Monday, May 20, 2024

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.



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