Animation Fun Facts for Dec 14, 2014

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. Chanteuse Jane Birkin "Je t'aime moi non plus" is 67.

1913-   Cartoonist Johnny Gruelle entertained his dying daughter 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 stirring rhapsody the Pines of Rome premiered.

1934- March of the Wooden Soldiers, the Hal Roach version of Babes in Toyland with Laurel & Hardy opened.

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

1957- Hanna Barbera's first TV cartoon "Ruff and Ready" premieres.

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

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.

1983- Disney Studio released the short film Frankenweenie, done by a young artist named Tim Burton.

Animation fun facts Dec 13,2014 sat

Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, Mary Todd Lincoln, Dick Van Dyke is 88, Mike Mosley, Darryl Zanuck Jr., George Schulz, Christopher Plummer is 85, Steve Buscemi is 57, Jamie Fox is 45, Lynn Holly Johnson, Wendy Malick, Taylor Swift is 25.

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. 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 real estate. Today it’s a supermarket.

1940- Fleischer Popeye cartoon "Eugene the Jeep" .The Thimble Theater 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 had taken a lover. On this day Wanger surprised Hollywood by pulling out a gun and shooting his wife's lover in the nads 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. The boyfriend, Jennings Lang, recovered and later became an executive producer of comedies like House Calls. After all, who needs balls to be a producer?

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

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

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 12, 2014

Birthdays: Frank Sinatra, Roman Emperor Alexander Severus, Edvard Munch, Gustav Flaubert, Auguste Rodin, Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie, John Jay, Edward G. Robinson, Field Marshal Karl Von Rundstedt-the Black Knight of Germany, NY Mayor Ed Koch, Zack Mosley –the cartoonist who drew “Smilin' Jack", Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Rigby, Tracy Austin, Bill Nighy is 64, Tom Wilkerson is 66, Jennifer Connelly is 44

1897-The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip by Rudolph Dirks appears. The first comic where characters spoke in word balloons. The adventures of Hans & Fritz was so popular a rival Hearst newspaper started an imitation called the Captain & the Kids, leading to the first artistic plagiarism lawsuit. 

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 (who later backed his bid for the governorship of California) that only residuals for films 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 box office champs of the mid-1940's put it mildly: "Reagan screwed me !!"

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

1991-Actor Richard Gere married supermodel Cindy Crawford.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 11,2014

Birthdays: Sir David Brewster,1781- inventor of the kaleidoscope, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Koch, conqueror of tuberculosis, Alexander Solzhenitsyn,  Carlo Ponti, Gilbert Roland, Big Mama Mabel Thornton, Vampira, Jean Marais, Jean Louis Tritignant, Tom Hayden, Jermaine Jackson, McCoy Tyner- John Coltrane's pianist, Brenda Lee, Rita Moreno is 83, Teri Garr is 67, Mos Def is 41, Mo’nique is 47

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

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 soon dropped.

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. The incident ruined his career. Great Balls of Fire!

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

2009- Disney’s animated Princess and the Frog.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 10, 2014

Birthdays: English King Edward VII “Bertie”, 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 54, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 62, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rod Blagojevich

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, destroying sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntelroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand ins.

1941-The Hollywood Victory Committee formed. Top Hollywood agents like Abe Lastfogel, Lou Wasserman and Myron Selznick (David's brother) start signing up movie stars for bond drives and touring shows for the troops.

 The committee later created the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen on Ivar near Sunset.  A soldier or sailor could come in for a free meal served by Tyrone Power or Red Skelton and have a dance with celebrities like Rita Hayworth or Dina Shore.

One animation painter who worked in the kitchen told me the only celebrity who would stay until closing, even mopping and washing coffee cups was Marlene Deitrich.

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly for the duration. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

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.

2013 Richard Williams famed unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler received it’s premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun in 1972.

Animation fun facts for Dec 9, 2014

Birthdays: Sappho, John Milton, Jean De Brunhoff, Emile Waldteufel the composer of the Skaters Waltz, Admiral Grace Hopper 1906 who wrote the earliest computer language, Elzie Segar the creator of Popeye, Hermoinie Gingold, Dalton Trumbo, John Cassavettes, Broderick Crawford, Dick Butkus, Kirk Douglas-born Issur Danielevitch is 98, Red Foxx, Cesar Franck, John Malkovich is 61, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Buck Henry is 84, Felicity Huffman, Judy Dench is 80

1946- Damon Runyon died, the writer whose characters the musical "Guys and

Dolls' are based. His philosophy:  "All life is six to five against."

1948-Actor Ossie Davis married actress Ruby Dee.

1960-  Coronation Street premiered on British ITV.

1964-John Coltrane recorded his landmark jazz album “The Love Supreme”. Late on

foggy nights Trane liked to take his saxophone out onto the middle of San Francisco’s

Golden Gate Bridge and practice by himself. 

1965- Bill Melendez's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" the first half hour

animated t.v. special featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi.  Producer Lee Mendelson

had heard Guaraldi's jazz combo perform in San Francisco. He never scored a

film before:" How many yards of music do you want?" A Charlie Brown Christmas has run every year for 49 years.

1968- Douglas Engelbardt of Stanford demonstrated the first computer work station at Brooks Hall in SF.

1994- Disney Animators in California move into their new Animation building designed

by Robert Stern.

2340- Mr Worf, the Klingon officer of Star Trek Next Generation was born.

Animation Fun Facts for Dec 8, 2014

Birthdays: Horace (Quintus Horatius), 65BC, Mary Queen of Scots, Gustavus Adolphus, Queen Christina, Jean Sibelius, George Melies the father of Motion Picture Special Effects, James Thurber, Richard Fleischer, Eli Whitney, Jim Morrison, Diego Rivera, Emile Reynaud, Sammy Davis Jr, Maximillian Schell, Flip Wilson, Sam Kinison, Ann Coulter, Teri Hatcher is 50, Sinead O’Connor is 48, Kim Basinger is 61

1913- ground broken for the construction of San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.

1940- Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo remarry. The two great Mexican artists had been married for ten years but divorced for a year because of their mutual infidelities. Diego also wanted to protect Frida from fallout from his political activities. But after a year apart that decided they couldn’t live without one another and remarried.

1941- On the day after the Pearl Harbor attack,  The civil defense command placed anti-aircraft guns on the Walt Disney Studio lot because of it's proximity to the aircraft plant of Lockheed. Walt Disney himself was turned away at the gate for not wearing his identity badge.

1958- THIS IS JAZZ- Landmark live CBS television broadcast of jazz greats Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Lester Young , Coleman Hawkins and Thelonius Monk .

1961-"Surfin’" the first record by the Beach Boys started to climb the local LA pop charts.

1980- The Bravo Channel began. Remember when it played only classical concerts and ballets?