QUIZ:
What do Charlton Heston, Miles Davis, Enrico Caruso and Gary Cooper have in common with Disney animator Eric Goldberg?
(answer below)

I have not heard about the memorial plans for Joe Barbera yet. The Animation Guild with ASIFA/Hollywood hosts a group memorial for everyone who passed away this year. The Afternoon of Remembrance this year will be on Saturday afternoon February 3rd. It is a non-religious event, free to all. Check the ASIFA website for details.

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Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey,film director George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Aguitter,spoon bending psychic Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, Harvey Firestone, John Spencer, animator Amby Paliwoda

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days this was the day Phileas Fogg completed his trip.

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Townes Hope became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

1937- Nazi Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolph Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey ‘vermin’ but privately he enjoyed his animated antics.


1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot invisible rabbit.

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

1962- The Osmond Brothers premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges....... you see why fiction pales next to this stuff.... A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so patent medicines he was high on, while he met Nixon.


1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blames his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fires him. This sets off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby throws her support against the mogul, Zanuck is overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.
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QUIZ:
What does Charlton Heston, Miles Davis, Enrico Caruso and Gary Cooper have in common with Disney animator Eric Goldberg? They all could draw pretty well. Gary Cooper's first ambition was to be a cartoonist for the Helena Montana Times. Charlton Heston studied at the Art Students League in NY and paid by doing nude modeling.

Yesterday we in Hollywood learned of the death of Joe Barbera. He was 95 and he slipped away peacefully surrounded by his family and friends.

Joe Barbera was one of the best story artists in animation. With Bill Hanna, who died in 2001 at age 90, he made one of the greatest creative teams in film history. I worked for them on Scooby, Yogi's Galaxy Goofups, Superfriends, Godzilla, Jana of the Jungle, Challenge of the Gobots and Young Flintstones.It was a fun atmosphere where it always seemed to be someones birthday and free cake was around, and I once made it into the lunchtime poker game with Nick Nichols, Rick Leon, Bob Gogh, and Mother Mabel Gesner.

Tributes are pouring in from all over the animation world. There are some great anecdotes on Jerry Beck's Cartoon Brew and Mark Evaniers websites. I wrote a long tribute in the Animation Guild 839 blog. Check my links for how to get there.

For here, suffice it to say, from one former Flatbush native to another, ya did good Joe! Thanks for the memories.

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Birthdays:Edith Piaf, Cicely Tyson is 73, Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Urich, Jennifer Beals is 43, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Darryl Hannah, Alyssa Milano, Bronwen Barry, Jake Gyllenhaal is 26

1914- Earl Hurd patented animation 'cels' (celluloids) and backgrounds. Before this cartoonists tried drawing the background settings over and over again hundreds of times or slashed the paper around the character and tried not to have it walk in front of anything. By the late 1990’s, most cels & cel paint had been replaced by digital imaging.

1918- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It Or Not" column in the New York Globe.

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts begin.

1971- Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ premiered based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. In America the film received an X Rating, more for the sex than the violence. Kubrick later cut some naughty scenes to get the rating down to R. The sensation over the film caused so many incidents of urban violence that it was banned in England for three decades.

1974- The first personal computer went on sale. The Altair 8800, named for the planet in the 1955 sci-fi movie classic Forbidden Planet. The computer came in a kit that you had to build and it cost $397. The next year two kids at Harvard named Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a programming language for it called BASIC.

2001- Peter Jackson’s film ‘The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring’ first opened.

Quiz: Which was the first animated TV special? The Grinch? A Charlie Brown Christmas? see below.


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Birthdays: Antonio Stradivari, Karl Maria Von Weber, Ty Cobb, George Stevens, Ozzie Davis, Diane Disney-Miller, Anita O’Day, Paul Klee, Betty Grable,Keith Richards, Leonard Maltin,Ray Liotta, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario,Katie Holmes is 28, Brad Pitt is 43, Steven Speilberg is 60

1937- Mae West does a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam and Eve that was considered so racy CBS banned her from their network. At the same time she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long!"

1939-Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels”.

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Killgallen as panelists.

1960- A young eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walk away and had been AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco and in 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night…a winoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts.

1966-FORTY YEARS AGO- YOU’RE A MEAN ONE, MISTER GRINCH!

Chuck Jone's TV version of the Doctor Seuss classic 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered. Chuck used many of his stalwart artists from his Bugs Bunny days like Maurice Noble, Ken Harris and Ben Washam. Narration was by Boris Karloff and the song "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" was sung by Thurl Ravnscroft,better known as the voice of Tony the Tiger.

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces for a solo singing career.

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again for residuals. (again...)

1984- Christopher Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

1997- Saturday Night Live Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the Hancock Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 31-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me.". Chris Farley was scheduled to be the voice of the character Shrek; Mike Myers now took over. Farley idolized the late John Belushi, who had also died of drugs and hard living at age 31. One writer recalled Farley drunk, throwing chairs and tables around in his hotel room, then he turned to him and asked innocently:" Do you think Belushi is in heaven?"

1998- Dreamworks feature cartoon the “Prince of Egypt”, or, as it was nicknamed,"The Zion King".
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Quiz: What was the first animated TV special? The Grinch? Charlie Brown Christmas?

ANSWER: In 1956 UPA director John Wilson created animation to Stavinsky's ballet Petroushka with Stavinsky himself conducting.It was for the Sol Hurok Music Hour on NBC. Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol was in 1961,Rankin Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in 1964, A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965,The Grinch who Stole Christmas in 1966.

I heard of the death last week of Adrienne Tytla. The lovely artist's model who became the life partner of master Disney animator Bill Tytla. She was 92 and this year had published her memoirs Disney's Giant and the Artist's Model. It is still available by special order. http://www.petertytla.com.
Our sympathies to her children Peter and Tamara.

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Birthdays: Antonio Cimmarosa, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr.,Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Armen Muhler-Stahl is 76, Bill Pullman, Eugene Levy, Wes Studi, Milla Jovovich is 31, Sean Patrick Thomas, Bart Simpson- 1989

ROMAN FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA-This festival of Saturn, the biggest holiday to the ancient Romans is one of the roots of Christmas. On this holiday Roman families got together, masters served their slaves and gave them the day off. People gave each other gifts in pretty colored wrappings. Most modern scholars agree that Jesus was probably born in July or August, but Christians began using the Saturnalia as the birth festival of Jesus as early as 335AD. It was made official by the Vatican in 885 AD. Why Dec 17th and not the 25th? Because in the Old Style calendar, today was December 25th. It's the 17th in the Gregorian reformed calendar. So at sunset shout "Io,Io, Saturnalia!" ancient Greek for Hail Saturn!
jingle bells,jingle bells, jingle all the wayyy..!

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more like today’s Mardi Gras. This is why the Pilgrims tried to ban it. The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate and pious observance among centered on the family. American business tycoon J.P. Morgan had a family custom every Christmas Eve of reading A Christmas Carol to his kids, from the original manuscript.

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received it's world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo) then gave the manuscript to a friend who kept it in a closet for 43 years.

1892- Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze-later American choreographer George Balanchine.

1903- THE AIRPLANE- Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For one minute a powered heavier than aircraft flew. Orville finished the day with a telegram to their father minding the bicycle shop back in Dayton Ohio:Success. Four Flights Thursday Morning against twenty-one mile an hour wind.. Inform press home for Christmas. The news failed to get into most national newspapers.

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously.”Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

1962- The Beatles first hit "Love Me Do" enters the U.K. pop charts.

1969- The US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

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HAPPY HANNAKAH ! - The Hebrew Festival of Lights commemorating the victories in 164 b.c.e. of the priest-general Judas Maccabeus (Maccabeus means the Hammer) against the Syrian Greeks when the re-lit lamp in the purified Temple of Solomon burned for nine days on one day’s oil . Hannakah of Chaunnakah means ReDedication. The ancient state of Israel had been conquered by Babylon then Persia and finally by Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death his Greek generals divided up his empire and Israel found itself on the border between the Kingdom of Seleucus and Ptolomey's Egypt. This power struggle enabled the Jewish state to reassert it's independence by playing one side against the other until the Romans kicked everyone's butt. The Greek descendant of Seleucus, Antiochus IV Theos Epiphanes- “God Made Manifest” thought this one-God stuff weird and Jews should be praying to Hercules and Apollo like every other self respecting ancient citizen. He plundered the Temple of Solomon for gold and even tried to command Jews to eat Pork on pain of death. The Jews reasserted their faith with such vigor that even when they fell under Roman rule Julius Caesar left specific instructions that Jewish customs and Sabbath be protected.

Birthdays: TA-TA-TA-TUMMMMMM!!! Ludwig Van Beethoven,Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George Santayanna, Liv Ullmann is 65, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, William 'Refrigerator' Perry, Arthur C. Clarke is 88

1900- EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a vaudeville act in drag. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison, then Edison put him on the payroll. He created this and several other trickfilms. This film doesn’t move much more than his vaudeville lightning drawing act, His 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is called the first animated cartoon.


1905- Variety magazine born.

1913- Young English music hall actor named Charlie Chaplin got a job at Keystone Studios in Hollywood. His first film he would play a villain.

1935-HOT TODDY. Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who starred with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers and loved to party. Was she done in by her jealous director boyfriend, was it the mob? she had dated Lucky Lucciano,or was it a suicide, or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor running? The mystery’s never been answered.

1944- Big Band Leader Glen Miller's plane disappeared over the English Channel. In 1988 ,a retired RAF engineer admitted he may have jettisoned some leftover bombs on top of the entertainer's plane while returning home from a bombing run.

1944- THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE- In his last gamble Hitler scraped together his remaining army reserves and launched them in a surprise attack through the center of the allied armies. The Nazis panzers were spearheaded by a group of commandos in G.I. uniforms trained in American slang and baseball scores to confuse communications. They calculated to launch their offensive during a heavy snowstorm when the superior Allied air forces would have to be grounded.
After chasing the Germans across France to the Rhine the American armies had come to consider the Krauts a defeated enemy. So they were taken completely by surprise. Gen. Eisenhower had just gotten his fifth general's star and was attending the wedding of his orderly Rickie in Versailles when he got the news. At one point the German offensive was so successful that Pres. Franklin Roosevelt wanted to drop the first Atomic Bomb on them. The offensive eventually stalled and was beaten back at the cost of 70,000 U.S. casualties; the most Americans killed and wounded in any single battle in history.

1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey Joe’, in the UK.

1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song ‘American Pie’.

1973- The first NFL player to rush for 2000 yards in a season?- O.J. Simpson.

1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, died.

1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.

1993- Aaron Spelling fired Shannon Dougherty off the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.

1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice during a routine throat operation.
A gag song appeared at the time for her sing (To my favorite things...)

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cadillacs and cataracts and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,

These are a few of my favorite things.

When the pipes leak,
When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.