Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mike Mosley, Darryl Zanuck Jr., George Schulz, Christopher Plummer, Steve Buscemi is 68, Jamie Fox is 58, Lynn Holly Johnson, Wendy Malick, Taylor Swift is 34, Dick Van Dyke is 98
1872- The town council of Abilene, Kansas fired Wild Bill Hickok as sheriff. They said he was more violent than most of the criminals he arrested.
1895- Gustav Mahlers 2nd Symphony “Resurrection” premiered.
1928- Leopold Damrosch conducted the premiere of George Gershwin's -"An American in Paris."
1936- At the urging of New Yorker editor Harold Ross to find a better line of work, actor Dave Chasen opened Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills, which catered to Hollywood stars for 60 years. It is the restaurant where Leopold Stokowski was introduced to Walt Disney and as a result they conceived "Fantasia". Humphrey Bogart, John Huston and Lauren Bacall met upstairs to discuss the Blacklist of 1947. The Shirley Temple cocktail was invented there so little Shirley Temple could hang with the big boys after work. Elizabeth Taylor ordered Chasen’s chili flown out to Rome so she could eat it on the set of Cleopatra. The restaurant closed in 1995 because the Chasen family wanted to cash in on the choice real estate. Today it is a supermarket. They keep one booth intact as a display.
1940- Fleischer Popeye cartoon "Eugene the Jeep" The character would give its name to the new army General Purpose vehicle- G.P. or "Jeep".
1951- One of the legendary Hollywood producers was Walter Wanger- starting in 1921 his films included The Sheik, Stagecoach, Queen Christina, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Silk Stockings and Cleopatra. His wife was beautiful starlet Joan Bennett, but at this time she was having an affair with her agent Jennings Lang. On this day Wanger surprised Hollywood by pulling out a gun and shooting Lang in the nuts right in the MCA studio parking lot.
In true Hollywood fashion Wanger got off, sentenced to just a few months in an honor ranchero compound and was soon back to work. Contributors to pay his legal fees included the Jack Warner, Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn. Jennings Lang recovered and later produced House Calls and High Plains Drifter. After all, who needs balls to be a producer?
1961- Jimmy Dean’s folk ballad Big Bad John went to #1 of the country charts. Later Dean had his own TV variety show featuring the Muppets, and started Jimmy Dean’s Pure Pork Sausage Company.
1969- Arlo Guthrie’s hit song Alice’s Restaurant released.
1971- Disney’s film Bedknobs and Broom Sticks opened.
1978- The US tried to introduce silver dollar coins. The first Susan B. Anthony dollars issued. They looked too much like quarters so they didn’t catch on.
1996- In Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi apocalypse epic the Plague of the 12 Monkeys was unleashed today, a virus pandemic that killed 4/5ths of the world’s population and drove the remainder underground.
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