Birthdays: Captain George Vancouver, Eric Maria Remarque, John Dillinger, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Mike Todd, Billy Wilder, Joe Papp, Bill Blass, Oskar Fischinger, Pistol Pete Maravich, Klaus Maria Brandauer is 80, Graham Greene is 71, Ed Bradley, Emmanuelle Seigner, Prunella Scales, Meryl Streep is 74, Konrad Zuse, Kris Kristofferson, Paul Frees,
1894 - Harry Houdini married Bessie Rahner. She remained devoted to him even after his death. Every Halloween for twenty years she held a séance to try and contact him.
1933- Max Fleischer promoted Lillian Friedman to be the first woman animator in American commercial animation. She animated a test, drawing Betty Boop and with the connivance of a camera woman, had it filmed without a name slate. Then she had it screened in front of the crew at dailies. Dave Fleischer said "Hire that guy!" "It's a girl", he was told. So, Lillian Friedman (Astor) was hired at 25 dollars a week when the male animators were making up to $125.00. I asked her about this and she said "It was the Depression and I was supporting my husband who was out of work. I wasn't angry then, but I am angry now."
1941- Walt Disney assistant animator Bill Hurtz married Mary Whitney, one of Walt Disney’s secretaries. Hurtz later went on to become an award winning director at UPA.
1966 – The Mike Nichols film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened. Based on the play by Edward Albee and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the first American movie to use four letter cuss words. Just a year before comedian Lenny Bruce had gone to jail for saying the same words, although everyone including President Johnson swore in everyday parlance.
1969- Singer actress Judy Garland OD’s on sleeping pills. She was 47. Whether it was an accident or a suicide we will never know. A pillhead from early age, she had gotten hooked when MGM chief Louis B. Mayer ordered studio nurses to put her on amphetamines so she would have the energy to finish the Wizard of Oz. Fellow contract actress June Allyson explained- “You didn’t argue when the nurses brought them to you. They told us they were vitamins!”
1970- President Nixon signed the law lowering the voting age in the U.S. from 21 to 18.
1977- Walt Disney’s The Rescuers opened in theaters.
1978 - James Christy's discovery of Pluto's moon Charon announced.
1990- A signal of the end of the Cold War, "Checkpoint Charlie" the main dividing gate between East and West Berlin was dismantled. John Le Carre' and other spy novel writers mourned. There is a replica and a Cold War Museum at the site today.
2012- Pixar’s Brave came out. Written and directed by Brenda Chapman-Lima.
2012- Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter opened.
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