|
Welcome back to The Spark. It's a brand new week with some
brand new chances to dig deep into upcoming events and anniversaries. Let's
begin, shall we?
Monday:
Today is International Chocolate Day, a chance to indulge your sweet tooth and not feel guilty
-- or, at least, unduly guilty. We don't know if the holiday is timed
to coincide with the 1857 birthday of Milton Snaveley Hershey (the man who founded both the Hershey chocolate company
and the town of Hershey, PA), but if it isn't, it's a sweet coincidence. (Of course,
it's also Fortune Cookie Day, so it may not be honoring him, after all.)
In our youths, this time of year was always looked forward to anxiously, as
the new television season was starting. For example (as we’ve noted previously, both Law & Order (1990) and Scooby-Doo, Where Are
You? (1969) began their
seemingly endless runs on this day, as did The Muppet Show in 1976.
The season still starts this week, but it's nowhere near as exciting as it
used to be. Regardless, it's not without interest. For example, Martha Stewart's new show premieres on the Hallmark Channel,
and both Oprah and Mary Hart begin their final seasons on their respective shows. (In
the latter cases, we guess that hoping for such events paid off -- especially
with this being Positive Thinking Day).
Maybe the most notable thing to happen on this day was in 1814, when lawyer Francis Scott Key observed the British attacking Fort McHenry in Baltimore, and was so moved by the stars and stripes surviving
intact that he penned a poem that soon became known as the "Star-Spangled Banner," which was eventually adopted as the American
national anthem in 1931.
Tuesday:
We begin the day by noting some passings. First, in 1927, Isadora Duncan died. Duncan is usually considered the mother of modern dance.
Her bohemian lifestyle and exuberant dancing made her world famous -- as did her death, when a scarf
she was wearing became tangled in the wheels of the automobile she was riding
in and broke her neck.
Next is Irving Thalberg, who was a film producer at Universal and MGM in the 1920s and '30s, and who turned out such classic films
as The Hunchback of Notre
Dame, The Big Parade, The Broadway Melody, Tarzan the Ape Man, Grand Hotel,
and A Night at the Opera. After his premature death in 1936 at the age of
37, F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalized his in his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, which painted him as one of the few men who was
able to hold the formula for successful motion pictures in his head.
On a lighter note, it was on this day when major league baseball owners, in
an attempt to break the players' union, cancelled the rest of the 1994 season – including the World Series.
Not all the news of this day is bad, though. For example, in 1961. Wendy Thomas,
namesake of the eponymous hamburger restaurant chain, was born, just a year after the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries -- or OPEC -- was founded -- well, maybe
that second one isn’t so good, after all.
How about we finish the day by remembering the 1985 premiere of The Golden Girls, or by telling you to get out the vote, as there
are primary elections in Minnesota,
Delaware,
Washington DC, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York,
Rhode Island,
Vermont,
and Wisconsin?
Wednesday:
Today’s birthdays include:
Marco Polo (1254), the Venetian who was one of the first Westerners to explore China and
Central Asia, and who later inspired kids playing in pools to shout his name.
In 1907, it was Fay Wray, the actress who so captivated the original King Kong and whose screams
pierced the eardrums of the world. (Peter Jackson even wanted to cast her -- at the age of 96 -- in his
ill-fated remake of Kong, but she unfortunately passed away before filming
could begin.)
Jackie Cooper (1922) was one of the first child stars of the talkie
era. Beginning at age 7, he worked as an actor, writer, producer, and
director until his retirement in 1989. He was the youngest performer ever to
be nominated in a leading role for an Academy Award (for 1931's Skippy).
Skippy was based on a comic strip of the same name that also gave its name to the peanut
butter brand (a fact which has caused some controversy over the years), but peanut butter also plays a weird
part in the death of Jumbo the elephant. Jumbo was the star attraction at the London Zoo in the
1860s and '70s, until P.T. Barnum, seeing the marketing possibilities, bought him in 1882
for $10,000, bringing the pachyderm to America where he became a huge hit
-- even lending his name to large-sized items. Unfortunately, Jumbo was hit
by a train in 1885 and crushed. His skeleton was donated to the American Museum of
Natural History in New York, but his hide was stuffed and eventually donated to Tufts University, where it was displayed until 1975, when it was destroyed
by a fire. But Jumbo's ashes were recovered and now reside in a 14-ounce jar
of Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter in the office of the college's athletic director, where Tufts athletes still rub the jar for luck.
Three literary birthdays: James Fennimore Cooper (1789), who wrote The Last of the
Mohicans and other adventure novels,
and who was later eviscerated by Mark Twain, who called him one of the worst writers who ever lived.
Robert Benchley (1899) was a master of an all-but-dead art form, the short
humorous essay. Working initially as drama critic for the original Life
magazine and The New Yorker, he eventually became a character actor whose droll cameos
enlivened any movie.
And in 1890, Agatha Christie was born. The mistress of mystery, she turned out 80
novels featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and others, along with a number of plays -- one of
which, The Mousetrap,
has been running continuously in London since 1952 -- to become (according to Guinness),
the best-selling author of any kind in history, with over four billion copies
of her books sold.
In 1902, the trio of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers (pronounced "EE-vers," if you please; not
"EVV-ers"), and Frank Chance
pulled off their first double play for the Chicago Cubs. They were later immortalized in a poem
by columnist Franklin P. Adams.
More TV. In 1949, The Lone Ranger premiered, just a day after the 35th birthday of
star Clayton Moore, who made a lifelong career of portraying the masked man.
Speaking of birthdays and TV stars, in 1971, Columbo first aired, the day before
Peter Falk turned 44. Falk will be forever identified with the
detective whose cigar, rumpled raincoat, and equal amounts of annoyance and inquisitiveness endeared him to millions.
The 1965 debut of I Spy was notable for two things. One was that it did a
lot of its filming overseas, an unheard-of practice for the time. The other
-- and far more important one -- is that it was the first series to feature a
black actor (Bill Cosby) and a white actor (Robert Culp) as
co-stars in equally important roles. There had been other shows featuring
black actors, but, until then, all had traded in stereotypes and comic relief.
Finally, in 1971, Greenpeace was founded, dedicating itself to increasing public
awareness of such issues as global warming, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling and nuclear power.
Thursday:
Lots of music today. First of all, the 1782 death of Farinelli, which was the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, who was probably the
greatest castrato of all time. While it seems barbaric now, castrati were boys
with beautiful soprano voices whose, um, manhood was cut short before
adolescence in order to maintain the purity of their tone with the power of
masculine singing. He traveled throughout Europe, becoming (somewhat
surprisingly) a ladies' man, and retired a wealthy man.
While Farinelli sang opera, it was different
from what we know today; not really the sort of thing that's much heard these
days at the New York's Metropolitan Opera
House, which opened in 1966 at Lincoln Center with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra.
About as far away as you can get from the Met, Riley B. King was born in 1925
on a plantation in Mississippi.
At the age of 21, Riley began singing on the radio in Memphis, and gained the nickname "Beale Street Blues
Boy," which was later shortened to "B.B.," and combined with
his last name, gave us B.B. King, one of the greatest blues singers and
musicians in history.
At the other end of the spectrum from the blues and opera are cheesy animated
musical TV specials such as the kind brought to us by Jules Bass, who was
born in 1935. With his partner Arthur Rankin, Bass formed an animation company that gave us such "classics" as The Year Without a Santa
Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer.
Such shows could really drive a person to drink, so if that's the case, you
may want to head to Denver, where the 2010 Great American Beer Festival will get
underway today, featuring brewers large and micro, bringing you the finest in suds. (Not to mention Oktoberfest, which begins in Munich, Germany, tomorrow for the 200th time.)
We don't know if they indulge in the occasional brewski, but if they do, Queen Elizabeth will be meeting Pope Benedict today, and that would seem to be the right time to hoist
one.
Friday:
Since April 2, 1956, many Americans have been following events in
Oakdale, IL with great enthusiasm, but that all comes to an end today when As the World Turns, the venerable soap opera, airs its last broadcast. Its death is another nail in
the coffin of daytime drama, which once gave millions hours of entertainment,
but is now just a relic of an earlier era or broadcasting and American
history.
Speaking of American history, it was on this date in 1787 that the U.S. Constitution was ratified, setting in motion a series of debates that
continue to the present day as to just what the Founding Fathers did mean.
With such confusion, it's no wonder that in 1859, the otherwise-harmless Joshua A. Norton declared himself "Emperor Norton I" of the United States. Norton was humored by his
fellow San Franciscans and treated with honor, and was given all the perks of
royalty with none of the responsibilities. When he died in 1880, he was given
a funeral whose procession stretched for two miles and drew 30,000
spectators.
A less inglorious send-off was received by guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who died of an overdose of sleeping pills in a London
hotel in 1970. Hendrix's flashy and virtuosic musical style has influenced
almost every rock and jazz guitarist since.
Lastly, we note that Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, begins at sundown.
Saturday:
Beginnings of note today:
In media, in 1851, The New York Times began publishing. While the "Grey Lady"
is still the "paper of record," we also have to wonder if it, soon,
will go the way of the soap opera. (We hope not, as we still enjoy settling
down on a Sunday with the Times.) And, in 1927, the Columbia Broadcasting
System, better known as CBS, went on the air for the first time. On another network (ABC) in 1964, The Addams Family premiered. The series, based on the New Yorker
cartoons of Charles Addams, took a delight in black humor and the wholesomely
perverse, and inspired the current Broadway musical.
In 1895, Daniel David Palmer gave the first chiropractic adjustment in history to one Harvey Lillard, in Davenport, IA, which is now the home of the Palmer College of Chiropractic.
In 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, Greta Gustafsson was born. By the age of 19, as Greta Garbo, she was one of the greatest movie stars in history.
Iconic and reclusive, she grew tired of the film industry and retired in
1941, and spent the half-century of her life avoiding the press and public.
Not so reclusive is birthday girl June Foray.
Born in 1917, Foray is the voice behind most of the female characters in the classic Warner Bros. cartoons, not to mention playing both Rocket J. Squirrel and Natasha Fatale on the Rocky and Bullwinkle
show. And she’s still working in her 90s!
One of the unluckiest men in sports history was born in 1925. Harvey Haddix
was a pitcher for, among other teams, the Pittsburgh Pirates. On May 26, 1959, Haddix accomplished something no other
pitcher in history has ever accomplished: he pitched 12 innings of perfect baseball; that is to say, he faced the first 36 batters without
allowing a baserunner. Unfortunately, the Pirates being the Pirates, they
didn't score any runs for Haddix. The 37th batter got on on an error, and was
bunted to second. The no-hitter was still in place when Hank Aaron was walked, but the next batter, Joe Adcock,
hit a home run to end the game (and even that went screwy went Adcock passed
Aaron on the basepaths and was called out).
That game was tragic for Haddix, but nowhere near the tragedy of actress Peg Entwistle
who, in 1932, despondent over her lack of success in the movies, committed suicide, supposedly by jumping from the letter "H" in the famous Hollywood sign.
Sunday:
We end the week by letting you know that it's the beginning of TV Turnoff Week, which asks parents and kids to turn off the boob tube
and read, play, talk, or just sit in quiet contemplative silence. Given that
it’s Adam West's birthday (1928), his culpability in the Batman TV series of the '60s, makes it easy to think about
never watching television again.
If you do watch, though, the Martin Scorsese-produced Boardwalk Empire premieres tonight on HBO. Being that it's from Scorsese, you can almost predict
that it's about gangsters -- this time in the wide-open Atlantic City of the 1920s.
Speaking of thugs and villains reminds us that, in 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was prevented
from visiting Disneyland. Police authorities cited security concerns, though many
speculated it was punishment for his being the top Communist. (Though to some
of us, having to go to the Magic Kingdom at all would be punishment indeed.)
To round out the week, we give our hopes that, at some time during the day,
you'll celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day by shivering your timbers, avasting your keelhaul, or
doing whatever it is buccaneers do.
See you next time!
Suggested Sites...
|
No comments:
Post a Comment