Birthdays: Sophocles, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, Hannah
Hoes Van Beuren- the First Lady for Martin Van Beuren, Oliver Wendell Holmes
Sr., Alan Hovhannes, Kenneth Grahame the author of the Wind in the Willows, Cyd
Charisse, Charlie Pride, Mickey Dolenz, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Rice, Aiden Quinn is
55, Freddy Prinze Jr is 38, Jim Bouton- baseball player, author, and inventor
of Big League Chew bubble gum
1886- SHERLOCK HOLMES- A small time doctor in Portsmouth
England named Arthur Conan-Doyle had been trying his hand at writing fiction. He
had sold a few stories to magazines and tried to publish a novel “Firm of
Girdlestone” with lackluster results.
This day he began a new novel “ A Tangled Skein” which had a
new character named at first Sheridan Hope, then Sheringford Holmes. By the time
he finished his story month later, he had changed the title to “A Study in
Scarlet” and the main protagonist name had become SHERLOCK HOLMES.
Conan Doyle was an admirer of the American writer Oliver
Wendel Holmes who was touring Britain that year. Like him, Holmes was a doctor
who turned writer. No one is sure where he got the name Sherlock. It may have
been a neighbor. Conan Doyle’s professor in Edinburgh college Dr Joseph Bell
excelled at deductive reasoning and had an assistant named Dr Watson.
1933- As a result of President Roosevelt's Nationwide Bank
shutdown, Hollywood Studios go into a cash panic. MGM, RKO and the others ask
for 30-50% salary cuts from their stars and artists. At one point they
announced the salary cuts at the Oscar banquet ( betchya that made for a real
fun party!)
Louis B. Mayer,
tearful and unshaven pleaded his case to his contract-stars, who reluctantly
accepted the cuts. Lionel Barrymore called out "We're with ya. L.B.
!" Afterwards Mayer winked to his
secretary and giggled:” So how’d I do?”
A week later Mayer hired his new son-in-law David Selznick as a producer
at $4000 a week. Production chief Darryl Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over the cuts
and went on to build Twentieth Century Fox.
1941- The National Television System Committee set up by the
FCC to standardize television technology recommended an industry standard of
525 scan lines at 30 frames a second- what we now call after their name- NTSC.
England later adopted the PAL (Phase Alernation Line)
of 625 lines, 25 frames per second and France the SECAM System (Systeme Electronique Couleur Avec
Memoire).which is also a 625 line, 25fps system. This is why British t.v. shows like
the Prisoner always looked so grainy on American sets and American shows look
so garish on British sets. By garish I mean
the color, not the content.
It also speeds up the film during
video from 24 frames to 25fps (i.e. 4%)...which is why in England and the rest
of Europe, all Hollywood movies are 4% shorter and the voices of the actors all
sound a little squeaky. The way to remember NTSC is
"Never-The-Same-Color'. DVD and BluRay went to a
thousand- scan lines .
1977- Ralph Bakshi’s film Wizards premiered.
1980- H&B’s “Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels’ show.
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