Birthdays: Guy de Maupassant, Amboise Thomas, William- first black
child born in British America, Neil Armstrong, John Huston, Robert Taylor,
Conrad Aiken, Roman Gabriel, Selma Diamond, Patrick Ewing, John Merrick the
Elephant Man, Loni Anderson, John Saxon, Jonathan Silverman is 44
1924 Arf, Arf ! the first Little Orphan Annie comic strip drawn by
Harold Gray.
1926 Magician Harry Houdini stays in a coffin under water for one
hour.
1927 Victrola Record producer Ralph Peer realized there might be a
market for “Hillbilly Music”. So he set up a makeshift recording studio above a
furniture store in Bristol Tennessee and put an ad in the local papers for
talent. In one day he recorded future stars Jimmy Rogers the Singing Brakeman,
The Carter Family, The Tennessee Mountaineers and Ernest Pop Stoneman. This
session has been called the “ Big Bang of Country Music.”
1953- The film “From Here to Eternity” opened, starring Deborah
Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift. But the big story was Frank
Sinatra’s Oscar winning performance as Maggio that signaled the turnaround in
his slumping career.
1955- The Screen Actor’s Guild strikes Hollywood for television
residuals. Their president was Walter Pidgeon who had played Dr. Morbius in
Forbidden Planet.
1957- American Bandstand featuring the eternally teenage Dick
Clark debuts on television.
1962- GOODBYE, NORMA JEAN.
Marilyn Monroe found nude in bed, dead of barbiturate overdose. She was 36.
Whether you think the starlet overdosed by accident, suicide, or was done in by
the Mafia, the Kennedys, a Svengali like personal physician, lovesick lesbian
physical therapist or space aliens, it is still a mystery. She made a call to
Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s office in Washington several hours earlier but
was rebuffed. Her last call was to her hairdresser Mr. Guilaroff. She left the
bulk of her belongings to her drama teacher Lee Strassberg and her funeral was
organized by ex-husband Joe Dimaggio. Her Westwood cottage suite had a tile
over the doorway which read :"All my troubles end Here."
1964 - Actress Anne Bancroft & Comedian Mel Brooks wed.
1966- Caesar’s Palace Hotel & Casino first opened to the
public. This was the first of the super-resort casinos, with a total theme park
design and three times the space and accommodations of anything yet seen on the
Vegas Strip. It’s success ushered in an accelerated era of building for Las
Vegas casinos.
1966 –It a moment of youthful indiscretion, John Lennon says his
band the Beatles are now more popular than Jesus. This flippant comment
provoked a firestorm of nationwide protest among conservative elements in the
US. Beatles albums were publicly burned
in the streets. Lennon apologized, then followed up by saying he was being
crucified over the comment. Paul McCartney rush up to the mike to insist that
wasn't the choice of words they preferred.
1967- Bobby Gentry released “Ode to Billy Jo”.
1980- The Osmond Brothers break up.
1984- Welsh actor Richard Burton died of cerebral hemorrhage at
64. With a tumultuous career and two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor, the hard
drinking Burton was the most famous English-speaking thespian of his day. But
unlike Olivier and Gielgud, he was never knighted. The monarchy objected to
their portrayal, when Burton starred in a TV miniseries on Winston Churchill.
Burton was buried with a copy of Dylan Thomas’ poems.
1986 - It's revealed painter Andrew Wyeth had secretly created 240
drawings & paintings of his neighbor Helga Testorf, in Chadds Ford, Pa
1995- The infamous Siggraph party at the Richard Nixon Library in
Yorba Linda. Titled Nailed: an Evening
on the Cultural Frontier. When the very conservative Nixon Library was
approached about the party, they heard it was a limited invitation event
sponsored by ILM and Silicon Graphics. What could go wrong? What they got was
3,000 drunken, pot smoking hippies and computer nerds. The grounds were festooned with scantily clad
Brazilian Carnevale dancers, sword swallowers, Japanese Taiko drummers, and the
bands Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone. LSD guru Timothy Leary held a mock
exorcism over Nixon’s birthplace. Siggraph Orlando chapter president said” It
was wonderful! I doubt Richard Nixon would have appreciated any of this!”
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