Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 9, 2023

Birthdays: King Henry V of England, John Dryden, Sir Issac Walton-author of the Compleat Angler, Melanie Griffith, Whitney Houston, David Steinberg, Bob Cousy, Jill St. John, Robert Shaw, Robert Aldrich, Sam Elliot is 79, Gillian Anderson is 55, Pamela Travers –the creator of Mary Poppins, Marvin Minsky, Eric Bana is 57, Audrey Tautou is 47, Philippe Bergeron is 64

1854- Henry David Thoreau published “Walden”, the first great work about nature conservation. 

1896- Actors Equity formed, the first actors union. 

1919- HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZORRO! Mexican California ranchers had issues with the provincial governors sent from Mexico City. Juan de Alvarado revolted against Gov Michel de Micheltorena in 1847. In the 1850s Joaquin Murrietta was a kind of Jesse James, Robin Hood bandit who rode through California Gold Rush Country. A book was written about him in 1854.

Then in 1919, Johnson McCulley, a Los Angeles man who made a living writing adventure stories for pulp magazines, took the bio of Murietta, and wrote a story of a rebellious ranchero, borrowing also from The Scarlet Pimpernel.

He named him Don Diego De La Vega, who rode at night as El Zorro, the Fox. This day The Curse of Capistrano, the first story of Zorro appeared in All Story Weekly magazine.

1929- Hollywood theater mogul Alexander Pantages was convicted of assaulting a young woman in a broom closet. The conviction was later overturned. The young woman, Eunice Pringle, later admitted that Joe Kennedy, who was trying to buy out Pantages' theatre chain for his RKO, paid her $10,000 to falsely accuse Pantages of rape. It was the first successful defense case of attorney Jerry Geisler, who became famous for getting movie stars and other Hollywood elites out of trouble with the law. The word in the studios when a movie star was naughty was “Get me Geisler!” 

1936- Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics. Host head of state Adolph Hitler refused to shake hands with him. 

1942- The premiere of Walt Disney’s Bambi.

1944- Antoine Du Saint-Exupery, the author of the Little Prince, died when he crashed his fighter plane. For many years the official story was his plane crash was an accident. In 1998 experts found an old German journalist named Horst Rippert who confessed that as a Luftwaffe pilot he shot him down in air combat. He didn’t know it was Saint-Exupery and was an admirer of his writing. The main protagonist of The Little Prince was an aviator who crashed his plane.

1947 -The British government in an attempt to bolster revenue for their shattered postwar economy, announced a 300% import tariff on Hollywood films. The Big Eight-Hollywood studios retaliate by stopping the export of movies to Britain. The British film industry has a heyday and Disney starts producing films locally in Britain like 'Rob Roy Highland Rogue' and such.

1960- Near Cuernavaca Mexico, Harvard professor Timothy Leary took some magic mushrooms and experienced his first hallucinogenic trip. He called it “ a conversion.”

1961- Marvel creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first introduced their superhero team The Fantastic Four comic book. (Its dated today, but may have come out in November)

1963 – Britain’s rock & roll TV show, Ready Steady Go, premieres.

1967- Joe Orton, English actor/playwright (Leaf, Murdered), died at age 34.

1969- The Haunted Mansion attraction opened at Disneyland.

1975- Hurricane Belle destroyed the gulf coast. 

1989- The Abyss opened, directed by James Cameron. Ed Harris, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, and breakthrough CGI water effect. 

1993- Heidi Fleiss, The Hollywood Madam arraigned for prostitution. The film community shuddered when she threatened to reveal the names of her clients in her “black book”. Most were suppressed except actors Charlie Sheen and Sean Penn who admitted as much early on. Fleiss wrote a memoir called “Pandering” and still thinks prostitution is an honorable profession. “I ran an 85% cash business.”

1995- Rocker Jerry Garcia died, the Grateful Dead broke up.

1995- THE HIGH TECH BUBBLE- Netscape first appeared on the stock market. The 15 month old company started by a Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark and a 22 year old college senior Marc Andreesen immediately shot up to $1.07 billion dollars in value. This IPO signaled the beginning of the gold rush in high tech stocks which five years later came crashing down as violently. Stocks like Lucent Technology, which sold at $84 dollars a share in 1998, dropped to .39 cents a share in 2001.