Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 30, 2024

 Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,

Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler is 78, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon, 

Claude Lelouche, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Herschel Bernardi, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, Ghibli animator Isao Takahata

 

 

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published. 

 

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

 

1936- London publishers George Allen & Unwin had received a manuscript from an Oxford ancient languages professor named J.R.R. Tolkein.  The publisher gave it to his ten-year old son Rayner Unwin, to read. Rayner read it and made a report, “This book will be a very good read for children from ages 5-7.” For his troubles, the young lad was paid a shilling. Based on his recommendation, they published “The Hobbit”. 

 

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast on CBS a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, one million people across the U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New Jersey.  Interestingly enough, the broadcast was only #2 in the ratings. More people listened to the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show. 

 

 

1943- Future movie director Frederico Fellini married actress Giulietta Masina. They were hiding in his aunt’s apartment from being drafted into Mussolini’s army. By a lucky chance, allied bombing blew up the building containing his registration records. 

 

1947- Bertoldt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and The Threepenny Opera,

testified to the Hollywood HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole

session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he fled the U.S. and resettled in East Germany.

 

 

1963- The first Lamborghini 350GTV went on sale.

 

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air.  I can’t write them because Facebook would put me in jail, but you all know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

 

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.

 

2005- The Disney feature Chicken Little premiered.

 

2012- The Walt Disney Company announced it was buying out George Lucas holdings (including the Star Wars franchise) for $4.05 billion.

 

 

Tom Sito Animation Almanac for Oct. 29, 2024

Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Mauldin, Akim Tamiroff, Rufus Sewell, Neal Hefti-composer of the theme song for TV shows like Batman and the Odd Couple. Richard Dreyfus is 77, Ralph Bakshi is 86, Dan Castellenata, the voice of Homer Simpson, is 68.

 

1923- The musical Running Wild opened on Broadway, introducing the dance craze the Charleston. The tune was written by composer James P. Johnson. Some people say the dance moves were based on a native African dance called the Juba.

 

1929- BLACK TUESDAY-THE STOCK MARKET CRASH AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS. The falling stock crisis which had been gaining momentum since early September finally culminated in the greatest ever one day collapse of the U.S. Economy. Millions of people who weren't ruined by last Thursday’s crash were ruined today.  One third of all U. S. banks failed- 2,500. 

 

 

1956- NBC TV upgraded its evening news show The Camel News Caravan with the Huntley-Brinkley Report. President Eisenhower disliked the change.

 

1957- Louis B. Mayer died. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." The head of MGM Studios lorded over Hollywood like a monarch, made and broke moviestars, ordered Judy Garland fed a steady stream of narcotics and had his office redesigned all white to resemble Mussolini’s, whom he admired. Humphrey Bogart was at the funeral. When asked if he was close to Mayer, Bogie replied: Nah, I'm just here to make sure he's dead!

 

1959- Goscinny and Uderzo’s comic character Asterix first appeared in Pilote magazine.

 

1968- The Lion In Winter, with Katherine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Hopkins opened. When filming wrapped on this movie, Hepburn said to O’Toole: When I started off in this business my agent said to me, never act with children or animals. But you Peter, are both.” 

 

 

1969- THE INTERNET- After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Defense Department asked the Rand Corporation to create a communication system that could survive Russian atomic bombs. They developed an idea by British scientist Paul Baran of a “net” of computers all in communication with another around the world. Because there was no center, a bomb could not knock out the entire system. 

At 10:30PM In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, J.C. “Lick” Licklider, Leonard Kleinrock, Vin Cerf, Robert Kahn, Larry Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. 

They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NET, a few years later the Internet. 

 

1993- Tim Burton’s fantasy A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, opened across the US.

 

2012- Superstorm Sandy –a late season hurricane the size of Europe collided with a storm front coming from the west, and a cold front from Canada, and it all slammed into the mid Atlantic coastline. 233 killed, 6 million without power and the Wall St area flooded, The Atlantic City boardwalk, Asbury Park and the Jersey Shore were destroyed. 

 

2012- Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph premiered. 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 28, 2024

Birthdays: Elsa Lanchester, Cleo Lane, Charlie Daniels, Evelyn Waugh, Jonas Salk, Joan Plowright, Edith Head, Chef August Escolfiere the great French Chef who created Peche Melba and moved French cuisine to the front rank of world cooking, Charles Grosvenor the founder of National Geographic magazine, Joaquin Phoenix is 50, Dennis Franz, Jack Soo, Julia Roberts is 57, Bill Gates is 69, Disney animator Don Lusk.

 

1726- Jonathan Swift published "Gulliver's Travels"-"To Vex the World rather than Divert it."

 

 

1886-THE STATUE OF LIBERTY DEDICATED- Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was originally asked by Ferdinand de Lesseps to create a huge statue of a woman to welcome Europeans sailing into the Suez Canal at Port Said. After that deal didn’t work out Bartholdi revamped the design for the Americas. The face looks like a classic Greek beauty although some insist it’s the artist’s mother. Bartholdi’s masterpiece, held up by Gustav Eiffel's superstructure, was supposed to be unveiled at the American Centennial celebrations in 1876, but was a little over deadline, about ten years.  President Cleveland had started giving his opening remarks when the curtain revealing the statue was dropped early and he was drowned out by cheers, boat whistles, cannon salutes and fireworks. Women suffragettes rented a boat and floated alongside the parade bearing a large banner "She's beautiful, but she cannot vote!"

 

1913- George Herriman’s Krazy Kat appeared initially as a side comic strip in his regular strip The Dingbat Family. This day Krazy and Ignacz debuted in their own strip in the NY Evening Journal. As Krazy herself would say,“ It’s wots behind me that I am.”. 

 

1929- Composer Irving Berlin scolded George Gershwin for his lack of patriotism that he unloaded his stocks and bonds. The Great Stock Market Crash the following day bankrupted Irving Berlin but Gershwin escaped unscathed. Stick to music, Irv...

 

1949- Kay Kamen, Walt Disney Studios merchandising mastermind, was killed in a plane crash in the Azores. For almost two decades the Baltimore-born ad man was the mastermind behind the creation of Disney merchandising, including the wildly successful Mickey Mouse watch. By the time of his death in 1966, Walt Disney merchandising was earning the studio $100 million a year.   

 .

 

1965- St. Louis Gateway Arch completed.

 

 

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 27, 2024

B-Days: Captain James Cook, Theodore Roosevelt, Dylan Thomas, Nicolo Paganini, Gerhard Von Gneisenau, Sylvia Plath, Roy Lichtenstein, John Cleese is 85, Freddy De Cordova, Ruby Dee, Roberto Benigni, Bernie Wrightson, Dr. Stamen Grigorov 1878, Bulgarian microbiologist who discovered the bacillus that made natural yogurt.

  

 

1886- Musical fantasy "A Night on Bald Mountain" premiered in Russia. Composer Modest Mussorgsky worked as a florist during the day and wrote music at night. He was convinced he couldn’t make a living otherwise.

 

1916- The entertainment trade magazine Variety has the blurb: "Chicago has added recently to it’s number of so-called Jazz bands." Now jazz had been around in black neighborhoods for years, but the form was labeled Ragtime or Syncopation. This is the earliest known use in print of the word Jazz.

 

 

1947- The "You Bet Your Life" quiz show premiered on radio. "Say the Secret Word and Win Fifty Dollars". Comedian Groucho Marx had struggled after his brothers act the Marx Brothers broke up. During a live radio program with Bob Hope at one point Hope dropped his script. Before he could pick it up Groucho stepped on the pages, threw his own away and the two improvised their conversation. The result was much funnier that anything anybody had written. The producer of the show was so impressed he hired Groucho and built a quiz show around him.

 

1954- The" Disneyland" television show premieres. Up until then the major Hollywood Studios were all boycotting the new upstart medium of television, then mostly done in New York by blacklisted stage actors and writers. MGM Production head Dori Schary called TV “ the Enemy”. Walt Disney is the first to break ranks with the major film studios and get into television production.  He even filmed the show in Technicolor, figuring television will develop color broadcasting eventually. 

 

1964- Sonny & Cher married. I got you babe!

 

1964- The “You Choose” speech. Actor, SAG President, and TV pitchman Ronald Reagan made his maiden political speech at a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. He had made political speeches in the past, but this one marks his shedding his acting and union careers to become a full time conservative politician. 

 

1966- Bill Melendez's Peanuts TV special "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown'.

For the first time TV audiences saw Snoopy duel the Red Baron. 

 

1967- the Worlds Fair in Montreal called Expo 67 closed.

 

1986- The NY Mets defeated the Boston Red Sox to win the baseball World Series.

 

1989 - World Series play resumes between Oakland and San Francisco after a ten day delay from the 1989- Loma Pietra Earthquake. 

 

2004- After not winning it for half the history of baseball, since 1918, this day the Boston Red Sox swept the Saint Louis Cardinals to finally win a World Series. They go on to win several more. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 26, 2024

Birthdays: Danton, Leon Trotsky, Francois Mitterand, Domenico Scarlatti, Charles W. Post of Post Cereals, Bob Hoskins, The last Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Mahalia Jackson, Clive Barker, Bootsie Collins, Marla Maples, Count Helmuth von Molkte the Elder -German strategist of the Franco-Prussian War, Dylan McDermott, Cary Elwes, Jaclyn Smith, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Jon Heder, Seth McFarlane is 51

 

 

1935 Disney short “Three Orphaned Kittens” premiered. Directed by Dave Hand. It won an Oscar.

 

1947-HOLLYWOOD FIGHTS BACK- Members of Hollywood's progressive elite tried to answer the McCarthy hearings and the blacklist with a nationwide radio broadcast "Hollywood Fights Back” -Starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, John Huston, Gene Kelly and Edward G. Robinson. 

 The event was a public relations fiasco. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann used his airtime to launch into a longwinded intellectual defense of Communism. When word reached them that some of the Hollywood writers they were defending really were communists Bogart and Bacall felt they had been hoodwinked. "As politicians we stink!" quote Bogie. 

 

1951- Despite being past his prime famed heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis The Brown Bomber came out of retirement to attempt a comeback and pay off back taxes. This day he was defeated by young champ Rocky Marciano. Growing up Marciano had idolized Louis, and afterwards apologized to him.

 

1952- The TV documentary Victory at Sea, first premiered, with its majestic soundtrack by Richard Rogers. Scoring by Robert Russell Bennett. 

 

1955- The Greenwich Village Voice, later called simply The Voice, first published. It ended in 2018. 

  

1957- Vatican Radio began broadcasting.

 

1958- The movie Bell, Book and Candle came out. Starring Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. The film inspired the 60s TV series Bewitched. Roy E. Disney liked the movie so much his car license plate was Piewacket.

 

 

1965- The rock band the Beatles received MBEs (most excellent Member of the British Empire) medals at Buckingham Palace.  John Lennon later returned his as a protest.

 

1970- Yale law graduate Gary Trudeau was convinced by his classmate Jim Andrews, now an editor at Universal Press syndicate, to recreate the funny comic strip he did in their campus newspaper. Its original name was 'Bull Tales". He renamed it Doonesbury. 

 

 

1984-" I’LL BE BACK…" James Cameron’s sci-fi thriller THE TERMINATOR first released. Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a Hollywood joke before this film made him a major star.  An interesting what-if, was that before Arnold was cast in the role of the cyborg assassin, the producers were first considering O.J. Simpson. 

 

1985- The original date Marty McFly time travels from in the film Back to the Future.

 

2015- The Supergirl TV show staring Melissa Benoist premiered.

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 24, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Domitian, Bob Kane the creator of Batman, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek- the founder of Microbiology, Moss Hart, Merrian Cooper, Jiles Perry Richardson better known as the Big Bopper, F. Murray Abrahams is 86, Enkwase Mfume, Y.A. Tittle, Sara Josepha Hale 1788- who wrote the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb", animator Preston Blair, Kevin Kline is 77

 

3018 BCT- Frodo the Hobbit awoke safely in Lord Elrond’s palace in Rivendell, after escaping The Ring Wraiths. 

 

1861-The Last Pony Express ride. The idea was romantic, but a financial dud and only operated about two years before being replaced by stagecoach, rail and telegraph.

 

1901- Anne Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and live to talk about it. She attempted the stunt for a cash prize she used to get a loan to buy a ranch in Texas.

 

1902- Author Arthur Conan-Doyle was knighted by King Edward VII. He received the honor not for his literary accomplishments but for his volunteer service as a doctor during the just concluded Boer War. It was also said the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was one of the few books King Edward ever managed to read from cover to cover.

 

1907- President Teddy Roosevelt called for a grand conference of government and business leaders to discuss a strategy for the conservation of America’s natural resources.  For the first time, Conservation was made an issue of national policy. “ I have seen the last fluttering of bird species that once blackened the skies...”  

 

1936- The first appearance in the Thimble Theater comic of Popeye’s father Poopdeck Pappy.

 

1937- At Piping Springs NY, composer Cole Porter suffered a spill while horseback riding that broke both his legs. Even after 26 operations he never regained their full use. One leg was amputated in 1958. He died in 1964 at age 73 of kidney failure.

 

1938- The Fair Labor Standards Act established the 40 hour workweek as the law of the land. The 40 hour week, that thing few of us see nowadays.

 

1946- KUSC, Southern California’s classical music station, started up.

 

1947- Walt Disney testified to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) as a friendly witness. He accused leaders of the Cartoonists Guild and the League of Women Voters –which he mistakenly called the League of Women Shoppers, as being infiltrated by Communists "Seeking to subvert the Spirit of Mickey Mouse”.

 

 

1956- Cartoonist Jules Feiffer had been working for Terrytoons writing Tom Terrific. This day he began moonlighting a simple one panel strip for The Village Voice newspaper. It became an institution that ran for decades, until 1997. 

 

1959- The TV program Playboy’s Penthouse premiered. Hugh Hefner hosted a variety show designed to look like a cocktail party in a swinging bachelor’s pad. It was a success despite many stations in the South refusing to show it. That was because they dared to have black celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Nat King Cole laughing and partying alongside white ones like Tony Bennett and Lennie Bruce. 

 

1962- UPA’s Gay Puree, animated film starring Judy Garland and Robert Goulet, and directed by Abe Levitow.

 

1969- Godfather Producer Robert Evans married young actress Ali McGraw.

 

 

1975- The musical play A Chorus Line opened.

 

 

1994- Disney TV series Gargoyles premiered.

 

2003- Walt Disney’s Brother Bear, directed by Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker opened in wide release.

 

2008- Oprah Winfrey hosted an internationally famous talk show. She promoted literacy and called herself, “The Queen of Reading.” This day she declared her new favorite thing in the world to be the Kindle from Amazon. This plug helped launch the era of e-books.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 23, 2024

Birthdays; Johnny Carson, Adlai Stevenson, Pele, Zioniev, Weird Al Yankovic, Dwight Yoakham, Michael Crichton, Chi-Chi Rodriquez, Phillip Kaufman, porn star Jasmine St. Claire, Gummo Marx, Ang Lee is 70, Ryan Reynolds is 48, Sam Raimi is 65

 

1928- A financial consortium led by Wall St. banker-bootlegger Joseph Kennedy Sr. bought the Keith Albee theater circuit and merged it with the Radio Company and the Orpheum theaters to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum or RKO pictures. After Joe Kennedy met with the other Hollywood moguls he told a friend: ”They’re all a bunch of Austrian Pants Pressers! I can take their businesses away from them!” Kennedy made a quick killing then got out of the picture business in 1930, just before the Depression dropped his studios stock value. RKO made films like King Kong, Fort Apache, Snow White and Citizen Kane before merging into Desilu in 1957.

 

1930- The first Miniature Golf tournament held in Chattanooga Tenn.

 

1940- Shooting on the film Citizen Kane wrapped.

 

1941- Walt Disney’s Dumbo premiered. 

 

 

1971-Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida opened.

 

1983- Jessica Savitch was one of the first women journalists to break the barrier for women getting the top anchor jobs in network news broadcasting. This day she died in a car accident.

 

1991- Ted Turner bought Hanna & Barbera Studios.

 

2001- Apple Computers launched the ipod. Once you could collect all your favorite songs in a little device, it sealed the doom of the record industry. Ipods were made obsolete by iphones in 2007.

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 22, 2024

Birthdays: Sarah Bernhardt, Timothy Leary, Franz Liszt, Doris Lessing, Joan Fontaine, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lloyd is 86, Annette Funicello, Brian Boitano, Jerry “Curly” Howard of the Three Stooges, Catherine Deneuve is 81, Spike Jonze is 56. Jeff Goldblum is 72.

 

 

1883- First performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. It was Gounod’s Faust with soprano Christine Nillson and tenor Italo Campanini.  

 

1900- Two Ohio bicycle repairmen named Orville and Wilbur Wright built a large glider and flew it. They choose the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to test their glider because the winds were strong, and they would crash in something soft. The airplane was still three years in the future, but this was their first test of their prototype double winged plane design. 

 

1903- Tom Horn, considered the Last of the Western Outlaws, was hanged in Wyoming for the murder of Willie Nickel. He supposedly adjusted the noose around his neck himself. The era of the gunslinger officially ends with him. 

 

1934- The comic strip Terry and the Pirates by Milt Caniff first appeared in newspapers.

 

 1934- Bank Robber James" Pretty Boy" Floyd killed in a furious gun battle with the F.B.I.  He had told his father months before:" Pa, when I go, I’m gonna go down in lead!" Floyd was called the, "dust bowl robin hood" for leaving food and money on doorsteps of destitute farmers. One story had him steal a pie cooling on a windowsill, then replacing it with a $50 bill. In Woody Guthrie's "Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd" He says:" You may call me an outlaw, but one thing that I have known. I've never seen an outlaw drive a family from their home."    

 

1938-THE BIRTHDAY OF THE XEROX COPY- Chester Carlson working with an amateur chemistry set behind a beauty parlor in Astoria Queens, created the first photo copy. He took his invention to Edison, G.E., RCA and IBM who all rejected it. Finally a little firm that produced photographic paper for Kodak called the Haloid Company bought it. They later changed their named to Xerox, Greek for “Dry-Writing”.  

 

1939-The first televised football game-The Brooklyn Dodger's 23 Philadelphia Eagles 14.

 

1948- The first In-N-Out Burger stand opened in Baldwin Park, a suburb of Los Angeles. Created by Harry & Esther Snyder as the first drive through hamburger stand. It is still in business today, selling only burgers, shakes, and fries, pretty much like they did back then. Their granddaughter Lynsi Snyder is CEO.  It was Bob Hope’s favorite burger place. Hollywood stars learned to stock up there before the drive to Palm Springs.

 

1962- Twentieth Century Fox chief Daryl Zanuck fired long suffering director Joe Mankiewicz off of the editing of the spectacle Cleopatra. Mankiewicz had shot a 6 hour movie he wanted shown as two films. Zanuck wanted one big movie at half that size. After a lot of embarrassing feuding in the press, Zanuck rehired Mankiewicz and he recut Cleopatra, When Elizabeth Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up. Cleopatra became one of the biggest flops in Hollywood History and forced Fox to sell off most of their studio back lot.  It became the Century City shopping mall.

 

 

1962- At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a stand-up comic named Vaughn Meador recorded a comedy album called The First Family. It made lighthearted fun of John F. Kennedy and his White House. The record became the fastest selling hit of the pre-Beatles era, 7.5 million copies. Jackie called Meador a rat, but JFK thought it was funny and gave out copies as Christmas presents. Kennedy said Meador’s impersonation sounded more like his brother Teddy than him.

2021- Disney's Ron's Gone Wrong.

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 21, 2024

Birthdays: Dizzy Gillespie, Whitey Ford, Alfred Nobel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Blair, Carrie Fisher, Patty Davis (Reagan's daughter), Benjamin Netanyahu, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Manfred Mann, Sir Georg Solti, Angus McFadyen, Ken Watanabe is 65, Kim Kardashian is 44.

 

 

1879- Thomas Edison announced the invention of the Light Bulb. After experimenting with dozens of different type filaments in a vacuum, Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb with carbonized cotton. He and his crew stared at the glowing bulb for 40 hours to make sure it was really worked.

     

1932- The film Red Dust premiered. It made stars out of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

 

 

1939- Walt Disney sent a confidential memo to his legal team: “Everything we do in the future should include television rights. There might be a big angle on television for the shorts we have already produced.” At this time, television was still mostly experimental.  It would be 15 years until Disney had a television show, and he was considered an early pioneer. 

 

1941- WONDER WOMAN, Elizabeth Holloway Marston was a niece of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. She married psychologist William Moulton Marston who when not inventing the lie detector, was an educational consultant for Detective Comics, Inc. (DC Comics). Elizabeth noticed the DC line was filled with images of super men like Green Lantern, Batman, Superman. She wondered why there was not a female hero? On her urging, Dr. Marston brought this up to DC head Max Gaines. Gaines was intrigued by the concept and told Marston that he should create a female hero – at first “Amazon Woman”, then "Wonder Woman." Marston's 'good and beautiful woman' made her debut in All Star Comics #8. 

 

 

1956- The last trolley cars in Flatbush Brooklyn shut down.

 

1959- Six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright his last creation the Guggenheim Museum in New York City opened.

 

1967- THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON- 100,000 anti-Vietnam War protestors surrounded the Pentagon in Washington and tried to do an “exorcism “ and levitate the building. This was the day of the famous images of Hippies putting flowers in the gun barrels of the National Guard troops.

 

1972- Curtis Mayfield’s theme to the movie “Superfly” debuted at Number #1 in the Billboard charts.

 

1975- The Cincinnati-Boston World Series-Carleton Fisk's 12th inning homer keeps the Boston Red Sox hopes alive against Johnny Bench and the 'Big Red Machine".

 

2003- The Great California Brush Fires. Hot dry wind and a lost hunter ignited the worst brush fires in California history. Ten fires from Ventura County north of Los Angeles to Tijuana Mexico burned hundreds of thousands of acres for two weeks, destroyed 3000 homes and killed 20. The smoke clouds were visible from space.

 

2015- According to Robert Zemeckis 1989 film Back to the Future II, all the events Marty McFly and Doc Brown experience in the future occur on this date. Did you ever get your hoverboard?

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 20, 2024

Birthdays: Sir Christopher Wren, Bela Lugosi (born Bela Blasgow from Lugosz), Charles Ives, Arthur Rimbaud, Daniel Sickles, Black Panther Bobby Seale, Juan Marechal, Tom Petty, Art Buchwald, Arlene Francis, Grandpa Jones, Mickey Mantle, Frank Churchill, Allen Reed, Thomas Newman, Jerry Orbach, Rex Ingram, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Michael Dunn, Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Broadus Jr) is 53, Danny Boyle is 68, Viggo Mortensen is 66, Kamala Harris is 60.

 . 

 

1921- Rudolf Valentino starred in The Sheik, which premiered today.

 

1939- Frank Capra’s film “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” opened.

 

 

1947- 'ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN...' Judge J. Parnell Thomas banged the gavel opening the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation into Communist infiltration into the Motion Picture Business. HUAC was set up in 1938 as The Dies Committee to keep an eye on pro-Nazis groups operating in German and Italian immigrant organizations, but by 1944 its emphasis had switched to Communist espionage. 

Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney were the first in line to name names. Sterling Hayden, Zero Mostel, Gale Sondergard, Ginger Rogers, Ed Wynn, Howard da Silva, and Lloyd Bridges admitted they had once held communist party memberships. Humphrey Bogart wrote a friend,” The whole town is running for cover.” The anti-commie hysteria turned Hollywood inside out and the bitter feelings remained for the rest of their lives. 

 

1951- the CBS Eye logo made its debut. Creative director Kurt Weiss was inspired when he drove through Pennsylvania Dutch country. He became intrigued by the hex symbols resembling the human eye that were painted on Shaker barns. In show biz slang CBS is still referred to as The Eye.

 

1955- Harry Belafonte recorded the Banana Boat Song, that made him a star. “ Come Mister Tally-Man, tally me bananas…Dayo!”

 

1955- J.R.R. Tolkien’s 3rd book of the Lord of the Rings published. The Return of the King.

 

 

1973- The Six Million Dollar Man with Lee Majors premiered.

 

 

1973- Sidney Australia’s Opera House was dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II.

 

1983- Mickey’s Christmas Carol premiered in London.

 

1977- Lynyrd Skynyrd band members Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines died when their plane crashed into a swamp while en route to a concert at Louisiana University.

 

1991- The Oakland California Firestorm. Drought and diablo wind conditions fanned a blaze in the East Bay hills that destroyed 3,000 buildings and killed 25 people.

 

 

2003- Disney’s Brother Bear premiered. Directed by Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker.

 

 

2013- Saving Mr. Banks with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, premiered.

 

2017- Pixar’s Coco premiered at the Morelia Film Festival in Mexico.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct.12, 2024

Birthdays: Martha "Patsy" Jefferson, Auguste Lumiere, Tor Johnson, John Le Carre', Peter Tosh, Amy Carter, Jack Anderson, Peter Max, animator Lou Scheimer, John Lithgow is 79, Robert Reed of the Brady Bunch, Evander Holyfield, Patricia Ireland, Michael Gambon, John Favreau is 58, Trey Parker of South Park is 54

 

 

 

1845- Richard Wagners’ opera Tannhauser premiered.

 

1901- Brazilian Santos Dumont flew a small dirigible around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This proved that a balloon could be maneuvered by a propeller motor. This was four years before the Wright Brothers. A crowd of 100,000 cheered including Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. 

 

 

1926- King George VI of England was known to have a bad stammer that embarrassed him when speaking in public. This day, George had his first appointment with his Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue at his Harley St. office. The event was dramatized in the film- The King’s Speech.

 

Wyeth self-portrait

1945- Near his Chadd’s Ford home, N.C. Wyeth, artist and father of Andrew Wyeth, was killed by a train that struck his car. His grandson was in the car with him and was also killed. He was 62. 

 

1953 – Arthur Godfrey had one of the more popular TV variety shows at the time. One of his headliners was the singer Julius LaRosa. But Godfrey was seen to act more and more imperiously with his cast and crew. This day after a song, Godfrey put his arm around LaRosa and said gently. "Julie lacks humility, So, Julie, to teach you a lesson, you’re fired." La Rosa and the audience first thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. He had fired LaRosa live, nationwide on the air.

 

1957- Montreal Hockey great Maurice Rocket Richard became the first player to score 500 goals.

 

1964- Doo Wah Diddy Diddy by Manfred Mann hit the pop charts.

 

1968- RUPERT MURDOCH INVADED ENGLAND. Never mind the Vikings or William the Conqueror, on this day the little Australian landed at Heathrow to begin a takeover war for his first English newspaper, the News of the World. Until now the Fleet Street press barons were a closed club of rich old gentlemen. Murdoch used Sir Robert Caro as his cover to get in and defeat a hostile takeover bid from Robert Maxwell. He then demoted Caro out of his leadership of the paper. He soon bought the London Times and The Sun. Rupert Murdoch later became a U.S. citizen so he could build the Fox News and TV empires.

 

1985- Take on Me by Aha hit number one on the pop charts.

 

 

1990- Kevin Costner’s film Dances With Wolves premiered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 18, 2024

Birthdays: Cannaletto, Lotte Lenya, Wynton Marsalis, George C. Scott, Pierre Trudeau, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mike Dytka, Peter Boyle, Inger Stevens, Violetta Chamorro, Wendy Wasserstein, Wynton Marsalis, Martina Navratilova, Zack Efron is 33, Jean Claude Van Damme, The Muscles from Brussels- is 64. Pixar Art Director Ralph Eggleston. Animator Alex Williams.

 

1776- Cato’s Road House, a colonial tavern New York City decorated with birds opened. The owner was a free black man named Cato Alexander. Customers ordered a favorite drink he created, called a "Cocks Tail" or cocktail. The origin of the name.

 

1861- Poet and suffragette Julia Ward Howe was staying at the Willard Hotel down the block from the White House. She awoke in the middle of the night inspired to write new words to a popular soldiers tune she heard that day "John Brown's Body". She wrote "Mine Eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord...." She called it "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"." Glory-Glory Halleluiah, His Truth is Marching On…"

 

1896- Joseph Pulitzer's N.Y. Journal American created the first Sunday Color Comics supplement.

 

 

1922- The British Broadcast Corp or BBC formed.

 

1922- In Hollywood, Sid Grauman's Egyptian Theater opened. Designed by Meyer & Holder, the first of Grauman’s fantasy theaters.

 

1924- College football star Red Grange scored four long yardage touchdowns in one game.

 

1931- Thomas Edison died peacefully at age 84. His last words were-

"It's beautiful over there..."

 

 

1946- Walt Disney premiered The Story of Menstruation.

 

1950- In a heated showdown in the Directors Guild all motions by Cecil B.DeMille and Frank Capra to adopt the anti-Communist blacklist were defeated. Billy Wilder, John Huston, John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy supported President Joe Mankiewicz who blocked the Blacklist Motions, and they also blocked a recall vote on Mankiewicz' s presidency.

 

1954- Hi & Lois comic strip debuted.

 

1967- Walt Disney's last animated feature done under his supervision "the Jungle Book." premiered. Disney had died the previous December. “Look for the Bear-Necessities…”

 

1974- Tobe Hooper's low budget cult film Texas Chainsaw Massacre first opened. Despite one film critic calling it " a bunch of sick crap" it became a huge hit. 

 

1977- New York Yankee batter Reggie Jackson earned the name Mr. October by slugging three home runs in a World Series Game against the LA Dodgers.

 

1982- President Reagan said during a radio address:" My Fellow Americans, the economy is in a helluva mess....this microphone isn't on, is it?.." 

 

1984- Handsome young television star John Eric Hexum died after shooting himself with a prop pistol.  Even though it was loaded with blanks the concussion of compressed air at close range cracked his skull. He was playing at mock-Russian Roulette. His last words to his friends were "Let’s see if I can do myself in this time!"

 

2019- Jojo Rabbit, a dark comedy by Taiko Waititti opened.  Taiko’s producer told him, I’ll greenlight this project only if you play Hitler. He agreed. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Oct. 17, 2024

Birthdays: Arthur Miller, Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur, Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Breslin, Tom Poston, Gary Puckett, Margot Kidder, Evil Knievel, Jerry Siegel (Superman co-creator), Virgil 'Vip' Partch, Charles Kraft the sliced cheese king, Beverly Garland- star of Attack of the Alligator People, George Wendt, Cameron Mackintosh, Mike Judge is 62, Eminem is 52

 

 

1814- In London a large beer vat burst and drowned nine people.

 

1873- MY NAME IS MUYBRIDGE.  One night a carriage drove up from San Francisco to the Yellow Jacket Mine near Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. A man asked for the foreman Major Harry Larkyns. When Larkyns answered the door the man quietly said to him: ”Good Evening, Major. My name is Muybridge.  Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife earlier. “ He drew a pistol and shot Larkyns through the heart, killing him instantly. He then dropped his weapon and waited for the sheriff.

The murderer was the famous Photographer and Motion Picture Pioneer Edweard Muybridge. Muybridges’ young wife Flora had been having an affair while he was working on his Motion Studies Series in Palo Alto. Muybridge discovered the son she bore him was not his. They were even calling him Little Harry behind his back. 

The jury that convened in Napa did not hang the artist-inventor. In the Code of the Old West, proven adultery was considered a justifiable homicide. Plus, Governor Leyland Stanford was paying for Muybridge’s experiments. So, he was acquitted. 

 

 

1919- The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) founded, the parent company of the NBC Network. 

 

1928- Duke Ellington recorded The Mouche, the Fly.

 

1937- Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, first appear in the Disney Sunday comic strip. Created by Al Taliaferro. The following year they first appeared in the short, Donald’s Nephews.

 

1938- The radio show Captain Midnight premiered on WGN Chicago. In 1940, sponsor Ovaltine dropped its decade old show Little Orphan Annie in favor of making Captain Midnight a nationwide broadcast.

 

1943- The Burma Railway was completed by occupying Japanese forces using British prisoners of war as laborers, the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. Cartoonist Ronald Searle was there to document events in drawings. Contrary to the David Lean movie, the bridge was never blown up, and is still in use today.

 

1965- After a two-year run, the New York World’s Fair in Flushing Queens officially closed.

 

1967- The Hippy musical “Hair” opened at the Anspacher Theatre on Broadway. 

 

 

1989- In the late afternoon, the BAY AREA EARTHQUAKE- called the Loma Prieta Quake, shook San Francisco and vicinity. For the first time since 1906, fires were seen in the Mission District. The epicenter was a little town called Watsonville. 67 people were killed. 

  There was a World Series baseball game under way in Candlestick Park, but miraculously no one was hurt. National TV audiences amazed that local fans laughed at the danger. They chanted to the TV cameras: "Welcome to California!".

 

1990- William Stieg published his children’s book Shrek.

 

1990- IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base started up. 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Oct. 16, 2024

Birthdays: Lord Cardigan, Eugene O'Neill, Noah Webster, Dave DeBusschere, David Ben-Gurion, Disney animator Ham Luske, Angela Lansbury, Gunter Grass, Linda Darnell, Charles Colson, Susanne Somers, David Zucker, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim Robbins is 66.

 

 

1834- The British House of Parliament caught fire and burnt to the ground in a horrific conflagration. Luckily artists William Turner and John Constable were around watching the blaze from the south bank of the Thames, so at least we got a few neat paintings out of it...

 

1847- Jane Eyre, an Autobiography first published. Writer Charlotte Bronte’ did it under the pen-name Currier Bell.  

 

1860- Olivia Bedel, a little girl from NY, wrote a fan letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, where she suggested that he grow a beard. Abe took her advice.

 

 

101923- The Walt Disney Studios Born. 22 year old Walt and his older brother Roy signed a deal with Margaret M.J. Winkler for six "Alice in Cartoonland" short cartoons. Budget-$1,500 each.  

 

1929- New York City skyscraper the Chrysler Building completed. It won a race with the Bank of Manhattan Company to become the world’s tallest building. But it only held the title for a few months because the Empire State Building was going up.

 

1929- The frosted light bulb patented.

 

1943- Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly dedicated the new subway system.

 

1950- C.S. Lewis’ book “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” published. First book of the Chronicles of Narnia series.

 

1952- Charlie Chaplin’s film "Limelight" premiered in London. Chaplin had shot the film in Hollywood but released it in Europe because he had been driven into exile by McCarthyite Red Baiters.

 

1955- Ann Landers published her first column.

 

1969- The Miracle Mets. The New York Mets, then possessing some of the worst records in baseball history, defied all 100-1 odds and won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in 5 games. 

 

1976- Disco Duck by Rick Dees became #1 on the pop charts.

 

1997- According to the writers of the 1965 television show 'Lost in Space', this was the date the Jupiter-2 with Will, Penny, Dr. Smith and the Robot took off to colonize deep space. "Danger! Danger! Spare me your insolence, you mechanical ninny..."

 

Tom Sito's. Animation Almanac for Oct. 15, 2024

Birthdays: Quintus Virgilius-Virgil 70 BC, Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great 1542, Oscar Wilde, Fredrich Nietszche, Mikail Lermontov, John L. Sullivan, Jane Darnell, Burt Gillett, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Trout, Klaus Barbie the Butcher of Lyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Penny Marshall, Mario Puzo, Sarah Ferguson-Fergie' the former Duchess of York, Chef Emeril LeGasse, Chuck Berry 

 

 

1905- First Little Nemo comic strip by Winsor McCay premiered in the NY Herald. McCay modeled the child on his own son Robert, and name Nemo came from a Latin root meaning no one.

 

1905- Premiere of Claude Debussy’s tone poem La Mer- the Sea.

 

 

1929- The Canadian Parliament passed a resolution declaring women to be people, too.

 

1930- Duke Ellington first recorded Mood Indigo.

 

 

1937- The Disney short Clock Cleaners premiered. “Loudly the Bell, in the Old Town rings….”

 

1940- Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator premiered.

 

 

1951- THE FIRST I LOVE LUCY SHOW- The successful family sitcom began its pilot episode this night. CBS and sponsor Phillip Morris had wanted Lucille Ball to transfer her popular radio show-“My Favorite Husband” to television. The story of the family life of Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban immigrant nightclub bandleader, his daffy wife Lucy, and their landlord friends Fred and Ethel Murtz became an overnight sensation. 

 

Oct 15, 1959- 20th Century Fox signed Elizabeth Taylor to star in their new movie Cleopatra. Legend has it when the studio called, Husband Eddie Fisher answered the phone. He called out to Taylor in the next room " Its Hal Wallis (producer). They want you to star in Cleopatra!" Taylor responded, " Tell him I'll do it for a million dollars!" After Fisher relayed the message, a pause, then Fisher said " He said yes!" The first time an actor was paid a million dollars for one role.

 

 

1969- The film musical Paint Your Wagon opened. Lerner & Lowe, Paddy Chayevsky, Andre Previn, Lee Marvin, Jean Seberg, Nelson Riddle, Josh Logan, with Clint Eastwood singing!

 

 

1976- What’s Love got to do with it? Ike and Tina Turner break up.

 

1988- Bottom of the 9^th, old, injured, Kirk Gibson came off the bench and hit the game winning home run to give the LA Dodgers victory over the Oakland A’s.

 

1989- Wayne Gretsky surpassed Gordie Howe’s all time record of scored points in hockey-1,850. The Great One went on to set a new record of 2,837 points before his retirement.