Quiz: Why are Marines called Leathernecks?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is a Lonesome Jennie?
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History for 5/12/2008
Birthdays: Dolly Madison, Daniel Rossetti, Frank Stella, Florence Nightingale, Tom Snyder, George Carlin is 71, Wilfred Hyde-White, Emilio Estevez, Howard K. Smith, Ron Zeigler, Farley Mowatt, Ving Rhames, Bruce Boxleitner, Katherine Hepburn, Gabriel Byrne, Yogi Berra is 80

1775- During the American Revolution a New York mob carrying clubs and torches broke onto the campus of King’s College determined to lynch it’s president Miles Cooper, who was an outspoken loyalist. The mob was stopped on the steps of Cooper’s home by student Alexander Hamilton. While Cooper watched from the second story window, Hamilton begged the mob not to kill his teacher. Cooper was hard of hearing and he thought the troublemaker Hamilton was the instigator. Miles Cooper yelled down:” DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! HE’S A BLOCKHEAD!” Despite this, Miles Cooper got away unharmed. Kings College name was changed to Columbia University.

1789- TAMANY HALL BORN- The first and oldest of U.S. political machines (clubs , pacts, lobbies, whatever ) Founded in Philadelphia and moved to New York it was named for a Chief Tamamend, the Delaware chief who welcomed William Penn. The Hall on 14 th street was nicknamed the Wigwam and the leaders called Sachems, the Algonquin word for chief. Throughout the 1800's it was famous for buying and selling political offices, bribery and corruption. Boss Tweed and Slippery Dick Connolly, the first American to embezzle one million dollars, were Tamany Sachems. Tamany were the first to realize there was political power in mobilizing the mass of working class immigrants against the snooty New York power elite. Tamany Hall men would stand on docks welcoming immigrants with a voting card and a silver dollar to vote for their candidates. Another trick was for Tamany men to grow a full beard and vote, then go home, shave to a goatee, vote again, shave to a mustache, vote again, then clean shave and vote once more.
Tamany Hall was still influential into modern times. Bill O'Dwyer, a Tamany sachem was mayor of New York in the late 1940’s and in 1963 future Mayor Ed Koch became a congressman by unseating the last Tammany sachem Carmen DeSapio..

1796- Napoleon's French Republican Army occupied the city of Venice and destroyed the last traces of the independent Venetian Republic 'La Serenissima" The Most Surene Republic. The Last Doge Daniele Manin was forced to abdicate and his Byzantine crown and trappings of office were burned, along with his famous gilded barge, the 'Boucintoro'. Venice, an independent city-state since 976AD, was going to be part of Italy whether she liked it or not!

1846- The Donner Party wagon train left Independence Missouri to start it’s trek out west to California. They tried a new short cut proposed by a charlatan named Lansford Hastings to get to California. They crossing the burning alkaline deserts of Utah and were attacked by Paiute Indians. By Halloween heavy snow storms stranded the Donners in the High Sierra Mountains where the starving survivors resorted to cannibalism.

1864-BATTLE OF SPOTSYLVANIA- After Lee whips Grant in the Wilderness, instead of retreating Grant wheels around and attacks again. This time winning a draw. The fighting was dreadful, reports of trees so thick you couldn't put your arms around cut down by bullets, and men hit with so many 68 cal.musket balls at one time that their bodies literally would fall apart. At the fight in the center of the line called The Angle Yankees and Confederates crowded in so tightly they pressed against one another like a massive rugby game. Soldiers fought hand to hand with pistol butts, flag staffs, clubs, fists, some even took their empty bayonet muskets and hurled them into the crowd like a spear. Nothing failed to cause injury. One casualty was union general "Uncle John" Sedgewick, shot by rebel snipers. His last words were:" Aw go on men! Them rebs couldn't hit an elephant at this dis......." His great, great granddaughter Edie Sedgwick hung out with Andy Warhol.

1915- THE BRYCE COMISSION- An English commission to study reports of German atrocities that was really a propaganda machine aimed at getting the United States into the Great War. America had the problem that if she chose the allied side in World War One, several million immigrant citizens of German, Hungarian and Austrian descent were sympathetic to the Kaiser. Add to them millions of English-hating Irish, Jewish Americans who wanted the openly Anti-Semitic Russian Empire beaten and many average Americans who felt the main reason their forefathers crossed the ocean was to get away from the kind of trouble that occurred back in Europe. So you can see it was hard to get everyone up for intervention. The American yellow press printed all the British accounts without ever questioning their accuracy- they horrified the average reader with hair-raising stories of German troops raping and killing Belgian women, chopping the hands off of children and crucifying Canadian prisoners with bayonets through their hands and feet. Even though some atrocities stories were verified, like the needless burning of the medieval Library of Louvain -The German term was Shreiklichkeit- Rule by Fear- today it is acknowledged that most of these accounts were dressed up to get us to Hate the Hun! Later the U.S. Office of War Information took over feeding these stories to the press. It was headed by a psychiatrist Edmund Bernays, a psychoanalyst nephew of Sigmund Freud who after the war went into advertising.

1936- John Maynard Keynes most famous work "the General Theory of Money, Interest and Work" was published. Today if a politician advocates government intervention in the business market he is called a "Keynesian".Keynes once said: ' My only regret in life is that I did not drink more champagne."

1938- “The Adventures of Robin Hood” starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia DeHaviland, Claude Rains and Eugene Paulette premiered. The swashbuckling film then cost a whopping $2 million dollars to make! The light brown horse Maid Marion rode in the movie was later bought by singing cowboy Roy Rogers and renamed Trigger.

1948- In Palestine the secret key cabinet meeting of Jewish leaders over whether to declare independence before the British evacuated on May 15th. The UN and even the US was asking for a UN sponsored three month cooling off period but Jewish leaders like David Ben Gurion felt any more delay would be fatal. The decided that even though they would be attacked by five Arab nations simultaneously they would declare independence on May 14th. The last problem was what to call the new country? After Zion, Zionia and Herzelania was suggested, they decided to go with the name of a Kibbutz using an ancient Biblical name- Eretz-Israel or simply Israel.

1950- The comic strip 'Marvin' debuted.

1962- First day shooting on Frederigo Fellini’s film 8 1/2. When screened for American Producer Joe Levine, Levine took the cigar from his mouth and growled-” Frederigo, what da hell did that movie mean? ” Fellini shrugged –“I dunno”.

1971 - Rolling Stone Mick Jagger weds Bianca Macias at St Tropez Town Hall.
They later divorced and Bianca became a famous habitue’ of trendy discos and fashion magazines.

1971- Tor Johnson died of a heart attack at age 68. Swedish wrestler turned actor Tor’s preferred role was the bald eyeless zombie in classics like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster.

Happy Birthday to meee...what? Oh, I'm dead? Oh...never mind....

1977- A small Westchester radio station WENW hired a thin, gawky, college grad as a DJ- Howard Stern. US radio would never be the same.

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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Lonesome Jennie?

Answer: In the middle of the night, it is the feint whistle of a far off freight train.

courtesy Andybudd.com
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Occasionally in American history, Government tries to enact dumbass laws, and we, as a responsible electorate, have to kick their butts over it. The Dredd Scott Decision of 1858, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1881, Prohibition 1919 and now this proposed Orphaned Work law.

The problem is explained by Mark Simon in his piece in AWN.com, and with their kind permission, I quote from him:

An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.

Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.

What makes me so MAD about this new legislation is that it legalizes THEFT! The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries.

These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.

It is currently against international law to coerce people to register their work for copyright because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, our country is about to break with the rest of the world, again, and take your rights away.

With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.

This includes every sketch, painting, photo, sculpture, drawing, video, song and every other type of creative endeavor. All of it is at risk!

If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries. Even then, there is no guarantee that someone wishing to steal your personal creations won't successfully call your work an orphan work, and then legally use it for free.

In short, if Congress passes this law, YOU WILL LOSE THE RIGHT TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR OWN CREATIONS!

Why is this allowed to happen? APATHY and MONEY.

Artists have apathy and corporations have money.

For the complete article, check-http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605

I agree. As artists, we prefer to think we are better than all this squalid money and politics, so we can't be bothered. But the truth is, when we don't bother, people do things like this to cheat us. Mozart and Beethoven didn't die rich. Vermeer and Rembrandt had their things auctioned off to raise money. It's not just all about talent. We have to remain vigilant, and defend our rights as artists!

Artistas!No Pasaran!

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The Society of Illustrators, Photographers Guild, Graphic Artists Guild, The Illustrators Partnership,even the prestigious NATIONAL CARTOONISTS SOCIETY, founded by Charles Schulz and Mort Walker among others, is taking the unusual step of urging you to write Congress in opposition to the pending Orphan Works Act of 2008. If enacted, this radical legislation will undermine key elements of your copyright protection. The House and Senate have different versions of the bill, and there are likely to be some modifications, but nothing under serious consideration makes this legislation remotely acceptable.

To take action, simply click this link ( http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/ ) and select one of the form letters. We recommend the letter titled “For Visual Artists – Any Image Can Be Infringed”. All you’ll need to do is add your contact information at the bottom of the page and press “Send Message”. It’s as easy as it is important.

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Question: What is a Lonesome Jennie?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: When designing the character Speed Racer, Japanese artist Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired by an American. Who?
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History for 5/11/2008
Birthdays: Salvador Dali', Chang and Eng Bunker-the original Siamese Twins-1811, Irving Berlin, King Oliver, Martha Graham, Dr Richard Fenyman, Mort Sahl, Baron Munchausen, Jean Jerome, Phil Silvers, Foster Brooks, Denver Pyle, Henry Morgenthau, Doug McClure, Randy Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Rev Louis Farrakhan

1780- A RUDE SHOCK TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA.- That was how it was described by a Tory minister back in London, when the British Army captured the last major American seaport- Charleston, South Carolina. Colonial General Lincoln and 2500 regulars lay down their arms, it is the largest surrender of American troops in the Revolutionary War. At one time or another during the Revolution all of the largest US cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston were under British occupation. The capture of Charleston also wiped out what little was left of the U.S. Navy. John Paul Jones was sitting on a beach in New Hampshire waiting for a new ship to be built. It was the French fleet, not the American, that won the Revolution at sea. Up till then the British strategy had been to wait out the bankrupt Yankees and concentrate on fighting the French and Spaniards in the Caribbean. George Washington recognized this strategy was working since Congress was broke and the unpaid Yankee Army on the verge of mutiny. But the victory at Charleston encouraged London to deviate from their plan and commit new armies to conquer America from the South. That decision led to the great British defeat at Yorktown.

1792- Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River in the Oregon territory.

1812- A merchant named Bellingham who's business was ruined by the Napoleonic wars, walked into the lobby of the House of Commons, and shot Prime Minister Sir Spencer Percival. He was the only British Prime Minister ever assassinated.

1864-JEB STUART FELL- Confederate commander of cavalry Jeb Stuart was a Beau-Sabeur who always rode into the thickest of a fight. This day one soldier shouted:” General, you must love bullets!” Stuart replied:” I don’t love bullets, but I can’t hide from them. I got a feeling I’m not going to survive this war.” Then he rode into battle with Sheridan’s cavalry at Yellow Tavern six miles north of Richmond. A dismounted Yankee marksman spotted the familiar gray horseman with the black plumed hat and cape. As he rode by he emptied his carbine into him. Gutshot, Stuart still managed to ride a mile to the rear before being taken insensible from his horse. He died shortly afterwards. He was 31. Jeb Stuart loved partying and kept around him a colorful crowd that included Sweeny the banjo player, accompanied by Stuart’s manservant Bob on bones and a German aristocrat dragoon named Major Heros Von Borcke, who traveled from Prussia to fight for Dixie. Stuart called him "My dear Von". After his death Von Borcke returned to Germany where he flew the rebel Stars & Bars over his castle in Geisenbrugge in Thuringia until his own death in 1895.

1878-Young anarchist Erik Hymdel tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm Ist. People today fear Al Qaeda but in the "Gilded Age" 1870's to 1920's it was the Anarchist movement- the stereotypical men in broad hats and long black coats with smoldering round bombs. They believed that society itself was the problem and if it could be broken down only then would everyone be truly free. In the times mentioned they assassinated an American President -McKinley, the Tsar of Russia, the Kings of Italy and Portugal, The President of France, The Empress of Austria, took shots at Edward the Prince of Wales and dynamited countless buildings like Wall Street Banks and the Los Angeles Times. When they were executed they usually shouted "Long Live Anarchy!" at the end. Composer Richard Wagner flirted with the movement and once wrote the anarchist philosopher Bakhunin" I work for the same goal as you, namely, a World in Flames."

1945-After the Nazi Germany surrendered, the Nazi governor of occupied Norway, Josef Treboven, committed suicide by sitting on a stick of dynamite. When Wile E, Coyote does it, its funny, but Norwegian Nazis? Very messy.

1956 - Pinky Lee Show last airs on NBC-TV

1972 -On the Dick Cavett talk show Beatle and peace activist John Lennon said his phone had been tapped by FBI. It turns out it was, but at the time we all thought he was just paranoid from too many drugs.

1981- The musical play CATS opened in London.

1981- Bob Marley died of brain cancer at age 36. Jamaican Marley and his group the Whalers made Reggae mainstream in pop music around the world. Ja –Mahn!

1992 - Carlos Herrera, chef, bartender and inventor of the Margarita, died at age 90

1992- Elizabeth McDonald, inventor of the detergent cleanser Spic & Span, died at 98.

1997- Deep Blue, a computer developed at IBM, defeated top world chess champion Gennady Kasparov.
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Yesterday’s Question: When designing the character Speed Racer, Japanese artist Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired by an American. Who?

Answer: Yoshida based his design on Elvis Presley in the film Viva Las Vegas.

Quiz: When designing the character Speed Racer, Japanese artist Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired by an American. Who?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who were the parents of Robin the Boy Wonder?
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History for 5/10/2008
Birthdays: Fred Astaire, Sir Arthur Lipton (inventor of the teabag), Nancy Walker, John Wilkes Booth (assassin of Lincoln) Mark David Chapman (assassin of John Lennon), David O. Selznick, Ariel Durant, Jim Abrahams, Donovan, Homer Simpson,Bono is 48

1748- English slave trader John Newton’s ship was caught in a violent Mid Atlantic storm and was about to go under. When Newton prayed to God he would reform his life if he made it through this gale, the storm broke. Newton not only stopped his slave trading ways but he wrote a hymn, Amazing Grace. "Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, to Save a Wretch Like Me! I was lost, but now I’m found, etc."

1775- FT. TICONDEROGA- Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen surprise the great fortress in the dead of night and capture the cannons Washington needed to drive the British out of Boston. 20 years earlier the British took huge losses taking that same fort from the French. All the British commander lost this time was his trousers, he was captured in his nightclothes. As Allen and Arnold woke him he scowled: "By who's authority do you do this?" Allen retorted: " In the name of Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

1796- THE BATTLE OF LODI- The Austrian Army in Italy attempted to slow Napoleons pursuit of them by blocking a bridge with 14 cannon and daring the French to cross. This is where the beginning of Napoleons legend among his men starts to form. He whips up the confidence of his men to the point where they enthusiastically rush across the bridge and overrun the cannon. Even though Napoleon is the army’s commander he is out in front sharing the danger from shot and shell sighting his cannon like a corporal. This is when men start to call him "The Little Corporal". He later told a friend’ They haven’t seen anything yet." Another older general said:" You know, that little bastard scares me."

1869- THE GOLDEN SPIKE- At Promontory Utah the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific met, finally connecting the entire U.S. continent by rail. Before this when you wanted to go from New York to San Francisco you had to take a boat to Havana, then Nicaragua, take a mule train through jungle then get a third ship up the Pacific coast to California. The millionaire directors of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific came to Utah for the ceremony. The racing rail gangs had actually passed each other and had to correct a detour of 250 miles. When the rich men were called upon to swing the large sledgehammers to drive in the golden spike both missed and hit the ground -one had a hangover. A workman had to actually accomplish the deed. The link completed an electric circuit to send telegraph news of the event simultaneously to New York and San Francisco. They celebrated by the synchronized firing of cannon east over the Atlantic and west out over the Pacific, symbolically telling the world to watch out! That America was now a continental power that has got its act together.

1869- CREDIT MOBILIER SCANDAL- The stock company that handled the transcontinental railroad's budgets, Credit Mobilier, billed the government $175 million dollars for the job when it actually only cost $86 million. When the figures were disputed gov't officials were given bribes of Credit Mobilier stock to keep quiet. When the scandal finally broke in 1872 many of Republican Pres. Grant's top officials were implicated. When Vice President Schuyler Colfax was asked about a deposit slip for $10,000 marked the same day as a Credit Mobilier payroll slip made out for the same amount, he remarked it was a political donation from a benefactor whose name he couldn't remember who died shortly after anyway. He said the check fell out of his morning newspaper at breakfast.

1893- The U.S. government declares the Tomato officially a vegetable and not a fruit.

1908- The First Mother's Day celebrated, it became a national holiday in 1914. The holiday was inspiration of a lady named Anna Jarvis, who spent the rest of her life trying to keep it from being commercially exploited. She died broke and surrounded by mothers day cards sent from well wishers.

1928- General Electric starts up WG4 Schenectady, the first US T.V. Station.

1933- Nazis Leader Josef Goebbels holds the first mass book-burning in Berlin. Goebbels said: " We consign everything unGerman to the flames." 20,000 works by Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Freud and Einstein are burned.

1940- British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned. Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister to deal with the war crisis. "I have nothing to offer except Blood, Sweat and Tears." No, he was not offering to share his old rock and roll albums, he invented the phrase.

1941- THE STRANGE FLIGHT OF RUDOLPH HESS. Rudolph Hess was Adolph Hitler’s trusted right hand and one of the top Nazis in the German Reich. This day at the height of Nazis power Hess commandeered a Messerschmidt fighter and flew alone to England. He was arrested and he claimed to have a secret mission to try and reach Churchill and negotiate peace. Hitler declared Hess had gone mad and allied leaders refused to meet with him. After the war Hess was sentenced to life in prison at Spandau. To eyewitnesses at the Nuremberg trial he did indeed appear deranged. Historians have always speculated what the secret message Hess was carrying from Hitler to Churchill. In 1991 on the 50th anniversary historians expected the secret files to at last be declassified, but the British government put them under a new top secret seal for another 100 years.

1963- On the advice of George Harrison and Little Richard, Decca Records signed a new teen band called the Rolling Stones to a recording contract.

1994- Nelson Mandela inaugurated as first black president of South Africa.

1994- Former children’s party clown and serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Police found 28 children buried around his house. His last words: "Kiss My Ass!"

1996- DEADLIEST DAY ON MOUNT EVEREST- One dozen mountain climbers with their veteran guides and Sherpas are caught on the summit by a hurricane-like blizzard. Pinned down by 100 mile an hour winds and a wind chill of one hundred degrees below zero. They soon run out of oxygen 29,800 feet above sea level. Eight die, two blindly walked off the South Escarpment and plunged 7,000 feet. Two had to have limbs amputated from frostbite. The groups leader Rob Hall called his base camp on his cellular phone who connected him with his pregnant wife in New Zealand so he could say goodbye before dying. The climbers were doctors, lawyers and executives who paid $65,000 apiece not counting airfare and Tibetan permits. Mount Everest would claim 11 more lives that spring and seven in 1997 yet a waiting list remains of hundreds of people wanting to climb to the top of the world.
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Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who were the parents of Robin the Boy Wonder?

Answer: They were an acrobat troupe, the Flying Graysons. After mother and father were both murdered by gangsters as a warning to their circus owner to pay protection money, orphaned son Dick Grayson moved in with Bruce Wayne, aka Batman.

We were shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Robert Nudelman. He was only 52 and died suddenly when visiting his elderly father in Tuscon.

Robert Nudelman in the green shirt on the far right facing the others.

Over the years I've spent a lot of my spare time working with a number of non-profit organizations to benefit the film and animation community. I feel it's important to give back to the community that has taken me in and counted me one of them. I noticed that in each non-profit organization, while most of us donate what little time we can, there always seems to be one or two individuals who work tirelessly with scant regard for their own interests. These are the foot soldiers, the boots on the ground. These people are always there when you arrive at an event, and can always be counted upon to be the last to turn out the light after sweeping up.

Robert Nudelman was such a person for the organization Hollywood Heritage. An archivist and historian, his passion was to stop or at least slow down the despoiling of Old Hollywood by developers. He was an integral part of Hollywood Heritage and the LA Conservancy, organizations dedicated to preserving what is left of the original buildings that Cecil B. DeMille, Marlene Dietrich and William Powell would have recognized.

I got to know Robert well through HH meetings, parties at the Wattles Mansion, and when we did the Afternoon of Remembrance annual service for the Animation community. Robert was always the one clearing away chairs, setting up microphones, adjusting lights and later locking up. His knowledge of Hollywood history was encyclopedic. For many years he was involved with a project with actress Debbie Reynolds to catalog her huge collection of film memorabilia.

But more than that, Robert was an aggressive champion against encroaching development. He would regularly go downtown to attend longwinded sessions of the L.A. City Council,the Parks Commission, the LA Landmarks Commission and the City Planning Commission. Small wonder several testimonials today are coming from LA City Council Members like Eric Garcetti. He would come back with word of the organization filing suit to save one building, get landmark status for another. He would describe the step by step legal gyrations he witnessed in detail so intricate, he could have James Ellroy shouting "enough already!"

It pained him whenever we lost one, like when the original Brown Derby was demolished. I recall he was furious when Frank Lloyd Wrights' beautiful Bandshell for the Hollywood Bowl was bulldozed in the middle of the night. "Sure they say the new one will have better acoustics and you won't notice the difference" he scowled. " But the fact is, that is NOT the band shell Frank Lloyd Wright built, that Gershwin, Paderewski and Duke Ellington played in! Thats been destroyed forever" He vowed to never go back again. He was even unafraid to go up against the Kennedy Family when they supported the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Bobby Kennedy was shot, to be made into a new neighborhood high school.

That was Robert. Every structure was a battle won or lost. Robert once estimated Hollywood lost a third of it's old structures just in his lifetime. " Tourists who come from Germany or China aren't coming to look at another Starbucks or GAP!"

Robert Nudelman told me he once got to interview Hitler's filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl shortly before she died at age 101. He asked her about her infamous Hollywood tour in 1938, when the only filmmaker who didn't boycott her was Walt Disney. She told him that the reason Walt Disney wanted to meet her was not about politics, but that he was still annoyed that his film Snow White lost out to her Olympia at the Venice Film Festival. Walt wanted to see it, to know why.

He smiled his little sardonic smile when he described how Leni Reifenstahl autographed a glossy B/W photo to him: " To Robert Nudelman, My Favorite Jew."

ADDENDUM: Valerie Yaros of SAG told me she heard that story this way: Leni inscribed the photo "To my Jewish Friend" and as Robert relayed the rest to me: "I told her: 'Well, only half the time.' And she said "You are only my friend half the time"? "And I said, 'No -- I'm only half Jewish.'

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Robert and the people of Hollywood Heritage and the LA Conservancy, more of the public now takes seriously the precious antique nature of central Hollywood, and developers think twice before reaching for that bulldozer. A great international city should have not only modern skyscrapers, but a legacy. The idea of Hollywood is not owned by a few real estate developers, city officials, and fast food salesmen. Hollywood is an idea that belongs to the world. And it is our duty to keep it and preserve it for the world.

When the Kodak Center was built on Hollywood and Highland where the Academy Awards are now held, Robert and his friends were looking over their shoulders to make sure the developers kept their promise to restore Graumann's Chinese Theatre and courtyard to it's original 1927 beauty, getting rid of an ugly aluminium box office and marquee added in the 1950s. When the Disney Company bought the old El Capitan Theater, they first wanted to turn it into a 16 screen multiplex. But Robert and the Conservancy convinced them it would be better to go the other way and restore this old 1927 movie palace where Citizen Kane premiered and the first meetings of the Screen Actors Guild were held. Disney caught the restoration-bug and later restored Manhattan's New Amsterdam Theater,where the original Ziegfeld Follies were performed.



Robert, I can't believe you are gone. There were to be some conferences on the Golden Age Movie Moguls on Memorial Day at the Huntington, I fully expected to meet you there and compare notes on Richard Schickel and Neil Gabler.

Adieu, My Friend. You are now stardust, but your work remains- The restored El Capitan Theater, The Restored Graumann's Chinese, The Restored Pig & Whistle Restaurant, The Max Factor Building, the Cinerama Dome, The Restored Egyptian Theater, the landmarked 3400 Cahuenga aka the Hanna & Barbera Building. The Palladium Theater where Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey brought Swing to the West Coast. The Restored Hollywood and Vine. The restored Ravenswood Apartments where Mae West lived.

Johnny Grant may have been the honorary Mayor of Hollywood, but you were it's greatest citizen. Because of you, your unknown and unheralded efforts, People from around the world can still visit, admire and click their cameras at the stately old landmarks of Hollywood.

There is more about Robert on the Hollywood Heritage website on my links page, and here is a link to his LA Times obituary.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nudelman9-2008may09,0,6704234.story?track=rss
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Quiz: Who were the parents of Robin the Boy Wonder?

Yesterday’s Question: What does the name Mahdi mean?
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History for 5/9/2008
Birthdays: John Brown, James Barrie the creator of Peter Pan, Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Glenda Jackson, Billy Joel, Candice Bergen, Mike Wallace is 90, Pancho Gonzales, James L. Brooks, Albert Finney is 72
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To the ancient Romans this was the Lemuria, the Festival of Death . Like the ancient Greek Anthesterion in February the Lemuria was a deal made with the Underworld that the dearly departed were allowed to visit the surface world and you should leave your door open and leave out food for them. This way they won't haunt you and you'll have good luck all year.
At sunset tomorrow the head of the house (Pater Familias) walks through the house hitting a little bronze gong, he throws a handful of black beans over his shoulder and chants 'With These Beans I Redeem Myself and My Family. O Shades of My Ancestors Depart ! Lemuria has Ended!'

1754- THE FIRST NEWSPAPER CARTOON- Ben Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette prints a drawing of a segmented snake with each piece named for a colony with the inscription: Join or Die. ( Okay, it's not Calvin and Hobbs but it's a start).

1785 - British inventor Joseph Bramah patents the beer-pump handle. So pull us a dram for a pint of pure.-i.e. I’d like a glass of Guinness Stout, please.

1887- Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show did it’s first performance in Europe. In London the English public thrilled to displays of trick riding, wild red Indians, cowboys and little Annie Oakley the trickshooter.

1927- Commander Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett fly over the North Pole in a Fokker monoplane called the Josephine Ford. He beats by two days famed Norwegian explorer Roald Ammundsen who flew over the Pole in a dirigible built by Mussolini. Remember Lindbergh hadn’t flown across the Atlantic yet and it was ten years before the Hindenberg disaster, so a dirigible was considered much safer than an aeroplane. Commander Byrd won the Medal of Honor and became a household name. A modern biography based on his diary now contends he really didn’t go over the Pole as he claimed but turned back 150 miles short. He was too drunk to tell anyway. Although a former World War One pilot by now he had grown terrified of flying.

1932 – London’s Piccadilly Circus first lit by electricity.

1935- The First Belch heard on nationwide radio. Melvin Purvis (the FBI man who killed John Dillinger) was doing an ad for Fleischmann’s Yeast when he committed the offense,dubbed “The Burp Heard Round the World”.

1937- ACTOR’S SHOWDOWN WITH L.B.MAYER- In a dramatic confrontation the heads of the Screen Actor’s Guild Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone go to MGM boss Louis B. Mayer’s beach house during a Sunday garden party. While IATSE-Capone mob gangster Willie Bioff stood by to give Mayer moral support, Montgomery told Mayer he had a 96% strike vote from the actors, so if Mayer didn’t recognize SAG as the sole bargaining agent for actors they would paralyze Hollywood monday morning!
Mayer considered, then gave in. Bioff got from the actors a deal that the IA would back off if the actors would withdraw their support from a rival union to IATSE’s organizing the behind the scene’s technical artists. That night 5600 actors and friends celebrated at Hollywood Legion Stadium. Next morning 200 waited in line to get their SAG cards including Garbo and Jean Harlow.

1937- Burne Hogarth began drawing the Tarzan comic strip. Hal Foster had been in contract negotiations with the syndicate over money and the right to his originals. He had created Prince Valiant as a bargaining chip when the syndicate called his bluff by giving the Tarzan job to Hogarth. Foster went on to greater glory with Valiant.

1955- HAPPY BIRTHDAY KERMIT THE FROG! Washington D.C. station puts on a young Univ of Maryland grad named Jim Henson as filler before the TODAY Show. He antics with his green frog called Kermit, fashioned from fabric from one of his mothers old green coats. The Muppets are born.

1960- Dr. Gregory Pincus introduced the Birth Control Pill Enovid-10, aka The Pill.

1961- John F. Kennedy's newly appointed head of the FCC, Newton Minow, did his first major address to a luncheon of top television executives. In his speech he blasted them for TV’s mindless content and violence and called television: " A Vast Wasteland."
What makes it historic is it's the first time anybody had noticed just how lousy TV is and how badly we are all addicted to it. In the show Gilligan’s Island, the boat they were on was nicknamed the Minnow for Newton Minow.

1970- THE MORATORIUM DAY- Largest of the nationwide youth protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam and Cambodia. President Nixon was obsessed by the protests. He had a bunker command post built under the White House where video monitors observed the “long haired peaceniks” outside. Retired CIA director Bill Gates confessed in his memoirs that as a young operative he took the day off to go protest as well as did a lot of other CIA agents. In Chicago young student and future comic John Belushi was dragged off by friends after being struck in the chest with a fired tear gas shell.

1995-Happy Birthday Ebola! The Center of Disease Control published findings on a new deadly strain of virus appearing near Kinshasha Zaire and called it the Ebola Virus.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The largest independent militia in Iraq today is the Shiite force called the Mahdi Army. In 1881 British Gen. Gordon fought a Sudanese leader called the Mahdi. What does the name Mahdi mean?

Answer: In Sunni and Shiite Moslem theology the 12 Imam is supposed to be the Mahdi, the Expected one, The Ultimate Savior of Mankind as in the Hebrew Mossiach, or Christ, Messiah.

Congratulations to fellow animator Seth McFarlane, he of Family Guy and American Dad, for making a $100 Million dollar deal with Fox. As one creative to another, I salute any one of us who can start with a pencil and end up making $100 Million bucks!

I feel like the Warner Bros fish who puts a gun to his temple and says" Now, I've seen everything!" BLAM!

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Quiz: The largest independent militia in Iraq today is the Shiite force called the Mahdi Army. In 1885, British Gen. Gordon fought a Sundanese leader called the Mahdi. What does the name Mahdi mean?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Why does the term quarantine mean isolating people with a contagious disease? If someone has Typhus, you give them 25 cents?
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History for 5/8/2008
Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakhunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert is 43, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius is 69, Enrique Inglesias is 32, Don Rickles is 82

1587- The Roanoke Colony settlers leave England for Virginia (named by Sir Walter Raleigh for Queen Elizabeth, "the Virgin Queen"). When a supply ship reached their colony in 1590 the houses were intact but the colonists had all disappeared, leaving no remains or signs of violence, but only a cryptic message CROTOAN carved on a tree.

1824- Ludwig Von Beethoven performed his Ninth (Choral) Symphony and Missa Solemnis in concert for the first time. Even though he was stone deaf he was still in demand as a conductor. The orchestra trained themselves to ignore the Maestro's baton waving and follow the lead of the concert-master ( first violinist ). It was said when they finished and the audience was cheering poor Beethoven was still flapping his arms about and moaning the melody, unaware of the sound of his own voice.

1878- David Hughes invents the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.

1910-Mazeltov! Russian-Jewish immigrant glove salesman Schmuel Gelpfisch married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Gelpfisch later changed his name to Goldfish, then Goldwyn. He and his father in law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They moved to Hollywood and in 1915 they merged with Paramount Pictures and Goldwyn merged into Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. Both became top Hollywood producers.

1933- When the Rockefellers were building their huge office complex, Rockefeller Center, in New York City they decided to get one of the greatest living Mexican painters, Diego Rivera, to design the murals for the interior of the atrium " Man at the Crossroads ". This despite the fact that Rivera was well known as a radical communist. Soon Nelson Rockefeller noticed Rivera was painting in the center of the mural a huge heroic portrait of Lenin stepping on John D. Rockefeller’s face! Over Rivera’s protests Rockefeller ordered the mural painted over and no record of its existence ever kept. But on the night before the painting was to be destroyed Swiss art student Lucienne Bloch slipped a camera into her shirt. While Frida Kahlo distracted the guards she took the only photos of the mural for posterity.

As a young art student I heard about the Lenin mural, but scoured Rockefeller Center in vain trying to find it.

1943-Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy !

1954-DIEN BIEN PHU- The Communist Viet Minh guerrillas decisively defeat the French in Indochina. The French strategy was to place a forward base in the heart of the guerrilla infested jungle to lure the Vietnamese into the open and defeat them. Instead they got a modern version of the Little Big Horn with the French Legionairies going down under endless waves of attacking Vietnamese. The guerrilla forces had carried large howitzers in small pieces up mountaintops and assembled them to rain shells down on the French.

1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.

1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When she appeared in the scene the thousands of Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!" but instead they shouted "Liz! Liz!"

1978-In court, postman David Berkowitz, confessed to being "Son-of-Sam" or the "44 caliber killer", the serial killer who terrorized New York City by shooting to death teenage couples at random and toying with letters to journalist Pete Hamill. Berkowitz said he received his orders to shoot people from his neighbor's dog "Sam". His reign of terror had the normally blase' city so upset that in a scene out of Fritz Lang’s "M", godfather John Gotti pledged the services of the Mafia to catch the maniac. Police finally caught Berkowitz when they found his Volkswagen Beetle illegally parked and noticed the infamous 44 handgun sticking out of a paper bag on the front seat. In Attica prison, Berkowitz made friends with Mark David Chapman, the murderer of John Lennon.

1991- President Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned waitress Paula Jones at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. With her legal bills financed by the Clinton-hating Neo-Cons, her case went as far as a Supreme Court. They decided to allow her to sue a President while in office. Clinton’s attorney didn’t help things with statements like :" Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and who knows who you’ll turn up". She got a lot of publicity, an $850,000 settlement and a nude spread in Penthouse Magazine.

1996- South Africa adopted its first post-apartheid constitution.

1998- The impotence drug Viagra gains national prominence when retired senator and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole confessed on the Larry King talk show that he participated in the drugs test trials and the had "thoroughly enjoyed himself."
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why does the term quarantine mean isolating people with a contagious disease? If someone has Typhus, you give them 25 cents?

Answer: Quarantine comes from the French number 40- Quarante. Medieval justice decreed that when plague broke out in a town, the way to keep it from spreading was to draw a line around it and not let anyone in or out for 40 days. Others say it was invented in Venice- quaranti giorni, to isolate for 40 days a plague ship coming into harbor.