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 When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 Kirby killed off Mr.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.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 6, 2024

Birthdays: Maximillien Robespierre, Sigmund Freud, Rudolph Valentino, Orson Welles, Robert Peary, Willie Mays, Stewart Granger*, Bob Seger, Toots Schoor, Weeb Ewbank, Adriana Caselotti- the voice of Snow White, Ruben Hurricane Carter, Christian Clavier, Roy Nesbit.

Tony Blair, George Clooney is 63. 

*English actor Stewart Granger (1913-1993) had to change his name to get into Hollywood movies. His real name was Jimmy Stewart. A nice name, but already taken

1840- Britain issued the Penny-Blacks, the first perforated adhesive postage stamps.

1862- Writer Henry David Thoreau died at age 44. When his sister asked him :"Have you made your peace with God?" Thoreau replied:" I was unaware that we had ever quarreled."

”

1903-A bronze plaque was attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. On it was a poem The New Colossus by a young Jewish immigrant woman named Emma Lazarus. She was disturbed by the Anti-Semitic violence in Russia and wrote this inspired by the symbol of the Statue. “Give Me your Tired, Your Poor..” The French creators had intended the Statue of Liberty to symbolize political liberty, but Lazarus’s poem had confirmed the Lady Liberty as “The Mother of Exiles ”.

1915- Babe Ruth hits his first home run. He was a Boston Red Sox pitcher at the time. He will finish his career with 714 home runs, a record that held for decades until Hank Aaron.

1919- Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum died of heart disease at 62. He was trying at the time to buy real estate in Los Angeles for an Oz- theme amusement park.

1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE-Cartoonists voted to strike Max Fleischer’s Studio after Max fired 13 animators for union activity and complaining about their 6 day work week.

  The strike was settled several months later when parent company Paramount forced Max to concede. Strikers sang "We're Popeye the Union Man! We're Popeye the Union Man! We'll Fight to the Finish, Cause We Can't Live on Spinach!...etc."

1937- The Society of Motion Picture Art Directors formed.

1946- Curly Howard, was the most outrageous of the comedy troupe The Three Stooges. 

While people laughed at his antics, he lived a wild Hollywood life, lots of clubs, drinking, smoking and girls. This day while filming the short Halfwits Holiday, he suffered a massive stroke. He was only 42. He survived 6 more years in debilitated health, moved from hospital to hospital by his brothers. He died in 1952 at age 48.

1949- In Cambridge University England, The computer EDSAC ran its’ first calculations. The first computer that could store data in its memory.

1954- Oxford student Roger Bannister ran the first Four Minute Mile. His time was 3:59.04.

2001- Variety reported that the Walt Disney Company in promoting their upcoming summer film Pearl Harbor, had canceled plans for Pearl Harbor Happy Meals at McDonalds, as being in bad taste. 

2003- A tornado destroyed the factory in Jackson, Tennessee that produced most of the world’s supply of Pringles Potato Chips.

2005- Senior Walt Disney storyboard artist Joe Grant died a few days before his 97 birthday. Joe had worked on Disney films from Snow White to The Incredibles. He died quietly at his desk while drawing. He finished the drawing.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 5, 2024

Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Jim Kelly, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, Jack Pierce (Hollywood makeup man who designed Frankenstein), John Rhys Davies is 80, Lance Henriksen is 84, Brian Williams, Floyd Gottfredson, Michael Palin is 82

In Mexico and parts of the US, this is Cinco de Mayo (see 1862 below)

In Japan this is a holiday known as Children's Day.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

1862- CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juarista army under Zaragosa defeated a French invasion force sent by Napoleon III. One of the heroes of the battle was a soldier named Porfiro Diaz. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Diaz made himself dictator and reigned 38 years until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910. 

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair to mark the centennial of the French Revolution. 

Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting, yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, or Winslow Homer was accepted. 

James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced, he patriotically entered a dozen paintings, but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opened. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section, and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1932- Charles Revson founded the Revlon Cosmetics Company.

1934-Actress-singer Helen Kane sued Max Fleischer and Paramount Pictures over Betty Boop. Ms. Kane claimed the Fleischers copied her to create Betty’s distinctive “Boop-oop-a-doop”. This day she lost the case after the Fleischers proved Ms. Kane had herself taken the idea from a African-American singer named Baby Esther. 

1945- Happy Birthday Yosemite Sam! Hare Trigger, the first cartoon to feature the red mustachioed desperado premiered.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I, when he was labeled a Communist. To save his career, this day he testified before Joseph McCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He admitted he had been a communist party member and named names. One actress he finked on, Margaret Lee said,” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically, Jerome Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using Zero Mostel, Beatrice Arthur and Jack Gilford, blacklisted actors who all hated him. During a break in rehearsal on Fiddler, one actor said, “I’d like to kick Jerry in the balls!” Beatrice Arthur replied, “Jerry has no balls.”

The famed actor/director Orson Wells observed that “Friend informed on friend not to save their lives but to save their swimming pools.”

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn.  Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside-down position the fluid ran up his back and puddled up in his helmet behind his head. NASA realized it needed to make modifications on the space suit….

1975- Anne Rice’s novel The Interview with The Vampire first published.

40th Anniv. 1984- Cartoonists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were sitting around one night. Over beers they tried to conceive the most ridiculous superheroes mag they could think of. Something with Ninjas, Mutants, and Teenagers. They had just enough from Peter’s tax refund to print one limited edition. This day at a regional Comicon in Portsmouth New Hampshire, the first edition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out and sold out in two hours. It became a monster hit and spawned TV series and movies.

2006- Walt Disney Company formally acquired Pixar Studio.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 4, 2024

Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'- inventor of the piano, Alice Liddel 1852- the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Pia Zadora is 70, Howard Da Silva, Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Richard Jenkins

1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, this was the day Sherlock Holmes perished at the Reichenbach Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime.  Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of novels. But readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the U.S. he wanted to lecture about historical subjects and spiritualism, but people only wanted know about Holmes & Watson. Finally, after a decade, Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series called the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable nitrate mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame. 

 1927- The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an arbiter where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for union representation. It didn't work. After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as an ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused instead on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.

1943- 303rd Bomber Group and the 41st Combat wing bombed an enemy aircraft assembly plant near Antwerp. One B-17 called 8 Ball contained top gunner Clark Gable. His first time in action. Gable would be decorated for his bravery and promoted to captain. Hitler actually posted a reward if Gable could be shot down and captured alive. He was a fan.

1948- Norman Mailor's first novel published: "the Naked and the Dead".

1953 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Ernest Hemingway for The Old Man & The Sea.

1957 - Alan Freed hosts "Rock n' Roll Show" 1st prime-time network rock music show.

1963- Nelson Rockefeller married Margaret Fitzler-Murphy, called Happy Rockefeller. 

1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented by Jim Delligatti at his MacDonalds franchise restaurant in Pittsburgh. Steelworkers weren’t coming to his McDonald’s. They often ate one big meal a day after double shifts and the tiny burgers at McDonald’s weren’t going to cut it. They preferred the hearty burgers and meal sizes sandwiched at Eat’n Park or Primanti Bro’s. So the only way he could compete was to double his burgers! 

1975- Moe Howard died, the last of the original Three Stooges.

1991- Bing Crosby’s son Dennis Crosby put a shotgun to his head and ended his life. In 1989 his younger brother Lindsay had committed suicide in a similar fashion.

2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Philippine grad student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner, and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. Robert Blake died in 2022. No other suspect was ever identified. 

2012- Marvel's The Avengers, directed by Josh Whedon, opened.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 3, 2024

Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Bing Crosby, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Engelbert Humperdinck, Dule Hill, Walter Slezak, Christina Hendriks, Bill Sienkiewicz

1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons. Two large ushers walked up and down the aisles with long staffs. One tipped with a feather to wake up the ladies. The other with a brass knob to wake up the men.

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1888- The Poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer first published.

1926- The El Capitan theater opened in Hollywood as a legit stage revue. As a movie theater it went through several hands, The Hollywood, the Paramount. Citizen Kane premiered there. The Disney company bought it in the 1980s, and restored it to its 1926 splendor.

1931- E.C. Segar introduced Popeye’s friend J. Wellington Wimpy in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. Based on Segar’s old boss William Shuchert, who own a local opera house in Decatur, Illinois and ate a lot of hamburgers. “I would gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.”

1933- Fritz Lang’s movie M released in the US. It made a star of Peter Lorre.

1936- Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio first game for the New York Yankees. He got three hits.

1948- THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theaters and producers (including the Walt Disney Company) had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. 

One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature. Many people were starting to become interested in that new television machine, anyway.

 1952- U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact North Pole, the first known person to do so. Commander Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909 as did others, but modern scholars think they were all off by several degrees. 

1952- President Harry Truman showed off the newly renovated White House to the newfangled network television cameras. 

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts. 

1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first U.S. news program with women anchors like Susan Stanberg.

1973- Chicago’s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the tallest office building in the U.S.A.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time, so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. 

1991- Steve Jobs agreed to the deal between Walt Disney and Pixar to create the film Toy Story.  He insisted the Pixar logo be at the head of the film, instead of in the back roll credits. “The world needs to know that Pixar are the one’s making these movies, not them. It’s all about marketing. The public will soon know who we are, more than they are.”

1994- The Walt Disney Company announced their new cruise line.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company James J. Morgan testified to a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.

2002- Spiderman, directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst.

2013- Marvel’s Ironman 3 premiered.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 2, 2024

Birthdays: Czarina Catherine the Great, Domenico Scarlatti, Manfred Von Richthofen the Red Baron, Bing Crosby, Dr. Benjamin Spock the Baby Doctor, Vernon Castle, Lorenzo Music, Theodore Bikel, Lesley Gore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Satyajit Ray, Pinky Lee, Link Wray of the Wraymen, Christine Baranski, Doug Wildey, Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock is 52, Marty Abrahams.

1920 –The Negro National League, the first successful all-Black baseball league, held its first game in Indianapolis. The league was founded earlier that same year by legendary baseball player, Andrew "Rube" Foster, and featured teams such as the Chicago American Giants, Chicago Giants, Cuban Stars, Dayton Marcos, Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarchs and St. Louis Giants in its first season.

1921- Chicago’s Field Museum opened to the public. It was housed in the building originally called the Hall of Fine Arts in the Great Chicago Exhibition of 1893.

1930- Little ten year old Phillip of Greece came home from school to find his mother Princess Alice von Battenburg had been packed off to an insane asylum, and his father Prince Andrew of Greece going to send him to an Scottish boarding school so he could move in with his mistress. The boy would grow up to marry Queen Elizabeth II and become Prince Phillip of Edinburgh.

1932- Jack Benny's Radio Show debuts. Oh Rochester! Mel Blanc the voice of Bugs Bunny did many characters and voices on the show, including the sputtering engine of Jacks’ old Maxwell automobile. 

1933- The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The Inverness Courier published an account of a couple that sighted Nessie and offered a reward for proof.

1952- The British Airline B.O.A.C. began the first trans-Atlantic jet plane service. This began the class of globetrotting rich partygoers named Jet-Setters. BOAC later became British Air.

1964- Disney’s audio-animatronic Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln opened at the NY World’s Fair.

1972- First day shooting on Steven Spielberg’s film JAWS. The giant mechanical shark used as a prop was nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg’s lawyer.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.

1983- Microsoft introduced the three-button mouse.

1997- Movie star Eddie Murphy was busted for picking up trans hooker Artisone Seiuli at 4:45 in the morning on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Murphy said he was just being a good Samaritan and giving the young lady a ride home.

1999- Actor Oliver Reed was filming the movie Gladiator in Malta with Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott. Reed, like many British actors of his generation was a very hard drinker. Some like Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins managed to pull themselves out of their spiral and went on to full careers in later life. But Oliver Reed did not. This day in a local pub, he got into a drinking contest with several young English sailors from HMS Cumberland. At one sitting Oliver Reed drank 8 pints of beer, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey and a few shots of Hennessey cognac. Then when arm wrestling the sailors, he suffered a massive heart attack and dropped dead. Oliver Reed was 61. Ridley Scott had to use computer imaging to complete his remaining scenes in the film. 

2008- The movie Iron Man premiered. Directed by Jon Favreau, starring Robert Downey, Jr. It is considered the first of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) franchise of movies.

 

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for May 1, 2024

Birthdays: Mary Harris a.k.a. Mother Jones, Marshal Vauban 1633, Benjamin Latrobe, Calamity Jane, Joseph Addison, Kate Smith, Jack Paar, Joseph Heller, Rita Coolidge, Steve Cauthen, Judy Collins, Glen Ford, Ray Parker Jr., Maurice Noble, Fyodor Khytruk, Louis Nye, John Woo, Wes Anderson is 55, Joanna Lumley is 78, animator Eric Goldberg is 70.

1273- Dante Alighieri met the love of his life Beatrice at a MayDay party in Florence. They were both age 9. He said from that moment he fell in love with her. Although she married another and died at 24, he was inspired to write his Divine Comedy to her. He started the medieval concept of Courtly Love.

1786- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO premiered in Vienna. So many encores and bows were demanded that the evening went on twice as long.

1902- Richard Outcault's comic strip Buster Brown and Tige first appeared. Outcault, the creator of the first hit cartoon the Yellow Kid was so famous that as part of his deal to do this strip he negotiated the first back-end deal for a percentage of the merchandise sales.

1914-THE BIRTH OF THE BIG BLUE- Thomas Watson got a job at a little business machine company called CTR, the Calculating Typewriter and Regulating Company. He quickly rose to the top and renamed the company International Business Machine or IBM. When he retired in 1956 it employed 60,000 workers and was one of largest companies in the world.

1926- Famed black baseball pitcher Satchel Page pitched his first game. His nickname came from Satchel-mouth.

1931- The Empire State Building in New York dedicated. For fifty years it was the world’s tallest office building and King Kong’s hangout. Its topmost deck was designed to be a dirigible mooring post, but despite several tries, no zeppelin has ever been able to park there. A Goodyear Blimp attempted mooring there in 1976 but the high winds bobbed it around like a bucking bronco. The building was dedicated during the depths of the Great Depression when business was so bad it was nicknamed the 'Empty State Building'.

1935- Lou Gehrig, the Yankee "Iron Man" who had never missed a baseball game, took himself out of a game because of illness. It is the first sign of the degenerative muscular disease ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, that would soon be called Lou Gehrig's Disease.

1941- Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane" debuted at the Paramount theater (the El Capitan) in Hollywood. At the last minute William Randolph Hearst's friend Louis B. Mayer tried to buy and destroy every print of the film and the Hearst press went crazy attacking it. Hearst columnist Louella Parsons threatened "A Beautiful Lawsuit" if the film was not pulled. Despite winning some Oscars, the film didn't do well in its initial release, but it remains one of the greatest films of all time. 

1944- One year after they started, the animators of Industrial Film & Poster Service changed their name to United Productions of America, or UPA.

1964- At Dartmouth, Scientist John Kemeny created the computer language BASIC.

1967- Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas.

1989- Walt Disney Feature Animation in Orlando Florida opened. They created hits like Muhlan and Lilo & Stitch. It closed in 2006.

1993- The Florida Animation Union Local 843 chartered. 

1997- Frank Gifford, ABC television sportscaster and husband of morning show celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford, was caught on videotape doing the nasty with stewardess Suzie Johnson. She got paid by a tabloid and posed nude for Playboy.

1997- Bebe, the dolphin who played Flipper on the television show, died at age 40.

1999- Spongebob Squarepants premiered on Nickelodeon. 

3019TA- Aragorn II was crowned King of Gondor (according to Tolkien)

.