Birthdays: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII's wife # 1), Marshal Gerbhard von Blucher, Lenoid Brezhnev, Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George Santayanna, Liv Ullmann is 83, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Miranda Otto is 54.
1871- BOSS TWEED INDICTED- William Marcy Tweed as New York City Commissioner of Public Works was behind one of the most corrupt city governments in U.S. history. Tweed mobilized poor and immigrant voters into political power and bought and sold city building projects. The cost overruns to build a simple courthouse cost more than the total cost to build the British Parliament in London- $13 million dollars. For example he once billed the city $14,000 for 11 thermometers.
The press tried to expose him, but it was really Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly who helped bring the Tweed Ring down. Boss Tweed said: "I don’t mind the newspaper articles since most of my voters can’t read, but those damn pictures!" Tweed once offered Nast half a million dollars to go to Europe and "study art". Nast refused. Boss Tweed ended his life in the Ludlow Street Jail, which he himself built.
1900 -EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a lightning-drawing act on the vaudeville circuit. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison, then Edison engaged him to make a film of his act. He created this and several other trickfilms. It doesn’t move much more than his vaudeville act, His 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is considered the first animated cartoon.
1905- Variety magazine born.
1913- When his lead actor quit, Max Sennett recalled a young English music hall actor he saw back east. He wrote,“I think his name was Carson, or Caslon, or Chaplin?” This day Charlie Chaplin signed a contract at Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Hollywood. $150 a week. In his first film he would play a villain.
1935- Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who starred with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. She loved to party so much, she was nicknamed "Hot Toddy". She knew New York mobster Lucky Lucciano. Was she done in by the mob, her jealous director boyfriend, was it a suicide or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor running? The mystery’s never been answered.
1966- New York Police raid the offices of Bernard Spindle, a freelance surveillance expert who bugged the phones of the rich and powerful. They carted off all his tapes and records; including tapes he claimed proved Marilyn Monroe’s sexual hijinks with President John Kennedy. He was later informed all his tapes were lost. Spindle’s career was the inspiration for the movies The Conversation and the Enemy of the State.
1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey Joe’.
1966- Sergio Leone’s epic Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly premiered in Rome. The last of the Man with No Name trilogy. Clint Eastwood never worked with Leone again.
1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song ‘American Pie’.
1973- O.J. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.
1978- The Disney short The Small One, directed by Don Bluth.
1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, died.
1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.
1993- Producer Aaron Spelling fired star Shannon Dougherty off the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.
1998- The premiere of Dreamworks The Prince of Egypt. Nicknamed The Zion King.
1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice during a routine throat operation.
2009- Roy E. Disney died, the Walt Disney nephew who oversaw the great animation resurgence of the 1990s.
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