Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 17, 2021

Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr., Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Pope Francis I, Bill Pullman is 68, Eugene Levy is 75, Giovanni Ribisi is 47, Armin Mueller-Stahl is 91, Wes Studi is 74, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mila Jovovich is 46, Bart Simpson is 32.

 

 

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more resembling Mardi Gras. 

The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate observance centered on the family. Charles Dickens said he wrote the book to make some money. Had two flops and wanted to capitalize on the new fashion for family Christmas celebrations from by the example set by the royal family of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

 

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received it's world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo), then forgot about it when he died in 1828. A friend kept the manuscript in a closet for 43 years.

 

1892- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze- later American choreographer George Balanchine.

 

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously, especially when sung by Elvis Presley” Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

 

1963- Americans began to hear on their transistor radios a new sound from a band in England named the Beatles. “I wanna hold your hand” becomes a big hit and heralds the British rock invasion in 1964. 

 

1969- Tiny Tim, the campy, ukulele strumming crooner, married his Miss Vicky, or Victoria Budinger live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

 

1969- The US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

 

1969- The Walt Disney Studio re-released Fantasia, and it was embraced by hippy stoners who liked to get high during screenings, Disney did a black-lite poster for it. It was the first time the 1940 film had ever made a profit. 

 

1989- After appearing in some interstitial shorts on the variety Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons first premiered as a regular TV series.

 

1999- The film Stuart Little premiered. 

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec. 16, 2021

 Birthdays: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII's wife # 1), Marshal Gerbhard von Blucher, Lenoid Brezhnev, Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George Santayanna, Liv Ullmann is 83, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Miranda Otto is 54.

1871- BOSS TWEED INDICTED- William Marcy Tweed as New York City Commissioner of Public Works was behind one of the most corrupt city governments in U.S. history. Tweed mobilized poor and immigrant voters into political power and bought and sold city building projects. The cost overruns to build a simple courthouse cost more than the total cost to build the British Parliament in London- $13 million dollars. For example he once billed the city $14,000 for 11 thermometers. 

The press tried to expose him, but it was really Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly who helped bring the Tweed Ring down. Boss Tweed said: "I don’t mind the newspaper articles since most of my voters can’t read, but those damn pictures!" Tweed once offered Nast half a million dollars to go to Europe and "study art". Nast refused. Boss Tweed ended his life in the Ludlow Street Jail, which he himself built.

1900 -EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a lightning-drawing act on the vaudeville circuit. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison, then Edison engaged him to make a film of his act. He created this and several other trickfilms. It doesn’t move much more than his vaudeville act, His 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is considered the first animated cartoon.

1905- Variety magazine born. 

1913- When his lead actor quit, Max Sennett recalled a young English music hall actor he saw back east. He wrote,“I think his name was Carson, or Caslon, or Chaplin?” This day Charlie Chaplin signed a contract at Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Hollywood. $150 a week. In his first film he would play a villain.

1935- Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who starred with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. She loved to party so much, she was nicknamed "Hot Toddy". She knew New York mobster Lucky Lucciano. Was she done in by the mob, her jealous director boyfriend, was it a suicide or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor running? The mystery’s never been answered.

1966- New York Police raid the offices of Bernard Spindle, a freelance surveillance expert who bugged the phones of the rich and powerful. They carted off all his tapes and records; including tapes he claimed proved Marilyn Monroe’s sexual hijinks with President John Kennedy. He was later informed all his tapes were lost. Spindle’s career was the inspiration for the movies The Conversation and the Enemy of the State.

1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey Joe’.

1966- Sergio Leone’s epic Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly premiered in Rome. The last of the Man with No Name trilogy. Clint Eastwood never worked with Leone again. 

1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song ‘American Pie’.

1973- O.J. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.

1978- The Disney short The Small One, directed by Don Bluth. 

1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, died.

1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.

1993- Producer Aaron Spelling fired star Shannon Dougherty off the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.

1998- The premiere of Dreamworks The Prince of Egypt. Nicknamed The Zion King.

1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice during a routine throat operation. 

2009- Roy E. Disney died, the Walt Disney nephew who oversaw the great animation resurgence of the 1990s. 

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Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 15, 2021

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nero, Roman Emperor Lucius Verus who was known for little else but his really swell haircut, Gustav Eiffel, J. Paul Getty, Jeff Chandler, Alan Freed, Ernie Pintoff, Tim Conway, Helen Slater, Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, Don Johnson is 72, Julie Taymor is 69

 

1790- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart held a farewell dinner for Franz Josef Haydn, who was going to London for two years.  Amadeus said:" Farewell Papa, I think we shall not see each other again in life. " Mozart was 34 and Haydn was 67, so he probably assumed Haydn would go first. Mozart died a year later at 35, and old Haydn lived another fifteen years, dying in his 80s.

 

1815- Giacomo Rossini received the commission to write a new opera based on Beaumarchais’ play The Marriage of Figaro- The Barber of Seville.

 

1893-Czech composer Anton Dvorak premiered a symphony he wrote while living in the Minnesota. The New World Symphony.

 

1939- The gala premiere of Gone with The Wind at the Loews Grand Theater in Atlanta Georgia. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh flew out from Hollywood and the Governor of Georgia declared it a state holiday. Clark Gable called Margaret Mitchell “ The most fascinating woman I ever met.” Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar for her portrayal, was not invited to the premiere.

 

1941- Lena Horne recorded her signature tune “Stormy Weather.”

 

1943- In Harlem jazz great Fats Waller died of alcoholism and heart failure. He was 39.

 

1944- Band Leader Glen Miller's plane disappeared over the English Channel. In 1988, a retired RAF engineer admitted he may have jettisoned some leftover bombs above the entertainer's plane while returning home from a bombing run. Other experts claim it may have been a faulty carburetor or icing in the fuel lines.

 

1954- “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” starring Fess Parker was featured on The Walt Disney TV show for the first time. The show created a mania for little kids all wanting coonskin caps. “Born on a mountaintop in Tenn-Ah-See..”

 

1966- Walt Disney died at age 65. He was alone in the room at Saint Joseph's when he died. His brother Roy had been in earlier rubbing his legs. On his desk, scribbled on a piece of paper the name- Kurt Russell. A heavy cigarette smoker- his favorites were Malboro and French Gitanes- he suffered from lung cancer and respiratory failure. Contrary to the legend that he's cryogenically frozen in a room in the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, he was cremated and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn. 

 

1973- The American Psychiatric Association reverses its earlier position and announced the homosexuality was not a form of mental illness. Before that, being gay meant your family could legally have you institutionalized, lobotomized or electro-shocked against your will.

 

1974- Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein opened.

 

1985- Sylvester Stallone married model Birgit Nielsson. This was after he divorced his first wife Sasha who had shared his years of privation up to stardom. She worked as an usher at the Crown movie theater in NY to support Sly while he went to acting school.

 

2008- Outgoing President George W. Bush made a farewell tour of Iraq, ostensibly to receive the thanks of the Iraqi people for freeing them.  During a speech in Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Muntather Zaidi rose up and threw his shoes at the presidents’ head, shouting “Here’s your thanks, you dog!”  He made Bush duck twice. 

 

NY Yankees owner Glen Steinbrenner commented” His first throw was low and inside, the second a bit high, but both were pretty good.”

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 14, 2021

Birthdays: 1553-King Henry IV, 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, Jane Birkin "Je t'aime moi non plus" is 74.

1871- Verdi's opera "Aida" debuts in Cairo.

1901- The first Ping-Pong tournament held in London.

1918- Cartoonist Johnny Gruelle entertained his dying daughter Marcella, 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 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" premiered.

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

1974- Irwin Allen’s disaster film The Towering Inferno, opened.

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.

1979- STUDIO 54 RAIDED- The Internal Revenue Service busted the worlds most famous disco club. Formerly the hangout of Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote and other “Beautiful People”, now the Feds were on to them. The IRS seized doctored account books, cocaine and undeclared cash, landing the owners in jail and bringing the celebrity playlands days to an end. 

1983- Disney Studio released the short film Frankenweenie, done by a weird young artist named Tim Burton. He was promptly fired upon its completion for wasting company resources.

1984- David Lynch’s version of Dune, with Kyle McClanahan.

2015- Hollywood premiere for J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars the Force Awakens. 

2017- Rupert Murdoch sold off much of the Twentieth Century Fox Studio to Walt Disney for $66 billion.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 12, 2021

Birthdays: Frank Sinatra, Roman Emperor Alexander Severus, Edvard Munch, Gustav Flaubert, Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie, John Jay, Edward G. Robinson, Marshal von Rundstedt-the Black Knight of Germany, Ed Koch, Zack Mosley –the cartoonist of “Smilin' Jack", Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Rigby, Tracy Austin, Bill Nighy is 71, Tom Wilkerson is 72, Jennifer Connelly is 51, Mayim Bialik is 46

1897-The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip by Rudolph Dirks appears in the Hearst’s New York Journal. The first comic where characters spoke in word balloons. When Dirks took a vacation without Hearst’s permission, Hearst got another artist to draw the strip. Dirks went to rival paper The New York Sun, and recreated the strip as the Captain & the Kids, leading to the first artistic plagiarism lawsuit. 

In Paris, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas had a problem whenever they bought the American newspapers, because Picasso and Fernande Oliver would fight over who got to read the Katzenjammer Kids first.

1899- George Grant of Boston invented the Golf Tee.

1901-First transatlantic wireless signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi. The letter “S” was sent electronically from Newfoundland to Cornwall. This finally ended the frustrating hoopla over laying transatlantic telegraph cables and have them break down almost constantly since the 1850s. The pioneers of radio broadcasting like Armstrong, Lee Deforest and David Sarnoff got their start working for the Marconi Wireless Company. 

1913- The Mona Lisa, which had been stolen out of the Louvre in 1911, was recovered. It was found in a hotel room in Florence, kept by waiter Vincenzo Peruggia, who had stolen it.  He had worked at the Louvre, so he knew the back room passages. He and his accomplices dressed as janitors to avoid suspicion

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

1967- the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” opened. The first American movie about an interracial relationship. 

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

1991- Actor Richard Gere married supermodel Cindy Crawford.

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for Dec 10, 2021

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 61, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 69, Michael Clarke Duncan

1607- Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes.  Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600.   Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white mans powers to his side. 

No one knows for sure. John Smith is the only source for the story, and he didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.

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 Fauntleroy 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 up, and washing dishes was Marlena Dietrich. While Janey Gaynor and Rhonda Fleming were working in the kitchen, Bette Davis would burst in and announce, “ Okay you Haus-Fraus! We need some glamour out front!” 

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.

1978- The world premiere of Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. The incomparable Christopher Reeve with Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman.

1994- The Unabomber sent an explosive device that killed Thomas J. Mosser, an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam who handled the public relations spin for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.

2013- Richard Williams unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler received its premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun 40 years earlier in 1972 and never completed. 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Dec 9, 2021

Birthdays: Sappho, John Milton, Jean De Brunhoff, Emil Waldteufel the composer of the Skaters Waltz, Admiral Grace Hopper 1906 who wrote the earliest computer language, Hermoinie Gingold, Dalton Trumbo, John Cassavettes, Broderick Crawford, Dick Butkus, Red Foxx, Cesar Franck, John Malkovich is 68, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Buck Henry, Felicity Huffman, Mario Cantone, Judy Dench is 87, Kirk Douglas

1641- Famed Flemish portrait artist Sir Anthony van Dyck died of a fever at his home in Blackfriars, London. He was 42. 

1854- Albert Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" published.

1889- The Chicago Auditorium dedicated. The landmark building’s architect Louis 

Sullivan had hired a new assistant to help with the drawings-Frank Lloyd Wright.

1905- Richard Strauss’s opera Salome premiered in Dresden. The lead role demands

a soprano with big Wagnerian lungs but also a flat stomach to do the strip tease

the Dance of the Seven Veils. When the opera debuted in New York, old millionaires

like J.P. Morgan were shocked at its’ blatant sexuality. They threatened to cut 

off funding until Sal and her skimpy veils was banished from the schedule. 

1931- Disney short Mickey’s Orphans debuted.

1936- The first cookery show appeared on British television.

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 “A Love Supreme”. Late on 

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

Golden Gate Bridge in the night fog, and practice by himself.  

1965- Bill Melendez's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" the first half hour animated TV 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? At the preview screening for CBS executives, the show was met with deathly silence; when the show concluded, one executive said to the director Bill Melendez, "Well, you gave it a good try." CBS hated its religious message, the idea of actual kids voicing the characters, not having a laugh track and having jazz as the soundtrack, and only aired it out of obligation for the specials sponsor, Coca-Cola. Out of fear, It was not screened for any critics sans one Time Magazine critic (who ironically gave it a positive review). 

Estimates are that 15,490,000 households and 36 million people watched Charlie Brown and his friends that night. A Charlie Brown Christmas won an Emmy and has run every year for 54 years. 

1967- At a Doors concert lead singer Jim Morrison was sprayed with mace and arrested

by Miami police for “lewd behavior” on stage, but probably more for referring to

the cops as pigs.

1968- The MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS- In San Francisco, Dr Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the first computer workstation. He showed how people would use hot keys, a printer and scanner, cut and paste text. And he had a real time internet hookup to another work station at Stanford Univ, 120 miles away.  

1

1992-Britains Prime Minister John Major announced the separation of Prince Charles

and Diana of Wales.

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

2004- Mia Hamm and the stars of the Women’s National Soccer Team played their last

game, defeating Mexico 5-0. 

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

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