Four years after Douglas Engelbart (1925 – 2013) invented the computer mouse, he sat down to demonstrate it to 1,000 of his closest friends. Because he was from Oregon, and thinking this way comes naturally to us, he made sure his 90 minute presentation was captured on video.

From his NY Times obituary:

For the event he sat on stage in front of a mouse, a keyboard and other controls and projected the computer display on a 22-foot-high video screen behind him. In little more than an hour he showed how a networked, interactive computing system would allow information to be shared rapidly among collaborating scientists. He demonstrated how a mouse, which he had invented just four years earlier, could be used to control a computer. He demonstrated text editing, video conferencing, hypertext and windowing.

You can see the entire presentation on Youtube. Here’s the Youtube description.

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

I hereby claim Douglas Engelbart: The Mother Of All Demos as an Oregon film, on the basis of Oregonian Douglas Engelbart’s contribution as producer, director, writer and star.

Sheldon Renan recently sat down in the director’s chair, a spot he has occupied on and off throughout a long career, to make a short tribute to city employee David Olson.

I hereby claim David as an Oregon film on the basis of numerous qualifying criteria.

In 1921, William and Irene Finley pulled out a camera and documented their friendship with a hungry campsite visitor.

Here’s the filmmaker:

Finley was an early conservationist. Oregon’s first fish and game commission was set up in 1911, following his recommendation. You can visit William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, named in his honor, just south of Corvallis.

Here’s how short Oregon’s history is.

William Finley was born in Santa Clara California, on Aug. 9, 1876. That’s one month after Custer’s Last Stand. His parents, John Pettus Finley and Nancy Catherine Rucker, had traveled west by covered wagon. His uncle, William Asa Finley, was the first president of Oregon State University.

William himself was one of the first presidents of Audubon Society of Portland. Notice the birds on his head! He made this film the same year Rudolf Valentino appeared in The Sheik and Charlie Chaplin appeared in The Kid.

At the time Chumming With Chipmunks was made, all feature films were preceded by newsreels. So although William Finley’s chipmunk film did not win the international accolades which later came to Perri, an Oregon film with a similarly wild cast, it was seen by movie audiences across the country.

I hereby claim Chumming With Chipmunks as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon citizenship of the director William and camerawoman Irene.

6. A Date With Judy (1948) Jane Powell

Elizabeth Taylor tries to steal all her scenes by wearing a slight mustache, but Jane Powell, Taylor’s best friend and a fellow MGM starlet, is the star of this peek into America before Elvis. Powell (born Suzanne Burce) arrived in Hollywood at age 14. She would have preferred to stay in Portland, because she was looking forward to going to Grant High School, but it was not to be. Portland radio made a star out of Suzanne Burce. Joe Pasternak made a star out of Jane Powell. She made 14 features at MGM, and was the lead in all of them.

7. What’s Opera, Doc? (1957) Mel Blanc

“This afternoon Melvin Blank, a boy with a good voice, will sing a number of solos, accompanied on the piano by his brother.” Mel Blanc’s first write up in The Oregonian gives little indication of what was to come. Portland is where Mel Blanc learned to play the violin, the ukulele, the sousaphone and the stand up bass. Portland is where he became, at age 23, the youngest bandleader on the West Coast. Mel Blanc soaked up everything the Rose City had to offer him except a high school diploma. “I loathed school” he wrote in his autobiography. He  left in 1935 for Hollywood, where he would become the Man Of 1,000 Voices, one of which was Bugs Bunny.

6. Sleeping Beauty (1959) George Bruns

Here’s a music history scavenger hunt for you. Go to the Oregon Historical Society’s  Oregon Rocks exhibit and find George Bruns. He sits holding a trombone in a group photo of a 1940’s Portland jazz band. You’ll have to ID him by his signature because you have never seen his face. You have heard his music. Bruns was Oscar nominated for three of his many film scores: Sleeping Beauty 1959 (his first), Babes In Toyland (1961), and The Sword In The Stone (1963). The Ballad Of Davy Crockett , his first gig for Mr. Disney, sold more that 10 million records. That’s only a small fraction of the take generated by Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me, another Bruns composition you might possibly recognize. George Bruns was born and raised in Sandy, Oregon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

9. Don’t Look Back (1967) Derroll Adams

Born and raised in Portland, Derroll Adams dropped out of Reed to follow his banjo. A senior statesman of the 1960’s folk scene, he famously provided Bob Dylan’s introduction to his British counterpart, Donovan. Well, someone had to do it! D. A. Pennebaker was there to catch it on film. Adams remained in Europe the rest of his life, playing folk music and teaching banjo. That’s him in the foreground at the beginning of the clip.

Click here to view the embedded video.

10. Good Will Hunting (1997), Elliott Smith

Did Gus Van Sant cut Good Will Hunting in Portland? Or was he in LA, playing Elliott Smith in the editing room because he was homesick, when it slowly dawned on him  ”Hey I think we’ve got something here…..” ? The soundtrack for this odd little blockbuster about a neurotic orphan with a Robin Williams sized hole in his heart includes Angeles and Miss Misery, which was Oscar nominated.  The Dandy Warhols also show up on the soundtrack. Van Sant is himself a musician. Like Smith, he arrived in Portland during his high school years. Unlike Smith, he basically never left.

Bonus film:

Click here to view the embedded video.

11. Wildwood (2014), The Decemberists

I’m just guessing here. Laika is planning a stop motion adaptation of Colin Meloy’s and Carson Ellis’ book. They may need some music, and Colin might have some ideas about where it should come from.

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Miss the first installment? The first Top Five Movies To See After Visiting Oregon Rocks can be found here.

Go find out.

When you get back, here’s some movies which feature Oregon musicians:

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Whoopee (1930) George Olsen and His Music

Born and raised in Portland, George Olsen was discovered in 1923 and brought to Broadway where he wasted no time becoming a huge star. How huge? Whoopee, an early color film and an early sound film, was such an enormous financial gamble that Samuel Goldwyn had to make sure he had a sure fire draw on the soundtrack. His solution was a one two punch: Eddie Cantor PLUS George Olsen. It is Olsen’s band you hear all throughout Whoopee.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. Three Little Pigs (1933) Pinto Colvig

Pinto Colvig’s early career as a newspaper cartoonist kept getting stalled because he was prone to leaving with the circus every time it came to town. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Oregon, Pinto had his own career as an animator before going to work for Disney. He is sometimes given credit for helping write “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?”, the song which got the country through the Great Depression. Everyone agrees that he sang it, as the voice of Practical Pig.  Like Mel Blanc, Pinto Colvig’s first identity as an artist was as a musician. He is most famous for providing the voice of Goofy.

3. Born To Dance (1936) Del Porter

Del Porter, born and raised in Newberg, Oregon, was a singer, composer and arranger. He came to Hollywood as a member of the stupendously well behaved, ocarina playing quartet, The Foursome.  In Born To Dance, they back up Eleanor Powell. He left Hollywood as a founding member of Spike Jones’ musically anarchic City Slickers. Del Porter belongs on this list not because of the size of his contribution to Hollywood, but because of the size of Hollywood’s contribution to him. If he hadn’t gone to Hollywood, there would have been no City Slickers. And he might have spent his entire life playing the ocarina.

4. Gone With The Wind (1939) Louis Kaufman

Louis Kaufman’s parents were so disoriented by the prodigious gifts of their musical son that they sent him out on a six month tour of the vaudeville circuit at age ten. They came to their senses and sent him to Julliard three years later. Kaufman moved to Los Angeles because he liked the sun, and thought he would make his living teaching violin. Hollywood had other plans for him, and you can hear him now in over 400 classic Hollywood films. That’s him playing Tara’s Theme. Louis Kaufman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon.

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5. There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) Johnnie Ray

Much to his own astonishment, which he does little to conceal, Johnnie Ray’s film debut took place alongside Mitzi Gaynor, Marilyn Monroe, Ethel Merman and Donald O’Connor. Awestruck and ill at ease, he looks exactly like what he is, a singer waiting, waiting, waiting for a chance to sing. Hollywood took note and never asked him to than play anything other than himself, ever again. Born in Dallas, Oregon, and raised in Hopewell and Portland,  Johnnie Ray crossed racial lines to embrace rhythm & blues, and in so doing paved the way to rock. A colossally original talent, Ray was partially deaf, and performed wearing his hearing aid.

Want more? Next Top Five Movies To See After You Get Back From Oregon Rocks @ OHS

Caricature by Martinus Van Tee

Myth #1. Mel Blanc graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon.

False! Lincoln High School has no record that Melvin Jerome Blanc ever graduated. He did attend.

Myth #2. Mel Blanc moved to Los Angeles in order to become a voice artist.

False! Mel Blanc already was a voice artist when he arrived in Los Angeles. His first professional gig was here in Portland, on KGW radio, in 1927.

Myth #3. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig formed the center of Mel Blanc’s professional universe.

False! Mel Blanc’s first love was radio, and he worked steadily in radio throughout his entire life.

Myth #4. Mel Blanc’s phenomenal talent was a freak of nature.

False! Mel Blanc worked hard to develop his talent. He conducted two parallel careers in Portland from 1927 to 1935: he was both a musician and  a radio performer. As a musician, he had front row seats (in the orchestra pit) to study the comic delivery of the nation’s top vaudeville comics, a group which included Jack Benny, with whom he would eventually work. As a radio performer, he spent 6 years on a nationally syndicated one hour weekly show at Portland’s KGW, and two years on his own daily one hour show – which he wrote, produced, and starred in – on Portland’s KEX. He was eight years into a show business career when he moved to Los Angeles.

Myth #5. Matt Groening, Oregon’s other animation supernova (who did graduate from Lincoln High School), idolizes Mel Blanc.

Not sure! Matt Groening has gone on record stating that Bill Plympton is God.

Here’s Mel Blanc himself, in a clip introduced by Dennis Nyback. Mel appears at 2:55.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute in honor of Bugs Bunny’s 70th birthday.