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June 2nd, 2007 Saturday
June 2nd, 2007

Lot's of Changing-of-the-Guard in animation schools in Southern Cal this year. Frank Terry is retiring from the Cal Arts animation department, Dan McGaughlin is stepping down from the chair of the animation branch of the UCLA Film Workshop, and Aubrey Mintz is leaving the Laguna College of Design. Animation students and teachers owe them a debt of gratitude for their stirling job at advancing the art of animation education into the Digital Era, while maintaining the traditions of our ancient toon masters. Bravo and Best of Luck to you all!


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Birthdays: The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Lotte Reinniger Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old t.v. show Leave it to Beaver is 63, Dayvid Haysbert, Lasse Halstrom,
Lotte Reinniger creator of the first animated feature film the Adventures of Prince Achmed, Disney animation story artist Dick Huemer - There is a nice website for Huemer done by his family
www.huemer.com

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his earlier reputation for fathering children out of wedlock, they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to ever be the First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.
courtesy of Twisted-Candy.com

1896- Gugielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio. At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away !

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1928 - Velveeta Cheese created by Kraft.

1932- The Screen Publicists Guild formed

1940-Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1958- An L.A. referendum allowed the county to buy Chavez Ravine from its inhabitants to build Dodger Baseball Stadium.

1961- Humorist writer George F. Kaufman died. He wanted put on his headstone: "Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be lectured by Disney legend Art Babbitt. The notes from these lectures have been xeroxed and rexeroxed and have become the most famous unpublished animation manual of all time.


Great website
June 1st, 2007

Scary Clowns and Republicans on Black Velvet.
http://www.velvetpaintings.com/galleries/galleries.shtml

Now you can order your own portrait of Vice Pres. Dick Cheney on black velvet! Life is Good!


June 1, 2007 Friday
June 1st, 2007

Welcome to June, from Iunius, the month of Juno, queen of the Roman gods.



1939- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUPERMAN- Joe Seigel and Jerry Shuster, two aspiring cartoonists in High School create a character called “Superman”. Jewish kids, they had read about the Nazis racial concept of the Aryan supremacy based on Frederich Nietzche's concept of the Superman. They wanted to show a Superman could be on the American side. Clark Kent's name was a combination of Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, two actors they admired, Metropolis was from the Fritz Lang movie. On this day they sell all the rights to their characters to Detective Comics (D.C.) for $130.

When the first megabudget Richard Donner Superman movie was being made in the 1976, and Marlon Brando was paid one million dollars for eight minutes of work, Neal Adams and the National Cartoonist's Society pointed out that Seigel and Schuster were now poverty stricken. They never received a nickel of the multi-millions their creation had generated. Seigel was blind on disability and Schuster delivered sandwiches from a local deli. The bad publicity forced Warner Bros and DC Comics to award them and their families pensions for life.

Mrs. Schuster, the model for Lois Lane, told fellow cartoonists recently :" Cartoonists should all stick together! On your own you have no power! Your're just dirt under their (the bosses) feet!"

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Birthdays: Brigham Young, Marilyn Monroe would be 80!, Pat Boone, Mikhail Glinka, Red Grooms, Karl Von Clausewitz, Andy Griffith, Morgan Freeman is 69, Nelson Riddle, Lisa Hartman, Cleavon Little, Frederica Von Stade, Powers Booth, Rene Aubergjenois, Lisa Hartman, Brian Cox, Josef Pujol *

*Pujol was famous throughout late Victorian Europe as Le Petomane- The Fartiste- who could fart musical melodies and snuff candles at great distances. He performed an entire evening’s concert for crowned heads and would finish by farting La Marseillaise.

1813- In battle with a British warship, HMS Leopard, dying Captain Lawrence, of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, cried:" Don't Give Up the Ship!" They don't but he died anyway.

1876- Eighteen-year old Milton Hershey opened his first candy store. Hershey's goes on to become the largest candy maker in the U.S. The Hershey’s chocolate kiss is so named because the machine that creates the candy looks like it is kissing the conveyor belt.

1931- Swiss artist Albert Hurter joined the Disney staff, giving the look of cartoons like Snow White a more Germanic storybook look.

1933 - Charlie Chaplin wed actress Paulette Goddard

1936 - "Lux Radio Theater" moved from NYC to Hollywood.


1942- British actor Leslie Howard, who played Ashley in" Gone with the Wind " and Henry Higgins in the first film of "Pygmalion" joined the RAF as a fighter pilot in World War Two. This day he was shot down and killed by the Luftwaffe over the English Channel.

1961 - FM multiplex stereo broadcasting 1st heard

1966 - George Harrison is impressed by Ravi Shankar's concert in London.

1967 –FORTY YEARS AGO- Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the US and it immediately goes gold.

1968 - Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" hits #1

1979- Gannett News Services began USA Today, called by some critic's- 'MacPaper'.

1980- Ted Turner started CNN 24-hour news channel.

2001- In Katmandu, Nepal Crown Prince Dipendra quarreled so much with his mother and father, the King Birenda and Queen Aiswarya, about his upcoming marriage that he came to dinner and shot them to death. He also killed four other members of the royal family and then himself. This was the largest massacre of a royal family since Czar Nicholas II’s family was executed in 1918. Next day, a Nepalese government spokesman labeled the incident an “accident”. Dipendra was in a coma for several days before dying and in those few days a government council declared him king anyway.


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