Animation Fun Facts for March 7, 2014

Birthdays: Maurice Ravel, Piet Mondrian, Roman Emperor Geta, Luther Burbank, Tammy Fae Baker, Willard Scott, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris, Daniel D. Travanti, Rachel Weisz is 43, Michael Eisner is 72, Wanda Sykes is 50, Peter Saarsgard is 43, Bryan Cranston is 58

1988- 300 pound female impersonator Harry Milstead, better known as Divine in the John Waters films, died of sleep apnea.

1999- Film director Stanley Kubrick died just five days after completing his final film Eyes Wide Shut.

Animation Fun Facts for March 6, 2014

Birthdays: Michaelangelo Buonnarotti, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Phil Sheridan, Lou Costello, Ivan Boesky, Ring Lardner, Gabriele Garcia-Marquez, Valentina Tereschkova the first woman in space, Tom Arnold, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rob Reiner is 67, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz is 66, Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal is 42

1921- The film Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse premiered. The first Hollywood film to earn over one million dollars, and it made a major star out of Rudolf Valentino..

1927- Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis opened in the US.

1979- The film The China Syndrome premiered. It was about an accident at an American nuclear power plant.. Three weeks later the real Three Mile Island accident occurred, boosting the box office. " It's spooky, it's enough to make you religious" said star Michael Douglas.

1989- Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to become Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. They were bought by AOL in 2000 but AOL proved to be dead weight and they resumed control as TimeWarner in 2003.

1998- The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides…

Animation Fun Facts for March 5, 2014 weds

CONGRATULATIONS TO FORMER ANIMATION TEACHER CHRIS BUCK FOR HIS OSCAR WIN FOR FROZEN!

Birthdays: Henry III of England, Gionanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule," Red Rosa" Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell is 77, Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 58, Eva Mendes is 39, Kevin Connolly is 39

1717- Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

1922- F.W. Murnau’s eerie film Nosferatu premiered in Berlin.

1982 - John Belushi died of drug overdose at Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done twenty heroin-cocaine speedballs in just 24 hours. A woman named Cathy Smith was charged with administering to him the fatal dose. Robin Williams was with him that night partying also but left early. Belushi was 31. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone:" You could have given us more laughs.....But  NNNOOOO!

Animation Fun Facts for March 4, 2014

Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, prizefighter Ray Boom-Boom Mancini, Patsy Kensit. Katherine O’Hara is 60, James Ellroy, Mykleti Williamson. animator Ken Duncan

1914- Animator Ward Kimball would be 100!

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refuses the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London, actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died, had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1991- During the Gulf War, US troops destroy an Iraqi bunker concealing tons of deadly serin nerve gas. Estimates are up to 24,000 troops were exposed to the toxic release.

1994- 375 pound comedian John Candy died of heart failure in his sleep. He was 43.

2000- The Japanese launch of Sony Playstation 2. The most anticipated videogame launch in history. 600,000 units were sold. One store in Tokyo’s Ginza had 4,000 people lined up at their door.

Animation Fun Facts for March 3, 2014

B-Dayz: George Pullman  of Pullman Railroad cars, General Matthew Ridgeway, Jean Harlow, Diana Barrymore, Akira Ifukube the composer of the music scores to movies like Godzilla, Tone Loc, Jacky Joyner-Kersee, James Doohan, Ronald Searle, Bruno Bozzetto, Will Eisner, Bobby Driscoll, Herschel Walker, George Miller, Miranda Richardson is 56

1950-Paramount's "Quack-a-Doodle-Doo" The first Baby Huey cartoon.

1950-Don Herbert teaches millions of kids about science as televisions Mr. Wizard.

1966- William Frawley, the bald, gravel-voiced neighbor Fred Murtz on I Love Lucy, had just seen the movie Inside Daisy Clover on Hollywood Blvd. He was outside the Knickerbocker Hotel when he lit a cigar, then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 79. When his TV partner Vivian Vance heard the news, she said “ Champagne for Everyone!” They never liked each other much. She died in 1979.

Animation Fun Facts for March 2, 2014

Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz ( Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III ), Ted Geisel aka Dr.Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum is 84, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Jon Bon Jovi is 52, Daniel Craig is 46

1933- Movie "KING KONG" premiered at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York and the Roxy. Animation by Willis O'Brian and his assistant Ray Harryhausen, and pre-production art by Charles R. Knight. Twas Beauty killed the Beast.

1947- Crusading Hollywood labor union organizer Herb Sorrell is plucked off the street in Glendale by gangsters posing as police. They may not have been just posing, many studios at the time hired off-duty LAPD at doubletime rates to rough up problem employees. They drive Herb up to Mulholland and work him over, leaving him by the side of the road. Shortly after leaving the hospital Sorrell was jailed for disturbing public peace.

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist whose wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

1973- The Women in Film organization founded.

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film“ Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas in the middle of shooting, but somehow it all got done.

1982- Science Fiction writer Philip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana California. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall were based. Dick said he was at times possessed by a superalien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light. His autobiography was titled “ I am alive and you are dead.”

Animation Fun Facts for March 1, 2014

Birthdays: Frederic Chopin, Glen Miller, Harry Belafonte is 87, David Niven, Oskar Kokoschka, Roger Daltry, Robert Conrad, Deke Slayton, Yitschak Rabin. Catherine Bach, Timothy Daly, Ron Howard is 59, Javier Bardem is 45, Zack Snyder is 48

1930-Disney animator Ub Iwerks, the animator/designer of Mickey Mouse, quits the studio to set up his own place. Walt was stunned by the defection of one of his first employees and closest friends. Iwerks studio producing Flip the Frog Cartoons, will eventually fail and he'll return to Disneys to invent the xerox process. Iwerks partner was Pat Powers, who’s PowersCinephone was the process used to put sound on “Steamboat Willie”.Powers engineered the break when Disney refused to let him buy into a co-partnership in Disney Studio.

1936- Max Fleischer's short cartoon"Snow White" (starring Betty Boop). Cab Calloway singing the "St. James Infirmary Blues" is a highlight.

1946-The National Cartoonists Society formed.

1961-The Ken Doll introduced.

1962- A huge tickertape parade in New York is held for astronaut John Glenn.

1988- Apple introduced the first commercially available CD-ROM drive for your personal computer.