Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 30, 2024

Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, William Enos Berkeley aka Busby Berkeley, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guilliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark, Ridley Scott is 87, Ben Stiller is 59, Kaley Cuoco is 39, Henry Selick is 72

 

1869- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, Bricktop, and Maurice Chevalier.

 

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. He was 46. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do.”

 

1918- Three weeks after the Kaiser was toppled, the new liberal government granted German women the right to vote. This was before America, Britain or France did.

 

1922- The great actress Sarah Bernhardt made her last performance in Turin Italy. She was still considered sexy despite advanced age and a wooden leg.

 

1923- Max Fleischer moved his Out of the Inkwell animation studio to big new offices in 1600 Broadway. 

 

100 Anniv. 1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

 

1940- Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz. Together they pioneered the new art of television production. They divorced in 1960 but remained lifelong friends.

 

 

1966- Barbados got its independence from Britain.

 

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

 

1970- First day shooting on William Friedkin’s film The French Connection.

 

1974- The Missing Link. In a dry gully in Ethiopia Dr Donald Johannsen discovered the perfect skeletal remains of one of the earliest human ancestors, an ape that walked upright. Australiopithicus Afrancenis. He called it Lucy. Johannsen liked the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

 

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

 

1982- Michael Jackson’s second solo album Thriller was released. It becomes the biggest selling album in history.

 

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS TV show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into Sony Pictures.

 

1985- Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

 

1987- John Lasseter’s Pixar short Red’s Dream released.

 

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was made to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the standard retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he himself hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. Roy built a successful grass root stockholders’ campaign SaveDisney.com. In 2005 it was Eisner who was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.

 

2010- Don Hahn’s doc Waking Sleeping Beauty was released on DVD.

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Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 29, 2024

Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis), Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Yakima Canutt, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Vin Scully, Joel Coen is 68, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Chadwick Boseman, Anna Faris is 48

 

 

1887- The US Navy received permission from the Hawaiian King David IV Kalakaou to lease land for a base at Pearl Harbor. 

 

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

 

1914- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything alone, and may have hired a cameraman or assistant. This day, John Randolph Bray's cartoon "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, today known as the Production Pipeline. He created the job classifications of layout, animator, inbetweener, background painter, inker, blackeners (cel painters), and camera. His wife Margaret Bray was his producer-production manager. In the 1920s the jobs of gag man (storyboarder), cleanup and checkers were created. After 1919, Bray shifted his studio focus from entertainment to technical and training films. J.R. Bray started the careers of Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer, Dick Heumer, and Shamus Culhane. 

 

1932- Cole Porter’s musical The Gay Divorcee’ opened on Broadway.

 

1935- Physicist Edwin Schrodinger published his thought experiment “ Schrodinger’s Cat”.

.

 

1959- The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darin’s rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

 

1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit.

 

 

1963- A week after the Kennedy assassination, comedian Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the slain president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies and won a Grammy in 1962, but now it just wasn’t funny anymore. Meader’s career faded, and he ended up managing a bar in Maine. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened his set with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”

 

 

1972- Atari announced Pong, the first popular mass-marketed interactive game. 

 

1981- Actress Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and 

drowned. She was 43. Her husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken were down in the ships cabin having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning. 

 

1995- Pixar’s IPO stock offering after the success of Toy Story made Steve Jobs a billionaire.

 

2001- Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer. He was 58.

 

2017- Matt Lauer, the celebrity host of NBC’s Today Show, was fired after allegations of sexual misconduct with staffers.

 

2018- Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns opened. Directed by Rob Marshall.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 28, 2024

Birthdays: Jean Baptiste Lully, William Blake, Frederick Engels, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Roehm, Brooks Atkinson, Berry Gordy the founder of Motown Records, Anton Rubinstein, Gary Hart, Vern Den Herder, Paul Warfield, Hope Lange, Paul Schaefer, Joe Dante, Michael Ritchie, Anna Nicole-Smith, Randy Newman is 81, Ed Harris is 75, John Stewart is 62

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING  Since the earliest times societies have had harvest festivals to give thanks to the appropriate deities that they're not going to starve that winter. A letter written in 1621 by pilgrim Edward Winslow described how Pilgrim Gov. Bradford and Miles Standish invited Massasoit and 90 of his Wampanoag people to a feast to celebrate their first successful harvest. The Indians brought several deer they killed. Gov. Bradford, who wrote a detailed history of the colony, does not mention the feast. The custom of Thanksgiving was a New England custom for decades thereafter.

 

 In 1789 George Washington had called for a thanksgiving celebration in late November to celebrate the new Constitution. But Pres. Thomas Jefferson thought Thanksgiving was the most ridiculous idea he ever heard of. He considered it a violation of the separation of church and state, as did Andy Jackson and Zachary Taylor. So, the holiday didn’t really become an annual custom until the Civil War. Sarah Hale the editor of The Ladies Magazine, the Martha Stewart of her time, had been lobbying the US Government to make the New England tradition a national one. 

 

In 1863 after the great union victory at Gettysburg, President Lincoln issued a decree that the last Thursday of November be set aside as a feast of national Thanksgiving. As blue clad troops chowed down on their turkey and chicken dinners, the Confederates withheld their fire in honor of the new Yankee holiday. For decades Thanksgiving was declared by Presidential decree, usually a notice buried in back of a newspaper.

 

 

1811- Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 premiered. It has been named the Emperor Concerto, even though it has no connection to Napoleon and Beethoven would not have approved of it.

 

 

1870- Painter Jean Bazille was killed while serving in the French Army fighting the Prussians. He was only 29. He had been one of the early leaders of the new movement called Impressionism. Had he lived he might have become as famous as Monet or Cezanne.

 

1895- The Chicago Times-Herald Race- the first American auto race. Two electric and four gas powered cars raced from Chicago to Evanston and back, 54 miles despite several inches of snow on the ground. The winner Car # 5 driven by inventor Charles Duryea reached a top speed of 7 miles an hour! Only one other car finished, the rest broke down. Duryea won $2,000, and caught a cold.

 

 

1907- 23 year old Russian-Canadian scrap metal dealer Lazar Meir, now renamed Louis B. Mayer, bought an old burlesque house in Haverhill Massachusetts to show the new moving picture shows. Originally called The Gem, it was such a dump locals called it The Germ. Mayer renamed it The Orpheum, and on Thanksgiving Day opened with the film “ From the Manger to the Cross”. L.B. Mayer grew his film business to become MGM, and at the time of his retirement in 1950 was the most powerful man in Hollywood. The Motion Picture Academy was his idea.

 

1922- The first skywriting display. Former RAF pilot Cyril Turner wrote HELLO USA, CALL VANDERBILT 7-200 in the skies above New York City. 47,000 people immediately telephoned the Vanderbilt Hotel..

 

1925- First radio broadcast from the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville.

 

 

1942- THE COCONUT GROVE FIRE-The U.S. public was distracted for awhile from war news by reports of a terrible disaster in Boston. A fire broke out at a popular nightclub called the Cocoanut Grove and killed 492 people in only twelve minutes. The clubs decorations caught fire and created carbon monoxide gas and there were only two exits. Among the dead was western movie star Buck Jones. The tragedy created the first mandatory laws requiring public buildings to have fire exits opening outwards and safety testing of decorative materials.

 

1942- Fleischer Paramount cartoon short “Superman and the Mechanical Monsters” opened in theaters. For the first time we see Clark Kent change into Superman in a phone booth. In 2004 the cartoon was the inspiration for Kerry Conran’s scifi epic “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” as well as Hayao Miyazaki’s giant robot in Lupin 3. 

 

1946- During the traditional Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in NYC,  Hollywood cameras filmed the Macy Parade scenes for the movie “The Miracle on 34^th St.”Star Edmund Gwenn posed as Santa.  At this time, Hollywood movies were rarely filmed on location. But the studio had little faith the film would be a success, and did not want waste a lot of money building big sets on their lot. 

 

1947- Disney's cartoon "Chip and Dale".

 

1948- Hopalong Cassidy premiered on television.

 

1953- Cartoonist & writer Milt Gross died.

 

1989- Opposites Attract, Paula Abdul dancing with cartoon MC Skat Kat, was released. It became one of the most popular R&B & dance-pop singles of 1990 and won a Grammy. 

   

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 27, 2024

Birthdays: Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jimi Hendrix would have been 81, Bruce Lee-original name Lee Jun Fan, would have been 84, James Agee, Chaim Weizmann, Mobster Vito Genovese, Czech leader Alexander Dubcheck, David Merrick, Marshal Thompson, Robin Givens, Judd Nelson, Buffalo Bob Smith, William Fichtner, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is 67, Kathryn Bigelow is 73

  

 

1582- William Shakespeare 18, married Ann Hathaway 26. They married quickly, and their first child Susannah was born after only six months. They had a son who died and two daughters. Three years later Will left Ann in Stratford on Avon, and by 1591 was known as an actor in London. He invested in land in Stratford, and in 1616 retired to the country to spend time with his daughters and grandchildren, but he never went back to Ann. It’s been speculated that she became a Puritan and disapproved of his profession. Shakespeare enjoyed making fun of Puritans in his comedies like "Twelfth Night"."

 

 

1910- New York’s Penn Station opened.

 

 

100 YEARS AGO-1924- The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marvel of the parade were large displays that moved down the street thanks to small automobiles concealed under them. They seemed to "float", so they were called parade floats today.  The huge balloons were added in 1927. Originally after the parade the balloons were let go to float away into the sky. Macy’s offered a bounty to people who found them after they landed, usually in rural New Jersey. 

 

1932- Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Walt Disney, wrote to fellow  animator Bill Tytla, encouraging him to come out to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon!"

 

1936- Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor".

 

1953- Playwright Eugene O'Neill died of pneumonia, Parkinson's Disease, and alcoholism at 65. He had been writing on cardboard laundry shirt boards because he needed something large to write on because his hands trembled so violently. When O’Neill realized his end was near he tore up six plays he was writing because he wanted no one else to complete them. He was staying at the Shelton Hotel in Boston. As his father was an actor his family traveled frequently. O'Neill's last words were: "I knew it! Born in a hotel room, and goddammit, I'm dying in a hotel room! "

 

1957- The Hollywood Reporter announced NBC had purchased a season of cartoons especially made for TV by former MGM animators Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. They will be called “Ruff and Ready” and will debut in a half hour slot on Saturday Mornings. This show was the debut of Bill and Joes system of “limited animation”. NBC was so happy with the results they quickly signed Hanna Barbera to a 5 years contract to develop more series. They even took the gamble of doing the shows in color. Hanna said. "We said, 'Color will be here soon. Cartoons last forever. Let's go ahead and do them in color, and we'll be a jump ahead of the game.” 

 

1960 – Gordie Howe became the first NHL player to score 1,000 goals.

 

1963- The Beatles released the single “ I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

 

1967- The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour.

 

1973- Conjunction Junction, by Jack Sheldon, first played on the TV show Schoolhouse Rock.

 

1973- According to the X-Files this was the night Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted by aliens.

 

1975- Ross McWhirter, publisher of the Guinness Book of World Records, was assassinated by the IRA.

 

1978- San Francisco Mayor George Mosconi and openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed by embittered city councilman Dan White.  Councilwoman Diane Feinstein discovered their bodies, and took over as mayor. Dan White was acquitted on an insanity plea using the "Twinkie Defense", that junk food raised his blood sugar to such an extent that he went berserk. He served only 5 years in prison, moved to Orange County, then committed suicide. Diane Feinstein became a long time Senator from California and just died this year at age 90.

 

2002- Disney’s animated feature Treasure Planet opened in theaters.

 

2009- Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of his time and could have been the greatest in history. He didn’t just win tournaments, he dominated the entire sport. While other athletes were tainted with drugs and scandal, Tiger had a squeaky clean image.

This Thanksgiving night at 2:30AM, Tiger Woods crashed his SUV into a tree as a result of an argument with his Swedish bikini model wife, who chased him from their home waving one of his golf clubs. This incident revealed Woods as a compulsive philanderer. More than a dozen women- cocktail waitresses, bimbos and porn stars came forward to admit riding the Tiger. His reputation in tatters, Tiger Woods’ game never again really regained his champion form. 

 

2013- Disney film Frozen premiered. Directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. Let it Go! Let it Go!

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 26, 2024

Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Marian Mercer, Charles Schulz, Cyril Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Sister Wendy Turnbull, Robert Goulet, Don Hahn.

 

 

1716- In Boston, the first African lion ever seen in America was put on exhibit.

 

 

1825- Kappa Alpha of Union College NY is established. The first college Greek Letter fraternity house.

 

1832- In New York, the John Mason started service, a streetcar pulled along iron rails by a team of horses. This replaced horse pulled wagons. It went from Princes Street to 14^th St. A ticket cost 12 pennies.  The last horse car tram stopped in 1926.

 

1865- Charles Dodgson sent a handwritten copy of the manuscript of his fantasy Alice’s Adventures Underground to his 12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. He conceived the story three years earlier. He later published the book with his own money retitled Alice in Wonderland, under the pen-name Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland was one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate or discipline them.

 

1868- At first baseball games were played in a convenient cow pasture. Today the first baseball game was played in an enclosed field. It was in San Francisco at Folsom & 25^th St..

 

1896- AA. Stagg of The University of Chicago invented the football huddle.

 

 

1917- The National Hockey League-NHL, was founded in Montreal. The first teams The Quebec Bulldogs, Ottawa Senators, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Arenas, and Montreal Maroons.

 

1926- Potato chips, or crisps in the UK, were invented in the 1880’s by African American chef George Crumm and served in restaurants and fairgrounds. This day Mrs. Laura Scudder was the first to put potato chips in a bag and sold them as a handy snack food. She sold them out of the back of her pickup truck until the business picked up. She ran her own company until 1959. 

 

1938- Walt Disney was raised in a hard-scrabble, struggling family. He promised his parents if he ever made good, he would take care of them. After Snow White made him rich and successful, he moved his parents out to Los Angeles and bought them a beautiful home in North Hollywood. This night faulty furnace leak filled their bedroom with carbon monoxide. The housekeeper found them in the morning and dragged them out onto the lawn. Walt Disney’s father Elias barely survived but his mother Flora died. This left Walt so shattered he could never talk about it after.

 

1940- Woody Woodpecker first appeared in an Andy Panda cartoon "Knock-Knock.’

 

 

1943- The Donald Duck short Home Defense was released.

 

1945- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded KoKo, the first bebop Jazz single. Instead of big bands as was the fashion, they used a smaller quintet. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card, so after his solo, Dizzy dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The song was from chord variations of an old Ray Noble song “Cherokee” that Bird and Dizzy knew. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”. Jazz critic Ira Gitler picked up on the witty interplay between musicians, and wrote of the new sound as BeBop.

 

 

1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.

 

1990- Acting on the example of Sony’s purchase of MGM-Columbia studios, Matushita (Panasonic) bought MCA- Universal studios for $6.6 billion. After a few fruitless years they sold it to The Bronfman’s Group, the distillers of Seagram’s Whiskey. 

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov. 25, 2025

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History for 11/25/2024

Birthdays: Lope de Vega, St. Pope John XXIII, Andrew Carnegie, Tina Turner, Joe Dimaggio, Carl Benz of Mercedes Benz, Virgil Thompson, Jeffrey Hunter, John Kennedy Jr., Percy Sledge, Ben Stein, Ricardo Montalban, Bob Matheson, John Larroquette, Gloria Steinem, General Augusto Pinochet, Christina Applegate, Bucky Dent,  Animator, Educator Bill Kroyer

 

 

1795- English architect Henry Latrobe left Europe for a life in the U.S. 

Latrobe was the architect who built the U.S. Capitol building.

 

1817- First sword swallower performed in the US.

 

 

1929- Alfred Hitchcock’s film Blackmail opened in London. It was the first full length talkie in Britain.

 

 

1949- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sung by Gene Autry hit number one on the music charts. The TV program by Rankin/Bass premiered in 1964.

 

1952- The stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery the Mousetrap opened in London’s West End and became one of the longest running plays in history.

 

1960- CBS canceled its remaining five radio soap operas, most of them now on television. 

 

1975- According to the movie Rocky, this was the date of the first prizefight portrayed in the film where we first meet Rocky Balboa.

 

 

1992- Walt Disney’s Aladdin opened in theaters.

 

1995- Legendary Corporate CEO Akio Morita retired as the leader of Sony. Under his guidance Sony went from a little postwar maker of electric rice cookers to the largest electronics company in the world. His official reason was he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while playing tennis. Some insiders said he was tired of dealing with the stress of managing Sony's Hollywood studios -MGM, Columbia, TriStar losing $2 billion. By the time Morita died in 1999, the Sony movie studios had pulled out of their slump and were on top with movies like Titanic and Men in Black.

 

2009- Disney’s Princess and the Frog, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, opened.

 

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

Birthdays: Spinoza, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Scott Joplin, Zachary Taylor, Carrie Nation, Dick Powell, Garson Kanin, Cass Gilbert-the architect of the first skyscraper, Alvan Barkley-Truman’s VP, Forrest J. Ackerman, William F. Buckley, John Lindsay, Dale Carnegie- author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, Steve Yeager, Denise Crosby, Billy Connolly is 83

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1789- The first issue of France’s national newspaper Le Moniteur.

 

 

1859- Charles Darwin published his book on evolution, The Origin of the Species.

 

 

1904- Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Steichen opened 291, the first art gallery dedicated exclusively to the art of photography.

 

1922- Irish writer Erskine Childers was the writer of the Riddle of the Sands, one of the first true spy novels, but he was also a leader of the IRA, and after Irelands Treaty with Britain he sided with the anti-treaty rebels in the Irish Civil War. This day Erskine Childers was shot by an Irish Army firing squad. His son became President of Ireland in 1973.

 

1933- The RKO movie Flying Down to Rio released, meant as a starring vehicle for Dolores Del Rio, but what we remember is it is the first pairing of the famous dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

 

1937- The Andrew Sisters record their Boogie-Woogie version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon”, an old Yiddish Klezmer song that was updated by Bennie Goodman.

 

1938- LENI DOES TINSELTOWN -Hitler's top filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl arrived in Hollywood to meet the film community and show off her new documentary 'Olympia". Nazis charges de’ affaires in L.A., Gerhard Gyssling, had bragged to the press that all Hollywood couldn’t wait to meet Reich’s top filmmaker. But Hollywood had different ideas. Sam Goldwyn said,” I’m not going to greet that N*zi bitch!” Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, Fox refused to speak to her and picketers hounded her every step. Well known Conservatives like Louis B. Mayer and Gary Cooper were polite but begged off the bad publicity.

 The only studio heads who would meet Leni Reifenstahl were Hal Roach and Walt Disney. Uncle Walt gave her a tour of the studio but begged off running her film, saying the union projectionist would make trouble. ( uh-huh....) Years later Disney said he didn't really know who she was. (uh-huh......) In her 90s, Leni told LA historian Robert Nudleman that she thought Walt met her because his professional curiosity got the better of him. That he wanted to see Olympia,because it was the only film to beat his Snow White at the Venice Film Festival, then the world’s most prestigious film festival.

 

1941- After suffering a strike and declining revenue because of the war in Europe, Walt Disney’s studio was in trouble.  Animator Ward Kimball noted in his diary for this day: “ 100 layoffs announced. Studio personnel from 1600 down to a Hyperion level of 300. Geez, It this the writing on the wall?”

 

1947- THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST- 50 Hollywood moguls like Harry Cohn, Jack Warner and Dore Shary met at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to formulate a group response to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee anti-commie hearings that were targeting Hollywood. Besides the heat from the feds their stockholders were clamoring for them to get the Reds out! They agreed to enforce an industry-wide blacklisting of anyone refusing to cooperate with the HUAC Committee. Nothing was ever officially written down or published, if you were blacklisted you suddenly were unable to find any work. 

   Eric Johnston, spokesman for the Motion Pictures Assoc. said on this day: "As long as I live, I will never be party ot anything as unAmerican as a blacklist!”.

 Two days later on Nov. 26th he said: " We will forthwith discharge and never again knowingly employ a Communist. Loyalty oaths for the Entertainment Industry are now compulsory." Many Hollywood artists signed Communist Party cards in the 1930's when it was chic' to be lefty, and the Communists were the only open opponents of segregation and Hitler. Writer Bud Schulberg’s excuse was CP parties had the prettiest girls. Out of an estimated 15,000 entertainment workers only around 300 were ever actually proven to be Communists. Famous blacklist victims included Zero Mostel, Lillian Hellman, Lloyd Bridges, Dashell Hammett, Gale Sondergaard, Edward G. Robinson, Howard Da Silva, Ed Wynn, Sterling Hayden & Dalton Trumbo. Sidney Poitier was blacklisted for no other reason than he was friends with black activist-actor Canada Lee; 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' composer Yip Harburg was blacklisted for writing a song: “Happiness is a thing called Joe" which the committee took to mean Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 

 

1950- The musical Guys & Dolls opened. “ I got da horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, I know a jock who tells me Never Fear, Can Do- Can Do..The Jock sez da horse can –do ”

 

1958- The musical film Gigi opened, music by Lerner & Lowe. Based on the writings of French author Collette, Collette herself had insisted young unknown Dutch actress Audrey Hepburn play the lead.

 

1958- Comedian Harry Einstein, known as Parkyakarkus, did his bit at the Friars Club. He sat down at amid the laughter and applause, put his head down and died of a heart attack. His son is comedian-filmmaker Albert Brooks.

 

1968- Hey Jude by the Beatles topped the pop charts while Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man headed the Country & Western listing.

 

1991- Freddy Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, died of AIDS. He was 45.

 

1988- Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered.

 

1998- America On Line bought their chief competitor Netscape.

 

1999- Pixar’s Toy Story 2. in theaters. 

 

2000- Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas. 

 

2010- Disney’s Tangled released.

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 23, 2024

Birthdays: German Emperor Otto I -972AD, Edward Rutledge, President Franklin Pierce, Krystoff Penderecki, Manuel DeFalla, William Henry Pratt better known as Boris Karloff, William Bonney better known as Billy the Kid, Roman Petrovich Tyrtof better known as Erte’, Arthur Marx better known as Harpo, George O’Hanlon the voice of George Jetson, Susan Anspach, Victor Jory, animator Ray Patterson, Vincent Cassel is 57, Joe Ezterhas is 80, Miley Cyrus is 32.

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1874- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy first published.

 

1876- The first intercollegiate College Football association set up in Springfield Mass.

 

1889- The first Juke Box installed at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. Created by Louis T. Glass and William Arnold, it used Edison cylinders instead of records and cost 5 cents a play. Juke comes from Juke Joint, a slang term then for a cheap dance hall.

 

1897- Windsor Castle saw the first performance for Queen Victoria of a cinematograph moving picture. Her Majesty watched footage of the procession of her Diamond Jubilee taken in June. Also on the program was Monsieur Taffary's Calculating Dogs.

 

1903- Italian tenor Enrico Caruso made his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in Verdi’s Rigoletto. The great singer loved drawing caricatures, collecting police badges, pinching ladies bottoms and doing practical jokes, like filling your hat with flour. Painter Norman Rockwell recalled when he was paying his way through school by being a Met stagehand, backstage Caruso liked to talk art with him and he asked about George Bridgeman’s class, the great anatomy teacher. 

 

1936- The first florescent lighting tubes are installed in the U.S. Patent office.

 

1936- Time Magazine owner Henry Luce launched LIFE Magazine. The first picture on the cover was a dam photographed by Margaret Bourke-White. The second picture was a doctor slapping a newborn baby with the caption: “Life Begins!”

 

1938- Bob Hope recorded his signature tune “Thanks for the Memory” for the movie The Big Broadcast.

 

1942- The movie CASABLANCA premiered. Based on a never produced musical, “Everybody Comes to Ricks’, Howard Koch and the Epstein Brothers adapted the play into one of the most memorable Hollywood love stories ever. 

 

1945- The U.S. government ends most wartime food and gas rationing.

 

1947- THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS- Prof E. L. Sukenik of Hebrew University in Israel was first told of a discovery made by two Bedouin shepherds in a cave near Qumran. Hebrew sacred scrolls dated from 200BC to 70AD, probably hidden from the Romans by Essene scholars. Many of the scrolls were found to corroborate translated passages in the modern Bible.

 

1952- Animator Fred Moore, who drew Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and the Brave Little Tailor, died from cerebral injuries incurred in an auto accident in the Big Tujunga Canyon area of Los Angeles. He was 41.

 

1960- The Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated, featuring over 1,500 names- but not Charlie Chaplin, who was banned until 1972 because of his lefty political views. Chaplin was never a communist, but the right wing politicians simply assumed he was.

 

 

1963- The very first episode of Dr. Who premiered on the BBC TV. William Hartnell played the first Dr. Who. 

 

1966- The film “Spinout “premiered. Elvis Presley pioneered the genre movie of bored male movie stars who use their studio muscle to make us watch movies of them racing cars. James Garner in Grand Prix-arguably the best one, Steve McQueen in LeMans, Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Sly Stallone in Driven, etc.

 

1985- The first commercial compact discs (CDs) go on sale.

 

1990- 37-year-old baseball catcher Bo Diaz was crushed to death by a large satellite dish he was trying to install.

 

1994- Turner Animation’s The Pagemaster opened in theaters.

 

2016- Disney’s Moana opened in theaters.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 22, 2024

Birthdays: French explorer Sieur de LaSalle, George Elliot- pen name for Mary Anne Evans, Benjamin Britten, Charles DeGaulle, Andre Gide, Wiley Post, Billy Jean King, Boris Becker, Geraldine Page, John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, Hoagy Carmichael, Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Vaughn, Tom Conti, Mark Ruffalo, Victoria Paris- porn star of such classics like Bimbo Bowlers from Buffalo, Stevie Van Zandt is 72, Jamie Lee Curtis is 65, Terry Gilliam is 83, Scarlett Johanssen is 39

 

 

1809- Baltimore native Peregrine Williamson was given a patent for a re-usable steel pen. This finally freed the western world from sharpening goose quills and other feathers to write.

 

 

1880- Actress Lillian Russell made her debut on the New York Stage. Russell exemplified the sex appeal of the era- big figured, big bustle, tiny waist and big caboose.

 

 

1888- According to Edgar Rice Burroughs, this is the birthday of the boy who would become Tarzan.

 

1928- Ravel’s Bolero Suite premiered in Paris.

 

1950- The Lowest Scoring Basketball game in NBA history. The Fort Wayne Pistons defeated the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18. They later became the Detroit Pistons and Los Angeles Lakers.

 

 

1957- The Miles Davis Quintet debuted.

 

 

1963- Aldous Huxley died. The author of Brave New World had inoperable cancer so his wife kept him high on LSD,

 

1965- The musical The Man of La Mancha opened on Broadway. “ To Dream, the Impossible Dreaaammm…”Brings back memories of middle school band practice.

 

 

1980- Screen goddess Mae West died at 87. He apartment suite at the Ravenswood in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles has been lovingly restored, since the owner claims her ghost nagged him to put her furniture back!

 

1985- Apple ended a long lawsuit with Microsoft and Hewlett Packard that allowed them to share the visual characteristics of the Macintosh displays in their Windows software.

 

1986- 20 year old Mike Tyson knocked out Trevor Berbick to become the youngest Heavyweight Champion of the World. 

 

1993- Sir Anthony Burgess died. The author of A Clockwork Orange had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he had one year to live, back in 1959, 34 years ago.

 

1995- Pixar’s Toy Story opened, the first all CG movie, and the first true CG hit.

 

2005- Microsoft Xbox 360 goes on sale.

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Nov 21, 2024

Birthdays: Francios Arouet called Voltaire, Colman Hawkins, Stan “The Man” Musial, Tom Horn, Pope Benedict XlV, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Harold Ramis, Rene Magritte, Goldie Hawn is 79, Dr. John (born Malcolm Rebennack), Mariel Hemingway, Troy Aikman, Marlo Thomas is 83, Bjork is 59 

 

 

 

1933- Film director Frank Capra went to Claudette Colbert’s home to talk her into delaying her holiday vacation long enough to star with Clark Gable in “It Happened One Night”. Colbert said she would only do it for double her normal salary and if they would be done by Dec 23rd so she could spend Christmas with friends at Squaw Valley Idaho.

 They made the picture on a rush, and Colbert later told her friends:” I just finished the worst picture in the world!” It Happened One Night” became a big hit for Capra, Columbia and swept the Oscars including one for Colbert’s memorable performance.

 

1934- Cole Porter's musical 'Anything Goes!' opened on Broadway. Ethel Merman starring, In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked upon as somewhat shocking. Now Heaven knows- Anything Goes!”

 

1942-Warner's "A Tale of Two Kitties" the first Tweety Pie. 

 

1946- Harry Truman became the first president to go underwater in a submarine.

 

1959- The day after he was fired WABC radio, DJ Alan Freed refused to sign a statement that he never received cash payments or payola to run Rock & Roll records on the air, which is exactly what he did.

 

1959- Jack Benny with his violin played a duet with Vice President Richard Nixon on piano.

 

 

1980-  “The Who Shot J.R.?” episode of the TV show Dallas.

 

1980- Australian Olivia Newton John’s disco anthem to aerobic exercise “Let’s Get Physical ” goes to number one of the pop charts and stays there for ten weeks.

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1986- Steven Spielberg’ and Don Bluth’s An American Tail opened.

 

 

2007- Disney film Enchanted opened generally. 

 

2008- Walt Disney’s Bolt premiered. Directed by Chris Williams and Byron Howard.

 

2017- John Lasseter, the creative head of Walt Disney Animation and Pixar, responsible for Pixar’s string of successful films like Toy Story, stepped down from all his duties because of accusations of inappropriate behavior with his female employees.

 

2018- Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to Wreck It Ralph, opened. Directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston.

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Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov. 20, 2024

Birthdays: Robert F. Kennedy Sr., Maya Plisetskaya, Gene Tierney, Dick Smothers, Bo Derek, Sean Young, Richard Dawson, Estelle Parsons, Barbera Hendricks, Duane Allman, Chester Gould the creator of Dick Tracy, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, Benoit Mandlebrot, Alastair Cooke, Sam Wright, Ming Na Wen is 61, President Joe Biden is 82  

 

 

1620- Shortly before coming ashore in the New World, The Mayflower Compact was drawn up by William Brewster and signed by the 24 male Pilgrim settlers "To covenant and combine ourselves into a civile body-politick". 

 

1718- " Fifteen men on a Dead Man’s Chest, Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum! Even though he knew the British Navy had cornered him, and was going to attack tomorrow, violent pirate Blackbeard spent this night drinking and partying with his crew. When someone asked Blackbeard, if you fall who do you leave your treasure to? He replied, “ No one knows where the treasure is but me and the Devil himself. And the longest liver can have it all.” Arrr….

 

1752- Death of John Shore, he was the most celebrated trumpet player of his time. Georg Frederich Handel and Henry Purcell wrote music for him, and he was the inventor of the Tuning Fork. 

 

1795- Beethoven’s opera Fidelio premiered. He rewrote the overture four times and still wasn’t happy with it. So, he rewrote it once more and published the other four as the Leonore Overtures.

 

 

1875- Henry James published his first novel Rockwell Hudson.

 

1894- Prince Ananias premiered, the first operetta of Victor Herbert.

 

1947- The longest running television show in history- Meet the Press, premiered. And it is still on today.

 

1958- On the TV show Playhouse 90, John Frankenheimer presented “The Old Man” the first show shot and edited completely on videotape. Videotape had been around since 1951 but was used primarily for in-studio live news shows and variety segments.

 

1959- The day the famous Twilight Episode aired “Time Enough At Last”. When Burgess Meredith played a bookworm who gets his wish to be left alone to read books, except…”

 

 

1998- Several state governments and the US tobacco industry reached a landmark settlement arising from lawsuits over smoking illnesses. The trial killed off once and for all ads featuring The Marlboro Cowboy and Joe Camel, a cartoon character that at one point was as recognizable to children as Donald Duck.

 

1998- Pixar’s film A Bugs Life was generally released.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Nov 19, 2024

Birthdays: King Charles I of England, President James Garfield, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Roy Campanella, Tommy Dorsey, Ted Turner is 86, Calvin Klein, Indira Ghandi, Larry King, Kathleen Quinlan, Alan Young -Mr. Ed’s friend, Ahmad Rashad, Allison Janey is 65, Meg Ryan is 63, Jodie Foster is 62, Adam Driver is 41, Dick Cavett is 88

 

1493- On his second voyage to the New World, this day Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Puerto Rico.

 

1939- The Looney-Tunes short The Night Watchman, a Sniffles cartoon that marked the directing debut of Chuck Jones.

 

1941- Princess Iron Fan, by Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming, opened . Considered the first Asian animated feature film. 

 

 

1942- In a concentration camp in Poland, author-artist Bruno Schulz was executed. The author of “Street of Crocodiles” last act was being forced by a Gestapo officer to paint images from Brothers Grimm fairytales on his son’s bedroom wall before he was shot.

  

 

1959- Jay Ward's television show 'The Adventures of Rocky and his Friends' debuts. 

 

 

1969- The great soccer champion Pele scored his 1,000 goal.

 

 

1998- Film Director Alan J. Pakula directed classics like All the Presidents Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Pelican Brief. He was one of the Hollywood types who preferred living in New York City. This day while driving on the Long Island Expressway a large truck kicked up in its tires a discarded piece of steel pipe and flung it through Pakula’s windshield, killing him instantly.

 

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