TOm Sito's Animation ALmanac for May 31, 2024

Birthdays: King Manuel I of Portugal 1495, Walt Whitman, Fred Allen, Don Ameche, Prince Ranier, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Ranier Werner Fassbinder, Brooke Shields, Joe Namath, Richie Valens, John Kemeny- the co-creator of the computer language BASIC, Tom Berenger, Denholm Elliot, Peter Yarrow, Lea Thompson, John Bonzo Bonham of Led Zepplin, Colin Farrell is 48, Clint Eastwood is 94

1669 -Samuel Pepys was forced to discontinue the diary he had kept from 1660 due to failing eyesight.

1837 - Joseph Grimaldi, England’s greatest clown (king of pantomime), died at 57. On stage since the age of 3 at Sadler-Wells, he never appeared in a circus ring. Instead, his act was stage pantomime. In tribute to him, English circus clowns are known as a “Joey’.

1859- The famous clock in the Elizabeth Tower of Parliament called after its bell, Big Ben, began running, and its chimes sounded out across London for the first time. The bell was named Big Ben after a champion prizefighter who was popular at the time.

1873- SCHLEIMANN FOUND TROY. Archaeologist Heinrich Schleimann unearthed the horde of gold known as Priam's Treasure in a mound near Hysarlik Turkey. This site was the Troy of Homer, proving the Trojan War was not a myth but a real historical event. There were actually 9 Troys on the site- from a Bronze Age village to a Late Roman Empire city. The Troy of the Trojan War was Troy number 4. It showed signs of destruction by fire.

1879- New York’s Madison Square Garden opened. Designed by Stanford White to resemble a Venetian Palazzo. The modern sports complex was opened in the 1960s.

1928- The song “Old Man River “sung by Paul Robeson came out as a single.

1929- Steamboat Willie was the first Mickey Mouse sound cartoon, but Mickey didn’t speak much. He just whistled, yelped and laughed. In the cartoon released this day “the Carnival Kid” Mickey spoke his first words “Hot Dogs!” The voice was musician Carl Stalling. Later Walt Disney decided to voice the mouse himself.

1935- Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Pictures merged to become Twentieth Century Fox. In 2017 Walt Disney Company purchased 20th Cent Fox and in the Summer of 2020 phased out the brand.

1958 - Dick Dale invented "surf music" with "Let's Go Trippin".

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded "Give Peace a Chance." at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal. It became the theme song of the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Because of this song and Lennon’s support of the Hippie protesters the Nixon White House kept a file on him. Lennon spent most of 1972-73 under a constant threat of 60-day deportation from the US. 

1984- Martial arts movie star Steven Segal married soap opera star Adrienne LaRussa. But what Adrienne didn’t know was he already had a wife named Miyako Fujetani and two kids waiting for him in Japan. A few months after this he fell for another actress named Kelly LeBrock.

1985- John Sculley was a former exec from Pepsi brought in by Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to help run the company. This day his solution to help the company run better was to fire Steve Jobs. Wozniak retired and Sculley eventually moved on. Before his death, Steve Jobs came back to Apple and make it the world’s most profitable company, as well as run Pixar, and be on the board of the Walt Disney Company.

1989- "Skinhead Day at the Magic Kingdom" Disneyland refused to admit a rally of skinheads, Nazis and Klansmen. 

1990- Television sitcom Seinfeld premiered based on a TV special about the standup comedian called the Seinfeld Chronicles. No Soup for You!

1995- A young Mexican-American Tejana singer named Selena was gaining a growing crossover appeal in pop music and there seemed no limit. This day her career was cut short when she was shot and killed by the Yolanda Saldivia, the president of The Selena Fan club.

2000- The first Survivor show premiered, shepherding in the era in America of TV Reality shows.

2004- Peppa Pig created by Astley Baker-Davies debuted on British TV.

2008- The spaceshuttle Discovery brings a Buzz Lightyear toy up to the International Space Station.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 30, 2024

Birthdays: Czar Peter the Great, Benny Goodman, Mel Blanc, Stepin Fetchit, Boris Pasternak, Irving Thalberg, Milt Neil, Howard Hawks, Gale Sayers, Agnes Varda, Michael J. Pollard, Wynonna, Keir Dullea is 87, Ceelo Green is 48, Idina Menzel is 52

1848- William Young patents the ice cream freezer.

1883- A rumor among the strollers on the Brooklyn Bridge that the bridge was falling caused a panic and 12 people were trampled. Young street kid Al Smith recalled being under the bridge and seeing a rain of bowler hats and parasols as the crowd pushed and shoved. To prove the bridge was absolutely safe, the mayor asked P.T. Barnum to parade his circus elephants over the bridge to Brooklyn. 

1919- Hollywood entrepreneur Charles Tolman bought a natural declivity north of Hollywood Blvd called Daisy Dell. People had been picnicking in the grass there for years. Now Tolman wanted to build a concert amphitheater. Conductor Hugo Kirchhofer remarked “ It looks like a big bowl!” So, it became the Hollywood Bowl thereafter. 

1922- The Lincoln Memorial dedicated. The huge statue of Lincoln seated was carved by an Italian immigrant family in the Bronx. While President Harding talked, a guest of honor was elderly 86 year old Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincolns only surviving child. He was a former Secretary of War. It was his last public appearance. 

1930- The Lockheed Terminal was rededicated as Burbank Airport.

1935 - Babe Ruth's last game. He went hitless for the Boston Braves against Phillies.

1936- Mickey short “ Through the Mirror”, opened.

1942- The British RAF launch the first of their 1000 plane bombing raids on Germany, this one flattened the city of Cologne.

1950- Charles Schulz introduced the character Schroeder into his Peanuts comic strip. The little boy obsessed with playing Beethoven on his toy piano.

1955- The New York chapter of the Catholic League of Decency pressured Loews State Theater on Broadway to take down a giant 30-foot billboard of Marilyn Monroe trying to push her skirt down.

1962- Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem had its first performance.

1972- Director choreographer Bob Fosse filmed a live performance of Liza Minelli’s one-woman show Liza with a Z. It was telecast in Sept. and became a sensation.

1994 - Death of Baron Marcel Bich, Italian-born French engineer and industrialist who created an empire of disposable BIC pens, lighters and razors.

2003- Pixar’s Finding Nemo opened in general release. 

2020- Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the Dragon Rocket with two astronauts into orbit. The first private company space launch, and the first time American astronauts blasted off into orbit from America since the space shuttle program was retired ten years ago.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 29, 2024

History for 5/29/2024
Birthdays: John F. Kennedy, King Charles II (the "Merry Monarch"), Bob Hope, G. K. Chesterton, Patrick Henry, Oswald Spengler, T.H. White, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Josef Von Sternberg, LaToya Jackson, John Hinckley Jr., Al Unser Jr., Beatrice Lilly, Danny Elfman, Annette Benning is 66, Melissa Etheridge is 63, Rupert Everett is 66

1606- Michel Caravaggio the artist shot a man over a tennis match. Caravaggio was a mad-artist before the term was invented.  The police records of Rome show the master painter constantly in trouble, seducing man, woman and child, throwing rocks at soldiers, stabbing waiters, etc.

1911 -The first Indianapolis 500

1912- In Philadelphia, 15 young women were fired by the Curtis Publishing Company for dancing "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break. 

1941-THE GREAT WALT DISNEY CARTOONISTS STRIKE.. The picket line and campsite went up across the street where St. Joseph's Hospital is today. Chef's from nearby Toluca Lake restaurants would cook for the strikers on their off time and the aircraft mechanics of Lockheed promised muscle if any ruff stuff was threatened.   

Picketers included Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), Walt Kelly and Margaret Selby (later Kelly) (Pogo), Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas), Steve Bosustow and John Hubley (Mr. Magoo), Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones (What's Opera Doc?), George Baker (Sad Sack), Dick Swift ("the Parent Trap") Frank Tashlin (Cinderfella) Ade Woolery (Playhouse), and four hundred others. Animators from Warner Bros. MGM and Walter Lantz marched with their Disney brothers and sisters, because they knew this was where the fate of their entire industry would be settled. Celebrities like Dorothy Parker, Frank Morgan, and John Garfield gave speeches. The studio claimed no one of importance was on strike. 

The strike was eventually settled by Federal arbitration and a little arm twisting by the Bank of America. Many of the artists who left the studio afterwards set up U.P.A. and pioneered the modern 1950's style.

1942- JOHN BARRYMORE- The great dramatic actor, the first American to dare to play Hamlet in England, died of cirrhosis and kidney failure at age 60. Whether the infamous prank actually happened where Raoul Walsh, Bertholdt Brecht, Peter Lorre, W.C. Fields and some others (the "Bundy Drive Boys") kidnapped Barrymore's body from Pierce Brothers Funeral Home and propped it up at the poker table to scare the willys out of Errol Flynn is a matter of debate. Flynn and Paul Heinried said it was true, writer Gene Fowler said it was false.  John Barrymore's last words were to screenwriter Gene Fowler:   "Say Gene, isn't it true you are the illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill?"

1942- Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas," debatably the best selling record of all time.

1952- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norga became first men to reach the top of Mt. Everest. The tallest mountain on the Earth.

1956- Hollywood director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) drowned himself in his pool. His career was over and his health was deteriorating from a series of strokes. Bruises were found on his head and at first the police suspected foul play. It wasn’t until 1989 his partner made his suicide note public. His head had struck the pool’s bottom as he jumped in causing the bruise.

1973 - Columbia Records fired President Clive Davis for misappropriating

$100, 000 in funds, So Davis went on and founded Arista records.

1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500.

1978 - Bob Crane, (Hogan-Hogan's Heroes), died at 49 under mysterious circumstances. He was found in a Tucson hotel room surrounded by pornography, bludgeoned to death by a camera tripod.  The murder was never solved.

1987 –pop singer Michael Jackson attempted to buy the XIX century remains of Joseph Meredith a.k.a. the Elephant Man.

1999- Hikers in a Malibu ravine discovered the remains of Phillip Taylor Kramer, the bass guitar player of the 1960’s band Iron Butterfly. The musician had disappeared four years before. Now his skeleton was found sitting in his Ford Aerostar at the bottom of a steep ravine.

2007- Apple sold it’s first iPhone.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 28, 2024

Birthdays: Solomon 970 BC, Noah Webster, Dr. Joseph Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, General Pierre Beauregard, Ian Fleming, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Jerry West, Dietrich Fisher-Deiskau, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, Taffy Abel (one of the first professional hockey stars), John Fogarty is 79, Carey Mulligan is 39, Carol Baker.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it probably had been around much earlier, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer recorded a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Scottish King James IV particularly liked the stuff.  Called in Gaelic “Uisge beatha”, this got corrupted by English speakers into “Whisky”

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1928 - Dodge Brothers Automobile Inc & Chrysler Corp merged. 

1929 - 1st all color talking picture, "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. The union claimed they had a majority of employee rep-cards signed, which Walt Refused to acknowledge. On this day, in defiance of the federal Wagner Act, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader.  Studio security officers escorted him off the lot. “Would you mind if I collect my pencils?” 

That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild at Hollywood Legion Hall, Art’s assistant Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike, and it was unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award-winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden". Picket lines go up next day in Hollywood animation’s own version of the Civil War.

  Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike, and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized completely, but the hard feelings remained for their rest of their lives.

1951- The Goon Show premiered on BBC Radio. It made stars out of comedians like Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and pioneered the type of irreverent anarchist sketch comedy later done by Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Royal Canadian Air Farce.

1953-Disney released its first 3D film a short, titled Melody (Adventure in Music). Written by Dick Heumer and co-directed by Ward Kimball.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1957- The National League Baseball owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants to move west to California. 

1960- George Zucco 74, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died. One version says he died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him. He actually died of natural causes in a nursing home.

1966- the It’s a Small World exhibit, which had been created for the 1964 NY Worlds Fair, reopened at Disneyland, California. Designed by Mary Blair and Alice Davis. Song by the Sherman Brothers.

1977- George Lucas film Star Wars opened in wide release across the country.

1983- “What a Feeling” the theme from the film Flashdance by Irene Cara and Giorgio Moroder reached the top of the pop charts. Everyone began dancing with leg warmers and baggy sweaters torn at the neck. Interesting that all the stylish dancing in the film was really done by Jennifer Beals stand in, Marine Jahan, but she got no credit on the film. 

1998- After a dinner at Buca di Beppo in Encino, Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drinker and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself. Hartman’s last role was doing the English dub of Jiji the cat in Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

2004- Lorenzo, animated short came out with the Disney film Raising Helen. Directed by Mike Gabriel, from an idea created decades ago by 95 year old storyman Joe Grant.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped for 45 minutes. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 27, 2024

Birthdays: James 'Wild Bill' Hickock, Julia Ward Howe, Aemelia Jenks-Bloomer, Dashell Hammett, Leopold Goldowsky (the inventor of Kodachrome film), Hubert H. Humphrey, Herman Wouk, Harlan Ellison, Joseph Feines, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Richard Schiff is 69, Peri Gilpin, Paul Bettany is 53 

1895 - British inventor Burt Acres patented a film camera/projector

1930- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTCH TAPE -Chemist Richard Drew of Saint Paul Minnesota invented cellophane tape, marketed by the Minnesota Mining &Manufacturing or 3M Company. It was called Scotch after the stereotype perception that Scots people are frugal with money, so it’s a good value. Three years later Drew invented Masking Tape as a way for car manufacturers to paint cars two tone.

1933- Disney’s cartoon “The Three Little Pigs” premiered, whose song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” became a national anthem of recovery from the Great Depression. 

Director of the short Burt Gillette left Disney afterwards to run the Van Beuren Studio in New York. 

1935- The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (The NRA) program. Roosevelt responded by unsuccessfully trying to stack the court with judges more to his liking. He referred to them as 'The Nine Old Men', a sobriquet Walt Disney would borrow in 1949 for his top animators.

1937- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened.

1948- Walt Disney feature Melody Time released, featuring Pecos Bill. 

1949- Actress Rita Hayworth married playboy Prince Aly Khan. Prince Aly Khan, 1911-1960, was born in Italy a son of dispossessed Pakistani royalty to the Aga Khan II. He lived his life as an international playboy, socialite and sportsman, making love to women from actress Rita Hayworth to Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela Churchill-Harriman. Cole Porter wrote him into a song. He died when he crashed his sportscar in France.

1961 – The first black light is sold.

1969 – Construction on Walt Disney World Florida began.

1977- Punk band The Sex Pistols release their hit God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime, in time for the Queen’s Jubilee year. Her Majesty herself preferred the Beatles’ All You Need is Love.

1994 – Nobel Prize winner and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after a twenty-year exile.

1995- Actor Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in an equestrian event in Charlottesville, VA.  He became a spokesman for stem-cel spinal cord research, but his efforts in the US were frustrated by powerful religious-right lobbyists. They felt the stem-cels were being harvested from the residue of aborted fetuses. Christopher Reeves died, still paralyzed, in 2004.

2005- Dreamworks animated feature Madagascar opened. Directed by Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 26, 2024

Birthdays: The Duke of Marlborough, Pope Clement VII the Medici Fox-1478, Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin 1759- early feminist writer and mother of Mary Shelley, Alexander Pushkin, Isadora Duncan, Norma Talmadge, Paul Lukas, Dorothea Lange, John Wesley Hardin the shootist, John Wayne, Al Jolson, Jay Silverheels (Tonto), Peter Cushing, Robert Morley, Peggy Lee, Sally Ride, Pam Grier is 76, Helen Bonham Carter is 58, Bobcat Golthwaite is 65, Matt Stone the co-creator of South Park

1897- A novel by a London theatre manager named Abraham “Bram” Stoker appeared in bookstores.  It was titled Dracula. 

1913- Actors Equity formed.

1933- Jimmy Rogers "the Singing Brakeman", the father of modern country music, died of tuberculosis at age 31. Shortly before his death he recorded a song called "TB Blues". 

1962- The Isley Brothers single “Twist & Shout” released.

1967- The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band released in the UK.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono have their "Bed-In for Peace" news conference in New York.  One of the testiest exchanges was one Lennon had with Lil' Abner cartoonist Al Capp.

1969- Actor Jeffrey Hunter had been in movies like King of Kings and The Longest Day. He was considered first for the role of Captain Kirk in Star Trek. This day he was walking down some stairs in his Van Nuys home when he suffered an intercranial hemorrhage. He fell and fractured his skull. He was taken to Valley Presbyterian Hospital, where he died the next day. He was 42. 

1994- Singer Michael Jackson married Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie Presley in the Dominican Republic. They keep the wedding a secret for six weeks, then divorced 18 months later.

1995- Looney Tunes director Friz Freleng died at age 89.

1995- In a memo to Microsoft, founder Bill Gates declared the Internet the “most important single development” since the personal computer.

2006- The World Premiere of Pixar’s Cars, held at the NASCAR speedway in Charlotte NC.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 25, 2024

 

History for 5/25/2023
Birthdays: Miles Davis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josef Broz Tito, Igor Sikorsky, Pontormo, Bennett Cerf, Claude Akins, Leslie Uggams, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Frank Oz (Richard Frank Oznowicz), Beverly Sills, Robert Ludlum, Anne Heche, Irwin Winkler, Mike Myers is 61, Ray Stevenson, Ian McKellen is 85

1906- Putting on the Ritz! Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz opened London’s Ritz Hotel. The first hotel to feature unheard of luxuries like a telephone and an indoor toilet in every suite!

 

1911- Thomas Mann visited Venice Italy. On the Lido Beach he was inspired to write A Death in Venice.

1932- Mickey’s Revue, the first Disney cartoon that featured the character that would eventually be called Goofy.

1942- First day shooting on the film “Casablanca”.

1946- Chuck Jones cartoon Hare Raising Hare, where Bugs meets a large shaggy monster originally named Rudolf, later Gossamer, “Monsters are such interesting people…”

1950- Brooklyn Battery Tunnel opened in NYC.

1957- Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows ended after nearly a decade. The show built a legendary writers room, employing future star writers like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and Neil Simon.  The show also pioneered the executive strategy of producer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver to not let the show be owned by an entire sponsor, but the network would produce the show and would sell the sponsor commercial time in 30 second chunks. Pat Weaver’s daughter is Sigourney Weaver. Your Show of Shows was finally bested in the ratings by The Lawrence Welk Show.

1961- THE SPACE RACE- The United States had been chafing about how far ahead the Soviet Union was in the exploration of space. In an address to Congress this day President John F. Kennedy pledged the wealth and resources of the U.S. to beating the Soviets to the Moon. "Our pledge is within the next ten years to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth… We choose to go to the Moon not because it will be easy but because it is hard!" The Moon landing was achieved in 1969. Today it is acknowledged that without the motivation of the Cold War the conquest of the Moon would have happened much more slowly. 

1965- The Saint Louis Gateway Arch dedicated.

1968- The Rolling Stones released the song Jumping Jack Flash. 

1969- John Schlesinger’s film Midnight Cowboy premiered. The first X-rated film to ever win the Oscar for Best Film. This is the film where Dustin Hoffman yells “Hey! I’m walking here!”

1977- The premiere of George Lucas’ movie Star Wars. Today called A New Hope.The movie opened on the 28th.  After Universal and Disney passed, Twentieth Century Fox picked up the distribution but let the backend profits go to Lucas. First because they had taken a loss with the failure of Dr. Doolittle, and second because they didn't think the film would do any serious business. Even George Lucas didn’t expect the film to break even. Fox's market research department told studio head Alan Ladd Jr:  1). don't make this movie; no one will go see a science fiction movie; and 2). change the title; no one will go see a movie with "War" in the title.  Fox executives had predicted the studios hit for that summer would be "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry" with Peter Fonda and Susan George. 

Star Wars was a monster hit. It was like there were no other movies playing that summer. It sold out Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood 50 weeks in a row. George Lucas became a seriously rich man and developed THX sound, digital animation and Industrial Light and Magic special effects. The film’s popularity ran so ahead of expectations, that at Christmas when you purchased a Star Wars game you got an empty box with a pink IOU note in it pledging to get you the game when they printed more. 

1979- Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien opened. It featured the exotic designs of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, and John Hurt with a classic case of chest pains!

1983- Return of the Jedi opened. It was originally Revenge of the Jedi, but George Lucas changed the name just a month before. Featuring Carrie Fisher in the slave bikini that inspired a generation of young males. 

1986- Hands Across America stunt to help hunger has 7 million people at one time holding hands at noon.

1994- First International Conference on the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee and CERN talked on how to unify existing internet systems into the new World Wide Web.

2000- NUKE THE MOON.  This day it was revealed that back in 1958 during the Cold War US scientists proposed to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. There would be no mushroom cloud because that requires an atmosphere, and the flash would only be visible for a few seconds.  What the purpose would be other than to scare the willies out of the Russkies no one knew. This dumb-ass idea was soon scrapped.

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Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for May 24, 2024

Birthdays: Jean Paul Marat, Queen Victoria, Walt Whitman, Emmanuel Leutze, Tina Turner, Priscilla Presley, Patti LaBelle, Tommy Chong of Cheech & Chong is 86, Peter Ellenshaw, Gary Burghoff is 8, Kristin Scott Thomas is 64, Alfred Molina is 70, Jim Broadbent is 75, John C. Reilly is 61, Bob Dylan is 83, 

WB animator Art Leonardi is 93.

1590- In Rome, construction of the great Dome of Saint Peters Basilica completed.

1830 –The poem "Mary Had A Little Lamb," was written.

1844- Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message. From Washington to Baltimore it said: "What Hath God Wrought?" The message was from the Bible- Numbers 23:23.

Samuel Morse considered himself an artist first and did a little inventing to pay the bills. He heard a French inventor had speculated about the idea of telegraphy so he decided to build a working model and invented the Morse code system of representing letters with dots and dashes. Members of Congress and octogenarian former First Lady Dolly Madison were present at the ceremony.  By the decade’s end, twenty thousand miles of telegraph wire crisscrossed the country. 

1850- America’s first nationwide newspaper/magazine Harpers Weekly began.

1899 - 1st auto repair shop and car garage opened. The Back Bay Cycle and Motor Company of Boston.

1929- The Marx Brothers first movie comedy” The Coconuts” premiered.

1935- The first Baseball night game- Reds vs. Phillies.

1941- Paramount Pictures seized direct control of the Fleischer Studio in Miami. They allowed Max and Dave Fleischer another 26 weeks to complete their projects in house but as Paramount employees. They had to sign “resignations in blank” to be exercised at Paramount’s discretion when the 26 weeks were up. Soon Dave quit and Max was fired that December. The studio was re-organized as Famous Studio under Max’s son-in-law Seymour Kneitel and moved back to New York in Jan 1943. 

1950- Married movie star Ingrid Bergman shocked American morality by having an open love affair with neorealist film director Roberto Rosselini. This day they were finally married but the outcry of conservatives about this “Apostle of Degradation” was such that her image needed a makeover. So, she played Saint Joan of Arc.

1954 - IBM announces vacuum tube "electronic" brain, a computer that could perform 10

million operations an hour.

1958 – United Press & International News Service merge into United Press International.

1976 - 1st commercial SST Concorde flight to North America -London to Wash DC.

1989- In Los Angeles, a spectacular fire destroyed the Art-Deco-Moderne all-wood landmark, the Pan Pacific Auditorium. 

1991- Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise opened. 

1991- Ron Howard’s Backdraft opened.

1999- Tim Sweeny invented the animation/vfx software Unreal Engine.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 23, 2024

Birthdays: Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Scatman Crothers, Rosemary Clooney, Artie Shaw, Alicia de Larrocha, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Melissa McBride, Frank McHugh, Drew Carey is 66, Joan Collins is 91

1911- President Taft dedicated the central branch of the New York Public Library.

1931- In Max Fleischer's Silly Scandals, the girl character first seen in Dizzy Dishes is first called by name Betty Boop.

1941-Hollywood union boss George Brown and assistant Willard Bioff (also a Frank Nitti bagman) were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Brown had been a Chicago operative and it was said 'he could drink 100 bottles of beer in one day". Their main contact among the Hollywood studio heads was Nicholas Schenck, the chairman of Loews Theaters and on the board of MGM. Willie Bioff had tried to help Louis B. Mayer defeat the screen actors guild and hijack the Disney animator's union. After their jail time Bioff blew up in his car after turning government witness, and Brown 'disappeared...' Nicholas Schenck meanwhile was pardoned by President Truman himself.

1969- The Who released their rock opera Tommy. 

1980- Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining opened.

2007- The documentary Dream-On, Silly Dreamer premiered at the Alex Theater in Glendale Ca. The film was made and financed by Walt Disney career traditional animation artists who lost their jobs when the studio laid them off.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 22, 2024

Birthdays: Sir Lawrence Olivier, Mary Cassatt, Richard Wagner, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, T. Bone Pickens, Herge’ (Tintin), Irene Pappas, Paul Winfield, Richard Benjamin, Susan Strassberg, George Baker (Sad Sack), Paul Winchell, Tommy John, Naomi Cambell, Dr. Robert Moog –inventor of the music synthesizer, Ginnifer Goodwin is 46

In Kodiak Alaska, today is the Kodiak Crab Festival.

Happy National Bartender's Day

337AD- Emperor Constantine the Great, who raised Christianity from an illegal cult to the official religion of the Roman Empire, died after a ruling for 37 years. He himself didn't accept baptism until on his deathbed. It was a tradition among leaders to put off baptism until almost the end, so the act baptism would cleanse all your sins and you entered Heaven clean as a whistle. His coins had Christ on one side and Sol Invictus, the Imperial Sun god on the other. To maintain order in the Empire until his son Constantius could be contacted and safely installed as leader in Constantinople, the embalmed corpse of Constantine continued to receive ambassadors and preside over meetings for the rest of that year. 

1276- Today is the feast day of Saint Humility of Faenza, a nun who insisted she be bricked up into her cell, with only a hole cut for food, water and to hear Mass and slept on her knees. After twelve years of this she was talked out of her prison to become an abbess.

1455- Battle of St. Albans- First battle of the WAR OF THE ROSES. The conflict wasn't about differing views on horticulture but a dynastic struggle between two powerful branches of the royal family of England. It seems a hundred years earlier King Edward III had a lot of lusty sons. His two eldest and lustiest were Edward the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. Edward lusted after Joan the fair Maid of Kent and John lusted after the throne. The Black Prince should have become The Black King, but he died young. Even then John couldn't be king because the rules said the throne went to the eldest Black Princeling, Richard II. So, John of Gaunt had some lusty sons himself and they became the Lancaster branch of the family, after John's title as Earl of Lancaster- represented by the Red Rose. The Black Prince's progeny were the York family represented by the White Rose.  They warred and conspired and murdered and had a lusty time until they wiped each other out and were replaced by a third family, the Welsh Tudors. 

1761-The first life insurance policy issued in the U.S.

1782- In a letter to one of his officers, George Washington rejected the calls to declare himself King of the United States. " It pains me to hear such ideas are circulating within the army. I regard such ideas with horror and condemn it severely. It seems pregnant with the greatest misfortunes that could ever befall our country."

1915- The San Fernando Valley voted to become part of Los Angeles. 

1922-The U.S. Supreme Court rules Baseball is not a monopoly but a sport. 

1925- First day of shooting on Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis.

1954- Chuck Jones “Claws for Alarm” with Porky and Sylvester.

1955-The Golden Age of Radio ended when after 22 years the Jack Benny show was canceled. Once the top broadcast show in the nation, Benny went into television.

1966- Bill Cosby became the first African-American to win an Emmy Award for starring in a television series- I-Spy.

1967- T.V. children's show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood debuted.

1973- Scientist Bob Metcalfe of Xerox PARC patented the Ethernet.

1985- Top Disney animation director Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman, who directed the Jungle Book among other films, died in a car crash following lunch at the Smoke House in Burbank. He was 75. 

1992- The film Encino Man premiered, with Brendan Frazier and Pauly Shore. Aaoooh!

2001- Ted Turner and Jane Fonda divorced. 

2002- The Ayatollahs of Iran outlaw Barbie dolls. They denounced Barbie as "agents of subversive Zionist Western propaganda."

2012- SpaceX, the world’s first privately owned spacecraft, blasted off to bring supplies to the International Space Station.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for May 21, 2024

Birthdays: Plato, Fats Waller, Albrecht Durer, Andre Sakharov, Armand Hammer, Raymond Burr, John Hubley, Dennis Day, Al Franken, Harold Robbins, Judge Reinhold, Larry Terro called Mr. T. is 74

1892- Leoncavallo's opera "I Pagliacci" debuted at La Scala in Milan.

1906 - Louis H Perlman patented a de-mountable tire-carrying rim for cars.

1908 - 1st horror movie “Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde” premiered in Chicago.

1914 - Greyhound Bus Company began in Minnesota.

1916 - Britain began "Summer Time" Daylight Savings Time. The US adopted the system in the 1930s.

1922- On the Road to Moscow, the first political cartoon to win a Pulitzer prize. The cartoonist Rollin Kirby, was passionate about Prohibition. He had a regular character to extol temperance named Mr. Dry. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 Kirby killed off Mr. Dry in print.

1927- Charles Lindbergh-Lucky Lindy, The Lone Eagle, etc. reaches a field outside Paris called Le Bourget after flying nonstop across the Atlantic. There was no such thing as an auto-pilot yet, so he had to stay awake and alert for 33 hours straight. His fatigue would have let him crash, if the gremlins he was hallucinating hadn’t kept him company.  

1933- 23 year old Woolie Reitherman’s first day at Walt Disney Studio.

1945- BOGEY LOVES BABY-Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall on a friend’s farm in Ohio. The friend Louis Bromfield was a best selling novelist “ The Rains Came” and early proponent of organic farming. Bogart was 48 and she was 21. Her real name was Betty Persky, but she passed for wasp. When the publicity photographers came, they were under strict instructions from Jack Warner to frame out Bacall’s more Jewish-looking relatives. His nickname for her was “Slim”, and she called him “Steve”, after their characters in the film “To Have and to Have Not.” Though few gave the marriage much of a chance, they remained together and very happy for the rest of his life.

1952- Actor John Garfield died. Some say he died in the midst of wild fornications; in truth he died in his sleep of heart failure aggravated by stress and alcoholism. He was 39. The matinee idol of “The Postman Rings Twice” and “Kid Galahad” was too politically left for the conservative postwar age. When a young stage actor he had run guns to the IRA, later he supported progressive union movements, anti-fascism and desegregation. His outspoken politics got him blacklisted in Hollywood, his friends deserted him, and he was ruined.

1952- Famed writer Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes, The Children’s Hour) testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee HUAC, but refused to name names. “I cannot cut my conscience to fit the fashions of the day.” She escaped a contempt of Congress wrap but she was blacklisted and at one point was working the makeup counter in Magnins department store. By the late 50s she was back with plays like Toys in the Attic.

1954- The Disney short Pigs is Pigs, directed by Jack Kinney, released.

1971- Marvin Gaye’s song “ What’s Going On?” Released.

1972- A lunatic shouting I am Jesus Christ, attacked Michelangelo’s statue La Pieta with a hammer. He is the reason why today we can only enjoy this beautiful sculpture from behind 3 inch thick bulletproof glass.

1979 - Elton John becomes the first western rocker to perform live in USSR.

1980 – Star Wars “The Empire Strikes Back" premiered.

1983 - David Bowie's "Let's Dance," single goes #1. The tracks featured a then little-known guitarist named Stevie-Ray Vaughn.

1992- Tonight Show host Johnny Carson did his last show “I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight.” Johnny spent his remaining years in privacy, even refusing an invitation to appear at the NBC 75th anniversary special.

2011- 89-year-old California Pentecostal minister Harold Camping caused a sensation in the U.S. when he declared today would be the Rapture, the Christian End of the World. Nothing happened except he died. Not from divine intervention, but from being 89. At his death Harold Camping was worth $75 million.

2017- In Nassau County NY was the final performance of Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey Circus. The Greatest Show on Earth had been a tradition for 146 years. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 20, 2024

Birthdays: Honore Balzac, Jimmy Stewart, Leon Schlesinger, William Fargo of Wells Fargo, Moshe Dayan, Henri Rousseau, Dave Thomas, Ted Bessell (Donald to Marlo Thomas’ “That Girl”), Japanese baseball great Sadaharu Oh, Antony Zerbe, Bronson Pichot, Joe Cocker, Busta Rhymes, Cher is 78

1609- Shakespeare’s sonnets first published.

1830 - D Hyde patented the fountain pen, replacing the goose quill. 

1891- Thomas Edison demonstrated an early prototype of kinetoscope- a motion picture machine- to his wife's friends at a party. The footage was of engineer W.K.L. Dickson and his associates dancing. That night Edison wrote a letter about his movie machine to photographer Eadweard Muybridge: " I doubt it will ever have any commercial value...”

1892- J.P. Morgan created the General Electric Company.

1892 - George Sampson patents the electric clothes dryer.

1916- Artist Norman Rockwell sold his first painting for a Saturday Evening Post cover.

1926 - Thomas Edison says Americans prefer silent movies over talking pictures. 

1927- Charles Lindbergh took off for France in his little plane The Spirit of Saint Louis. Just the day before two pilots died when their plane failed to clear some power lines. They exploded and burned. Weighed down with extra fuel, Lindbergh barely cleared the wires himself. By attempting the trip alone, it meant he would have to stay awake for 33 1/2 hours with no company but a Felix the Cat doll and a thermos of coffee.

1932- Amelia Earhart landed in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, completing the first solo flight by a woman across the Atlantic Ocean. Since Lindbergh in 1927, five aviators had died trying to recreate the feat, until Earhart did it. 

1937-The Cinema Editor's Guild started.

1937- Bob Clampett promoted to director at Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes Studio. Clampett’s mother hand-sewed the first Mickey Mouse dolls for Walt Disney.

 

1939- Pan Am established "Yankee Clipper"" flying boat passenger service across the Atlantic. From Long Island New York to Lisbon Portugal in 22 hours. For awhile it was thought flying boats would be the future of civilian aviation because they land in water so save land for airports and runways. Also safer because if there was any kind of engine trouble they could just put down in water and bob around until help arrived.

1948- A tornado touched down on a commercial airport in Tinker Oklahoma. What made this episode special was two air force meteorologists named Miller and Forbush just happened to present studying tornado weather patterns when the twister showed up as if on cue. The result was the invention of the first serious tornado warning systems.

1975- In a small warehouse in Sherman Oaks California, George Lucas assembled an effects crew to create the film Star Wars. It is the birth of Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM. 

1979- The last Saturday Night Live show done by the original cast. Many of them had their 5 year contracts up and they wanted to do something else. Plus, producer Lorne Michaels was feuding with NBC chairman Fred Silverman and wanted to leave. So goodbye Lorne Michaels, Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, Garret Morris, Bill Murray and Al Franken. Hello Jean Doumainian and Joe Piscopo! Lorne Michaels came back to the show a few years later and has produced it ever since.

1984- Hanna Barbera’s “The Smurfic Games”.

1988- George Lucas film Willow premiered.

1993 - Max Klein, the inventor of Paint by Numbers sets, died at 77. President Eisenhower once passed out paint-by-numbers sets to his senior cabinet so their paintings could adorn the West Wing offices. Imagine seeing on your wall an original canvas by Richard Nixon or  Gen. Curtis LeMay! 

1994- Walt Disney released Aladdin II, the Return of Jaffar. Done overseas at ¼ the budget of the original, it nevertheless success spawned the industry of Disney direct-to-video sequels, called “cheapquels” by some animators. 

2003- In 1977, when Walt Disney's the Rescuers was being completed, the artists for a joke added a Playboy picture into a pan shot. Going by at 1/24th a second, they were confident nobody would ever spot it. Later in the 1990s, when Rescuers went to VHS video, they edited out the controversial frame. But when it was time in 2003 to rerelease on DVD, the Studio apparatchik’s went to the original 1977 negative, without ever bothering to consult any of the artists. We could have warned them, but noooo. So on May 20, 2003, nine million copies of the Rescuers DVD hit the stores, with the ensuing out cry, firestorm, and embarrassed apologies you can imagine..

2005- Rolie-Polie-Olie, one of the first TV cartoons to be animated all on computer, was awarded a special award at the Daytime Emmys.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 19, 2024

Birthdays: Malcolm X- born Malcolm Little, Ho Chi Minh- born Ngyun Tat Tanth- Ho Chi Minh means the Enlightener, Giovanni Della Robbia, John Hopkins, Lord Waldorf Astor, Dame Nelly Melba, Frank Capra, Wilson Mizner, Elena Poniatowska, Jim Lehrer, Nora Ephron, Grace Jones, Peter Mahew, Nancy Kwan, Pete Townshend, Joey Ramone, Andre the Giant, Polly Walker, James Baxter, animator Tom Sito is 68.

1884 - Ringling Brothers circus premiered.

1886- First performance of Camille Saint Saen's Organ Symphony #3. Saint Saen's had written 6 such works but hated them all but three. He liked the third symphony so much he never wrote another. Composer Charles Gounod heard the symphony and exclaimed:" There is now a French Beethoven!" 

1892 - Charles Brady King invented the pneumatic jackhammer- sleeping city dwellers rejoice.

1897- Writer Oscar Wilde was released from prison after doing two years of hard labor. The experience broke his health and he never completely recovered. He did use his experiences to write his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898.

1898 - Post Office authorizes the use of postcards.

1921- The U.S. Congress ended the system of unchecked immigration and sets up a quota system based on nationalities. The act was heavily influenced by experts in the pseudo-science of Eugenics, then very popular. Even today the system heavily favors Europeans..

1934- Mickey Mouse short cartoon Gulliver Mickey.

1956- Cecil B. de Milles film " The Ten Commandments" premiered. Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter and Edward G, Robinson.

1956- The Disney film Pollyana debuted, making a star of Haley Mills.

1958- The film,” The Attack of the 50 Ft Woman” premiered. A drive-in favorite.

1960 - DJ Alan Freed is accused of bribery in the radio payola scandal, the first scandal to hit the new world of Rock & Roll.

1962- Giant birthday party and rally held for President John F. Kennedy in New York's Madison Square Garden (his birthday was actually the following week). What made it memorable was Marilyn Monroe in a dress so tight she had to be sewn into it, singing her sexy version of the Happy Birthday song.  'Happy (exhale) Burth- Day, Mister - Prezz- a -dent (sigh), Happy, etc. " 

1991- Willy T. Ribbs became the first African American racecar driver to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.

1992- The completion bond company Allied Filmmakers seized Richard Williams’ unfinished masterpiece Cobbler and the Thief. Producer Jack Eberts had the film’s remaining sequences completed by another studio (Fred Calvert, and one sequence subcontracted to Don Bluth) and released as Arabian Nights. A year later I asked Dick how he was doing? He replied, “Well, contrary to everyone’s best wishes, I am NOT suicidal.” 

1997- Matthew Broderick married Sarah Jessica Parker. 

1999- George Lucas’ much anticipated film Star Wars Episode One the Phantom Menace premiered, the first Star Wars sequel in over a decade. It was the first major film premiere to be projected digitally. Only two theaters in New York and two in Hollywood could do digital projection then. It featured Jarr Jarr Binks, a character so annoying, that web sites like www. I Want Jarr-Jarr to Die-Die.com soon racked up tens of thousands of hits.

2000- Walt Disney CG animated film Dinosaur opened.

2005- Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith premiered.

2006- Dreamwork’s animated film ‘Over the Hedge’ premiered.

Tom Sito's animation almanac

Birthdays: Pope St. John Paul II, Grover Cleveland, Ezio Pinza, Czar Nicholas II, Omar Khayam, Walter Gropius, Reggie Jackson, Margot Fonteyn, Robert Morse, Perry Como, Dwayne Hickman aka Dobie Gillis, Big Joe Turner, Richard Brooks, Mad artist Don Martin, Miriam Margolyes, Chow Yung Fat is 69, Tina Fey is 54

1642- Huron village of Hochelaga was rededicated as the city of Montreal.

1911- Composer Gustav Mahler died of heart disease shortly before his 51st birthday. He had completed his Ninth Symphony with dread, because he knew Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner had never lived beyond their ninth symphony.  On his table were preliminary sketches for his tenth.

1927- Sid Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood opened. The first show was the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings. Ushers and doormen were dressed in imported Mandarin robes, and wall hangings were painted by young artist/actor Key Luke. Sid Grauman was the showman who also invented the Hollywood premiere with spotlights and limo's pulling up to red carpets, etc. He made other themed theaters like The Egyptian and the Mayan, but the Chinese was the most famous.

1940- John Halas & Joy Batchelor founded Halas & Batchelor, for many years one of the best animation studios in England.

1976- The filming of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now was disrupted when the Philippines was hit by a major typhoon. Francis rode out the storm cooking pasta, smoking pot and listening to recordings of La Boheme.

1980- Mt. St. Helens exploded in Washington State. The volcano was always thought to be safely extinct but Mother Nature had other plans. I was in Toronto thousands of miles away and noticed volcanic ash floating in Lake Ontario. The eruption and earthquake killed 57 people and destroyed 24 square miles around the mountain. 

A lone eccentric named Harry Truman refused to be evacuated and stayed in his home. He was interviewed by Sixty Minutes and other programs. After the explosion Truman disappeared and is assumed killed.

1995- Elizabeth Montgomery, the star of Bewitched, died of colon cancer at age 62.

2001- Dreamworks animated SHREK opened. The voice of Shrek was originally planned to be Chris Farley but the big comedian died of a drug overdose and was replaced by Mike Myers. I’m serving Waffles! Shrek was awarded the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

2003 Pixar’s Finding Nemo premiered.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 16, 2024

Birthdays: Tamara de Lempicka, Lily Pons, Richard Tauber, Henry Fonda, Liberace- real name Wladziu Valentine Liberace, Jan Kiepura, Edmund Kirby-Smith, Gabriela Sabbatini, Thurman Thomas, Margaret Sullivan, Olga Korbut- the original adorable little Olympic Gold Medal gymnast, Debra Winger is 70, Tori Spelling, Janet Jackson, Woody Herman, Studs Terkel, Ivan Sutherland is 86, Danny Trejo is 70, Pierce Brosnan is 70.

W

When you consider just how far digital media has come remember this: the man who wrote the first drawing and animating program is still around. Happy Birthday Ivan Sutherland. May 16, 1938. Sutherland wrote Sketchpad in late 1962, pioneered early VR, was on the panel that approved funds to create the Internet and trained a generation of computer pioneers. His pupils include Ed Catmull, Nolan Bushnell, Alan Kay, Jim Blinn, Bui Dong Phuong, and more. Everything we experience in… 

1879- Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances premiered.

1922- The White Star Line’s ocean liner Majestic, a sister ship to the Titanic, made its maiden voyage with no problems at all.

1929- The First Academy Awards ceremony at the Rose Ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel. Douglas Fairbanks was the first emcee. They gave out two best picture winners. One was to William Wellman’s “Wings”. The second for “unique and artistic merit” went to F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise. The Academy originally wanted to give the Best Actor Oscar to the dog Rin Tin Tin, but they reconsidered when reminded about what kind of message that would send. So, they gave it to Emil Jannings. Janet Gaynor got the first Best Actress. The ceremony was originally a dinner party with some industry business conducted. About 270 attendees who paid $5 each. The ceremony took about 15 minutes. 

1946- the musical Annie Get Your Gun starring Ethel Merman premiered on Broadway.

1957- in a town in Pennsylvania, a failing small time businessman who had been drinking heavily, died of a heart attack at age 54. Ironically, he had just completed the first draft of a memoir about his days as a young Treasury Agent in Roaring Twenties Chicago. His name was Elliot Ness. The book - The Untouchables- became a national best seller and Hollywood turned it into a hit television series, films. Elliot Ness became the most famous lawman since Wyatt Earp.

1963- Gordo Cooper orbited the Earth in the last flight of Project Mercury.

1965 – the birthday of Spaghetti-O's later known as Spaghettios.

1969- PEOPLE’S PARK- The escalating tension between anti-war counter-culture and "the Establishment" picked an unusual item to fight over. A group of activists in Berkeley took over a 2 acre plot of land scheduled for development by the college. They planted grass and flowers and called it a "people’s park". Conservative Governor Ronald Reagan wasn’t going to tolerate any more tomfoolery and after officers and a chain link fence failed to keep out the squatters, he sent in the National Guard. This day the confrontation between the bayonet wielding troops and hippies broke out into violence. One man was killed and another was blinded by riot gas. The college decided to yield the land for the park, and it stays so today.

1972- Hollywood Cartoonists local# 839 voted to expel Business Agent Larry Kilty for misappropriation of funds. They called him Guilty-Kilty.

1975- Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to climb Mt. Everest. 

1975 - Wings release "Listen to What the Man Said" in UK

1979- Shooting wraps on Steven Spielberg’s movie 1941.

1980 - Brian May of rock group Queen collapsed on stage with hepatitis.

1980 - Paul McCartney releases "McCartney II" album.

1981 - "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes hits #1 for next 9 weeks. The elderly movie legend was not impressed,” Kim Carnes does not have eyes like me!” quote Bette.

1985 - Michael Jordan named NBA Rookie of Year.

1986 – "Top Gun," directed by Tony Scott and starring Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis premiered.

1990- Jim Henson died of viral pneumonia at Bellevue Hospital in NYC. He was 53. 

1996- One of the lamest moments in TV writing. On Dallas, Pam Ewing encounters her husband Bobby Ewing in the shower although he had been dead for one year. The incident meant the entire previous season had only been a bad dream.

2009- Pixar’s film UP premiered.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 15, 2024

Birthdays: Lyman Frank Baum, Claudio Monteverdi, Richard Avedon, James Mason, Joseph Cotten, George Brett, Jasper Johns, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Jean Renoir, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Trini Lopez, Charles Lamont, director of Abbott & Costello Go to Mars, country singer Eddy Arnold, Chaz Palmintieri is 71, Lainie Kazan, Joe Grant

1703- Charles Perrault died. Perrault 1628-1703 was a retired minister to French King Louis XIV, who wrote stories for children under the pseudonym Mother Goose. He created Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Puss in Boots. 

1863- Edouard Manet first displayed his Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)  at the Salon des Refuses in Paris. It was his modern interpretation of The Judgement of Paris by Renaissance master Marcantonio Raimondi. The painting is of two modern clothed men having a picnic with two nude women by a riverbank. The women aren’t portrayed as mythical goddesses or muses, but just bare, naked ladies. That shocked Paris society. Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugene called it “Immodest and obscene”. It heralded the rise of Impressionism and had been called the first masterpiece of modern art.

1903- While on a tour of Yosemite, President Teddy Roosevelt slipped away from his entourage to camp out alone under the stars with naturalist John Muir. 

1905- From a public auction of railroad land, the town of Las Vegas Nevada founded. 

1927- The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel opened for business. Named in honor of Teddy Roosevelt.

1928- Walt Disney held a private sneak preview screening of his completed cartoon Plane Crazy, featuring his new star Mickey Mouse, imitating hero Charles Lindbergh. But it was a silent cartoon, and Walt had recently been impressed by the new Talking Pictures. So, he decided to hold back the release of this cartoon and push ahead with his first sound cartoon Steamboat Willie. After the wild success of Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy was refitted with a soundtrack and released as the 4th Mickey Mouse cartoon in 1929.

1935- The Moscow Subway system opens.

1940- The first Nylon stockings go on sale in the US.

1941- Yankee centerfielder Joe DiMaggio had been in a dry spell hitting lately. This day he got a safe hit and began a hitting streak that ran for 56 straight games, an unparalleled feat. He became America’s most famous baseball player since Babe Ruth. He was variously nicknamed Joltin’Joe, the Yankee Clipper but his teammates called him affectionately the Big Dago.

1942- The U.S. initiated a program of wartime gas rationing. Slogans like “Is this Trip Really Necessary?” and a system of ratings vehicles with A, B & C cards pop up in a lot of gas stations for the duration. C meant a war-essential worker and you went to the head of the line to get gas. B was for police, firemen and municipal workers. A cards was the lowest status i.e. the rest of us. 

1946- The first Tommy’s Burger stand opened in Los Angeles.

1952- A big fire destroyed several stages on the Warner Bros studio lot.

1953- Rocky Marciano defeated Jersey Joe Walcott for the Heavyweight Championship.

1963 – Folk group Peter, Paul & Mary won their first Grammy for, “If I Had a Hammer”.

1967- Paul McCartney first met his first wife Linda Eastman.

1968 - Paul McCartney & John Lennon appear on the Johnny Carson Show to promote

Apple records, Joe Garagiola was the substitute host. 

1970 – A month after their breakup, The Beatles' last album, "Let It Be," is released in US.

2019- The Sci-Fi animated series Love, Death and Robots premiered

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 14, 2024

Birthdays: Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Wedgewood, Francesca Annis, David Byrne, Jack Bruce, Bobby Darin, Mark Zuckerberg is 39, Tim Roth is 65, Robert Zemeckis is 72, Kate Blanchett is 54, George Lucas is 80

1842 - 1st edition of London Illustrated News.

1935- Griffith Park Observatory above Hollywood first opened to the public. 

1942- Walt Disney composer Frank Churchill, who wrote "Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", Whistle While you Work”, shot himself at his piano at home. He was 40. He left a suicide note that said, “Dear Caroline: My nerves have completely left me. Please forgive this awful act. It seems the only way I can cure myself. Frank.”

1944- In the comic strip Dick Tracy, the longtime nemesis Flattop Jones was killed.

1951 - Ernie Kovacs Show, debuted on NBC TV. Kovacs was a great pioneer in the video medium who created uniquely surreal images and pantomime blackout skits.

1955- Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park Cal, today’s Silicon Valley, was founded by peace activist Roy Kepler. Keplers’ books was a hangout for Stanford computer scientists, Hippies, and creators of the Whole Earth Catalog. The Grateful Dead and Joan Baez played there, Prof. Douglas Englebart the inventor of the computer mouse, would pop in for coffee, and kids like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would ride their bikes over to check out the new computer books.

1973- Skylab, Americas first attempt at a space station, blasted off into orbit. In 1979 the remains of the 77 ton satellite re-entered the atmosphere, causing half the world to duck.

1976- Keith Relf of the rock group the Yardbirds, was electrocuted while playing his guitar in his bathtub.

1968 - Beatles announce formation of Apple Records.

1992 - Carlos “ Danny” Herrera, bartender inventor of the Margarita, died at age 90- The Margarita was supposedly invented in 1938 for Hollywood actress Margaret Sullavan who wanted to drink tequila with the guys, but couldn’t tolerate the strong taste. Herrera mixed the tequila and lime juice into an iced cocktail and put the salt along the rim. He mixed a batch whenever he heard the actress was in Tijuana, writing on the bottle- For Margaret- Por Margarita.

1998 - Last episode of sitcom Seinfeld on NBC. Elderly singer Frank Sinatra died shortly after watching it.

2016- The Disneyland Parks stopped selling Disney Dollars

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 13, 2024

Birthdays: Sir Arthur Sullivan, Cyrus McCormick, Stevie Wonder, George Braque, Daphne DuMaurier, Joe Louis, Richie Valens, Gil Evans, Beatrice Arthur, Harvey Keitel is 83, Dennis Rodman, Clive Barnes, Disney animator Burny Mattinson, Steven Colbert is 59

1956- Actor Montgomery Clift was disfigured in a car crash. He had to have his jaw wired until it could heal.

1963- The English adventure comic Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway debuted.

1963- Marvel published the first X-Men comic book.

1965 - Rolling Stones recorded "Satisfaction".

1965- In a DC nightclub, the Ramsey Lewis Trio recorded live “The In Crowd”, one of the last jazz singles to crossover and become a hit pop song. 

1966 - Rolling Stones released "Paint it Black"

1971 - Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane was seriously injured in a car accident

1988- Legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker “The Prince of Cool” died when he fell off a window ledge of the Hotel Prinz Hendrik in Amsterdam. He frequently locked himself out of his room and trying to climb in a window. Heroin and cocaine were found in his system. He was 58.

1992- Police arrest the manager of Comic Book Heaven in Sarasota Florida on seven counts of "displaying materiel harmful to minors", i.e., comic books.

2006- Disney’s The Little Match Girl, directed by Roger Allers was released.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 12, 2024

Birthdays: Dolly Madison, Dante Rossetti, Frank Stella, Florence Nightingale, Tom Snyder, George Carlin, Wilfred Hyde-White, Emilio Estevez, Ron Zeigler, Farley Mowat, Ving Rhames, Bruce Boxleitner, Katherine Hepburn, Yogi Berra, Joy Batchelor

Happy Mothers Day (US) 1908. 

1934- Winnie, a Canadian black bear who had been living at the London Zoo, passed away at the ripe old age of 20. She had been at the Zoo since 1915. She was a favorite of young Christopher Robin Milne, the son of author a.a. milne. Winnie was the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh.

1938- “The Adventures of Robin Hood” starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia DeHaviland, Claude Rains and Eugene Paulette premiered. The swashbuckling film then cost a whopping $2 million dollars to make! The light brown mare Maid Marion rode in the movie was later bought by singing cowboy Roy Rogers and renamed Trigger.

1962- First day shooting on Frederico Fellini’s film 8 1/2. When screened for American Producer Joe Levine, Levine took the cigar from his mouth and growled-” Frederigo, what da hell did that movie mean? ” Fellini shrugged, “I don’t know”.

1963- Folksinger Bob Dylan walked out of a taping on the Ed Sullivan Show. He objected to CBS censors wanting to cut his number making fun of extra Right-Wing extremists like the John Birch Society.

1971 - Rolling Stone Mick Jagger weds Bianca Macias at St Tropez Town Hall.

They later divorced and Bianca became a famous habitue’ of trendy discos and fashion magazines.

1971- Tor Johnson died of a heart attack at age 68. Swedish wrestler turned actor, Tor’s best known role was of the bald eyeless zombie in classics like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster.

1977- A small Westchester radio station WENW hired a thin, gawky, college grad as a DJ- Howard Stern. US radio would never be the same.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for May11, 2024

Birthdays: Salvador Dali', Jean Jerome, Chang and Eng Bunker-the original Siamese Twins-1811, Baron Munchausen, Irving Berlin, King Oliver, Martha Graham, Dr. Richard Fenyman, Mort Sahl, Foster Brooks, Denver Pyle, Henry Morgenthau, Doug McClure, Randy Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Rev Louis Farrakhan, Albert Hurter, Margaret Kerry the model for Walt Disney’s Tinkerbell is 95

1831- French writer Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States.

1934- The Howard Hawks screwball comedy Twentieth Century premiered with John Barrymore and Carol Lombard. 

1935- Disney Silly Symphony Water Babies, directed by Wilfried Jackson.

1956 - The Pinky Lee Show last aired on NBC-TV.

1968 - actor Richard Harris attempted a singing career, releasing the song "MacArthur Park".

1972 -On the Dick Cavett talk show rock star and peace activist John Lennon said his phone had been tapped by FBI. It turns out it was, but at the time we all thought he was just paranoid from too many drugs.

1981- The musical play CATS opened in London.

1981- Bob Marley died of brain cancer at age 36. Marley and his group the Wailers, made Jamaican Reggae mainstream in pop music. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 10, 2024

Birthdays: Fred Astaire, Phil Silvers, Nancy Walker, French royal minister Turgot, Marshal Jean Lannes, Marshal Nicolas Davout, John Wilkes Booth (assassin of Lincoln) Mark David Chapman (assassin of John Lennon), David O. Selznick, Mother Maybelle Carter, Ariel Durant, Jim Abrahams, Nancy Walker, Donovan, Homer Simpson, Gen. Antoine Lasalle, Bono, Kenan Thompson is 46, Paige O’Hara the voice of Belle in Beauty & the Beast.

1650- The British took Jamaica from the Spanish. At this time Europeans were discovering the delights of a new condiment from that island- sugar!

1726- Philosopher François Voltaire visited Britain.

1748- English slave trader John Newton’s ship was caught in a violent Mid Atlantic storm and was about to go down. Newton prayed to God that he would reform his life if he made it through this gale. Then the storm broke. John Newton not only stopped his slave trading ways, but he wrote a hymn, Amazing Grace: "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, That Saved a Wretch Like Me! I was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see..."

1893- The U.S. Agriculture Dept. declared the tomato was officially a vegetable and not a fruit.

1908- The First Mother's Day celebrated; it became a national holiday in 1914. The holiday was inspiration of a social activist named Anna Jarvis, who spent the rest of her life trying to keep it from being commercially exploited. She died broke and surrounded by store-made mother’s day cards sent from well-wishers.

1908- An article in the New York Times advised women to wash their hair every two weeks. The norm then was every three months!

1928- General Electric started up WG4 Schenectady, the first T.V. Station.

1929- Yankee slugger Babe Ruth signed new contract that paid him more money than President Herbert Hoover. Babe replied, "Well, I had a better year than he had.”

1929- Walt Disney’s short Skeleton Dance premiered. Animated mostly by Mickey Mouse designer Ub Iwerks, it was a breakthrough in tightly done musical sync animation.

1933- Nazis Leader Josef Goebbels holds the first mass book-burning in Berlin. " We consign everything unGerman to the flames." 20,000 works by Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Freud and Einstein are burned. 

1962-Happy Birthday Hulk! The first Incredible Hulk comic book.

1963- On the advice of George Harrison and Little Richard, Decca Records signed a new teen band called the Rolling Stones to a recording contract.

1977- Joan Crawford died of cancer and a heart attack. Once the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, now a neglected old recluse. She was 74. Soon after her daughter Christine published the memoir Mommy Dearest, in which she alleged years of abuse and neglect. Her last words were when she saw her nurse and maid were praying, she said,” Damn it! Don’t you dare ask God to save me!”

1993- 188 young women died in a fire in a toy making factory near Bangkok, Thailand. They were locked into the building by their employer like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims in 1911. They were making Bart Simpson dolls for America.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for May 9, 2024

Birthdays: John Brown, James M. Barrie the creator of Peter Pan, Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Pedro Armendariz, Frank Frazetta, Glenda Jackson, Billy Joel, Candice Bergen is 78, Mike Wallace, Pancho Gonzales, James L. Brooks, Rosario Dawson, John Corbett, Albert Finney

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1662- London diarist Samuel Pepys noted today he first saw a Punch & Judy puppet show in Convent Garden.

1754- THE FIRST NEWSPAPER CARTOON- Ben Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette prints a drawing Ben drew of a segmented snake with each piece named for a colony with the inscription: JOIN or DIE. (Okay, it's not Calvin and Hobbs, but it's a start).

1887- Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show did its first performance in Europe. In London the English public, several European kings and writer Oscar Wilde thrilled to displays of trick riding, real red Indians, cowboys and little Annie Oakley the trick shooter. 

1919- Harlem bandleader James Europe had toured Europe while in uniform for World War I and had made the Old World wild for jazz. Europe was doing a triumphal tour of America with his doughboy band when his career was tragically cut short. In Boston, he argued with one hotheaded musician who stabbed him in the neck. He quickly bled to death. Had he lived, James Europe might have been as famous in Jazz history as Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington.

1932 – London’s Piccadilly Circus first lit by electricity.

1935- The First Belch heard on nationwide radio. Melvin Purvis (the FBI man who killed John Dillinger) was doing an ad for Fleischmann’s Yeast when he committed the offense, which was dubbed “The Burp Heard Round the World”.

1937- ACTOR’S SHOWDOWN WITH L.B. MAYER- In a dramatic confrontation the heads of the Screen Actor’s Guild Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone go to MGM boss Louis B. Mayer’s beach house during a Sunday garden party. While Capone gangster Willie Bioff stood by to give Mayer support, Montgomery told Mayer he had a 96% strike vote from the actors, so if Mayer didn’t recognize SAG as the sole bargaining agent for actors they would paralyze Hollywood come Monday morning!

  Mayer thought about it, then gave in. Bioff got from the actors a deal that the IA would back off if the actors would withdraw their support from a rival union to IATSE’s organizing the behind the scene’s technical artists. That night 5,600 actors and friends celebrated at Hollywood Legion Stadium. Next morning 200 waited in line to get their SAG cards including Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow. 

1937- Burne Hogarth began drawing the Tarzan comic strip. Hal Foster had been in contract negotiations with the syndicate over money and the right to his originals. He had created Prince Valiant as a bargaining chip when the syndicate called his bluff by giving the Tarzan job to Hogarth. Foster went on to greater glory with Prince Valiant, but never forgave Burne.

1942- Chuck Jones’ wartime comedy short “ The Draft Horse” premiered. 

1955- Washington D.C. station WRC TV put on a young Univ of Maryland grad named Jim Henson as filler before the TODAY Show. First called Sam & Friends, Henson antics with his puppets, including a green frog called Kermit, fashioned from fabric cut out from one of his mother’s old green coats. The Muppets were born.

1961- John F. Kennedy's newly appointed head of the FCC, Newton Minow, did his first major address to a luncheon of top television executives. In his speech he blasted them for TV’s mindless content and violence. He called television: " A Vast Wasteland."

 What makes it historic is it's the first time anybody had noticed just how lousy TV is and how badly we are all addicted to it. Minnow did a lot to build up PBS and Sesame Street. In the show Gilligan’s Island, the boat they were on was named the Minnow for Newton Minnow.

1973- Soylent Green opened in general release. Starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in his last movie role. Soylent Green takes place in the year 2022.

2016- The TV comedy Upstart Crow debuted in the UK.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 8, 2024

Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, Arthur Q. Bryan the voice of Elmer Fudd, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius, Enrique Inglesias, animator Bob Clampett, Don Rickles, film graphic designer Saul Bass

1878- David Hughes invented the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.

1910- Russian-Jewish glove salesman Shmuel Kelpfish married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Kelpfish later changed his name to Sam Goldfish, then Sam Goldwyn. He and his father-in-law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They soon moved to Hollywood.  He was famous for his pithy comments “Goldwynisms.” Like, “If people don’t want to go see a picture, nothing can stop them!” and “ I want this picture to begin with a volcanic eruption, then build to a shuttering climax!”

1912- The movie studio Famous Players Lasky born. In 1914 they changed their name to Paramount Pictures. 

1943- Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy!

1947- Department store mogul Harry Gordon Selfridge died in poverty in Putney, a suburb of London. He was 89. Even though his store Selfridges made millions, in his old age he wasted so much money on gambling and women, his exec board stripped him of his power.  In 1943 he was arrested for vagrancy for loitering in front of his own store. 

1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.

1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant, and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When Elizabeth Taylor appeared in the scene, the Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!, but instead they all shouted "Liz! Liz!"

1962- An MIT lab open house that year featured a new idea created by grad students Slugg Russell and Adam Kotok for the college’s PDP-1 mainframe computer. An interactive game called Spacewar! Scientists had been adapting chess and checkers to be played on a computer, but this was the first original game. A spaceship shoot-em-up. The company that leased PDP-1s gave out Spacewar! as a perk and soon around the country scientists were playing away into the night. Most computer game pioneers like Nolan Bushnell got their inspiration from playing Spacewar!

Tom Sito's animation almanac for May 7, 2024

Birthday: Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gary Cooper, Anne Baxter, Gabby Hayes, Ichiro Honda, Robert Browning, Marcus Loew of Loews Theater chain, Darin McGavin, Edward Land (inventor of the Polaroid lens and camera), Amy Heckerling, Traci Lords, Disney director Jun Falkenstein 

1901- The actions of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, takes place this day. 

1937- Nobel Prize winning writer William Faulkner hired by MGM Studios, earning $500 a week. He celebrated by going on a two-week drinking binge. MGM's Head of Writing Sam Marx had him tracked down to an Oakie migrant camp in the Imperial Valley. He was dragged off, boozily whining, "Ah wanna write for Mickey Mouse!"

1939- Los Angeles Union Station opened. It was built on top of L.A's original China Town.

1941-Glen Miller records the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" for RCA. the first gold record million seller.

1942- Battle of the Coral Sea-The U.S. Navy, suffering only defeats up till then, stopped a Japanese task force. This is the first engagement in which the two fleets never saw each other but fought long distance with carrier launched airplanes. Veterans commented that one of the sadder losses was when the aircraft carrier USS Lexington went down, she took the fleet's supply of 6 Bugs Bunny cartoons down with her. War is Hell.

1945- Director Bob Clampett left Looney Tunes, now called Warner Bros Cartoons, to strike out on his own.

1950- The Carolwood Pacific Railroad. Walt Disney had grown up around and loved trains. Animator Ward Kimball got him interested in collecting model trains. Walt grew so enamored he built a miniature steam train big enough to take children on rides. The tracks ran all around the back of his Holmby Hills home. This day was the first running of his new hobby. The germ of his idea for Disneyland began here. After the home was sold, in the 1990s the Carolwood Barn and trains were moved to Griffith Park.

1966- “Monday Monday” by the Mammas and the Poppas becomes #1 in the pop charts.

1989- Police in Buenos Aires discovered the body of actor Guy Williams (Zorro, Lost In Space) He had died of a brain aneurysm in his apartment. He was 65.

1996- Comedian Martin Lawrence went berserk and ran down a main intersection in Van Nuys Cal. raving and waving a pistol. When asked to explain himself, Lawrence blamed it on “Dehydration.”

1998- Apple Computers introduced the iMac.