Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 22, 2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Diocletian 245AD, Josef Stalin-born Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 60.

 

1808- DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5^th Symphony.

 

1861- Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was ordained a deacon in the Church of England.

 

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia, today telegraphed Pres. Lincoln: ” I present you as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah”. Uncle Billy spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

 

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

 

1888- Horn & Hardart opened their first Automat Restaurant. This in Philadelphia.

 

1932 – The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan and Arthur Byron was released.

 

1937- The day after the triumphant premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, animator Woolie Reitherman ran into Walt Disney at the studio. Instead of complimenting Woolie and telling him to kick back and relax a bit, Walt launched into a detailed analysis of the problems facing the next picture, and how they need to get started right away!

 

1938- Memo from Dave Fleischer’s casting director to Paramount rep A.M. Botsford, asking if they might offer the role of Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels to Gary Cooper!

 

1939- Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels” opened in theatres.

 

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car accident in L.A.

 

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge, a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen. McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!'  McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "It is an honor to meet you, General Nuts".

 

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

 

1964- In Chicago, comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed out loud. Lenny complained about the policeman’s delivery. After Lenny Bruce no one has ever again been convicted in the U.S. for telling jokes. 

 

1973- The 55 miles per hour speed limit was set for all US interstate highways.

 

1975- English actor Sir Alec Guinness wrote a friend about a recent job offer, "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps."

The part was Obie Wan Kenobi, and the movie was Star Wars. By the time the first trilogy was done, he personally had made $50 million from it.

 

1993- The Hubble Space telescope cost $1.5 billion but it had a flaw. Its lens was ground incorrectly, so it was nearsighted. This day Space Shuttle Endeavour flew into space to fit the Hubble with an optical corrective system called CoStar, in effect, giving it a set of glasses. 

 

2000- The Cohen Bros. Depression Era comedy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Opened.

“ I, am a man of constant sorrow….”

 

  

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 20, 2024

Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey, George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Agutter, Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, animator Amby Paliwoda, Charlie Callas, John Spencer, Elsie De Wolfe, Jonah Hill is 41. 

 

1819- The novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott was published in Edinburgh. The novel caused a sensation in Europe and was one of the great influences on Victorian England. It created our modern perception of Richard Lionheart, Prince John and Robin Hood. Polite society sought to emulate its ideas of chivalry and courtly love. During the US Civil War, Confederate General James Longstreet complained that his contemporaries, Southern Gentlemen, had been raised on “…too much Walter Scott.”

 

 

1860- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his most famous poem- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. “Oh, listen my children and you shall here, of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere. “ Although he got most of the actual facts wrong, it was a great success. Longfellow intended it to rouse Americans of his day to the threat of Southern Secession and Slavery. 

 

1891- BASKETBALL INVENTED. Methodist Minister and former rugby player James Naismith worried how his Springfield College students could do team sports in the harsh New England winters. So he nailed up two peach baskets on opposite ends of a gymnasium at a YMCA in Springfield Mass. and invented the game of basketball. The first basketball was a soccer ball. He originally asked for square boxes but the man he sent out mistook his instructions and brought round peach baskets instead. The NBA regulation height of the baskets of ten feet was determined by the gym in Springfield having a second floor running track and two nails were conveniently waiting at this height.  He blew a whistle, and “the boys began tackling, kicking and punching in the clinches,” Naismith said. “They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor.” Naismith played himself frequently, and married one of the first female players, named Amelia.

 

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days this was the day Phileas Fogg returned to London to complete his trip.

 

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Townes became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

 

1937- Nazi Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolf Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey “vermin”, but privately he enjoyed their animated antics. Mussolini’s family loved “Topolino” cartoons. (Mickey Mouse in Italian). 

 

1940- Captain America first appeared in a comic book.

1946- It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra, James Stewart opened.

 

1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit. 

 

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

 

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

 

1962- The Osmond Brothers premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

 

1957- Elvis Presley received his draft notice. G.I. Blues!

 

1968- Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day premiered.

 

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges. A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so prescription medicines he was on while Nixon was naming him honorary chairman of the War on Drugs.

 

1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blamed his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fired him. This set off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby threw her support against the mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck was overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

 

1971- Roy O. Disney, Walt Disney’s older brother who took over running the company after Walt’s death, died of a stroke. He was 78. 

 

1974- Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too came out with the film Island at the Top of the World.

 

 

1996- Beavis and Butthead Do America, directed by Mike Judge, premiered.

 

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 19, 2024

 

Birthdays: King Phillip V of Spain (1683), Edith Piaf, Edwin Stanton, Tip O'Neil, Cicely Tyson, Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Urich, Robert Sherman, Jennifer Beals is 61, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Mel Shaw, Alyssa Milano is 52, Jake Gyllenhaal is 44

 

 

1686- According to Daniel Defoe, this was the day Robinson Crusoe was rescued from his deserted island. 

 

1732- The Pennsylvania Gazette announced the publication of a new book by Dr. Benjamin Franklin writing under the penname Richard Saunders. The work was Poor Richard’s Almanac, an international best seller that made Franklin famous.

 

 

1914- Earl Hurd patented animation 'cels' (celluloids) and backgrounds. Before this cartoonists tried drawing the background settings over and over again hundreds of times or slashed the paper around the character and tried not to have it walk in front of anything. By the late 1990’s, most cels & cel paint were replaced by digital imaging, except in Japan, where some traditional paint continued. 

 

1918- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It Or Not" column in the New York Globe.

 

1919-The premiere of E.C. Segar’s comic strip “The Thimble Theatre”. The original characters were Olive Oyl, her brother Castor Oyl, and her original boyfriend Ham Gravy. Ten years later Popeye the Sailor appeared, as well as J. Wellington Wimpy, Alice the Goon and the Jeep. 

 

1926- The U.S. government passed a law that women authors can only legally copyright their works under their husband's names.

 

 

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts began. Originally called Empire Broadcasts. The sound of the chimes of Big Ben heard around the world. Despite gloomy predictions from the BBC's director-general John Reith - "The programs will neither be very interesting nor very good", the broadcasts received praise, and were further boosted by the support of a Christmas message from King George V (the first ever) to the Empire a few days later.

 

1957- The musical ‘The Music Man’ starring Robert Preston first debuted. "Seventy Six Trom-bones in the Big Parade…"

 

1958- First airing of the Disneyland TV holiday special “ From All of Us, to All of You.”

 

1971- Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ premiered. Based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. In America the film received an X Rating, more for the violence than the sexual situations. The sensation over the film caused so many incidents of urban violence, that with Kubrick’s permission, it was banned in England for three decades.

 

1974- The first personal computer went on sale. The Altair 8800, named for the planet in the 1955 sci-fi movie classic Forbidden Planet. The computer came in a kit that you had to build and it cost $397. The next year, two kids at Harvard named Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a programming language for it called BASIC.

 

1986- Frank Oz’s movie version of the Ashman-Mencken musical Little Shop of Horrors.” This film convinced Disney to hire them to write the music for Little Mermaid.

 

1997- MTV dropped airing the rap song Smack My Bitch Up, by Prodigy.

 

2001- Peter Jackson’s film ‘The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring’ first opened. It was the first film to use the software Massive, which created hundreds of digital figures to recreate whole armies attacking and retreating. 

 

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 18, 2024

Birthdays: Antonio Stradivari, Karl Maria Von Weber, Ty Cobb, George Stevens, Ozzie Davis, Diane Disney-Miller, Anita O’Day, Paul Klee, Betty Grable, Willy Brandt, Keith Richards is 82, Leonard Maltin is 74, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario, Ray Liotta, Katie Holmes is 46, Brad Pitt is 60, Steven Spielberg is 72, Billy Ellis is 23.

 

 

1917- Universum-Film AG (UFA) was founded as a consolidation of private film companies in Berlin.

 

 

1937- Mae West did a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam & Eve that was considered so suggestive CBS banned her from their network. At the same time, she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long."

 

1954- MGM Tom & Jerry short, Touche’,Pussy Cat. Jerry’s nephew Nibbles as musketeers. Nibbles with an adorable accent.

 

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Kilgallen as panelists.

 

1960- A young, eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walking away. He had been AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army, Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco. In 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

 

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night… a wimoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts. Originally written in 1939 under the title Mbube by South African singer Solomon Linda. The chorus “Awimoweh” is a misreading of the lyric Uyimbube meaning “You’re a lion”, in Zulu.

 

1962- UPA’s Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol directed by Abe Levitow, premiered on NBC. Songs by Bob Merrill and Jules Styne, who went on to write musicals like Funny Girl.

 

1964- DePatie-Frelengs The Pink Phink, the first Pink Panther cartoon short.

 

1966- Chuck Jones 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered.

 

 

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces, for a solo singing career.

 

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again for residuals. (again...)

 

1983- The film of Jean Shephard’s A Christmas Story opened to tepid reviews and weak box office, but on cable and video sales it became an annual holiday classic. 

 

1984- Christopher Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

 

1984- Pixar’s first short The Adventures of Andre and Wally-B released in theaters. Directed by Alvy Ray Smith and animated by John Lasseter.

 

1997- Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the John Hancock Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 33-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me.” Farley idolized the late John Belushi, who had also died of drugs and hard living at age 31. One writer recalled a drunken Farley once turned to him and asked:" Do you think Belushi is in heaven?"

 

1988- Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time opened.

 

1998- Dreamworks The Prince of Egypt”, opened wide in theatres. 

 

2009- A massive blizzard buried the U.S. east coast. Washington D.C. got 24 inches, the most December snow since the 1920s.

 

2015- Star Wars VII, The Force Awakens opened. J.J. Abrams reboot of the old Star Wars franchise became a box office phenomenon. It earned $247 million in its opening weekend and ended way over a billion and a half dollars.

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 17, 2024

Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr., Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Pope Francis I, Bill Pullman is 71, Eugene Levy is 78, Giovanni Ribisi is 50, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Wes Studi is 77, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mila Jovovich is 50, Bart Simpson is 35.

 

 

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more resembling Mardi Gras. 

The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate observance centered on the family. Charles Dickens said he wrote the book to make money. He had two flops and wanted to capitalize on the new fashion for family Christmas celebrations set by the example of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

 

 

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received its world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo), then forgot about it when he died in 1828. A friend kept the manuscript in a trunk for 43 years.

 

1892- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze- later American choreographer George Balanchine.

 

 

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously, especially when sung by Elvis Presley” Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

 

1963- Americans began to hear on their transistor radios a new sound from a band from England named the Beatles. “I wanna hold your hand” becomes a big hit and heralds the British rock invasion in 1964. 

 

1969- Tiny Tim, the campy, ukulele strumming crooner, married his Miss Vicky, or Victoria Budinger live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

 

1969- The US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

 

1969- The Walt Disney Studio re-released Fantasia, and it was embraced by hippy stoners who liked to get high during screenings, Disney did a black-lite poster for it. It was the first time the 1940 film had ever made a profit. 

 

 

35 Anniversary 1989- After appearing in interstitial shorts on the variety Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons first premiered as a regular TV series. Season 1, Episode 1, Simpsons roasting on an open fire. “

 

1999- The film Stuart Little premiered. Directed by Rob Minkoff.

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 16, 2024

 Birthdays: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII's wife # 1), Marshal Gerbhard von Blucher, Lenoid Brezhnev, Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George Santayanna, Caroline Munro. Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Miranda Otto is 57, Liv Ullmann is 86.

 

 

1900 -EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a lightning-drawing act on the vaudeville circuit. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison, then Edison engaged him to make a film of his act. He created this and several other trickfilms. It doesn’t move much more than his vaudeville act. His 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is considered the first animated cartoon.

 

1905- Variety magazine born.  

 

1913- When his lead actor quit, Max Sennett recalled a young English music hall actor he saw with Fred Karno’s troupe back east. He wrote, “I think his name was Carson, or Caslon, or Chaplin?” This day Charlie Chaplin signed a contract at Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Hollywood. $150 a week. In his first film he would play a villain.

 

1935- Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who could hold her own with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. She loved to party so much she was nicknamed "Hot Toddy". She dated New York gangster Lucky Lucciano. Was she done in by the mob, her jealous director boyfriend, was it a suicide or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor running? The mystery’s never been answered.

 

1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey Joe’.

 

1966- Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly premiered in Rome. The last of the Man with No Name trilogy. Clint Eastwood never worked with Leone again. 

 

1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song ‘American Pie’.

 

1973- O.J. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.

 

1978- The Disney short The Small One, directed by Don Bluth. 

 

1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, died.

 

1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.

 

1993- Producer Aaron Spelling fired star Shannon Dougherty off the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.

 

1998- The premiere of Dreamworks’ The Prince of Egypt. 

 

1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice during a routine throat operation. 

 

2009- Roy E. Disney died, the Walt Disney nephew who oversaw the great animation resurgence of the 1990s.

 

2016- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opened in theaters. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 15, 2024

 Quiz: What is the correct way to spell Chanukah, err…Hanukkah, um...Chanukkah?  

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is a Jersey Devil?

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­History for 12/15/2024

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nero, Roman Emperor Lucius Verus who was known for little else but his really swell haircut, Gustav Eiffel, J. Paul Getty, Jeff Chandler, Alan Freed, Ernie Pintoff, Tim Conway, Helen Slater, Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, Don Johnson is 75, Julie Taymor is 72

 

214BC, Hieronymus, the Greek Tyrant of Syracuse, was assassinated in the street. 

 

1641- The Puritan Parliament had the Great Remonstrance published across England without King Charles ‘s permission or a chance to officially respond.  .

 

1815- Giacomo Rossini received the commission to write a new opera based on Beaumarchais’ play The Marriage of Figaro- The Barber of Seville.

 

1874- Hawaiian King David IV Kalakaou visited the White House and was received by President Grant. 

 

1893- Composer Antonin Dvorak premiered a symphony he wrote while living with the Czech community in Spillville, Iowa. The New World Symphony. He said that If Americans wanted to create their own national style of music, they needed to study the music of African-Americans and Native Americans.

 

1939- The gala premiere of Gone with The Wind at the Loews Grand Theater in Atlanta Georgia. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh flew out from Hollywood and the Governor of Georgia declared it a state holiday. Clark Gable called Margaret Mitchell “ The most fascinating woman I ever met.” Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar for her portrayal, was not invited to the premiere.

 

 

1941- Lena Horne recorded her signature tune “Stormy Weather.”

 

1943- In Harlem jazz great Fats Waller died of alcoholism and heart failure. He was 39.

 

80^th Anniv. 1944- Band Leader Glen Miller's plane disappeared over the English Channel. Glen Miller was among the top performers in modern big-band music. Imagine Taylor Swift dying at the height of her career.  In 1988, a retired RAF pilot admitted he may have jettisoned some leftover bombs above the entertainer's plane while returning home from a bombing run. Other experts claim it may have been a faulty carburetor or icing in the fuel lines. To this day the remains have never been found.

 

 

1952- In Denmark, British fashion photographer George Jorgenson had the first sex change operation and became Christine Jorgenson.

 

1954- “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” starring Fess Parker was featured on The Walt Disney TV show for the first time. The show created a mania for little kids all wanting coonskin caps. “ Born on a mountaintop in Tenn-Ah-See..”

 

1966- Walt Disney died at age 65. He was alone in the room at Saint Joseph's when he died. His brother Roy had been in earlier rubbing his legs. On his desk, scribbled on a piece of paper the name- Kurt Russell. A heavy cigarette smoker- his favorites were Malboro and French Gitanes- he suffered from lung cancer and respiratory failure. Contrary to the legend that he's cryogenically frozen in a room in the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, he was cremated and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn. 

 

1967- Beverly Hills police chief C.H. Anderson assured the public that there are "No Hippie Pads in Beverly Hills". Chief Andersen said many oddball types arrested on the Sunset Strip and West L.A. are sent to Beverly Hills municipal courts for trial, but inhabitants need not fear an outbreak of longhaired, hopped up, psychedelic speed freaks. 

 

 

1974- Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein opened in general release.

 

1979- Lupin III- The Castle of Cagliostro opened. The first theatrical film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. He had directed the TV series with his friend Isao Takahata, but this was his first feature film as sole director.

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for dec 14, 2024

Birthdays: 1553-King Henry IV of Navarre, Tycho Brahe, Nostradamus -Michel de Notre Dame-1503, English King George VI- 1895, Spike Jones the bandleader, Morey Amsterdam, Charlie Rich, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, Lee Remick, Patty Duke, Adult film star Ginger Lynn, Clark Terry- trumpeter. Cecil Pay, Saxophonist, Jane Birkin.

 .

 

1871- Verdi's opera "Aida" debuts in Cairo.

 

1901- The first Ping-Pong tournament held in London.

 

1911- Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four others first reached the South Pole, winning the race against Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

 

1918- Cartoonist Johnny Gruelle entertained his dying daughter Marcella, by making up stories involving her rag dollies. After her passing, friends urged Gruelle to publish them. The RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY stories are born.

 

1924- Ottorino Respighi ‘s rhapsody The Pines of Rome premiered.

 

1927- Charles Lindbergh did one last flight with his famous monoplane the Spirit of Saint Louis, from Washington to Mexico City. This is at the request of American Ambassador Dwight Murrow who wanted to improve Mexican-American relations. Lindbergh would not only improve relations, but also marry Murrow's daughter Anne. To make the flight a challenge Lindbergh took off at night in a rainstorm to prove air travel was safe. The President of Mexico and 150,000 people greeted him in Mexico City. 

 

 

1934- March of the Wooden Soldiers, the Hal Roach version of Babes in Toyland with Laurel & Hardy opened. Walt Disney had been trying hard to get the rights to Babes in Toyland for his first animated feature but lost out. Despite that, Walt and Hal Roach were good friends, and Walt allowed him to put a Mickey-looking mouse character in the film. 

 

1944- The film National Velvet premiered, making a star out of 12 year old Elizabeth Taylor.

 

1947- The National Association of Stock Car Racing or NASCAR formed.

 

1953- Young pitcher Sandy Koufax was signed by the Dodgers. He became one of their most famous pitchers of all time.

 

1962- Mariner II reached the planet Venus. The first manmade probe to reach another planet. Although it stopped working, it’s still up there in orbit between Venus and Mercury.

 

1970- George Harrison’s single My Sweet Lord went gold.

 

1972- THE LAST MAN LEAVES THE MOON. Apollo 17 blasted off. We all remember the first man on the moon, but do you remember the last? Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt.  President Nixon annoyed NASA by saying he doubted that men would return to the moon in the remainder of the Twentieth Century, but he was right.

 

1974- Irwin Allen’s disaster film The Towering Inferno, opened.

 

1977- DISCO! The movie Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta and the music of the Bee Gees make the Disco dancing scene a national craze.

 

1979- STUDIO 54 RAIDED- The Internal Revenue Service busted the worlds most famous disco club. Formerly the hangout of Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote and other “Beautiful People”, now the Feds were on to them. The IRS seized doctored account books, cocaine and undeclared cash, landing the owners in jail and bringing the celebrity playlands days to an end. 

 

1983- Disney Studio released the short film Frankenweenie, by a weird young artist named Tim Burton. He was promptly fired upon its completion for wasting company resources. Later in 2012, when he was THE Tim Burton, he remade Frankenweenie as a full length stop-motion film.

 

1984- David Lynch’s version of Dune, with Kyle McClanahan.

 

2015- Hollywood premiere for J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars the Force Awakens.

 

2017- Rupert Murdoch sold off much of the Twentieth Century Fox Studio to Walt Disney for $66 billion. He kept his FoxNews division.

  

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 13, 2024

Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mike Mosley, Darryl Zanuck Jr., George Schulz, Christopher Plummer, Steve Buscemi is 69, Jamie Fox is 59, Lynn Holly Johnson, Wendy Malick, Taylor Swift is 35, Dick Van Dyke is 99

 

 

1895- Gustav Mahlers 2^nd Symphony “Resurrection” premiered.

 

1928- Leopold Damrosch conducted the premiere of George Gershwin's -"An American in Paris."

 

1936- At the urging of New Yorker editor Harold Ross to find a better line of work, actor Dave Chasen opened Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills, which catered to Hollywood stars for 60 years. It is the restaurant where Leopold Stokowski was introduced to Walt Disney and as a result they conceived "Fantasia". Humphrey Bogart, John Huston and Lauren Bacall met upstairs to discuss the Blacklist of 1947. The Shirley Temple cocktail was invented there so little Shirley Temple could hang with the big boys after work. Elizabeth Taylor ordered Chasen’s chili flown out to Rome so she could eat it on the set of Cleopatra. The restaurant closed in 1995 because the Chasen family wanted to cash in on the choice real estate. Today it is a supermarket. They keep one booth intact as a display. 

 

1940- Fleischer Popeye cartoon "Eugene the Jeep" The character would give its name to the new army General Purpose vehicle- G.P. or "Jeep".

 

1951- One of the legendary Hollywood producers was Walter Wanger- starting in 1921 his films included The Sheik, Stagecoach, Queen Christina, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Silk Stockings and Cleopatra. His wife was beautiful starlet Joan Bennett, but at this time she was having an affair with her agent Jennings Lang. On this day Wanger surprised Hollywood by pulling out a gun and shooting Lang in the nuts right in the MCA studio parking lot. 

In true Hollywood fashion Wanger got off, sentenced to just a few months in an honor ranchero compound and was soon back to work. Contributors to pay his legal fees included the Jack Warner, Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn. Jennings Lang recovered and later produced House Calls and High Plains Drifter. After all, who needs balls to be a producer?

 

1961- Jimmy Dean’s folk ballad Big Bad John went to #1 of the country charts. Later Dean had his own TV variety show featuring the Muppets and started Jimmy Dean’s Pure Pork Sausage Company.

 

1969- Arlo Guthrie’s hit song Alice’s Restaurant released.

 

1971- Disney’s film Bedknobs and Broom Sticks opened.

 

1996- In Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi apocalypse epic the Plague of the 12 Monkeys was unleashed today, a virus pandemic that killed 4/5ths of the world’s population and drove the remainder underground. 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for dec 12, 2024

Birthdays: Frank Sinatra, Roman Emperor Alexander Severus, Edvard Munch, Gustav Flaubert, Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie, John Jay, Edward G. Robinson, Marshal von Rundstedt-the Black Knight of Germany, Ed Koch, Zack Mosley –the cartoonist of “Smilin' Jack", Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Rigby, Tom Wilkerson, Tracy Austin, Bill Nighy is 74, Jennifer Connelly is 54, Mayim Bialik is 49

 

 

 

1897-The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip by Rudolph Dirks appears in the William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. The first comic where characters spoke in word balloons. When Dirks took a vacation without Hearst’s permission, Hearst got another artist to draw the strip. Dirks went to rival paper The New York Sun, and recreated the strip as the Captain & the Kids, leading to the first artistic plagiarism lawsuit. 

 

1899- George Grant of Boston invented the Golf Tee.

 

 

1901- First transatlantic wireless signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi. The letter “S” was sent electronically from Newfoundland to Cornwall. This finally ended the frustrating hoopla over laying transatlantic telegraph cables and have them break down almost constantly since the 1850s. The pioneers of radio broadcasting like Armstrong, Lee Deforest and David Sarnoff got their start working for the Marconi Wireless Company. 

 

1913- The Mona Lisa, which had been stolen out of the Louvre in 1911, was recovered. It was found in a hotel room in Florence, kept by waiter Vincenzo Perugia, who had stolen it.  He had worked at the Louvre, so he knew all the back-room passages. He and his accomplices dressed as janitors to avoid suspicion.

 

1925- The world’s first motel opened. Arthur Heinman opened the Milestone Motel in San Luis Obispo California. Motel was a contraction of Motor-Hotel.

 

1939- Movie star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. one time King of Hollywood, now a forgotten silent movie star, died in his sleep of a heart attack in his apartment in Santa Monica. He was 54. 

 

1952- The first Screen Actors Guild Strike. President Walter Pidgeon -Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet- had the movie stars hit the bricks to win television and commercial residuals. The final deals were settled by then SAG president Ronald Reagan in 1960. Ronnie compromised with the studio heads (many who later backed his bid for the governorship of California) that only residuals for films released after 1955 would be paid. 

Actors who made their big hits in the 30's and 40s like Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and The Little Rascals were left out. Mickey Rooney, who's Andy Hardy movies were the top box office of the mid-1940's put it mildly: "Reagan screwed me !!" 

 

1955- the first hovercraft design patented. It wasn't built and launched until 1959.

 

 

1967-“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” opened. The first American movie about an interracial relationship. 

 

1980- The song “Whip It” by Devo won a gold record.

 

1991- Actor Richard Gere married supermodel Cindy Crawford.

 

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Yesterday’s Question: People speak of Christmastime as the Yuletide season. What is a yule?

 

Answer: In the animist and Wiccan religions of the northern Teutonic and Scandinavian people, the celebration of the winter solstice was the 12 day festival called Yule. With the burning of the Yule Log in the family fireplace. When Germanic and Nordic peoples mingled with Southern Gallo-Roman peoples in the barbarian invasions, their customs blended with the Saturnalia to become Christmas traditions.

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Dec 11, 2024

Birthdays: Sir David Brewster 1781-inventor of the kaleidoscope, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Koch the conqueror of tuberculosis, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Carlo Ponti, Gilbert Roland, Big Mama Mabel Thornton, Jean Marais, Jean Louis Tritignant, Maila Nurmi aka Vampira, Tom Hayden, Jermaine Jackson, McCoy Tyner- John Coltrane's pianist, Brenda Lee, John Buscema, Rita Moreno is 93, Teri Garr, Mos Def is 51, Mo’nique is 57

 

 

1763- This day a Paris cultural newspaper noted: “A kapellmeister from Salzburg named Leopold Mozart arrived at court today. He brought his two performing children, a daughter who is 11 years old, and a son who at 7 years old is extraordinary. He already can perform and compose music!” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

 

1785- French artist Jean Baptiste Greuze was well known for making popular paintings of simple scenes like Young Girl Weeping For Her Dead Bird. This day he went to the Paris police prefect and accused his wife Gabriele Babuti of “Persistently receiving lovers into his home over his protests, stealing large sums of his money, and trying to beat his head in with a chamber pot.” The couple was granted a legal separation.

 

1793- The previous July, when the French Revolutionary Convention heard of the assassination of their great radical leader Jean Paul Marat, one delegate called out “David! We Need You!” This day Jacques Louis David unveiled his painting, The Death of Marat for the first time.

 

 

1882- The Bijou Theater in Boston presented Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe in the first show completely illuminated by electric light bulbs.

 

1926- Josephine Baker first performed her banana dance in Amsterdam.

 

1926- THE LADY VANISHES- 35 year old mystery writer Agatha Christie caused a mystery herself when she disappeared, leaving her car abandoned at the edge of a cliff. The search for the body sensationalized the London press, even knocking the death of the last great impressionist master Eduard Monet off the front page. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle employed the first use of a police psychic. Finally, after a week Mrs. Christie turned up at a health spa in Yorkshire. She was depressed when she earned her handsome husband Sir Archibald Christie of the Guards was having an affair with a younger lady. She ran off and registered in the hotel using her younger rival’s name as her alias- Mrs. Neel. 

 

1929- Frenchman Charles Cros patented a searchlight he declared he would use to signal civilizations on Mars and Venus. Nobody's returned the call yet.

 

1941- Gone With The Wind producer David Selznick pitched a movie version of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Ben Hecht. Mercifully for moviegoers, the idea was dropped.

 

1946- UNICEF formed.

 

 

1951- Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball.

 

1957- Rock and Roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis secretly married his 13 year old cousin Myra Gail Brown, while still married to his second wife, who he divorced when the press broke the story the following April. They divorced 13 years later. The incident ruined his career. Great Balls of Fire!

 

 

1964- Soul music star Sam Cooke was shot to death in an argument with a lady who ran an L.A. motel he had brought his girlfriend to.

 

1967- The Concorde SST passenger plane is unveiled in Toulouse. It was a joint venture between England and France. The American SST project was scrapped as too expensive.

 

1970- Walt Disney's the 'Aristocats' premiered.

 

1978- THE LUFTHANSA HEIST. Brooklyn gangsters of the Lucchese family slipped into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport and stole $8 million in unmarked bills and jewelry, most from currency exchange booths. As the FBI moved in on the gang its members tended to wind up dead, thirteen bodies in all. The money was never recovered. The reputed mastermind, Jimmy the Gent Burke, died in prison on an unrelated murder charge in 1991. The feds were still chasing ringleaders as late as 2015. The incident was the basis for the Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas”. 

 

 

2009- The Princess and the Frog opened in theaters. Directed by Little Mermaid directors John Musker and Ron Clements, it was the first film with an African-American Disney Princess. 

 der. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 10, 2024

Birthdays: English King Edward VII, Emile Dickinson, Ada Lovelace, E. H. Shepard the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh. Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaughlin, Dan Blocker, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 63, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 71, Michael Clarke Duncan

 

 

1905- O. Henry’s short story “A gift from the Magi” first published.

 

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, burning sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntleroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand-ins.

 

 

1962- Happy Birthday Iron Man. The character Iron Man first appeared in the Marvel comic Tales of Suspense.

 

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

 

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. He was 26. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

 

1969- Disney’s It’s Tough to be a Bird opened in theaters. Directed by Ward Kimball.

 

 

1978- The world premiere of Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. The incomparable Christopher Reeve with Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman. Great Score by John Williams.

 

1993- id Software released the interactive game Doom. 

 

 

2013- Richard Williams unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler: A moment in Time, received its premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun 40 years earlier in 1972 and never completed.