July

JULY 1ST
1941 - TEX AVERY QUITS AT WARNER BROS. - Famed animation director Tex Avery stormed out of Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, "A Wild Hare." Boss Leon Schlesinger put him on a four week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a gig at MGM
1970- Hanna Barbera's primetime animated series "Where's Huddles?

JULY 3RD
1989 - Jim Backus, best known as Thurston Howell on TVs "Gilligan's Island" dies. Backus, also the voice of toon Mr. Magoo, played many dramatic roles, including the part of James Dean's dad in "Rebel Without a Cause"

JULY 6TH
1928 - The film "The Lights of New York" premiered at the Strand theater on Broadway. It used an early sound on film technique but failed to capture the public's imagination the way "The Jazz Singer" would do in four more months
1933 - Max Fleischer introduced Popeye the Sailor in a Betty Boop short of the same name
1957 - Chuck Jones short "Whats Opera, Doc?" debuts. " Kill da wa-bitt, kill da wa-bitt..."

JULY 7TH
2000 - June Foray, performer of numerous cartoon voices, best known for Rocky the Flying Squirrel receives her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

JULY 8TH
1982 - Walt Disney's "Tron", the first film attempting to be made chiefly with computer graphics, premiered. It's poor box office performance earned Ron Miller, then Disney CEO and Walt's son-in-law, the unaffectionate nickname of "Tron" Miller.

JULY 9TH
1993 - ILM GOES DIGITAL - George Lucas' Industrial Light Magic completes it's transition to digital technology by shutting down it's Anderson Optical Printer. The optical printer system of mattes had been the way motion picture visual effects had been done since Melies in 1909, but the Digital Revolution changed everything.

JULY 13TH
1925 - Walt and Lillian Disney marry.

JULY 14TH
1933 - HAPPY BOITHDAY, POPEYE! - "Well Blow Me Down"- Fleischer's first "Popeye the Sailor" cartoon debuted. Vaudvillian Red Pepper Sam provided his salty mumbles throughout the post-sync track. When Sam asked for more money than Max Fleischer thought he was worth, he replaced him with assistant Jack Mercer, who was the voice ever after.

JULY 16TH
1954 - Groundbreaking for the construction of Disneyland.

JULY 17TH
1955 - DISNEYLAND OPENS - Disneyland opens with live television coverage. The television coverage somehow missed certain aspects of Disneyland on opening day, such as the still-soft asphalt of Main Street U.S.A laid only the night before, the lack of drinking fountains due to a plumber's strike, and the near capsizing of the overloaded Mark Twain paddle boat. Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan host the televised gala.
1964 - Warner Brothers "A False Hare", the last Bugs Bunny theatrical short until the late 1980's.

JULY 21ST
1893 - Ernst Shuftan born. He was the inventor of the 'Shuftan Effect', a cheap way to imitate matte technique using mirrors that was used in all those Cesar Romero vs. the giant iguana movies.

JULY 24TH
1984 - Walt Disney's "The Black Cauldron" premiered.

JULY 27TH
1940 - Happy Birthday Bugs! Warners Brother's short "A Wild Hare" premiered.

JULY 30TH
1930 -THE FIRST COLOR CARTOON -Walt Disney's "Flowers and Trees" the first Technicolor cartoon. Disney had worked out a deal with Technicolor creator Herbert Kalmus to use his technique exclusively for two years to show larger Hollywood studios its quality.
1943 - "The Secret Agent", the last Max Fleischer Spurperman cartoon short. The series was discontinued because their were too expensive to make.