Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king,, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Sig Ruman – the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies and Ninotchka

1303- Pope Boniface VIII died. He was the Pope who first proclaimed Papal dominance in the bull Unam Sanctam ( even when I'm wrong I'm still right because I'm the Pope and you're not ), and who used to declare Crusades against Italian families he didn't like. He died a raving lunatic in the dungeons of San Angelo eating the flesh off of his own arms. Dante hated him so much in his poem "Inferno" he has two devils stirring a boiling cauldron of lead and calling up to the world above:" Hey Boniface! When are you coming down? It's almost ready!"

1424- Czech general John of Ziska died of plague. He had never been defeated in the Hussite Wars and led battles even when almost blind. When dying he requested that his body be skinned and the skin used to make a drum for his army. Wow, tough Czech!

1492- The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria continue sailing west. Christopher Columbus' fear crazed men began to see signs that land was close at hand: floating driftwood, a carved stick, moths, a seabird.

1800- The remaining French army trapped in Egypt and abandoned by Napoleon made a deal with the Egyptians and their English allies to get evacuated back to France. One of the things that had to give up to the Brits was the Rossetta Stone, the key to deciphering Ancient Heiroglyphics. Another thing the French troops brought back to Europe was marijuana, easily purchased in Egyptian bazaars. The old soldiers said the weed didn’t give you a hangover like drinking brandy did and made recovering from wounds easier.

1809- MERIWETHER LEWIS’ SUICIDE- Colonel.Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame, shot himself..twice. He wounded himself in the head the first time. He was 35. Meriwether Lewis was governor of Upper Louisiana (Missouri, Wisconsin, Montana, Illinois) and was the personal protege of Presidents Jefferson and Monroe. It’s not inconceivable to assume that he would have been president one day. Some contend that Lewis didn't commit suicide but was murdered, because it was at a small tavern on the Natchez Trace, he had been arguing with some men along the road, and he was found with two head wounds, and his belly slashed with a bowie knife. Another scholar recently theorized Lewis was suffering from delirium caused by advanced syphilis, which he may have contracted from a Shoshone woman while on the great trek over the Rockies. His friends Jefferson and Captain Clark maintained Lewis was emotionally overwrought and was drinking too much. What an important United States Governor was doing riding all alone with no staff on a country road is still a mystery.

1906- The San Francisco Board of Education ordered children of Chinese and Japanese ancestry placed in segregated schools. This act caused great popular resentment back in Japan who thought the Americans were their friends after helping settle their war with Russia. President Teddy Roosevelt intervened and forced Frisco to rescind the law.

1939- Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt describing the feasibility of atomic weapons and urging the US begin such a program before Hitler creates an A-Bomb. Years later with atomic weapons a reality he said his letter of Oct.11th “was the biggest mistake of my life.”

1944-“ To Have and to Have Not,” written by Ernest Hemingway premiered. The movie paired Humphrey Bogart with a sultry Harpers model turned actress named Betty Persky, now changed to Lauren Bacall. Bacall originally had a higher voice but director Howard Hawks told her to go behind the soundstage and scream for an hour every day to bring her voice down to a dusky, sexy alto. It worked on Bogart, who fell in love and married her despite his being 44 and she 20 years old. The nicknamed each other Slim and Steve after the characters in the film.“If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premiered on TV. “Overture, hit the lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”

1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while high- and the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd ,Gilda Radner, Garret Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Mike O’Donaghue. Albert Brooks did a short film and Andy Kaufman did his Mighty Mouse lip sync routine. Paul Shaefer conducted the music and the show was held in NBC’s Studio 8H, which was built originally for Maestro Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony of the Air. At the last moment a sketch by young Billy Crystal was cut from the show.. The show also revived the career of announcer Don Pardo, who had trouble finding work since the original Jeopardy Show was cancelled.

1975- Bill Clinton married Hillary Rodham.

1976- After the death of Chairman Mao, Chinese authorities arrest his widow Chiang Ching and three followers and accuse them of plotting a coup- the Gang of Four.

1978- Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sid was too stoned to adequately explain why he killed the love of his life. It’s assumed they had a suicide pact. Vicious died of a drug overdose before his trial.

2001- V.S. Naipul won the Nobel Prize for literature.

2005- Andrea Merkel named Chancellor of Germany. She is the first woman to lead Germany and the first head of state from the former East Germany.

from satrapi's original book

I went to an ASIFA screening last night of Persepolis. Great film, well done and well told. Bravo to all the filmmakers. It shows the power of animation to move people and inform in an innocent way.

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Birthdays: Martin Luther, Guiseppi Verdi, Helen Hayes, Disney designer Mary Blair, Louis Lumiere, Thelonius Monk, Clampett animator Rod Scribner, LaVerne Harding one of the first women animators, sculptor Alberto Giacometti, Tanya Tucker, Harold Pinter, James Clavel the author of Shogun, Jodi Benson, David Lee Roth, Bradley Whitford, Sharon Osbourne is 55.

animation by LaVerne Harding

1469- Renaissance master artist Fra Filippo Lippi died, probably poisoned by the family of a girl he seduced. The great painter was a major influence on Leonardo daVinci and Massaccio, but for a Carmalite monk he had an immoderate lust for women. He left one son, the artist Fillipino Lippi, by his wife Lucrezia Buti, a nun he had carried off from the convent of Santa Margherita promising to use her as a model for the Madonna.

1492-According to Columbus's diary, this was the worst day of his sailors disaffection. Their pleas to turn around and go home almost become open mutiny, but still Columbus refused to turn back.

1770- At Mission San Gabriel in Old California a Spanish soldier killed a Chumash Indian chief who sought revenge for the rape of his wife. An uprising is put down and the Church responds with a period of forced baptisms.

1842- King Frederich Wilhelm IV issued a new style of head gear to the Prussian Army, a pressed leather and metal helmet with a distinctive spike on top. As German unification was achieved the spiked helmet became famous and was called the Pickelhaube, or Pickle Sticker. It lasted until World War One ended in 1918.

A duck in a pickelhaube manning a pigeon camera, of course!From a funny blog called Januesmuseum.com, check it out

1846- Neptune’s moon Triton discovered by William Lassell.

1886- The first Tuxedo jacket worn at the Autumn Ball at Tuxedo Park, New York. Another story of the origin of the fashion was supposedly invented by English gentleman on safari with Bertie the Prince of Wales. Wanting to appear at dinner formally but because of heat and high spikey grass they cut the lower part of their long dinner jackets off.

1911- Ten-Ten National Day- Chinese demanding a republic seize the city of Wuhan and march on Beijing. Their leader Dr. Sun Yat Sen was at this time in Denver soliciting funds for their cause. The Wuhan Uprising is the beginning of the final overthrow of the Manchu Emperors. One of the revolutionaries first recruits was a young Hunan man named Mao Tse Tung,.

1953- "Winky Dink and You" show. Children were invited to place a piece of celluloid acetate on their t.v. screens from a kit and help Winky Dink through numerous adventures by drawing on their t.v. screens. Of course many kids didn’t wait for the acetate but just drew on their family TVs with indelible markers. The birth of Interactive T.V. -?

1957- RKO Studios, who produced King Kong, The John Ford Westerns and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, was sold to Desilu- the television production company of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez.

1957- President Eisenhower had to apologize to a diplomat from Ghana, Komla Gbdemah, after he was refused service at a segregated restaurant in Dover, Delaware.

1962- The BBC banned on air play of a novelty record The Monster Mash, by Bobby Picket. For some reason they considered it offensive.

1971- The reconstructed London Bridge dedicated at Lake Havasu City Arizona. Moving London Bridge from the Thames to the American Southwest was the brainchild of Kirk McCullough, the chainsaw tycoon. After winning the auction of the bridge as he flew home he filled out the little customs declaration card- "Amount of goods you are bringing into the country , not to exeed $400. McCullough wrote-" One Bridge. $2,500,000.00. Antique, therefore – TARIFF EXEMPT."

1973- Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. He was under indictment for accepting bribes and pleaded no contest to one count of income tax evasion. Until Nixon picked House Minority leader Gerald Ford for veep there was a lively discussion over who would be president if Nixon fell. The House Speaker (3rd in line) was also facing charges. Lots of jokes about the under secretary of game and fisheries, etc. Lyndon Johnson had said of Jerry Ford: "Jerry's a good senator but sometimes I think he played too much football with his helmet off."

1980- Actor William 'Billy" Thomas, also known in the Our Gang kiddie comedies as Buckwheat, died at 49. His last words weren't "O' Taayy !"

1985- Orson Welles and Yul Brynner die one hour apart. They were both 70. Welles had just finished taping yet another appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Brynner had a furious smoking habit, supposedly leaving one lit cigarette in every room of his house as he paced around thinking.When he knew he was dying of the stuff, he recorded several television spots to be aired after his death. He looked squarely at camera and said: " I smoked. -Don't."

2002- The U.S. Congress voted to give war making powers to President George W. Bush over Iraq. The U.S. invasion began the following March. Like the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1965 (passed 385-2) congressman have been making excuses ever since.

My first book DRAWING THE LINE, THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON is now one year old. University Press of Kentucky released it on October 6th, 2006.
Princeton University listed it for Distinguished Mention, The London Review of Books said "It was the most complete account of the Walt Disney 1941 Strike yet written" and Leonard Maltin praised it as " A must for all interested in animation history."

It took four and a half years to write, in between doing my regular job as a Hollywood animator. It was an amazing experience for me, getting to combine several of my passions at once- Animation, History, Unions, the stories of the rank and file artists in Hollywood’s Golden Age, and lots of fun anecdotes I’ve gathered over the years. Many was the time old animation vets and I would swap anecdotes of Golden Age artists and their times. Inevitably the conversation would climax with ” Somebody should write this all down one day!”

I’m grateful to the historians and writers like Karl Cohen, Bob Birchard, Jerry Beck, Paul Buhle, John Canemaker, Leonard Maltin, Mark Kausler and Mike Barrier. They took the time to read over my pages, and give me some valuable tips and critique. Once realizing my topic, some selflessly shared with me some valuable interviews, images and periodicals. Also literay agent-editor Julia Lord for having faith in me and encouraging me as a writer.

The proof-reading process, footnoting, indexing and securing the rights for images, took long weeks after I thought the manuscript was done. I was ever recalling one more detail I should add, one more name I might have inadvertently omitted.

The book signing tour was a lot of fun, traveling the country meeting old friends and making new ones. Seeing my book on a shelf in Barnes & Noble and the Strand in Manhattan was almost more of a thrill than all the screen credits I’ve had on the big screen. One author complained to me” What is the use of doing book signings? They never break-even for the trouble you go through.” But to me it was the celebration, it was like senior prom and graduation, what you dream of for during the long hours writing and rewriting. Check out my Gallery Section for the images of the tour.

I’m very grateful to Barnes & Noble for stocking up early on my book, and Tina Price and the Creative Talent Network for throwing my first book party at Gordon Biersch brewpub in Burbank.

Part of the reason I did the book was so the stories of some of the unsung people in animation would have their stories told for today’s artists and future generations. My greatest satisfaction was derived from the responses I’ve gotten from the families of these great artists. Barbera Babbitt, Linda Jones, Emily Hubley, Juana Culhane, Selby and Walt Kelly’s Family, Mark Hilberman, the Friedmans, Mo Gollub’s sons, and many more. And of course, also the living artists like Bill Littlejohn, Martha Sigall and Jack Zander.

I don’t think that Drawing the Line is the definitive study of the animation unions. I hope others build upon what I did for future works. But it gives me satisfaction to know it’s out there to educate the animators of the future of a part of their heritage just as central as the Hollywood Sign.

One Disney director once growled at me;" SITO! IF YOU FOCUSED ON YOUR DRAWING AS MUCH AS YOU DO HISTORY, YOU'D BE A BETTER ANIMATOR! Maybe so, but I confess I have caught the writing bug. I am writing a new history book. I hope it won’t take another four years, but however long it takes, I am up for the challenge. As Willa Cather once wrote, “ the end means nothing, the road is all..”

me by Hans Bacher
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History for 10/9/2006
Birthdays: Camille Saint Saens, E. Howard Hunt, Jacques Tati, Alastair Sim, Bruce Catton, Joe Pepitone, cartoonist Mike Peters, Savannah, John Lennon, his son Sean Lennon, E. Howard Hunt,, Scott Bakula, Tony Shalloub, Peter Tosh, Charles Rudolph Walgren-the inventor of the modern Drugstore, Guillermo Del Toro is 43

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

1000 AD VIKINGS DISCOVER AMERICA.- Viking Leif Ericsson lands his dragonships in Labrador, Canada. He calls it Vinland and there are several theories why: one was because of an abundance of grapevines he discovered. Another is that the old Norse crossed with Latin Vinland could also be described as Land of Pastures. Still a third theory was that Leif may have described this barren rocky shoreline Vinland to get suckers interested in settling. The Vikings settled a colony in America, but it didn't take and was withdrawn for unknown reasons. The second expedition under Thorfinn Karlsefni called the Indians they met Skraelings, and claimed they met a race of one legged men.

1192- Richard the Lionheart left the Holyland. End of the Third Crusade. He planned to return in 1196 and take Jerusalem but never did.

1609- Invalid Captain John Smith is put on a ship back to England. Smith had earlier gotten stung by a stingray and almost died. This time a powder horn exploded on his hip and blew out part of his side. While Smith was leader of the Jamestown Colony he had many enemies among the jealous gentry and some don't think he had an accident. Opinions also differ as to why the Jamestown settlers put Smith through a two month Atlantic crossing that could kill even healthy men. Some say they were hoping he wouldn't make it. He survived but never returned to America. Nobody told Pocahontas he had left and when she visited camp the men told her he was dead and forget about him. She would meet him ten years later in England when she was a wife and mother of the children of settler John Rolfe.

1635- Pilgrim Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts colony for saying the government should not be involved in determining someone’s religion.

1701- Yale University chartered.

1779- THE LUDDITE RIOTS- A movement of English peasants and tradesmen started by a man named Ned Lud who felt that all this newfangled machinery was going to cost them their jobs. The Luddites roamed the countryside smashing any looms, pistons, flywheels or other such devices they encountered. A similar movement in France. French peasants would remove their wooden clogs, called sabots, and throw them into a machine's gears to jam them, and coined the term Saboteurs.

1809- The first Royal Jubilee celebrated in England. The monarchy had taken a number of hits lately. King George III was a blind, insane shut in and the Prince and Princess of Wales couldn't stand each other and were sleeping around. So an old widow named Mrs Biggs came up with the idea of a celebration of King George's 50th anniversary of his reign as a way to boost morale. It worked and it's been a custom ever since.

1855- James Stoddard patents the steam calliope.

1888- The Washington Monument finally opened to the public. Construction on it was begun in 1840 and discontinued for a decade during the Civil War. Work was also held up when Protestant workmen refused to use marble blocks donated by Pope Pius IX.

1905- The World Series resumes after a one year haggle between the owners of the American and National leagues. A best of seven contest between the N.Y. Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics. It would continue undisturbed until 1994 with the players strike.

1938 Eugene O'Neill's play 'The Iceman Cometh' opened.

1951- RKO Pictures asked Marilyn Monroe to please wear panties while working, She was distracting the filmcrew.

1986- The Fox Network's first program-the Joan River's Show, premiered. The show didn't last but future hits like The Simpson's, Married With Children and the X-Files made Fox a major network in ten years.

Arthur Babbitt would have been 100 years old today. Animator, cartoonist, director, he took a dog character named Dippy and renamed him Goofy, developing him into one of the big three of Disney's most beloved characters. His other characters included the Wicked Queen in Snow White, Geppetto in Pinnochio, The Mushrooms in Fantasia, Frankie in Rooty-Toot-Toot, John & Marsha in their Cleo winning commerical for Parkay Margarine, The Camel in Raggedy Ann, the Sultan in Cobbler and the Thief. In 1942 writer R.K. Field called Art Babbitt one of the top animators in the world.

Art was one of the greatest animation teachers who ever lived, one of the leaders of the Great Walt Disney Studio Strike, for which he earned the lifelong anger of Walt Disney. Art could have kept his mouth shut and remained a key figure at Disney, but his personal sense of justice compelled him to speak out. As I wrote in DRAWING THE LINE, Art was: "a small bantam of a man who squinted at the world through thick glasses, he possessed a Davy Crockett like sense of right and wrong." He died in 1991 in his late 80s.

Art was a personal friend as well as a personal hero. When I was Guild president I hoped that if I measured up even halfway to what he had done, I would have done a great job. In Hollywood where everyone is on the make and out for themselves, someone who sacrificed his own career so that all would do better, is still an inspiration to us all.

Happy Birthday Bones!

Check out the ASIFA Animation Archive Biopedia for a more complete view of his life.


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Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine,Chevy Chase, Paul Hogan, Rona Barrett, Ruben Mamoulian, Edward Zwick, Johnny Ramone, Sigourney Weaver is 58, Matt Damon is 37

1777- British General Clinton tried to get a message through to Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne and his army trapped at Saratoga. He sent a Tory-Loyalist American scout with a message rolled up and hidden in a solid silver capsule. When the scout was intercepted by the Americans the loyalist swallowed the capsule before he was searched. He was given a heavy emetic "whereupon he soon produced the capsule, which he proceeded to grab and swallow again. Another emetic was administered and he produced the capsule again." The message was opened and read, then the man hanged as a spy."

1846- Battle of Old Woman's Gun.

1871- THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE- Legend said Old Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocks over a lantern and starts a fire that burns down 17,500 buildings and kills 300 including the Mayor. The fire jumped the Chicago River and people rode their carriages into Lake Michigan and even jumped into open graves to escape. Eventually the firemen’s pumpers ran out of water and the Northside kept burning past Fullerton until it burned itself out when it hit open prairie. 300,000 were left homeless. One of the only downtown buildings to survive the inferno was Chicago’s beloved old water tower. The slaughter houses and grain elevators also survived so business could go on. Ironically the O'Leary house stayed intact, just the barn burned. Two journalists later admitted inventing the O’Leary cow story to sell newspapers.

1871-THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE- The most deadly fire in North American history occurred on the exact same day as the Chicago Fire, but this one was in Peshtigo Wisconsin. A forest fire started by loggers burning debris built into a firestorm (actually a flaming tornado) and destroyed a wooden town killing 1,200 in a town of 1,750, five times as many as the Chicago Fire. The tornado caught dozens of people during church services. Three hundred died trying to escape across a wooden bridge that caught fire and burned from both ends. Survivors saw "people and cows stagger a few feet and go down burning brightly, like so many pieces of pitch pine." A heavy rain fell the next day. One day late.

1906- In Paris Swiss inventor Ludwig Pressler demonstrated the first electric 'permanent -wave' hair curler.

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.

1915- The Battle of Loos. British troops release poison gas at the German lines. The wind changes and blows it back on their own men. Doh!

1918- SERGANT YORK- simple Tennessee hillbilly Alvin York was drafted into the U.S. Army where his crack shot talents enabled him this day to shoot up an entire German regiment. He captured 300 prisoners alone with only his single shot Springfield rifle. He got the Medal of Honor and a tickertape parade. Then went back to the Ozarks where he resumed his life of making moonshine, hog calling and other rustic pursuits.

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.

1935- Ozzie Nelson married Harriet.

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 Great Balls of Fire.

1958- Swedish Arne Laarsen received the first artificial implanted heart pacemaker. Over the years he had 17 operations and a dozen more pacemakers put in him as the designs improved. Without the pacemaker he would have died at age 40, instead he died in 2000 at age 86 of skin cancer. Arne Laarsen outlived all his original doctors.

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

1967- In Bolivia guerrilla leader Ernesto Che' Guevara was captured and shot. Che' started as an Argentine doctor and was wracked with asthma most of his life. He had gone to Bolivia after quarreling with Fidel Castro about whether it was more important to export Cuban revolution the rest of Latin America or concentrate on building Cuba's economy. Thirty years later in 1997 his remains were identified and returned to Cuba for burial. Even today his legend remains powerful among poorer parts of the Spanish speaking world. It’s not uncommon to be walking the streets of Lima, Cartagena or even Madrid and see the familiar grafitti on a wall- " El Che’Vive ! "

1970- Dissident Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsin was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Soviet State kept him in internal exile and refused to let him travel to accept his prize. He was exiled to America in 1974 and returned to Russia after the fall of communism.

1971- John Lennon first released his song Imagine.

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

The Glamour Guilds- The Screen Actors Guild, Writers and Director's Guilds, are all in negotiations with the major studios. There is great anger among the rank and file for an increased cut of the DVD pie. Right now for the studios it's pure profit. Another reason why studios put films out on DVD as soon as possible. The writers are up first and their negotiations broke down on Friday. They say they are still far apart from the studios in any deal. Interestingly enough, the re-elected President Verrone of the WGA is an animation writer, and the chief negotiator for studio management is animation producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. One of the Guild's negotiators, Susannah Grant, worked with me and Jeffrey on Walt Disney's Pocahontas. She later went on to write the hit films Erin Brockovich and In Her Shoes.

Last time there was a writers strike in 1986 we got reality shows as a result. Both sides are gearing up for a strike and the writers contract runs out on the 30th. All of us in animation have to prepare for a series of major strikes. Our animation writers are under our TAG 839 jurisdiction instead of the WGA, but there may still be an impact on our business.

We'll see.


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

312 BC-THE SUCCESSORS- Seleucus Nicator - Seleucus the founder - conquered Babylon and set up his Syrian-Greek kingdom. One of the generals of the recently dead Alexander the Great, he divided up Alexander's Empire along with fellow generals like Ptolomey, who became Pharoah of Egypt, Perdiccas, Antigonus One-Eye, who controlled mainland Greece and Demetrius Poliocretes-the Destroyer of Cities. Called the Successors, they and their descendants warred and conspired with each other until the Roman Empire rose up and knocked them all off. Seleucus and his heirs figure prominently in the last parts of the Old Testament. The Israelites did well under the Persians and Alexander but the later Greeks attempted to force pagan worship on them and tried to put statues of Zeus in the Holy of Holies. King Antiochus Theos Epiphanes –Antiochus the God Made Manifest, plundered Solomons Temple for money and ordered Jews to eat pork and worship Zeus on pain of death. Many Jews were martyred until an uprising led by Judas Maccabeus restored the Hebrew Kingdom.

1337- King Edward III of England decides he's not only King of England but King of France as well- the HUNDRED YEARS WAR begins. It was actually 111 years, until 1446. Ironically it was around this time that the English language began to emerge as the common mother tongue of Britain, melding the Norman French of the nobility with the Anglo Saxon of the common folks.

1571- BATTLE OF LEPANTO- Great naval engagement in which the ships of Venice, Spain, Genoa and the Papacy defeat the Grand Turks navy led by Ali Pasha. The last battle fought with war galleys rowed by teams of rowers. The admiral in charge was the bastard brother of Phillip II, Don John of Austria, a military hero who would have later led the Spanish Armada against England had he not succumbed to an early fever. Had he lived Shakespeare might have had to learn to write in Spanish. The battle raged from ship to ship until Don Johns ship overran Ali Pasha’s flagship and hoisted his severed head to the top of their mainmast. Among the common sailors in the battle were future writers like Lope De Vega and Miguel de Cervantes, who lost his right hand:" For the greater glory of my left" he joked.

1763- THE ROYAL PROCLAMATION TO NORTH AMERICA- The British Colonial Ministry, trying to reward it's Indian allies in the French and Indian War and kill two birds with one stone, told the Americans that any further western colonization to the Mississippi was forbidden, but they were invited to go north and colonize Quebec. This would hopefully mean the outnumbering and eventual assimilation of the French Canadians. Neither happens and it only angered the Americans who were never asked about this idea. The British even toyed with making the Illinois and Michigan territories part of Canada. Could you imagine it:" How' bout dem Cubs,-eh?"

1777-SECOND BATTLE OF BEMIS HEIGHTS-British General Johnny Burgoyne trying to break out of a trap, smashed his army against the American defenses in a heavy rain. The defense works were engineered by Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Washington spelled his name 11 different ways in dispatches, the men just called him " Colonel Koz". Burgoyne had snubbed his superior officers since his arrival in America, saying he answered directly to the War office in London. Now surrounded in the forest by overwhelming odds he snuck out a message to General Guy Carleton in Canada "I await your Lordship's orders." Carelton recognized this weenie attempt to shift blame and ignored him. The hero of this battle was Benedict Arnold. Arnold was everywhere, rallying minutemen brigades and crashing them into the enemy without waiting for his commanders orders. The U.S. commander Horatio Gates spent most of the battle in the rear entertaining captured British officers and discussing the futility of the American cause. The battle ended when someone shot Arnold in the leg.

1799- Napoleon returns from his Egyptian Campaign without his army but with a new appreciation for antiquities.

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.

1897-A group of Russian Jews, disgusted by the state sanctioned anti-Semitism of the Czar, formed the Jewish Socialist Bund. They broke with Theodore Herzel and the mainstream Zionist movement who wanted all Jews to go to Palestine. The Socialist Bund advocated political action to reform within Russia. Communist Leon Trotsky, himself a Jew, belittled the Bund, calling them “Zionists who are afraid of getting sea-sick”.

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 as the 'Jazz Singer 'opened and made Warner-Vitaphone a major Hollywood Studio. 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.

1959- Young assassins sent by the dissident Ba’ath Party made an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister of Iraq Sherif Al Kassim. The plotters failed but they sneaked back into the country later. One of them would be one day the ruler of Iraq- Saddam Hussein.

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.

1964- ITS FUN TO PLAY AT THE Y-M-C-A! The only big sex scandal of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Walter Jenkins was a top LBJ aide and confidant. Johnson called Jenkins “My vice president of almost everything.” This day Walter Jenkins was busted for lewd behavior with a Turkish diplomat in a pay toilet at the YMCA just two blocks from the White House. Jenkins claimed he was just dehydrated.

1974- THE TIDAL BASIN BOMBSHELL- At 2:00 AM Washington DC police stopped a car driving near the White House with its lights off. Inside police discovered powerful Congressman Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, drunk as a skunk with an Argentine stripper named Fanne Fox. Mills broke away from the cops and he and Fanne began to cavort in the Tidal Basin pool near the Jefferson Memorial. They were fished out by police. Mills’ sexual escapades had been hushed up by politicos before but this was just too much. The subsequent publicity brought about hearings and Mills resignation.

1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.

1985- Palestinian terrorists hijack the Italian Mediterranean cruise ship Achille Lauro. They murder an elderly Jewish American tourist named Leon Klinghoffer and dump his wheelchair and body into the sea. Composer John Adams wrote an opera about the incident called the Death of Klinghoffer.

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

2003- 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 either. This night, after a comical election the state elected Austrian-born weight-lifter, turned movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger.