Besides my USC and UCLA commitments, I just started teaching a class at Woodbury College in Animation History. I took it on from Charles Solomon when he went on a sabbatical.

Egads! Sito now being paid to tell history stories? Yes We Can!
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I hope everyone has a nice and safe, Labor Day Holiday!
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Quiz: Why are the political polar extremes called Lefties and Rightists?

Question: Okay animation buffs, during World War Two, when Jack Mercer was drafted into the army, who supplied the voice for Popeye?
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History for 8/29/2008
Birthdays: King James II Stuart, John Locke, Oliver Wendel Holmes Sr., Jean Dominique Ingres, Charlie Parker, Preston Sturges, Ingrid Bergman, William Friedkin is 70, Dinah Washington, George Montgomery, Slobodan Milosevic, Robin Leach, Richard Attenborough is 85, Donald O’Connor, Elliot Gould, Rebecca DeMornay, Joel Schumacher, choreographer Mark Morris, Charles Kettering inventor of the automobile ignition, Sen. John McCain is 72, Michael Jackson The King of Pop is 50.

1776- The Long Island Campaign ends. George Washington's army was humiliatingly defeated in open battle by the British regulars, driven off Brooklyn Heights and pinned up against the East River. All night the fishermen of Marblehead Massachusetts succeeded in ferrying the remainder of his troops across to Manhattan while the British Navy sat strangely inactive around Staten Island. Even the weather helped with a thick fog that shrouded all activity until 8:00AM in the morning. A Loyalist homeowner named Mrs. Rapalie sent her slave to warn the British that the rebels were getting away. The man was intercepted by some German Hessians who couldn’t understand any thing he said in his thick Brooklyn-Colonial accent, so they arrested him as a spy.

1885 - Boxing's 1st heavyweight title fight with regulation 3-oz gloves & 3-minute
rounds fought between John L Sullivan & Dominick McCaffrey. Before this bareknuckle fights could go on for 75 rounds and only be stopped when one of the other opponent was too bloody to continue.

1889 - 1st American Intl pro lawn tennis contest -Newport RI.

1893- Whitcomb Judson invented the zipper.

1896- Chop Suey invented in New York City.

1908 - NY gives a parade to returning US Olympians from London. Wall Street brokers come up with the idea of throwing shredded stock ticker tape out the windows.
The first ticker tape parade.

1925 - After a night on the town, Babe Ruth shows up late for batting practice Yankee manager Miller Huggins suspended Ruth & slapped a $5,000 fine on him. Whenever the Yankees were on the road and were safely winning a game Ruth would take himself out of the lineup early so he could scout out a good bar for the team to go to later.

1929- New York City was having competitions between builders for who could build the tallest office building. The Chrysler Building had recently surpassed the Bank of Manhattan Building. On this day William Ratzengauer and former Presidential candidate Al Smith announced they would build a monster building, much higher than any other. It would be on the site of the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel and they would call it the Empire State Building.

1949- Soviet Russia detonated it's first atomic bomb "First Lightning". The scientists won medals, automobiles and dachas. They knew that if it had not worked they all would have been shot. Yet Stalin made no public announcement until he could fill his larder with nukes. A CIA sniffer plane picked up the evidence of the bomb and dubbed it "Joe-1" after Joe Stalin. It was announced on Sept 23rd. The U.S. reacted to this news and the news of Mao's taking over China with shock. It fueled the great Red-scare of the 1950's.

1953-Warner's "Cat Tails for Two" introduces Speedy Gonzales. Years ago I met an old animator named Frank Gonzales who claimed the character was named for him. Warners had a drawing quota for assistants and Frank was always first done and out of his chair to go flirt with the ink & paint girls. The other guys would say:" There goes "Speedy" Gonzales again. When Chuck Jones & designer Hawley Pratt were thinking of new characters, the rest as they say, was history.

1958 - George Harrison joins the Quarrymen -Lennon-McCartney and Sutcliffe. The later rename themselves the Beatles.

1966- Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb was executed for plotting against the government. Qutb is considered by many the philosopher of the new radical offshoot of Islam in the world today. His pupil who took up his cause was Ayman Al Zuwahiri. He is the man in the horn rimmed glasses we see today standing next to Osama Bn Laden.

1967- Final Episode of the television series "The Fugitive". Dr. Richard Kimble catches the one-armed-man and clears his name.

1974- THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE- Prizefighter Mohammed Ali wins back his heavyweight crown from George Foreman in a wild showbiz event set up in Kinshasa, Zaire. While the African government was trying to use the press attention to highlight the modern society they had developed, Ali was making jokes about witchdoctors, missionaries in stewpots and other cliches. "Tonight they'll be a thousand guys named Mohammed out there rooting for me, and another thousand guys named Ali rooting for me, but their won't be anybody else out there named George Foreman!" Foreman left boxing, became a minister, then returned in his 40’s to win the heavyweight crown and a fortune when most athletes are retired.

1989 -Hotel millionaire Leona Helmsley had said : "Only little people pay taxes". This day she was sentenced to four years in prison and fined two million dollars for 33 counts of income tax evasion. Leona died in 2007 and left the bulk of her estate to her lapdog.

2002- Peep-O-Rama, Times Square’s last remaining peep show, closed.

2005- HURRICANE KATRINA destroyed the cities of New Orleans, Gulfport Louisiana, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Tidal surges up to 30 feet collapsed levees, sending walls of water across the Big Easy. Thousands died, 800,000 homeless and billions of dollars in damage. The tragedy proved that for all the fuss about preparedness after 9-11, America was woefully confused in a real crisis. While people drowned in their attics and critical care patients were abandoned on the sidewalks to die, the government fumbled for almost a week. Long lines of relief trucks and ambulances were kept waiting outside the city with no permission to move in. Meanwhile President Bush played air guitar at a Navy base in San Diego and compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt, then partied with John McCain on a golf course for his birthday. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff attended a Bird Flu seminar and FEMA head David Brown was sending e-mails to friends like “Did you see me on camera with my new tie? -Fabulous!”
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Question: Okay animation buffs, during World War Two, when Jack Mercer was drafted into the army, who supplied the voice for Popeye?

Answer: The old sailor’s salty mumbles were done by Mae Questel, the voice of Olive Oyl and Betty Boop.