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Blog Posts from September 2006:

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!"


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