Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius 42BC, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 43
1906- Opera star Enrico Caruso was charged for pinching a ladies bottom while visiting the Bronx Zoo. Caruso claimed a monkey did it.
1915- BIRTH OF THE COKE BOTTLE- The owners of Coca Cola were concerned that the success of their soft drink was being subverted by all the various cheap imitations. They decided if they had a distinctive bottle people would recognize genuine Coca Cola. This day the first Coca-Cola appeared in their distinctive curved little green bottles, created by the Ross Glass Co. of Indiana.
1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE- Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner whose property later became the site of MGM. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests was Charlie Chaplin and Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked Ince was dead and everyone very upset. The official cause of death was a heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies in flagrante-delicto, and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came between them. We’ll never know for sure.
1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts- singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue, many would say it was this date, when the New York Palace Theater on Broadway, a premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live acts to purely Movies.
1946- The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium, because nothing on it is Rare, or Well Done."
1952- The first time in a Peanuts comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting to kick it. It became one of Schulz’s best recurring jokes.
1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59 year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting. Ten days later, while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, Clark was sitting up in bed, joking with the nurse and reading a magazine. Suddenly he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the pillow, and died. Clark Gable was 59.
He composed his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."
1977- Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in theaters.
1981- Actor William Holden died. The handsome star of such classics as Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17 and Network, was told as a young actor to take a few drinks to calm the pre-camera jitters. But by now he was a hopeless alcoholic. This night, at home alone and drunk, he fell and cracked his head on a table edge. Too inebriated to call for help, he dabbed his forehead with bunches of Kleenex tissues until he bled to death. He was 63.
1990- Disney’s feature film the Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer instead of acetate cels and paints.
1996- Warner Bros Space Jam, where Bugs Bunny met NBA star Michael Jordan.
2001- The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the dole, now she was one of the richest women in the world. In England second only to Madonna and the Queen.
2002-The mysterious flu like disease SAARS first reported in Kwantung China. The epidemic spread around the world killing hundreds but was contained by the following summer.
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