Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 2)

[Mark_Finn]

1. Except for 1941, Walt Disney was nominated for at least one Oscar every year from 1934 to 1963.

2. The largest employer in one location in the US is Disney World in Florida, with 70,000 employees.

[Chronos]

I think that gyrocompasses are generally too big and heavy to be practical on airplanes. I saw one once on a ship, and it was the size of a washing machine.

It’s probably possible with modern tech to make them much smaller, but then, with modern tech, it’s trivially easy to just use GPS instead.

[Lumpy]

Weren’t laser gyros developed for missile warhead guidance?

[CalMeacham]

@Chronos

I think that gyrocompasses are generally too big and heavy to be practical on airplanes. I saw one once on a ship, and it was the size of a washing machine.

It’s probably possible with modern tech to make them much smaller, but then, with modern tech, it’s trivially easy to just use GPS instead.

They certainly do make gyroscopes smaller. Fiber Optic gyrocompasses are put on satellites!

Fibre-optic gyroscope

[commasense]

@Mark_Finn

Except for 1941, Walt Disney was nominated for at least one Oscar every year from 1934 to 1963.

Yes, but:

@commasense

Composer Alfred Newman (no relation to Alfred E. Newman, you goofball) was nominated for at least one Oscar every year between 1938 and 1960. Incredibly, in 15 of those 22 years, he was nominated for two or more, with four nominations in 1940 alone!

In his 40-year career, he was nominated for 45 Academy Awards, and won nine. (John Williams, whose career has lasted 25 years longer so far, has been nominated for 54, but has only won five to date.)

Alfred’s two brothers, two of his five children, and nephew Randy Newman have collectively received another 48 nominations and three wins, making them the most nominated family ever, with a total of 93 noms and 12 wins.

@RealityChuck countered:

@RealityChuck

While this is nice, remember that Walt Disney has 59 nominations, and 22 wins. It’s possible that Williams could catch him with nominations, but not for wins. He also has more wins than the Newman family.

Disney had up to six nominations in a year (1953) and often competed against himself.

To which I riposted:

@commasense

The vast majority of Walt’s nominations were for 10-minute cartoons, with a few two-reelers and documentaries thrown in, plus a special Oscar for the stereo sound developed for Fantasia. I didn’t check the credits for all of them, but a spot check of several reveals that for most of them he was producer, often uncredited, but not writer or director. So the extent of his personal creative contribution to any of them is questionable. His only feature win (as uncredited producer) was Mary Poppins (1965) for Best Picture.

Disney was an undoubted giant of the film world, but ISTM that most of the awards he is credited with were the creative work of many others whom he oversaw and guided as studio head.

For that reason, IMHO his contributions are not in the same category as the individual creative efforts of Alfred Newman or John Williams (or any number of other composers) in producing dozens of award-winning or -nominated feature film scores.

[RealityChuck]

But Walt still won more than anyone else, didn’t he?

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

John Williams won “only five” Academy Awards. Poor guy!

[commasense]

Yeah, because he was the boss of the hundreds of people who did the actual work, but who didn’t get to put their names on the statue.

Newman (and family) and Williams may have had a handful of assistants who helped them in relatively minor ways, but no one else did the creative work of composing beautifully memorable scores, each with up to an hour of music, for dozens and dozens of films.

That level of creativity and talent just can’t compare to Walt’s contributions, which were essentially that of a supervisor of many much more talented people.

Here’s one of my favorite YouTubers talking about the best known musical artist in history.

The MOST Well-Known Musical Artist In History?... It's Not Even Close

[RealityChuck]

And again, that’s all irrelevant. He still won more Oscars than anyone.

He was also the one who hired the people who did the work. He had the ability to see what worked and what did not. Those are talents, too.

But ultimately, you can’t just ignore the numbers. Disney won more Oscars than anyone else. Period.

[commasense]

Factually correct, obviously.

Do you acknowledge my point, that the kind of personal creativity and talent required to compose dozens of 800-page musical scores is on an entirely different level than that needed to supervise a studio and put your name on the work of others?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

We’re getting into the realm of whether a 3" diameter apple is larger than a 3" diameter orange.

Disney’s era was the era of the studio head. Like a god, the movies released were created in his image. Every studio had a different image. Moviegoers knew without seeing the logo whether they were watching a Columbia or MGM or RKO picture.

Every cel of every short and full-length movie Disney produced went through Walt’s head. He was involved at every stage of production, from idea to writing to drawing. His role in the business was not business - his brother Roy handled that. Walt was the head creative, immersed in creation day and night for decades. Even the live-action shorts were reality warped into Walt’s vision of what reality should be. Disneyland was all him, an obsession about something no one had ever seen before, a gigantic success that I think dwarves literally anything else that came out of Hollywood. (I went once. It was fun. It wasn’t designed for me, but that’s irrelevant to its success.)

I’m not a Disney acolyte. He wasn’t a nice guy - he just played one on television. The other movie moguls were far worse, though. Nor am I minimizing the creativity of composers.

The Oscars went to Disney because everybody in the industry recognized what he was and how his product was an outward projection of what he was. The most outstanding creative of his times.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Saint_Cad

His last words (according to that story) was something like, “Turn me over. I’m done on that side.” If you want to celebrate his feast day on August 10th, you may want to go to the Saint Lawrence Gridiron restaurant in Boise, ID.

I mentioned in another thread recently that he is accordingly the patron saint of chefs and comedians. According to the legend he was cheerful to the last.

[RealityChuck]

@commasense

Factually correct, obviously.

Do you acknowledge my point, that the kind of personal creativity and talent required to compose dozens of 800-page musical scores is on an entirely different level than that needed to supervise a studio and put your name on the work of others?

As Exapno pointed out, Disney did not sit in his office twiddling his thumbs. He was extremely hands on, and hired the talent, supervised them, made suggestions, and made sure everything was carrying out his vision. He innovated in many ways and stressed creativity over profit.

It’s not comparable to a composer; they are two different disciplines. But your implication that Disney wasn’t creative gives him short shrift.

[Pardel-Lux]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

I mentioned in another thread recently that he is accordingly the patron saint of chefs and comedians.

I don’t know whether the royal monasterey of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is known in the US, but it is famous in Spain as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, king’s palace, biggest Renaissance building in the world and tourist attraction. Things you get taught at school.

The floor plan of the building is in the form of a gridiron. The traditional belief is that this design was chosen in honor of Saint Lawrence who, in the third century AD, was martyred by being roasted to death on a grill.

[Mark_Finn]

For those of you into gory images, there are numerous paintings of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence.

[elbows]

2022 and 1970,

are as far apart as,

1970 and 1918!

[Lumpy]

What exactly does a gridiron look like? All the references I can find are for American football.

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

[Lumpy]

Thanks, that helps a lot. Like a super-hefty barbecue grill or a fireplace grate.

[EinsteinsHund]

I love the itsy bitsy tiny flames on his ass.