Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius
42BC, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws
Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 37
1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE-
Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner who’s property
later became the site of MGM. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s
yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests
was Charlie Chaplin and Hearsts’ mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked
Ince was dead and everyone very troubled. The official cause of death was a
heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press
quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies
in flagrante-delicto and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came in between
them. We’ll never know for sure.
1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville
was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts-
singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first
opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson,
the Marx Brothers, Mae West , Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly
supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you
asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue,
many it would say it was the date that the New York Palace Theater on Broadway,
the premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live shows to purely Movies.
1946- The Television Academy of
Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium because
nothing on it is Rare or Well Done."
1952- The first time in a Peanuts
comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting
to kick it.
1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59
year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director
John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional
antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were
going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting, and on this day
while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital reading a magazine, a
second heart attack killed him. He wrote
his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."
1990- Disney’s feature film the
Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first traditionally animated film to be
painted digitally on computer instead of acetate cels and paints.
1996- Warner Bros Space Jam, where
Bugs Bunny met NBA star Michael Jordan.
2001- The film Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry
Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the
dole, now she was one of the richest women in the world. In England second only
to Madonna and the Queen.
