Ink and Paint Department at Warner Bros,1962. Courtesy of Annie Guenther.

Speaking of Martha Sigall, for those who are worried that my book on union history will be dry-dull stuff, just full of wage scales and negotiations for residual percentages, here is an excerpt :

Nowadays, everyone is sensitive to the issue of sexual harassment. In Hollywood's Golden Age, guys who got fresh with girls were joked about as wolves and tomcats. But a woman who complained about a butt pinch was called a killjoy or an Old Maid. -----Martha Sigall tells a story of a big-breasted painter who had to endure a certain male animator who liked to reach around from behind and squeeze her breasts while she tried to paint. When she complained, she was just laughed at as a spoilsport. Finally she came up with a solution. She lined a padded bra with sharp steel pushpins points-out, and covered it with a loosely fitted silk shirt. When the animator in question grabbed the "booby traps", he let out a howl. Marked as he was with this curious form of stigmata, the miscreant was cured of such behavior.
( Drawing the Line: Chap 1, Page 27.)

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Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine, Art Babbitt -the creator of Goofy, Chevy Chase, Paul Hogan, Rona Barrett, Johnny Ramone, Sigourney Weaver is 56, Matt Damon is 35

1907- Charles Frederick Dow, one of the founders of the Wall Street Journal, started his system of charting the average performance of industrial stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

1929- British Imperial Airways shows the first in-flight movie.

1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTOR'S FIRST MASS PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion Picture rates and fees. The catch was the rates were drafted with the advice of friends of the studio heads in Washington. The actors went ballistic when they saw new rules such as a ceiling cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year (the producers had no such cap), restriction of actors independant agents, and terms of an old salary contract would stay in effect even after the contract expired until it was renegotiated.
This night at the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Blvd. hundreds of moviestars met to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Groucho Marx and Boris Karloff. SAG president Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) was considered politically too far left to face Roosevelt, so he stepped down in favor of comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize. In previous meetings at the El Capitan the earth tremors from the Great Long Beach Earthquake the previous March made actors reconvene in the Grauman's Chinese parking lot across the street. Cantor went to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition and had the hated articles taken out of the code.

1945- "Bloody Monday" During a big strike Three hundred and fifty armed thugs club their way through picketing Warner Bros. film workers. Jack Warner had stationed sharpshooters behind the studios billboards. A logo on the studio wall said:"Better Movies through Better Citizenship", which the union folk changed to "Better Movies through Better Marksmanship". Similar scenes were happening in front of Fox and MGM.

1957- Walter O'Malley announced the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.

1957- Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his hit single Great Balls of Fire.

1966- LSD is added to the list of illegal drugs.

2004- Home decorating guru Martha Stewart began serving her 5 month prison term for perjury and insider trading.

Well, the book is off to a good start. I see DRAWING THE LINE is in the stacks in Barnes & Noble, Powells in Portland, The Strand in Greenwich Village and many more. I did my first podcast today, for Chuck Oberleitner's fan site www.o-meon.com. It's not on line yet, but I'll let you know. He has an interview with Floyd Norman there now which is very good. PLans are moving ahead for the big party at Gordon Biersch in Burbank this friday the 13th, and the big UCLA nite on monday October 23rd. Some more interviews, and in November I take my show on the road to San Francisco and the Big Apple.

But by far the best compensation I've gotten is all the good reactions from the family of the great animation folks I write about. Walt and Selby Kelly's family, Dave Hilbermans, Chuck Jones, Art Babbitts' and the amazing Martha Sigall, and more. All very flattering and excited for the book. Martha told me tonight she was glad that the story was finally told, that it was a story that all animation artists need to know.

For those who don't know her, Martha is an inker and cel-painter who started at Looney Tunes in 1936 and moved to MGM in 1943 and at Hanna Barbera in 1957. She worked with all the great animation directors, walked the picket lines and is blessed with a wonderful memory. I included a lot of her great stories, and you can read her memoirs for yourself- Living Life Inside the Lines:Tales From The Golden Age of Animation by Martha Sigall, Univ Press of Mississippi.

Birthdays: Hans Holbein, Heinrich Himmler, Andy Devine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Yo Yo Ma, Henry Wallace, June Allyson, Oliver North, Al Martino, Jose Cardenal, Neils Bohr, Ameil Buraka, Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, Toni Braxton.

1870- Writer Edgar Allen Poe was found sprawled over a barrel in a Baltimore street, dressed in someone else's clothing. He was taken to a hospital where he died raving at the walls. It was thought he died from heavy alcohol abuse but recently scholars theorize he may have died from a brain tumor or diabetes impacted by alcohol sensitivity, which would explain the violent mood swings, and that he drank heavily to deaden the pain. Another scholar also theorized that the symptoms strongly point to rabies. Poe loved cats and as we all know there was no rabies shot or test at the time. How or why the cats changed his clothes, is another puzzle.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson reversed his position and announced he was now in favor of giving women the vote.

1927- Sam Warner, the Warner Brother most responsible for committing the studio to gambling on a talking picture process, died of a brain hemmorage on the day after the 'Jazz Singer 'opened. The film's success made Warner-Vitaphone a major Hollywood Studio. His brother Jack Warner had earlier said "Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?"

1947 "Hey Stella !!" The Actor's Studio opened, teaching the Stanislavski Method, sometimes called Method Acting. The group later suffered a feud between it’s two top teachers-Lee Strassberg and Sandy Meisner. Ask any old actor if they were with Lee or Sandy, odds were they sided with one and hated the other.

1957-Dick Clark’s T.V. show American Bandstand debuts.

1959-MARIO LANZA.- Philadelphia born Italian–American Lanza was the pop icon opera singer long before there were three tenors in concert. With moviestar good looks and a velvety voice his records and movies sold millions. But he was temperamental and had angered most of the powers that be in Hollywood, climaxing with skipping a $250,000 promise to perform in Las Vegas. This day in Italy he was found dead of a heart attack at age 38. For years there were rumors that he was actually done in by the Mafia for offending Lucky Lucciano, but in the 1990s a forensic investigation by his son proved his brutal regimen of binge eating and furious dieting wore out his heart. He literally dieted himself to death.

1960- The movie Spartacus opened. Producer/star Kirk Douglas had been using blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for the script , smuggling him in and out of the lot for story meetings. Finally Douglas got fed up and ordered Trumbo to be brought out in the open as the movie's true author. This was considered the official end of the Hollywood Blacklist era, which had lasted since 1947. After director Anthony Mann left the project Douglas hired Stanley Kubrick, who had such a hard time he afterwards left Hollywood never to return.

1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.

1993- Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" earned $ 712 million dollars just in North American box office.

2003-Conan the Republican The state of California had an unpopular Democratic Governor named Grey Davis. A Republican congressman named Daryl Issa who made a fortune making annoying car alarms “step away from the car..” found an obscure codicil in the State constitution calling for a recall election. The recall election soon had 154 candidates including a porn star, former child star Gary Coleman, Porn publisher Larry Flynt,, a woman who financed her campaign by selling autographed thongs and Grey Davis’ own lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante who couldn’t stand him. This night after a comical election the state overwhelming voted for Austrian action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

According to my publisher, DRAWING THE LINE is now offically out! I had my first booksigning and interviews are continuing. Check out a chapter here, then run to go buy a copy. See what I wasted five years on and why I soon won't be able to work anywhere in town ever again, yippee!

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Birthdays: Alfred Lord Tennyson,Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale, George Westinghouse, Janet Gaynor, Carol Lombard, Karol Szymanowski, Thor Heyderthal, wrestler Bruno Sammartino, late Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, Britt Eckland, Le Corbusier, Elizabeth Shue is 43, Sean William Scott

In Ireland this is Ivy Day, when Irish folk commemorate the death of the great statesman Charles Stuart Parnell with a sprig of ivy in their buttonholes.

1802- The Heiligenstadt Testament- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven left behind a note found among his papers after his death in 1827. Dated this day it was addressed to his brother Karl and another unspecified relative. It was more of a spiritual Last Will than anything else. In the note Beethoven poured out of his heart confessing his faults and his fears of going deaf. It is an amazing insight into the great man’s soul.

1826- A Missouri saddlemaker offered a reward of one penny for a runaway apprentice. The boy had joined a Santa Fe bound wagon train and grew up to become Kit Carson, one of the Old West's most famous scouts.

1863- The first Turkish Bath House is opened in Brooklyn.

1866-The first recorded train robbery.

1889- Paris' naughty nightclub the Moulin Rouge opened.

1921- In London the society known as PPEN established, for Poets, Playwrights, Editors and Novelists.

1927-"THE JAZZ SINGER"with Al Jolson debuts. Okay, Okay, Somebody made a sound picture in 1924 and also something called "Footlights of New York" from 1926 but hey, you know what?- who cares! THIS was the movie that made "Talkies" a reality. The premiere was also the occasion for Sid Grauman to throw the first big Hollywood premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater with limos and red carpets and spotlights.

1942-THE BIRTHDAY OF WONDER WOMAN. William Moulton Marston was an educational consultant in 1940 for Detective Comics, Inc.(now better known as DC Comics). Marston saw that the DC line, seeing it filled with images of super men such as Green Lantern, Batman, and their flagship character, Superman. Seeing all these male heroes, Marston was left wondering why there was not a female hero. Max Gaines, then head of DC Comics, was intrigued by the concept and told Marston that he could create a female comic book hero - a "Wonder Woman." Marston did that, using a pen name that combined his own middle name with the middle name of Gaines: Charles Moulton
Marston was the creator of the systolic blood-pressure test, which lead to the creation of the polygraph(lie detector). Because of his discovery, Marston was convinced that women were more honest and reliable than men and could work faster and more accurately. During his life time, Marston championed the causes of women.
In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston said: 'Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power, Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.' In December 1941, Marston's 'good and beautiful woman' made her debut in All Star Comics #8. Following this exposure in what was the second largest selling comic in DC's line, Wonder Woman appeared in her own berth in Sensation Comics #1(January 1942), and six months later in her own self-titled book(Summer 1942).

1959- “Pillow Talk”premiered, the first romantic comedy pairing Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Stanley Shapiro won a best screenplay Oscar for it. The film typified the wink-wink attitude about sex before the 1960’s Sexual Revolution and defined Doris Day’s reputation as the wholesome, girl-next-door archetype. Oscar Levant quipped: “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”

1971- William Freidkin’s gritty cop movie the FRENCH CONNECTION premiered. The film won best picture, director and actor Oscars, made a major star out of Gene Hackman. One unforeseen result was the movie stimulated interest in pursuing the investigation of the real French-Corsican Mafia heroin trafficking in the US until that mob was broken up in 1979. The two real life detectives the film was based on- Eddie Egan and Sonny Corso, booth retired from the NYPD and pursued careers in show biz.

I was in High School at Art & Design and everyone in class was talking about it. It was filming around our neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn, and it was full of swear words, and violence and gritty realism.

We thought it was the coolest movie.

Films are often mirrors of our society, and old films become time capsules of bygone eras. Now in middle age, watching from the secure shade of my California tangerine trees, I can see films like the French Connection are all thats left of my New York.

Even though the buildings are old, New York is a city that constantly evolves. The city my parents grew up in was the city of neighborhood tenements and pushcarts, the city of the 30s films Dead End and Angels with Dirty Faces.

My New York was the city of the French Connection, Mean Streets, Heavy Traffic and Taxi Driver. A little dirtier, a little more dangerous, a little more real. The Times Square I knew was not the corporate Disneyland it has become. It was a scary place after dark, a place that dealt in sin at a discount. It was a black and white city. NYPD drove in those black and darkgreen Plymouths, still the best looking cop cars to me. Like Popeye Doyle , I remember what it was like to hang out on a bitter cold streetcorner in January, steam pouring out of your mouth and nothing to warm you but a blue & white paper cup of bad Greek coffeeshop coffee. Jumping turnstiles, remembering to never ride in the last subway car, especially when going under a river, thats where the gangs ride. Making out in Central Park, heroin syringes among the litter in the bushes. Hot zeppole at the San Genaro Festival. Every street seemed to have a Jamaican steel drum player. You had to watch out for dogsh*t on your shoes, yellow snow and the subway corridors smelled of urine and vomit. Ah bliss.

It was probably good that it did evolve, but the films bring back the old shades of What Once Were, and Will Never Be again.

Gang, one thing I noticed when doing research for my book was the number of objects and pictures I found that weren't labelled. I found archive pictures,sketches and gag drawings that I had no clue who the people in them might be. I'm sure when the person took the picture, he felt he would always recall who the people are. Then one day they are in strange hands and no one knows the people in the photo. It makes historians crazy.

At the Motion Picture Academy, there is an entire section called Home Movies. Sometimes, back in the decades past, a person walked through a studio or backlot with a home movie camera and filmed. The person dies and the family donates the footage to the Academy. They staff two full time librarians whose only job now is figuring out who are in these photos and where and what the year might be.

So, when you have old photos or goof drawings, write down the names right now, before your mind dribbles out of your ears, much like mine.

Picture above- Seated front- Grim Natwick, animator creator of Snow White and Betty Boop, next to him is Irv Spence, great Tom & Jerry animator. Behind and standing is Fleischer animator Lou Zukor, no relation to Adolpf Zukor, and Ellsworth Barthen, NY assistant animator and professional Franklin Delano Roosevelt impersonator (I'm not kidding, he made a living at it!)Taken by Bill Turner at the Grim Natwick 100th Birthday Party in 1990 at the Sportsmans Lodge Restaurant in LA.
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Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President.Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges"Calling Dr Howard, Dr. Fine Dr. Howard", Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana "my name Jose Jimenez", Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynis Johns, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Karen Allen ,Kate Winslet is 31, Bernie Mac is 49

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER!- Lager Beer is perfected in the Czech city of Pilsn -Pilsner Beer. Beer was made by the Egyptians and Sumerians and traced back to the Ice Age, but our concept of beer requiring refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager beer.

1880- Alonzo T. Cross patented the first ball point pen.

1904- According to comedian and playwright Steve Martin, this is the day Pablo Picasso met Albert Einstein at the Cafe Lapin Agile. There was a Cafe in Paris called Lapin Agile that Picasso did like to go, to but he never actually met Einstein.

1932- MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.


courtesy of IA Local 839.
1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK.- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. This citywide strike was broken but two more followed in 1946 and 47. One of the strikeleaders arrested wasa background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters.

1947-President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River, and Mickey Rooney doing an embarrassing Japanese impersonation " Missey Go Right-ree!".

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska those bears attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When he had appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year Letterman had joked:"Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?"laughter… When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. Werner Herzog did a film about his life.