Birthdays: Louis XIV The Sun King, Jesse James, Cardinal
Richelieu, Johann Christian Bach, Jacopo Meyerbeer, John Cage, Quentin de la
Tour, Darryl F. Zanuck, Jack Valenti, Bob Newhart is 85, George Lazenby, Raquel
Welch is 74, Kathy Guisewhite, Dweezil Zappa, Werner Herzog is 74, Michael
Keaton is 63, Rose McGowan is 42
1921: THE WILD PARTY. After completing three feature films
simultaneously, comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle rented three rooms
in San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel for a big party. One attendee, Actress Virginia Rappe, died of
peritonitis a few days afterward. Maude Delmont, a professional blackmailer who
also attended, spread the story that Arbuckle had raped the actress. She never
testified in court.
The Hearst Press took up the story and sensationalized it as
an example of Hollywood depravity. Fatty Arbuckle was found innocent after
three sensational trials (the last jury actually apologized to him). The Motion
Picture Production Code was formed as a direct result. Its first action was to
ban Arbuckle from the screen. Fatty Arbuckle directed comedy for ten years
under the pseudonym Will B. Good, and appeared in a successful series of short
sound films in 1932, but died the same day that Warner Brothers signed him for
a feature.
1935- Tumbling Tumbleweeds premiered, the film that made a
star out of Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy.
1943- Young British cartoonist Ronald Searle is captured by
the Japanese in Burma. He spent his time as a P.O.W. working on the infamous
Bridge on the River Kwai and making sketches of the nightmarish conditions of
his fellow prisoners.
1957- Jacques Kerouac’s ode to the beat life ON THE ROAD,
first published. Kerouac wrote it in a white heat using one large roll of white
paper stuffed into his typewriter instead of individual sheets. When the editor
got the novel it had no paragraph breaks of chapter breaks. Another young
writer of the time, Truman Capote, was unimpressed. “That’s not writing, it’s
typing.”
1965- CBS television network headquarters are moved into a
sleek building on 6th Ave. in Manhattan. Because of it's black granite and
smoke tinted window's it's nicknamed "Black Rock". NBC's headquarters
in Rockefeller Center are called "30 Rock". ABC's, owing to their
status as the third network, called their headquarters "Little Rock".
1994-Patrick McDonnell started drawing the comic strip
MUTTS.
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