Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 29, 2024

Birthdays: Emperor Hirohito, Duke Ellington, Duke Wellington, William Randolph Hearst, Sir Thomas Beacham, Zuben Mehta is 88, Tom Ewell, Rod McKuen, Fred Zinneman, Irvin Kershner,  Jerry Seinfeld is 70, Michelle Pfeiffer is 66, Daniel Day Lewis is 67, Uma Thurman is 53, Willie Nelson is 91, 

April 29, 1925 animator Iwao Takamoto the creator of Scooby Doo.

1749- In Philadelphia inventor Ben Franklin hosted a dinner party where he used his new battery to electrocute the turkeys to be roasted for the amusement of his guests.

1771- Artist Benjamin West unveils his painting of the “Death of General Wolfe” at the Royal Academy in London. Wolfe was killed in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which decided that Canada would be English. West’s portrayal of Wolfe in his actual uniform instead an idealized Grecian god surrounded by floating cherubs, was considered scandalously realistic, and revolutionized painting.

1786- The day before his opera THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO was to premiere, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sat down after dinner and wrote the famous overture. Friends said he liked to think while playing billiards.

1929- The film "All's Quiet on the Western Front" premiered. The World War I battlefield was constructed on a California ranch and dozens of real veterans hired to be extras. When the antiwar film debuted in Germany, Nazis agitators were sent out to Berlin theaters to release rats, skunks and snakes in the theaters to scare people away. The star of the movie Lew Ayres ruined his career when he declared himself a conscientious objector during World War II. 

1944- Dancing Romeos, the last Our Gang comedy short was produced by MGM, which had bought the franchise in 1938 from Hal Roach.

1950- MGM chief Louis B. Mayer fired Frank Sinatra for making a joke about him. Mayer had hurt his hip riding, and Sinatra joked he got hurt not from falling off his horse, but falling off Ginny Simms, a young actress Mayer was chasing. 

1962- President John Kennedy hosted a dinner for a group of Nobel Prize winners at the White House. Kennedy said: “ I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone.”

1981-Marylin Barnett “outs” tennis champion Mrs. Billy Jean King, the most famous American female athlete of her time. She said they had a lesbian affair for seven years.

1986- Los Angeles Central Library burns down. A lot of the costs of rebuilding was raised by private donation, much raised by a wild local televangelist named Dr. Gene Scott. Scott would preach his own strange brand of Bible study while smoking a cigar and wearing funny hats on camera. He also liked to laugh at other evangelists.

1992- THE GREAT LOS ANGELES RIOT- Los Angelenos go berserk after an all-white jury in Simi Valley acquitted four policemen who beat up drunk motorist Rodney King while being videotaped. 63 killed, 2500 businesses destroyed, $1.5 billion dollars in damage, 13,200 arrests and large sections of Los Angeles put under martial law. Even Rodney King was moved to go on TV and proclaim: " Can't we all just get along?" 

2001- Pioneer 10 was a space probe launched to the outer planets in 1972. After sending the first photos of Jupiter and Pluto in 1973, Pioneer 10 left our solar system and headed for deep space in 1997. It is aimed at the Constellation Taurus. On this day 7 billion miles away Pioneer 10 phoned home to say it was fine. Its last message was received in 2003. I wonder if it asked if Richard Nixon was still president?

2004- The last Oldsmobile made, was ending the 106-year-old product line.

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Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for April 28, 2024

Birthdays: English King Edward IV (1442), President James Monroe, Lionel Barrymore, Oskar Schindler, Carolyn Jones-aka Morticia Addams of the TV Addams Family, Ann Margret is 83, Jay Leno is 74, Saddam Hussein, Jean Redpath, Penelope Cruz is 50, Jessica Alba is 45, Godzilla is 70- see below.

1897- The first distress signal sent by wireless at sea. The S.O.S. (Save Our Ship) code wasn't invented until 1912.

1925- T.S. Elliot landed a job at Faber & Faber Publishing. His enabled the poet to quit his job as a bank teller at Lloyds and get serious about his literary career.

1937- Italy’s movie studio Cinecitta’ was dedicated.

1947- Thor Heyderthal set out on a balsa wood raft called Kon Tiki to prove ancient Peruvians could have used the ocean current to reach Polynesia.

1954- Happy 70th Birthday Godzilla! The original kaiju movie by Ichjiro Honda was inspired when a Japanese fishing boat was fatally exposed by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test. He was also inspired by the Hollywood movies The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and King Kong. Godzilla is an Anglicized version of the Japanese Kohjira, which is a combination of Gorilla and Whale. The famous roar was done by rubbing a resin-covered glove down some bass fiddle strings. The film was later released in the U.S. with American actor Raymond Burr (actually, Canadian actor.) acting in inserted scenes. The intact Japanese version of the film was not seen in North America until 2004.

1961-At La Scala, When tenor Guiseppi Di Stefano took ill, a young schoolteacher from Modena took the lead role in the opera La Boheme. Lucciano Pavarotti debuted.

1967- Citing his Black Muslim religion, world champion prizefighter Cassius Clay, now renamed Muhammad Ali, refused to be drafted into the army to fight in the Vietnam War. "I’m not mad at any Vietnamese person over there." The World Boxing Federation stripped Ali of his championship title, but he won it back during the 'Rumble in the Jungle" prizefight against George Foreman in 1974.

1996- Genndy Tartakowsky’s  Dexter’s Laboratory premiered.

2019- The Marvel superhero movie Avengers Endgame earned $1.2 billion worldwide in its opening weekend.  $350 million North America, and $850 million worldwide. A record shattering opening. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April27, 2024

Birthdays: Ulysses S. Grant, King Edward IV, Samuel Morse, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Edward Gibbon, Anouk Aimee, Sheena Easton is 65, Sandy Dennis, Coretta Scott King, Kasey Kasem, Jack Klugman

1884- The British government declared that Christopher Wrens 1675 observatory at Greenwich would be the central meridian point for calculating time zones. This would aid in calculation of longitudes, which is crucial in navigating the world’s oceans. Starting at Greenwich, they divided the world into 24 time zones each 15 longitudinal degrees apart.

1958- The Lavender Scare. Pres Eisenhower issued Executive order 10450, banning gays and lesbians from ever holding government jobs. 5,000 govt workers and scientists were fired.  The ban was not lifted until 1977.

1964- The John Muir National Wilderness created.

1967- Twiggy Day at Disneyland. The famous English fashion model and her entourage spent a groovy day at the park.

1970- THE FIRST ATM- Automatic bank teller machine, opened at the Surety National Bank in downtown Los Angeles.

1975- Monty Python and the Holy Grail opened in US theaters.

1981- Ringo Starr married Barbera Bach, his costar on the film 'Caveman'. UngaBunga!

2005- Maiden flight of the world's largest passenger plane- the Airbus A-380.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 26,2024

Birthdays: Marcus Aurelius, French Queen Marie De Medicis, Pasquale Paoli, John James Audubon, Frederick Law Olmstead, Eugene Delacroix, Syngman Rhee, Dr. Lee DeForrest, John Grierson founder of the National Film Board of Canada, Rudolf Hess, Bobby Rydell, Anita Loos, I. M. Pei, Carol Burnett is 91, Eyvind Earle, Giancarlo Esposito is 68, Kevin James, Amos Otis, Joan Chen is 62, Jimmy Giuffre, Rocker Duane Eddy- 84, Jet Li- born Li Lian jie is 61, Victor Perrin 1916, voice actor who did the Control Voice in The Outer Limits. He also was Dr Zin in Johnny Quest, Former First Lady Melania Trump is 54

1928- Los Angeles City Hall dedicated. 

1937- GUERNICA- In Spain the Stuka bombers of the German Condor Legion, Nazi subcontractors for Franco, bombed an innocent Basque village, killing 5,000 and provoking an international outcry and a painting by Picasso. Attacking at the height of the market time, for three hours the planes bombed and strafed the helpless civilians with no military target in sight. Combatants in WWI tried to avoid harming civilians, but this act and the simultaneous Japanese attacks in China signaled a new tactic, sowing terror by treating civilians as targets. 

1940- Disney short “Tugboat Mickey”. 

1941- An organ is played for the first time at a baseball game in Chicago.

1942- The last Little Orphan Annie radio program ran on WGN Chicago. After 12 years, Ovaltine replaced it with Captain Midnight.

1954- Akira Kurosawa’ The Seven Samurai opened in Japan.

1965- Fred Smith, a student at Yale, got his economics paper back with a "c'" and a note stating the idea he espoused was impractical. The idea was an overnight air-freight service which he founded six years later as Federal Express.

1969- PAUL IS DEAD. The height of a strange rumor that excited the rock & roll world that Paul McCartney of the Beatles had died, and the news was being kept a secret. Evidence was presented in the cryptic lyrics of "I am the Walrus", songs played backwards and the record album photo where Paul is the only figure with his back to the camera. 

A primetime TV special hosted by celebrity attorney F. Lee Bailey explored the controversy. Finally, this day Paul and Linda McCartney held a news conference and declared he was very much alive and what on Earth was everyone on about? Paul McCartney is still alive today at age in his 80s.

1977- In New York City, Studio 54, the mecca of 70’s Disco culture opened.

1986- Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Conan the Republican, married Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy. 

1993- NBC announced former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live comedy writer Conan O’Brien would take David Letterman’s old Late Show spot. After a few years he moved on to replace the retiring the retiring Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. But soon Leno decided he did not want to retire just yet and bounced Conan.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for april 24, 2024

Birthdays: Daniel Defoe, William de Kooning, St. Vincent de Paul, Morgan Earp, Jack E. Leonard, Dame Ethel Smyth, Jill Ireland, Eric Bogosian, Sue Grafton, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Donner, Barbara Streisand is 82, Cedric the Entertainer is 60, Shirley MacLaine is 89, Djimon Hounsau is 60.

1184 B.C. (est.) TROY FALLS TO THE GREEKS- Despite the warnings of the seers Cassandra and Laocoon, the Trojans brought Ulysses' great wooden horse into the city, and at night the Greeks climbed out and opened the city gates to destruction. The reason we have any date for this was this day the Romans celebrated a festival commemorating the event, and they invented our calendar. 

1584- Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi asked the Heii Shrine in Edo (Tokyo) to dedicate a new heraldic design - the red disc Asahi - Rising Sun flag is created. 

1800- The U.S. Congress set up the Library of Congress. By 1814 it had three thousand volumes, but they were destroyed when a British Army burned Washington. Thomas Jefferson then donated his own private library to restart the collection. Today it numbers in the millions of volumes.

1833- The Soda Fountain was patented.

1874- Jesse James married his cousin Miss Zerelda Mimms, who he called Z. 

1901-The First American League baseball game. The Cleveland Blues vs. the Chicago White Stockings.

1913- The Woolworth Building was dedicated in lower New York. It’s cornices decorated like the campanile of Saint Marks in Venice. At the time it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. President Woodrow Wilson illuminated its electric lights by flipping a switch long distance in the White House. One person upon taking the elevator to the top floor, said “ Is God in..?”

1933- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

1944- Film Noir classic film Double Indemnity premiered.

1954- Handsome English actor Peter Lawford married John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy. This union would give JFK his link to Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack.

1961- First day of shooting on the film King of Kings, the Christ story starring Jeffrey Hunter. Called by one critic” I was a Teenage Jesus” In 1966 Jeffrey Hunter turned down a TV series after doing the pilot episode. His wife worried that he’d be typecast. The role of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk went instead went to William Shatner.

1979- Paul McCartney happened to be in New York City and dropped in on his old mate John Lennon. They spent the day together and at one point mediated visiting the set of Saturday Night Live but changed their minds at the last minute. Paul McCarthy left in the wee hours. It was the last time he ever saw John Lennon alive. 

1981- Small companies like Apple and Commodore had dominated the personal computer market while giants like IBM stuck with large business systems. Now IBM weighed in with The IBM PC –personal computer, with basic software language DOS provided by Microsoft. It soon came to dominate the market.

1990- The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 23, 2024

Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, John Muir, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 84, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Tony Esposito, Michael Sporn, Michael Moore is 70, Herve Villechais, John Oliver is 47.

1867- William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures.

1896- THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Paris would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines.  The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively jump to keep from getting wet.

1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.

1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened. 

1931- Warner Bros movie The Public Enemy was released. Starring Jean Harlow and a Broadway dancer with a strong lower east side accent named James Cagney. It made them both stars.

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.

1970- Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane was inadvertently invited to a tea party at the White House by Pres. Nixon’s daughter Trisha. She had invited Slick because under her maiden name Grace Ward she was a fellow alumni of Finch College. Grace Slick and her escort Abbie Hoffman were in line to get into the event, when at the last-minute White House security recognized them and turned them away. It was too bad, because she had a plan to slip LSD into President Nixon’s tea. 

1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed- Doh!

2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me at the Zoo.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 22, 2024

Birthdays: Queen Isabella I of Castille, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Immanuel Kant, Madame De Stael, Alexander Kerensky, Aaron Spelling, Eddie Albert, Glen Cambell, Betty Page would be 100, Marilyn Chambers, Rondo Hatton, Charlie Mingus, Peter Frampton, John Waters is 78, Jack Nicholson is 87

1741- Georg Frederich Handel dipped his quill into ink and began to write the Messiah.

1811- Last of the Parthenon Marbles pried off their walls in Greece and sent back to England on a British frigate. Lord Byron was on board and called Lord Elgin, the supervisor of this act, "The Spoiler". Today the Elgin marbles are still at the British Museum and the Greeks are still mad about it.

1876- Composer Peter Tchaikovsky completed his score for the ballet Swan Lake.

1935- The Bride of Frankenstein released. James Whale’s sequel to his original classis. With Elsa Lanchester. “Friend…good! Smoke….good!” Ahah Hahhah!”

1940- Writer Ernest Hemingway cabled his editor Max Perkins from Havana about a new novel he began writing. " Title is "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from passage John Donne Oxford Book of English bottom page seventy one STOP Please register immediately."

1942- Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Saboteur” premiered in Washington.

1952- The first nuclear bomb test shown on network TV -Tommy Turtle says duck and cover!

60 years ago. 1964- The opening day of the New York World’s Fair. It was in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, built on the site of the 1939 World’s Fair.

1970- The first Earth Day. The idea was started by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin "The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy," Senator Nelson said, "and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda."

1972- Magnavox announced the Magnavox Odyssey. Created by Ralph Baer in his spare time, it was the first mass retail home videogame console.

1978- Comic actors Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi debut two new characters on the Saturday Night Live TV show, Joliet Jake and Ellwood Blues. The Blues Brothers are born. On that same broadcast, host Steve Martin did his King Tut Song. “Now when I die, now don’t think I’m a nut. Don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like Old King Tut.”

1996- Christopher Robin Milne died at age 75. The young boy whose fascination with a bear in the London Zoo called Winnie inspired his father A.A. Milne to write the Winne the Pooh stories. Christopher Robin wasn’t always appreciative of all the attention. He said of his father: "Someday I’ll write some verses about him and see how He likes it!"

2001- Dreamwork’s Shrek opened in theaters. I’m making waffles! 

2021- The Mars Perseverance probe successfully collected oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 21, 2024

Birthdays: Queen Elizabeth II, Edwin S. Porter, Charlotte Bronte', John Muir, Freiderich Froebel the inventor of kindergarten-1782, Anthony Quinn, Patti Lupone, Charles Grodin, Anna Magnani, Andie MacDowell is 65, Tony Danza, Elaine May, Iggy Pop is 77, James McAvoy is 45, Rob Riggle is 54 

1910- Mark Twain died of congenital heart failure at 75 as Haley's comet appeared overhead. He once wrote: " When arriving in Heaven feel free to ask all the questions you want of Saint Peter. You may ask for his autograph, however don’t take any Kodak photos or bring your dog. Admittance to Heaven is based on favor, not merit, else the dog would be allowed to go in and you kept out."

1921- The Coconut Grove nightclub opened in Hollywood.

1938- Disney animator Bill Tytla married artists model Adrienne LeClerc.

1961- Two British teenage rock bands meet each other for the first time- The Beatles met the Rolling Stones. They partied together often and wrote songs for each other.

1964- British TV viewers double their pleasure- BBC 2 goes on the air. Their first program is Play School.

1973- The pop song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn became a number one hit on the US, Canadian and UK pop charts. The song spawned the custom of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of remembering a soldier overseas, which reached its’ peak during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That in turn spawned variations like the red AIDS ribbon, the pink breast cancer ribbon, and so on.

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a live primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. Called THE MYSTERY OF AL CAPONE’S SECRET VAULT. After wasting two hours speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room, sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles, trash and a few dollar bills.

1989- Oil executive George W. Bush became part of an ownership consortium that bought the last place baseball team the Texas Rangers." As soon as I knew they were for sale I went after them like a pit bull on a pants leg…. It doesn’t get much better than this…"

1997-The first Intergalactic Funeral.  The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960's LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary were shot into space.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 20, 2024

Birthdays: Harold Lloyd, Juan Miro', Adolf Hitler, Tito Puente, Nina Foch, Gregory Ratoff, Ryan O'Neal, Daniel Day Lewis, Jessica Lange, Luther Vandross, Don Mattingly, Rosalyn Summers, Crispin Glover, Betty-Lou Gerson the voice of Cruella da Vil, George Takei is 87, Clint Howard, Carmen Electra is 49, Andy Serkis is 61, Bob Kurtz

1859- " It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times..." Charles Dicken's novel "A Tale of Two Cities" began to be published in magazine form.

1902- Marie Curie discovered radium.

1909- Mary Pickford, the first Movie Star, goes in front of a camera for the first time.

1912- A London West End theater manager and failed author named Abraham “Bram” Stoker died. He was 65. If anyone noticed him, it was because he managed the Lyceum theater where famed actor Henry King performed. Bram Stoker’s seven books and several plays made little money in his time. But a decade later a play adapted from one of his novels made him world famous. Dracula.

1925- The Warner Bros. Moving Picture Company merged with Vitagraph, and began experimenting with fixing sound on to film.

1935- Radio program “Your Hit Parade” premiered.

1938-For Hitler’s birthday was the Berlin premiere of Leni Reifenstahl’s film Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 

1939- RCA president David Sarnoff dedicated RCA pavilion at World's Fair in New York City. First U.S. news event filmed on television. Sarnoff predicted that one day everyone would have a television in their home!

1940- RCA labs demonstrated the first Electron Microscope.

1946- Walt Disney’s Make Mine Music premiered in NY.

1974 - Paul McCartney and Wings releases "Band on the Run" .

1976 - At a stage performance at City Center NYC, George Harrison secretly slipped in and sang the Lumberjack Song with the Monty Python comedy troop. John Cleese recalled: “George was wonderful. He came up on stage with us as a Mountie and sang the 'Lumberjack Song’ impeccably, and I don’t suppose 10 percent of the audience knew he was up there."

1977- Woody Allen & Diane Keaton starred in the film “Annie Hall”. Young Christopher Walken did an early cameo as Annie’s weird brother. 

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for April 19, 2024

Birthdays: Paulo Veronese, Elliot Ness, Jayne Mansfield, Dudley Moore, Paloma Picasso, animator Iwao Takamoto, Ashley Judd, James Franco is 47, Kate Hudson is 46, Tim Curry is 79

Cerealia- an ancient Roman agricultural festival. Ceres (Demeter), the mother of Persephone, was the Goddess of Growing and Planting.  To say, “That’s Fit for Ceres” was the Roman equivalent of saying “That’s Totally Awesome”.

1824- Poet Lord Byron died of fever and uremic poisoning at Missolonghi Greece.

1910- The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet. 

1927- Mae West found guilty of indecent behavior in writing, producing and starring in a Broadway musical entitled “SEX”. She was fined and emerged from jail more popular than ever.  She said:” Everyone thinks I am opposed to censorship. Actually, I’m in favor of censorship. I’ve made a fortune from it!”

1956-Movie star Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

1970- XEROX PARC – The Xerox Company announced the setup of a research group in Palo Alto Cal. This group pioneered the development of the personal computer, GUIs, digital scanning and the laser printer. 

1973- Three years later Xerox Parc booted up the Alto, the first personal computer. They invented a new mouse, point and click windows, graphic interface and a digital printer. President Carter installed one in the White House. Yet Xerox didn’t know what to do with them, they were in the copier business. There was no internet yet, except for government communications. The Alto cost $16,500 each, too expensive for most, so the idea bombed. One day in 1979 a group from Apple visited led by Steve Jobs. The group was inspired by their progress, and they went back to Apple and put what they learned into the development of the Macintosh.

1987- The first Simpsons short aired today. MG01 "Good Night Simpsons" was on the 3rd episode of The Tracey Ullman Show, airing Sunday, 4/19/87 at 9pm. Animated by Wes Archer, Bill Kopp, and David Silverman.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 18, 2024

Birthdays: Lucretzia Borgia, Franz Von Suppe’, Haley Mills is 77, Leopold Stokowski, Miklos Rosza, Herb Sorell, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Disney animator Phil Young, Conan O’Brien is 60, James Woods is 76, Eric Roberts, Rick Moranis is 72, Maria Bello is 56, David Tennant is 52, America Ferrerra is 39 

1914-. The full feature length movie premiered in Turin, Italy. "Cabiria" directed by Giovane Patrone. It was believed to be the first full length movie ever until the discovery of a 1912 version of Quo Vadis.  D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic the Birth of a Nation popularized feature film format in the U.S..

1923- The first Yankee Stadium dedicated. Yankees win the opener against Boston, 4-1 in front of over 72,000 fans, Babe Ruth hit the park's first home run. The new $2.5 million ballpark is the first to feature three decks.  This Yankee Stadium was replaced in 2009.

1958- At the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 78,672, the Dodgers play their first game in the City of Angels, defeating the new San Francisco Giants, 6-5.     

1967- Jonathan Frid first appeared as the vampire Barnabas Collins in the TV series Dark Shadows.

30th Anniv 1994- Disney’s first theatrical musical based on one of their animated films, Beauty and the Beast: A New Musical, opened on Broadway. It’s first run would go for over thirteen years and became the 4th highest earning show on Broadway. It saved Radio City Music Hall from demolition.

2000- Earlier that spring some of the world’s biggest internet companies –e-Bay, Amazon and CNN were paralyzed by a virus spread by a hacker. Today the FBI made an arrest. The culprit was a Canadian High School student who went by the domain name of Mafia Boy. He received probation, and a promise to use his computer only for schoolwork for two years.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 17, 2024

Birthdays: Tobias Stummer-1539, Duke Maximillian I of Bavaria, Nikita Khrushchev, Thorton Wilder, Clarence Darrow, Arthur Schnabel, Olivia Hussey is 73, Gregor Piatigorsky, Don Kirschner, William Holden, Harry Reasoner, Boomer Eiseason, Sean Bean is 65, Victoria Beckham, Martha Sigall, Ron Miller, Jennifer Garner is 52, Rooney Mara is 39.

1792- British Captain Vancouver explored Puget Sound. He founds a settlement and names it for then Prime Minister Granville. In 1886 Granville (sometimes called Gastown after Gassy-Jack a  saloon keeper) was renamed Vancouver.

1869- The first professional baseball game ever played saw the Cincinnati Reds defeated the rival Cincinnati Amateurs, 24-15.

1875- The billiard game Snooker was invented by Sir Joseph Chamberlain, the uncle of the future British Prime Minister.

1924- Metro Pictures, Goldwyn and Mayer Films all merged to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. By 1940, MGM was the largest studio in Hollywood.

1929- Baseball great Babe Ruth married Ziegfeld Follies dancer Marge Colson in a morning ceremony. Then he drove to Yankee Stadium and hit a home run.

1937 "Porky's Duck Hunt" The birth of Daffy Duck. One legend is that voice actor Mel Blanc designed Daffy’s distinctive lisp to be his impression of the Looney Tunes boss Leon Schlesinger. When they screened this cartoon all the artists stood in dread of how Leon would take the joke. Leon never made the connection that the Ducks voice was an imitation of him. Michael Maltese recalled Leon saying: “ Hey fellowth, where’d you get the craythee voith of that duck? Lotta joketh!”  

1960- Cleveland Indians traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers.

1960- Munro, directed by Gene Deitch won the academy award for best animated short.

1964-The Ford Mustang introduced by Lee Iacocca.

1971- The song "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night tops the pop charts. 

1973- In Marin County, young movie director George Lucas sat down and began writing a 13 page treatment for a story called, “The Adventures of Luke StarKiller: As Taken from the Journal of Whills”. This would later be polished into Star Wars, A New Hope.

1987- Comedian Dick Shawn ­the Hippy-Hitler in the original Mel Brooks film the Producers- was doing his one-man show The Second Funniest Man in the World at UC San Diego. After one particularly funny punch line he fell over dead from a heart attack. The audience laughed and clapped for several more minutes because they thought it was part of the act.

2011- The first episode of Game of Thrones premiered in the U.S. on HBO. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 16, 2024

birthdays: King John II “The good” of France (1319), Elisabeth Vignee-Lebrun, Wilbur Wright, Charlie Chaplin, J.P. Morgan, Kingsley Amis, Anatole France, Henry Mancini, Peter Ustinov, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bobby Vinton, Spike Milligan, John Halas, Edie Adams, Hans Sloane, Disney artist Victor Haboush, Pope Benedict XVI, Martin Lawrence, John Cryer is 59, Billy West, Ellen Barkin is 71, Claire Foy is 41 

 

1260- Chartres Cathedral completed. Art history lecturers rejoice!

1787- What some consider the first professionally produced American play- Royall Tyler’s The Contrast- debuted at New York City’s John Street Theater. It was a comedy that poked fun at aristocracy. Gen. George Washington was in the audience. At this time the Broadway theater district and Times Square was a quiet forest clearing.

1828- Spanish artist Francisco Goya died at 82 in Bordeaux, France. Years later when his remains were moved to Madrid, it was discovered Goya wasn't alone in his grave. His son’s father-in-law Martin Goesochea's remains were in there with him. Also, Goya’s head was missing. To this day it is still unaccounted for.

1905- Andrew Carnegie established the Carnegie Foundation to distribute his philanthropy. The former Scottish orphan coal miner Carnegie renounced his robber baron career and dedicated himself to donating the bulk of his fortune to building libraries and hospitals.  He claimed: “A man who dies rich dies disgraced!” When Mark Twain wrote him letters, he addressed them “To Saint Andrew from Saint Mark”

1912- Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

1926- The Book-Of-The-Month-Club distributed its first selection-Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. 

1933- Dick Huemer’s first day working at Walt Disney. Huemer became a senior story artist, and writer. He and Joe Grant developed The Band Concert, Dumbo, Fantasia, Lady and the Tramp, Saludos Amigos and more.  

1935- Fibber McGee and Molly debut on radio.

1940- On Baseball Season’s opening day President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ceremonial first pitch smashed a Washington Post camera. The Chief Executive was not charged with a wild pitch. Red Sox hurler Lefty Grove blanked the Washington Senators, 1-0. 

  

1947- The Zoom Lens patented.

1956- Season 5, episode 23 of I Love Lucy aired. Where Lucy has the fight with a lady in the wine vat squishing grapes.

1959- John McCarthy of MIT invented the computer language LISP. 

1962- Walter Cronkite took over the job of anchor at the CBS Evening News, building a reputation for journalistic integrity almost equaled to Edward R. Murrow. Nicknamed the Most Trusted Man in America, many credit Cronkite for breaking the news to America that the U.S. was not going to win The Vietnam War. President Lyndon Johnson said: If I lost Cronkite then I’ve lost middle America.” When Cronkite retired, the redoubtable CBS News Division descent into tabloid stupidity and irrelevance began. 

1983- Disney Channel debuted.

1988- Grave of the Fireflies, by Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli, was released in Japan.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for April 15, 2024

l

Birthdays: Leonardo DaVinci, composer Domenico Gabrieli, Nanak I the founder of the Sikh religion 1469, Charles Wilson Peale, Theodore Rousseau, Henry James, Bessie Smith, Heinrich Klee, Kim Il Sung, Claudia Cardinale is 85, Roy Clark, Emma Thompson is 63, Hans Conried, Olympic runner Evelyn Ashford, Alice Braga is 39, Seth Rogen is 41, Emma Watson is 33

1874- THE IMPRESSIONISTS. In Paris, a group of young modernist painters, fed up with being rejected by mainstream galleries and salons, banded together to mount their own show, Le Societie Anonyme Artistes, at photographer Nadar’s old studio. One franc, and a one flight walk up allowed you to see works by Cezanne, Degas, Pizarro and Monet. The critics hated it. One writer Louis Leroy said,” These people are not real artists, they are just Impressionists.” The name stuck.

1912- The Titanic sank by 2:20AM.  At 4:30 AM, The S.S Carpathia finally reached the Titanic disaster site to rescue 705 survivors in the bobbing lifeboats. The Titanic death toll is now estimated at around 1,522 out of 2,200. Early reports of the disaster mentioned that the Titanic had struck an iceberg but that all was well. That morning's Wall Street Journal noted the incident "proved a triumph of modern technology!" 

1924- The Rand McNally Company published the first automobile road atlas or North America.

1925- Ford introduced the first pickup truck. Up to now farmers had cut the backs off Model T cars and welded boxes on, to make a light-load vehicle. There was also an earlier pickup truck called the International, but it had limited distribution.

1927- First Hollywood star's footprints in cement ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater. Called Hollywood's most enduring publicity stunt. Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman himself are the first to leave their prints. Grauman also invented the classic Hollywood premiere with spotlights, red carpet runways and chauffeured limousines.

1933- Chief of production Darryl F. Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over an argument about employee salary cuts, to take over a struggling little movie studio called Twentieth Century Fox, which he turned into a giant.

1935- Kodachrome film developed. First as motion picture film, later for home photography.

1938- Donald’s Nephews, the first appearance of Huey, Duey and Louie. All voiced by Clarence Nash.  Written by Carl Barks and Jack Hannah.

1938- Walt Disney received his first honorary degree, a Master of Science from USC.

1947- Jackie Robinson took the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

1950- Chuck Jones short The Hypo-chondri-Cat.

1953- Famed illustrator Charles R. Knight died peacefully in a Manhattan hospital. The man who first us all showed us what dinosaurs might have looked like and inspired the lush look of such films as 1933 King Kong. His last words were to his daughter Lucy, “Don’t let anything happen to my drawings.”

1955- The First McDonald's Restaurant franchise opened in Des Plaines, Ill.  Ray Kroc, a traveling milkshake machine salesman, buys into a franchise restaurant idea cooked up in 1948 by two brothers named McDonald from Santa Bernadino. He urged the brothers to go national with their pre-prepared food system, but the brothers wanted to stay local. So, he offered them 1 million bucks for their idea and name, (would you go to" Kroc’s?”). The rest is history. 

1962- AUNTIE EM! 80 yar old actress Clara Blandick, the Auntie Em of the Wizard of Oz, took an overdose of sleeping pills and tied a plastic bag around her head.

She had been retired for several years and was suffering from bad arthritis and failing eyesight. 

She said,” It is time to embark on The Great Adventure.” She left out on a table her resume and press clippings so the newspapers would get her obituary right. 

1964- Walt Disney sent attorney Robert Foster to Orlando Florida to quietly start buying up land for a planned new Disneyland Park.

1983- Tokyo Disneyland opens.

1990- Kennan Ivory Wayans comedy show In Living Color premiered on FOX TV. The show made stars of Marlon Wayans, Damon Wayans, Jamie Fox, Jim Carrey and the Fly-Girls, Jennifer Lopez and Rosie Perez.

1994- English ice skater John Curry who created the concept of Ice Dancing, died of HIV/AIDS at age 44.

2019- A terrible fire gutted Notre Dame Cathedral, which had stood for 856 years.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 14, 2024

Birthdays: King Phillip III of Spain, Christian Huygens, Arnold Toynbee, Sir John Gielgud, Menachem Schneerson- the Grand Rabbi of Chabad, Papa Doc Duvalier- Haitian dictator 1907, Robert Doisneau, Rod Steiger, Loretta Lynn, Morton Sobotnick, Frank Serpico, Pete Rose, Julie Christie, Kenneth Mars, Anthony Michael Hall, Steve Martin is 73, Sarah Michelle Geller is 46, Adrien Brody is 50. Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo

1828- The first edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary published. In the 70.000 entries Webster made it a political point to separate American English from the King’s English by substituting Spanish roots for words in the place of Norman French roots. This is when “Colour” became “Color”, Theatre and Centre became Theater and Center, and Cheque became Check.

1883- Leopold Delibes’ opera Lakme premiered in Paris. 

1910- At a baseball game in Washington, William Howard Taft becomes the first President to throw out the season's first ball.  

1912- RMS TITANIC SINKS- At 11:40PM The unsinkable luxury liner going too fast and 14 miles off course struck an iceberg and by 2:40AM went down, taking millionaires and immigrants alike. As the stricken liner sank, the cruiser SS Californian watched a short distance away. They could have saved more people, but their radioman had gone to bed, and they thought the emergency flares lighting up the night sky were party skyrockets. No one was saved until the SS Carpathia arrived on the scene at dawn. 

1925- WGN broadcasts its first regular season baseball game. Quinn Ryan behind the mike as Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Cubs defeated the Pirates on Opening Day, 8-2. 

1927- The first Volvo automobile rolled off the assembly line in Goteborg Sweden.

1956- In Redwood City, Cal. Charles Ginsburg, Ray Dolby and Charles Anderson demonstrated the first videotape recording machine. They were going then for a mere $75,000 each.

1960- The musical Bye Bye Birdie opened on Broadway.

1962- Bob Dylan recorded “Blowing in the Wind”.

1963- Beatle George Harrison was impressed by an unsigned rock band he just heard called the Rolling Stones.

1969- Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day won the Oscar for best Animated Short.

1969- The first regular season baseball game played outside the United States. The Montreal Expos play their first home game, treating 29,184 fans at Jarry Park to an 8-7 win over the St Louis Cardinals. Speaking about Expo fans, Cub announcer Harry Carrey noted: "They discovered 'boo' is pronounced the same in French as it is English.”

1994- The cable channel TCM (Turner Classic Movies) premiered this day. Host Robert Osbourne introduced Gone With The Wind.

2005- Baseball returned to Washington D.C., 34 years after the Washington Senators left to Texas, the Washington Nationals played their first game.

2008- Ollie Johnston, the last animator of Walt Disney’s original Nine Old Men, passed away at age 96.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 13, 2024

Birthdays: St. Thomas Becket, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Lord North, Samuel Beckett, Dame Eudora Welty, Al Green, Jack Cassidy, Butch Cassidy, Franklin W. Woolworth, Howard Keel, Don Adams, Ricky Schroeder, Peabo Bryson, Ron Perleman, Stanley Donen, Alfred Butts the inventor of Scrabble, animator Glen Keane

1870- New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.

1902- J.C. Penny opened his first store in Kemmerer Wyoming.

1939- The film Wuthering Heights starring Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon premiered. Sam Goldwyn was disgusted by the headaches to bring this Charlotte Bronte novel to the Hollywood Screen. When asked if he planned to film more XIX century novels he replied: "Don’t bring me no more scripts by guys who write with feathers!"

1943- Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial at the Washington D.C. Mall.

1949- Lead character designer and story artist Joe Grant resigned from Disney Studios, not to return until 1989. 

1953- A British WWII intelligence officer turned newspaperman in peacetime was bored with his life. His name was Ian Fleming. He decided to write a novel about his idea of the ultimate spy. Looking for a suitably bland name, his favorite book on birdwatching was written by someone named James Bond. "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, yet very masculine name, was just what I needed.”  His wife thought the finished story was vulgar. This day, the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, came out and was an instant hit.

1962- The New York Mets (metropolitans) Baseball Club formed. They played at the old Giants park, the Polo Grounds, until Shea Stadium was built in 1964 next to the Worlds Fair grounds. The team adopted the Blue and Orange logo colors of the Fair as their own. Blue and Orange were also the colors of the moved away Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants. 

1964- Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor for the film Lilies of the Field. The first Oscar for any black actor or actress went to Hattie McDaniel as Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind in 1939. Best actress was not won until Halle Berry in 2002.

1964- The Best Animated Short Oscar was won by Ernie Pintoff’s film The Critic, voiced by Mel Brooks.

1967- Columbia Picture’s bizarre version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale premiered. Several directors, John Huston, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, George Raft, and David Niven. Richard Williams opening titles, and Dusty Springfield ‘s song “The Look of Love.” Stories of a lot of recreational drugs off camera.

1970- "Houston, we have a problem here..." An explosion of an oxygen tank disabled the Apollo XIII moon mission. For the next several days the world held its breath as the spacecraft ricocheted itself around the moon and came back to Earth, the slightest mis-calculation of trajectory meant a cold, airless death for the three astronauts. Their plight was made into the film “Apollo XIII” directed by Ron Howard.

1997- 21year old golf phenomenon Tiger Woods won his first Masters Tournament by a record 12 strokes. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 12, 2024

Birthdays: Henry Clay, Lily Pons, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Disney artist Bernhard “Hardie” Gramatky, Monserrat Caballe' is 91, Ann Miller, Tiny Tim, Shannon Dougherty, Andy Garcia is 68, Claire Danes is 45, David Letterman is 77, animator Francis Glebas

1709- In London the first issue of the Tattler published. “All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, poetry, foreign and domestick news you will have from Saint James Coffeehouse.”

1911- Cartoonist Winsor McCay opened his vaudeville act with his "Little Nemo" animated short. 

1945- During WWII young infantryman Robert Sherman was hit in the knee by enemy gunfire. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life. After the war he teamed up with his brother to form the famous writing team The Sherman Brothers. Composing the hit songs for movies like Mary Poppins and Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. Robert Sherman died at age 86 in 2012.

1945-Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (桃太郎 海の神兵, Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei) by Mitssuyo Seo opened.  The second Japanese anime, feature-length  animated film.

1954- "ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK' recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets- arguably the first true Rock & Roll hit.

  

1955- the Salk vaccine for Polio made available to the public.

1961-THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE- Soviet Major Yuri Gargarin aboard Vostok 1.

1981- The first space shuttle Columbia took off. After 26 flawless missions, in 2003 the Columbia broke up and disintegrated upon reentry, killing all aboard. 

1992- Euro-Disney, now called Disneyland Paris, opened. It attracted only 50.000 visitors the first year, about ten times less than what was expected. In 1955, the first Disneyland in California drew 100,00 on opening day alone. Many felt it should have been built in Barcelona where the climate was milder. Disneyland Paris finally paid for itself in 1997 and today is prospering.

1996- James and the Giant Peach opened in the USA. Directed by Henry Selick.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for April 11, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, Frederick the Warlike of Saxony-1370, Ethel Kennedy, Joel Grey is 92, Louise Lasser, Mason Reese, Oleg Cassini, Cameron Mitchell. Norman McClaren would be 110, Bill Irwin, John Milius, Jennifer Esposito

1890- In England John Merrick, who was known as the Elephant Man, died.

1906- Albert Einstein published his Theory of Relativity.

1907- Baseball N.Y. Giant's Roger Bresnahan becomes the first catcher to wear a mask and shin guards. He had the mask built based on a sword fencing mask.

1914- George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion premiered at the Haymarket in London.

1926- Horticulturist Luther Burbank died. His last words:" I don't feel good."

1931- Dorothy Parker resigned her job as drama critic for the New Yorker Magazine. She married an actor named Alan Cambell and moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. While on her honeymoon the editor Harold Ross bugged her for some final fixes on an article. She sent a telegram from Paris: ”Don’t bother me. Stop. F*cking busy. Stop. And vice-versa. Stop“

1933- the Bauhaus directed by Mies Van Der Rohe was closed down by the Nazis.

1950- First day filming on the movie All About Eve. As Bette Davis said “Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night.”

1955- WABD in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles began running pre-1948 Warner Bros cartoon shorts in a half hour format, soon to be followed by other cities. This helped introduce the baby boomers to the world of Bugs, Daffy and Porky.

1981- Valerie Bertinelli married rocker Eddie Van Halen.

1983- At that year’s Academy Awards the winner for Best Animated Short was Polish artist Zybigniew Rybcyznski for his film Tango. During the ceremony he stepped outside for a smoke. When Security guards refused to let him re-enter, he became combative, shouting the only English he knew: ”I Have Oscar!” He wound up in an LA jail for assault, and his Oscar wound up in the bushes.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 10, 2024

Birthdays: Josef Pulitzer, Lew Wallace, George Arliss, Omar Sharif, Harry Morgan, Max Von Sydow, Ken Griffey Sr, Claire Booth Luce, Chuck Connors, John Madden, Dandy Don Meredith, Paul Theroux, David Halberstram, Steven Segal is 73, Orlando Jones, Mandy Moore is 40, Haley Joel Osment is 36, Daisy Ridley is 32

1866-The ASPCA founded.

1868- Johannes Brahms A German Requiem debuted.

1923- Peeps invented. The sweet Easter marshmallow confection that is shaped like a yellow baby chick and can stick to most surfaces. It was invented by Russian-Jewish immigrant Sam Born after his first idea, a lollipop machine called “Born Sucker” failed to succeed.

1925- F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" published by Scribners.

1947- THE FBI PAY A VISIT to Screen Actor’s Guild president Ronald Reagan and actress-wife Jane Wyman. They accuse them of belonging to Communist Party front organizations. Ronnie agrees to become an informer on his own guild SAG, and just about everyone else in Hollywood. Jane Wyman divorced him, and he married much more conservative Nancy Davis.

1948 Chuck Jones’ Bugs Bunny cartoon “ Rabbit Punch”.

1952- ELIA THE FINK- Film director Elia Kazan ( On the Waterfront, East of Eden, etc.) saved his career but earned the lasting hatred of Hollywood by testifying to the House Un American Activities Committee. He named 8 of his friends as Communists, including writers Clifford Odets and Lillian Hellman. 

Unlike others who were forced to testify, Kazan never expressed any regret for the pain he caused. Many see the irony of 'On the Waterfront', that the hero is a guy who does the right thing by turning informer. The film was written by Bud Schulberg, who also named names. 

In 1999 the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar and caused a new firestorm of protest, when Kazan stood next to visibly uncomfortable Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorcese. There an estimated 40% of the audience did not rise or applaud, although on television it seemed louder. That year the American Film Institute preferred to confer its lifetime achievement award on Roger Corman, director of Attack of the Giant Crab Monsters.

1953- The Vincent Price film The House of Wax in 3d premiered.

1961- Singer Joan Baez entered the Greenwich Village club called Folk City and was accosted by a funny young man with a nasaly twang ;”Joan Baez! Here, I wrote a song for you!” His name was Bob Dylan. Baez and Dylan became friends and together changed the image of folk music.

1962- Stuart Sutcliffe was the bass guitarist of the Beatles until creative differences and a marriage made him drop out of the band in favor of George Harrison. This day Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage at age 21.

1962- The Los Angeles Dodgers play their first game at their new Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine. They lost to the Cincinnati Reds 6-3.

1971- Rob Reiner married Penny Marshall. 

1973- At Xerox PARC, Dick Schoup’s team of scientists created Superpaint, the first digital paint and surfacing system for computer images. The first picture on the computer was a photo scanned of Dick holding a sign that read “ It works, sort of.”

1985- Madonna began her first tour, the Virgin Tour.

1992- Bill & Sue Kroyer’s Ferngully the Last Rainforest premiered.

1992. Raunchy comedian Sam Kinison was killed in a head on collision with a truck on the road to Laughlin Nevada. He was 36. Ironically, the comedian who had glorified the wild sex, drugs and rock&roll lifestyle was sober at the time, and the other driver, a 17 year old, was drunk. 

2019- The first photo evidence of a Black Hole in space. Young MIT grad student Katie Bouman led the creation of an algorithm that allowed scientists to capture the first-ever black hole photo. Proving Einstein was correct.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 9, 2024

Birthdays: Tamerlane, Eadweard Muybridge, Lenin, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner, Dennis Quaid is 69, Elle Fanning is 25

1553- French comic writer Francois Rabelais died. His last words were: ” I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

1747- Famed British actor David Garrick signed a contract to take over the management of London’s Drury Lane Theatre.

1778- In Paris the philosopher Voltaire is initiated into the Masonic Order of the Nine Sisters on the arm of his friend, Benjamin Franklin.

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1921- The Fly-In Lunch Party. Leslie Brand was a millionaire who developed Glendale California north of Los Angeles. This day he invited guests to a special garden party provided they all arrived in their own airplanes. The little biplanes parked all around his grounds, today known as The Brand Library.

1938- In an interview with Liberty Magazine, Walt Disney said he, “had plans to put animation to various well-known pieces of music, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being only the start.” He was beginning to think of expanding the short into a concert feature. The result of which would be Fantasia.

1942- Black opera star Marian Anderson gave her concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to an audience of 75,000. She was snubbed from giving a recital at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall which caused a furious Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the DAR and arrange this concert.

1943- A U.S. Patents court concluded that Guglielmo Marconi had used several of Nichola Tesla’s patents to create Wireless Broadcasting. So in effect, Tesla was the real inventor of radio broadcasting. Vindication came too late. Marconi died a rich Nobel-Prize winner, and Tesla died alone and penniless.

1948- Variety columnist Lee Mortimer had been needling Frank Sinatra for his advocacy of liberal causes. He accused Old Blue Eyes of draft-dodging, and hinted maybe he had pro-Communist sympathies. This day as Sinatra passed Mortimer in front of Ciro's restaurant on Sunset Blvd. he heard Mortimer call him a dirty dago. Frank went at Mortimer and punched his lights out.

1952- The quiz show “I’ve Got A Secret” hosted by Gary Moore premiered on the Dumont Network and ran for 15 years.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1959- NASA introduced the first seven astronauts to the public, The Mercury Astronauts: Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, Leroy Cooper, and Malcolm Carpenter- all military test pilots instead of scientists.

1962- The musical West Side Story swept the Academy Awards.

1963- Animator Vernon Stallings died (1891-1963) He is known for inventing the animation disc while working on Felix the Cat in the 1920s. 

1965- Mickey Mantle hits the first indoor home run as the Astrodome opens with an exhibition game with the Astros hosting the Yankees. President Lyndon Johnson was supposed to throw out the first pitch but arrived late.  Phillie catcher Bob Boone commented about the Astrodome "This is a tough yard for a hitter when the air conditioning is blowing in.." 

1966- actress Sophia Loren married producer Carlo Ponti, with whom she had been living with for a decade but not allowed to marry because Catholics did not allow divorce from their previous spouses.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover the 10,000 year-old grave of a New Stone Age man. With him were the remains of a cat that looks like it was deliberately placed there. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.

2008- Stuntman Rupert MacDonald built a full-size Viking ship out of 15 million popsicle sticks. 

2023- Illuminations’ Super Mario Bros. Movie breaks all records of an animated movie opening, and a movie based on a game. $484 million USD over the Easter holiday.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for APril 8, 2024

Birthdays: Gautama Buddha –as commemorated by Japanese custom-Kambutsue, Ponce De Leon, King Albert of the Belgians, Mary Pickford, Yip Harburg, Betty Ford, Sonja Henje, Catfish Hunter, Jacques Brel, Darlene Gillespie, Julian Lennon, Carmen McCrae, Shecky Green, Douglas Trumbull, Robin Wright is 59, Patricia Arquette

1876- Amilicare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda debuted. The ballet portion is famous as the Dance of the Hours.

1879- Milk first sold in glass bottles.

1911-Vitagraph released Winsor McCay's short cartoon "Little Nemo" theatrically.

1933-The WPA- Works Progress Administration, later renamed the Works Projects Administration founded. It was the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s massive jobs program to heal the Depression by putting unemployed people back to work. They built bridges, dams, roads, federal buildings. The WPA arts projects employed artists like Grant Wood, Berenice Abbott, Tyrus Wong, and Thomas Hart Benton and put on plays with Orson Welles and John Houseman. Lee Krasner said it was a life-saver. They created a WPA Symphony that found dozens of unemployed musicians, including three who once played for Peter Tchaikovsky.

1933- Disney short Father Noah’s Ark opened. Directed by Wilfred Jackson.

1949- A three year old girl named Kathy Fiscus fell into a well in the LA suburb of San Marino California. After a concerted effort by authorities to rescue her, she was found dead. What makes this sad incident memorable, was it was the first time a news story was followed by KTLA television cameras and reported live as it happened. 

1963- The Best Short Oscar went to John Hubley's The Hole. Voices by Dizzy Gillespie and George Matthews.

1973- Pablo Picasso died at age 91. His last words at a dinner with friends was a toast 'Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore'. On his night table was a book of spot cartoons drawn by former Disney animator Vip Partch. 

50th Anniv.1974- Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record of 714 home runs set in 1935. Hammerin' Hank hit #715 off Dodger pitcher Al Dowling.  Aaron had tied the Babe’s record at the end of the previous season and had to endure an entire winter of stress and racial threats before he could come up to bat again and break the record on opening day of the new season. His locker had sacks of vicious hate mail alongside it. Henry Aaron retired with a new record of 755. Pitcher Al Dowling joked: "I never say 7:15 anymore. I only say, 'It's a quarter after seven'." 

1975- Frank Robinson becomes the first black manager in major league history as his Cleveland Indians defeat the Yankees 5-3. The Tribe's new player-manager hits a home run in his first at-bat as the designated hitter.

1986- Actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of the town of Carmel, California.

1994- Chan Ho Park becomes the first Korean to play in the US major leagues as he makes his Dodger pitching debut.

1994- Grunge rocker Kurt Kobain’s body was discovered by a security system electrician three days after he blew his own head off with a shotgun. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 7, 2024

Birthdays St. Francis Xavier, William Wordsworth, Mongo Santamaria, Walter Winchell, David Frost, Percy Faith, Daniel Ellsberg, Jerry Brown, Alan Pakula, Billie Holiday, Ravi Shankar, Irene Castle, Wayne Rogers, Stan Winston, James Garner, Olkirk Christenson- the inventor of Lego toys, Francis Ford Coppola is 85, Russell Crowe is 60, Jacky Chan (born Chan Kong Shang) is 70

1805- Ludwig Van Beethoven premiered his Symphony # 3 Eroica at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wein. It marks his break with the classical styles of Mozart and Haydn and the evolution of his full mature sound. 

1891- Showman P.T. Barnum died of old age. The man who invented kiddie matinees, the Greatest Show on Earth, and coined the word “Jumbo” and “ There’s a sucker born every minute.” His last words were "How were the box office receipts today?"

1927- An audience at the Bell Laboratory watched a three inch television screen broadcast a sound image of US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

1927- Abel Gance’s classic film Napoleon premiered at the Paris Opera. Gances active camera and editing were years ahead of their time, climaxed by a triptych of large images on three movie screens linked by synchronized projectors. One American man in the audience, Walter Wallin, was inspired to develop the Panavision wide screen lens, used in many modern movies.

1939-"The Ugly Duckling" the last Disney Silly Symphony short cartoon.

1939- At the Philadelphia Academy of Music, recording sessions began for the music of Walt Disney’s Fantasia and would continue for 42 more days. Leopold Stokowski leading the Philadelphia Philharmonic.

1949- Musical "South Pacific" debuts. Some Enchanted Evening…

1970- The film Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight won the Best Picture Oscar. The only x-rated (NC-17)film ever to do so. Walt Disney’s It’s Tough to be a Bird” won best animated short.

1990- The Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center opened a show of the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe that the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC cancelled. Mapplethorpe’s explicit depictions of gay and s/m lifestyles shocked neoconservative critics of the national endowments for the arts. A media debate on whether government should subsidize or censor art raged, and Dennis Barry the museum director was tried for obscenity. His acquittal was seen as a victory for free expression, but the argument cast a pall on future funding of controversial art.

1995- A Goofy Movie opened theaters. Directed by Kevin Lima. A lot of the animation was done at Disney’s Paris animation studio.

1995- Frank & Ollie premiered, a documentary written and directed by Frank Thomas’ son, Ted Thomas.

1998- Pop star George Michael was busted after exposing himself to an undercover policeman in a public park men’s room in Beverly Hills.

1998- Lead singer for the punk band The Plasmatics, Wendy O. Williams, committed suicide with a shotgun. The outrageously mohawked punk rocker was known for stunts on stage like destroying her amplifiers with a chainsaw, skydiving in the nude, autoeroticism with a sledgehammer, and crashing a burning school bus into a wall of television sets.

2155- According to the show Babylon 5 today marked the first contact between humans and the Centauri Alliance.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 6, 2024

Birthdays: Raphael of Urbino, Sacajawea, Ram Dass, Butch Cassidy, Gustav Moreau, Lowell Thomas, Merle Haggard, Billy Dee Williams, George Reeves, Michelle Phillips, Andre Previn, Barry Levinson, Roy Thinnes, John Ratzenberger, Gheorghe Zamfir, Paul Rudd is 55, Zach Braff is 49.

1906 - Cartoonist James Stuart Blackton released his film The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Today it is considered the first animated film. Blackton made a fortune, lost it, and was hit by a bus in 1940. But his animated antics paved the way for Mickey, Bugs, Bart, Gollum and Laura Croft. 

1931- The Little Orphan Annie radio show premiered. “Who's the little chatterbox?
The one with pretty auburn locks. Who can it be, It's Little Orphan Annie…”

1933- the Screen Writer's Guild, later the WGA, formed. It took about seven years for them to unionize screenwriting in Hollywood. Jack Warner called them: "Communists, Radical Bastards and Soap Box Sons of B*tches !" David O. Selznick, who prided himself on running a writer-friendly studio, told them: “What? You put a picket line in front of my studio and I'll mount a machine gun on the roof and mow you all down!!" Despite these protestations, the Guild today represents most Hollywood writers.

1936- A scientist at Dupont invented Teflon. 

1936- Episode One of the Flash Gordon series of movie serials premiered. This introduced Flash, Dale, and Emperor Ming the Merciless of the Planet Mongo.  It made a moviestar out of Olympic gold medalist Larry “Buster” Crabbe.

1951- Happy Birthday AstroBoy! According to the 1951 manga comic book by Osamu Tezuka, today Professor Elephant completed the little boy with the suction cup feet and pointed hairdo. Originally called Tetsuwan Atomo, he was named Astro Boy when Mushi Prod released the animated version in the US in 1961. 

1956- Elvis Presley signed his first movie deal with Paramount Pictures.

1956- The Iconic round Capitol Records Building in Hollywood opened for business. Its recording studios were used by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Les Paul to create their classic albums.

1970- Sean Flynn was the only child of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita. He became a freelance war photographer who specialized in going to the most dangerous war zones. This day he was arrested by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas in the Cambodian jungle. He was never seen again. His mother had him declared legally dead in 1984. Sean Flynn was 28.

1974- ABBA, a new disco phenomenon from Sweden is introduced to the world when they win a Eurovision song contest. Mama Mia!

1991- The first episode of Darkwing Duck premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 5, 2024

Birthdays: Plato, Swinburne, Booker T. Washington, Josef Lister, Bette Davis, Nadar, Jean Fragonard, animator Hicks Lokey, Nguyen Van Thieu, historian Robert Bloch, Gale Storm, Washington Atlee-Burpee the mail order seed king, Spencer Tracy, Frank Gorshin, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Greenway, Gregory Peck,  Mary Costa, the voice of Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Roger Corman, Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA is 74, Colin Powell, Pharrell Williams is 51.

1874- Johann Strauss Jr.’s operetta Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna.

1923- Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band took a train from Chicago to Richmond Indiana to record Chimes Blues. Satchmo’s first record.

1930 -James Dewar invented the Twinkie. He said he got the name when he drove by a billboard advertising "Twinkle-Toe Shoes" and modified it to Twinkie. Dewar ate two every day of his life, and called them, “The best darn-tootin idea I ever had!” 

1931- Fox Film Company dropped their option on young star John Wayne as a dud not going anywhere. Wayne eked out an existence doing cheap westerns for Republic and Monogram until John Ford of RKO made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach.

1940- Disney short Donald’s Dog Laundry.

1945- The first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

1951- The Atomic Spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for espionage.

1955- Elderly Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally retired. He was succeeded as PM by Anthony Eden. Churchill, already the author of several books, joked with his cabinet: ”Gentlemen history shall be kind to us, for I intend to write it!”

1956- At Disneyland, The Bathroom of the Future opened at Tomorrowland.

1963- The Lava Lamp invented by Dr. Edward Craven Walker.

1965- Julie Andrews had created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But when filming the motion picture, the studio head Jack Warner decided she was not a big enough star, so he used Audrey Hepburn with a dubbed singing voice. But Andrews had her revenge. At the Academy Awards this night My Fair Lady won Best Picture, but Julie Andrews won the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins. She famously said, "I would like to thank Jack Warner for making this award possible!"

1975- The Best Animated Short Oscar went to Closed Mondays, claymation from Portland based Bob Gardiner and Will Vinton. In 2005 the Will Vinton Studio was renamed Laika.

1985- Singer David Lee Roth quit the rock band Van Halen to pursue a solo career.

1987- The young Fox TV network premiered The Tracey Ullman Show. She was an English sketch comedy actor who did clever impressions. But a highlight of the show was the unique animated interstitials before commercials. One in particular was a take on a family done by Matt Groening entitled The Simpsons. The Tracey Ullman Show eventually ended, but The Simpsons spun off into a regular TV show in 1989. It became one of the most famous, longest running TV series in history.

1994- Grunge rock star Kurt Kobain shot himself. His body wasn’t discovered until two days later.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 4, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Caracalla, Eadweard Muybridge, Maya Angelou, Frances Langford, Irv Spence-Tom & Jerry animator, Gil Hodges, Arthur Murray, Muddy Waters-born McKinley Morganfield, Cloris Leachman, Dorothea Dix, Elmer Bernstein, Bijan, Bea Benaderet, Heath Ledger, Robert Downey Jr is 59, Barry Pepper, Craig T. Nelson is 80, Hugo Weaving is 64

1850- The City of Los Angeles was incorporated under U.S. law. 

1952- CARTOON COMMIES- Nationally syndicated columnist Walter Winchell accused the owners of a New York commercial animation studio, Tempo Productions of Communist sympathies. One of the owners was Disney Layout man Dave Hilberman, who was a union organizer and was the only artist personally named by Walt Disney to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. The F.B.I. began investigating Tempo and their Madison Avenue clients quickly pulled their business. Tempo closed, laying off 50 artists. Mr. Clean, Markie Maypo and the Hamm’s Beer Bear were once again safe from Red subversion. 

1954- Arturo Toscanini, who had been making music since the 1880’s, conducted his final concert. Toscanini’s studio space at NBC is today the set of the Saturday Night Live TV show.

1958- Screen goddess Lana Turner and her gangster lover Johnny Stompanato had a violent argument that ended when Turner’s teenage daughter plunged a kitchen knife into his chest. She was acquitted as justifiable homicide. Rumors maintain the daughter was covering for her mother’s own actions. 

1967- Van Nuys premiere head shop Captain Ed’s Heads & Highs first opened for business.

1967- Snoopy’s little bird friend Woodstock debuted in the Peanuts comic strip. 

1973- The World Trade Center Twin Towers first opened to the public.

1987- Ronald Reagan’s hand-picked FCC voted to repeal The Fairness Doctrine, which mandated news services report only unbiased news, reflecting all opinions. It also said you clearly had to separate hard news from opinion. This set the stage for the highly Right-Left partisan reporting of today.

1994- Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark started Netscape. Clark also founded Silicon Graphics, Inc.

2007- Bob Clark, the director of the holiday classic film A Christmas Story, was killed in a head on car crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. He was 67. 

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for April 3, 2024

Birthdays: Marlon Brando would be 100, King Henry IV of England (1361), Washington Irving, William Marcy "Boss"Tweed, Sally Rand the Fan Dancer, Bud Fisher “Mutt & Jeff”, Ma Rainey, Iron Eyes Cody, Wayne Newton, Doris Day, Robert Sherwood, Virgil Grissom, Marsha Mason, Melissa Etheridge, Amanda Byrnes, David Hyde Pierce is 66, Alec Baldwin is 66, Eddie Murphy is 63, Jane Goodall is 90.

1869- First performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor. 

1897-composer Johannes Brahms died.

1920- Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald married.

1941- With the possibility of a strike at his studio, and war looming, Walt Disney held the first meeting with U.S. government officials to try and obtain work for training films. 

1968- Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was: " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" After an academy screening in Hollywood, movie star Rock Hudson walked out saying” Will someone please tell me what the hell that was about?” 

 Writer Arthur C. Clarke always said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM. At the Oscars, Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for The Producers. 2001 won only one Oscar, for visual effects. It was the only Oscar a Stanley Kubrick film ever won.

1973- Standing on the corner of 6th Ave in Manhattan, Motorola scientist Marty Cooper made the first cell phone call. He called his competitor Joel Engel at Bell Labs to tell him he had lost the race to invent the cell phone. He said of that first phone, “It was the size of a leg of lamb.”

1975- Eccentric chess champion Bobby Fischer was stripped of his World Chess Championship for refusing to play any more matches to defend his title. 

1994- Disney chief executive Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash on a skiing trip. It’s been speculated that blowing snow off some high peaks caused an ice ball to be sucked into the copter’s air intake manifold. Clint Eastwood was supposed to be on that trip but couldn't make it. Billie Joel and Christie Brinkley had a similar scare with their helicopter on the same day. The death of the Disney CEO set in motion the events that would lead to Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving Disney and forming Dreamworks, as well as Michael Ovitz’s brief tenure as a mouseketeer and Michael Eisner’s eventual fall in 2006. In 1999 the Hollywood Reporter estimated that little iceball cost the Walt Disney Company over one billion dollars.