April

APRIL 1ST
1915 - Hans Conried born, actor and the voice of Disney's Captain Hook.
1944 - Tex Avery's cartoon "Screwball Squirrel"

APRIL 2ND
1943 - Disney's "Private Pluto", the first Chip & Dale cartoon

APRIL 4TH
1968 - MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS - Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" Despite this, "2001" became a classic of American cinema and one of the best known cautionary tales of technology run amok. No doubt, part of the film's initial success can be attributed to it's "head trip value" - almost everyone that was into that scene has a story about someone dropping acid and freaking out during a screening. The film's surrealistic imagery and lines of dialogue have become pop culture mainstays - from the monkeys and the Monolith to the HAL9000's disturbingly apathetic voice droning, "I'm sorry. I can't do that, Dave". In a recent interview, screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM (using the letters preceding I, B, and M) as was widely thought. At the Oscars for that year, Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for "The Producers" A highlight of the film is the stunning visual effects, most of which were done with traditional 2-D animation.

APRIL 11TH
1955- WABD in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles begin to run pre 1948- Warner Bros. cartoons in a half-hour format. Saturday Morning Cartoons are born!

APRIL 15TH
1927- the first footprints in cement ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theater.
1935 - Kodakchrome movie film invented.

APRIL 16TH
1947 - The Zoom Lens patented.
1983 - The Disney Channel debuts.

APRIL 17TH
1937 - "Porky's Duck Hunt" premieres, introducing Daffy Duck.

APRIL 19TH
1970 - The first Broom Hilda comic strip.

APRIL 21ST
1992 - Kroyer Films' "Ferngully - The Last Rainforest" opened.

APRIL 22ND
1996 - Christopher Robin Milne died. He was the son and inspiration of the author of the "Winnie the Pooh" stories.

APRIL 23RD
1867- William Lincoln patended the Zoetrope.
1896- First Projection of Edison Kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Arnat's Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall in New York City.

APRIL 25TH
1972- actor George Sanders,the voice of Disney's Shere Khan in "The Jungle Book", commits suicide leaving a note saying he was bored with it all and not looking forward to old age.

APRIL 28th
1956- the first Godzilla movie is released.