Wednesday, May 1, 2024

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)


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