Birthdays: Antonio Frescobaldi, Captain
William Bligh, Jimmy the Greek Snyder, Joe Theismann, Cliff Robertson, Angela
Cartwright, Alf Landon, Dee Dee Sharpe who sang the 60's R&B hit the Mashed
Potato, Michael Keaton, Don Mattingly, Otis Redding, Anita Ekberg, Hugh Grant
is 57, Topol, Colonel Lyman Sanders the creator of Kentucky Fried Chicken, James Hilton-writer
who created the name for paradise- Shangri-La, in his novel Lost Horizons. Adam
Sandler is 50, Michelle Williams is 36
1908- THE PATENTS TRUST- Thomas
Edison, Charles Pathe and Leon Gaumont form the Motion Picture Patents Group.
Called the "Trust". Their attempt to monopolize movie production and
strangle off the independents had a lot to do with the early filmmakers exodus
to Los Angeles. Otherwise the film capitol of the world would have been Ft.
Lee, New Jersey. The only positive
result of the trust was they enforced a regular industry standard for film
stock of 35 mm running at 24 frames per second. It seems the Mitchell Camera
Company was developing a motorized motion picture camera to replace the hand
crank variety but they needed an official speed to set it at. In a contentious
meeting of the Trust held at the Waldorf Astoria no one could settle on a
single speed. Finally the compromise was made to make it the number of
delegates in the room- 24.
1910-Alice B. Toklas moved in with
Gertrude Stein at the 22 Rue de Flerus in Paris. Until Stein’s death in 1946
they ran one of the most glittering social networks of the Twentieth Century.
Soirees included Picasso, Matisse, Dali, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
John Dos Passos, Max Ernst, Virgil Thompson, Sherwood Anderson, Max Ernst,
Guilliame Apollinaire and Carlos Santayanna. But the ultra modern was not to
everyone’s taste. Painter Mary Cassatt only visited once. She later told a
friend:" I never saw so many
horrible things, I never met so many horrible people!"
1920- Silent movie star Olive
Thomas, nicknamed America's Kid Sister, partied a little too hard at the Dead
Rat Cafe in Paris. It was said the 21 year old died of an overdose of cocaine
and alcohol. Another theory was she accidentally overdosed on mercury
bicholoride tablets. Her nude body was discovered wrapped in a full length
ermine fur left on her couch in the Ritz Hotel.
The scandal started the first investigation of drugs in Hollywood. It
netted an army captain named Spaulding who admitted that film stars like
Thomas, Mabel Normand and Ramon Navarro were regular clients for morphine,
heroin and cocaine. Shortly after
Groucho Marx put in his vaudeville show Animal Crackers the song Hooray for
Captain Spaulding,.
1926 – The National Broadcasting
Company or NBC created by the Radio Corporation of
America RCA. Under the direction
of David Sarnoff it became the powerhouse network of broadcasting, recording
and later television.
1939- The first Andy Panda
cartoon.
1939- The first day of shooting on
Charlie Chaplin’s film the Great Dictator. The first day was the Ghetto street
scene. One of his distributors grumbled “ By the time Chaplin finishes his
movie, people won’t even remember who Hitler ever was.”
1945 - 1st bug in a computer
program discovered by Naval Commander Grace Hopper. A moth that had burned out
some relays was removed with tweezers from a relay & taped into the log.
Since then any computer glitch was nicknamed "a bug". The logbook is
in the Smithsonian today.
1950 - 1st use of TV laugh track
invented by Hank McCune.
1951 - 1st broadcast of the soap
opera" Love of Life " on CBS-TV
1956- Elvis Presley appeared on
nationwide television on the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan himself had vowed never
to have the kid on his show but caved in to network pressure. He stayed home
that first time, and actor Charles Laughton was the substitute host. CBS
Network censors thought the gyrations of Elvis' pelvis so obscene that in many
markets they blacked out the lower portion of the screen so he was covered the
waist down.
1967- Jay Ward’s show George of
the Jungle premiered, with Super Chicken and Tom Slick sequences.
1982- Princess Grace of Monaco,
the former movie actress Grace Kelly, died in a car accident on the mountainous
hill roads of Monaco. Twenty years earlier in the film To Catch a Thief, Alfred
Hitchcock had her drive her car at dangerous speeds over the exact same hairpin
turns.
1985- She-Ra the Princess of Power
premiered on TV.
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