Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius
42BC, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws
Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 40
1906- Opera superstar Enrico
Caruso was charged for pinching a ladies bottom while visiting the Bronx Zoo.
Caruso claimed a monkey did it.
1915-BIRTH OF THE COKE BOTTLE- The
owners of Coca Cola were concerned that the success of their soft drink was
being subverted by all the various cheap imitations. They decided if they had a
distinctive bottle people would recognize genuine Coca Cola. This day the first Coca-Cola appeared in
their distinctive curved little green bottles, created by the Ross Glass Co. of
Indiana.
1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE-
Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner whose property
later became the site of MGM. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s
yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests
was Charlie Chaplin and Hearsts’ mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked
Ince was dead and everyone very troubled. The official cause of death was a
heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press
quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies
in flagrante-delicto and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came between them.
We’ll never know for sure.
1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville
was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts-
singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first
opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson,
the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly
supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you
asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue,
many it would say it was this date, when the New York Palace Theater on
Broadway, a premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live acts to purely
Movies.
1946- The Television Academy of
Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium because
nothing on it is Rare, or Well Done."
1952- The first time in a Peanuts
comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting
to kick it.
1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59
year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director
John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional
antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were
going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting, and on this day
while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital reading a magazine, a
second heart attack killed him. He wrote
his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."
40 years ago 1977- Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind
opened in theaters.
1981- Actor William Holden died.
The star of such classics as Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17 and Network, was told as a
young actor to take a few drinks to calm the pre-camera jitters. But by now he
was a hopeless alcoholic. This night at home alone and drunk, he fell and hit his
head on a table edge. Too inebriated to call for help, he dabbed his forehead
with bunches of Kleenex tissues until he bled to death.
1990- Disney’s feature film the Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first
traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer instead of
acetate cels and paints.
1996- Warner Bros Space Jam, where Bugs Bunny met NBA star
Michael Jordan.
2001- The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry Potter’s creator J.K.
Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the dole, now she was one
of the richest women in the world. In England second only to Madonna and the
Queen.
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