Quiz: Which was the first animated TV special? The Grinch? A Charlie Brown Christmas? see below.


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1937- Mae West does a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam and Eve that was considered so racy CBS banned her from their network. At the same time she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long!"

1939-Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels”.

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Killgallen as panelists.

1960- A young eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walk away and had been AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco and in 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night…a winoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts.

1966-FORTY YEARS AGO- YOU’RE A MEAN ONE, MISTER GRINCH!

Chuck Jone's TV version of the Doctor Seuss classic 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered. Chuck used many of his stalwart artists from his Bugs Bunny days like Maurice Noble, Ken Harris and Ben Washam. Narration was by Boris Karloff and the song "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" was sung by Thurl Ravnscroft,better known as the voice of Tony the Tiger.

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces for a solo singing career.

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again for residuals. (again...)

1984- Christopher Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

1997- Saturday Night Live Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the Hancock Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 31-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me.". Chris Farley was scheduled to be the voice of the character Shrek; Mike Myers now took over. Farley idolized the late John Belushi, who had also died of drugs and hard living at age 31. One writer recalled Farley drunk, throwing chairs and tables around in his hotel room, then he turned to him and asked innocently:" Do you think Belushi is in heaven?"

1998- Dreamworks feature cartoon the “Prince of Egypt”, or, as it was nicknamed,"The Zion King".
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Quiz: What was the first animated TV special? The Grinch? Charlie Brown Christmas?

ANSWER: In 1956 UPA director John Wilson created animation to Stavinsky's ballet Petroushka with Stavinsky himself conducting.It was for the Sol Hurok Music Hour on NBC. Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol was in 1961,Rankin Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in 1964, A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965,The Grinch who Stole Christmas in 1966.