I gotta note from Mark Kausler this morning, who asked after reading my last blog if Bill Littlejohn was okay. I had listed him among the animation illustrium now gone hence. I reassured him, fear not, old Pres. Littlejohn is alive and well. Antran Manoogian the ASIFA President talked to him the other day and I talked to him today. Although well over ninety and on a walker, his voice was clear and his mind sharp. He said he was dissappointed animated features didn't get five Oscar nominees this year because the disqualification of Arthur and the Invisibles. The Academy rules stated that a film has to have over 70% of the main character be animation to qualify.

Another friend I spoke to joked about the big live action directors like Zemeckis, Besson and Cameron who want to be animators. We agreed that if they want to make animation so bad, they should make our same salary! That will cure them of the notion.

Went to the final judging for the short films animation Oscar yesterday. While we don't know who the nominees are yet, congrads for the great work the ten finalists put in- Joanna Quinn, Bill Plympton, Don Herzfeldt and the redoubtable teams at Pixar and Blue Sky. Roger Allers with a crew of Disney 2D folks and more, artists from Denmark, Belgium and Hungary.

Guide Dog,with the gracious permission of the big Ol' PLymptoon man hisself.

I recall my first time going to these screenings. Sitting in the audience as judges were such august animators as Marc Davis, Friz Freleng, Bill & Fini Littlejohn, Leo Salkin, Herb Klynn, Saul Bass, Bill Hertz, Duane Crowther and more. Now all but memory, but their spirit lives on.

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Birthdays: Benedict Arnold, Faye Dunaway, Hal Roach, Raymond Outcault the cartoonist of the Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, Cecil Beaton, John Dos Passos, Lawrence Kasdan , Andy Rooney, Julian Bond, Steven Soderbergh is 44, LL Cool J, T. Bone Burnet, Emily Watson, Sterling Holloway the voice of Winnie the Pooh “oh bother…”

350 a.d.- The feast day of Saint Hilary of Poitiers- Saint Hilary may have been the father of church music. In exile in Phyrgia he noticed pagans sang hymns to their deities, so he composed the first Christian musical hymns. The Haleleiuyah Chorus, Ave Maria and “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Heaven” would follow in due time.

1952-The NBC "Today" show debuts with Dave Garroway, Jim Fleming and J. Fred Muggs the chimp.

1954- actress Marilyn Monroe married baseball great Joe DiMaggio.

1957- Humphrey Bogart died of esophageal cancer at age 57. When he was buried at Forrest Lawn Lauren Bacall put in with his ashes a solid gold whistle inscribed with the famous line from "To Have and To Have Not"- 'If you ever need me, just whistle.' The group of friends around Bogie and Bacall were nicknamed ‘The Rat Pack” . After Bogart’s death Frank Sinatra became the focus and his circle made the Rat Pack famous.

1964- Hanna & Barbera's ' The Magilla Gorilla' cartoon show. Won't you, buy him; take him out and try him,Go-rilla for sale...."

1967- Hippies in San Francisco hold the first “Be-In” in Golden Gate Park.

1972- Norman Lear’s hit comedy series Sanford & Son premiered. Starring Red Fox, it was based on the English show Steptoe & Son.

1990- Matt Groenings the Simpsons, which had been run as a series of blackout vignettes on the Tracey Ullman Show, now debuted as its own regular prime time series. Cowabunga!

Just got my copy of my second book, Jews and American Popular Culture from Praeger/Greenwood press. Thanks to everyone who aided me with the project, including John Canemaker who lent me a cool drawing of Friz Freleng done by Chuck Jones in 1976.

Today members of the Hollywood Animation and Short Films community will gather at the Motion Picture Academy for what's called The Branch Screening. It's when we decide on the nominees for this years short film Oscar. Those rooting for a particular film, time to rub your rabbits foot, finger your worry beads or whatever you do.
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Birthdays: Sophie Tucker, Gwen Verdon, Robert Stack, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brandon Tartikoff, Armie Archerd, Julie Louise Dreyfus, Orlando Bloom is 30

1847- Gen. Andres Pico signed the capitulation of Campo de Cahuenga (the little park next Universal studios today), surrendering the Mexican state of Alta-California to U.S. General John Fremont. Fremont, nicknamed "The Pathfinder" was the first Republican candidate for President in 1856 and when the Civil War began he was a General until the confederates made a fool of him and he dropped from public view. During the Civil War Andres Pico served in the Yankee force that defeated an attempted Confederate invasion of California. I guess he figured one change of flag in a lifetime was enough.

1854- The Accordion is patented. polka fans rejoice!

1906- The first ad for a radio appeared in an American Science Magazine. It boasted an effective range of over one mile !

1925- THE FIRST CALIFORNIA GURU- Indian spiritual teacher Abrahamansa Yogananda , then called “The Swami” settled in Los Angeles and gave his first lecture to an audience in LA Philharmonic Hall. He founded the Malibu Self-Realization Center in 1950.

1929- Wyatt Earp died at 81 of prostate cancer in Los Angeles. After careers as a gunfighter, buffalo hunter, Dodge City marshal, prizefight referee, Yukon gold prospector and faroe dealer he finished in L.A. speculating in real estate. He liked to stroll onto Hollywood western movie sets to give advice to Tom Mix and William S. Hart on how they did it in the Old West. He was buried in San Francisco's Jewish Cemetery because his third wife, ex-saloon hooker Sadie Marcus was of that faith. On the subject of the Gunfight of the OK Corral in 1881 he told so many different versions of what happened that his account is considered unreliable.
Wyatt Earp would have died totally forgotten but in his last years he was interviewed by a journalist named Stuart Lake who published a best selling biography in 1931 called Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal. After that the movies and TV took up his name to make him the most famous lawman in western history, which would have been a surprise to him.

1942- In the late evening the German U-Boat U-123 sailed into New York Harbor. The German captain was amazed that although they were at war the Americans had made no defensive arrangements. The city wasn’t even blacked out, but still illuminated brightly.

1943- Movie starlet Frances Farmer was dragged screaming in a straightjacket out of a Hollywood Hotel and committed. She screamed Rats! Rats! and listed her occupation on her arrest record as “c**ksucker”. Her career was ruined and she spent years in asylums but it’s inconclusive whether she had actually suffered mental illness or it was her mother overreacting to her sullen, tempermental nature.

1957-THE FRISBEE- Two former World War Two pilots, Warren Fransconi and Walter Morrison invented he plastic platter in a San Luis Obisbo home. Originally called Flying Saucers and Pluto’s Platters they got the name Frisbee when they demonstrated it at Yale University. The students there were used to flipping pie platters at each other from the local Frisbee Pie Company, so when they played with the new disc they cried “Frisbee, Frisbee!” which seemed to Warren and Walter a better name. When Morrison died in 2002 his family obeyed his last request- and I’m not making this up- to have his body cremated and his ashes mixed with plastic and molded into a Frisbee.

1958- Actress Jayne Mansfield married weightlifter Mickey Hargitay. Their daughter was Marisa Hargitay

1979- The Young Men’s Christian Association filed a lawsuit against the outrageously gay rock group the Village People over their hit song “YMCA”.

1985- Carol Wayne, an actress who played dumb blonde roles on shows like Johnny Carson, drowned while swimming in Mexico. She was 41.

2002- President G.W. Bush almost choked on a pretzel while watching football on TV.

Birthdays: Pilgrim leader John Winthrop, John Hancock, Edmund Burke, John Singer Sargent, Jack London , Charles Perrault (Mother Goose), James Farmer the founder of CORE, Herman Goering, Kirstie Alley is 51, "Smokin'Joe"Frazier, Tex Ritter, Howard Stern is 52, Rush Limbaugh, Oliver Platt, Wayne Wang, Tiffany, PIXAR's John Lasseter is 50

1669- Buccaneer Henry Morgan convened a meeting of the Captains of the Coast, a council of pirates on board his frigate, the Oxford. In their meeting they resolved to attack Cartagena Columbia, a rich Spanish port and staging area for the great treasure fleets. During the drunken celebrations someone fired a gun off in the Oxford’s powder magazine and the ensuing explosion killed 200. Arrrg..Mateys!

1809- A group of Viennese businessmen convince Ludwig Van Beethoven not to move to another city by paying him a yearly allowance. Beethoven continually worried about money and pleaded poverty yet after his death people found thousands of silver coins hidden in little pots and cupboards throughout his home. He used to charge people on the street three marks to come and look at him through his window while he composed.

1928- Police raid the prestigious women’s college, Radcliffe Hall and seize 800 copies of the novel “The Well of Loneliness” because it was considered to promote lesbianism.

1928- Henry Grey and Ruth Snyder are electrocuted in Sing-Sing Prison for the murder of Mrs. Snyder's husband. The love triangle was the inspiration for the films 'Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice' and 'Body Heat". Press photographer Thomas Howard taped a small camera to his ankle and snapped a photo of Mrs Snyder frying in the chair. The New York Daily News published the photo on its front page.

1960- ”The Scent of Mystery”- the first film in Smell-O-Vision.

1962- President John F. Kennedy signed Executive order 10988, mandating federal workers had the right to join unions and bargain collectively. In 2001, in the trauma over 9-11, President George W. Bush insisted his new 50,000 member Department of Homeland Security be forbidden to unionize.

1966- Holy Cult Classic ! The t.v. show "Batman" with Adam West and Burt Ward premiered.

1970- The Boeing 747 makes it’s first flight.

1971- “ALL IN THE FAMILY” ,Norman Lear's t.v. sitcom about racism and the 60's,
debuts. Based on a successful British show, it broke new ground for American sitcoms by frankly discussing prejudice, menopause, rape and other taboo subjects. Its first show featured the sound of a toilet flushing. The networks were so worried about its explosive content ABC rejected the show twice and CBS ran the first episodes with a long apologetic disclaimer. Carrol O’Connor, the actor who played Archie Bunker was so convinced the show would flop he demanded as part of his contract a round-trip plane ticket home. The show ran for 13 years, won a bushel of Emmy Awards and made Archie Bunker a folk hero.

1992-According to Arthur C. Clarke's "2001, a Space Odyssey", the HAL-9000 computer was booted up today.

1987-No mystery, Agatha Christie dies at 88 of natural causes.

1995- Steven Speilberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen announced that the name of their new partnership would be 'Dreamworks SKG'. Someone in Florida immediately bought the domain name “Dreamworks.com” and waited for their buyout offer.I heard it was $5,000

QUIZ: What do the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Terminator have in common?

Started teaching my classes at UCLA and USC this week. I read in USC Cinema Arts bulletin that director and alumni Robert Zemeckis ( Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forest Gump) is going to teach a workshop at USC on his performance capture technique. The same rotoscope-mo-cap stuff that was used for Polar Express, Monster House and now Beowulf. Yesterday the Hollywood Reporter said James Cameron announced he wants to do a heavy mo-cap movie called Avatar. George Millar Mad Max has scored a hit for Warner Bros with Happy Feet.

Since all these great live action guys want to be animators, why don't someone give me a Terminator movie to direct?

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Birthdays: Roman Emp Theodosius 1st, Alexander Hamilton, Gliere, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Mr. Selfridge the London department store guy, Rod Taylor, David Wolper, Lyle Lovett, Naomi Judd, Stanley Tucci, Amanda Peet is 32

Roman festival Carmentalia, or the Feast of the Nine Muses

1874- Gail Borden, the inventor of condensed milk, died and was buried beneath a tombstone made to look like one of his milk cans.

1892- French impressionist painter Paul Gaughin, aged 46, married a 13 year old Tahitian girl named Tehura.

1908- President Teddy Roosevelt declared the entire Grand Canyon a National Monument. “The Ages have been at work at it and Man can only mar it.”

1958- the TV show Seahunt permiered. It made a star out of Lloyd Bridges.

1964- U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry gave the first warnings against smoking. Which government agency was the first to declare smoking caused lung cancer? The Nazi Government in 1939.

1965- Whiskey-A-Go-Go, the first Disco opened on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Discotecque is French for record library.

1995- Warner Bros purchased a dozen metromedia television stations around the US and this day started them off as the WB Network.

2000- America On Line announced its takeover of the worlds largest media conglomerate Time Warner Inc who had earlier merged with Ted Turner. The Walt Disney Company, who had just purchased ABC/Cap Cities, ESPN and Jim Henson, complained to the US Government that Time Warner was creating a monopoly. Uh- huh. After three years of plunging stock prices Time Warner regained control of itself and reduced AOL to a subsidiary.
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QUIZ:What do the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Terminator have in common? Answer: Animator Peter Kleinow (1934-2007), he gave life to the pudgy biscuit seller and the metal armature of the Terminator in the first movie. He also worked for Art Klokey on the Davey and Goliath show. Jerry Beck's site Cartoon Brew has more.