Tom Sito animation almanac for march 31, 2025

Birthdays:  Rene' Descartes, Franz Josef Haydn, Serge Diaghilev, Harald von Braunhut 1926- the inventor of Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs, Richard Chamberlain, Cesar Chavez, Herb Alpert, Gordie Howe, Liz Claiborne, Gabe Kaplan, Rhea Perlman, Shirley Jones is 90, Richard Kiley, Volker Schlondorf, William Daniels, Lucille Bliss the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Christopher Walken is 81, Colin Farrell is 46, Ewan McGregor is 53, Al Gore is 76, Ed Catmull is 79.

 

1836- Charles Dickens first work published "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club."

 

1840- Congress lowers the minimum workday for federal workers from 11.4 hours a day to 10 hours a day. At this time in mines and factories people worked an average 12-16 hour day. The 8 hour day wasn’t achieved until 1913, not until 1941 in Hollywood.

 

1860- Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper refers to Harriet Lane, President James Buchanan's niece as "FIRST LADY of the Land". Buchanan was a bachelor and was probably gay, So Ms. Lane performed the duties of the White House hostess. Earlier in 1840 President Zachary Taylor eulogized Dolly Madison as First Lady, before that Martha Washington and Abigail Adams were referred to as Lady Washington and Lady Adams. But this is the first official use of the term First Lady for the President’s consort.

 

1889- The Eiffel Tower first opened to the public, to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. Twice as tall as the Saint Peter's in Rome or the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Wizard of Iron Gustave Eiffel also designed the armature holding up the Statue of Liberty. Eiffel’s original deal with the French government called for the tower to only stay up for twenty years, then pulled down if no further use can found for it. Eiffel agonized about what to do as the deadline approached.  Fortunately by 1909, wireless radio transmissions became important and the Eiffel Tower turned out to be a great broadcast antenna.

 

 

1905- THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous sleuth in a new series of adventures. Conan Doyle had created Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in 1887 but by 1893 he had tired of the characters, he wanted to write more serious fiction like his novel The White Company. So he killed him off. Holmes fell to his doom fighting Prof. Moriarity at the Reichenbeck Falls. The reaction of the public was astonished outrage. It seemed whenever Conan Doyle went out inevitably someone would stop him and say "You Blackguard! How Could You ?!" He did a speaking tour in America, but all anybody wanted to know was how Holmes and Watson were doing?  Finally, Conan-Doyle bowed to public pressure and resumed the career of the inhabitants of #221B Baker Street. He would later refer to Holmes success as “his monstrosity.”

 

1930- Floyd Gottfredson began drawing Disney’s Mickey Mouse comic strip after Ub Iwerks quit. He continued to do the strip uninterrupted for 45 years, until his retirement in 1975.

 

1930 -Reacting to charges that the movies had become too naughty, Hollywood producers accept the MOTION PICTURE CODE. It was regulated by Will Hays, former Republican Party Chairman. The regulation wouldn't really start to have strength until 1935-36 when pressure groups like the Catholic League of Decency went after Mae West and the Tarzan pictures. 

The Hays Code forbade open sex and obscenity:

  - twin beds only in a bedroom, nightclothes buttoned to the neck. 

  - if a couple were seated together on a bed they must have at least one foot touching the floor,

  -"kisses with a duration of no longer than 3 seconds, parting with lips closed."

-  One other little known clause was the forbidding of members of different races from kissing on camera. So Anna Mae Wong, the greatest Chinese-American actress of her time, could not play a Chinese heroine if her co-star was a Caucasian made up to look Asian.

   Lots of jokes were spawned like: "Give him the bird!" "If the Hays Commission would let me, I'd give him the bird!"

 

1931- ITT transmits the first message by microwave, from Dover to Calais.

 

1932- Ford introduces the V-8 Engine.

 

1933- Max Fleischer's short cartoon "Snow White" (starring Betty Boop) premiered. Cab Calloway singing the "St. James Infirmary Blues" is a highlight.

 

1943- Rodger & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" debuts.  Despite the opinion of producer Mike Todd -"No legs, No Laughs, No Chance", the musical becomes one of the great hits of American musical theater.

 

1950- Thor Heyderthal's book of his exploits Kon Tiki published. This was an account of his 4,200 mile voyage which proved ancient mariners could have traveled from Peru to Polynesia on boats made from tied reeds.

 

1959- The Dalai Lama fled the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet and began his long exile.

 

1962- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened on Wilshire Blvd. No, it didn’t display customized surfboards, or the ideal tuna melt with sprouts, but an exhibit of paintings by Bonnard. 

 

1967- In a small London nightclub, rising young rock & roller Jimmy Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time. Rock luminaries like Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Pete Townsend sat in the audience stunned at the technical brilliance of this unknown former paratrooper who played left-handed. The pieces of his guitar were purchased by Microsoft chairman Paul Allen and today are in his Seattle Rock Museum.

 

1973- Comic strip hero Smilin' Jack gets married; the strip concludes next day.

 

1991- Former child star Danny Bonaduce arrested for a fist fight with a trans prostitute.

 

1995- In Corpus Christy Texas legendary Tejana singer Selena Perez was shot and killed by an obsessed fan. The woman Yolanda Saldivar was president of the Selena Fan Club. “The gun just went off, I didn’t mean to shoot anybody.” Just last week her request for parole was denied again.

 

1999- The movie The Matrix opened in theaters. Whoah!

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 30, 2025

Birthdays:  Maimonides- Moses Ben Maimon, Anna Sewell (the author of Black Beauty), Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco Goya, Peter Marshall, Ray Magliozzi (CarTalk), Warren Beatty is 88, Eric Clapton, Arthur Lee Harrington the designer of the first Jeep, Tracey Chapman, Robby Coltrane, Paul Reiser, Celine Dion, Nora Jones is 46, Disney animator Marc Davis, Maurice LaMarsh is 67, John Astin is 95

 .

 

1858- The pencil eraser patented. The Eraser, or Rubber outside the U.S., was developed in 1770, but Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia first attach it on the top of a pencil.

 

1918- Thomas Edison sold his studio and got out of the movie business. He fired W.K.L. Dickson, inventor of the movie studio set, Edwin Porter the inventor of the narrative film, Willis O’Brian, and J. Stuart Blackton, the inventor of cartoon animation, for annoying him too much about filmmaking. Edison was more interested then in finding a way to extract iron ore from rocks using magnets. 

 

1939- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BATMAN Detective Comics # 27, Batman, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, first appeared in a comic. It was called the May issue but it actually came out this day.

 

1968- In New York City’s Bowery district two children find the dead body of a homeless drug addict. It took weeks to identify the remains as Bobby Driscoll, 31, Walt Disney child star, and the voice of Peter Pan. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in Potter’s field.

 

1980- Easter Fever by Nelvana premiered.

 

1988- Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton. Starring Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Michael Keaton.

 

2000- Dreamworks animated feature The Road to El Dorado premiered.

 

2007- Disney’s Meet the Robinsons.

 

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 29, 2025

Birthdays: President John Tyler, Sir William Walton, Pearl Bailey, former English P.M. John Major, Bud Cort is 77, LaToya Jackson, Eugene McCarthy, Jennifer Capriati, M.C. Hammer, Walt "Clyde" Frazier, Cy Young, Christopher Lambert is 70, Jimmy Dodd, Disney animator Jack Kinney, Brendan Gleeson is 70, Lucy Lawless, Elle MacPherson, Eric Idle is 82

 

1859- In St. Louis, unemployed drunk Ulysses S. Grant voluntarily freed his one slave, given him by his slave-owning father-in-law. He could have gotten up to a thousand dollars to sell him. But he hated the concept of owning another human. He would go on to win the Civil War and become president.

 

1886- COCA-COLA invented. Atlanta Pharmacist and liver pill salesman John Pemberton developed the carbonated drink, originally with cocaine in it. His bookkeeper Francis Robinson penned the famous script logo, still in use today. Advertising for the drink claimed it cured everything from hysteria to cholic and the common cold.

The formula is still a secret. During World War II the Nazis openly worried how a break with the United States would affect their supply of Coca Cola, so Reichminister Goebbels arrested Coke execs in Germany and forced them to develop a substitute. This became Fanta Cola. 

 

1891- Impressionist painter George Seurat died at age 31. Before he died, he told his parents that he had fathered two children with his model Maureen Knobloch. Surprise!

 

1936- Republic Pictures formed.

 

1939- Moviestars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard married. They had a happy marriage until Lombard was killed in a plane crash in 1942. It’s been said the first California King Size mattress, slightly larger than normal king size, was ordered custom made for Gable and Lombard for their rather exuberant rendevous at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. 

 

1951- 'The King and I' debuted on Broadway with Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner, who shaved his head for the first time for the role.

 

1974- Mariner 10 was the first satellite to reach the planet Mercury.

 

1974- Chinese farmer Zhao Kangmin digging a well discovered the huge, lifesize terracotta army buried with Chinas’ first emperor at XIAN.

 

1979- The House Committee Investigation into Assassinations, published their conclusions. They concluded that "President John F. Kennedy was in all probability killed by a conspiracy " but just who and why and what to do about it, they didn’t know. 

 

1989- As part of one of the silliest Oscar telecasts in history, actor Rob Lowe had to dance and sing 'Proud Mary" with a Las Vegas showgirl named Eileen Bowman dressed as Disney’s Snow White.  Rob Lowe had just been embarrassed by the publication of a videotape shot in a hotel room of him having sex with two teenage girls. The Walt Disney Company immediately threatened a lawsuit. The Academy apologized and replaced producer Alan Carr with Gilbert Cates.

 

1992- Presidential candidate Bill Clinton uttered the legendary American phrase:" I smoked pot- but I didn’t inhale!" 

 

1993- At the 65^th Academy Awards, Disney’s Aladdin won two Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Soundtrack. Best Animated Short was Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase by Joan Gratz.

 

2019- Tim Burton’s remake of the Disney animated classic Dumbo opened in theaters.

 

2020- At President Trump’s insistence, the FDA approved emergency use of an anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine despite little evidence that it was effective in treating coronavirus. Even after the FDA declared hydroxychloroquine totally useless against the disease on Aug. 1 President Trump continued to tout its miraculous qualities. 

 

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 28, 2025

Birthdays: Paul Whiteman, Freddy Bartholomew, Dirk Bogarde, Gen. Wade Hampton, pianist Rudolph Serkin, Swifty Lazar, Sterling Haydn, Mouseketeer Jimmie Dodd, Marlin Perkins, Diane Weist, Reba McEntire, cartoonist Edward Sorel, Vince Vaughn is 55, Julia Stiles is 44, Lady Gaga (born Stefani Germanetta) is 39

 

1881- P.T. Barnum formed a partnership with his chief competitor James Bailey to create Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. He proclaimed it the Greatest Show on Earth!

 

1920- Silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford married.

 

1928- Via radio broadcast, the public heard the voice of Charlie Chaplin for the first time.

 

1929- Disney short The Opry House was released. The first short where they changed Mickey Mouses’ design to give him white gloves. 

 

1930- The name of the City of Constantinople was officially changed to Istanbul, Turkish for “The City”. Angora was renamed Ankara.

 

1935- Leni Reifenstahl’s hypnotic movie paean to Nazism- Triumph of the Will, premiered at the Berlin Ufa Palace Theatre.

 

 

1941- English writer Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex. She was 59. Her body was never found. 

 

1942- Albert Hurter, Swiss designer for Walt Disney's "Snow White' and 'Pinocchio", and called the first inspirational artist in animation, died of rheumatic heart disease. He was 59.

  

 

1958- The Killer Slide- US 1, The Pacific Coast Highway has always been at the mercy of wind and weather erosion effecting the unstable cliffs it was carved from. This day while repairing a previous land slide, construction workers were caught in an even bigger hillside collapse- several people were killed.

 

1966- The hit British TV series The Avengers first appeared on American TV. With Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee. “ Mrs. Peel, we are needed.”

 

 

1987- The first Disney Store opened, this one in the Glendale Galleria not too far from the Burbank studio.

 

1999- Matt Groening’s cartoon series Futurama debuted.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 27, 2025

Birthdays: French King Louis XVII –the boy during the Revolution who died in prison after his Royal parents were guillotined, Patty Smith Hill, Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson, Sarah Vaughn, Maria Schneider, Mies Van der Rohe, Snooky Lanson, Wilhelm Roentgen the discoverer of X-Rays, Nathaniel Currier of Currier & Ives, Donald Duck artist Carl Barks, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Michael York is 82, Quentin Tarantino is 62, Mariah Carey is 56

 

 

1790- The invention of modern shoelaces. Lacing up footwear goes back to the Greeks, Romans and Chinese, but this is our modern version.

 

1855- Canadian doctor and part time scientist Abraham Gesner patented Kerosene. As a source of light, it burned brighter and was cheaper than whale oil. The first product made from crude oil. Before this no one really knew what to do with the oozing stuff. Some native tribes used it as warpaint. Locals called it Indian Oil

 

1866- Andrew Rankin received the first patent for the upright porcelain urinal.

 

1908- Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuted.

 

1912- Washington DC received its famous cherry trees, 3,020 in number, a gift from the Japanese government.

 

1940- “Rebecca,” the first Hollywood movie by Alfred Hitchcock opened.

 

1948- WB cartoon “ Back Alley Oproar” directed by Friz Freleng.

 

1952- U.P.A.’s cartoon “Rooty-Toot-Toot” premiered. Its music score was by jazzman Phil Moore, the first African American to receive a screen credit for scoring a movie.

 

1952- “Singing in the Rain” starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor premiered.

 

1957- California Reverend Robert Schuller opened the first Drive-In Church in Santa Ana Cal.

 

1958- At the 30th Academy Awards, the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay went to Pierre Boule for The Bridge on the River Kwai. But Boule was not there. He wrote the novel it was based on, but the actual screenplay was written by two Blacklisted writers in exile- Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Boulle’s name was entered as a cover.

 

1973- In one of the more celebrated stunts in Hollywood history, when Marlon Brando won an Oscar for his role in The Godfather, he sent a buckskin clad model named Sashin Littlefeather to refuse the award and delivered a protest about treatment of Indigenous Americans. 

 

1978- The first draft script of the film Norma Rae completed. The film dramatized the life of Christa Lee Jordan, a mill worker who was blackballed by the J.P. Stevens millworks for wanting a union. 

 

1989- Who Framed Roger Rabbit earned four Oscars at the Academy Awards. Sound Effects, Visual Effects, Film Editing and a special one for Richard Williams for the animation. At that same ceremony, Pixar’s Tin Toy won best animated short. The first Pixar short to win.

 

1996- Fearful of mad cow disease, The European Community banned the export of beef from Britain for one year. 

 

2022- At the Academy Awards, Best Actor winner Will Smith slapped and cursed out comedian Chris Rock on camera in front of the whole world for making a joke about his wife Jada Pinket Smith.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 26, 2025

B-Days: Robert Frost, Chico Marx, Conde Nast, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Houseman, Leigh Harline, Joseph Campbell, Gen. William Westmorland, Erica Jong, Duncan Hines, Bob Woodward, Leonard Nimoy, Alan Arkin, James Caan, Diana Ross is 81, Sandra Day-O’Connor, Martin Short, Bob Elliot of Bob & Ray, Thornton “T” Hee, Michael Imperioli is 60, Keira Knightley is 40, Edward Sorel. Alan Silvestri, Steven Tyler, Chris Bailey, Yon Duk Jhun, John Pomeroy. Aubry Mintz 

 

1832- Artist George Catlin began his first trip to the West.  He traveled up the Missouri River on the American Fur Trading steamer The Yellowstone. Catlin’s portrait paintings of Plains Indians became famous.

 

1883-To inaugurate her opulent new 5th Ave. mansion Mrs. Cornelia Vanderbilt held one of the most lavish costume balls in New York City history. She and Mrs. Astor had formed the Social Register, also called the Golden 400, the ranking of the top families in polite society. If you weren’t on their list, then darling, you simply weren’t anybody. 

The mansion stood where Bergdorf Goodman¹s faces the Plaza Hotel today. The party set new standards for the conspicuous wealth and excess of the Gilded Age. Many guests dressed as Venetian nobility. Mrs. J.P. Morgan dressed as “Electric Light: The Wonder of the Age.”

 

1900- The Happy Hooligan comic strip.

 

1909- The U.S. Board of Censorship created.

 

1920- This Side of Paradise, the first novel published by a young Minnesota writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, writer of the Star Spangled Banner.

 

1937- A statue of Popeye the Sailor unveiled at the Crystal City Texas Spinach Festival.

 

1953-The Salk Vaccine for Polio announced.

 

1955- The song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, went to number 1 in the U.S. pop charts and stayed there for 5 weeks. 

 

1959- Writer Dashell Hammett died.

 

1969- The western movie 100 Rifles premiered. It broke taboos, because it featured sexy Raquel Welch making love to sexy black actor Jim Brown.  And Burt Reynolds as the bandito Yaqui Joe Hererra.

 

1970- Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary admitted to having sex with a 14 year old girl.  

 

1973- The Young and the Restless soap opera premiered. 

 

1975 - The Who¹s rock opera "Tommy" premiered in London.

 

1976- USC film school sophomore Levar Burton screen tested for the role of Kunta Kinte in the landmark TV miniseries Roots. The role made him a star.

 

1976 - Wings release "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album.

 

1977 - Elvis Costello releases his first record "Less Than Zero" 

 

1978- The skull of Swedish scientist-philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg auctioned at Sotheby¹s for $3,200. Swedenborg's family had found it in an antique shop and kept it until the auction. They said they needed the money.

 

1982 - Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder release "Ebony & Ivory" in the UK

 

1982- In Washington DC, groundbreaking for the Vietnam War Memorial. aka The Wall.

 

1989- The first free elections in Russia made Boris Yeltsin President.

 

1990- The Little Mermaid’s composers Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken won two academy awards. For Best Score and Best Song “ Under the Sea”. 

 

 

1997- Turner Animation's film 'Cat's Don't Dance", Directed by Mark Dindal, featuring the last movie work of Gene Kelly. He was a consultant on the dance sequences.

 

2008- Arnold Schwarzenegger fired Clint Eastwood. No, it’s not a movie plot line. The former actor turned Republican Governor, objected to a position the actor/director and former Republican mayor took on the California State Parks Commission. 

 

2228-According to Star Fleet records- James T. Kirk, captain of Federation Star Ship Enterprise (Star Trek) was born. 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 25, 2025

B-Days: King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gutzon Borglum, David Lean, Mary Flannery-O’Connor, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia, Jerry Livingston (songwriter of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo), Richard O’Brien (Rocky Horror author), Elton John, Simone Signoret, Gloria Steinem is 92, Sarah Jessica Parker is 61.

 

In ancient times this was the feast of Thalia, the goddess of comedy, one of the Nine Muses. In Latin she was called Hilaria. According to the historian Pausanias there was a town that was sacred to Thalia. When you arrived, you had to tell a joke to the locals or they would kill you.

 

 

1928- Young American composer George Gershwin first arrived in Paris.

 

1931- Shortly after the invention of automobiles, there were automobile races. This day in the dry lake beds of Muroc California saw the first race car speed trials sanctioned by the American Automobile Assoc. It was the beginning of NASCAR. 

 

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., tried starting a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they wouldn't try to unionize). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls. The forum quickly devolved into a screaming free-for-all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was quickly abandoned. Workers continued to organize into craft unions. 

 

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offered film director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bags for Hollywood.

 

1943 - The first Japanese anime film premiered " Momotarō no Umiwashi (桃太郎の海鷲,

Momotaro's Divine Sea Eagles" by director Mitsuyo Seo. Momotaro or Peach Boy, was a popular character with children. It was made as wartime propaganda. It ran only 37 minutes. 

 

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile, 12 inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

 

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem, he was arrested.

 

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls & butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today" album, It was later pulled.

 

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

 

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.

 

1996- Pixar was awarded a special Oscar for Toy Story, and Colors of the Wind from Disney’s Pocahontas won Best Song. The Animated Feature Category came in 2001.

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 24, 2025

Birthdays: Steve McQueen, Lawrence Ferlingetti, John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weisz, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Jesus Alou, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera, Cal Howard, R. Lee Ermey, Peyton Manning, Kelly LeBrock, Sir Elton John is 78, Jessica Chastain is 48

 

 

1882 -In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the dreaded pandemic of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin, Henry Clay, Doc Holliday, Aubrey Beardsley, to Mimi in La Boheme. 

 

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. Conan Doyle was inspired when he in 1905 he attended a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, when an Amazon explorer described finding dinosaur bones. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories. In 1925, Willis O'Brien made the Lost World into the first dinosaur monster movie.

 

1918- A top magician on the London stage was Chung Ling Soo. His real name was Bill Robinson from Westchester, NY, but he got up in yellowface and pretended to be a magical mandarin. His best routine was when someone fired a pistol at him and he caught the bullet with his teeth. On this day his trick gun failed, and he was really shot and killed. Ta-Daaa!

 

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search, American Idol and The Voice.

 

1939- The film The Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. They became famous interpreters of the characters and went on to make a dozen more films.

 

1945- Warners Life With Feathers, directed by Friz Freleng. the first Sylvester the Cat.

 

1949- MGM’s The Little Orphan won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

 

1954- The Nash-Kelvinator Company and the Hudson Car Company merge to form American Motors Corporation or AMC automobiles. 

 

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat, and Burl Ives was "Big Daddy".

 

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army. G.I. Blues!

 

1973- In Buffalo, a drunk fan bit singer Lou Reed on the ass.

 

1987- Michael Eisner and Premier Jacques Chirac signed the protocol to build Euro-Disney, later called Disneyland Paris.

 

2005- A Colorado Rockies big league baseball game was called off on account a swarm of bees. The bees were attracted by the coconut oil in the starting pitcher’s hair gel.

 

2006- 13 year old Miley Cyrus debuts on TV as Disney’s Hanna Montana.

tom sito's animation almanac for march 23, 2025

Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr. Werner Von Braun, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman, Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Erich Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Catherine Keener is 65, Hope Davis is 60

 

 

1721- Johann Sebastian Bach sent the first copy of his Brandenburg Concertos to his patron the Margrave of Brandenburg. After the Margrave died, an inventory was made of his holdings in Berlin, the value placed on each concerto was six groschen, or about $5 each.

 

1936- Ollie Johnston got his first job at the Walt Disney Studio, as Fred Moore’s assistant.

 

 

1951- Disney short Corn Chips, with Donald Duck and Chip & Dale. Directed by Jack Hannah.

 

1971- US Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

 

 

1977- The first Richard Nixon-David Frost interview. 

 

1987- After meeting creator Matt Groening, animators David Silverman, Wes Archer and Bill Kopp began animating the very first Simpson’s short for the Tracy Ullmann Show. 

 

1990- President George H.W. Bush banned broccoli from the White House. 

He joked; "Read My Lips! I hate Broccoli!"

 

2003- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, Beating out Lilo & Stitch, Ice Age, Spirit Stallion of the Cimmaron and Treasure Planet. Twenty One years later he won again for The Boy and the Heron.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 22, 2025

Birthdays: Anthony Van Dyck, Marcel Marceau, Stephen Sondheim, Karl Malden, Werner Klemperer, animator Milt Kahl, George Benson, James Gavin, Allen Neuharth, Milt Kahl, Charlie Downs, Mort Drucker, Fanny Ardant is 76, Lena Olin is 70, Bruno Ganz, Reese Witherspoon is 49, Keegan Michael-Key is 54, William Shatner is 94.

 

 

1913- Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild) wrote fellow writers HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill, and asked them how much do they get paid? He was unsure what to charge.

 

 

1935- Walt Disney Silly Symphony “ The Golden Touch”. 

 

1935- TV SHOWS-The first true television service in the world began in Berlin as Deutscher Fernseh Rundfunk. Broadcasting from the Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, it used a 180-line system, and was on air for 90 minutes, three times a week. Very few receivers then were privately owned, so viewers went instead to Fernsehstuben (television parlors). During the 1936 Summer Olympics, broadcasts up to eight hours a day took place in Berlin and Hamburg.

 

 

1958- Hollywood producer Mike Todd was killed in a small plane crash. He produced hit movies like Around the World in 80 Days and romanced starlets like Gypsy Rose Lee and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Todd had been married for one year and she was devastated by the accident. Years and many marriages later Taylor said Mike Todd was the only man she ever really loved.

 

1960- Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes patented the laser beam. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER. Pussycats rejoice!

 

1970- The Beatles began their break-up. Paul McCartney filed papers in a London court for a formal dissolving of the Fab Four’s partnership. A year later John Lennon signed the final papers at Disneyworld Florida.

 

1972- Concluding a five-year study, the National Commission on Drug Abuse recommended ending all penalties and laws prohibiting marijuana. No one in authority listened to them.

 

 

1976- In Tunisia, George Lucas’ first day filming Star Wars. 

 

1991- Ivana Trump divorced Donald Trump. A celebrated court case ensued to see how the huge Trump fortune would be divided up. Newspapers cried, Ivanna More Money! When she died, he had her buried in an unmarked grave on this Florida golf course.

 

1995- First day of shooting on that utterly classic film- Dinosaur Valley Girls!

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 21, 2025

Birthdays: Plato, Johann Sebastian Bach, Benito Juarez, Modest Mussorgsky, Fats Waller, Josef Pulitzer, Florenz Ziegfeld, Bronco Billy Anderson, Rev Ralph Abernathy, Armand Hammer, Harold Robbins, Matthew Broderick is 63, Gary Oldman is 67, James Coco, Timothy Dalton is 79, Rosie O’Donnell is 63, animator Kathy Zielinski.

 

1617-Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, died at Gravesend, England after being taken off her homeward bound ship, too ill with smallpox to continue. She was 21. Her children with John Rolfe became the beginnings of one of the largest families in Virginia, with many scions of the Old Dominion tracing their ancestry to Pocahontas.

 

1740- Composer Antonio Vivaldi - Il Prete Rosso- the Red Priest, conducted his last concert at the Ospedale Della Pietra in Venice. It was a home for orphaned girls so it was an all-girl orchestra. The 64 year old Vivaldi went to Vienna to see if he could get any commissions from the Austrian Emperor, but caught an illness on the way and died.

 

 

1859- The first public zoo opened in the U.S.

 

 

1871- William Stanley set out to find Dr. David Livingstone. Livingstone was an explorer –missionary who had disappeared into the African jungle. No one had heard from for two years. Stanley, an illegitimate Welshman, had been a soldier-adventurer in the American Civil War and fought on both sides. He undertook this African expedition financed by the New York Herald. His Swahili name was “Bula Matari” the Breaker of Rocks.

 

1917- Buster Keaton first stepped in front of a movie camera.

1930- Col. Lyman Sanders founded Kentucky Fried Chicken. 

 

1935- Persia was renamed Iran and Mesopotamia renamed Iraq.

 

1947- Then Pluto short “The Rescue Dog” was released.

 

1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas left Washington and set up in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the media. They began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later moved to the federal building downtown. 

Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member, your dossier would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself for embezzlement.  

 

1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of the new pop music in Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it may be the very first Rock & Roll concert.

 

1961- The Beatles first performed at the Cavern Club in Hamburg Germany.

 

1961- based on the success of the first Playboy Club in Chicago, Playboy Clubs with their Bunny waitresses opened in New York, Miami and LA.

 

1963- On orders from Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Alcatraz Prison was closed. 

 

1963- Barbara Streisand married Elliot Gould. 

 

1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for cable and videocassette income. 

 

2006- The first Tweet sent on the new format Twitter. Scientist Jack Dorsey tweeted his friends “Setting up my twttr…” Twitter went public that July. In 2022 Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion and changed its name to X.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 20, 2025

 Question: What is cloisonne’?

 

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What did it mean to” be sent up the river?”

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History for 3/20/2025

Birthday: Roman poet Ovid 43BC, Napoleon’s son Napoleon II "l'Aiglon" The eaglet, Henryk Ibsen, Lauritz Melchior, Ray Goulding, Mr. Rogers, Bobby Orr, B.F. Skinner, Pat Riley, Sir Michael Redgrave, Edgar Buchanan, Holly Hunter is 69, William Hurt, Sheldon "Spike" Lee is 68, Carl Reiner, David Thewlis is 62, Hal Linden is 94, Chris Wedge is 68

 

Happy Spring!

 

 

1800- Alessandro Volta announced he had invented the electric battery.

 

 

1841- Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder's in the Rue Morgue first published in Graham’s Magazine. Called the first true detective novel. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".

 Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin was inspired by a real French sleuth named Jules Vinquoc who used disguises and scientific technique to solve crimes the Paris police could not solve. Dupin was the inspiration for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

 

1852- Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" first published. It sold one million copies within six months. Based on the story of escaped slave Josiah Henson, the book was the first to treat the horrors of slavery directly. It portrayed slave families not as dumb brutes or happy minstrels but victimized human beings. Because of this book, Yankee soldiers referred to Southerners as women-whippers, and baby sellers. Mrs. Stowe said modestly: “I didn’t write it, God did. I just took dictation.” When she visited the White House President Lincoln greeted her with, “So here’s the little lady who started the big war.”

 

1899- In Sing-Sing prison Martha Place becomes the first woman in the U.S. to be electrocuted. She had killed her stepdaughter. Because Sing-Sing Prison in Ossining New York was situated up the Hudson River from New York City, the phrase to be” sent up the river” as meaning going to jail, became popular.

 

1903- Henri Matisse first exhibited at the Salon des Independents in Paris.

 

1931- Cantors Kosher deli opened in the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles.

 

1932- The German airship Graff Zeppelin began a regular passenger service between -Cologne Germany to Buenos Aires Argentina.

 

 

1943-MGM's "Dumb Hounded" the first Droopy Cartoon.

 

 

1969-John Lennon married Yoko Ono on the Rock of Gibraltar.

 

1985- Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Alaskan Iditarod dog-sled race. She would win it a total of four times.

 

1987- The U.S. food and drug administration finally approved AZT for use in treating the effects of AIDS. 

 

1991- In 1955 Walt Disney recorded Peggy Lee to sing “He’s a Tramp” for the film Lady and the Tramp. For that she was paid $3,500. In 1991, a judge ordered The Walt Disney Company to pay Peggy Lee $3.8 million for the songs she wrote and performed in the film. This additional income was from videocassette sales for a re-issue of the soundtrack. 

 

1992- Basic Instinct opened. Noir thriller directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Sharon Stone, and Michael Douglas.

 

1999- Legoland opened in Carlsbad Cal.