Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev
Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine, Arthur Babbitt -the creator of
Goofy, Chevy Chase is 71, Paul Hogan, Ruben Mamoulian, Edward Zwick, Johnny
Ramone, Sigourney Weaver is 65, Matt Damon is 44
1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTOR'S FIRST MASS
PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try
and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion
Picture rates and fees. The catch was the rates were drafted with the advice of
friends of the studio heads in Washington. The actors went ballistic when they
saw new rules such as a ceiling cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year (the producers
had no such cap), restriction of actors independent agents, and terms of an old
salary contract would stay in effect even after the contract expired until it
was renegotiated.
This night at the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Blvd. hundreds of
moviestars met to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The
activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Groucho Marx
and Boris Karloff. SAG president Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) was considered
politically too far left to face Roosevelt, so he stepped down in favor of
comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize. In previous
meetings at the El Capitan the earth tremors from the Great Long Beach
Earthquake the previous March made actors reconvene in the Grauman's Chinese
parking lot across the street. Cantor
went to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition and
had the hated articles taken out of the code.
1935- Ozzie Nelson married
Harriet.
1945- "Bloody Monday"
During a big strike three hundred and fifty armed thugs club their way through
picketing Warner Bros. film workers. Jack Warner had stationed sharpshooters
behind the studios billboards. A logo on the studio wall said:" Better
Movies through Better Citizenship", which the union folk changed to
"Better Movies through Better Marksmanship". Similar scenes were
happening in front of Fox and MGM.
1957- Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his
hit Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire.
1971- John Lennon first released
the song Imagine.
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