Reflecting on last fridays' Animation Guild Holiday Party, I had a great time signing books and meeting people. About 600-800 partied the night away. So much for those who wonder, who's in a union?

I have been going to union parties since my first in New York City in 1976. Then I was a young pup watching all these old silver haired artists laughing and drinking. These were the men and women who made the cartoons that I grew up on. They were the Gods who manufactured dreams for a living. It must be a symptom of maturity that
I've come to miss the faces in the crowd I once saw there in years past:


-Ed Freidman- Steady Eddie, Jewish Olympian in the 1932 LA Games, Filmation Director. He had 55 years experience and a dry humor. He once told me"You know, life's been easy since I gave up.."

-Dale Oliver- Tall, well dressed, a glider pilot with the 82nd Airborne on D-Day. He was Milt Kahl's assistant where his rough thick-thin line was a standard to be emulated by all the crew, the Dale Oliver Line.

-Hicks Lokey, who animated the hippo leaping into the alligators arms in Fantasia (no, Preston Blair didn't do that particular scene) Hicks had been in every union strike since 1935 and no matter how frail and wrinkly he liked to relax by shooting his 357 Magnum.

-Dave Tendlar and Jack Ozark, animators for Max Fleischer who animated the First Popeyes and Betty Boop.

And the MGM gang now at Hanna & Barbera- Ray Patterson, Ed Barge, Ken Muse, Mike Lah. Plus a lot of other old friends- Marc Davis, Louis Tate, the Spider, Perry Keifer, Bill Hurtz, Stan Green, Joe Grant, Joe Ranft. Art Babbitt complaining about Jule Engel, and Jules Engel complaining about Art Babbitt.



I still see them in my minds eye. I raise my glass to them and other old friends. I think they are with us still.
Happy Holidays, Gang.

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Birthdays: Sir David Brewster,1781- inventor of the kaleidoscope, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Koch, conquerer of tuberculosis, Alexander Solzhenitsin, Carlo Ponti, Gilbert Roland, Big Mama Mabel Thornton, Jean Marais- The Beast in Cocteau's Beauty & the Beast, Jean Louis Tritignant, Tom Hayden, Jermaine Jackson, McCoy Tyner- John Coltrane's pianist, singer Brenda Lee, Rita Moreno, Teri Garr

711AD- death of Byzantine Emperor Justinian II Rhino-Nose.

1785-French artist Jean Baptiste Greuze was well known for making popular paintings of simple scenes like Young Girl Weeping For Her Dead Bird. This day he went to the Paris police prefect and accused his wife Gabriele Babuti of “Persistently receiving lovers into his home over his protests, stealing large sums of his money and trying to batter in his head with a chamber pot.”He was granted a legal separation.

1793- Last July when the French Revolutionary Convention heard of the assassination of their great radical leader Jean Paul Marat one delegate called out “David ! We Need You!” This day Jacques David unveiled his painting THE DEATH OF MARAT for the first time.

1882- The Bijou Theater in Boston presented Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe in the first show completely illuminated by electric light bulbs.

1929- Frenchman Charles Cros patented a searchlight he declared he would use to signal civilizations on Mars and Venus. Nobody's returned the call yet.

1941- Gone With The Wind producer David Selznick pitched a movie version of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Ben Hecht. Mercifully for movie goers the idea was soon dropped.

1957- Rock and Roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis secretly married his 13 year old cousin Myra Gail Brown, while still married to his second wife, who he divorced her when the press broke the story the following April. The incident shot down his meteoric career. Great Balls of Fire!

1964- Soul music star Sam Cooke was shot to death in an argument with a lady who ran an L.A. motel he had brought his girlfriend to.( "Darling you send meee...")

1968- Just point your browser and click! Dr. Douglas Englehardt invented the computer Mouse.

1970- Walt Disney's the 'Aristocats'.

1978- THE LUFTHANSA HEIST.- Some small time Brooklyn Mafiosi slipped into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport and stole $8 million in unmarked bills and jewelry, most from European money exchange booths. As the FBI moved in on the gang it’s members tended to wind up dead, thirteen bodies in all. The money was never recovered and the reputed mastermind Jimmy the Gent Burke died in prison on an unrelated murder charge in 1991. The incident was dramatized in the Martin Scorcese film “Goodfellas”.