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December 26, 2006 tues.
December 26th, 2006

Birthdays:Charles Babbage,Admiral Dewey, Mao Tse Tung, Richard Widmark is 91, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Alan King, Phil Spector is 65, Fred Schepsi

In Britain this is BOXING DAY, from the Victorian English custom of boxing up the leftovers of your Christmas feast and giving it to the poor.

First Day of the Kwanza Festival. Kwanza is from the Swahili words “Matunda ya kwanzaa” meaning “first fruits” of the harvest. See below-1966.

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast Day of the Pagan god Jul, when good Guildsmen would gather in their Guild Halls to eat themselves sick and drink themselves silly. Then in a total stupor they would swear oaths on their patron saints to stick by each other in the new year. Churchmen bristled at the licentious nature of the festival and tried to ban it, but there was no stopping a good rowdy party. Nobody really knew who the pagan god Jul was, just that it was fun to see the priests get so pissed off.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

Al Hirschfield as a young man

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld does his first caricature. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend takes it to a newspaper and sells it, soon he's under contract to the New York Times. He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and has become a legend himself. In the American Theater a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2001 he died at age 100, drawing to the end.

Al Hirschfield as an older artist

Back on Aladdin in 1992 Eric Goldberg and I had the chance to have lunch and interview Al on the Walt Disney studio rotunda. He was a wonderful and gracious man, very giving with his ideas about technique. We joked about longevity. He loved to tell about an article he read about George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill and their long lived. He said Shaw was vegetarian, chaste and didn't drink. Churchill woke up to a sherry, smoked 22 cigars a day and liked his steaks bloody. Al's conclusion was there was no secret to long life. Either it's in your genes or not. Then he asked for more wine.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moves from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1944- Tennessee Williams play the Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1946- The Gala Opening day of the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel's $ 4 million dollar gamble in the desert. Despite booking top talent like Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat the promised Hollywood society types failed to materialize. The hotel part of the casino wasn't ready for guests yet so the high rollers couldn't see making the long trip. A violent rainstorm kept still more people away. Also the casinos formal dresscode discouraged the local yokels who liked to gamble in ten gallon hats and bluejeans. The Flamingo casino made a profit eventually but not before the angry Mafia riddled Siegel with bullets and cut the throat of his manager, Moe Greenberg.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate African-American culture.

1973- Murakami-Wolf's t.v. special "The Point" with Dustin Hoffman narrating and Harry Nilsson's music. Hoffman's track was later rerecorded by Ringo Starr for some reason.
“Me and my Ar-row…”

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

1985- Gorillas in the Mist author and ape anthropologist Diane Fossey was murdered by machete in her lab in Africa.

2004-TSUNAMI- One of the stronger earthquakes 9.1, recorded in the last 100 years hit the Indian Ocean. The earthquake sent giant tidal waves covering the coastlines of Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, killing over 215,000. Whole beach communities were wiped out without warning.


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