Birthdays: Captain George Vancouver, Eric Maria Remarque, John Dillinger, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Mike Todd, Billy Wilder, Joe Papp, Bill Blass, Oskar Fischinger, Pistol Pete Maravich, Klaus Maria Brandauer is 79, Ed Bradley, Emmanuelle Seigner, Prunella Scales, Meryl Streep is 73, Konrad Zuse, Kris Kristofferson, Matt Doherty, animator Floyd Norman is 87.
1342 – According to JRR Tolkeins’ book the Hobbit, this day Bilbo Baggins returned to his home in the Shire, with the one true Ring.
1894 - Harry Houdini married Bessie Rahner. She remained devoted to him even after his death. Every Halloween for twenty years she held a séance to try and contact him.
1933- Max Fleischer promoted Lillian Friedman to be the first woman animator in American commercial animation. She animated a test, drawing Betty Boop and with the connivance of a camera woman, had it filmed without a name slate. Then she had it screened in front of the crew at dailies. Dave Fleischer said "Hire that guy!" "It's a girl", he was told. So, Lillian Friedman (Astor) was hired at 25 dollars a week when the male animators were making up to $125.00. I asked her about this and she said "It was the Depression and I was supporting my husband who was out of work. I wasn't angry then, but I am angry now."
1941- Walt Disney assistant animator Bill Hurtz married Mary Whitney, one of Walt Disney’s secretaries. Hurtz later went on to become an award winning director at UPA.
1966 – The Mike Nichols film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened. Based on the play by Edward Albee and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the first American movie to use four letter cuss words.
1969- Singer actress Judy Garland OD’s on sleeping pills. She was 47. Whether it was an accident or a suicide we will never know. A pillhead from early age, she had gotten hooked when MGM chief Louis B. Mayer ordered studio nurses to put her on amphetamines so she would have the energy to finish the Wizard of Oz.
1977- Walt Disney’s The Rescuers opened in theaters.
1990- A signal of the end of the Cold War, "Checkpoint Charlie" the main dividing gate between East and West Berlin was dismantled. John Le Carre' and other spy novel writers mourned. There is a replica and a Cold War Museum at the site today.
2012- Pixar’s Brave came out. Written and directed by Brenda Chapman-Lima.
Into Cold War era thrillers then read the curious and epic fact based stand-alone spy novel Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series by Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington in MI6 & the CIA. Even his handler knew Oleg Gordievsky! See TheBurlingtonFiles DOT org for a brilliant website too!
ReplyDelete