Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Month in Animation

Time once again for President Emeritus Tom Sito's cartoon and movie history factoids.



Movie Sign Posts for November



Nov. 2, 2001 - Pixar’s "Monsters Inc." opens.



Nov. 2, 2012 - Walt Disney’s "Wreck-It Ralph" premieres.



Nov. 3, 1977 - Disney's "Pete's Dragon" starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons opens.



Nov. 3, 1981 - WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty comics like "Sally Forth". He drew EC Comics, the "Mars Attacks" series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that brought down upon him the wrath of the Disney legal dept. Hard living and deadlines took their toll, and Wally was suffering from a stroke and failing kidneys. This was the day police found his remains.



Nov. 5, 1937 - Walt Disney's silly symphony "The Old Mill" debuted. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique.



Nov. 5, 2004 - Pixar's "The Incredibles" premieres.



Nov. 8, 1966 - Doctors at St. Joseph’s hospital remove one of Walt Disney’s cancerous lungs and discover the contagion had spread to his lymph nodes. They determine he did not have long to live.



Nov. 8, 1973 - Walt Disney’s animated Robin Hood premieres.



Nov. 10, 1950 - Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" opens. It’s the first Herman and Katnip cartoon.



Nov. 10, 1953 - Disney’s short "Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom" is released. Legend has it that Walt was abroad when Ward Kimball pushed this experiment, created in the UPA style, to completion. When Walt first saw it, it was without credits. He turned to Kimball and said “Aren’t you glad we don’t do crap like that?” It later won an Oscar.



Nov. 10. 1969 - The children’s education show Sesame Street premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper. The show employed a lot of animators.



Nov. 11, 1992 - Premiere of Walt Disney’s "Aladdin".






Nov 12, 1937 - Alan Turing delivered his famous paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidung’s Problem" at Kings College, Cambridge. In it he postulated on the ability to create a "universal machine"; that uses numbers to solve problems and could be reprogramable for different tasks. In his day they were called Turing Machines, but we know them now as Computers.



Nov. 12, 1946 - Walt Disney's "Song of the South" opens.



Nov. 13, 1940 - Walt Disney's "Fantasia" premieres. As Walt put it, "This'll make Beethoven!" Frank Lloyd Wright's opinion was "I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?"



Nov. 13, 1971 - Walt Disney’s "The Aristocats" opens.



Nov. 13, 1978 - Mickey Mouse got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.



Nov. 13, 1986 - Directors John Huston and Woody Allen join Martin Scorsese to denounce the fad promoted by Ted Turner of computer-colorizing classic Black & White films like the "Maltese Falcon".



Nov. 13, 1991 - Disney's animated film "Beauty and the Beast" opens. It’s the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.



Nov. 14, 1967 - Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sells out his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts.



Nov, 14, 1998 – Pixar’s "A Bugs Life" premieres.



Nov. 15, 1881 - The American Federation of Labor (AF of L) formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to make the AFL-CIO that we know today.



Nov. 15, 1907 - The comic strip “Mutt & Jeff” debuted. The strip was so popular that its creator Harry “Bud” Fisher became a celebrity and negotiated the first large backend deal. He built an animation studio, but spent all the profits on partying with showgirls.



Nov. 15, 1926 - FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooks up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein.



Nov. 15, 1934 - Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.



Nov. 15, 1965 - Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this time in Orlando Florida. ...



The second half of "The Month in Animation" on the morrow.





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