courtesy of the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting.
I will be talking about my new book Drawing the Line this tuesday on the NPR radio program Curtains@8!, an arts & cultural talk show hosted by Nick Lawrence. Tuesday night, September 5 at 8:00 pm Eastern /5:00 pm Pacific.

Martha Baxton Benefit a week away! Even if you don't know Martha or never went to Cal Arts you can get some amazing artwork. Check out the cool stuff piling up for auction-http://baxton.mrkurtnielsen.com/ Among the goodies is an original Milt Kahl sketch from Robin Hood, animation drawings from the Little Mermaid and the Iron Giant, John Musker caricatures of John Lassiter and Tim Burton, two tickets to Penn & Teller in Vegas and more! Its all in a great cause. Donate, bid and come party with us on Sat Sept 8th at 5:30PM at Cal Arts in Valencia.

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Birthdays: The last monarch of Hawaii Queen Liliuokalani, Cleveland Amory, Alfred Spaulding 1850, founder of Spaulding sports equipment, Martha Mitchell, Mark Harmon, Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Connors, Selma Hayek is 38, Keanu Reeves is 42

31 BC- The Battle of Actium- Large naval battle near Corfu that decided that Augustus and not Anthony & Cleopatra would be the master of Rome. Legend has it that before a battle the priests spread out sacred chicken feed, and could predict victory or defeat based on how the sacred chickens would peck. This time the chicken wouldn't peck. Anthony said:"If the chickens won't peck, then let them drink!" And had them all thrown overboard. He lost the battle. Shows ya, don't mess with the sacred chickens.!

1609- Henry Hudson and his Dutch ship "Half Moon" entered New York Harbor. Twenty canoes of Indians rowed out to welcome the strange looking craft. The French under Cartier and English under Cabot had cruised by decades earlier but had not bothered to stop there. Hudson sailed 100 miles up the Hudson near the future site of Pookepsie, looking for China but found just more riverand forest. He reported this "Great River not unlike the Rhine and this Great Natural Bay Wherein a Thousand Ships may Ride tranquilly in Harbor."

1666- THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON- started in the bakery shop of Thomas Farynor on Pudding Lane. The Lord Mayor was woken up at 3:00AM. At first he was not impressed."Tosh, an old woman might piss it out!"

1752 - Last Julian calendar day in Britain and her colonies, including the US and Canada. That year you went to sleep the evening of Sept. 2nd and awoke the morning of Sept. 14th. The Calendar had been promulgated in Rome in1582, but it took this long for the Protestant countries to get on board with the new system.

1901- In a speech Teddy Roosevelt said the U.S. should " Speak softly and carry a big stick!"

1909- On the three hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson¹s discovery New York City held a grand birthday party. Hundreds of ships and public spectacles capped off with Wilbur Wright flying his new aeroplane around the Statue of Liberty. Thomas Edison illuminating the entire skyline with the new electric bulbs- the first time a city was illuminated at night by electricity.

1923- Harold Lloyd¹s comedy short "Why Worry?" released.

1945- The Grand Surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on board the U.S.S. Missouri. Presiding General Douglas MacArthur said:" The proceedings are now concluded. The greatest tragedy in human history is now at an end. We hope in the future nations will not resort to war to resolve their conflicts."He then collected all the pens used in the ceremony as souvenirs.

1973- J.R.R. Tolkein died at age 81. He couldn't care less who owned the film rights, touching off a legal battle
between Ralph Bakshi, Rankin Bass and others.

1985- A team of French and American oceanographers led by Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the final resting place of the HMS Titanic, which sank in 1912.

Welcome to September from Septembrius, After August the Romans ran out of names for the
months. Septembrius is from the Roman number 7, March being the first month.

Today we learned of the death of two famous Hollywood artists.Ed Benedict, the animator-designer of the Flintstones among other great characters. He was a strong influence on filmmakers like John K.. Various blogs like Johns' and Cartoon Brew speak about his achievements. I communicated with Ed in his retirement, but I really didn't know him that well.

I do recall when I was working on Hanna & Barbera shows in the late 1970s I was once doing cleanup on Yogi's Space Race, yet another retread of the old H&B characters. Partly for reference the studio gave us copies of the original model sheets of Yogi, Boo-Boo and Huckleberry Hound. Handling the characters I was impressed by the amount of sophistication in the design. At first glance they seem so naively simple, but in about 15 minutes you were drawing them like you drew them all your life. You could animated them full on ones, or you could animate them very limited, and they always looked good. That kind of design was not an accident, it required intelligence and experience. The minds that created the beautiful MGM Tom & Jerrys knew just where to cut corners. I don't know if Ed designed those characters, but he was central to the H&B design team.

Also the death of screenwriter Josef Stefano. He wrote Alfred Hitchcocks' Psycho and the television series The Outer Limits. " Do not attempt to adjust your television set....We are in control...We control the horizontal...etc."
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Birthdays: Joachim Pachebel, boxer Gentleman Jim Corbet, orchestra conductor Seiji
Ozawa, Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, Walter Reuther founder of the United Auto
Workers, Englebert Humperdinck- the 19th century composer, Conway Twitty,
Jack Hawkins, Leonard Slatkin, Marylin Munster-Yvonne DeCarlo, Gloria Estefan,
Tex Avery animator Mike Lah, Canadian folksinger Boxcar Willie, Richard Farnsworth, Lily Tomlin.

1852-The Hot Dog or Frankfurter was invented by a group of butchers in
Frankfurt, Germany. It didn't catch on in the U.S until it was served at the
opening the Coney Island Exhibition in 1894 where it was billed as a Vienna
Sausage. In Chicago they were called Red Hots. Dog was one newspaper's speculation
upon the origins of the meat. It was first served at a baseball game in 1910.

1913 - George Bernard Shaw¹s play "Androcles & the Lion," premieres
in London.

1919- Pat Sullivan's 'Feline Follies" cartoon staring Felix the Cat.
Felix is the first true animated star, not depended on a previous
newspaper comic strip. His body prototype, a black peanut shape with four
fingers, will be the standard for years to come and copied for characters
like Oswald and Mickey Mouse. By 1926 he was the most popular star in
Hollywood after Chaplin and Valentino. Lindbergh had a Felix doll in his
plane and it has been speculated that Groucho Marx copied his famous strut.
The first television image broadcast by scientists in 1926 was of a Felix
doll.
Producer Pat Sullivan and his wife Margaret. Courtesy of Cartoon Brew.

1928- Paul Terry premiered his sound cartoon RCA Photophone system for a
short called "Dinner Time". Young studio head Walt Disney came by train
out from Los Angeles to see it. He telephoned his studio back in L.A." My Gosh,
Terrible! A Lot of Racket and Nothing Else!" He said they could continue to
complete their first sound cartoon "Steamboat Willie".

1932-Mayor Jimmy Walker resigned as Mayor of New York. The corrupt but
colorful Walker was a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote a hit song "Will
you love me in September like you do in May.?" and flouted his chorus girl
mistress at social functions. The man who served out Walker¹s term was John
P."Boo-Boo" O¹Brian, another Tamany machine politician who was so inept
that when a reporter asked who he planned to name as the new Sewer Commissioner
O¹Brian said "A decision hasn¹t been given me yet.."

1939- FIRST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL- The premiere film event in Europe had been
the Venice Film Festival but western democracies tired of the bias of the
judges for Fascist and Nazi films. For example Walt Disney was annoyed his
Snow White, the box office and critical champ of 1938, lost out to Leni
Reifenstahl's Olympia. So the little French Riviera city was chosen as the
site for a new festival. Two days after opening World War Two was declared
and the festival shut down until 1946.

1939- WORLD WAR TWO BEGAN. The Nazi Army blitzkreigs into Poland.

1939 ­ The Physical Review published the1st paper on a celestial phenomena
called "black holes".

1955- Phillip Loeb was a TV star, playing Papa on the show The Goldbergs on
radio and television. But the book Red Channels listed him as a Communist.
He was blacklisted and the show dropped by CBS and NBC. This day Phil Loeb
checked into the Hotel Taft and swallowed a bottle full of sleeping pills..

1979 - LA Court orders retired TV star Clayton Moore to stop wearing his
Lone Ranger mask in public appearances. Paramount was pushing a bad remake
the Legend of the Lone Ranger starring Klinton Spillsbury and so wanted the
old man to stop competing for the spotlight. But today that movie is
forgotten while everyone remembers the TV show,

1998- THE STARR REPORT- The full text of independent Special Counsel Kenneth
Starr¹s investigation into the sexual wrongdoings of President Bill Clinton
with his intern Monica Lewinsky was released on-line. It was the first major
news story reported on the Internet first, a full day before newspapers and television
could get it. Twenty million log on¹s occurred in one days time. It caused
huge internet user jams and sparked a furious response from millions of
Americans, all on electronic mail. Americans learned of their Presidents
many uses for his cigar and Monica snapping her thong underwear at him. Many
felt the salacious details ranked as soft-core pornography but it was sent
out without any child-proof guards anyway, championed by conservative
politicians who normally cry for media censorship. Pornography publishing
tycoon Larry Flynt jokingly offered Kenneth Starr a job."Heck, any man who
could get that much porn into 50 million homes so quickly should be working
for me!"

Bill and Sure Kroyer.courtesy awn.com
As we are recalling the terrible events of Hurricane Katrina last year, we in the animation community would like to pause to salute the unheralded work of Sue Kroyer. Sue is an animator and teacher who has worked for Walt Disney, Bluth, Warner Bros and Richard Williams, she also teaches at LMU and Woodbury College. Sue had been involved in animal rescue in Southern Cal for years, but a year ago when she heard about the tens of thousands of stranded family pets in the New Orleans area, instead of shaking her head she acted. She and her friends filled up a car with supplies and drove to Louisiana. Sleeping in a camp in the sweltering heat they did volunteer work for two weeks saving and boarding hundreds of pets left for dead by the floods. When possible they reunited them with their owners, even owners evacuated to Houston and Oklahoma. In return she asked for nothing and didn't care who knew. But the people of New Orleans and Mississippi will remember. For your compassion, initiative and courage,
Bravo Sue!
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Birthdays: Caligula 12AD., Commodus 161AD, Amilcare Ponchielli, Eldridge Cleaver, Buddy Hackett, James Coburn, Itshak Perleman, Van Morrison, Arthur Godfrey, Debbie Gibson, Richard Baseheart, Rocky Marciano. Alan J. Lerner, Daniel Shorr, Dan Rather, Maria Montressori (of the Montressori Method of education), Daniel Saroyan, Richard Gere, Chris Tucker

1829- Giacomo Rossiini's opera Guglielmo Tell debuted in Paris. The William Tell overture was heard for the first time- Hi Ho Silver! and lots of cartoon chases.

1887- Thomas Edison patented the plans for a Kinetoscope, his original version of Motion Pictures using George Eastmans new celluloid roll film. Most of the actual grunt work was done by Canadian technician W.K.L. Dickson. He drove himself sick designing, building and improving the device as well as the camera and studio, but Edison gets all the credit. Edison wrote Edweard Muybridge at the time that he doubted the Kinetoscope would have much monetary value beyond the lab.

1888-THE FIRST JACK THE RIPPER MURDER. Then called the Whitechapel Murders. The unique detail was that the Ripper killed his victim Mary Ann Nichols with a simple throat cut, then proceeded to remove her internal organs with the precision of a surgeon. Was the sadist murderer of London prostitutes the syphillitic Duke of Clarence ? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle suggested it was a woman, a psychotic midwife. An anti-Semetic issue appeared when a cryptic clue at the murder scene was interpreted by some to think the Ripper was Jewish. Then the message was thought to be a freemasons symbol. After six ghastly killings the murders stopped as mysteriously as they had started. In 1891 an Australian-born abortionist named Dr. Edward Cream was hanged for poisoning a prostitute. As he dropped through the trapdoor and the rope snapped he shouted: "I AM JAC-...!"

1920 -Detroit radio station is 1st to broadcast a news program on the air.

1928- In Berlin the ThreePenny Opera premiered, music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Bertholdt Brecht with Lotte Lenya as Pirate Jenny. Mackie Messer or Mack the Knife is born

1941 –The Great Gildersleeve, a spin-off of Fibber McGee & Molly debuts on NBC radio.

1946- Looney Toon short 'Walky Talky Hawky' the first Foghorn Leghorn. The character was based on a Fred Allen radio character Senator Clayton Langhorn that poked fun at bombastic Southern conservative politicians.

1948- Disney's 'Melody Time' premiered, featuring Blue Bayou, Johnny Fedora and ALice Bluebonnett and Willie the Operatic Whale.

1948- Movie star Robert Mitchum was busted for smoking pot with a blonde in the Hollywood Hills. This would have normally smoked his career but the new postwar outlaw, noir attitude was in vogue and bad-boy Mitchum emerged from jail more popular than ever.

1955 - 1st microwave TV station operated in Lufkin, Texas.

1955-1st solar-powered automobile demonstrated, Chicago, Ill. Ed Begley didn’t buy it.

1964 - Ground is broken for Anaheim Stadium, future home of the California Angels

1969- Former Heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano died in a plane crash in Newton Iowa. He had been hurrying home to attend a birthday party in his honor. He was 45.

1972-Russian Olga Korbut won a gold medal in gymnastics at the Olympics. She was the first of the cutsey little 15 year old girl gymnasts with the bright smile to catch the world’s attention.

1997- PRINCESS DIANA OF WALES died after a high speed car crash in Paris. Her Mercedes had been trying to avoid paparrazzi hounding her and her current boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, the son of the Egyptian tycoon owner of Harrods. The drivers body tested above normal for alcohol and drugs. Princess Di was 36. Britain reacted with an outpouring of grief not seen since the death of Nelson. The rapacious British paparazzi worked overtime to absolve themselves of hounding the poor woman to death. Rupert Murdoch personally flew to London to direct the spin campaign defending his papers. Part of their tactics was to point out that the Queen didn’t make a true statement of regret until the following Thursday, almost a week after the accident. I was in Spain on the day of the crash and the late edition London Evening Standard printed before news of the tragedy had the headline: DI & DODI’S BONKING BONANZA!

2001- The NY Stock Exchange tries to avoid a Recession and bolster growth by getting Michael Jackson and Jerry Lewis to ceremonially open trading sessions. Didn’t work.

More Lessons from the Great Animators:
courtesy animation world network
Bill Tytla once said:" Animation is really quite simple; and like anything that is supposed to be simple, it's the hardest thing in the world to do."

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History for 8/30/2006
Birthdays: Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley, artist Jacques Louis David, Huey Long, Fred MacMurray, Raymond Massey, Ted Williams, John Blondell, Timothy Bottoms, Shirley Booth, John Landis, cartoonist Robert Crumb, Cameron Diaz is 34

30 BC- Cleopatra committed suicide at age 39. Some accounts have her allowing herself to be bitten by a poison asp concealed in a basket, another said she took poison concealed on a hairpin. It was said she killed herself to join her lover Marc Anthony, more likely it was because the victorious Augustus planned to have her dragged through the streets of Rome in a cage for the crowd's amusement, then quietly strangled. The snakebite was thought by Egyptians to bestow immortality.

304 AD-Today is the feast of Saints Felix and Adauctus. Felix was sentenced to be beheaded when a voice in the crowd called out :"I too believe in what this man confesses! Take me too!" So the Romans beheaded both of them but forgot to get the other guy's name. Adauctus means "That other guy" So it's Saint Felix and Saint Whats-His-Name.

1873- The Royal Canadian Mounted Police- The Mounties formed. Ninety years later Jay Ward invented the Snidley Mounties.

1867- At the University of Göttingen, Albert Niemann isolates the chemical elements of the Columbian coca plant and names the substance Cocaine.

1880- Diablo, chief of the Cibecue Apache, was killed fighting the White Mountain Apache.

1935- “Top Hat” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers premiered.

1939- The last peacetime voyage of the HMS Queen Mary evacuated Americans fleeing the impending war in Europe. Among the crowd was a large contingent of Hollywood stars like Bob Hope and Jack Warner who planned to attend the first Cannes Film Festival (postponed until 1946). The Queen Mary kept radio silence across the ocean to hide from U-Boats. This was a wise because her sister ship HMS Athenia was torpedoed.

1945- THE AMERICAN SHOGUN- Gen. Douglas MacArthur lands on mainland Japan as military governor. After the ceasefire was announced, there still was a lot of distrust on both sides, and in the streets of Japan gangs of outraged youths and kamikaze pilots fought loyal troops trying to restart the war. Into this turmoil General MacArthur and his staff flew in alone ahead of any other allied occupying troops. He even ordered his staff to leave their pistols behind to show their fearlessness to the Japanese. He also wanted to get there before Admiral Nimitz and the Navy got there first and stole his spotlight.
In a sight that alarmed his staff as MacArthur drove to Yokohama the road was lined on both sides with 30,000 crack Japanese troops standing silent with fixed bayonets. They were not threatening but saluting their new Shogun. They even faced backwards from the road not looking at MacArthur, a gesture of respect reserved only for the Emperor.
While the still new Truman administration concentrated on Stalin and postwar Europe MacArthur was left with a free hand to reshape Japanese society as he saw fit. He used the power of unquestioning Japanese social discipline to give women the vote, form labor unions and rewrite their constitution, setting the basis of Japanese democracy.

1968- The first 7-11 store opened in Palmdale California. Have a Slurpee !

1975- Ralph Bakshi's film "Coonskin". Bad boy Bakshi's portrayal of African-American urban violence was deemed so offensive by the CORE and th NAACP that it caused the first riot ever at the Museum of Modern Art, and died at the boxoffice. The film was retitled on video "Streetfight". When Ralph resurfaced he turned his attention to Sword and Fantasy films.

1979- President Jimmy Carter claimed that while boating on vacation in Georgia he was attacked by an enraged rabbitt.

1993-The David Letterman Show premiered on CBS. Letterman was wooed away from NBC for 42 million bucks.

More Wisdom from the Old Animators:
courtesy anim mag.
Ollie Johnston taught us:"Real animation is not about copying life. It is about caricaturing life, life plus."
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Birthdays: King James II Stuart, John Locke, Oliver Wendel Holmes.,French painter Jean Dominique
Ingres, Charlie Parker would have been 85, director Preston Sturges, Ingrid Bergman, William
Friedkin, Dinah Washington, George Montgomery, Slobodan Milosevic, Robin Leach,
director Richard Attenborough, Donald O'Connor, Elliot Gould, Sen. John McCain, Rebecca
DeMornay, Joel Schumacher, choreographer Mark Morris, Michael Jackson The King of Pop is 48.

29 AD- Estimated date of the beheading of John the Baptist by King Herod II Antipas.

1893- Whitcomb Judson invented the zipper.

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

1953-Warner's "Cat Tails for Two" introduces Speedy Gonzales.

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. Foreman
left boxing, became a minister, then returned in his 40s to win the heavyweight
crown and make a fortune on weightloss cooking grills.

1976 - Anissa Jones, the child actress who played Buffy on the television show Family
Affair), died of a drug overdose at age 18.

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. According to a London newspaper one servant
under oath admitted he hated The Queen of Mean so much that whenever he had to bring
her a Perrier, he would unzip his fly and use an rather unique stirrer for her drink.

2002- Peep-O-Rama, Times Squares last remaining peep show, closed.

2005-KATRINA, a Force 5 monster hurricane, destroyed the cities of New Orleans,
Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi.