Birthdays: Piero 'the Fatuous' de Medici, King Francis I of France-1494, H.L. Mencken, Maurice Chevalier, Ben Blue, Jesse Owens, Billy Gilbert, Barry White, Alfred A. Knopf, Rachael Ward, Michael Odaatje- author of The English Patient, Margaret Hamilton, Brian de Palma, Ian Holm, Joe Pantoliano “Joey Pants”is 72, Hans Zimmer is 67, Jennifer Hudson is 44.
1846- Poet Elizabeth Barrett secretly eloped with poet Robert Browning and were married at St. Marlybone Church in Durham England. Her father had refused his permission for the match, but the Browning’s went ahead anyway, then ran off to Italy. She never saw her father again, but she was inspired to write the sonnet “ How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
1866- Theater producer Fred Niblo got stuck with a French ballet troupe stranded and broke after the New York Academy of Music burned down. So, he combined the dancers with a rather mundane melodrama and created" The Black Crook". It is considered the first true American Broadway Musical. It ran for twenty years and was continually revived until 1925.
1910- Gustav Mahler’s Symphony # 8, The Symphony of a Thousand, premiered in Munich.
1932- In his Thimble Theatre comic strip E.C. Segar introduced Bluto. A minor character in the comic strip, the Max Fleischer animated cartoon raised him to be Popeye’s perennial nemesis.
1940- In southern France near Montignac, a pet dog fell through a crack in the ground into an underground chamber. When four boys follow in to retrieve the dog, they discovered the Lascaux Caves paintings, where Stone Age people created some of the earliest artwork.
1941-THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE ENDED- Everyone went back to work after the NLRB, with a lot of behind the scenes pressure from the Bank of America, settled the dispute. Walt Disney had to recognize the cartoonists guild, give screen credits, double the salaries of low paid workers retroactive to May 29th and re-hire animator Art Babbitt. Walt Disney immediately got on a train to Washington to try and convince the feds to reverse the decision or get an injunction in court. He failed. Many of the lead strikers were made to feel so unwelcome, they left anyway and formed UPA Studios. Ironically within a few months the war would break out and artists who had been bitter foes would be compelled to work side by side in the U.S. Army Picture Unit.
1945- The first French troops land in Vietnam to re-assert their colonial rule.
1948-The People's Republic of North Korea declared.
1954- Television comedian Ernie Kovacs married Edie Adams, the Muriel Cigar Girl. They married in Mexico, and at the insistence of Kovacs used a priest who read the entire service in Spanish, a language neither of them understood.
1953- John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier.
1953- THE RED REDHEAD? McCarthy investigators accused TV star Lucille Ball of being a communist. Lucy was listening to Walter Winchell on his popular radio show when he made reference to a “famous redhead” who was being investigated as a communist. She later found out to her horror that it was her! She and husband Desi Arnez immediately went and testified that Lucy’s grandfather was an old-line Socialist who routinely enrolled all his grandkids in the Communist Party as their birthday present. America wouldn’t stand to see their favorite TV family go down, so the matter quickly blew over. Years later Desi would condescendingly joke:" Lucy didn’t even know who the mayor of L.A. was.”” The only thing that was red about Lucy was her hair, and even that wasn’t real!"
1965- The Beatles release 'Yesterday'.
1966-"Gee Mr. French..." Family Affair premiered on TV.
1966- The Monkees TV show premiered. Two young television executives Bert Schneider and Sam Rafaelson convinced their network to make "A Hard Day's Night" for American television. Of the four kids in the make-believe band Mike Nesmith was the only full-time musician. The others were actors. Micky Dolenz had to be taught how to play the drums the first day of shooting. Insiders nicknamed them "The Pre-Fab Four". Still, the show was a major hit, won Emmy Awards and all their albums went gold. The producers took that success and used it to finance the hit film "Easy Rider". Mike Nesmith later inherited a fortune from his mom developing Liquid Paper and used his fortune to help start MTV.
1986- The film attraction Captain EO, opened at Disneyland Anaheim. Produced by George Lucas, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Michael Jackson.
1992- Anthony Perkins, the star of Hitchcock’s Psycho, died of HIV/AIDS. His widow, Berry Berensen the sister of actress Marisa Berensen, died in one of the hijacked airliners that plunged into the World Trade Center on 9-11.
2003- Country-western singer Johnny Cash died of diabetes at 71.
2005- Disneyland Hong Kong opened.
2010- At the Video Music Awards, singer Lady Gaga wore a dress made from 50 lbs. of raw meat.
