Tom Sito's animation almanac for June 10, 2025

Birthdays: Charles James Stuart “The Old Pretender”, Prince Phillip Duke of Edinburgh, 

Yamaoka Tesshu (1832- Japanese swordsman), Judy Garland, Saul Bellow, Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loew (of Lerner & Loew), Madeleine Lebeau (Cabaret singer in Casablanca), Howlin’ Wolf, Maurice Sendak, animator Dorse Lanpher, animator Harald Sieperman, Gina Gershon is 63, Leilee Sobieski is 42, Jean Triplehorn is 62, Jurgen Prochnow, Elizabeth Hurley is 59.

 

 

1776- The great English actor David Garrick went on stage for the last time, playing in a benefit for The Decayed Actor’s Fund.

 

1847 –The Chicago Tribune begins publishing

 

 

1865- Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich. 

 

1902 - Patent for the window envelope granted to H F Callahan.

 

1910- The first Krazy Kat comic strip- Cartoonist George Herriman was doing a strip for Hearst called "The Family Upstairs". He was amused at the idea of a friendship between a cat and a mouse. So, Herriman put them in the corner playing marbles while the family quarreled. First an office boy and later editor Arthur Brisbane suggested they have their own strip. The immortality of the denizens of Coconino County follows, loved by the likes of H.L. Mencken, e.e.cummings, and Jacques Kerouac. Krazy herself explains:" It's wot's behind me that I am."

 

1921- Babe Ruth became top HR champ with #120 runs passing then champ Gavy Cravath. But the Bambino was just getting warmed up. 

 

1926- Artist Antonio Gaudi was run over by a streetcar while crossing in front of his famous cathedral in Barcelona. Construction begun in 1886, The Cathedral Sagrada Familia is still scheduled for completion in 2026.

 

1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character by MGM, debuted.

 

1944- A USO troop was entertaining soldiers in Normandy from the back of a truck but they lacked a piano player. They called out to the G.I. audience if anyone could play. A shy cattle rancher’s son from Modesto California came up and played. He did so well his colonel ordered him out of the line and told him to form his own G.I. band. Dave Brubeck’s jazz career began.

 

1957- “Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog” cartoon debuted on the Captain Kangaroo show.

 

1967- A week after finishing shooting the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Spencer Tracy sat in his kitchen one morning making himself a cup of coffee. He then had a heart attack and fell over stone dead. He was 67. His partner Katherine Hepburn found his body. She was so upset she was not able to watch the movie Guess Who’s Coming for years after.

 

1980- Comedian Richard Pryor had been doing so much cocaine even his dealers were worried about him. This day, while trying to freebase he exploded, and ran screaming down his street on fire. Another version of the story said he tried to commit suicide by pouring tequila on himself and setting it alight. During his long recovery in the Sherman Oaks burn unit, his nurse once put on the news and he watched CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite report his death. `He thought to himself: "If Walter Cronkite said I died, it must be true! Ahhh!" He recovered but suffered from Muscular Dystrophy until he died in 2005.

 

1995-110,000 people jam Central Park in New York to see Disney's Pocahontas, up to then the largest audience ever to attend an animated movie premiere.