Birthdays: Buddy Rich, Lena Horne,
Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Hayward, Deanna Durbin, Howard Hawks, William Goldman,
Martin Landau, Essa-Pekka Salonen, David Alan Grier, Vincent D’Onofrio, Monica
Potter, Mike Tyson is 48, Michael Phelps, Rupert Graves is 51
1856- Charles Dickens does his
first public reading from his works in London.
1933- A group of actors meet in
secret at Frank (the Wizard of Oz) Morgan and form the Screen Actors Guild. The
secrecy was because studios threatened to blacklist anyone who so much as
breathed the word union. Among the founding members that night are James
Cagney, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Frederic March, Robert
Montgomery and Boris Karloff.
1936- Margaret Mitchell's
bestseller “Gone With the Wind" first published.
1936- the 40 hour work week was
made a federal law. It was not followed in the animation industry until 1941.
1937- Congress voted to shut down
the Federal Theater Program, the division of the government funded WPA that
produced plays for Depression wracked poor people. The FTP produced cutting
edge works of Orson Welles, Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neill and at it’s
height reached 25 million people. But conservative senators thought it had become
too radicalized by lefties. Theater actors working in L.A. on a hit production
of Pinocchio held a mock funeral for the puppet. Over it’s casket was the
headstone FTP: Born 1934, Killed by an Act of Congress, June 30th 1937.
1940- Female Cartoonist Dale
Messick takes over the Brenda Star comic strip and adds the trademark sparkles.
1948- Bell Laboratories announced
the Transistor, a possible substitute for radio-vacuum tubes. So early
computers can shrink from the size of a building to the size of a bus. In 1980
the silicon chip reduced the same computing power to the size of your
fingernail.
1975- Just 4 days after divorcing
Sonny Bono, Cher married rocker Gregg Allman.
1996 - Margaux Hemingway,
considered the first modern Supermodel, committed suicide at 41. Her
grandfather Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, and his father before him.
1989- Spike Lee’s movie Do The Right
Thing opened.
