Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 30, 2023

 

Birthdays: William Wrigley the Chewing Gum king 1868, Truman Capote, Eli Weisel, Lester Maddox, Buddy Rich, David Oistrach, Deborah Kerr, Angie Dickinson, Marylin McCoo, Len Cariou, Johnny Mathis, Rula Lenska, Eric Stolz, Monica Bellucci is 59, Jenna Elfman is 52, Marion Cotillard is 48, Al Leong (Al KaBong) is 71

1681- Louis XIV of France seized the city of Strasbourg, a city half-German and half-French. The German Emperor considered Strasbourg one of his imperial cities and the stage was set for future Franco-German rivalry. The city would change hands again and again over the centuries until becoming finally French in 1945.

1791- Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflotte, The Magic Flute" premiered at Emanuel Schiknader's theater in Vienna. 

1868- Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women first published in installments.

1919- The Fleischer Brother's first Out of the Inkwell cartoon featuring Koko the Clown. Koko was rotoscoped- meaning traced from live action like Motion Capture does today. Dave Fleischer put on the clown suit and was filmed by his brother Max.

1928- Walt Disney and his crew re-recorded the final music for the first Mickey Mouse short, Steamboat Willie. Walt was unhappy with the sync on first version of the track, and pawned his car for the money to pay for this second session.

1930- Death Valley Days Show premiered on radio, sponsored by Twenty Mule Team Borax powder. When it moved to television in the 50’s the host was Ronald Reagan.

1935- George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess premiered at the Colonial Theater in Boston. It flopped originally, but after some rewrites it became a major hit.

1939- With war breaking out across the world, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky moved to the USA. After living in Boston and New York, he settled in LA for the next 25 years.

1947- The first World Series Game on Television- New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-3. Gillette and Ford paid $65,000 to sponsor the entire series.

1952- This Is Cinerama, showcasing the widescreen film process, opened in theaters.

1955- James Dean (24) was killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder crashed head on into a pickup truck driven by college student Donald Turnipseed on Highway 41 outside of Paso Robles, California. Dean was driving 85 mph at dusk without his headlights on, and two hours earlier had been given a ticket for speeding. Until now the American public had only seen him in one movie- "East of Eden" and some TV work. Giant and Rebel Without a Cause had yet to be released, yet the legend endures to this day. In an eerie coincidence, Dean had just filmed a public service announcement promoting automobile safety. His last lines were:” Remember, the life you save may be mine!”

 

1960- On a Friday night on ABC, Hanna & Barbera's "The Flintstones" debuted. For six seasons the inhabitants of 301 Cobblestone Lane, Bedrock, was one of the most successful TV series ever. Originally going to be named the Flagstones, then Gladstones, before Flintstones. Ed Benedicts' designs with Alan Reed as the voice of Fred, Jean Van Der Pyl the voice of Wilma, Mel Blanc doing Barney and Bea Benaderet doing Betty. 

  The show was so obviously modeled on the live action comedy The Honeymooners, that Jackie Gleason seriously considered suing, especially when two of his old writers went to work for them. But his people dissuaded him, saying if he did, he’s be hated by every child in America. 

1982- The TV comedy Cheers premiered. The Beacon Street Bar in Boston where everybody knows your name. It made stars of Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Kelsey Grammar.

2021- The Academy Museum of the Motion Picture opened to the public. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 29, 2023

Birthdays: Roman general Pompey Magnus, Miguel de Cervantes, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Rudolph Diesel (inventor of the engine), Enrico Fermi, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Autrey, Lech Walesa, Stanley Kramer, Bryant Gumbel, Greer Garson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ian McShane, Anita Ekberg, Andrew Dice-Clay, Russ Heath, Tom Sizemore, Emily Lloyd is 54, Silvio Berlusconi

1930- Ninety-year-old writer George Bernard Shaw refused the offer of a Peerage.

1930- First day of shooting on the Tod Browning horror classic Dracula. Hungarian actor and morphine addict Bela Lugosi played the lead role he had already made famous on stage. Lugosi was identified with the character Dracula for the rest of his life. When he died, he was buried in the Dracula cape.

1933- The movie A Bill of Divorcement introduced the star Katherine Hepburn.

1938- Walt Disney brought 60 of his lead artists to a soundstage and told them of his plans for an animated concert feature, to be called Fantasia. He finished by running the work reel for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, originally begun as a Mickey Mouse short. 

1953- The television show “Make Room for Daddy” premiered, making a star out of big nosed nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas. The Lebanese Thomas had tried to break into films like other nightclub stars, but with no luck.  He burst into tears after Columbia studio chief Harry Cohn suggested he get a nose job and forget about it. Danny Thomas at one time was the richest man in Beverly Hills. 

1959- Hanna Barbera's "Quick Draw McGraw" TV show. Baba Louie, Snooper and Blabb and Augie-Doggie and Doggie-Daddy.

1961- Russian ballet star Rudolph Nureyev, acclaimed as the greatest dancer of his age, defected to the west in Paris and was granted asylum. 

1967- The cult TV series The Prisoner premiered. 

1969- The TV series Love American Style premiered.

1969- Country singer Merle Haggard released the song “I’m Proud to be an Oakie from Muskogee”. It was a huge hit on the country charts, but more than that, it was a conservative declaration of cultural war of against the urban-hippy, liberal rock & roll counterculture that dominated American media at the time. It focused rural anger into an already polarized American public debate. 

1975- The legendary R&B singer Jackie Wilson, collapsed of a heart attack while performing on stage for Dick Clark’s ‘Good Ol’ Rock and Roll Revue’ at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, N.J. He lingered in an out of a coma for 8 years, dying in 1984. He was only 49. All the time he was comatose, Dick Clark paid all his medical bills, and kept it a secret.  This wasn’t revealed until Clark himself died in 2012.

1976- At his birthday party musician Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally shot his bass player Norman Owens in the chest with his 357 magnum. He said he was using the gun to try and open a soft drink bottle and it accidentally went off. Owens survived and sued Lewis.

1996- The first Nintendo 64-bit game system, The NES, debuted in the US. It sold 500,000 units the first day. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept.28, 2023

 Birthdays: Michel Caravaggio, Georges Clemenceau, Al Kapp, William Paley, Max Schmelling, Frederic Engels, Marcello Mastroianni, Moon Unit Zappa, Ed Sullivan, Sylvia Kristel, John Sayles, Arnold Stang, J.T. Walsh, Seymour Cray, Janeane Garofalo is 59, Mira Sorvino is 56, Hillary Duff is 36, Naomi Watts is 55, George Scribner, Bridgette Bardot is 89

1928- For his birthday, William Paley, son of a cigar manufacturer, was given control of a little radio company called the Columbia Broadcasting System. He turned CBS into a corporate broadcasting giant and threw his support behind developing television and long playing records.

1929- USC first played UCLA in a football game. USC won 76-0. Play was suspended for a few years because of UCLA revamping its program, but resumed regularly in 1935. A sportswriter at the time wrote: "In years to come, this game will probably be one of the football spectacles of the West"

1935- Mickey Mouse short On Ice, premiered.

1960- Ted Williams hit a home run at his last at-bat. Number 521.

1961- Richard Chamberlain made a name for himself by playing the handsome Dr. Kildare on TV, Raymond Massey co-starred.

1961-The Hazel TV show with Shirley Booth premiered.

1961- Tennessee Tuxedo and his Friends Show premiered. Don Adams (Get Smart) did the lead voice.

1967- Speed Racer premiered in the U.S.

1976- Stevie Wonder released his album Songs in the Key of Life.

1987- Star Trek the Next Generation premiered.

1994- Michael Eisner cancelled plans for a theme park called Disney’s America in Northern Virginia. The idea was dropped after much resistance from local homeowners in Northern Virginia. Many of them were retired Washington D.C. power brokers, who didn’t want a huge noisy theme park next to their quiet estates.

1996- The Ambiguously Gay Duo premiered on the Dana Carvey Show. Created by SNL writer Robert Smigel. J.J. Sedelmier created the animation, Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert did the voices.

2015- Scientists discovered liquid water on the planet Mars.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Sept. 27, 2023

 Birthdays: King Stefan Bathory of Poland, Thomas Nast, Arthur Penn, Mike Schmidt,

 Meatloaf, William Conrad, Dick Schapp, Samuel Adams, George Cruikshank, Jayne Meadows, Wilford Brimley, Shaun Cassidy, Greg Morris, Amanda Detmer, Avril Lavigne is 39, Gwyneth Paltrow is 51

1934- The character of Oliver “ Daddy” Warbucks first appeared in Harold Gray’s comic strip Little Orphan Annie.

1935- 13-year-old singer Frances Gumm of the singing Gumm Sisters signed an exclusive contract with MGM Pictures. Louis B. Mayer changed Frances’ name to Judy Garland.

1937- J R Tolkien’s’ The Hobbit first appeared in bookshops.

1938- Bob Hope first sang “Thanks For the Memory” on his NBC radio show. It became a hit in his movie appearance in “The Big Broadcast of 1938.”

 

1944- Evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson died in hospital from an overdose of sleeping pills. She was 53. MacPherson was one of the most powerful evangelists of the 1920s with thousands of followers donating millions of dollars. 

1947- Disney’s film Fun and Fancy Free, featuring Mickey and the Beanstalk.

1954- The Tonight Show premiered. Steve Allen was the first host.

1961- Hanna Barbera's "Top Cat" show premiered. Do you remember the words to the theme song..?  "Top Cat, the most effectual- Top Cat, who's intellectual: Close friends get to call him T.C., Providing it's with dignity. Top Cat, the indisputable leader of the gang... He's the Boss. He's a pip. he's the championship, He's the most tip-top, Top Cat !"

1962- Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published. The best seller first brought to the public’s eye how indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides, particularly DDT, was damaging the environment and killing off wildlife.

1977- Bob McKimson, Warner animation, director of many Looney Tune shorts, collapsed and died of heart failure in front of Friz Freleng and Yosemite Sam animator Gerry Chiniquy while having lunch. He was 66. Fellow animator Art Leonardi had asked Bob for a souvenir drawing that morning, Bob drew him a Bugs Bunny but as he was leaving Art reminded him that he neglected to sign it. Bob said as he walked out "Oh, I'll get to it after lunch..."

1989- The Japanese corporate giant Sony purchased Columbia Pictures.

2003- Hours after the season’s final concert, in the dead the night, the historic bandshell at the Hollywood Bowl was demolished. After a long legal fight with preservationists, the historic 1929 structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, that Gershwin and Stokowski played in, was replaced with a new shell with better acoustics. 

Tom Sito's ANimation Almanac for Sept 26, 2023

Birthdays: George Gershwin, T.S. Elliot, John Chapman (also known as Johnny Appleseed)-1774, Winsor McCay-1869, Theodore Gericault -1791, Olivia Newton-John, Cheryl Tiegs is 75, Marty Robbins, Pope Paul VI, Jack Lalanne, Melissa Sue Andersen, Phillip Bosco, James Cavaziel, Surena Williams, Linda Hamilton is 67.

1687- The Ancient GREEK PARTHENON WAS BLOWN UP during a minor Venetian raid on Turkish held Athens.  A random shell ignited a gunpowder magazine the Turks had been storing inside of it. For two thousand years the Parthenon had survived mostly intact. Until now. Later on, in 1801 English Lord Elgin will back up his frigate to the shore and pry off the frieze marble sculptures for his collection. 

1835- Donizetti’s opera Lucia De Lammermoor premiered.

1887- Emile Berliner patented the gramophone, rejecting Thomas Edison's cylinder recording in favor of a flat disc record on a turntable.

1892- The John Philip Sousa Band makes its first public appearance.

1920- The NFL, National Football League, created.

1926- Bullock's Wilshire department store opened. Their Tea Room quickly became the in-place for Hollywood Society to see and be seen in.

1937- "Queen of the Blues" Singer Bessie Smith died after a car accident in Mississippi. She crashed her Packard into a parked car. She was 43. One account said she died because she was refused treatment in a segregated hospital, but the truth was she was treated by a white doctor at the scene and sent to the nearest hospital, which was a black one. 

1939- Nazi scientists led by Rudolph Heisenberg met to discuss how the fission of uranium could be used to create a super bomb. Meanwhile in America, Hungarian scientist Dr. Leo Szilard was warning the US government that they better start an atomic program fast.

1941- Max Fleischer's Superman cartoon “ The Mad Scientist” debuts. The first animated action-adventure short. There had not been a serious cartoon since Winsor McCay’s Sinking of the Lusitania in 1918. The Superman’s were much more expensive that the usual short cartoons- $90,000 to the usual $40,000, but Paramount wanted them. It was nominated for an Academy Award.

1955- Eddie Fisher married Debbie Reynolds.

1957- The musical West Side Story opened. The legend goes composer Leonard Bernstein was in the hospital to be operated on for a deviated septum. While recuperating he ran into lyricist Steven Sondheim, who was also recovering from an operation. To pass the time while convalescing they started talking about the idea of an updated Romeo and Juliet set to music in the slums. One early idea for the title was Gang Way!

1961-Nineteen year old folk singer Bob Dylan made his debut in a Greenwich Village coffee house Gerde’s Folk City.

1962- The Beverly Hillbillies debuts. The story goes that CBS mogul William Paley disliked farm-humor type shows, and this project was greenlit behind his back, while he was on vacation.

1964- The premiere of Gilligan’s Island. The good ship Minnow was named for Newton  Minnow, the FCC Chairman who first called television “A Vast Wasteland”. Actress Natalie Schafer, who played the wife of millionaire Thurston Howell III, really was a millionaire. She took the role just for the free trip to Hawaii.

1987- A market research group called Q-5 tried to use a bank of computers number-crunching demographic surveys to design the ultimate safe, wholesome, politically-correct children's show.  They came up with "The Little Clowns of Happytown"-. Of the 26 children's series in syndication it remained dead last in ratings, He-Man, Jem and G.I. Joe on top. The people had spoken.

1990- The Motion Picture Association changed the rating for the naughtiest movies from X to NC-17.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Sept. 25, 2023

Birthdays: William Faulkner, Jean Phillipe Rameau, Mark Rothko, Dmitri Shoshtakovich, Sergei Bondarchuk, Phil Rizzutto the Scooter, Bob MacAdoo, Christopher Reeve, Glen Gould, Barbera Walters, Red Smith, Aldo Ray, Heather Locklear is 61, Will Smith, Michael Douglas 79 & Catherine Zeta-Jones-55, Mark Hamill is 72

1849- Johann Strauss Sr. was found naked and dead in his apartment. He was 45. The Waltz King had abandoned his wife and three sons and moved in with his mistress. He caught scarlet fever from one of his illegitimate children and quickly succumbed. As soon as he was cold his girlfriend stripped him of his possessions and fled. Despite this, Johann Strauss was given a grand funeral through Vienna. 100,000 people attended. It was said Strauss “Died like a dog, and was buried like a king.” His estranged son Johann Strauss Jr. went on to even greater success.

1887- The first Sears Catalog published.

1888- The beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Hound of the Baskervilles.

1890- Spurred on by the writings of John Muir and John Wesley Powell, Congress created Yosemite National Park in California. 

1911- Groundbreaking in Boston for Fenway Park.

1926- Henry Ford announced a 40 hour, 5 day work week for his employees. 

1928- Walt Disney wrote to his brother Roy and lead animator Ub Iwerks, “Carl’s (Stalling) idea of a Skeleton Dance as a musical novelty has been growing on me…” 

1933- Young writer John Huston was driving drunk on Sunset Blvd when he struck and killed a pedestrian. His father Walter Huston was a top movie star, so to avoid scandal, MGM head Louis B. Mayer paid $46,000 to cover it up. John Huston went on to become a great Hollywood director and screenwriter.

1953- Alfred Hitchcock wrapped filming on his only 3D film, Dial M for Murder.

1961- Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color debuted on NBC TV today. Moved over from ABC. This episode introduced the character of Ludwig von Drake.

1965- The Beatles animated cartoon show premiered. 

1975- The Rocky Horror Picture Show opened. The movie version of the successful cult stage musical. Let’s Do the Time Warp Again.

1980- John Bonham of Led Zeppelin was found dead of alcohol poisoning.

1984- THE RUBBERHEAD STRIKE- Disneyland workers including the actors who stroll the park in big Mickey and Goofy heads went on strike.

1992- Michael Mann’s epic film, “The Last of the Mohicans” premiered. “I will find you!”

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Sept. 24, 2023

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vitellius, Duke Albrecht Wallenstein, Chief Justice John Marshall, Francis Scott Key, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Raft, Chief Joseph, Sheila MacCrae, Anthony Newley. Phil Hartman, Mean Joe Greene, Billy Bletcher the voice of Pegleg Pete, Pedro Almodovar is 73, Jim Henson.

1906- Teddy Roosevelt designated Devils Tower Wyoming as our first national monument. Teddy’s desire to preserve natural resources was blocked by Congressmen bribed by rich developers. So, he circumvented Congress and by Presidential Executive order declared the entire mountain a national monument. 

1934- Stanford graduate Frank Thomas’s first day as at Walt Disney studio. 

1936- Babe Ruth's last appearance in a baseball game. Yankees lost to Boston 5-0.

1936- Noel Coward's play 'Private Lives' opened.

1938- Bob Clampett's cartoon "Porky in Wackyland" ( Foo!)

1938- Tennis champion Dan Budge won the US Open in Forrest Hills. Budge became the first person to win a Grand Slam, all four major tennis meets in one year- Wimbledon, French Open now called Roland Garros, Australian Open and Forrest Hills, now called the US Open.

1953- US Army scientist Frank Olsen jumped out of a NY hotel window to his death after unknowingly taking LSD slipped into his cocktail as part of a CIA monitored program. Olsen’s widow sued twenty years later when she finally found out the circumstances of her husbands’ death. The case was only resolved recently.

1953-UPA's "Unicorn in the Garden" directed by Bill Hurtz, based on the cartoon style and story by James Thurber.

1953- The movie "The Robe" premiered, the first movie in CinemaScope. It's success was part of a wave of 'Sword & Sandal" epics and fostered many variations on wide screen processes- Superama,VistaVision, Dynarama, WarnerVision, TotalScope-etc.

Fox had actually finished an earlier picture Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, but studio chief Darryl Zanuck held it for The Robe, because a costume spectacular was a better way to showcase the technique.

 There had been earlier experiments with wide screen - Abel Gance's 1925 Napoleon, which used three 35mm images shown simultaneously, and The Big Trail 1930, which was a true wide screen 70mm film starring a very young John Wayne. It was superseded by 1967 by the more advanced Panavision lens. For many years in Hollywood, we called a wide screen formatted picture a "Scope" picture.

1960- The "Howdy Doody Time" children's show ended after thirteen years. The show remains a pivotal memory in the minds of thousands of American baby-boomers who grew up in the fifties. As the last song and the last credits rolled by, just before the cameras switched off, Clarabell the mute clown goes up to the lens and in a haunting voice said; "Goodbye, Kids."

1964- The Munsters TV comedy starring Fred Gwynne, Yvonne DeCarlo and Al Lewis premiered.

1968- CBS T.V. show "60 Minutes" debuted. Mike Wallace was pared with Harry Reasoner. The show was originally aired Tuesday nights at 10PM and fared poorly in the ratings. When it was moved to Sundays at 7:00PM it became a weekly institution.

1977- The TV series “The Love Boat “debuted.

1988- The Godfather of Soul James Brown got a little crazy sometimes. This day he burst into his own offices in Georgia waving a pistol and shotgun and demanded everyone stop using his washroom! After locking the bathrooms, he led police on high-speed chase through Georgia and South Carolina, only stopping when the cops shot out his tires. He rode the sparking rims till they collapsed. James Brown did 2 years for being under the influence of drugs. Hey!

Answer: Colditz was a maximum security Nazi prison camp where they sent all the Allied POW’s who kept trying to escape. Its name became a synonym for harsh incarceration.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Sept. 23, 2023

Birthdays: Euripides-484BC, Victoria Woodhull, Walter Lippmann, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Mickey Rooney, Julio Inglesias, Walter Pidgeon, Louise Nevelson, Jason Alexander, Mary Kay Place, Harry Connick Jr, Bruce Springsteen is 74, William Holmes McGuffey*

*McGuffey was the educator and author of "the McGuffey Readers", a standard public school textbook so successful, that by 1860 the U.S. had an 80% literacy rate.

1846- The planet Neptune discovered by Johann Gottleib Gala. We did not know it had rings like Saturn until the Voyager 2 space probe visited in 1989.

1889- The Nintendo Company started in Kyoto, They began by making hand-painted playing cards, very popular with the Yakuza. In 1956 they transitioned to electronics, and invented Donkey-Kong, Gameboys, Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda.

1912- "Cohen Collects a Debt" Max Sennett's first film comedy featuring the Keystone Kops.

1921- The Band-Aid self-adhesive bandage introduced. A scientist at Johnson &Johnson, Earle Dickson, invented it for his wife who kept cutting herself in the kitchen. Supposedly the skin tone color, which never seemed to match anybody’s skin, was her skin coloring.

1937- Mickey Mouse cartoon The Brave Littler Tailor premiered.

1939- At the World’s Fair in New York a time capsule was buried not to be opened until the year 6939. It contains a Bible, a mail order catalog and newsreels of President Franklin Roosevelt. I hope they include an explanation of what film was, and how to use it.

1939- Sigmund Freud died at age 83. Suffering from inoperable cancer of the jaw, he had his doctor euthanize him with a lethal shot of cocaine.

1942- Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Grove start the "Manhattan Project", the building of a "cosmic-super bomb" (the A-Bomb). Hungarian Professor Leo Szilard had been pestering the U.S. government since 1938 to do something before the Hitler made one first. Finally the War Dept. gave the go ahead to collect the finest physicists in the free world to create a super bomb. Scientists like Richard Fenyman and Enrico Ferme would arrive for work at an office in downtown Santa Fe and be immediately whisked out the back in a sealed truck to the top secret lab complex at Los Alamos. 

The project was so secret that they were warned if they breathed a word about it the government would make sure they "disappeared' for at least ten years! Vice President Truman had no idea of the project until he was told the night Franklin Roosevelt died.  Leo Szilard was never asked to join the team because the F.B.I. considered him 'politically suspect', yet we now know at least two scientists there were Soviet spies, Dr. Karl Fuchs and Ted Hall.

1962- H& B's show The Jetsons premiered. It was the first ABC show to be presented in color.  Jane! Stop this Crazy Thing! Jane!

1964- Marc Chagall painting on the ceiling of the Paris Opera House unveiled.

1969- the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" premiered. Written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill. It made fortunes for stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who later started and independent film festival called Sundance.

1984- Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells met the Disney Animation Dept. and were pitched storyboards for the film Basil of Baker Street, later called the Great Mouse Detective. Up to now their thinking had been to close the animation department and earn income from the licensing the existing library. Roy Disney was instrumental in insisting the animation division remain. That evening Eisner dictated memos to start the Disney television animation division, stagnant for over a decade.  

1990- Ken Burns landmark TV series The Civil War premiered. It redefined American documentary filmmaking for a generation.

1994- Quentin Tarentino’s film Pulp Fiction premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Sept. 22, 2023

Birthdays: Anne of Cleves 1515- Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins, Mafioso Joe Valachi, Michael Farraday, Meryl Streep is 73, John Houseman, Joanie Jett, Erich Von Stronheim, Tom Lasorda, Paul Muni, Debbie Boone

3001-Bilbo Baggins left the Shire, having entrusted the one true ring to the custody of his nephew Frodo.

1910- 15 year old button sewer Bessie Abramowitz led the Great Chicago Garment Workers Strike.

1925- Lon Chaney’s horror classic film The Phantom of the Opera premiered.

 1927- The Dempsey-Tunney championship fight. Tunney wins in the famous 'long count', meaning the referee delayed the count because Dempsey wouldn’t return to his neutral corner. The extra time allowed Tunney to recover his wits and continue the fight to victory. Jack Dempsey had been world heavyweight champion for ten years but retired a year later.

1944- Disney short First Aiders, the first short of Minnie Mouse without Mickey.

1947- A C-54 Skymaster flies over the Atlantic using the first automatic pilot control.

1964- The T.V. series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. premiered. “Open Channel D, Please..”

1964- Jerome Robbins’ “The Fiddler on the Roof “ opened on Broadway. Based on the story “Tevye and His Daughters” by Sholom Aleichem in 1894. In 1953 Jerome Robbins had named names to the HUAC committee to save his career. Now on Fiddler he had to use blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel and Beatrice Arthur, who all despised him. 

1976- TV show Charlie’s Angels premiered. It made a star out of Farrah Fawcett.

1979- Hanna Barbera's Super Globetrotter's Show, featuring Multi-Man, Sphere Man, Gizmo-Man, Spaghetti-Man and Fluid-Man.

1984- Michael Eisner named CEO of the Walt Disney Corporation.

1994- Friends TV show premiered.

1996- Seymour Cray, the genius engineer who designed the most powerful supercomputers for the Control Data Corporation and Cray Computers, was in a bad car accident in Colorado Springs. He died two weeks later. He was 71.

    

2011- Scientists at the CERN accelerator claimed to make a particle go faster than the speed of light, something Einstein said could not be done.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Sept. 21, 2023

Birthdays: Louis Joliet of the explorers Marquette & Joliet, Chuck Jones, Gustav Holst, H.G. Wells, Stephen King, Cecil Fielder, Rob Morrow, Jay Ward, Larry Hagman, Ricky Lake, Fanny Flagg, Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers, Leonard Cohen- not one of the Coen Brothers, Faith Hill, Jerry Bruckheimer, Nicole Richie is 43, Bill Murray is 73

1599- A Swiss tourist named Thomas Platter was visiting London and kept a diary of his trip. He wrote on this day he attended the play The Tragedie of Julius Caesar by Master William Shakespeare at the New Globe Theatre, and enjoyed it very much. This is the first written account of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar being performed, and Shakespeare himself was one of the actors. 

1846- Irish drygoods dealer Alexander T. Stewart opened a store in New York City that was so large he put the various items in their own departments. the first U.S. Department Store. He called it his Marble Palace, and gave it the first large glass display windows, which one newspaper labeled “A useless extravagance.”

1897- The famous column by Frank Church in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World first appeared with the answer to 8 year old Virginia O’Hanlon’s question:  "...and yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus..."

1915- The archaeological treasure Stonehenge was sold at auction to a barrister named Sir Cecil Chubb, who promptly donated it to the British nation. His wife thought he had gone to that auction to buy some chairs. 

1917- The Gulf Between, the first film shot in Technicolor.

1938- This day the Long Island Express- A force 3 Hurricane slammed into New England killing 600. The Boston area was hit with 120 mile an hour winds and downtown Providence was flooded under 13 feet of water. 

1944- An internal FBI memo concludes "Communist infiltration of the Hollywood Guilds and unions and the only organization that could stop them was the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals" a conservative publicity group that included Walt Disney, John Wayne and Gary Cooper.

1945- Disney short "Hockey Homicide" the first Sport-Goofy directed by Jack Kinney.

 

1948- the first Texaco Star Theater television show featuring a nightclub comedian named Milton Berle. Berle’s antics make him a major star and with Arthur Godfrey’s show help grow television from a scientific curiosity to the entertainment every household had to have. For ten years the U.S. public never missed Uncle Miltie on TV.

1954- The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine, was launched in Groton Conn. 

1957- The Perry Mason TV show with Raymond Burr premiered.

1961- The Washington Senators baseball club played its last game before moving to Texas. They lost. The US capitol would not have a hometown team again until 2005 with the Nationals. Pundits would say,” Washington! First in War. First in Peace. Last in the American League.”````

1970-The first ABC Monday Night Football - Cleveland Browns defeated the NY Jets led

by Broadway Joe Namath, 24-21. Announcers- Keith Jackson, Howard Cosell and retired Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dandy Don Meredith. 

1970- 20 year old Bill Murray was at O’Hare Airport waiting for a plane, when he joking told another passenger he had two bombs in his suitcase. An airline attendant overheard him and called the police. They didn’t find any bombs, but they did find a bag of marijuana. He was charged a misdemeanor. Dropped out of college, His older brother got him a tryout at Chicago’s Second City Improv comedy club.

1985- “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straights hit #1 in the Billboard charts. Writer Mark Knopfler overheard a workman in an electronics store making fun of celebrities on MTV and wrote the conversation down. The early CG animation done by London company Mainframe for the video was groundbreaking.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 20, 2023

Birthdays: Alexander the Great -357 BC, Upton Sinclair, Jelly Roll Morton, Jay Ward, Red Auerbach, Guy Lafluer, Fernando Rey, Ann Meara, Rachel Roberts, Jonathan Hardy, Pia Lindstrom, Gary Cole, Fran Drescher, George R.R. Martin is 75, animator Nancy Beiman, Sophia Loren is 89

1670- English poet John Milton published his last works “Paradise Regained” and “Samson Agonistes”. He was blind but dictated to a secretary who wrote down his poems. When he felt the inspiration he would call him by saying:” Come. I need to be milked.”

1839- The SS British Queen first brought news of the invention of Photography and the Daguerreotype process to the U.S. Soon everyone is happily snapping away.

1853- Elisha Otis revolutionized tall building construction by demonstrating his elevator that didn’t fall when the cable was cut.

1947- Tex Avery’s MGM cartoon Slap Happy Lion.

1952- CBS premiered the Jackie Gleason Show- The Honeymooners".

1952- Chuck Jones’ short Rabbit Seasoning, second of his Bugs-Daffy hunting trilogy.

1955- The Phil Silvers Show, originally entitled You’ll Never Get Rich” debuted on CBS. Silvers played con-man soldier Sgt. Bilko. Its been speculated that Hanna & Barbera based the cartoon Top Cat on this show.

1973- Musician Jim Croce (30) died in a charter plane crash near Natchitoches Louisiana.

1977- During the premiere episode of the 5th season of the show Happy Days, Henry Winkler’s Fonzi character water-skis in his trademark black leather jacket and jumps a ramp over a live shark. This caused writer Jon Hein to coin the term Jumping the Shark. It has come to mean pinpointing the moment a quality program or person descends into banal silliness.

1984- The Cosby Show premiered.

2001- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away released in the US. The first Japanese anime film to win an Oscar.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 19, 2023

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, Saladin, Hungarian nationalist Leopold Kossuth, Brian Epstein, "Momma" Cass Elliot, Frank Tashlin, Dr. Ferry Porsche- inventor of the Porsche race car, Twiggy– real name Leslie Hornby, William Golding author of The Lord of the Flies, Paul Williams, Adam West, Frances Farmer, David McCallum, Duke Snyder, Jeremy Irons is 75, Jimmy Fallon is 49.

1783- Jacques Montgolfier launches the first hot air balloon in Paris. The first aeronauts were a sheep, duck and rooster. Montgolfier made his fortune in paper. To this day if you get some high quality stationary with a balloon and French flag in the watermark that is Papier Canson et Montgolfier, his company.

1819- On a beautiful English autumn day poet John Keats was moved to write his Ode to Autumn.

1926- THE BIG ONE- This day Miami, Florida was destroyed by a huge hurricane. They didn’t have names then. The storm stopped a real estate boom in South Florida. Snowbirds from up north invested millions in land that turned out to be under water. The Marx Brothers poked fun at the craze in their stage comedy The Cocoanuts. As Groucho said:” Florida Folks. Sunshine, Sunshine, now let’s get the auction started before there is a tornado.”

1931- The Marx Brothers comedy “Monkey Business” premiered.

1936- Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald record “Indian Love Call”. When I’m Calling You, Oooh-ohhoohhh, Ohhhh-ohhh-oohhhhhhh”, etc.

1942- Chuck Jones cartoon The Dover Boys released. 

1945- Little Shirley Temple, now all grown up, married actor John Agar, who she met on the set of John Ford's film Fort Apache. The RKO studio turned the marriage into a media circus by inviting 12,000 people. John Ford teased Agar mercilessly, calling him Mr. Temple. John and Shirley divorced five years later. Shirley Temple remarried and became a career diplomat, and John Agar went on to star in sci-fi flicks like 'Tarantula", The Brain from Planet Aurous".  Eventually he built his own theme dinosaur park by an Arkansas freeway, "John Agar's House of Kong'.

1952- The TV show The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves debuted.

1961- This is the night Betty and Barney Hill claimed they were picked up by a flying saucer and experimented on. It is one of the more famous abduction stories because it was one of the first, and it holds up under hypnosis. Hey little guy, what are you planning to do with that anal probe?

1968 - "Funny Girl" opened in theaters, starring a young singer named Barbra Streisand. Hello Gorgeous!

1970- The Mary Tyler Moore TV Show premiered.

1984- Milos Forman’s movie of the play Amadeus opened.

1985- Mexico City devastated by a large earthquake 8.1 on the Richter scale. The next day the city was rocked again by a 7.5 earthquake. 10,000 people died. Curiously enough 80% of the cities ancient landmarks were undamaged, only modern buildings collapsed. People camped out in Aztec ruins, figuring they’ve stood for centuries and would probably stand now.

1990- Martin Scorcese’s movie Goodfellas opened. “You think I’m funny? What? Am I here to amuse you?” 

1991- UTZI- Two German tourists hiking in the Austrian Alps discovered the remains of an Ice Age man, killed with an arrow over 5,000 years ago. The body, exposed from the ice by global warming, was in such an excellent state of preservation, that they thought it was a modern homicide. Called Utzi, or Frozen Fritz, he was 42. He had 50 tattoos, a copper axe, a full stomach, and Lime Disease.

1995- Orville Reddenbacher 'the Popcorn king' died.

Answer: A possum. A sloth.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Sept. 18, 2023

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajan 53AD, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Frankie Avalon, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Leon Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum), Jack Warden, Canadian PM John Diefenbaker, Eddie “Rochester”Anderson,  Rossano Brazzi, Joe Kubert, Debbie Fields founder of Mrs. Field's Cookies, Jada Pinkett-Smith, James Gandolfini, June Foray

1804- Napoleon inspected Baron Gros’ painting The Plague Victims of Jaffa and liked it. Nappy considered paintings part of state propaganda and commissioned artists to project his image.

1811- A Portuguese 'Projectionist' (experimenter with Magic Lanterns) offers the Duke of Wellington to burn up Napoleon's army with a series of convex lenses and mirrors.   Wellington says thanks, but no thanks...

1895- In Davenport Iowa, Daniel David Palmer performed the first chiropractic adjustment session. Crack!

1917-Writer Aldous Huxley got a job teaching at Eton. One of his students was Eric Blair, who would write under the name George Orwell.

1927-The Columbia Broadcasting System-CBS, broadcast its first program, an opera called the King’s Henchman.

1932-Frustrated movie actress Peggy Enwhistle jumped off the Hollywood Sign. In case you are curious she jumped off the “H”. She also didn’t hit the ground immediately but hit a cactus patch, dying slowly later in great pain.  Ironically in her mailbox that day was a script and a job offer. The role was of a woman who commits suicide.

1951- The Day the Earth Stood Still, with Michael Rennie premiered. Klaatu, barrata, nicto!

1964- H&B’s Johnny Quest Show premiered.

1964- The Addams Family TV show premiered. Lurch, Thing and Uncle Fester. You Rang?

1965- I Dream of Genie debuted on television. Network Standards & Practices said Barbara Eden could wear the harem outfit so long as her belly-button didn’t show. At first the reviews were not good. The Variety TV critic said: “The only thing that stands out in this show is Barbara Eden’s cleavage.”

1970- Jimmy Hendrix (27) was found dead of drug and alcohol abuse. He had passed out and choked on his own vomit. Janis Joplin's reaction was"G-ddammit! He beat me to it !" Joplin herself died three weeks later. Hendrix fame was made in about 4 years. 

1987- Disney’s TV show Ducktales premiered.

Tom Sit's Animation Almanac for Sept. 17, 2023

Birthdays: Hank Williams, Spiro Agnew, Ken Kesey, Jerry Colonna, Roddy MacDowell, George Blanda, Wendy Carlos Williams, Elvira- real name Cassandra Peterson, Anne Bancroft, Jeff MacNelly, John Ritter, Sir Frederick Ashton, Rita Rudner, animator Tim Walker, Baz Luhrmann is 61

1179- Feast of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval female composer.

1880- The L.A. Athletic Club opened.

1925- In Mexico City, a streetcar crashed into a schoolbus carrying 14 year old Frida Kahlo. It fractured her pelvis when she had already been dealing with polio. The difficulty she suffered recovering had a great impact on her painting.

1932- Mickey Mouse short Mickey’s Whoopee Party, premiered.

1965- If you ever wondered what could be funny about being held in a Nazi prison camp you could watch the TV sitcom HOGANS HEROES, which debuted this day. Commandant Colonel Klink was acted by Werner Klemperer, whose father was the famous orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer. They had to flee Germany because they were Jewish. Sargent Schulz and the Frenchman LeBeau were also played by actors who survived the Holocaust- John Banner and Robert Clary. 

1966- The original series of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE premiered this night. Starring Peter Graves, Martin Landau, Barbera Bain, Greg Morris and Peter Lupus.

1971- RCA gave up and pulled out of the retail computer market.

1972- Filmation’s The Groovie Ghoulies" debuts.

1975- Psychotherapist Lucile Yaney opened one of LA’s most unusual restaurants- the Inn of the Seventh Ray in Topanga Canyon. Built on the site of a country house 1920’s evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson brought her toyboy lovers.  Premiere organic cuisine with berry wines, then you can browse the store for power crystals, I-Ching sticks and literature from Alastair Crowley and Edgar Cayce. Faaar- Out!

1991- The TV show Home Improvement debuted, making a star out of stand-up comedian Tim Allen.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Sept. 16, 2023

Birthdays: J.C. Penney (James Cash Penney), B.B. King, Gen. Mikhail Kutuzov, Anne Francis, Linda Darnel, Nadia Boulanger, Alan Funt, George Chakiris, Peter Falk, Ed Begley Jr, Jennifer Tilly, Molly Shannon, Marvin P. Middlemark 1919-the inventor of the rabbit ears TV antenna, Lauren Bacall, Mickey Rourke is 68

1920- Enrico Caruso made his last recordings for the Victor Recording Company.

1941- CBS radio premiered the Arkansas Traveler Show. In it, bandleader Bob Burns played a strange instrument made out of a stovepipe he called a Bazooka. Later, when the US Army issued the first hand-held rocket launchers to their infantry, the GI’s called the things bazookas because it resembled Burn’s instrument.

1949- Chuck Jones "Fast and Furrious" the First Road Runner-Coyote cartoon.

1953- The St. Louis Browns Baseball team moved to Baltimore and became the Baltimore Orioles.

1963- The Beatles record “She Loves You-Yeah,Yeah,Yeah.” on the Swan Records label.

1963- The sci-fi thriller series The Outer Limits premiered- Do not attempt to adjust your television- We control the horizontal, We control the vertical, etc.

1964- The Peter Potamus Show debuted. Time for my hippo-hurricane-holler.

1965- The Dean Martin Show premiered on NBC. “Well, Ah think I’m gonna go to da couch now..”

1966- the last LOOK magazine published.

1966- The new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center had its opening night. A performance of Samuel Barbers Anthony & Cleopatra sung by Leontyne Price and Justino Diaz. It was a near disastrous night because Ms Price got locked in a pyramid for awhile, and couldn’t get out.

1968- Presidental candidate Richard Nixon appears on the TV comedy "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" and says:" Sock it to Me?"

1983- Arnold Schwarzenegger became a US citizen.

1984- “Miami Vice” TV show debuted.

1985- Steve Jobs was kicked out of the chairmanship of Apple. CEO John Scully denies he actually fired Jobs. He just stripped him of all his authority and this day Jobs quit. Steve Jobs always claimed he had been fired. Jobs went on to run his new company Next and Pixar. In Dec 1996, after failing revenue, Steve Jobs was invited back to take over Apple. At the time of his death in 2007, Apple was the richest company on earth. 

2003- Sheb Wooley, the composer of the 1951 hit “One Eyed, One Horned, Flying Purple People Eater” and the theme song of the TV show Hee Haw and the originator of the Wilhelm Scream, died in Henderson Tennessee at age 82.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 15, 2023

Birthdays: James Fennimore Cooper, William Howard Taft, Porfirio Diaz- Mexican President 1884-1911, Agatha Christie, Cannonball Adderly, Bruno Walter, Yuri Noorstein, Merlin Olsen, Oliver Stone, Jean Renoir (film director and son of painter August Renoir), Alexander Korda, Jesse Norman, Robert Benchley, Albert Whitlock, Ron Shelton, Fay Wray, Tommy Lee Jones is 77, Prince Harry is 39

1928- Walt Disney staged the first recording session for the music for Steamboat Willie. He was unhappy with the results, so he pawned his car to raise the cash to make a second recording session happen. Steamboat Willie premiered on Nov. 18th.

1930- The first Blondie comic strip. 

1930- Hoagy Carmichael first recorded “Georgia on My Mind”.

1936- MGM producer Irving Thallberg, the "Boy Genius" of Hollywood, died of a pneumonia at age 37. He was the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon". 

1957-The TV series Bachelor Father starring John Forsythe premiered.

1960- The Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse cartoon show premiered.

1965- "Green Acres" TV show debuted. Arnold Ziffel the pig gains national prominence.

1971 –The environmental political movement Greenpeace founded in Vancouver by twelve members of the Don’t Make a Wave Committee.

1998- Rap star Coolio is busted in Lawndale Cal for driving on the wrong side of the road, using an expired license and having a 9mm pistol and bag of marijuana in his car. 

2009- Waking Sleeping Beauty by Don Hahn premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 14, 2023

Birthdays: Lao Tzu -604 BC, Caliph Al Mansur -the founder of Bagdhad-711AD, Dr. Ivan Pavlov, Charles Dana Gibson, Margaret Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood, Clayton Moore-TV’s Lone Ranger, Luigi Cherubini, Hollywood Producer Hal Wallis, Joey Heatherton, Bowser from Sha-Na-Na., Walter Koenig-Star Trek’s Mr. Chekov, Nicole Williamson, Sam Neill is 76

1927- Modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan died in freak car accident when her long scarf tangled in the spokes of her Bugatti sportscar and snapped her neck. She was 50. The scarf was a gift from the mother of future movie director Preston Sturges. When she heard the news, writer Gertrude Stein said, “Affectations can sometimes prove dangerous.”

1927- Gene Austin recorded “My Blue Heaven”. 

1955- Little Richard recorded the song, “Tutti Fruitti. While working as a dishwasher at a Greyhound bus station in Macon Georgia, Richard Penniman sent a demo to producer Art Rupe. Rupe set up a recording session in New Orleans. During a pause in the session, Richard as a joke started singing a bawdy song, “Wop Bop Aloo Bop, Tutti-Fruitti, Good Bootie.” His producer Bumps Blackwell heard something there, so he brought in a local songwriter Dorothy La Bostrie to clean up the lyrics. When she finished, they only had 15 minutes of paid studio-time left, so Little Richard had to nail it in just three takes. One of the landmarks of Rock & Roll was born.

1957- TV show “Have Gun Will Travel” with Richard Boone as Paladin, premiered.

The head writer of this show was Gene Roddenberry, who would later create Star Trek.

1967- The first appearance of Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) on the Batman TV show.

1968- Filmation's "the Archies" Show. "Sugar...ah, honey honey...."

1972- Premiere of the TV show The Waltons. “Goodnight John-Boy.”

1978- The Mork & Mindy Show with a young Robin Williams. “Na-Nuu, Na-Nuu.”

1985- Disney's TV shows "Gummi Bears and Wuzzles premiered."

1987- Filmation’s Bravestarr debuted.

2002- Millennium Actress by director Saytoshi Kon premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 13, 2023

 

Birthdays: Gen "BlackJack" Pershing, Clara Schumann, Milton Hershey, Arnold Schoenburg, Yma Sumac (Star of Brazilian jazz- real name Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo, from Ichocán, Peru. Descendent of Inca royalty), Jacqueline Bissett is 78, Frank Marshal, Laura Secord, Jesse L. Lasky, Richard Kiel – Jaws in the James Bond movies, Maurice Jarre, Mae Questel the voice of Betty Boop. Roald Dahl, Don Bluth is 86, Fred Silverman “The Man with the Golden Gut.” Tyler Perry is 54 

1835- The Tuba invented. Deep-throated horns called Tubas were used by the Romans.  Modern tubas awaited creation of the valve. This day Prussian Patent No. 19 was granted to Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz for a “basstuba” in F1. The original Wieprecht and Moritz instrument used five valves of the Berlinerpumpen type that were the forerunners of the modern piston valve.  

1899- First man was hit by a car. (74th and Central Park West in New York City).  

1916- A Tennessee judge ordered Margo the circus elephant to be hanged for killing three men.  It took a railroad crane and steel cable, but it sure taught her a lesson!  

1928- Riding high on their big hit film The Jazz Singer, the Warner Bros. bought out First National Pictures and move into their big Burbank studio lot, where they are still today.  

1945- NY gangster Bugsy Siegel bought a 30-acre roadside tract from a widow in Las Vegas. On it will rise the Las Vegas Casino hotel-resort, the Flamingo. There were two little hayseed casinos in Vegas already, but the big glitzy hotel strip of mega casinos was Bugsy's dream.  

1961- TV sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? debuted. 

1965 – Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster was released in the U.S. 

1969- Hanna & Barbera's "Scooby-Doo, where are you?" and "Dastardly and Mutley and their Flying Machines" premiered.  

1974- The Rockford Files TV series with James Garner debut. 

1974- Kolchak the Night Stalker mystery TV series with Darin McGavin premiered. It was the show that inspired Chris Carter to create The X-Files.

 1979- On his birthday, Animator Don Bluth quit Walt Disney Studios, taking a third of the top artists with him. Bluth becomes Disney's most serious rival since Max Fleischer and helped sparked the animation renaissance of the 1990s. A whole new group of young talent, "bluthies", exert great influence throughout the animation business.  

1993- The Animaniacs Show premiered. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 12, 2023

Birthdays: Piero 'the Fatuous' de Medici, King Francis I of France-1494, H.L. Mencken, Maurice Chevalier, Ben Blue, Jesse Owens, Billy Gilbert, Barry White, Alfred A. Knopf, Rachael Ward, Michael Odaatje- author of The English Patient, Margaret Hamilton, Brian de Palma, Ian Holm, Joe Pantoliano “Joey Pants”is 71, Hans Zimmer is 66, Jennifer Hudson is 43.

1846- Poet Elizabeth Barrett secretly eloped with poet Robert Browning and were married at St. Marlybone Church in Durham England. Her father had refused his permission for the match, but the Browning’s went ahead anyway, then ran off to Italy. She never saw her father again, but she was inspired to write the sonnet “ How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

1910- Gustav Mahler’s Symphony # 8, The Symphony of a Thousand, premiered in Munich.

1932- In his Thimble Theatre comic strip E.C. Segar introduced Bluto. A minor character in the comic strip, the Max Fleischer animated cartoon raised him to be Popeye’s perennial nemesis.

1940- In southern France near Montignac, a pet dog fell through a crack in the ground into an underground chamber. When four boys follow in to retrieve the dog, they discover the Lascaux Caves Ice-Age paintings, where, a Stone Age people created some of their earliest artwork.

1941-THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE ENDED- Everyone went back to work after the NLRB, with a lot of behind the scenes pressure from the Bank of America, settled the dispute. Walt Disney had to recognize the cartoonists guild, give screen credits, double the salaries of low paid workers retroactive to May 29th and re-hire animator Art Babbitt.  Walt Disney immediately got on a train to Washington to try and convince the feds to reverse the decision or get an injunction in court. He failed. Many of the lead strikers were made to feel so unwelcome, they left anyway and formed UPA Studios. Ironically within a few months the war would break out and artists who had been bitter foes would be compelled to work side by side in the U.S. Army Picture Unit.

1954- Television comedian Ernie Kovacs married Edie Adams, the Muriel Cigar Girl. They married in Mexico, and at the insistence of Kovacs used a priest who read the entire service in Spanish, a language neither of them understood.

1953- THE RED REDHEAD? McCarthy investigators accused TV star Lucille Ball of being a communist. Lucy was listening to Walter Winchell on his popular radio show when he made reference to a “famous redhead” who was being investigated as a communist. She later found out to her horror that it was her! 

 She and husband Desi Arnez immediately went and testified that Lucy’s grandfather was an old-line Socialist who routinely enrolled all his grandkids in the Communist Party as their birthday present. America wouldn’t stand to see their favorite TV family go down, so the matter quickly blew over. Years later Desi would condescendingly joke:" Lucy didn’t even know who the mayor of L.A. was.”” The only thing that was red about Lucy was her hair, and even that wasn’t real!"

1957- Market researcher James M. Vicary explains at a press conference the theory of Subliminal Advertising. His company proposed to unconsciously compel people to buy products by flashing messages at 1/24th of a second during movies. Even though the concept was discredited (givetomsitomoney) by the American Psychiatric Association  (givetomsitomoney) a national panic ensued as people feared they were being brainwashed.

1965- The Beatles release 'Yesterday'.

1966-"Gee Mr. French..."  Family Affair premiered on TV.

1966- The Monkees TV show premiered. Two young television executives Bert Schneider and Sam Rafaelson convinced their network to make "A Hard Day's Night" for American television. Of the four kids in the make-believe band Mike Nesmith was the only full-time musician. The others were actors. Micky Dolenz had to be taught how to play the drums the first day of shooting. Insiders nicknamed them "The Pre-Fab Four".  Still, the show was a major hit, won Emmy Awards and all their albums went gold.  The producers took that success and used it to finance the hit film "Easy Rider". Mike Nesmith later inherited a fortune from his mom developing Liquid Paper and used his fortune to help start MTV. 

1986- The film attraction Captain EO, opened at Disneyland Anaheim. Produced by George Lucas, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Michael Jackson.

1992- Anthony Perkins, the star of Hitchcock’s Psycho, died of HIV/AIDS. His widow, Berry Berensen the sister of actress Marisa Berensen, died in one of the hijacked airliners that plunged into the World Trade Center on 9-11.

2003- Country-western singer Johnny Cash died of diabetes at 71.

2005- Disneyland Hong Kong opened.

2010- At the Video Music Awards, singer Lady Gaga wore a dress made from 50 lbs. of raw meat. 

Tom Sito's ANimation Almanac for Sept. 11, 2023

Birthdays: O. Henry, D.H. Lawrence, Brian DePalma, Hedy Lamarr, Lola Falana, Paul "Bear" Bryant, Tom Landry, Kristy McNichol, Lola Falana, Pinto Colvig the voice of Goofy, Grumpy, Pluto & Bozo the Clown, Peter Tosh, Virginia Madsen, Amy Madigan, Moby, Brad Bird is 66.

1841- British artist John Goffe Rand invented oil paint in a squeezable metal tube. Replacing pig bladders and glass syringes.

1847- Stephen Fosters song “Oh Susanna” first published.

1857- Singer Jenny Lynde, the Swedish Nightingale, first performed in America.

1914- W.C. Handy's Saint Louis Blues, the first true Jazz recording to gain national popularity.  Also called the Birth of the Blues. Myron “Grim” Natwick, the cartoonist who would one day create Betty Boop, did the artwork for the music coversheet. For this he was paid one gold dollar. 

1947-Radio Bejing went on the air.

1951-METROPOLIS TO MOSCOW?  Robert Shayne, the actor who played the Inspector Henderson character for television’s Superman show appeared before the House American Activities Committee accused of being a communist. He was led off the set by the FBI in handcuffs as George Reeves (Superman) and Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen) protested vigorously. He was eventually cleared of all charges and continued to do small parts in TV until his retirement in 1990.

1960- Terrytoon's Deputy Dawg TV show.

1960- Nancy Sinatra married Tommy Sands.

1966- "Kimba the White Lion" debuts in the U.S.

1967-The Beatles began filming the Magical Mystery Tour.

1971- The “Jackson Five” Saturday morning cartoon show.

1972- The BBC quiz show Mastermind first broadcast. The shows creator Malcolm Muggeridge claimed he got the idea while a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaysia. In truth the show resembles an interrogation. Some postman sits in a dark room with a single spotlight in his face while people shoot questions at him about the lesser known works of Thomas Hardy, etc.

1987-Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" wins MTV's Best Video Award.

1987- Reggae great Peter Tosh and two others are shot and killed by

thieves who were robbing his Kingston, Jamaica home.

1992- Actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), began a second career as the voice of The Joker in Batman, The Animated Series.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 10, 2023

   Birthdays: Fae Wray, Ian Fleming, Robert Wise, Raymond Scott (composer of pop songs Carl Stalling loved to score into Bugs Bunny cartoons), Margaret Trudeau, Amy Irving, Arnold Palmer, Charles Kuralt, Jose Feliciano, Karl Lagerfield, Chris Columbus, Charles Simonyi- who designed Microsoft Word, Colin Firth is 63

1608- Captain John Smith was elected leader of the Jamestown Colony. This advances the low-born adventurer over the heads of several gentlemen like Captain Wingfield and Captains Martin and Newport. But since they first landed in April, the rigors of the Virginia wilderness proved that John Smith knew best how to run the colony. 

1894- London taxi driver George Smith is the first man ever fined for drunk driving an automobile.

1907-The first Neiman Marcus dept. store opens in Dallas.

1920- Silent movie star Olive Thomas, nicknamed America's Kid Sister, partied a little too hard at the Dead Rat Cafe in Paris. It was said the 25 year old died of an overdose of cocaine and alcohol. Another theory was she accidentally overdosed on mercury bichloride liquid solution used by her husband to treat his syphilis. The scandal started the first investigation of drugs in Hollywood. It netted an army captain named Spaulding who admitted that film stars like Thomas, Mabel Normand and Ramon Navarro were regular clients for prescription drugs.  In 1928 Groucho Marx put in his Broadway show Animal Crackers the song Hooray for Captain Spaulding.

1926- The body of screen idol Rudolph Valentino arrived in Hollywood after a mammoth funeral in New York where he had died two weeks before. Hollywood, knowing a publicity coup when it saw one, immediately staged a second spectacular funeral.

1953 - Swanson Foods sells its first TV dinner. 

1955- the TV series 'Gunsmoke' premiered.

1963- The First New York Film Festival opened with Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel.

1966- H&B's Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles debut.

1968- Hanna Barbera's Space Ghost and Dino Boy' debut.

1972- Premiere of the TV special Liza with a Z. Bob Fosse directed and choreographed the one woman show of the spangled 23 year old. 

1977- H&B’s “Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels’ show, also the Three Robonic Stooges.”

1977- H&B’s The Laugh-a-lympics”

1981- Picasso left instructions in his will that his famous painting Guernica never return to Spain during the Franco dictatorship. “Only when freedom returns to Spain.” It was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in NY for decades. This day Guernica was at last returned to Spain.

1993- The TV series The X Files premiered. The truth is out there.

2009- The first D-23 opened in Anaheim. It is an annual Comicon just for Disneyanna fans. D-23 means the year the Walt Disney Company began, 1923.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 9, 2023

Birthdays: Antonio Frescobaldi, Captain William Bligh, Jimmy the Greek Snyder, Joe Theismann, Cliff Robertson, Angela Cartwright, Alf Landon, Dee-Dee Sharpe who sang the 60's R&B hit the Mashed Potato, Michael Keaton, Don Mattingly, Otis Redding, Anita Ekberg, Topol, Colonel Lyman Sanders the creator of Kentucky Fried Chicken, James Hilton-writer who created the name for paradise- Shangri-La, in his novel Lost Horizons. Adam Sandler is 57, Michelle Williams is 43, Hugh Grant is 64

1776- The Continental Congress officially changed the name of the United Colonies to the United States of America.

1892 - E E Barnard at Lick discovered Amalthea, the 5th moon of Jupiter.

1908- THE PATENTS TRUST- Thomas Edison, Charles Pathe and Leon Gaumont form the Motion Picture Patents Group. Called the "Trust". Their attempt to monopolize movie production and strangle off the independents had a lot to do with the early filmmakers relocating to Los Angeles. Otherwise the film capitol of the world would have been Ft. Lee, New Jersey.  The only positive result of the trust was they enforced a regular industry standard for film stock of 35 mm running at 24 frames per second. It seems the Mitchell Camera Company was developing a motorized motion picture camera to replace the hand crank variety, but they needed an official speed to set it at. In a contentious meeting of the Trust held at the Waldorf Astoria no one could settle on a single speed. Finally, the compromise was made to make it the number of delegates in the room- 24.

1926 – The National Broadcasting Company or NBC created by the Radio Corporation of America, RCA. Under the direction of David Sarnoff it became the powerhouse network of broadcasting, recording and later television.

1939- The first Andy Panda cartoon.

1939- The first day of shooting on Charlie Chaplin’s film the Great Dictator. The first day was the ghetto street scene. One of his distributors grumbled “By the time Chaplin finishes his movie, people won’t even remember who Hitler ever was.”

1949- “Top of the World, Ma!” White Heat, with James Cagney premiered.

1950 - 1st use of TV laugh track, invented by Hank McCune.

1951 - 1st broadcast of the soap opera" Love of Life " on CBS-TV.

1956- Elvis Presley appeared on nationwide television on the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan himself had vowed never to have the kid on his show but caved in to network pressure. 

1965- LA Dodger Pitcher Sandy Koufax struck out 14 Cubs to win his perfect game and 4th shutout in one season. 

1967- Jay Ward’s show George of the Jungle premiered, with Super Chicken and Tom Slick sequences.

1982- Princess Grace of Monaco, the former movie actress Grace Kelly, died in a car accident on the mountainous hill roads of Monaco. She was 52. Twenty years earlier in the film To Catch a Thief, Alfred Hitchcock had her drive her car at dangerous speeds over the exact same hairpin turns.

1985- She-Ra the Princess of Power premiered on TV.

1995- Pinky and the Brain premiered.

2002- Martin Strehl, "the Swimming Slovenian" completed his swim down the entire length of the Mississippi River from Lake Athabasaca Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico in 68 days. To prevent infection from swallowing industrial pollution in the water, he daily gargled with Hydrogen Peroxide.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Sept. 8, 2023

Birthdays: Richard the Lionhearted, Michel Caravaggio, Antonin Dvorak, Patsy Cline, Jimmy Rogers the Singing Brakeman, Peter Sellars, Sid Caesar, Freddy Mercury, Lyndon LaRouche, Ewell Gibbons- natural food advocate, Heather Thomas, David Arquette is 51, Jonathan Taylor-Thomas, Pink is 44, Alvy Ray Smith is 80

1760- Montreal, the last French stronghold in Canada and seat of the French Governor, fell to British troops. Governor Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered all of New France to the Anglaise.

1771- Mission San Gabriel founded by Fra Junipero Serra.

1892- Writer Francis Bellamy published "The Pledge of Allegiance" in the Youth's Companion magazine as a vehicle to instill a sense of Patriotism in America's youth. The way Bellamy wanted you to salute the flag was in the ancient Roman style, a stiff right arm upraised, plan extended. Then in the 1930s when Adolf in Germany made that salute “questionable?’ It was changed to the hand over your heart. The phrase ”under God,” was shoe-horned in the commie-paranoid 1950s. Rev. Bellamy was a lifelong socialist also liked to put in his sermons that Jesus was too.

1920 - US Air Mail service begins (NYC to SF)

1921 - 1st Miss America crowned -Margaret Gorman of Washington DC.

1926- Screen actress Greta Garbo skipped her own wedding and left John Gilbert alone at the altar. They still stayed part-time lovers and lived together.

1930 - Richard Drew invented Scotch tape.

1935-A vocal group called "4 Joes from Hoboken" get their first break on Major Bo's radio show. One of the singers is a young man named Frank Sinatra.

1935- Top Hollywood musical director Buzby Berkeley (42nd Street, Footlight Parade) got drunk at a party in Malibu and drove his Cadillac head on into oncoming traffic on Pacific Coast Highway near where Gladstones Fish Restaurant is today. He piled into three other cars. Berkeley was unhurt but three people died and four were injured. After three trials for 2nd degree murder Berkeley was found innocent. 

1939- British film director Alfred Hitchcock began shooting his first Hollywood picture- Rebecca, for David Selznick.

1946 - SF 49ers play their first AAFC game, losing to the NY Yankees 21-7.

1954- Akira Kurosawa’s film The Seven Samurai premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

1960- Penquin Books was charged with obscenity for the first large public paperback printing of D.H. Lawrence's 'Lady's Chatterley's Lover'.

1965 - Dorothy Dandridge, beautiful black actress (Island in the Sun), dies at 41 in

Hollywood of sleeping pills overdose.

1966- STAR TREK debuts. LA policeman turned screenwriter Gene Roddenberry pitched it to Desilu Productions as, “Wagon Train in Outer Space.” The first episode “The Man Trap” aired this night. The show was produced by Lucille Ball’s production company, Desilu. That season Star Trek ranked 52nd in the Nielsen ratings, behind #1 "Iron Horse" starring Dale Robertson, and "Mr. Terrific". It was canceled after two seasons but a letter writing campaign won it a third season. Star Trek then found a new life in syndication. 

The cult fan base called Trekkies kept the memory of the show alive for ten years until Paramount revived it to cash in on the Star Wars-Close Encounters craze for Sci-Fi. First as a Filmation animated series, and then from 1979 a series of feature films, then spin-offs. 

Frank Sinatra once said: "The only good thing to come out of the 1960s was Star Trek." 

1966 - "That Girl" starring Marlo Thomas and Ted Bessell premiered on ABC-TV

1967 - Surveyor 5 launched; made a soft landing on Moon, Sept 10.

1971- Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center opened. It was planned in the early sixties by John and Jackie Kennedy, although then unaware that their name would be on it. The performance featured the debut of Leonard Bernstein’s choral work “Mass”.

50 Years-1973- Hanna Barbera’s The Superfriends premiered on ABC TV.

50 Years 1973- Star Trek the Animated Series by Filmation premiered.

1974- Daredevil Evil Knievel in his most famous stunt, jumped the Snake River Gorge in a rocket powered motorcycle.

1979- The decomposing body of actress Jean Seberg (Breathless, Paint Your Wagon), was discovered in the back seat of a car in Paris. She had been missing since Aug. 30th. Today it is assumed she committed suicide. She had been in an affair with a member of the radical Black Panther Party and was under continual harassment by the FBI and other Federal authorities. She was 40.

1986- The Chicago based television talk show the Oprah Winfrey Show went national and became one of the most successful talk shows ever.

Sept. 7, 2023

Birthdays: Grandma Moses, Dame Edith Sitwell, Elia Kazan, Richard Roundtree, Sinclair Lewis, Anthony Quayle. Peter Lawford, Daniel Inouye, Susan Blakely, Shannon Elizabeth, Sonny Rawlins, Toby Jones is 56, Julie Kavner the voice of Marge Simpson, animator Fred Moore. Don Messick the voice of Scooby Doo, Leslie Jones is 56

1907 - Sutro's ornate Cliff House in San Francisco was destroyed by fire.

1911- French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire was the man who coined the term “surrealism’. He was such an outspoken, radical guy, that Parisian authorities felt he must be up to something. So when the Mona Lisa was stolen out of the Louvre, Apollinaire was arrested. There was no evidence and he was released shortly after. The real thief was a disgruntled waiter who once worked as a security guard at the museum.

1957- Actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini separate.

1961- MGM released Switchin Kittens, Tom & Jerry directed and animated by Gene Deitch in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

1963- Mushi productions cartoon series," Tetsuan Atom" debuts in the U.S as Astro Boy.

1968- Led Zeppelin (billed as The Yardbirds) made their live debut at the Teen Club Box 45 in Gladsaxe, Denmark.

1968- Hanna Barbera’s The Banana Splits Show.

1978 - Keith Moon, rock drummer of the Who, died of a drug overdose at 31. He actually overdosed the drug he was prescribed to treat his drug abuse. 

1984- The Walt Disney Board formally fired Walt’s son-in-law CEO Ron Miller.

1991- Walt Disney’s Darkwing Duck aired.

1996- Rap artist and actor Tupac Shakur was shot to death gangland style in Las Vegas Nevada. He was standing up in the open roof of a BMW 750 sedan talking to some girls when a Cadillac pulled along side and opened fire. In 2002 the LA Times concluded an investigation that rapper Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G. hired the killer and provided the gun. Notorious B.I.G. was himself shot to death shortly after.

1998- Google started.