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Save the Motion Picture Hospital.
February 19th, 2009

Last week, the Hollywood entertainment industry was rocked by the news that the Motion Picture Fund Hospital and Residence was broke and was closing.

the late Roddy McDowell at a fundraiser for the MPH

The fund was started in 1940 and to retire to the home all you needed was twenty years in show-business, union or non-union, performer, technician or executive. Past residents included Max Fleischer, Larry Fine, Cal Howard and Looney Tunes director Art Davis. Currently I stop in to visit Chris Jenkins, who directed many of Rocky & Bullwinkle Show episodes and created Super Chicken for the Tom Slick Show.
They run a great Hospital Clinic which Pat & I have used in the past, as well as many other industry people.

Today The Motion Picture & Television Fund Long-Term Care unit is planning
to evict 130+ of its oldest, weakest, most needy and disabled
residents beginning in mid-March. This decision affects not only
those residents in Long-Term Care, but every resident in assisted and
residential care on the Wasserman Campus who may one day require the
next level of care.

When asked by members of Saving the Lives of Our Own, CEO Dr. David Tillman responded that no amount of money could be raised that would change the decision to close the facilities.

The Motion Picture Home was supported by Hollywood biggies like Bob Hope, John Ford, Sam Goldwyn and Walt Disney. It survived the collapse of the old studio system in the 1960s, and every financial crisis since. It seems strange that an industry that can give $20 million to one actor and routinely float budgets up to $200 million a movie, suddenly can't afford enough to keep this great institution going.

Spencer Tracy and Walt Disney at a celebrity polo match at the Will Rogers estate to benefit the Motion Picture Fund. Courtesy of Corbis images.

Humphrey Bogart once said of our industry:"These guys love ya, so long as you can make them a buck. Soon as that's over, they forget you ever existed..."

The motto of the Home was " We Take Care of Our Own." Now grass-roots movements are starting to rally among filmdom's denizens to do something to save the hospital. check out their site:

http://www.savingthelivesofourown.org/




See you tonight at the Anim Feature nom Directors Symposium at the Academy.

http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2009/animatedfeature.html

I'm cramming today, so I don't sound stoopid when I talk to deeze folks.


February 19th, 2008 thursday
February 19th, 2009

Quiz: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama plan a series of regular Weds night cocktail receptions at the White House. Who originated the idea?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Of these U.S. Presidents, which one was not once a lawyer? Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson?
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HISTORY FOR 2/19/2009
Birthdays: Copernicus, Luigi Boccherini, Smokey Robinson, Andre Breton, Lee Marvin, Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Karen Silkwood, Paul Terry, Paul Krause, Merl Oberon, Amy Tam the author of the Joy Luck Club., John Frankenheimer, Jeff Daniels, Benicio Del Toro is 42, Hilary Duff is 23

Today is the Feast of Saint Wulfstan of Worchester

197AD- General Septimius Severus of the African Legions had seized control of the Roman Empire and had himself declared emperor. This day he defeated his last rival, Albinus ,the Commander of the legions of Gaul. He left Albinus’ dead body in front of his headquarters, where for fun he trampled it repeatedly with his horse. This was before office desk Nerf-basketball was invented. Albinus‘ corpse layed around being torn by dogs and vermin for days until it stank so bad, it was flung into a nearby stream.

1405- Timur Khan, called Timur the Lame or Tamerlane in the west, died at 69 of a fever. Tamerlane wreaked a path of destruction almost as horrible as Genghis Khan two centuries earlier. Raging up and down the Near East and Western China, his personal touch was leaving pyramids of human skulls to show he’d stopped by. But because Genghis had already "been there, done that..." history doesn't really pay much attention to him, proving you can be genocidal as long as you’re not redundant.

1600-In Rome philosopher Giordano Bruno was stripped naked and burned at the stake with a nail hammered through his tongue. The monk was one of the first modern free thinkers and skeptics. He raged against superstition and denied there was any such thing as Hell or Purgatory. But his chief sin that got him burned was his expansion on the Copernicus Theory. He said that not only is the Earth revolving around the sun but that the Universe is Infinite and unfathomable, that God should not be belittled, as being focused on one little people on one rock. He is an Infinite Presence ruling over countless worlds. Later scientists like Galileo and Descartes kept Bruno’s fate in mind when they went too far in bucking Holy Mother Church.

1674- The Second Treaty of Breda settled the Third Dutch War with England. As part of the settlement Holland gave up any chance of getting back her colonies in North America, now renamed by the English New York and New Jersey. Truth be told they weren’t bringing in any income anyway. They were considered of little value.

1725- The first recorded case of someone dying of spontaneous combustion.

1847-“ ARE YOU FROM CALIFORNIA OR ARE YOU FROM HEAVEN?” The Donner Party found at last. The wagon train of settlers had been trapped in the High Sierra mountains of California near Lake Truckee in blizzard conditions with no food since last October 31st. Half the settlers were dead and the rest subsisting on cannibalizing the dead for food. This day a survivor named John Reed who got to safety returned with a rescue party from Sutter’s Fort. Of the 89 original settlers only 45 made it out alive. One opened a restaurant.

1878- Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1913- Crackerjacks start putting toy prizes in every box. The name Crackerjack for the caramel corn was named for the reaction of Teddy Roosevelt trying it for the first time- These are Crackerjack!

1915- L.A. Times publisher and land baron Harry Chandler was indicted with 8 other prominent Angeleanos for conspiring to start a new revolution in Mexico. The Mexican government had seized their large land holdings there for land redistribution and this was their quaint little way of getting them back.

1920- THE MYSTERY OF ANASTASIA- This day came the first news reports that a emotionally disturbed young woman who tried to jump into a Berlin canal claimed to be the Archduchess Anastasia Romanov, youngest child of the Czar and Czarina of Russia. She somehow escaped the 1918 murder of her family and tried to prove it by recalling minute details about the Imperial household. She was called Anna Anderson and was the toast of New York and Parisian society for awhile. But unlike the Ingrid Bergman movie the Romanov family in exile never took her seriously and Anna eventually married and settled down. In 1991 extensive laboratory attempts to match her DNA with the Romanovs proved she was not the little archduchess.



1942-PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT signed Executive Order# 9066- The JAPANESE INTERNMENT ACT- All along the Pacific Coast first and second generation Japanese-Americans were uprooted from their homes and property and with what only they could carry were shipped off to camps in the desert. Few Japanese-Americans were interned in Hawaii however, because it would have seriously depleted the population. Many got no restitution for their lost property. America remembered how effective German agents were in the First World War, when bombs going off on Boston and New York waterfront docks was common. Throughout the Second World War no act of Japanese-American sabotage was ever recorded. Apologists would say it was because of the act. Although the F.B.I. kept tabs on German and Italian agents in U.S. and pro-Fascist groups like the American Bund flourished in the 30’s nothing like what happened to Japanese Americans occurred to them. Less than 10,000 were rounded up as opposed to over 100,000 Japanese Americans.

1945- THE INVASION of IWO JIMA-The nine mile square bit of barren beach cost over 50,000 lives. This island and Okinawa were the test cases to judge how fiercely the Japanese would fight for mainland Japan. Iwo Jima was the first island that wasn't conquered territory of some other people but was considered part of the home Japanese Islands, only 700 miles from Tokyo.

1944- Writer John Steinbeck asked that his name be taken off of the credits for the Alfred Hitchcock film version of “Lifeboat”. “In view of the fact that my script for the picture was distorted in production.”

1945- Nazi S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler contacted the neutral Swedish diplomat Count Bernadotte to try and open secret peace talks with the Allies behind Hitler's back. Bernadotte asks as a condition that all concentration camps in the Reich be turned over to the International Red Cross. Himmler balks at this but agrees to allow food packages to be delivered to Nordic inmates. When Hitler finds out Himmler was trying to cut his own deal he was extremely upset and Himmler was under house arrest at the end of the war.

1951-Poet philosopher Andre Gide died in Paris. Several things were quoted as his last words, my favorite is " Before you quote me, please make sure I'm conscious."

1954- The prototype Ford Thunderbird auto completed.

1960- Bill Keane's "Family Circus" cartoon strip debuts.

1968- “ It’s a beautiful day in the Neighborhood…” Mister Roger’s Neighborhood debuted on National Education Television, later called PBS. Ordained Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers had been doing children’s shows similar in Pittsburgh and Canada since the 50’s but today was the start of his show that would run unchanged for thirty-five years.

1985 - Mickey Mouse welcomed in China.

1995- Pamela Anderson married rocker Tommy Lee. On their honeymoon they shot that notorious video on Lake Powell.
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Yesterdays’ question: Of these U.S. Presidents, which one was not once a lawyer? Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson?

Answer: James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights.


February 18th, 2009 weds
February 18th, 2009

Quiz: Of these U.S. Presidents, which one was not once a lawyer? Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: In live action moviemaking, what is a Martini Shot?
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History for 2/18/2009
Birthdays: Queen Mary I Tudor -Bloody Mary, Pietro Guarnieri the violin maker, Harry Grover- Seeley one of the founders of Paleontology, Louis Tiffany, Andre Segovia, Wendell Wilkie, Billy de Wolfe, Enzo Ferrarri, Yoko Ono is 76, Jack Palance, Milos Forman is 77, Bobby Bachman of the Bachman Turner Overdrive, Gahan Wilson, Johnny Hart, Matt Dillon is 45, Cybil Shephard is 59, John Travolta is 55, John Hughes, Dr. Dre

1842- Two hundred of New York City’s high society and top politicians held a banquet in honor of the visiting English author Charles Dickens. Dickens kept confounding everyone with his insistence on touring the cities prisons and poorhouses.

1856- The KNOW NOTHING PARTY held their first –and only, presidential convention. Officially called the American Party but famous for responding to reporters questions as “they knew nothing” This 3rd party was formed over anger at growing immigration. They sought to curb the influx and civil rights of non-native born Americans especially Roman Catholics from Ireland and Italy. They nominated ex president Millard Filmore for re-election but their ranks were broken up over disputes over slavery and their movement sputtered out.

1878- THE LINCOLN COUNTY WARS- John Tunstall, a Scottsman who gave a number of young cowboys work on his ranch in New Mexico, was murdered while his bodyguards were hunting wild turkeys. Tunstall was buried in his clan tartan kilt. This murder sparked a running gun battle between Tunstall's group led by his attorney John McSweeny, a town merchant named Murphy, rancher John Chisum and most of the county. One of Tunstall's hired hands turned this range war into a personal vendetta that would make his name famous- Billy the Kid.

1885-Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' published.

1888- The Hotel Coronado in San Diego Cal. opened for guests. It remains one of the largest remaining wood structures in the U.S.. Several presidents stayed there, the Duke of Windsor may have met Mrs. Simpson there and films like the Marilyn Monroe film Some Like it Hot and The Stuntman were shot there.

1930- The planet Pluto discovered- in 1909 Scientist Lord Percival Lowell had detected signs of a planet at the edge of our Solar System beyond Neptune but could not definitely confirm or identify it. They named it for the time being 'Planet X' The Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona had searched in vain for decades until Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tumbaugh, an amateur astronomer who was allowed to occasionally use Lowell’s telescope to justify the public grants they got. Lord Lowell had just passed away before the discovery he had dedicated his life to. Recently a consortium of scientists demoted Pluto from a planet back to just a big-ass icy asteroid status.

1950- First Mr. Magoo cartoon "Ragtime Bear".

1953- First 3-D movie "B'wana Devil" starring Robert Stack.

1970- The Chicago 7, Yippie leaders of the anti-war rioting in front of the Democratic presidential convention of 1968 were found innocent of all charges. David Dillinger, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden and the other guys. One of their offenses was trying to get a 250 pound pig onto the floor of the Convention so they could get it nominated for President.

1972- President Richard Nixon and Pat Nixon land in China.

1973- Richard Petty the Stock Car King won his first Daytona 500 race . He would go on to win 6 more and prove that NASCAR racing was one of America’s favorite though most under reported sports.

2001- Dale Earnhardt Sr, the reigning NASCAR racing car champion, died in a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. His eldest son Dale Jr. placed second.
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Yesterday’s Question: In live action moviemaking, what is a Martini Shot?

Answer: The last shot of a long day of shooting, which means drinks to follow.


February 17th, 2008 Tuesday
February 17th, 2009

This week marks a week of events and parties leading up to the Oscars on Sunday.

Tonight will be a seminar for the director of the Oscar nominated shorts.

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Quiz: In live action moviemaking, what is a Martini Shot?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree?
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History for 2/17/2009
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, Montgomery Ward, Red Barber,Michael Jordan, Marian Anderson, Chaim Potok, Jim Brown, Rene Russo, Michael Bay, Jerry O’Connell, Cybil Shepard, Barry Humphries ( Dame Edna) is 75, Denise Richards is 38 and Paris Hilton is 28

3,201BC- According to Sumerian records from today in the month of Hilu to the month of Eshil-March 30th occurred the GREAT FLOOD, that the story of the flood of Noah in the Bible was based on. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1920’s theorized that the Great Flood was the tidal backwash caused by the sinking of the lost continent of Atlantis.

1673- MOLIERE DIED. The great playwright was suffering from tuberculosis and was in failing health, but he insisting on playing the lead in his final play "The Imaginary Invalid". Tonight when asked to rest instead, he responded" There are fifty workman here who won’t get paid if we don’t play". He played Argan, a hypochondriac who imagined himself dying.
In the final act he uttered the word "Juro I swear," and was seized with a violent coughing fit. He covered with a joke and finished the play, but later was carried home where he died choking on his own blood. The local priest refused to come and give him Last Rights because of his Tartuffe making fun of religious types. Moliere was one of the greatest playwrights and poets of the age and Frenchmen equate him with Shakespeare.

1864-THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL SUBMARINE ATTACK-. The Confederate submarine Hunley ,after testing that drowned 23 men including the inventor, sails, err, chuggs, actually it was driven with a screw turned propeller -screws it's way to Yankee ships blockading Charleston Harbor. It attaches a underwater bomb called a David to the hull of the U.S.S. Housatonic. The david exploded sinking the Housatonic, but it also dragged down the Hunley and it’s 13 man crew to a watery grave. The first modern diesel/electric submarine was developed by John Holland in 1894. Recently archaeologists raised the Hunley from the harbor and even found the lucky gold dollar the captain kept in his pocket. Researchers also found the graves of one of the earlier test crews under the concrete foundation of a Charleston football stadium.

1865- Gen. Sherman burns Columbia, S.C. The POPULARITY OF THE CIGARETTE- Everyone knew the Civil War was almost over, yet try and reason with Uncle Billy. Sherman's army fresh from burning Georgia spread a wide path of destruction through the Carolinas. When Sherman's men reached the capitol of South Carolina they took special revenge in destroying the city where the first vote to secede took place. Yankee's sang "Hail Columbia, Happy Land; If I don't burn you I'll be damned!" Cigarettes were gaining popularity in Spain and Latin American while in the U.S. tobacco was taken chiefly in cigars, pipes and chaw. A South Carolina planter in Durham had just finished developing the perfect mild blend of cigarette tobaccos, Bull Durham, when Sherman's bluecoats arrived to loot and torch the factory. Instead of tragedy things worked out well for the fellow. After the Civil War the Yankees went home to towns from Maine to California and talked of the good smoke they had in Carolina. Soon it was a national passion. Hey man, you got any papers?

1876- The invention of canned sardines.

1877- THE SATSUMA REBELLION-Part of the modernizing of Japanese society after the Mejii Restoration was the phasing out of the Samurai class. Some moved into the officer corps of the new western trained army. Many of the samurai, rather than bear the shame of demotion to peasantry, emigrated to Hawaii under the invitation of King David Kalakaua IV. But some samurai didn’t go quietly. When ordered by the government to give up their swords, a large samurai army led by Takamuri Saigo revolted and has to be put down in several bloody battles. Takamuri committed suicide but later all is forgiven. One of the Satsuma clan retainers will go to the Naval Academy and become Grand Admiral Togo, father of the modern Japanese Navy.

1906- In a White House wedding ceremony President Teddy Roosevelt saw his eldest daughter Alice married to Congressman Nicholas Longworth of Ohio. Alice was as free spirited as her father, Once when confronted about her escapades Teddy remarked "I can run the country or control Alice, but I cannot do both."

1911- General Motors installed in their Cadillacs the first automatic starters, replacing the handcrank. It was developed by Charles Kettering, the reason he did it was because a friend of his stopped to assist a young lady's who's engine had stalled. When he tried to get the engine started again using the hand crank, it kicked back and hit him in the jaw, breaking it and eventually causing gangrene, which eventually killed him.
Kettering spent many years at GM and started the Delco brand of auto parts. He also was responsible for fast drying paint which allowed a car to be painted in almost instantly on an assembly line instead of days. He sold the idea to an unbelieving client by having his car taken from the parking lot, painted and returned over a long lunch.

1912- THE NEW YORK ARMORY SHOW-Mabel Dodge and Gertrude Stein introduce Post expressionist modern art to the U.S. public. The first U.S. showings of Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp and the Italian futurists. The show was denounced as a "chamber of horrors" and Matisse was burned in effigy in Chicago. Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" was described by an art critic as "an explosion in a shingle factory". Duchamp was highly gratified, I believe.

1925- First issue of Harold Ross’s The New Yorker magazine.

1942- Ernst Lubitsch’s screwball comedy about the Nazis "To Be , Or Not To Be"debuted. Adolf Hitler enters a room and after everyone "Seig Heil" salutes him, he replies "Heil Myself!" But the film flopped because it’s female star Carole Lombard died tragically in a plane crash shortly before the premiere.

1945- Nazi scientists abandoned the Pennemunde, the V-2 rocket testing site as Allied armies overran the area.

1958 – Johnny Hart’s comic strip "BC" 1st appears

1967 – The Beatles release "Penny Lane" & "Strawberry Fields"

1979- A Prairie Home Companion radio show starring Garrison Keilor was first broadcast nationally. It was a feature on Minnesota Public Radio since 1974.

1987- Soviet premiere Mikhail Gorbachev revealed President Ronald Reagan's preoccupation with space aliens: "At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it's early yet to worry about such an intrusion..."

1989- "Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure" premiered starring the most excellent Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. Whoah-Dude!

1992- Jeffrey Dahmer sentenced to life in prison without parole for drugging, torturing, murdering, cannibalizing 15 young men. Two years later he was beaten to death in prison by another murderer who had killed three other inmates because God told him to.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree?

Answer: In the 1800 a Parson Mason Weems wrote a best selling book about the early life of George Washington. He was the origin of a lot of fanciful stories like the cheery tree, “ I cannot tell a lie”, and throwing a gold dollar across the Potomac. He claimed he got the mythical stories from an old neighbor who called herself Washington’s cousin.


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