Animation Fun Facts for March 10, 2020

Birthdays: Lorenzo da Ponte -librettist of Mozart's operas, Barry Fitzgerald, Claire Booth Luce, Heywoud Hale Broun, James Herriot, Pablo de Sarrasate, Osama Bin Laden, Chuck Norris is 80, Shannon Tweed, Sharon Stone is 62, John Hamm is 49

1926- The First Book of the Month Club – The Lovely Willows by Sylvia Townshend Warner.

1933- The LONG BEACH EARTHQUAKE. There had not been a serious quake in LA since 1857, so everyone thought it a thing of the past. Today the buildings swayed and brick walls collapsed. It was the last big shift in the San Andreas Fault. 200 people were killed, and if the schools had not been empty for Easter break, the casualties could have been much higher.

Actors convening early SAG union meetings in the El Capitan Theater moved out into a parking lot because of the aftershocks. The quake sparked the first serious earthquake building codes.

1935- The First Smokey Stover comic strip (notary sojac).

1947- Ronald Reagan becomes President of the Screen Actor's Guild after President George Montgomery and V.P. Franchot Tone resigned to become independent producers. In the violent gangster-ridden atmosphere of Hollywood unions Reagan took to wearing a .32 Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster under his coat.

1948- Zelda Fitzgerald, the socialite wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died in a fire at the mental hospital where she had been committed for more than a decade. 

1954- In a letter to studio heads director Elias Kazan worried that young actor James Dean was “too odd” and unpredictable to star in his movie “Rebel Without a Cause”.

1954- First day of shooting on Stage 3 of the Giant Squid battle on Walt Disney’s production of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The director was Richard Fleischer, the son of Walt Disney’s onetime competitor Max Fleischer.

1969- The Godfather, a novel by Mario Puzo was first published. The book about a NY mafia family was a huge hit and spawned three successful movies.

1988- Andy Gibb of the BeeGees died at age 30. It was reported he died of a drug overdose, but he actually died of heart failure brought on by years of heavy drug abuse.

Animation Fun Facts for March 9, 2020

Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, Eddie Foy., Yuri Gargarin, Samuel Barber, chess master Bobby Fischer, Mickey Spillane, Vita Sackville-West, Raul Julia, Vacheslav Molotov, Juliet Binoche is 56, Linda Fiorentino is 62, Lil’ Bow-Wow is 33

1888- While strolling through his garden, writer Jules Verne was shot by a deranged nephew.  He recovered, but walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

1907-Former Edison animator J. Stuart Blackton started "Moving Picture World" an early movie fanzine.

1913- Virginia Woolf completed her first novel The Voyage Out.

1935- The Looney Tune Cartoon "I haven’t Got a Hat" premiered. This cartoon gave birth to the first permanent Warner Bros. Cartoon star- Porky Pig. 

1954- Edgar R. Murrow does his "See It Now" television broadcast detailing the life of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the commie-chaser. The obvious contradictions and gross opportunism in McCarthy's record when laid out before a nationwide audience, destroyed his career and took the steam out of the "Red Scare" of the 50's. It is probably television journalism's finest moment. For the lowest? Well, what's on tonight? 

1955- Actor James Dean’s film, East of Eden, premiered today,

1959-The first "Clutch Cargo" show. 

1984- Roy E. Disney Jr., Walt’s nephew, resigned from the central board of the Walt Disney Company, setting in motion a series of takeover bids and maneuvering that by August would wrest control of the company from Ron Miller, Walt’s son-in-law.

1984- Touchstone pictures Splash premiered, featuring Tom Hanks, John Candy and a tastefully topless Daryl Hannah.

1989- Artist-photographer Robert Maplethorpe died of AIDS.

1997- Gangsta-rap singer Christopher Wallace, who was known as the Notorious B.I.G. and also called Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed by a gangsta-style drive by. His last album was entitled Life After Death. Notorious BIG could never shake the accusation that he was involved in the similar murder of singer Tupac Shakur.

Animation Fun Facts for March 8, 2020

Birthdays: Sophocles, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, Hannah Hoes Van Beuren- the First Lady for Martin Van Beuren, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Alan Hovhannes, Kenneth Grahame the author of the Wind in the Willows, Cyd Charisse, Charlie Pride, Mickey Dolenz, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Rice, Aiden Quinn is 61, Freddy Prinze Jr is 46, Jim Bouton- baseball player, author, inventor of Big League Chew bubble gum, animator Don Hall

1886- A small time Scots doctor in Portsmouth England named Arthur Conan-Doyle had been trying his hand at writing fiction. He had sold a few stories to magazines and tried to publish a historical novel about an insurance company, “Firm of Girdlestone” with lackluster results. 

This day he began a new novel “ A Tangled Skein” which had a new character named at first Sheridan Hope, then Sheringford Holmes. By the time he finished his story, month later, he had changed the title to “A Study in Scarlet” and the main protagonist name had become SHERLOCK HOLMES. 

Arthur Conan Doyle was an admirer of the American writer Oliver Wendel Holmes who was touring Britain that year. Like him, Holmes was a doctor who turned writer. No one is sure where he got the name Sherlock. It may have been a neighbor. Conan Doyle’s professor in Edinburgh college Dr Joseph Bell excelled at deductive reasoning and had an assistant named Dr. Watson.

1933- As a result of President Roosevelt's Nationwide Bank shutdown, Hollywood Studios go into a cash panic. MGM, RKO and the others ask for 30-50% salary cuts from their stars and artists. At one point they announced the salary cuts at the Oscar banquet ( betchya that made for a real fun party!)

 Louis B. Mayer, tearful and unshaven pleaded his case to his contract-stars, who reluctantly accepted the cuts. Lionel Barrymore called out "We're with ya. L.B. !"  Afterwards Mayer winked to his secretary and giggled:” So how’d I do?”  A week later Mayer hired his new son-in-law David Selznick as a producer at $4000 a week. Production chief Darryl Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over the employee salary cuts and went on to build Twentieth Century Fox. 

1941- Writer and playwright Sherwood Anderson dies from pterioteritus- internal bleeding- after swallowing a toothpick at a cocktail party.

1941- The National Television System Committee set up by the FCC to standardize television technology recommended an industry standard of 525 scan lines at 30 frames a second- what we now call after their name- NTSC. England later adopted the PAL (Phase Alernation Line) of 625 lines, 25 frames per second and France the SECAM System (Systeme Electronique Couleur Avec Memoire).which is also a 625 line, 25fps system.  This is why British TV shows like The Prisoner always looked so grainy on American sets and American shows look so garish on British sets. By garish I mean the color, not the content. 

It also speeds up the film during video from 24 frames to 25fps (i.e. 4%)...which is why in England and the rest of Europe, all Hollywood movies are 4% shorter and the voices of the actors all sound a little squeaky. The way to remember NTSC is "Never-The-Same-Color'. DVD and BluRay went to a thousand- scan lines. The invention of digital screens is making most of this irrelevant.

1950-  the Volkswagen bus introduced.

1961-The Frito Company merges with potato chip makers H.L. Lay to form Frito-Lay. The recipe for Fritos corn chips was bought by milkshake salesman Elmer Doolin from a Mexican fry cook in Texas.

1973- Paul McCartney was fined 100 pounds for growing marijuana on his farm Mull of Kintyre.

1977- Ralph Bakshi’s film Wizards premiered.

animation fun facts for march 7, 2020

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 49, Michael Eisner is 78, Wanda Sykes is 56, Peter Saarsgard is 49, Bryan Cranston is 64.

1945- At the Academy Awards, Tom & Jerry cartoon Quiet Please won best animated short.

1955- The first televised Emmy Awards on NBC. Steve Allen hosted. The Disneyland show won two emmys for " Operation Undersea".

1988- 300 pound female impersonator Harris Milstead, better known as Divine in the John Waters films, died of sleep apnea. He was 42.

1999- Film director Stanley Kubrick died of a heart attack in his sleep, just five days after screening his final film Eyes Wide Shut. He was 71.

2010- Pixar's Up won best animated feature at the 85 Academy Awards.

Animation Fun Facts for March 6, 2020

Birthdays: Michelangelo Buonarotti, 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 73, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz is 72, Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal is 48

1850- Gustav Flaubert was the French writer who was once tried for pornography for creating Madame Bovary. This day while in Egypt he kept an appointment with the countries most famous belly dancing prostitute, Kuchuk Hanem.

1853-  Giusseppi Verdi’s classic opera La Traviata premiered at Teatro alla Fenice in Venice. It was based on Dumas novel Le Dame Aux Camelias. Verdi wrote in his diary about the premiere:" The evening was a disaster! Was it my fault or the fault of the singers? Only time will tell..."

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..

1933- Two days after inauguration Eleanor Roosevelt became the first First Lady to hold her own separate press conference. She insisted only female journalists could attend.

1936- Mr. Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen vegetables.

1978- Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot and crippled by a lunatic. 

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.

1981- CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite retired.  Dan Rather succeeded him after CBS learned ABC was offering Rather big bux to jump networks. Roger Mudd, who was thought to be the real successor to Cronkite, left the network to anchor the History Channel. Dan Rather was the CBS anchor until 2004.

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.

1992- The film The Lawnmower Man premiered. It featured early motion-capture CGI imagery, and claimed to have the first virtual reality sex scene. 

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

Animation Fun Facts for March 5, 2020

Birthdays: Henry III of England, Giovanni 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, Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 64, Eva Mendes is 45, Kevin Connolly is 45

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

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

1863- The U.S. Army finally admits having the men do their own cooking was bad for morale, as well as their digestion. The first field kitchens with real cooks set up.

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

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

1963- Country star Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn. Also killed were singers Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

1966- As America was still getting used to the idea of fighting in Vietnam and anti-war sentiment was beginning, a Sgt. Barry Sadler wrote a pro-war song titled Ballad of the Green Berets, that today hit #1. “Put silver wings, on my sons chest….”

1982 - John Belushi died of drug overdose at Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done 20 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 but left early. Belushi was 31. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone:" You could have given us more laughs.....But  NNNOOOO!

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

 

Animation Fun Facts for March 4, 2020

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, Ray Boom-Boom Mancini, Patsy Kensit. Katherine O’Hara is 66, James Ellroy, Mykleti Williamson. Ward Kimball, Ken Duncan

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.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon Blvd. in L.A. William Holden was their best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1960- American opera baritone Leonard Warren dropped dead on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

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.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants baseball team would stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada. 

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

2000- The Japanese launch of Sony Playstation 2. It was designed to compete with Segas Dreamcast and Nintendo’s Cube. The Playstation 2 was 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.  It remained hot for 13 years.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t actually work.

2008- The first Simon’s Cat short cartoon appeared on YouTube.