Birthdays: Pope Julius II, Francesco Geminianni, Martin Van Buren, Walt Disney, Fritz Lang, Eugene Debs, George Armstrong Custer, Little Richard Penniman, Strom Thurmond, Otto Preminger, Lin Piao, Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Jim Plunkett, Jose Carrerras, Margaret Cho is 57
Walt Disney, Dec 5, 1901
1704- In Hamburg, towards the end of his opera Cleopatre, composer Georg Frederich Handel and soloist Johann Mattheson started bickering over who should bow and receive the audiences applause. As the curtain came down and the cheers rang out, Handel and Mattheson began furiously wrestling over the harpsichord. Finally they rushed out into the snowy public square and fought with swords. The audience followed them and cheered on this unique encore. Neither was hurt in the end, and they even made up over their next collaboration.
1766- London auction house Christies held its first auction.
1791-MOZART DIED- The 35 year old composer was slaving away on a commission for a Requiem Mass when he died of scarlet fever and kidney failure complicated by exhaustion and alcoholism (and no, he didn't work in animation). His last words were telling his student Sussmeyer how to perform the percussion for the Requiem. Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave, and when his wife came to mourn him a few days later nobody could recall where he was buried.
1837- Hector Berlioz chorale Requiem premiered.
1854- Aaron Allen of Boston patented the theater chair that folded up so you could exit.
1912- New York Hat directed by D.W. Griffith starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore premiered. The first movie script written by 19 year old Anita Loos to be produced. The first American women to be a staff screenwriter, she became one of the finest Hollywood screenwriters and Broadway playwright, who penned films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Gigi. She helped discover Douglas Fairbanks and Audrey Hepburn. She died in 1981 at age 93.
Her autobiography was titled “The First Time I got PAID for It!”
1938- The FCC concludes there was no malicious intent in Orson Welles’ Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds, and no fines would be imposed.
1947- Paramount’s “Santa’s Surprise” the first Little Audrey cartoon. The short was directed by Bill Tytla for Famous Studios. He designed Little Audrey based on his own daughter Tammy.
1951- Shoeless Joe Jackson died. The most powerful baseball batter of his age, he taught Babe Ruth how to hit. But he was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 and permanently banned from baseball. He spent the rest of his life running a hardware store near his rural Georgia home.
1952- The Abbott & Costello Television Show premiered. Hilary, Mr Fields and Stinky. “ Niagara Falls! Slooowwlly I turn! Step by Step! Step by Step!”
1974- The Seattle Seahawks football team formed.
1974- The BBC aired the last Monty Python show.
1980- The campy glam movie Flash Gordon opened, With Sam J. Semple as Flash, Ornela Muti, Brian Blessed and Max von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. Written by Lorenzo Semple who wrote the Adam West Batman TV series. The opening theme was by Freddy Mercury and Queen.
2002- Peter Jackson’s second part of his Lord of the Rings trilogy “ The Two Towers” opened.
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