken man. “I envy the dead.” He had his chauffeur would ,,drive him aimlessly around the city he helped create. He became a shut in for the last seven years of his life. D.A. Keyes later went to jail himself for misappropriation of funds.

1939- The film Wuthering Heights starring Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon premiered. Sam Goldwyn was disgusted by the headaches to bring this Charlotte Bronte novel to the Hollywood Screen. When asked if he planned to adapt more XIXth Century novels for film he replied: "Don’t bring me no more scripts by guys who write with feathers!"

1943- Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial at the Washington D.C. Mall.

1949- Lead character designer and story artist Joe Grant resigned from Disney Studios, not to return until 1989. 

1953- A British WWII intelligence officer turned newspaperman in peacetime was bored with his life. His name was Ian Fleming. He decided to write a novel about his idea of the ultimate spy. Looking for a suitably bland name, his favorite book on birdwatching was written by someone named James Bond. "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, yet very masculine name, was just what I needed.”  His wife thought the finished story was vulgar. This day, the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, came out and was an instant hit.

1964- Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor for the film Lilies of the Field. The first Oscar for any black actor or actress went to Hattie McDaniel as Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind in 1939. Best actress was not won until Halle Berry in 2002.

1964- The Best Animated Short Oscar was won by Ernie Pintoff’s film The Critic, voiced by Mel Brooks.

1967- Columbia Picture’s bizarre version of Ian Flemings Casino Royale premiered. Several directors, John Huston, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, George Raft, and David Niven. Richard Williams opening titles, and Dusty Springfield ‘s song “The Look of Love.” And a lot of drugs off camera.

1997- 21year old golf phenomenon Tiger Woods won his first Masters Tournament by a record 12 strokes. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 12, 2023

Birthdays: Henry Clay, Lily Pons, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Disney artist Hardie Gramatky, Monserrat Caballe' is 90, Ann Miller, Tiny Tim, Shannon Dougherty, Andy Garcia is 67, Claire Danes is 44, David Letterman is 76

1709- In London the first issue of the Tattler published. “All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, poetry, foreign and domestick news you will have from Saint James Coffeehouse.”

1796- George and Martha Washington sit for painter Gilbert Stuart. Stuart noted that the General was a very uncooperative model. Stuart asked him to take out his dentures because they made his jaw bulge. But then his cheeks looked sunken, so he had him pad them inside with cotton balls. He tried small talk about his famous battles but that made GW even more annoyed. Washington much preferred a discussion on how to raise turnips to reliving his military career. The likeness Stuart painted became the basis for many other paintings and prints. Today it is on the U.S. one dollar bill. Eventually Gilbert Stuart had to move to England, because the only commissions he ever got in the U.S. were people wanting copies of his Washington portrait.

1911- Cartoonist Winsor McCay opened his vaudeville act with his "Little Nemo" animated short.

1945-Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (桃太郎 海の神兵, Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei) by Mitssuyo Seo opened.  The first Japanese anime, feature-length animated film.

1954- "ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK' recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets- arguably the first true Rock & Roll hit.

1961-THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE- Soviet Major Yuri Gargarin aboard Vostok 1.

1992- Euro-Disney, now called Disneyland Paris, opened. It attracted only 50.000 visitors the first year, about ten times less than what was expected. In 1955, the first Disneyland in California drew 100,00 on opening day alone. Many felt it should have been built in Barcelona where the climate was milder. Disneyland Paris finally paid for itself by 1997.

1995- To celebrate David Letterman’s 49t birthday, actress Drew Barrymore climbed up on his desk and flashed her breasts. For once, the bucktoothed talk show host was speechless.

1996- James and the Giant Peach opened in the USA. Directed by Henry Selick.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April10, 2023

Birthdays: Josef Pulitzer, Lew Wallace, George Arliss, Omar Sharif, Harry Morgan, Max Von Sydow, Ken Griffey Sr, Claire Booth Luce, Chuck Connors, John Madden, Dandy Don Meredith, Paul Theroux, David Halberstram, Steven Segal is 72, Orlando Jones, Mandy Moore is 39, Haley Joel Osment is 35, Daisy Ridley is 31

1868- Johannes Brahms A German Requiem debuted.

1906- O' Henry's story " The Gift of the Magi " first published.

100 Anniv 1923- Peeps invented. The sweet Easter marshmallow confection that is shaped like a yellow baby chic, and can stick to most surfaces. It was invented by Russian-Jewish immigrant Sam Born after his first idea, a lollipop machine called “Born Sucker” failed to succeed.

1925- F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" published by Scribners.

1948 Chuck Jones’ Bugs Bunny cartoon “ Rabbit Punch”.

1953- The Vincent Price film The House of Wax in 3d premiered.

1961- Singer Joan Baez entered the Greenwich Village club called Folk City and was accosted by a funny young man with a nasaly twang ;”Joan Baez! Here, I wrote a song for you!” His name was Bob Dylan. Baez and Dylan became friends and together changed the image of folk music.

1962- Stuart Sutcliffe was the bass guitarist of the Beatles until creative differences and a marriage made him drop out of the band in favor of George Harrison. This day Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage at age 21.

1962- The Los Angeles Dodgers play their first game at their new Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine. They lost to the Cincinnati Reds 6-3.

1971- Rob Reiner married Penny Marshall. 

50th Anniv 1973- At Xerox PARC, Dick Schoup’s team of scientists created Superpaint, the first digital paint and surfacing system for computer images. The first picture on the computer was a photo scanned of Dick holding a sign that read “ It works, sort of.”

1985- Madonna began her first tour, the Virgin Tour.

1992- Bill & Sue Kroyer’s Ferngully the Last Rainforest premiered.

1992. Raunchy comedian Sam Kinison was killed in a head on collision with a truck on the road to Laughlin Nevada. He was 36. Ironically, the comedian who had glorified the wild sex, drugs and rock&roll lifestyle was sober at the time, and the other driver, a 17 year old, was drunk. 

2019- The first photo evidence of a Black Hole in space. Young MIT grad student Katie Bouman led the creation of an algorithm that allowed scientists to capture the first-ever black hole photo. Proving Einstein was correct.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 9, 2023

Birthdays: Tamerlane, Eadweard Muybridge, Lenin, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner, Dennis Quaid is 69, Elle Fanning is 25

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1921- The Fly-In Lunch Party. Leslie Brand was a millionaire who developed Glendale California north of Los Angeles. This day he invited guests to a special garden party provided they call arrived in their own airplanes. The little biplanes parked all around his grounds, today known as The Brand Library.

1938- In an interview with Liberty Magazine, Walt Disney said he, “had plans to put animation to various well-known pieces of music, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being only the start.” He was beginning to think of expanding the short into a concert feature. The result of which would be Fantasia.

1952- The quiz show “I’ve Got A Secret” hosted by Gary Moore premiered on the Dumont Network and ran for 15 years.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1959- NASA introduced the first seven astronauts to the public, The Mercury Astronauts: Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, Leroy Cooper, and Malcolm Carpenter- all military test pilots instead of scientists.

1962- The musical West Side Story swept the Academy Awards.

1963- Animator Vernon Stallings (1891-1963) He is known for inventing the animation disc while working on Felix the Cat in the 1920s. 

1966- actress Sophia Loren married producer Carlo Ponti, with whom she had been living with for a decade but not allowed to marry because Catholics did not allow divorce from their previous spouses.

1974- Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds Restaurants was the owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team. After yet another sorry performance, losing 8-0, Kroc stormed over to the broadcast booth, grabbed the mike and out shouted ” You Guys Stink!” Despite this morale booster, the Padres eventually did win championship pennants and get to the World Series.

1991- The last Horn & Hardardt Automat was closed on 42nd St in Manhattan. Philadelphia restaurateurs Joseph Horn and William Hardart saw German experiments in mass market automated restaurants, and imported the equipment to start one in Philadelphia in 1902.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover a 10,000 year-old grave of a New Stone Age man. With him were the remains of a cat that looks like it was deliberately placed there. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.

2008- Stuntman Rupert MacDonald built a full-size Viking ship out of 15 million popsicle sticks. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 6, 2023

Birthdays: Raphael of Urbino, Sacajawea, Ram Dass, Butch Cassidy, Gustav Moreau, Lowell Thomas, Merle Haggard, Billy Dee Williams, George Reeves, Michelle Phillips, Andre Previn, Barry Levinson, Roy Thinnes, John Ratzenberger, Gheorghe Zamfir, Paul Rudd is 54, Zach Braff is 48.

1896- The first OLYMPIC GAMES of the modern era opened in Athens Greece. The last was closed by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius in 391A.D along with all the other pagan festivals. The Olympics were revived as the idea of Baron Pierre Coubertin, who became the first president of the IOC. These games also saw the first modern Marathon race. Appropriately it was won by a Greek- Spyridion Louis. 

1906 - Cartoonist James Stuart Blackton created a sensation when Edison filmed him doing sequential drawings and they seemed to come alive.  The film was The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Today it is considered the first animated film. Blackton made a fortune, lost it, and was hit by a bus in 1940. But his animated antics paved the way for Mickey, Bugs, Bart, Gollum and Laura Croft. 

1931- The Little Orphan Annie radio show premiered. “Who's the little chatterbox?
The one with pretty auburn locks. Who can it be, It's Little Orphan Annie…”

1933- the Screen Writer's Guild, later the WGA, formed. It took about seven years for them to unionize screenwriting in Hollywood. Jack Warner called them: "Communists, Radical Bastards and Soap Box Sons of B*tches !" David O. Selznick, who prided himself on running a writer-friendly studio, told them: “What? You put a picket line in front of my studio and I'll mount a machine gun on the roof and mow you all down!!" Despite these protestations, the Guild today represents most Hollywood writers.

1936- Episode One of the Flash Gordon series of movie serials premiered. This introduced Flash, Dale, and Emperor Ming the Merciless of the Planet Mongo.  It made a moviestar out of Olympic gold medalist Larry “Buster” Crabbe.

1951- Happy Birthday AstroBoy! According to the 1951 comic book by Osamu Tezuka, today Professor Elephant completed the little boy with the suction cup feet and pointed hairdo. Originally called Tetsuwan Atomo, he was named Astro Boy when Mushi Prod released the animated version in the US in 1961. 

1956- Elvis Presley signed his first movie deal with Paramount Pictures.

1956- The Iconic round Capitol Records Building in Hollywood opened for business. Its recording studios were used by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Les Paul to create their classic albums.

1970- Sean Flynn was the only child of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita. He became a freelance war photographer who specialized in going to the most dangerous war zones. This day he was arrested by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas in the Cambodian jungle. He was never seen again. His mother had him declared legally dead in 1984. Sean Flynn was 28.

1974- ABBA, a new disco phenomenon from Sweden is introduced to the world when they win a Eurovision song contest. Mama Mia!

1991- The first episode of Darkwing Duck premiered.

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Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 5, 2023

Birthdays: Plato, Swinburne, Booker T. Washington, Josef Lister, Bette Davis, Nadar, Jean Fragonard, animator Hicks Lokey, Nguyen Van Thieu, historian Robert Bloch, Gale Storm, Washington Atlee-Burpee the mail order seed king, Spencer Tracy, Frank Gorshin, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Greenaway, Gregory Peck,  Mary Costa, the voice of Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Roger Corman, Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA is 73, Colin Powell, Pharrell Williams is 50.

1874- Johann Strauss Jr.’s operetta Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna.

1923- Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band took a train from Chicago to Richmond Indiana to record Chimes Blues. Satchmo’s first record.

1930 -James Dewar invented the Twinkie. He said he got the name when he drove by a billboard advertising "Twinkle-Toe Shoes" and modified it to Twinkie. Dewar ate two every day of his life, and called them, “The best darn-tootin idea I ever had!” 

1931- Fox Film Company dropped their option on young star John Wayne as a dud not going anywhere. Wayne eked out an existence doing cheap westerns for Republic and Monogram until John Ford of RKO made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach.

1945- The first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

1963- The Lava Lamp invented by Dr. Edward Craven Walker.

1965- Julie Andrews had created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But when filming the motion picture, the studio head Jack Warner decided she was not a big enough star, so he used Audrey Hepburn with a dubbed singing voice. But Andrews had her revenge. At the Academy Awards this night My Fair Lady won Best Picture, but Julie Andrews won the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins. She famously said "I would like to thank Jack Warner for making this award possible!"

1975- The Best Animated Short Oscar went to Closed Mondays, claymation from Will Vinton.

1976- Eccentric Billionaire Howard Hughes died at age 76. Hughes had inherited his fathers oil rig tool company at 17, and built the mighty Hughes aircraft empire, and ran RKO pictures. He was a well-known Hollywood playboy and dated beautiful women like Jane Russell. But after surviving several test plane crashes, he became addicted to pain killers and became increasing paranoid and withdrawn from the world. He died a strange shut in, long haired and living on a diet of drugs, and saving his urine in mason jars.

1985- Singer David Lee Roth quit the rock band Van Halen to pursue a solo career.

1994- Grunge rock star Kurt Kobain shot himself. His body wasn’t discovered until two days later.

2063- FIRST CONTACT- According to Star Trek, this is the day Professor Zephram Cochran adapted an old-World War III ICBM missile and invented the Warp Drive, enabling the Earth to begin deep space exploration, and during whose maiden flight he made the first contact with an alien race- from the planet Vulcan.  

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 4, 2023

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Caracalla, Eadweard Muybridge, Maya Angelou, Frances Langford, Irv Spence-Tom & Jerry animator, Gil Hodges, Arthur Murray, Muddy Waters-born McKinley Morganfield, Cloris Leachman, Dorothea Dix, Elmer Bernstein, Bijan, Bea Benaderet, Heath Ledger, Robert Downey Jr is 58, Barry Pepper, Craig T. Nelson is 79, Hugo Weaving is 63

1850- The City of Los Angeles was incorporated under U.S. law. 

1952- CARTOON COMMIES- Nationally syndicated columnist Walter Winchell accused the owners of a New York commercial animation studio, Tempo Productions of Communist sympathies. One of the owners was Disney Layout man Dave Hilberman, who was a union organizer and was the only artist personally named by Walt Disney to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. The F.B.I. began investigating Tempo and their Madison Avenue clients quickly pulled their business. Tempo closed, laying off 50 artists. Mr. Clean, Markie Maypo and the Hamm’s Beer Bear were once again safe from Red subversion. 

1954- Arturo Toscanini, who had been making music since the 1880’s, conducted his final concert. Toscanini’s studio space at NBC is today the set of the Saturday Night Live TV show.

1958- Screen goddess Lana Turner and her gangster lover Johnny Stompanato had a violent argument that ended when Turner’s teenage daughter plunged a kitchen knife into his chest. She was acquitted as justifiable homicide. Rumors maintain the daughter was covering for her mother’s own actions. 

1967- Van Nuys premiere head shop Captain Ed’s Heads & Highs first opened for business.

1967- Snoopy’s little bird friend Woodstock debuted in the Peanuts comic strip. .

1973- The World Trade Center Twin Towers first opened to the public.

1984- In George Orwell’s novel 1984, this is the day Winston Smith started a secret diary and first wrote the dangerous thought-crime “Down With Big Brother”.

1994- Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark started Netscape. Clark also founded Silicon Graphics, Inc.

2007- Bob Clark, the director of the holiday classic film A Christmas Story, was killed in a head on car crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. He was 67.   

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 3, 2023

Birthdays: King Henry IV of England (1361), Washington Irving, William Marcy "Boss"  Tweed,  Sally Rand the Fan Dancer, Bud Fisher “Mutt & Jeff”, Ma Rainey, Iron Eyes Cody, Wayne Newton, Doris Day, Robert Sherwood, Virgil Grissom, Marsha Mason, Melissa Etheridge, Marlon Brando, Amanda Byrnes, David Hyde Pierce is 65, Alec Baldwin is 65, Eddie Murphy is 62

1869- First performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor. 

1897-composer Johannes Brahms died.

1920- Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald got married.

1941- With the possibility of a strike at his studio, and war looming, Walt Disney held the first meeting with U.S. government officials to try and obtain work for training films. 

1968- Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was: " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" After an academy screening in Hollywood, moviestar Rock Hudson walked out saying” Will someone please tell me what the hell that was about?” 

 Writer Arthur C. Clarke always said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM. At the Oscars, Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for The Producers. 2001 won only one Oscar, for visual effects. It was the only Oscar a Stanley Kubrick film ever won.

1973- Standing on the corner of 6th Ave in Manhattan, Motorola scientist Marty Cooper made the first cell phone call. He called his competitor Joel Engel at Bell Labs to tell him he had lost the race to invent the cell phone. He said of that first phone, “It was the size of a leg of lamb.”

1975- Eccentric chess champion Bobby Fischer was stripped of his World Chess Championship for refusing to play any more matches to defend his title. 

1994-Disney chief executive Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash on a skiing trip. It’s been speculated that blowing snow off some high peaks caused an ice ball to be sucked into the copter’s air intake manifold. Clint Eastwood was supposed to be on that trip but couldn't make it. Billie Joel and Christie Brinkley had a similar scare with their helicopter on the same day. The death of the Disney CEO set in motion the events that would lead to Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving Disney and forming Dreamworks, as well as Michael Ovitz’s brief tenure as a mouseketeer and Michael Eisner’s eventual fall in 2006. In 1999 the Hollywood Reporter estimated that the little iceball cost the Walt Disney Company over one billion dollars.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 2, 2023

Birthdays: Frankish Emperor Charlemagne, Giacomo Casanova, Hans Christian Andersen, Marvin Gaye, Emile Zola, Max Ernst, Buddy Ebsen, Sir Alec Guinness, Frederick Bartholdi, Emmy Lou Harris, Linda Hunt, Isaiah Washington, Karl Castle.

1800- Beethoven's First Symphony premiered. Vienna's leading music critic called it - 'a vulgar, impertinent explosion, more expected from a military band than an orchestra!’

 

1877- First man shot out of a cannon.

1877- The first White House egg-rolling contest.

1902- The first movie theater opened in Los Angeles.

1934- Ward Kimball’s first day at Walt Disney as an inbetweener.

1943- Disney short 'Private Pluto' the first Chip & Dale cartoon.

1943- Warner short “Super Rabbit”.

1951- Author Jack Kerouac began writing his masterpiece On the Road, on one long roll of teletype paper. He tried to write in a marathon, reinforced by cigarettes, coffee and Benzedrine. The book was one long paragraph, with no page or chapter breaks.“ The only people for me are the mad ones…”

1974-While actor David Niven was speaking at the Academy Awards telecast a nude streaker named Bob Opel ran past him on nationwide television. Mr. Niven, completely unflustered, dryly commented: "The only laugh that man will ever get is by stripping off his clothes and showing off his shortcomings. " 

1974- Later at that same Oscar telecast, Francis Ford Coppola presented the last award of the evening, the Best Picture to Cabaret. But he held up the show to launch into a speech that a Revolution was coming in Digital Technology “that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a small town try-out!” The audience was confused and annoyed at being delayed any longer to get to their parties. No one knew what he was talking about.

1978- The TV show "Dallas" debuts.

1993- Bullocks Wilshire department store with the famous Tea Room closed.

2004- Walt Disney Studio released Home on the Range.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 1, 2023

Welcome to April, named for Aprilis, an Etruscan Goddess of Agriculture and planting, or it may even be a corruption of the name of the Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The month was considered by Romans sacred to Venus- Venuralia.

 – The Ancient Romans considered today ALL FOOLS DAY-a day of comedy- For the end of the time sacred to Hilaria, goddess of laughter. They did things backwards, men and women swapped clothes and carried on. 

Before the Gregorian reforms some Old Style Calendars had the year begin in late March instead of January. As the new modern calendar became more widely accepted, the people who stubbornly clung to the old practice were made fun of and called April-Fools. 

1747-Georg Frederich Handel premiered his oratorio Judas Maccabeus with the song "Hail, Conquering Hero!", frequently used at royal functions.

1923- Developers S.H. Woodruff and Canadian William Whitley start advertising lots for sale in Hollywoodland, beneath their giant new Hollywoodland sign. The sign originally was covered with lightbulbs. It collapsed and was repaired in 1939, the 'land' part never restored. The Hollywood Sign was made over again in 1978.

1944- Tex Avery's "Screwball Squirrel" Only a few shorts were made. 

1949- Zsa Zsa Gabor married George Sanders.

1970- A symbol of the 70’s, AMC’s compact car the Gremlin introduced.

1984- Motown star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father in an argument over plans for the singer's 45th birthday party the next day. 

1995- Chasen's restaurant closed. Former actor Frederick Chasen opened his exclusive Beverly Hills Restaurant in 1936.  James Stewart and Mickey Rooney were regulars. During the filming of Cleopatra (1963) Elizabeth Taylor had Chasen's chili flown out to her in Rome. Walt Disney met Leopold Stokowski over dinner at Chasens and conceived the film Fantasia, Orson Welles and Joe Mankiewicz got into a fistfight over the script outline of Citizen Kane there. Bogart, Bacall and John Huston discussed how to fight the Hollywood Blacklist there. The non-alcoholic  cocktail The Shirley Temple was invented there, so little Shirley could schmooze with the grownups .Today there is a booth from Chasens preserved in the Reagan Presidential Library, and a small section of tables in the supermarket it became today. 

1996- Animation World Network, Toontown’s virtual trade magazine, started up. www.AWN.com

2004- G-Mail invented.