Part of coming to the end of a year is looking back at where we’ve come from. Part of that is also remembering the animation people who left us in 2006. Here, in no particular order, are a few of the ones I’m thinking of.

Joe Barbera- Story artist, director and co-creator of the Hanna & Barbera pantheon of characters.

Ed Benedict- The character designer who created the Flintstones, Yogi and Boo Boo, Quick Draw McGraw and BabaLouie. I once realized how much intelligence went into those characters when I got to handle some of them in 1978 for a show called Yogi's Galaxy Goofups. In fifteen minutes you can draw Yogi like you’ve draw him all you’re life. You can animate him on ones or limited. None of this is an accident, a lot of thinking went into those designs.

Alex Toth- the master comic book artist of DC comics, who I knew as the designer of the Superfriends, Space Ghost and the Herculoids. I still recall working on scenes with the Toth Batman, drawing the back of his head with that one bold, straight line from the base of the neck to the tip of his bat ears. If you were trying to make quota, you hoped for Batmans because they were so easy to draw.

Myron Waldman and Berny Wolf- the last two surviving Max Fleischer animators and probably the last two living animators from the silent era. Myron directed a few of the Fleischer Supermans and Berny animated the ghost dancing to Cab Calloway’s voice singing the Saint James Infirmary Blues.

Bill Kovacs- A programmer on Disney’s TRON, he was one of the developers of MAYA, the worlds leading animation tool.

Sid Raymond- who gave voice for Paramount cartoons like Baby Huey and Katnip.

Norm McCabe- Gentle, funny Norm, with his long Beatles cut hair. Looney Tunes animator and director of the wartime spoof the Ducktator.

Walerian Borowczyk- Polish surrealist animator who made films that influenced Terry Gilliam and Jan Svankmajer. In the 1970s he moved to Paris and directed high quality porn.

Jan Svochak- stalwart NY animator who did Punchy, the Hawaiian Punch character.

And my two old animation friends John Collins in Toronto and John McCartney in London.

We miss them and we hope that if is there is a Valhalla for animation people, they are taking their places among the illustrious of our curious field . Like Robert Howard the creator of Conan the Barbarian wrote:

All done, all fled, now lift me upon the pyre, the feast is over and let the lamps expire….

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Birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Maggie Smith, Edgar Winter , Stan “The Man” Lee, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Denzel Washington is 52, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12),Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi,

Feast of the Innocents-commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod the Great ordered the first born of Nazareth slain. In Spain and many Latin American countries this is a kind of April Fools Day, the victim of a practical joke being proclaimed an "innocent".

1869- CHEWING GUM- William Semple of Mount Vernon Ohio received a patent for chewing gum. Since early times frontiersmen and Indians had the habit of chewing on a piece of pine resin or sap. The oldest chewed piece of gum was found in Sweden in a glacier in 1993. It is 9,000 years old and no, it wasn’t found under a theater seat. As early as 1842 Charles Curtis was selling spruce chewing gum from his home in Bangor Maine.
In 1869 a Staten Island photographer named Thomas Adams made friends with exiled Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, he of the Alamo fame. Adams noticed the old general didn’t smoke but liked to chew a plug of tree sap he called “Chicle”. Adams took the chicle and put a candy shell around it, getting rich on the invention of Gum Balls. Santa Anna hoped the invention would finance his return to power in Mexico City but that never occured. Gumball machines appeared in 1918, Bubble Gum in 1928.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capuchines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory, but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience jumped for fear of getting wet. In the audience was a magician named George Melies who was inspired to use the new device to invent motion picture special effects.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play CYRANO DE BERGERAC premiered in Paris. There really was a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly big nosed hero, who helps another man romance his true love. DEGUISE: “Have you read Don Quixote? Reread the part about tilting the windmills. One who tilts with windmills can be cast down into the mud.” CYRANO:” Or up into the stars!”

1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premieres as part of a vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by a living thing. The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- ON THE TOWN a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green, and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Oscar Levant(1906-1972). Levant was not in animation but he was a famous pianist, composer and actor and hosted one of the earliest talk shows on television.He was a piano player who was considered one of the great interpreters of George Gershwin's music. You can see him as the buddy of Gene Kelly in An American in Paris (1951)

He was famous for his witty one-liners like " Meeting you increases my desire to be lonesome." I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin" and " Sure LA is a Tinseltown, but just peel away that tinsel and you'll find geniune tinsel underneath!"

As a young prodigy he was invited to audition for Ignance Paderewski, the greatest pianist of his time. Paderewski listened to his playing, then told him " You're good, but you'll never be great." That crushing critique by such a genius may have contributed to his lifelong feelings of inadeqacy, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse.

So, my fellow old pros, be careful what you say to someone whose portfolio you are critiquing, you don't know what harm or inspiration you may be doing!

" There's a fine line between genius and insanity, and I'm erasing that line.." Oscar Levant.


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Other Birthdays:Marlene Dietrich,Louis Pasteur, Gerard Depardieu is 58, Sidney Greenstreet, Anna Russell, William Masters of Masters & Johnson, Leslie Maguire of the Maguire Sisters, John Amos, Tovah Feldshuh,Heather O’Rourke is 31

1903- The Barbershop Quartet favorite “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of opera star Adelina Patti.

1904-PETER PAN, a play by James Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned children who laughed and cheered all night. Peter llewlyn Davies, the little boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:”I am not Peter Pan. Mr Barrie is.”, Davies committed suicide in 1960. James Barrie once said to H.G.Wells:”It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle your ears?”

1927- Broadway musical "ShowBoat" debuts at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a story by Edna Ferber the music was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play made a star out of a tall black baritone named Paul Robeson.”Ol’ Man River..”

1935- Radio City Music Hall opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in the world, seating over 6,000. Cole Porter sang” They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they clamor to get in…..”

1947- The "Howdy-Doody" show debuts on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse.

1951- The Crosley car goes into service for the post office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is a little jeep with the steering wheel on the right side so the mail deliverer didn’t have to get out of his vehicle to reach every curbside mailbox.

1954- The" Disneyland" television show premieres. Up until then the major Hollywood Studios were all boycotting the new upstart medium of television, then mostly done in New York by blacklisted stage actors and writers. Walt Disney is the first to break ranks with the major film studios and get into television production and even films the show in Technicolor, figuring television will develop color broadcasting eventually.

Birthdays:Charles Babbage,Admiral Dewey, Mao Tse Tung, Richard Widmark is 91, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Alan King, Phil Spector is 65, Fred Schepsi

In Britain this is BOXING DAY, from the Victorian English custom of boxing up the leftovers of your Christmas feast and giving it to the poor.

First Day of the Kwanza Festival. Kwanza is from the Swahili words “Matunda ya kwanzaa” meaning “first fruits” of the harvest. See below-1966.

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast Day of the Pagan god Jul, when good Guildsmen would gather in their Guild Halls to eat themselves sick and drink themselves silly. Then in a total stupor they would swear oaths on their patron saints to stick by each other in the new year. Churchmen bristled at the licentious nature of the festival and tried to ban it, but there was no stopping a good rowdy party. Nobody really knew who the pagan god Jul was, just that it was fun to see the priests get so pissed off.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

Al Hirschfield as a young man

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld does his first caricature. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend takes it to a newspaper and sells it, soon he's under contract to the New York Times. He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and has become a legend himself. In the American Theater a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2001 he died at age 100, drawing to the end.

Al Hirschfield as an older artist

Back on Aladdin in 1992 Eric Goldberg and I had the chance to have lunch and interview Al on the Walt Disney studio rotunda. He was a wonderful and gracious man, very giving with his ideas about technique. We joked about longevity. He loved to tell about an article he read about George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill and their long lived. He said Shaw was vegetarian, chaste and didn't drink. Churchill woke up to a sherry, smoked 22 cigars a day and liked his steaks bloody. Al's conclusion was there was no secret to long life. Either it's in your genes or not. Then he asked for more wine.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moves from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1944- Tennessee Williams play the Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1946- The Gala Opening day of the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel's $ 4 million dollar gamble in the desert. Despite booking top talent like Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat the promised Hollywood society types failed to materialize. The hotel part of the casino wasn't ready for guests yet so the high rollers couldn't see making the long trip. A violent rainstorm kept still more people away. Also the casinos formal dresscode discouraged the local yokels who liked to gamble in ten gallon hats and bluejeans. The Flamingo casino made a profit eventually but not before the angry Mafia riddled Siegel with bullets and cut the throat of his manager, Moe Greenberg.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate African-American culture.

1973- Murakami-Wolf's t.v. special "The Point" with Dustin Hoffman narrating and Harry Nilsson's music. Hoffman's track was later rerecorded by Ringo Starr for some reason.
“Me and my Ar-row…”

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

1985- Gorillas in the Mist author and ape anthropologist Diane Fossey was murdered by machete in her lab in Africa.

2004-TSUNAMI- One of the stronger earthquakes 9.1, recorded in the last 100 years hit the Indian Ocean. The earthquake sent giant tidal waves covering the coastlines of Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, killing over 215,000. Whole beach communities were wiped out without warning.

Birthdays: Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus the Christ, 6-4 BC? or Four Before Himself-(traditional date.)
Sir Issac Newton, Clara Barton, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein,, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Alice Cooper, Sissie Spacek, Tarzan cartoonist Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Annie Lennox, Humphrey Bogart- born in 1899 liked to call himself the Last Child of the Nineteeth Century, animator Howard Beckerman

885AD- Pope Gregory I formalized what Christians had already been doing for 500 years, namely celebrating the birth festival of Jesus or "Christ’s Mass", on December 25th.

1428- During the Hundred Years War, at the siege of the city of Orleans, a six hour truce was declared for Christmas. English warlords Sir William Gladesdale and Sir John Talbot expressed a wish to hear French music, so a band of enemy trumpeters serenaded them from the city walls.

1541- At the Christmas mass Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgement was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian despite the opinions of King Frederick the Great in Berlin:" German singers? I’d rather hear my horse whinny!"

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.

1855- Ice hockey first played in North America at Kingston, Ontario, Canada

1914- During World War One German and British soldiers facing each other across the Western Front held a spontaneous Christmas truce. After midnight the German guns ceased and the sounds of Christmas Carols drifted over the barbed wire. The British and French responded with serenades from their regimental bands. At dawn without any official sanction or orders the soldiers of both sides came out of their trenches and in the middle of No-Man's Land exchanged laughter, Schnapps, Scotch, tobacco and even played a good natured soccer game together. Next morning the shooting resumed and the officers who allowed the fraternization were reprimanded.

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. A wild Moorish fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.

1931-The first BBC World Service Network broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire".

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast.

1946-Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67. While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C. what are you doing with that? "Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

1949- Artists at the Disney studio machine shop presented Walt Disney with his own miniature steam train. Walt could now ride his guests around. This gets the Old Man interested in theme parks...

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Speilberg calls it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here was because Carl Stalling wrote it specifically for the cartoon.


1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He tells his father he is inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

1991- General Party Secretary and Premier Mikhail Gorbachov resigned and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. In it's place is the Confederation of Independent States led by the Federation of Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

2006- James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, died at age 73.

As you sit back in your chair this Christmas –Christ’s Mass ( the biggest holiday of the Ancient Roman World called Saturnalia and the birth of the Persian Sun God Mithras was named the birth festival of Jesus by Pope Leo the Great in 885 A.D. December 25th was also the Feast of Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, a cult popular to Romans like Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Modern estimates based on the census records of Augustus and astronomy calculate Jesus' actual birth may have occurred in July although Christians had started to use the Saturnalia as the birthday feast as early as the 300's A.D. ) by your yule log (German Norse custom, the Yule Festival lasting twelve days), wrapping your presents in pretty paper ( Roman Saturnalia custom) with your house all decorated with lights ( Roman New Year custom) under your mistletoe (Druid custom), drinking from your Wassel Bowl (Anglo-German hot beer with toast floating in which is why we "toast" with the words "was-heil"-hail to you. Egg Nog was a drink of Elizabethan sailors which means 'Eggs with Grog".)

You're admiring your Christmas Tree ( besides Druid tree worship, the 24th of December was the feast day of Saints Adam & Eve when Medieval Churches act out the Genesis story and set up a tree representing the "tree of life" with glass balls representing the fruit. Some attribute the idea to Martin Luther and others to a legend about devils trying to undermine the Tree of Life and they succeed at end of the year so decorating a tree helps the Tree of Life grow back. They began to appear in private homes in the mid-1500s. The Christmas Tree custom was taken from Germany to England by Queen Charlotte of Mecklenberg Streilitz, the wife of King George III and to America by Hessian soldiers and later German immigrants in the 1850’s. In an 1883 editorial about the newfangled custom the New York Times called the Christmas Tree-" A rootless, lifeless corpse -unworthy of the Day..", Thomas Edison first strung electric Christmas lights around the tree replacing candles in 1882. Holly bloomed only at this time of year and to Medieval people looked like the Crown of Thorns with the little red berries symbolizing blood droplets. Poinsettas were introduced in the 1850s by the US consul to Mexico, Jacob Poinsetta.

And you dream of a visit from Santa Claus ( a hybrid of Anglo-Dutch customs appearing in it's modern form in New York in the late 1850's. The English form was St. Nicholas, a big jolly Bishop in a red suit and the Dutch had Kris Kringle, the elf who dropped down your chimney and was also known as 'Klaus-in-the-Cinders' or 'Cinder-Klaus". The Welsh had a Druid priest who distributed magic mushrooms wore a red robe with white fur trim. To avoid the more toxic qualities they fed these mushrooms to Reindeer and drank an ale fermented from their urine. yeah, that’s where the Reindeer come from. The first image of him was drawn in 1859 in the New York Sun by cartoonist Thomas Nast for the anonymously published poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” attributed to Clement Clarke Moore. Nast also created the Democratic Donkey and Republican elephant. In 1866 Nast originated the idea that Santa was from the North Pole to stop post Civil War squabbling as to whether Santa was a Yankee or a Southerner. The modern Santa Claus image was created for a 1930's Coca Cola ad by illustrator Haddon Sundblom

The song THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS was a secret code from an unknown author in the XVIII Century. From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ, don’t ask me why. Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments. Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love. The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Pentatuque, the first five books of the Old Testament. The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation. Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit: Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy. The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes. Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control. The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments. The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples. The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed. The carol “Silent Night” was composed by Austrian minister Rudolph Scribner in 1848. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer appeared in 1939 in a story by a Montgomery Ward Department Store ad exec named Mayo- Gene Autry the Singing Cowboy recording the famous song.

So here's wishing you hopes for a White Christmas (song written by Russian-Jewish composer Irving Berlin) and a very Happy New Year (courtesy of the 12 month calendar reformed in 45 B.C. by the Hellenic-Egyptian scientist Sosigenes for Julius Caesar, modified by Pope Gregory in 1582 and not accepted by English speaking lands until 1752, else we'd be celebrating New Years in March.- the stubborn Old Believers were called April Fools )

Merry Christmas, Freylich Chaunnakah, Happy Ramadan, Happy Winter Solstice, Happy Washing of the Buddha, Happy Birth of Mithras- who was born in the wilderness and adored by shepards, Io, Io, Saturnalia, Joyeux Noel, Bozego Narodzenia, Frohe Weinacht, Prettig Kerstfeest, Nadolig llawen, Selamat Hari Krismas, Happy Birth of Sol Invictus the Sungod, Happy death and rebirth of Baldur son of Odin, Happy beginning of the rise of Persephone back from Hades to her mother Demeter, and please pass the reindeer pee !

Tom & Pat Sito 2006