Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- born Schmuel Gelbfisz, Harry Hopkins, Monte Wooley, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Jim Courier, Donnie Wahlberg, Belinda Carlisle, Maureen O’Hara, Sean Penn is 64, Martha Coolidge is 79, Robert DeNiro is 81
1838- Lorenzo da Ponte died in New York City at age 89. In Vienna he was a librettist for Salieri and Mozart. He wrote La Nozzi de Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutti and Don Giovanni. Failed business ventures and bankruptcy made him move to America in 1805. "He who believes in his dreams is mad; and he who does not believe in them--what is he?"
1876- Richard Wagner’s 4 hour opera Gotterdammerung- the Twilight of the Gods, premiered.
1908- D.W. Griffith signed a contract to begin directing movies for Biograph Pictures. He was paid $50 dollars a week plus royalties.
1908- The premiere of the first fully animated film, Emile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie".
1941- EL GRUPO- Walt Disney and his artists arrive in Rio on a ten-week goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 U.S. government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to the Nazis, forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. One of the things they wanted was Donald Duck. Back in LA the federal mediator Stanley White had worked out with Roy Disney that if they got Walt out of town, they could settle the Disney animators strike. The name comes from hotel footmen in Buenos Aires paging the artists as “ El Grupo Disney! Your bus is here.” The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.
1954- Walt Disney’s True Life Adventure, “The Vanishing Prairie”, directed by James Algar, opened in theaters.
1960- Georg Pal’s The Time Machine opened in NY.
1962- The Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. One of the reasons they decided on Ringo was that he came with his own car.
1979- Monty Python’s The Life of Brian premiered. Directed by Terry Jones. Just before principal photography was due to begin, a key sponsor got cold feet about the dodgy religious connotations and withdrew their funding. At the last-minute Beatle George Harrison stepped in and donated $3 million of the $4 million dollar budget. He said he just wanted to see it. “ It is the world’s most expensive theatre ticket.”
1984- The Walt Disney Company executive board informed its chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller had been Walt’s son-in-law and he was he was once a tight end for the LA Rams. Within two years of Michael Eisner taking power Disney was number one.
1985- The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the world’s supply of SPAM.
1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admitted he was having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime lover Mia Farrow. He was 60 and she was 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.” They’ve been together ever since.
1994 The Great Baseball Players Strike- canceled out the season and the 1994 World Series. It was the longest strike in sports history until the NBA lockout of 1998.
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