Quiz: Another holiday question: Why reindeer? Why not eight tiny horses?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who decided the official theme for the US President should be the song:” Hail to the Chief”?
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history for 12/21/2007
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 69 , Paul Winchell, Keifer Sutherland is 41 ( I had him listed on Dec 18th, oops!) , Samuel L. Jackson is 59, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner-FloJo, Chris Evert, Joe Paterno, Phil Roman, Jane Kasczmaryk, Ray Romano is 49, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 57.

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 for the rebellious colonies with France, Holland and Spain. Their secretary, William Bancroft, was a British spy.

1909- The first Junior High School or Middle School set up in the US in Berkeley Cal.

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.

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner and founder of the Three Stooges, was killed in a barfight. The careers of the Three Stooges take off afterwards. 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 James Bond movies and win an Irving Thalberg Award at the 1982 Oscars.

1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) dropped dead 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 for a vein on his testicle.

1982- Thom Riley, one of the stars of the TV cop show ChiPS was busted for driving stoned on quaaludes.

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 decided the official theme for the US President should be the song:” Hail to the Chief”?

Answer: President James K. Polk (1795-1849) was such a runty little man that when he came into a White House party in progress, nobody noticed. So his wife Sara ordered the band to always play the 1810 song Hail to the Chief really loud whenever Polk entered a room. She got the idea from the former first lady Julia Tyler, who’s husband Pres. John Tyler was also often ignored. It remained a custom until made official in 1954.

Here is the obituary of Jack Zander in today's NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/arts/20zander.html?_r=1&oref=slogin



I was told by Jack's daughter, Jane Sussman, that Jack slipped away "peacefully and with dignity" on Monday. On Saturday Jan 26th at 4:00PM there will be a celebration of his life at Conent Hall in his home town of Pound Ridge NY. Jack's favorite Dixieland Band will be on hand to play.

For us on the West Coast the Animators Guild and ASIFA/Hollywood will host it's annual Afternoon of Remembrance at the Hollywood Studio Museum. This year the tentative date is March 1st. Jack Zander will be listed among the honorees.

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Today's Quiz: Who decided the official theme for the US President should be the song:” Hail to the Chief”?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Why are Poinsettias associated with Christmas?
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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, 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!"

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.

1688- William and Mary of Orange’s army occupied London.

1780- Britain declared war on Holland over the Dutch covertly aiding the Americans in their revolution. One of the causes mentioned in the declaration was the harboring of “ John Paul Jones, notorious pirate and Scotsman.” Gee, I know a lot of notorious Scotsmen myself.

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 and Wellington constantly shot barn doors and stable boys by accident. Napoleon kept the Royal shooting park at St. Cloud as a game preserve and a captain once saw him feeding snuff to the deer.

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.

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 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.”)

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 Osmond Borthers 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. Tony Orlando & Dawn or the Bay City Rollers would drive me out.

Yesterday’s question: Why are Poinsettias associated with Christmas?

ANSWER: Poinsettias are a flower that puts out a large bright red blossom always around Christmastime. They were introduced into the US from Mexico in 1829 by the U.S. ambassador, Jacob Poinsett. Its Aztec name was something like Cuetlaxochitl.

I've just heard from some friends that the NY Times is reporting the death of animator JACK ZANDER.


click to enlarge

There's a thorough obit of Jack on Mark Mayerson's blog http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com

I worked for Jack Zander, and he was a friend. Jack began at the Rohmer Grey Studio in 1930. He started at Leon Schlesinger Studio in 1933 on the day Friz Freleng threatened to take the entire staff out if Leon didn't pay them their back wages! He was one of the last surviving animators of the Hanna & Barbera's MGM team who animated on the great Tom & Jerry shorts. I recall Kevin Petrilak once flipped for me a Jack Zander scene of Jerry he xeroxed from the personal collection of rough animation Friz Freleng kept at his office in Depatie-Freleng. Jerry dancing about the prostrate Tom with a THE END sign. It was very good. Jack was also one of the first presidents of the Screen Cartoonists Guild,and he ran two of the most successful commercial animation studios on Madison Ave, Pelican and Zander's Animation Parlour.

When I got to work for him as a freelance assistant in 1978, I knew I had finally made the big time. His studio was one of the best. Jack used some of the best assistant animators in the business, including Jim Logan, Ellsworth Barthen, Ed Cerrillo and Helen Komar, plus elder statesmen like Preston Blair, Emery Hawkins and Clyde Geronimi. He gave a lot of young people a chance, like Dean Yeagle, Nancy Beiman, Dan Haskett and Juan Sanchez. Jack was a man of taste, who never forgot his roots as a studio animator. As he aged gracefully, he maintained a dry wit that was a lot of fun.

He liked to ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle and rode his Hog across the US to get his Annie Award. This while near 90 years old. He only stopped riding his Harley when he suffered a spill on a road in South Carolina that banged him up. He was 92 then. He gave one of the best Annie Award speeches ever, in my humble opinion.

" Getting this award at this great age kinda reminds me of the joke about the two old men walking down a road until one encountered a talking frog. The Frog said " I am not a real frog but an enchanted princess. Kiss me and I shall turn into a beautiful woman and do any erotic thing your heart desires!" The man pocketed the frog and they walked on. After awhile the man's companion said to him;" Aren't you going to kiss her?" The old man replied:" When you reach my age, some times you'd rather have a talking frog. Thank You.

He contributed a lot about his past to my book Drawing the Line and was giving me notes up to this past Spring. He used to send me long faxes, labeled Jax Fax, then he was on the Internet. My condolences to Mark and the family.

Adieu Jack. I hope you are at the celestial version of Costello's Bar now, having a drink with old pals like Friz Freleng, Joe Barbera and Bill Tytla. Age may have finally stilled your noble heart, but on the screen, Jerry continues to dance merrily, imbued with your indefatigable spirit. New generations of children continue to laugh at his antics. And so this is the way of the animator. For in this way, you live on.

TS



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Time for some holiday questions: Why are Poinsettas associated with Christmas?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Was A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), the first
animated TV special?
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History for 12/19/2005
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,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 siblings 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 is 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.."

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 Lewinsky. 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 so he 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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Yesterdays Question: Was A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), the first animated TV special?

Answer: No. A Charlie Brown Christmas(1965) directed by Bill Melendez is a beloved special, but alas, is not the first ever. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Rankin Bass was done in 1964, UPA’s Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol directed by Abe Levitow was done in 1962, but the very first TV special was Petroushka based on the Stravinsky ballet, directed by John Wilson in 1956.

QUIZ: Was A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), the first animated TV special?

Yesterdays Question answered below: What was Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams?
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History for 12/18/2007
Birthdays: Antonio Stradivari, Karl Maria Von Weber, Czarina Elizabeth-1709, Ty Cobb, George Stevens, Ozzie Davis, Diane Disney-Miller, Anita O¹Day, Paul Klee, Betty Grable, Willy Brandt, Keith Richards, Leonard Maltin, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario, Rachel Griffiths, Ray Liotta is 53, Katie Holmes is 29, Steven Spielberg is 61, Brad Pitt is 44, Christina Aguilera is 27

1679- THE ROSE ALLEY AMBUSCADE- Writer and critic John Dryden was walking in the Rose Alley in Covent Garden when a group of thugs jumped him and beat him up. They had been hired by The Earl of Rochester because of a satirical essay making fun of him was attributed to Dryden. Other writers like Voltaire suffered similar attacks from aristocrats who couldn’t take a joke.

1783- The American Revolution now over, George Washington appeared before Congress in Philadelphia to resign his army commission and go home to Mount Vernon. The president of Congress was Thomas Mifflin, his former aide who was removed after trying to politic behind Washington’s back to have him removed for incompetence. This moment was when George Washington parts company with most conquerors like Cromwell, Napoleon and Castro. He had power, but then walked away. Kings George III and Louis XVI were amazed when they heard the news: That Washington, the great generalissimo, the most powerful man in the Americas, would give up his power so lightly in order to return to his farm like some legendary Roman -Cinncinnatus, to be exact. Washington was called out of retirement five years later to be the first U.S. president.

1787- New Jersey named the third state.

1812-NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM MOSCOW ENDS -Napoleon reached Paris by sled after racing ahead of his shattered army to prop up his tottering regime.
Of Napoleon's 600,000 troops that invaded Russia less than 60,000 frozen wretches came out. Insanely brave Marshal Ney was the last invader to recross the border. Alone with bullets whistling past his ears, he calmly crossed the burning Neiman River bridge stopping to pick up abandoned muskets to fire them at the Russians. After he fired a last shot he threw the empty rifle at them. When Napoleon got to his palace at Saint Cloud he was so dirty from the trip the guards didn't recognize him and wouldn't let him in. His first official acts after the public announcement of the Russian Campaign’s disaster was ordering the Paris ballet dancers to dance barelegged instead of in tights. While that topic dominated gossip his second act was to give the French people a big tax cut. Watching Louis XVI lose his head in the Revolution gave Nappy a healthy if cynical respect for the anger of the average citizen.

1890-The first electric powered subway train opened in London. This allowed the subways to be built in closed tunnels (or tubes) under buildings. The older steam engine tube trains operating since 1863 needed an open trench for the coal smoke to be let out.

1912- THE PILTDOWN MAN- An announcement was made, of a find, in a peat pit, in England, of the remains of a human ancestor between ape and man, the so-called "Missing Link". The skull had canine teeth like an animal but it had an enlarged cranium like a man and was buried with primitive tools. This find was made at the time Darwin’s Evolutionary theories were being hotly debated. The authenticity of the Piltdown Man was thrown into question in 1949. When modern dating techniques were perfected, by 1953, the Piltdown Man was officially declared a hoax. The remains were too modern to be ancient and the canine teeth had filed down by tiny files. It is generally believed that a practical joker named Martin Hinton at the British Museum of Natural History may have been the perpetrator.



1919- in France Composer Cole Porter married divorcee Linda Thomas. They stayed together all their long lives even though she knew from the outset that he preferred male companionship.

1931- Gangster Jacky "Legs" Diamond had a penchant for recovering after being shot repeatedly by pistols and shotguns. It was said he had so much lead in him he could attract a magnet. Today someone finally shot him down and he didn't get up.

1937- Mae West does a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam and Eve that was considered so racy CBS banned her from their network.
At the same time she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long!"

1939-Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels”. To many animators, the best use of motion capture to date.

1944- MOE BERG AND THE NAZI EINSTEIN. Head of the German atomic program, Prof. Werner Heisenberg gives a lecture on S-matrix physics in Zurich, Switzerland. In the audience was Moe Berg, allied spy, amateur physicist and catcher for the Washington Senators (sounds ridiculous but true). Before the war Berg and Heisenberg were both friends with Danish physicist Neils Bohr, hence his invitation. The U.S. intelligence officers gave Berg a pistol and instructed him to stand up and shoot Heisenberg dead on the spot if he felt from the talk that the Nazis were close to finishing their Atomic Bomb. Moe Berg coolly schmoozed Heisenberg at the reception afterwards and even walked him home but did nothing. In the 1950's Berg was a frequent contestant on quiz shows. Recent scholarship claimed Heisenberg deliberately delayed and sabotaged his experiments because he was anti-Nazi but letters from Heisenberg to Bohr found in 2002 show he was trying as hard as he could to give Hitler nuclear weapons.

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Killgallen as panelists.

1960- An eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walk away. He was AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco and in 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night…a winoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts.

1966- Chuck Jone's 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered.

1970- An atomic leak, at a Nevada weapons stockpile, caused hundreds to flee.

1972- President Nixon announced that despite all the war protestors and outcry he would continue to carpet-bomb North Vietnam and Laos until he got the negotiated settlement he wanted.

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces for a solo singing career.

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again for residuals. (again...)

1984- Chris Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

1997- Saturday Night Live Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the Sears Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 31-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me."Chris Farley was scheduled to be the voice of the character Shrek; Mike Myers now took over.

1998- Dreamworks feature cartoon the “Prince of Egypt”, or, as it was known in Hollywood,"The Zion King".

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Yesterdays Question: What was Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams? ( the Answer was so nicely put by reader Frank Gladstone, I reprint it with his kind permission).

ANSWER: Newman Laugh-0-Grams was Walt Disney's first animation company (in association with the Newman chain of movie theatres then in Kansas and environs). It developed from Walt's working partnership with Ub Iwerks, after the two of them met at the Kansas City Slide and began doing animation at Kansas City Film Ad Company. The Laff-O-Grams were animated short films, take-offs on well known fairy tales with modern sensibilities, designed to be shown in the Newman theatres before the feature film and other vaudeville fare. The last film in the series, made before Walt's little company packed up and moved to California, was a precursor to the "Alice in Cartoonland” series.

I might add there is currently an effort in Kansas City to restore and preserve the original building.

QUIZ: What was the Newman Laugh-O-Grams Company?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Here’s another one about famous meetings. Of these meetings, which one never took place? Walt Disney and H.G. Wells, Walt Disney and Frank Lloyd Wright, Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, Walt Disney and Nikita Khruschev, or Walt Disney and Mussolini?
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History for 12/17/2007
Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, Canadian PM William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Penthouse Magazine creator Bob Guccione, William Safire, Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Bill Pullman, Eugene Levy, Wes Studi is 59, Milla Jovovich is 32, Sean Patrick Thomas, Armen Mueller-Stahl, Giovanni Ribisi, Bart Simpson-1989

ROMAN FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA-This festival of Saturn, the biggest holiday to the ancient Romans is one of the roots of Christmas. On this holiday Roman families got together, masters served their slaves and gave them a day off. People gave each other gifts in pretty colored wrappings. Romans also decorated the outsides of their houses with wreaths and lights to welcome the New Year -sound familiar? Most modern scholars agree that Jesus was probably born in July or August, but Christians began using the Saturnalia as the birth festival of Jesus as early as 335AD. It was made official by the Vatican in 885 AD. So at sunset shout "Io,Io, Saturnalia!" Hail Saturn!
jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the waaaayy!"

1777-VALLEY FORGE- While Lord Howe’s British Army calls the Christmas Truce and beds down in Philadelphia, George Washington’s army makes camp at Valley Forge. The severe winter and poor conditions make Washington’s Army lose as many men as if there had been a battle. 2500 out of 10,000 colonials do not live to see the Spring. Meanwhile the local American farmers sold their food to the British, who paid better prices.

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more like today’s Mardi Gras. This is why the Pilgrims tried to ban it. The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate and pious observance among centered on the family.
Magoo, still the best Scrooge ever!

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received it's world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo) then gave the manuscript to a friend who kept it in a closet for 43 years.

1892- Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze-later American choreographer George Balanchine. Interestingly enough the two of his compositions Tschaikowsky liked the least were The Nutcracker and his 1812 Overture.

1903- THE AIRPLANE- Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For one minute a powered heavier than aircraft flew. Orville finished the day with a telegram to their father minding the bicycle shop back in Dayton Ohio: “ Success. Four Flights Thursday Morning against twenty-one mile an hour wind.. Inform press home for Christmas.”The news failed to get into most national newspapers. The Wrights themselves maintained a strict secrecy because they knew rivals like Glen Curtis, the French and Smithsonian professor William Langley were all close to inventing an airplane as well. The sensation of the airplane didn’t really become widespread until the Wrights demonstrated their plane in France in 1908 and around New York Harbor in 1909.

1917-HAPPY BIRTHDAY THE KGB! Lenin created the first Communist Secret Police, the Cheka, led by a son of a Jewish Orthodox Rabbi turned Communist, Felix Derszhinsky:” My thoughts induce me to be without pity.” In a few months the Cheka executed more people than the Czars’ police the Okrana did in all of the XIXth Century. The Cheka in Stalin’s time was called the OGPU, then NKVD, his executioners in the Great Purges. After Stalin their name was changed to the KGB, the great spy and Secret Police operation set to bedevil their counterparts in the west the CIA and MI5. The KGB was disbanded in 1991. Current Russian President Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent.

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

1962- The Beatles first hit "Love Me Do" enters the U.K. pop charts.

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

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

1989- Communist dictator Nicholas Cercescu ordered the Romanian Army to open fire on democratic protestors in Timisoara. Two thousand were killed. This incident pushed elements of the Army to turn their guns on the government. The Romanian Revolution was the most violent of the Communist regime changes. The people and army overthrew Cercescu, who was shot on live television on Christmas Day.
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Yesterday’s Question: Here’s another one about famous meetings. Of these meetings, which one never took place? Walt Disney and H.G. Wells, Walt Disney and Frank Lloyd Wright, Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, Walt Disney and Nikita Khruschev, or Walt Disney and Mussolini?

Answer: Walt Disney and Nikita Khruschev. Khruschev did a highly publicized tour of America in 1959. In LA his wife was invited to Disneyland but not him. US officials cited security concerns. Legend was that Walt Disney blew him off because the Russians pirated bootleg copies of Snow White in 1942. But others say the nationwide publicity was too big for Walt to bear a grudge, and he had hoped the bald Soviet Premier would come.
Chim-chiminy, chim-chiminy, chim chim, cheroo: Let me visit Space Mountain or I drop bombs on youuuu!"