Quiz: Who said:” There’s a method to his madness..”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What nation was St. Nicholas originally from?
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History for 12/22/2008
Birthdays: Josef Stalin- real name Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo is 72, Diane Sawyer, Steve Carlton, Steve Garvey, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 46

HAPPY HANUKKAH ! - the Hebrew Festival of Lights commemorating the victories in 164 b.c.e. of the priest-general Judas Maccabeus (Maccabeus means the Hammer) against the Syrian Greeks when the re-lit lamp in the purified Temple of Solomon burned for nine days on one day’s oil . Hanukkah of Channaukah means Rededication. The ancient state of Israel had been conquered by Babylon then Persia and finally by Alexander the Great.

After Alexander's death his Greek generals divided up his empire and Israel found itself on the border between the Kingdom of Seleucus and Ptolomey's Egypt. This power struggle enabled the Jewish state to reassert it's independence by playing one side against the other, until the Romans kicked everyone's butt. The Greek descendant of Seleucus, Antiochus IV Theos Epiphanes- “God Made Manifest” thought this one-God stuff weird and Jews should be praying to Hercules and Apollo like every other self respecting ancient citizen. He plundered the Temple of Solomon for gold and even tried to command Jews to eat pork on pain of death. The Jews reasserted their faith with such vigor that even when they fell under Roman rule Julius Caesar left specific instructions that Jewish customs and Sabbath be protected. So spin a dradle, light the candle, have some Hanukkah Gelt and enjoy!

Happy Winter Solstice! The shortest day of the year. Ancient Egyptians made offering to the god Horus to return from the Land of the Dead. Zoroastrians light fires on their roofs to Ahura Mazda. Norse Vikings brew an extra strong beer and decorate their mead halls with evergreen garlands.

1742-HALLELUIAH! HALLELUIAH!- George Fredrich Handel's oratorio "the Messiah" debuted in Dublin. Legend says he completed the work in only three weeks. When Messiah was played in London King George II was so moved by the "Halleluiah Chorus" that he rose to his feet. Of course then everyone else immediately had to also, and to this day the tradition is to stand during it's singing. Critics of the king, said the only reason he stood up was the silly old duffer thought they were playing the national anthem.

1808-DA-DA-DA- DUMMMMM…..Beethoven premiered his 5th Symphony.

1849-Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky had been a political radical. On this day the Czar's secret police the Ohkrana broke his spirit by a cruel ruse. They arrested him for treason. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was given a last meal, received Last Rites from a priest, blindfolded and stood before a firing squad. But before the guns would go off the squad stopped and his sentence was commuted. He was sent instead to Siberia for four years. This naturally had an adverse effect on his sensitive nature and he spent his later years a raving conservative.

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia today telegraphed Lincoln :”I present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah”. Sherman spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

1898-THE DREYFUS CASE- Early in 1898 the French Army High Command discovered they had a spy on their staff leaking secrets to Germany. The man was a Colonel Count Esterhazy an aristocrat pretty high up in the chain of command. The Generals worried that news of the scandal would humiliate and weaken the army's prestige. So they looked for a lower ranked scapegoat to pin Esterhazy's crimes on. They chose a Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was working class and Jewish. They had Dreyfus courtmartialed for espionage and treason and exiled to Devil's Island. As his sword and medals were being publicly stripped from him he shouted out loud "Citizens of France ! I am Innocent !!"


But Dreyfus's family refused to give up hope and brought in the famous author activist Emile Zola, who uncovered the plot in the news article "J'Accuse !"I Accuse. The scandal tore the French military and public opinion apart. Esterhazy fled to Germany and one top general shot himself. In 1906 Dreyfus was cleared of all charges and when the Great War came General Dreyfus was entrusted with the defense of Paris. In 1998 on the hundredth anniversary of the Dreyfus Case everyone was still arguing over the interpretation of events.

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car crash in L.A..

1941-Now that America was officially at war with the Axis, Prime Minister Winston Churchill slips across U-Boat infested waters to spend a month at the White House planning strategy with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A White House butler described;" Mr. Churchill awoke to a tumbler of sherry. At noon scotch and sodas, champagne at dinner finished off with 90 year old brandy then light a cigar and begin the day's work- from 9:00 PM- 2:00 AM.

Churchill liked to dictate memos from his bath. When Roosevelt was told he could enter the room he was embarrassed and excused himself to leave. Churchill stood up from the tub wearing nothing but soapsuds and the cigar in his teeth and declared: "THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN HAS NOTHING TO HIDE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES !" When a friend later asked FDR what was Churchill like, the President mused: "He's pink...all over."

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen.McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!' McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "How do you do, General Nuts".

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

1964- In Chicago Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges, for using the F-bomb in his jokes. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed but convicted him anyway. Bruce complained about the policeman’s delivery. One fan arrested that night as well was future comic George Carlin. Since Lenny Bruce, no comedian has ever been arrested for telling jokes.

2001- THE SHOE BOMBER. Would-be terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Rome to Orlando by trying to ignite a substance concealed in his sneakers. He was stopped and beaten silly by his fellow travelers, including a 6’8 pro basketball player returning home from the Italian leagues. He’s why we all have to take our shoes off in airports now.
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Yesterday’s Question: What nation was St. Nicholas originally from?

ANSWER: Haogious Nikolaos of Bari, was a Christian Bishop of Lydia, now modern Turkey. Scholars can’t even agree if he ever lived, but people celebrated the goodness of St. Nicholas since the late 300s.

Attention all old H&B, Ruby Spears and other type Animation folks!

Pat and I heard today that an old piece of LA Animation history is closing.



World Art Supplies, the big art supply store across the street from the old Hanna Barbera Building in the Cahuenga Pass is calling it quits after forty years.

I've been shopping there for supplies since I first hit town in 1977. Many of us probably bought our first Cel Vinyl, peg bars and cels from World Art Supplies.

Now the original owners want to retire, and with computers eroding interest in markers, paper and rubber cement, I guess they can't see handing it off to anyone. So they tell me the doors are closing New Years Eve, and until then everything is 50% off. Books are 40% off.

Steve Worth tells me that the building was the original site of the 50's animation studio RAY PATIN PRODUCTIONS. The second floor where the Henry the custom framer was, was Ray Patin's office.

We drove over today and talked with the owners about the days when H&B was packed with artists, with Ron Campbell Studios and Filmfair to their left, Ruby Spears and Richard Williams Hollywood to their right, and the H&B annex a few doors down. They said they remembered Ted Turner dropping in the day he bought H&B.

I bought a final pack of 12fld punched paper and some DESIGN markers. Stuff is going, but you can get a great deal on portfolios, frames and Winsor Newton Paints .

And you can say Goodbye to an old friend.


World Art Supplies Open 7 days
3425 Cahuenga Blvd W
Los Angeles, CA 90068
(323) 851-1350

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Quiz: What nation was St. Nicholas originally from?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who dubbed Laurel & Hardy’s voices into Spanish for their film’s foreign release?
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history for 12/21/2008
Birthdays: Benjamin Disraeli, Josh Gibson- the Home Run King of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Pat Weaver-TV exec who created the Today Show and father of Sigourney Weaver, Frank Zappa, Jane Fonda is 70, Paul Winchell, Keifer Sutherland is 42, Samuel L. Jackson is 61, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner, Chris Evert, Joe Paterno, Phil Roman, Ray Romano is 50, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 58, Jane Kascmareck.

1375- The writer Boccaccio died, not of the plague, and not during a party like in his book the Decameron.

1376- END OF THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY- After a lot of lobbying from St. Catherine of Siena and Saint Brigid of Sweden, Pope Gregory XI moved the Vatican back to Rome from Avignon. Gregory mysteriously died shortly after he arrived. Roman mobs, angry at the poverty caused by the absence of the Holy See, attacked the mostly French cardinals selecting the next pope. They crowded around their building shouting: "Death or an Italian Pope!' and threw javelins at the ceiling knowing the points would pop out of the floor and prick their feet. The terrified cardinals dragged any old bishop out of the Vatican library, made him an Archbishop, then Cardinal, then Pope, then ran for the hills. The librarian became Pope Urban VIII, the "Beast of Naples".

Gee, They never told me this stuff in Catholic School...

1776-American diplomats Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane arrive in Paris to negotiate an alliance and money for the rebellious colonies with France, Holland and Spain. Their secretary, William Bancroft, was a British spy.

1863- Congress created the Medal of Honor, at first only for Navy personnel for gallantry, but later extended to all branches of the military.

1866- THE FETTERMAN MASSACRE- Foreshadowing by ten years what Custer would get, the Sioux led by a young warrior named Crazy Horse surrounds an army detachment and wipes them out. The commander of Fort Phil Kearny, Colonel Carrington sent out the troop to drive away some hostiles molesting a woodcutting detail. It turned out to be an elaborate trap planned by Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. It was said Carrington was such an aristocrat "the way he would prefer to deal with the Sioux would be to socially ostracize them". Now as his men went down under a hail of arrows Carrington could hear the firing in the distance but didn't think they needed any help. Captain Fetterman and his second in command Brown were among the last survivors. Fetterman had said the threat of the hostiles was overrated and "With 80 men I could ride through the entire Sioux Nation !" Brown had gone against orders on the mission because he promised his family back east a real Indian scalp for Christmas. Now surrounded and not wishing to be tortured by the Indians they held their revolvers to each other's temples and on the count of three...

1913-THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE-The first Crossword Puzzle appeared in the New York World.

1914- The premiere of the first feature length film comedy- Tilly’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and young Charlie Chaplin.

1919-THE PALMER RAIDS- THE RED SCARE- American businessmen watched the growing Communist regime in Russia with fear. Soviet groups were also moving to take over Germany, Hungary and Austria." Bolshevism is worse than war.”-Herbert Hoover
Could such things happen in the Good Old US of A ? Under emergency wartime sedition legislation (even though World War One had been over for a year) U.S. marshals raids newspaper and union offices and deports 249 Russian immigrants including radical women's rights advocate Emma Goldman. The raids were organized by a young executive in the treasury dept. named J. Edgar Hoover.

1925- Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin premiered in Moscow. The films pioneering use of montage and allegorical imagery intercut inspired a generation of filmmakers.

1933- Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year old Shirley Temple to a seven year contract.

1937-Walt Disney's " Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" premiered. The first feature length American cartoon, it becomes the box office champ of 1938-earning 4 times more than any other film that year.

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner and founder of the Three Stooges, was killed in a bar fight. One legend has it that actor Wallace Beery and some gangsters did the fatal pounding. Another rumor is one of the gangsters was young Albert Cubby Broccoli, who forty years later would produce the Superman movies and win an Irving Thalberg Award at the1982 Oscars. The Three Stooges do much better without him.

1939- In the year that saw them signing a non aggression pact, Adolf Hitler in Berlin sent Holiday Greetings to his buddy Marshal Josef Stalin in Moscow. Merry Christmas you Zionist-Bolshevik UnterMenschen! Thank you and same to you, you Fascist Maggot Tool of International Capitalism!

1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) died of a heart attack at Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham's house. She had just left the house to buy him some candy.
His last words were 'Hershey bars will be fine..."

1953- Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the Atomic Bomb, is accused of being a Communist. When he was asked in 1940 to head the Manhattan Project the government knew he was a Berkeley eccentric who had joined every leftist group in town but he was brilliant. This act is now viewed more as the government revenge for his flat refusal to help Edmund Teller in developing the Hydrogen Bomb.

1969- Famed football coach Vince Lombardi coached his last game- Dallas beat Washington 20-10.

1971- Richard William's animated TV special "A Christmas Carol"

1972- 14 members of an Uruguayan rugby team were found alive on an Andes mountain peak after their plane crashed. They survived the harsh conditions by turning cannibal and eating the dead. Umm..Goalie Empanadas!

1975- International terrorist Carlos the Jackal attacked an OPEC oil meeting in Vienna and took 11 ministers hostage. He escaped to Algeria and wasn’t finally caught until 1994 while trying to get an operation on his testicle.

1978- Chicago police investigating the disappearance of a 15 year old boy searched the home of contractor John Wayne Gacy. They found the remains of 33 boys in the crawl space. Gacy in his spare time did volunteer work as a clown entertaining sick children.

1989- PanAm 747 jumbo jet Flight 103 from London to New York explodes over Lockerbie Scotland killing most of the passengers. The bomb was planted in Munich by Libyan agents.

1989- The Romanian army joined the people protesting in the streets and overthrew the hated Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu. While most of the nation starved in a stagnant economy, Cercescu lived in luxury and his son drove sports cars and lost fortunes at roulette tables in Monte Carlo. Little Cercescu kept a “raping room” for women who caught his fancy. As the Communist regimes of Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany collapsed, Romanians realized their time had come and they poured out into the streets.

1989- Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 official Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled- beakon.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who dubbed Laurel & Hardy’s voices into Spanish for their film’s foreign release?

Answer: They did it themselves, as they did for the French and German versions. For each language they learned their lines phonetically, and redid them. Friends who grew up in those countries seeing them, said they were even funnier because the pronunciation was so deliberately bad.

Quiz: Who dubbed Laurel & Hardy’s voices into Spanish for their film’s foreign release?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Speaking of confessed Wall St crook Bernie Madoff, who and what is a Ponzi Scheme?
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History for 12/20/2007
Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey, , George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Aguitter, Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, Harvey Firestone, John Spencer, Jonah Hill is 25, Elsie De Wolfe*,

*Manahattan socialite and activist Elsie De Wolfe (Born 1860) described herself as the first interior decorator. When she was in Greece and saw the Acropolis she exclaimed; "It's Beige! My Color!"

69AD- Roman General Vespasian occupied Rome with his legions, declared himself emperor and dispatched his predecessor. Aulus Vitellius General of the Rhine was executed, leaving behind little but a recipe for 'chicken vitello'. New emperor Vespasian is the final winner in a long year of civil war that started with Nero committing suicide, then Sevius Galba, Otho,and Vitellius all in one year took the throne and were knocked off. The Romans called A.D. 69, the "Long Year". Vespasian was not an aristocrat like Casear but a humble man who rose up through the ranks. He was once caught sleeping during one of Nero’s harp recitals.

1192- Richard the Lionhearted was returning from the Crusades when he was imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria. Leopold blamed Richard for the death of his relative Conrad of Monferrat in Palestine. The King of France Phillip II and Richard’s own brother John send large bribes to the German Emperor Henry to keep Richard locked up. Richard spent the time in prison writing a beautiful ballad” I am master of Gascony, Brittany, Poitoux: So how come no one can get me outta here?” I’m paraphrasing a bit.

1780- Britain declared war on Holland over the Dutch covertly aiding the Americans in their revolution.

1790- The first successful U.S. cotton mill opens in Pawtucket RI, it’s inventor Samuel Slater had memorized British technology for use in America. He also thought child labor would be most useful in his factories.

1811- Napoleon made another attempt to go hunting in the Forest of Boulogne. Even though they were both great generals, Napoleon and Wellington were terrible hunters and bad shots. While hunting, Napoleon shot out the eye of one of his generals by mistake.Wellington constantly shot barn doors and stable boys by accident.

1860- to the sound of cannon and church bells the first Southern State, South Carolina, votes to secede from the Union. Until the Confederacy formed South Carolina calls itself "the Palmetto Republic". Judge Pettigru, who was against this drastic move, said:" South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."
In Washington D.C. Northerners at first reacted with apathy. One Washington department store advertised: THE UNION IS DISSOLVING BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T STILL FIND SAVINGS WHEN YOU SHOP FOR CHRISTMAS AT LEHMANS!

1891-BASKETBALL INVENTED. Minister and former Canadian rugby player James Naismith worried how his students could do team sports in the harsh New England winters. So he nailed up two peach baskets on opposite ends of a gymnasium at a YMCA in Springfield Mass. and invented the game of basketball. He originally asked for square boxes but the man he sent out mistook his instructions and brought round peach baskets instead. The NBA regulation height of the baskets of ten feet was determined by the gym in Springfield having a second floor running track and two nails were conveniently waiting at this height. Naismith played himself frequently and married one of the first female players, named Aemelia.

1892- Alexander Brown and George Stillman of Syracuse New York invented inflatable pneumatic automobile tires, replacing wooden wagon wheels.

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, this was the day Phineas Fogg completed his trip.

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Downes became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

1937- Nazis Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolph Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey ‘vermin’ but privately, he enjoyed his animated antics.

1942- Japanese planes bombed Calcutta, India.

1943- Stalin changed the national anthem of Russia from the revolutionary Internationale to the Hymn of the Soviet Union. (The song Sean Connery and his crew sang in the film “The Hunt for Red October.”)

1945- After the defeat of Japan in World War Two Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation. This day France said what it thought of this, by heavily cracking down on protesters in Hanoi and Saigon. This began an eight year war against the French, to be followed by a civil war and another 8 year war against the Americans.

1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot invisible rabbit.

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

1962- The Osmonds premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

1957- Elvis Presley received his draft notice. G.I. Blues!

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges....... you see why fiction pales next to this stuff.... A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so patent medicines he was on while he met Nixon.



1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blames his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fires him. This sets off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby throws her support against the mogul Zanuck is overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

1977- Mayor Richard Daley Sr, the Boss of Chicago for twenty years, died of a heart attack.

1989- Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invades Panama to oust General Manuel Noriega, for being a dictator, drug pusher and not returning the C.I.A.'s washroom keys. When the general, known to Panamanian citizens as “Pineapple-face” took sanctuary in the Vatican Embassy, the U.S. army surrounded the building and drove him out by playing Jimi Hendrix and Motown through loudspeakers 24 hours a day. Hmm, Tony Orlando & Dawn would drive me out.
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Yesterday’s question: who and what is a Ponzi Scheme?

ANSWER: There were investment frauds before, but Charles Ponzi ‘s fraud was so spectacular it acquired his name. Italian Ponzi came to America after defrauding a bank in Montreal Canada. In 1920 he convinced Wall St investors that his investment corp Securities Exchange, could give them 50% profit on their investments in 6 months. But he never invested any of the money he accumulated, but merely used it to sucker other investors by releasing little dividends back, in dribs and drabs. He was taking in $250,000 a day. But it soon all collapsed and he went to jail.

He was deported to Italy where he became a finance minister for Mussolini. Embezzling money from him, he escaped to Brazil and died in Rio de Janiero in 1949.

Quiz: Since The Bernie Madoff scandal has made it relevant recently, I’ll bring back a question I once asked. Who and what is a Ponzi Scheme?

Yesterday’s QUIZ answered below: Which TV Christmas Special was first? A)A Charlie Brown Christmas, B) Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, C) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, D) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
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History for 12/19/2008
Birthdays: King Phillip V of Spain (1683), Edwin Stanton, Thomas 'Tip' O'Neil, Edith Piaf, Cicely Tyson, Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Urich, Jennifer Beals, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Darryl Hannah, Alyssa Milano, Bronwen Barry, Jake Gyllenhaal

1154- Coronation of King Henry II of England. He was the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou and Empress Matilda, the daughter of William the Conqueror. His coronation settled a period of dynastic civil wars in England between the Conqueror’s children known as the 'Wars of Stephen and Matilda". Henry and his sons Richard Lionheart and John Lackland are also called the Angevin dynasty, because of the part of France (Anjou) their family came from and also because medieval scholars like to overcomplicate things.

1686- According to Daniel Defoe, this was the day Robinson Crusoe was rescued from his deserted island.

1732- The Pennsylvania Gazette announced the publication of a new enterprise by Dr. Benjamin Franklin writing under the penname Richard Saunders. The work was Poor Richard’s Almanac, an international best seller that made Franklin famous.

1783- William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister of Great Britain at only 24 years old." A sight to make the Nations stare, A Kingdom trusted to a Schoolboy's care."

1914- Earl Hurd patented animation 'cels' (celluloids) and backgrounds. Before this cartoonists tried drawing the background settings over and over again hundreds of times or slashed the paper around the character and tried not to have it walk in front of anything. By the late 1990’s, most cels & cel paint had been replaced by digital imaging.

1918- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It Or Not" column in the New York Globe.

1926- The U.S. government passed a law that women authors can only legally copyright their works under their husband's names.

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts begin.

1941- THE FLYING TIGERS debut in the skies over China, surprising and shooting down 9 out of 10 in a Japanese bomber squadron flying from Hanoi. General Claire Chennault had come to China as an advisor to organize the Chinese Air Force and stayed on to coordinate U.S. efforts in Mainland China after Pearl Harbor. His men were all volunteer adventurers who flew their P-40's with the tiger teeth insignia against overwhelming odds. They were awarded a bounty of $500 for every Japanese plane downed. Eventually they were incorporated into the regular U.S. Air Force.
Chennault argued frequently with Washington, MacArthur and his army partner in China General 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell. Just before the final victory in 1945 Chennault was forcibly retired and resumed his post as advisor to Chiang Kai Shek. He was the U.S. general most times under hostile fire. He flew combat missions and personally had 60 kills, which made him an Ace. Yet Chennault was deliberately not invited to the Grand Surrender Ceremony on the Missouri in Sept ‘45.

1957- The musical ‘The Music Man’ starring Robert Preston first debuted. "Seventy Six Trom-bones in the Big Parade.."

1959- Confederate General Walter Williams, who claimed to be the last living veteran of the Civil War, died at age 117. The claim was later proved false, but it was a good story.

1971- Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ premiered based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. In America the film received an X Rating, more for sexual situations than violence. Kubrick later cut some naughty scenes to get the rating down to R. The sensation over the film caused so many incidents of urban violence that it was banned in England for three decades.

1974- The first personal computer went on sale. The Altair 8800, named for the planet in the 1955 sci-fi movie classic Forbidden Planet. The computer came in a kit that you had to build and it cost $397. The next year two kids at Harvard named Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a programming language for it called BASIC.



1997- MTV dropped airing the rap song Smack My Bitch Up, by Prodigy.

1998-IMPEACHMENT- The Republican dominated House of Representatives voted two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewsinsky. The vote was along strict party lines and most of the Democrats stormed out in protest afterwards. Despite the impeachment President "Slick Willy" Clinton was acquitted by trial in the Senate in February and Clinton completed his second term. To complete the circus-like atmosphere pornography publisher Larry Flynt announced he had proof that incoming Republican Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had had at least six affairs while a congressman including one of his staff and a lobbyist. Livingston resigned before his hand could touch the gavel.

2001- Peter Jackson’s film ‘The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring’ first opened.
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Yesterday’s QUIZ: Which TV Christmas Special was first? A)A Charlie Brown Christmas, B) Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, C) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, D) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.



Answer: B) UPA’s Magoo’s Christmas Carol, directed by Abe Levitow came out in 1962. Rudolph came out in 1964, Charlie Brown in 65 and Grinch in 66.

Today is the Tenth Anniversary of the premiere of DreamWorks Animation's first animated feature- The Prince of Egypt.



Just to demonstrate the diversity in the work flow in animation, the directors were-

Simon Wells- a linear descendant of H.G.Wells who was a key animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Brenda Chapman- Head of Story on the Lion King who is married to Kevin Lima (Enchanted)

Steve Hickner- Whom I worked with on HeMan, Fat Albert and at Disney, was co-director on A Bee Movie and an exec producer for Amblimation.

Music was done by Hans Zimmer (Lion King, Backdraft)and Stephen Schwartz (Wicked).

Among the crew were Mike Ploog-top cartoonist on Vampirella and other Warren Comics in the 60s, Bruce Zyck, Carter Goodrich, Darek Gogol, Paul Lasaine, Kathy Altieri, Lorenzo Martinez, and a slew of Europeans from Amblimation who came over like Kristof Serrand, Fabio Lignini, Rudolph Guenodon, Patrick Mate' and many more. Cairo native Disney artist Hani El Masri kept trying to get the color designers to pay attention to his own skin" This is what we (Egyptians) look like!"

Among the voice talent considered we auditioned Charlton Heston for Seti, Mel Brooks for Jethro, Patrick McGoohan, and Paul Newman- who turned down the script writing in read pencil all over it " I DON'T DO CARTOONS!" Hmm...what about Cars..?

I storyboarded a lot of the comedy scenes, that were mostly cut out of the movie. We wrestled with how much comedy to drama they could do in a Biblical story. I mentioned that when the Angel of Death passes-over and killed the First Born of Egypt, it might be a good spot to add a cameo of Caspar the Friendly Ghost. Nyuck, Nyuck!



There's an old adage that the more seriously a production takes itself, the more likely the cartoonists will do lots of gags to counter. We kept sticking goof drawings on the main Beat Board to lighten the pretense. So we had Moses hitting Ramses with a big Tex Avery mallet, giving him a hot-foot, and as one of the Plagues of Egypt, ordering a Pizza delivery he didn't want. One time the directors were showing Val Kilmer through the storyboards, when one of these gags turned up. I got in trouble.

It was an unusual process trying to do a film about a Bible Story. Every time there was a discrepancy about a part of the narrative, instead of reaching for the script, everyone whipped out King James Bibles, New Catholic Edition Old Testaments, Torahs and Korans. Steven Speilberg sent us his favorite Rabbi to give us Yeshiva Lessons! " Isn't the colors of Mose's cloak the Spectrum, that he is a prism stone of God's Light?" Effects artist Ester Barr joked:" When we're done, will I get a set of silver-plated Cross Pens?"

Anytime you put out a film with a religious theme, you are opening yourself up to an attack by someone who objects to your interpretation. Even Franco Zefirelli's detailed miniseries JESUS OF NAZARETH was savagely criticized in it's premiere. The studio was so concerned about religious blowback on POE, they were constantly consulting various Clergy- Sufis, Rabbis, Televangelists and other assorted Thumpers. When the film was done, they even gave a preview to the Vatican!( John Paul II was reputed to be a fan of Roger Rabbit). When it ran for the College of Cardinals, Dreamworkers there said their Eminences were " Speechless with Admiration". Which led one exec named Goldstein to joke:" Were they speechless because they liked the film, or that they never knew you could get that many Jews into one movie!"

Another exec was insistent that when we drowned Pharoah's Army in the Red Sea, we should not show that the horses of the charioteers had died. We argued, But it's a cartoon! No one will get upset! But nevertheless, there is shot of Ramses at the edge of the waters where you can see horses galloping out safely.

Despite all the precautions, P.O.E. still got hit with some flack from some quarters. One media preacher got in the news by saying of the film " It's THEIR version of the Moses story." And he over emphasized the BERG in Katzenberg and Speilberg's names. Well, uh... isn't it THEIR book, after all..? Oh well, ya can't please everybody.

The hope that Prince of Egypt would become a seasonal perenial like Cecil B. DeMille's TEN COMMANDMENTS(1956) never quite happened, but it was a great effort and a fun working experience. The film became the maiden shakedown cruise the crew needed to enable future hits like SHREK and KUNG FU PANDA to come.

My best wishes to all the veterans of the crew. Happy Anniversary!

Hmm...maybe if we gave Moses a big funny dog sidekick like Scooby-Doo..? Herro Roses!