history for 1/6/2007
Birthdays: St. Joan La Pucelle also called Joan of Arc, Mountainman Jedediah Smith, Tom Mix, Alexander Scriabin, illustrator Gustav Dore', Loretta Young, Earl Skruggs. Carl Sandburg, Danny Thomas, Nancy Lopez, John DeLorean, Alan Watts, John Singleton, Rowan Atkinson, Anthony Minghella

Happy Feast Of Epiphany, Twelfthnight and The Eastern Orthodox Christmas.
Today is the end of the twelve days of Christmas when the Magi, the three kings Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar visited the Holy Family. The Magi were the priestly caste of ancient Persia and the Zoroastrian religion. They were believed to predate the Persians and come from the Chaldaeans, the people who invented the western branch of the science of astronomy, the Maya and Chinese were doing the same thing on their sides of the world. A lot of their ritual concerned observation of the stars. Some astronomers theorize the Star of Bethlehem was a rare planetary alignment that created a bright spot the Magi weren't used to, or a close orbit of Jupiter. The Chinese have calculated that there was a supernova around 6 BC which is more or less the right time.

1849- the first cartoon cover of Punch Magazine.

1945- First Pepe Le Pew cartoon, "Odorable Kitty". When the Warners producer who replaced Leon Schlesinger, Eddie Selzer, heard the plans to do a short about a skunk he thundered: "Absolutely Not! Nobody will like a cartoon skunk!" Chuck Jones recalled: "As soon as he said no, I knew we just had to do it." Selzer's final opinion:" Nobody'll laugh at that sh*t!" The short won an Oscar. Selzer later went on into network T.V.

1949- Composer Leonard Bernstein noted in his diary that “JR (Jerome Robbins) called today with a novel idea- a modern version of Romeo and Juliet set in the slums.” At first the musical was going to be called East Side Story, then GangWay, finally West Side Story.

1956- Prince Rainier of Monaco announced his engagement to movie star Grace Kelly.

1956- Walt Disney met his old enemy, Max Fleischer. Max had retired and Walt had hired his son, Richard Fleischer, to direct Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The meeting was cordial and Max was reunited with a number of his former old artists. But Richard Fleischer sensed the bittersuite mood. It felt like Goliath had beaten David.

1962- Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent. This was the animated version of his popular puppet show.“So Long Kids ,Wind Up Your Lids, We’ll look for You Real Soooooon.” Animator Carl Bell recalled when you conferred with Bob Clampett, sometimes he'd have the Cecil puppett on his arm, and you'd have to receive your critique or get a new assignment from Cecil.


1975-“ Ease on Down the Road.-“ The Wiz premiered on Broadway.

1994- “WHY ME, WHY ME?” Shortly after a practice in a Detroit skating rink Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man trying to smash her knees with a steel pipe. The man Derrick Smith later confessed to the FBI that he was paid $6500 to do the deed by Jeff Gilhooly, the ex-husband and manager of Kerrigans rival skater Tanya Harding. Despite all the intense media coverage in the end Kerrigan got one Silver medal, Harding nothing and the Olympic gold in Figure Skating went to Ukrainian Oksana Baiul, who was later busted for drunk driving.

Birthdays: Alvin Ailey, J. Stuart Blackton- the first American animator, born in Lincolnshire, England, Jack Norworth -composer of Take Me out to the Ballgame, Astrologist Jean Dixon, Umberto Eco, Yves Tanguy, George Reeves, Roger Spottiswoode,Robert Duval is 76,Diane Keaton is 61,King Juan Carlos, Hiyao Miyazaki is 66

1477- THE BATTLE OF NANCY- The Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Rash, found out why the Swiss are left alone by most European powers. Upon invading Switzerland, his army was cut to pieces and his body was found naked in a ditch with his head stuck in a puddle of ice. Battle Axes were protruding from his groin and butt. These wounds were seen as more for insult's sake.

1643- The first divorce granted in North America. Pilgrim Anne Clarke was granted a divorce by the Massachusetts Bay Colony from her deadbeat husband, Dennis.

1757- A man named Robert Damiens attacked French King Louis XV and stabbed him. It was a flesh wound that Voltaire described as a pin-prick. The king survived and the court sentenced Damiens to the most horrible death they could think of, the medieval punishment for regicides. Nobody had done it for generations so the court executioner, Charles Samson, had to consult the history books. Hmm...Drawing and quartering....cut off assailants hands and stick stumps in pan of burning sulfur...uh-huh..got it! The execution was so ghastly that the witnesses fled, the executioner fainted and his assistants had to finish the job.

1825- Writer Alexander Dumas fought a duel with the Chevalier Saint George, a black Creole duelist from Martinique who played violin so well he helped Beethoven write his Violin Concerto. Neither man was seriously hurt and Dumas went on to write the Three Musketeers. Saint George also once fought a duel with the enigmatic Monsieur d’Eon, a transvestite who fought his duels in a woman's ballgown. In later life, Dumas would have young writers up to his Paris home on weekends and cook dinner for them. He told young Jules Verne” People may criticize my prose style, but they dare not criticize my sauce!”

1896- The New York World began printing the Yellow Kid comic strip with a yellow color on his shirt. The strip gave the name to the sensationalist tabloid press 'Yellow Journalism".



1914- The Ford Motor Company shocked the captains of American Industry by raising its wage rates for work shifts from $2.40 a day to $5.00 a day and adopting the new 8 hour work day. Henry Ford’s idea was “when workers have more money they buy cars”. The idea worked and sales of cars quadrupled and the economic climate of Detroit boomed. I wonder what Henry Ford would have thought of today’s companies who lay off thousands of workers and move plants overseas to make their stock rise, then seem perplexed by the stagnant rate of consumer spending?

1953- Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot ( En attendant Godot ) first premiered in Paris.

1959- Buddy Holly released his last single,” It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”

1959- The first Bozo the Clown TV show premiered on TV. Chicago based Larry Harmon invented the famous children’s clown.

1961- “Hello Wilbur” Mr Ed the Talking Horse appeared on tv for the first time.

1979- EMI Records ended their contracts with the punk band the Sex Pistols. They felt their outrageous behavior had gone just too far.

1980- The first Hewlett Packard Personal Computer or PC goes on the market.

1998-At the Heavenly Valley Ski Resort, former pop-singer-turned-Neocon Congressman Sonny Bono died when he skied into a tree.

Got a nice review on Amazon.com from Graham Hill. He is a Hollywood based film and TV critic, not the British Formula One race car champion. But, you never know on the Internet.

“ Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Mr. Magoo, Fred Flintstone, the Pink Panther and Bart Simpson, are the biggest stars in the business. But they couldn't make the slightest move or even open their mouths, without the help of the animation worker. Meaning no disrespect, I say worker and not artist, because that's what Tom Sito's book "Drawing The Line" is all about. The eternal labor struggle of men and women in the animation industry and their right to be recognized and treated as artists. Of course Hollywood is not the kind of town where that is ever likely to happen any time soon. And for all those that scoff and think that anyone who gets paid to simply draw for a living, let alone getting to work in Hollywood at all should be forever grateful. Well -you're about to have your eyes opened as you turn the pages of this well written and lovingly researched history, that dares to speak the truth and document it in precise detail. Through first-hand accounts of the animators that struck the studios, were fired and blacklisted, Sito has chronicled their plight and shown the effect it has had on working conditions today.

As an animator himself and a former declared labor cynic. Sito learned from personal experience why their really was a need to be unionized. So much so that he later went on to become an active president of the screen cartoonists local in Hollywood. Yes, animation was and still is a labor intensive assembly-line that even in this digital computer age, still relies on the artistic and professional skill's of it's of workers. It's a "must read" not just for anyone with the least interest in animation, Hollywood or social and labor studies, but for anyone who's keen to know just how their favorite cartoon characters came into being in the first place. Believe me, you'll never see them as just simple drawings ever again!”
-- Graham Hill, film/TV reviewer
Disney strikers, 1941. Courtesy of the Animation Guild Archives, CSUN. Is that guy with the sign animator Dave Burgess? That would make him ninety five years old! That guy never ages!

remember folks, Tom Sito's new book on Jews in Animation is available now on Amazon.com. I'm gonna do a film version where everyone speaks in the original ancient Paphlagonian. Hey, errrr..you're uh, not Jewish.....are you..? Oh, err...sorry."


ttp://www.amazon.com/American-Popular-Culture-Three-Volumes

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Burthdaze: Sir Issac Newton, Emile Cohl the first animator, Louis Braille, , General Tom Thumb, Jane Wyman, Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, Dyan Cannon is 69, Barbara Rush, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Julia Ormond, is 39

1881- Johannes Brahms Academic Festival Overture premiered in Breslau. Modern audiences would recognize it as the theme song to National Lampoons Animal House.

1946- Terrytoons "The Talking Magpies" the first Heckle and Jeckle cartoons.

1954- Young truck driver Elvis Presley went into Sun Records recording studio in Memphis. He plunked down $4 to record two demos for his mothers’ birthday. " Casual Love Affair" and "I’ll Never Stand in your Way". The studio technician was impressed enough to play the demo for his manager who called back Presley for an audition.

1956- In the Peanuts comic strip Charles Schulz first had Snoopy stand up on two legs.

1973- In San Francisco scientists from several top food companies like Proctor & Gamble, Heinz and DelMonte began work inventing the Universal Product Code, or the Bar Code now seen on everything you buy. The first product to sport the bar code was Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.

1997- Spoonbending psychic Uri Geller predicted a UFO would land in Tel Aviv. Israelis watched the skies but nothing appeared.

John and Faith, courtesy of Hofstra Univ images

Last month when I was in the New York City area, I had the opportunity to go out and visit Emily Hubley and her family. Emily is one of the four siblings of John (1914-1977) and Faith (1924-2001). The Hubleys are particular heroes of mine, I wrote about them in detail in Drawing the Line. It was fun spending the day with Emily looking through the family's treasure trove of animation classic art. Emily and Georgia were the little girls who got to be the soundtrack of the classic short Cockaboody.

Emily with a drawing from Cockaboody, click on image


I looked through John & Faith’s drawings for Moonbird, The Windy Day, The Hole, Zuckercandle and the correspondence and photos from the Walt Disney Strike of 1941. One revelation was that John had saved a lot of his layout work from his Disney years, 1935-1941. I held original layouts from Bambi, the seq where Bambi and Celine amble through the clouds of love. Also, color setups for Pinocchio and Snow White. There was a beautiful model sheet of the dwarf, Doc, that was pasted up from an animator's key poses, with the blue pencil roughs still underneath.

Emily showed me a little letter handwritten in pencil from the young John Hubley to his parents back in Wisconsin, that he had gotten to Hollywood and landed a steady job at this animated cartoon company called Disney’s.” I’ve turned in a dozen layouts, and I think I got the job….” To see the tentative excitement and expectation in this 22-year-old who grew to become a multi-Oscar winning giant in our business was inspiring. He was once a nervous newcomer also.

I also studied John’s annotated script for the feature film of Finian’s Rainbow. John was set to direct and had teamed with Disney master animator Bill Tytla, who was to head the animation team. Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald were lined up to do voices. But the film was killed because of the Hollywood Blacklist. They dragged John in to testify about his politics and the clients fled.

my man Marky Maypo from a 1956 commercial

Cut off from mainstream commercial filmmaking, John and Faith turned to creating independent short films, and were among original backers of the creation of ASIFA as an international animation organization. Faith said later:” I know this sounds totally irreverent but I think Johnny’s career was made by the Blacklist.” It got him out of the studio system and got him into being an independent. I don’t think he would have done it otherwise.”
Just like if he did not support the strike against Walt Disney, he would have been a successful layout supervisor on the Disney feature films, but UPA and Gerald McBoing-Boing, and all those wonderful Oscar winning films may not have happened.

Me with John Hubley's memento of the Disney Strike

It’s a great message to those of you out there today facing layoffs or other unwanted changes in your careers. Look how John and Faith Hubley took the problems they were handed and made them into opportunities. The system never beat them, they turned it around and created their own success.

The Hubley family moves on. Emily is an animator and filmmaker in her own right, having contributed to films like Blue Vinyl and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Mark, Georgia and Ray are also filmmakers.

Thanks Emily and all the Hubley clan for sharing your memories with me.

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Birthdays: Marcus Tullius Cicero, John Paul Jones, Victor Borge, Zazu Pitts, Sergio Leone, Robert Loggia, Maxene Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Ray Milland, Anna Mae Wong, Steven Stills, J.R.R. Tolkein, Victoria Principal, Mel Gibson is 51.

1777- BATTLE OF PRINCETON- After the Christmas victory at Trenton, George Washington’s little army gives the main British army the slip, wheels around behind them and surprise attacks another redcoat regiment at The Royal College of New Jersey, now called Princeton. Years before, young student Alexander Hamilton had failed the entrance requirements to study at Princeton and instead went to Kings College, later renamed Columbia. Now artillery major Hamilton had a pleasure rare among rejected college applicants- that of being allowed to fire a few cannon balls into the college’s admissions building.

1871- Henry Bradley patents Oleomargerine in the U.S.. It had been demonstrated in the Paris Exhibition of 1867 as a butter that didn't spoil, so it could be used by armies in the field.

1899- An editorial in the New York Times refers to the horseless carriage as an “Automobile”. This is the earliest known use of the word.

1933- MGM hired producer David O. Selznick to produce movies. His father-in-law Louis B. Mayer set his salary at $4000 a week. This was after telling his workers that conditions were so bad at the studio that everyone needed to take a 30% salary cut. Newspapers joked “The Son-In-Law Also Rises”

1952-The T.V. series DRAGNET premiered today. “The story you have seen is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Star Jack Webb produced and wrote most of the scripts and oversaw the deadpan acting style.”Just the facts, Maam..”

1958- Howard Rushmore was the editor of Confidential, one of the most ruthless scandal magazines in show business. This day for reasons never explained Rushmore murdered his wife then took his own life in the back of a NYC taxicab. Today Howard Rushmore would probably be considered a serious journalist.

2004- After partying hard all New Years in Las Vegas, 22-year-old pop singer, Britney Spears married friend Jay Alexander for a joke. She later realized the jokes on her because the marriage was legal. She annulled it a day later. Later that year, Alexander, who listed himself as unemployed, was seen driving around rural Louisiana in a $90,000 luxury BMW.