Birthdays: Hans Holbein, Heinrich Himmler, Caesar Rodney, Joe Hill, Andy Devine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Henry Wallace, June Allyson, Al Martino, Neils Bohr, Ameil Buraka, Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, Toni Braxton, Yo Yo Ma, Vladimir Putin is 72.
1914- Young Viennese musician Max Steiner arrived in America from Europe. He had $32 in his pocket. He eventually made it Hollywood where he became one of the greatest movie composers. He created the soundtracks for Gone with the Wind, King Kong and Casablanca.
1947- The Actor's Studio opened, teaching the Stanislavski Method, sometimes called Method Acting. The movement later suffered a feud between it’s two top teachers-Lee Strassberg and Stella Adler and Sandy Meisner. Ask any actor if they were with Lee or Sandy, odds were they sided with one and hated the other.
1955- THE BEATS- Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading was intended to promote the new gallery. The poet Kenneth Rexroth organized the reading, and in preparation, he introduced Gary Snyder to Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg introduced everyone to Jack Kerouac, and they became the core of the group of writers known as the Beats. Ginsberg was the second to the last to read, and he started at about 11 p.m. He was 29 years old, and he had never participated in a poetry reading before. He started off in a quiet voice. But as he read, he found his rhythm, and he took a deep breath before each of the long lines in "Howl" and then said each line in one breath. Jack Kerouac chanted "Go, go, go" in rhythm while Ginsberg read, and the audience went wild. Just recently the Russian satellite Sputnik was in the news, so people who adopted the Beat lifestyle were dubbed by the press Beatniks. Like cool, daddy-o.
1957-Dick Clark’s T.V. show American Bandstand debuts.
1959- MARIO LANZA . Philadelphia born Italian–American Lanza was a pop icon opera singer. With moviestar good looks and a velvety voice, his records and movies sold millions. But he was temperamental and had angered most of the powers that be in Hollywood, climaxing with skipping a $250,000 promise to perform in Las Vegas. This day in Italy he was found dead at age 38.
For years there were rumors that he was actually done in by the Mafia, but in the 1990s a forensic investigation by his son proved his brutal regimen of binge eating and furious dieting wore out his heart. He would attempt to drop 50 pounds in three weeks, then put it back just as quickly until it gave him a heart attack. He literally dieted himself to death.
1960- The movie Spartacus opened. Producer/star Kirk Douglas had been using blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for the script, smuggling him in and out of the lot for story meetings. Finally Douglas got fed up and ordered Trumbo to be brought out in the open as the movie's true writer. This was considered the official end of the Hollywood Blacklist era, which had been raging on since 1947. After director Anthony Mann left the project, Douglas hired Stanley Kubrick, who had such a hard time he left Hollywood afterward, never to return.
1965- The film, The Agony and the Ecstasy opened in theaters. Sir Carol Reed adapted Irving Stone’s historical novel about the painting of the Sistine Chapel, with Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II, and Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. For the first time movie makers were allowed to film inside the Vatican and Sistine.
1971- Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks premiered at the Odeon Theatre in London.
1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.
1993- Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" earned $ 712 million dollars just in North American box office.
1994- Tim Burton’s movie Ed Wood opened in wide release.
1996- Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel began.
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