Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for July 26, 2023

 Birthdays: Salvador Allende, Serge Koussevitzky, George Bernard Shaw, Gracie Allen,

 Carl Jung, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards, George Grosz, Pearl Buck, Jason Robards Jr, Aldous Huxley, Jean Shepard, Ken Muse, Vivian Vance, Emil Jannings, Ken Muse, Sandra Bullock is 59, Kevin Spacey, Kate Beckinsdale, Helen Mirren is 78, Jason Statham, Mick Jagger is 80

1656– Rembrandt van Rijn declared bankruptcy.

1861- Mark Twain left St. Jo Missouri to go west and sit out the Civil War. He went with his brother Oren Clemens who had been appointed to administer the Nevada territory. 

1943- The Birth of L.A. Smog! A newspaper headline from this date mentions a 'gas-attack' of exhaust and haze that reduced visibility to three short blocks. Besides leaded gasoline, many suburban homes had little backyard ovens to burn their garbage.

1951- Charlie Chaplin driven into exile by red-baiters. Chaplin never was a communist or any other radical movement. He was just outspoken in his views, and in Commie-Paranoid America that was enough. He was on a holiday to Britain when he learned his visa had been revoked by the U.S. government. He didn't return until 1972. Despite his immense achievements in Hollywood History, when the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated later that year, Chaplin’s name was deliberately excluded.

1951- Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland had its world premiere in London’s Leicester Square Theatre. It opened in the U.S. two days later.

1959- KPFK, Los Angeles progressive radio of The Pacifica Network, starts up.

1970- Oh, Calcutta! Play opened in London. Oh, Calcutta had nothing at all to do with a city in  India, the show was a series of unrelated, but sex-dominated sketches featuring a totally nude cast, both male and female. Sketches were written by John Lennon, Sam Shephard and Jules Feiffer. The title came from a 1946 Dadaist painting by Clovis Trouille. It was a pun on the French “O quel cul t’as” meaning “what a nice ass you have”. The fun turned dark in 1988 when the show’s producer Norman Kean went mad, stabbed his wife then committed suicide.

1984- Edward Gein died peacefully in a prison for the criminally insane. Gein was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to life for mass murder. Police found his farm in Wisconsin decorated with human body parts, heads in the freezer and in the stove, and the dried cadaver of his mother Augustina.  His story inspired "Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs".

1990- Pres. George H.W. Bush signed the Citizens with Disabilities Act into law.

1991 – Children’s comic Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman was arrested in Florida for masturbating in an adult movie theater. The film was Naughty Nurse Nancy. 

1995- After a year of investigation, the General Accounting Office noted that all documents pertaining to the Roswell UFO Incident of 1947 had disappeared or been destroyed. …Hmmm.