Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 31, 2024

Birthdays: Henri Matisse, General George C. Marshall, Odetta (real name Holmes Felicious Gordon), Simon Weisenthal, Virginia Davis, Pola Negri, Jules Styne, Sarah Miles, Donna Summer, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Arden, Tim Matheson, John Denver, Dianne Von Furstenberg, Psy, Ben Kingsley-born Khrishna Banji is 81, Anthony Hopkins is 87, Val Kilmer is 65, Gong Li is 59 

 

 

1862-3 - SLAVERY ENDED IN THE UNITED STATES- In a service at Boston's Music Hall Abolitionist leaders Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubmann, Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison sang 'Battle Hymn of the Republic" and celebrated midnight when the Emancipation Proclamation would officially take effect.

 

1879- Thomas Edison did a public demonstration of his new invention the Light Bulb. Special commuter trains brought people to Menlo Park New Jersey for the show.

 

1881- Los Angeles became the first U.S. city to be lit entirely by electricity.

 

 

1901-Los Angeles Angel's Flight cable tram opened. It closed down in the 1980's but was restored in 1996, then broke down a few years later.

 

 

1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the Chimes of Big Ben around the world.

 

1929- New York's "21" Club opened as a speakeasy. Barkeep Jack Kramer opened the hangout at 21 west 52nd street. With a wine cellar hidden behind a two-foot thick stone wall door. The feds raided 21 once and found nothing after hours of searching. When they went back outside all their cars had been towed away by NYPD traffic cops. It seems the Mayor of New York Jimmy Walker was having dinner in the wine cellar with his mistress and was annoyed by the intrusion. In subsequent years it was normal to see movie stars, Lucky Lucciano, J. Edgar Hoover and John F. Kennedy eating side by side. Richard Nixon loved their tater-tots.  21 Club closed in 2021 due to covid.

 

1941- A Warner Bros memo dated this day from producer Hal Wallis office announced that the movie to be made from a play by Murray Bennett called “Everybody Goes to Rick’s” has been renamed “Casablanca”. This was to capitalize on an already popular film title “Algiers” with Charles Boyer “come with me to ze Casbah” etc.. Humphrey Bogart got the lead after George Raft first turned it down. 

 

 

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival. 

 

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

 

1952- At the Cosmopolitan Club in East St. Louis, bandleader Johnny Johnson had a problem. Scheduled to play his regular gig at New Years, one of his trio suffered a stroke. Johnson looked around for a substitute musician and settled on a young construction worker trying to break in show business named Chuck Berry. Johnson played Boogie-Woogie piano, and Chuck Berry listened to country western on the radio and invented his own up-tempo variations. The two of them collaborating evolved a distinctly new sound we now recognize as Rock & Roll. 

 

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Spielberg called it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here, was because Chuck Jones & Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for the cartoon.

 

1965- “Dot and the Line”, Academy Award winning cartoon short opened. Directed by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble.  

 

1965- Soupy Sales hosted one of the more successful kiddie shows on daytime TV. In an age when very few adults were monitoring children’s content, Soupy often improvised his own comedy bits between introducing old cartoons. 

 This day Soupy jokingly asked his kiddie audience to go into mommy’s purse while she was asleep, take out all those green pieces of paper with presidents on them and mail them in to Soupy Sales c/o the station. All that week the station received thousands of dollars in small envelopes. The resultant outcry from parents and consumer groups got Soupy Sales fired off the air. 

 

1967- The Ice Bowl- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 for the NFL championship ( the Superbowl had not been invented yet). It was nicknamed the Ice Bowl because the game was played in Green Bay in the outdoors in below zero weather, with a wind chill of 40 below zero. Referees’ whistles froze to their lips.

 

1979- The debut of Gary Larson’s daily newspaper cartoon The Far Side.

 

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson had been living on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snickers bars.

 

1995- The last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterston. He just decided one day to end it, before it became stale.

 

1999-2000 - The Y2K MANIA. While the world prepared to celebrate the new century and the Third Millennium, the American tabloid media whipped up fear over a theory that the change from 1999-2000 would cause most computers to crash. Planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles would launch themselves, and marauders would rule the streets like something out of Mad Max. The US Government spent $65 million to prepare for the crisis.  But at midnight absolutely nothing happened. Even older less sophisticated computers were unaffected, and everything ran normally. Meanwhile many of the US public shivered at home and watched the rest of the world have fun on television.

 

2001-2002- The European Union currency exchange went into effect. Adieu, Adios and Ciao to the French Franc, Belgian Franc, Italian Lire, German Deutschmark, Austrian Schilling, Dutch Gulden, Greek Drachma, Irish Pound, Portuguese Escudo and Spanish Peseta. Welcome the Euro.

 

2020- Because of the global covid pandemic, many world capitols cancelled their large public New Years celebrations or held them virtually.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025!

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 30, 2024

Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman, Russ Tamblyn, Tiger Woods is 48, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary, Douglas Engelbart the inventor of the computer mouse, Lebron James is 40, Eliza Dushku is 44

  

 

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to royalty, or a rich patron, but to the general public. 

 

1689- The opera Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell premiered in London.

 

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary wrote Frankenstein two years later.

 

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

 

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

 

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571. After the tragedy building codes were enforced that public buildings have exit doors that always open outwards, and some form of firefighting equipment always be on the premises. The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

 

1924- Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced that the gaseous system Andromeda was not just a nebula cloud but another galaxy with orbiting planets like our Milky Way. The first observed proof of a planetary system outside our own.

 

 

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the first L.A. Freeway, opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. Today called the Pasadena Freeway 110. (interstate U.S. route 66 was in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936.)

 

 

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. "When I was just a little child, as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds … don't like many people." She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her death in 1990. Friends said she watched a lot of television and loved The Flintstones, and Hollywood Squares.

 

 

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

 

1988- the Pixar short Tin Toy released in theaters. The first CG short to win an Oscar. (Luxo Jr. was nominated but did not win.) Pixar’s first feature film Toy Story initially began as an attempt to capitalize on the success of Tin Toy, as a TV special. Tinny’s Xmas.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 29, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Flavius Titus, Pablo Casals, Madame de Pompadour, Andrew Johnson, Charles Goodyear, Gelsey Kirkland, Dina Merrill, Tom Bradley, Mary Tyler Moore, Ray Nitschke, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Flanders, Ted Danson is 77, Marianne Faithful is 78, Paula Poundstone, Jon Voight is 86, Jude Law is 52, Patricia Clarkson, Animator Duncan Marjoribanks..

 

1913- Cecil B. DeMille had been sent to the West by his New York partners to scout out a possible place to move to escape Edison's Patents Trust.

After scouting several cities with year round sunshine, this day C.B. telegraphed his partners back in New York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose. Have proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called Hollywood for $75 a month.” His partner Sam Goldwyn cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not make long commitment.” DeMille began shooting the Squaw Man, the first official Hollywood Film.

 

1916- James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” published.

 

1939- Scientist William Shockley first noted in his laboratory notebook that it should be possible to replace vacuum tubes with something called a semi-conductor. Eight years later he led the team that developed the transistor.

 

 

1941- Disney animator Bill Tytla told Time Magazine in an interview about creating "Dumbo": "I don't know a damn thing about elephants!"

 

1946- Milt Caniff published his last Terry and the Pirates comic strip. Caniff moved on to begin his Steve Canyon strip, which he had better ownership of.   

 

 

1964 – To create the first pilot of the TV series Star Trek, the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise was delivered by model maker Rick Datin, Jr, based on the design created by Star Trek production artist Walter “Matt” Jefferies.  The “miniature” was 11 feet long!

 

1965- First day shooting on Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was an indoor set at Elstree Studios in England, and the first setup was the inspection of the excavation of the Monolith in the moon crater Tycho.

 

1967- The Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles first aired.

 

1968- Animator Bill Tytla died at age 64, from complications of a stroke. He had several strokes over the previous six years.

 

1972- LIFE Magazine ended publication.

 

1974- While staying at the Polynesian Village in Disneyworld Florida, John Lennon signed the last papers dissolving the Beatles. The band had broken up in 1970, but it took four more years to unravel all their vast financial holdings. The other three members had already signed.

 

1975- Euell Gibbons, early advocate for natural foods, died of a stomach ailment.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 28, 2024

 birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff, Edgar Winter, Stan Lee, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12), Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber, Denzel Washington is 70, Maggie Smith, Sienna Miller is 43, Animator teacher Rick Farmiloe

 

 

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capucines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in the front row jumped for fear of getting wet. 

 

 

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris. There really lived a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who helps another man romance his girlfriend Roxanne. 

 

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

 

1941- Paramount Pictures called Max Fleischer to their business offices in New York. There they told him his contract with the studio would not be renewed and he was fired. Paramount had seized direct control of Max Fleischer Productions in May and put Max and Dave on notice. Dave Fleischer took the hint and left around Thanksgiving. Max was probably holding out that if Hoppity Goes to Town was a hit he might still work out an accommodation. But such was not to be.

 

1944- On The Town, a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

 

1945- In Los Angeles, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and his wife became U.S. citizens. Actor Edward G. Robinson was his friend and witness.

 

1950- The first stretch of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles was dedicated.

 

1951- The British film A Christmas Carol with the memorable performance of Alastair Sim as Scrooge premiered in the USA. 

 

1963-Happy Birthday the Daleks. In the first season of the BBC TV show Dr. Who, this day Dr. Who first met the Daleks.

 

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one on the pop charts.

 

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

 

1973- Pres. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. It saved animals like Bald Eagles, Buffalo, Grizzly Bears and Gray Whales from extinction.

 

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach Boys, but he had a pretty bad drinking and drug habit. He was once friendly with the Manson Family. 

Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier.  Wilson recalled this very spot was where after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementos overboard. He wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “, i.e.-diving holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned, he miscalculated the depth and drowned.

Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only one who liked to surf.

 

1987- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles premiered. ________________________________________

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 27, 2024

Birthdays: Johannes Kepler, Linwood Dunn, Marlene Dietrich, Louis Pasteur, Oscar Levant, Sidney Greenstreet, Anna Russell, Dr. William Masters of Masters & Johnson, Leslie Maguire, John Amos, Tovah Feldshuh, Heather O’Rourke, Cokie Roberts, Bollywood star Salman Khan, Gerard Depardieu is 76

 

 

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

 

 

1903- The Barbershop Quartet standard “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of opera star Adelina Patti.

 

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned children who laughed and cheered all night.He placed the kids all amongst the London theatre critics.  Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter Pan. Mr Barrie is.” Barrie stipulated in his will that all monies earned from the play go to the Great St. Ormond Street Home for Boys, where he was raised. Peter Pan also made the name Wendy popular for girls. Barrie said he got from “Fwendy-Wendy” a nickname he had in the home. 

 

1927-"ShowBoat" debuted at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, the musical was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play was written for black baritone Paul Robeson but he could not appear in it until 1932.” Ol’ Man River” became his signature song.

 

 

1935- Radio City Music Hall opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in the world, seating over 6,000. 

 

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler announced their separation.

 

1940- The Pantry Pirate opened. Pluto cartoon directed by Clyde Geronimi. 

 

 

1943- The movie The Song of Bernadette premiered.

 

1947- “ Hey Kids, What Time is It?”  The "Howdy-Doody Show” debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse. The live audience of children was called the Peanut Gallery. Gumby was debuted on the show in 1957.

  

1951- The Crosley car goes into service for the post office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the funny little jeep with the steering wheel on the right side, so the mail deliverer didn’t have to get out of his vehicle to reach every curbside mailbox.

 

1968- Apollo 8 landed safely on Earth after being the first ship to reach the Moon and come back. The brought back spectacular photos of the Earth from space. One of the three astronauts was also the first to barf in deep space, but they aren’t saying which.

 

 

1988- Director Hal Ashby died of colon cancer. He was 59. One of the top Hollywood directors along with Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola, he did not live long enough to be celebrated as much as they would be.

 

2016- Actress-screenwriter Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia in Star Wars), died of cardiac arrest due to sleep apnea while flying from London to Los Angeles. She stopped breathing 15 minutes to landing. The coroner’s report said it was cardiac arrest/deferred. She was 60.  Her mother Debbie Reynolds had a stroke and died the next day at age 84. After her acting career, Fisher was one of the better script doctors in Hollywood. A lot of the witty banter in Don Bluth's Fantasia is hers.

---

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 26, 2024

Birthdays: The Persian prophet Zoroaster (1,000BC), Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Mao Zedong, Charles Babbage, Admiral Dewey, Richard Widmark, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Carlton Fisk, Chris Chambliss, Alan King, Phil Spector, Fred Schepsi, Jared Leto is 52

 

 First Day of the Kwanza Festival. Kwanza is from the Swahili words “Matunda ya kwanzaa” meaning “first fruits” of the harvest. See below-1966.

 

XIX Century England- Today was Boxing Day, a Victorian tradition where you boxed up the leftovers of your Christmas dinner and gave them to the poor. 

 

1909- Famous Western artist Frederick Remington died from an acute appendicitis operation that went badly. Today operations like that are routine and handled by anti-biotics, but back then no such drugs existed. He was 40.

 

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

 

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld had made his first caricature for the Broadway Stage. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend took it to The New York Tribune and sold it. Al figured here's a nifty way to make a living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York Times. 

Al would keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and became a legend himself. In the American Theater, a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. His style influenced the look of Walt Disney’s animated classic Aladdin. At age 94 Al remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2003 he died just shy of age 100, drawing to the end.

 

1935- The premiere of the Warner Bros swashbuckler Captain Blood. Originally supposed to star Robert Donat, when he dropped out for health reasons, they cast a new actor, a debonair young rogue from Tasmania named Errol Flynn. The first teaming of Flynn, 19-year-old Olivia DeHavilland, director Michael Curtiz. Music by Eric Wolfgang Korngold. Olivia DeHavilland died in 2020 at age 104.

 

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

 

1939- Walt Disney Animation moved from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hit economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

 

1941- Goofy cartoon, the Art of Self Defense, premiered.

 

 

1944- Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

  

1956- The premiere of the Japanese monster movie Rodan. Released in Japan as Radon the Sky Monster. The name comes from a flying dinosaur called a Pteranodon.

 

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first pro wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

 

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate African-American culture.

 

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

 

1985- Gorillas in the Mist author and ape anthropologist Diane Fossey was murdered by machete in her lab in Africa.

 

2003- As part of a promotion for a NJ Islanders-NY Rangers Hockey Game the Nassau Coliseum invited all the fans dressed as Santa Claus to parade on the ice. As the hundreds of Santas marched on to the rink several opened their coats to reveal they were actually Rangers supporters. The Islander Santas objected, some shoving ensued and pretty soon the Nassau Coliseum was packed with fist-fighting Santas.

 

2004-TSUNAMI- One of the strongest earthquakes 9.1, recorded in the last 100 years hit the Indian Ocean. The earthquake sent giant tidal waves covering the coastlines of Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, killing over 215,000. Whole beach communities were swept away without warning. Poor fisherman to wealthy vacationers like a Victoria Secret model had to run for their lives.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 25, 2024

Birthdays: (observed) Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus the Christ, 6-4 BC (est) 

 

Other Birthdays: Sir Isaac Newton, Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe’, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Anwar El Sadat. Larry Csonka, Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Maurice Utrillo, Kid Ory, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Clark Clifford, Annie Lennox is 70, Sissie Spacek is 75, CCH Pounder is 72, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, animator Howard Beckerman.

 

HAPPY HANUKKAH ! - Tonight begins the Hebrew Festival of Lights, commemorating the victory in 164BCE of the priest-general Judas Maccabeus (Maccabeus means the Hammer) against the Syrian Greeks, when the re-lit lamp in the purified Temple of Solomon burned for eight days on one day’s oil . Hanukah of Chanukah means Rededication. 

 

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgment was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.

 

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian. 

 

1815- At a Christmas concert in Vienna, Beethoven premiered his NameDay Overture.

 

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.

 

1855- Ice hockey first played in North America at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

 

1870- Siegfried Idyll, written by Richard Wagner as a birthday gift to his wife Cosima, was first performed by a small ensemble outside her door as she awoke this morning at their home in Lucerne Switzerland. 

 

 

1917-"Why Marry?" by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play to win a Pulitzer Prize.

 

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. An Arabian Nights-type fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.

 

1931-The first BBC World Service broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire". Written by Rudyard Kipling.

 

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premiered with its first radio broadcast. In 1975, their studio space, Studio 8H, became the stage of Saturday Night Live.

 

1940- Rogers & Hart’s musical Pal Joey opened on Broadway. It made a star out of a young dancer named Gene Kelly.

 

1946- Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at age 67.  While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C., what are you doing with that? " Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

 

1957- Disney film Old Yeller premiered. 

 

1962- The film of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird premiered with Gregory Peck, Brock Peters, and Robert Duval.

 

1963- Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone released. First animated feature solely directed by Wolfgang,” Woolie” Reitherman.

 

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland. He was 86.

 

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He told his father he was inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

 

 

1993-The release of the animated "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm," not only arguably the best Batman animated film, but some say one of the best Batman feature films of any kind.

 

1998- Fidel Castro allowed the resumption of Christmas celebrations in Cuba, outlawed since 1960.

 

1999- Galaxy Quest opened. Spoof of Star Trek with Tim Allen, Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver.

 

2020- Pixar’s film Soul premiered.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 24, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Revolutionary Patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz, I.F. Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin, Pixar animator Glen McQueen, Ryan Seacrest.

 

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast of Saints Adam and Eve. The western theatrical tradition survived in the form of Mystery Plays, acting out stories from the Bible. So this day they would do a play about the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A tree was brought into the church and decorated to represent the Tree of Life, glass balls representing the forbidden fruit. This is one of the origins of the Christmas Tree. The Feast of Adam and Eve was discontinued during the Reformation.

 

1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died.  Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell. 

 

 

1818- the song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obernsdorf, Austria. Its lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr set to music by a teacher named Franz Gruber. Their little church could not afford an organ, so this first singing of Silent Night was accompanied on a guitar.

 

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cut off most of his left ear after a drunken argument with fellow artist Paul Gaugin over the affection of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to Rachel. She fainted. In 2009, historians theorized his ear was sliced off by Gaugin drunkenly waving an antique sword. The two men agreed to keep the secret to not get Gaugin in trouble.

 

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

 

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

 

1925- The London Evening News published a story “In which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh, and some Bees.” By A.A. Milne. The first book of stories came out the following year.

 

 

1937- Disney short Lonesome Ghosts premiered..

 

1949- The Bugs Bunny cartoon “Rabbit Hood” opened. directed by Chuck Jones.

 

1949- In the comic strip Dick Tracy, Tracy married his longtime girlfriend Tess Trueheart.

 

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered on NBC TV..

 

 

1952- First draft script completed on the MGM film Terror Planet, changed to “ Forbidden Planet.”

 

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

 

1966- Local New York City TV station WPIX premiered The Yule Log. They ran a loop of 6 minutes of a closeup of a log burning in a fireplace in Gracie Mansion, the NY Mayors official residence. The loop ran from 11:00PM to 1:00AM with Christmas carols playing. It made the TV the symbolic family hearth. New Yorkers loved their kitschy Yule Log tradition, and when WPIX tried to replace it in 1989 hundreds of complaints forced them to put it back. The log was videotaped once more in 1970, and that’s been the film ever since. Other places have picked playing a Yule Log like You Tube.

 

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. This Christmas night Frank Borman sent a message to Earth, by reading from Genesis, as they sent back the very first images of the Earthrise, our planet seen from another world. A little blue gem in a black cosmos. Borman read: " Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.…”

To a world in 1968 exhausted by the riots, wars, political polarization and assassinations, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

 

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in.  Japanese sections were directed by Kinji Fukusaku and Toshio Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime. 

 

 

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman. They divorced a few years later.

 

1993- Tombstone premiered. Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton do the OK Corral, finally with accurate facial hair of the period.

 

1997- The first Hanukkah menorah lit in Vatican City.

 

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.." His 3^rd or 4^thpartner, they have lived happily together ever since.

 

2005- Movie star Burt Reynolds grew so tired of the National Enquirer publishing scandalous stories about him that he gathered 300lbs of horseshit from his ranch, then hired a helicopter. At 3:00AM he flew over the Enquirers’ headquarters in Boca Raton Florida, and dumped it all on the building. Much of it hit their large Xmas tree. 

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 23, 2024

Birthdays; Joseph Smith, Paul Hornung, Ruth Roman, Otto Soglow -cartoonist of 'the Little King', Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz actor) Jose Greco, Elizabeth Hartmann, Harry Guardino, Claudio Scimone, Vincent Sardi of Sardi’s restaurant, Bob Barker, Frederick Forrest, Japanese Emperor Akihito, Carla Bruni, Harry Shearer is 81

 

Happy Festivus for the rest of us.

 

1753- A twenty-year old buckskin clad surveyor almost drowned when a raft his party was pulling across the Allegheny River capsized. Miraculously, despite his inability to swim and the icy water, he made it to safety. His name was George Washington.

 

1786- HMS Bounty sets sail from Portsmouth. Their mission to the South Seas was to bring back breadfruit plants and see if the breadfruit could be a cheap dietary staple like potatoes from America, except these would be used to extend the lives of the slaves in Jamaica and Barbados harvesting the sugar cane fields. But Mr. Christian and the crew would mutiny against tyrannical Captain Bligh and set him adrift in a rowboat.

 

1823- SANTA CLAUS BORN. This day the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in The Troy Sentinel. Several years after the authorship was claimed by a Bronx Bible teacher, the Reverend Clement Clarke Moore. He was celebrated in his time as the father of Santa Claus until his death in 1863. In 2000, a literary-forensic specialist challenged Clement Moore’s authorship. He said a Revolutionary War veteran from Poughkeepsie named Major Henry Livingston was really the author of the poem. He said the poetry style of Livingston was much closer to the poem than anything Rev Moore ever wrote. But we may never know.

The poem completed the synthesis of English and Dutch folk traditions that were merging in colonial New York into our modern concept of Santa. The British had Father Christmas, or Saint Nicholas, who was a big fat jolly bishop with a white beard in a red suit. He merged with the Dutch Kris Kringle, or Sinterklaas, an elf who climbed down chimneys to give children toys. 

 

Leaving cookies and milk out for Santa comes from an old Danish Viking custom at Yuletime to leave food out at night for Odin the Wanderer and his 8-legged horse Sleipnir. 

In an 1859 reprint of the famous poem famed cartoonist Thomas Nast (who created the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey) drew the first likeness of Santa Claus. Because of residual anger from the Civil War claiming Santa was a Yankee or came from old Dixie, in 1867 Nast ended the argument by declaring Claus’s true address to be the North Pole! The Santa we all recognize was created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in 1934.  

 

1834- In London, Joseph Hansom patented Hansom cabs. This is the one horse, two wheeled cab with the driver in back. Cab is shortened from Cabriolet.

 

1857- In St. Louis, ex-army officer, failed businessman and town drunk Ulysses Grant pawned his watch so he could buy Christmas presents for his wife and son. From this rock bottom he would eventually rise to win the Civil War, become President of the United States and the most celebrated American of his time.

 

1893- Humperdinck's opera "Hansel und Gretel" debuts in Weimar Germany.

 

1894- Claude DeBussey’s “Afternoon of a Faun” premiered in Paris.

 

1912- France’s leading literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise rejected a new novel by an author named Marcel Proust “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu” “Remembrance of Things Past”. 

 

1912- The Max Sennett short comedy “Hoffmeyer’s Release” premiered, the first comedy featuring the Keystone Cops.

 

 

1913- Young Italian Rudolph Valentino arrived in America to seek his fortune. He was so poor, that after a year he sent his parents a photo of himself in a borrowed tuxedo to show he was doing well. He worked as a nightclub dancer and gigolo until becoming a Hollywood film star in 1921.

 

1930- Young actress Betty Davis signed her first contract with Universal Studio.

 

1935- Walt Disney sent a detailed memo to drawing teacher Don Graham outlining his plan to retraining his animators to do realistic feature films.

 

circa-1935- This was the traditional day for Republic Pictures to fire all their employees and hire them back after New Years so they wouldn't have to pay them holiday pay. Republic billed itself on its business cards as The Friendly Studio.

1954- Walt Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, opened. Directed by Richard Fleischer, Max’s son.

 

 

1971- “You feel lucky, punk?” Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry premiered.

 

1972- The Immaculate Reception. Football’s Pittsburgh Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7-6 with one second to go, when QB Terry Bradshaw unloaded a Hail-Mary pass across the field to Franco Harris. The feared and brutal Oakland DB Jack Tatum batted the ball away back towards the Steelers, and Harris (still running upfield) made a shoestring catch (around the 20 yard line) and weaved through the stunned and basically unaware Oakland defenders into the end zone to win.

 

1973- Soap Opera “the Young and The Restless” premiered.

 

1973- THE ASTRONAUTS STRIKE. The first labor action in space. American astronauts on board SKYLAB protested micromanagement, employer spying, and long hours. They demanded a day off, regular breaks, and greater workplace autonomy, but NASA refused. So they shut off their radio and took the day off, floating around, enjoying space, and taking photos of Earth. NASA gave in to their demands after one day, but those astronauts were never sent back into space.

   

 

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 22, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Diocletian 245AD, Josef Stalin-born Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 60.

 

1808- DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5^th Symphony.

 

1861- Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was ordained a deacon in the Church of England.

 

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia, today telegraphed Pres. Lincoln: ” I present you as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah”. Uncle Billy spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

 

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

 

1888- Horn & Hardart opened their first Automat Restaurant. This in Philadelphia.

 

1932 – The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan and Arthur Byron was released.

 

1937- The day after the triumphant premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, animator Woolie Reitherman ran into Walt Disney at the studio. Instead of complimenting Woolie and telling him to kick back and relax a bit, Walt launched into a detailed analysis of the problems facing the next picture, and how they need to get started right away!

 

1938- Memo from Dave Fleischer’s casting director to Paramount rep A.M. Botsford, asking if they might offer the role of Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels to Gary Cooper!

 

1939- Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels” opened in theatres.

 

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car accident in L.A.

 

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge, a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen. McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!'  McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "It is an honor to meet you, General Nuts".

 

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

 

1964- In Chicago, comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed out loud. Lenny complained about the policeman’s delivery. After Lenny Bruce no one has ever again been convicted in the U.S. for telling jokes. 

 

1973- The 55 miles per hour speed limit was set for all US interstate highways.

 

1975- English actor Sir Alec Guinness wrote a friend about a recent job offer, "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps."

The part was Obie Wan Kenobi, and the movie was Star Wars. By the time the first trilogy was done, he personally had made $50 million from it.

 

1993- The Hubble Space telescope cost $1.5 billion but it had a flaw. Its lens was ground incorrectly, so it was nearsighted. This day Space Shuttle Endeavour flew into space to fit the Hubble with an optical corrective system called CoStar, in effect, giving it a set of glasses. 

 

2000- The Cohen Bros. Depression Era comedy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Opened.

“ I, am a man of constant sorrow….”

 

  

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 20, 2024

Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey, George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Agutter, Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, animator Amby Paliwoda, Charlie Callas, John Spencer, Elsie De Wolfe, Jonah Hill is 41. 

 

1819- The novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott was published in Edinburgh. The novel caused a sensation in Europe and was one of the great influences on Victorian England. It created our modern perception of Richard Lionheart, Prince John and Robin Hood. Polite society sought to emulate its ideas of chivalry and courtly love. During the US Civil War, Confederate General James Longstreet complained that his contemporaries, Southern Gentlemen, had been raised on “…too much Walter Scott.”

 

 

1860- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his most famous poem- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. “Oh, listen my children and you shall here, of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere. “ Although he got most of the actual facts wrong, it was a great success. Longfellow intended it to rouse Americans of his day to the threat of Southern Secession and Slavery. 

 

1891- BASKETBALL INVENTED. Methodist Minister and former rugby player James Naismith worried how his Springfield College students could do team sports in the harsh New England winters. So he nailed up two peach baskets on opposite ends of a gymnasium at a YMCA in Springfield Mass. and invented the game of basketball. The first basketball was a soccer ball. He originally asked for square boxes but the man he sent out mistook his instructions and brought round peach baskets instead. The NBA regulation height of the baskets of ten feet was determined by the gym in Springfield having a second floor running track and two nails were conveniently waiting at this height.  He blew a whistle, and “the boys began tackling, kicking and punching in the clinches,” Naismith said. “They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor.” Naismith played himself frequently, and married one of the first female players, named Amelia.

 

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days this was the day Phileas Fogg returned to London to complete his trip.

 

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Townes became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

 

1937- Nazi Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolf Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey “vermin”, but privately he enjoyed their animated antics. Mussolini’s family loved “Topolino” cartoons. (Mickey Mouse in Italian). 

 

1940- Captain America first appeared in a comic book.

1946- It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra, James Stewart opened.

 

1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit. 

 

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

 

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

 

1962- The Osmond Brothers premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

 

1957- Elvis Presley received his draft notice. G.I. Blues!

 

1968- Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day premiered.

 

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges. A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so prescription medicines he was on while Nixon was naming him honorary chairman of the War on Drugs.

 

1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blamed his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fired him. This set off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby threw her support against the mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck was overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

 

1971- Roy O. Disney, Walt Disney’s older brother who took over running the company after Walt’s death, died of a stroke. He was 78. 

 

1974- Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too came out with the film Island at the Top of the World.

 

 

1996- Beavis and Butthead Do America, directed by Mike Judge, premiered.