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Gang, one thing I noticed when doing research for my book was the number of objects and pictures I found that weren't labelled. I found archive pictures,sketches and gag drawings that I had no clue who the people in them might be. I'm sure when the person took the picture, he felt he would always recall who the people are. Then one day they are in strange hands and no one knows the people in the photo. It makes historians crazy.

At the Motion Picture Academy, there is an entire section called Home Movies. Sometimes, back in the decades past, a person walked through a studio or backlot with a home movie camera and filmed. The person dies and the family donates the footage to the Academy. They staff two full time librarians whose only job now is figuring out who are in these photos and where and what the year might be.

So, when you have old photos or goof drawings, write down the names right now, before your mind dribbles out of your ears, much like mine.

Picture above- Seated front- Grim Natwick, animator creator of Snow White and Betty Boop, next to him is Irv Spence, great Tom & Jerry animator. Behind and standing is Fleischer animator Lou Zukor, no relation to Adolpf Zukor, and Ellsworth Barthen, NY assistant animator and professional Franklin Delano Roosevelt impersonator (I'm not kidding, he made a living at it!)Taken by Bill Turner at the Grim Natwick 100th Birthday Party in 1990 at the Sportsmans Lodge Restaurant in LA.
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Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President.Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges"Calling Dr Howard, Dr. Fine Dr. Howard", Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana "my name Jose Jimenez", Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynis Johns, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Karen Allen ,Kate Winslet is 31, Bernie Mac is 49

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER!- Lager Beer is perfected in the Czech city of Pilsn -Pilsner Beer. Beer was made by the Egyptians and Sumerians and traced back to the Ice Age, but our concept of beer requiring refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager beer.

1880- Alonzo T. Cross patented the first ball point pen.

1904- According to comedian and playwright Steve Martin, this is the day Pablo Picasso met Albert Einstein at the Cafe Lapin Agile. There was a Cafe in Paris called Lapin Agile that Picasso did like to go, to but he never actually met Einstein.

1932- MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.


courtesy of IA Local 839.
1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK.- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. This citywide strike was broken but two more followed in 1946 and 47. One of the strikeleaders arrested wasa background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters.

1947-President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River, and Mickey Rooney doing an embarrassing Japanese impersonation " Missey Go Right-ree!".

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska those bears attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When he had appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year Letterman had joked:"Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?"laughter… When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. Werner Herzog did a film about his life.


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