Author: Richard Daybell

A writer of fiction and other stuff who lives in Vermont where winters are long and summers as short as my attention span.

February 18, 1953: Leaping from a Screen Near You

Posted on by Richard Daybell

An exciting new kind of movie opened in New York City on February 18, 1953, and quickly took the entire nation by storm. It promised each and every theater patron the cinematic excitement of a lion in his or her lap. It was the latest attempt by desperate movie studios to pry people away from those insidious television sets that had popped up in living rooms everywhere, to get them back into theaters.  In a frenzy they had tried to beat the little box with Cinerama, Cinemascope and a host of other Deadly Cins.

The new kind of movie was of course 3-D, complete with those funny little glasses (sadly lacking a big nose and mustache), and this first film was called Bwana Devil. Not only did audiences have to sit through a newsreel and a featurette about folk dancing in a remote Himalayan village to get to the good stuff, they also had to endure an opening lecture on just how this modern marvel worked. A very serious scientist in a lab coat delivered this lecture. He described the 3-D process in numbing detail while the antsier members of the audience chewed Necco wafers and stared at him through those special glasses, wondering why he remained flat as a pancake in a lab coat.

Bwana Devil was a jungle flick (in case you wondered), obviously chosen so that it could feature lions and tigers and elephants and giraffes leaping from the screen onto the unsuspecting audience, causing most of the ten-year-olds to pee their pants. “Let’s see your 15 inch, black and white TV do that,” Messieurs Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer snickered.

And they continued to do that, with westerns, in which Indians would shoot flaming arrows indiscriminately into the audience – one of them right into the forehead of a kid sitting in the third row. Or creepy horror films in which a mad scientist reached into the audience plucking a comely teenager by the throat, pulling her out of her seat, sucking her into the screen never to be seen again.  And Cat-Women on the Moon — sexy moon maidens in black tights leaping into the aisles and luring ogling men into the lobby for who knows what? Hollywood had struck back.

To experience the sheer terror of 3-D, tape red cellophane over your left eye and blue cellophane over your right eye.  Then look at the picture below and Omigod! Look out for the tiger!.

tiger-large

Naming Rights

Born on this day in 1745, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, inventor of the electric battery, for whom the volt was named (not to be confused with the Volta Boatman).  There’s also Georg Ohm  and Andre-Marie Ampere, but they weren’t born on February 18.  Ernst Mach was, in 1838.  He was the Austrian physicist who gave his name to a unit of speed.  And way back in 1516, the daughter of Henry VIII,  Mary Tudor, who gave her name to the popular cocktail, the Bloody Tudor.

February 17, 1972: New Kid on the Block

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There’s an old tradition among Italian singers: they won’t go on stage unless they see a bent nail.  Don’t ask.  A certain Italian tenor saw a bent nail on February 17, 1972 (one of many planted surreptitiously by stagehands at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House), and it proved to be quite an omen.  Although he had an international reputation, he was the new kid on the block here, making his first appearance in the United States.  The production was Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, and Luciano Pavarotti sang the role of the peasant Tonio opposite Joan Sutherland.  He brought down the house with his mastery of the amazing aria “Ah, mes amis” with its nine successive top Cs.  His performance was one for the history books.  At the opera’s conclusion, he received a record 17 curtain calls.

He would go on to do much, much more.  Pavarotti’s 43-year career included 15 Grammy nominations, five wins and two Guinness world records. He would set another record for curtain calls in a 1988 Berlin production of L’elisir d’amore –165 curtain calls, lasting 67 minutes.  His 1990 Three Tenors concert with José Carreras and Plácido Domingo sold 10.5 million albums, the most for a classical recording.

Another Kid, Another Block

Mickey Dugan, a bald, snaggle-toothed kid with a silly grin who always wore an over-sized yellow hand-me-down nightshirt, was right at home in the 19th century New York slum known as Hogan’s Alley, and beginning on February 17, 1895, became right at home in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.

In the neighborhood filled with quirky characters that was home to R. F. Outcalt’s comic strip, Mickey, also know as the Yellow Kid was the quirkiest. The Hogan’s Alley comic strip gradually became a full-page Sunday color cartoon with the Kid as its main character. He spoke in a muddled slang that was practically his own language, and everything he said was printed on his nightshirt as though he were a walking billboard.

It may have been a cartoon, but Outcault’s comic strip aimed its humor and social commentary squarely at an adult audience. It has been described as a turn-of-the-century theater of the city, in which a group of mischievous ragamuffins act out the class and racial tensions of the their urban environment.

As the Kid’s popularity  grew, the strip’s presence actually increased paper sales for the World, and led to all sorts of merchandising from dolls to playing cards to cigarettes.  It also earned Outcault the appellation ‘father of the comic strip.’

When You Wish Upon a Book

The Sears & Roebuck catalog may have become the Magilla Gorilla of mail order, but Aaron Montgomery Ward, born on February 17, 1844, beat Mr. Sears and Mr. Roebuck to the punch by 18 years — and there was only one of him. As a young traveling salesman, Ward saw firsthand how rural folk were being poorly served by small town general merchandisers. Couldn’t they have some of the same opportunities to buy lots of stuff as their big city counterparts?  Of course they could, Ward answered, and in 1872, the mail-order catalog was born.

That first catalog was a one-page price list featuring 163 items. By 1874, it had grown to 32 bound pages; by 1895, over 600 pages with thousands of items. Dubbed the Wish Book, it was a magnificent thing, fully illustrated with woodcuts and drawings, hawking anything you could possibly want — tools, jewelry, millinery, musical instruments, furniture, bathtubs and buggies.  Cradle to grave.

 

February 16, 1923: Beware of the Hippo

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This could be the mother of all conspiracy theories. On February 16, 1923, mummy_2in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter entered the burial chamber of the Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen — Tut to his friends and hangers on. As every schoolgirl knows, Tut died and was mummified back in 1324 B.C., give or take a year, while still a teen idol. As every schoolboy knows, anyone foolish enough to enter Tut’s burial chamber would become subject to a pretty nasty curse — involving but not limited to crocodiles, snakes and scorpions.

Tut was the first mummy found in tact and with all his wealth untouched by tomb raiders. And his discovery left scientists scratching their heads. No one knew what had caused the young king’s death. Theories have popped up during the years — genetic disorders, disease, foul play.

An Egyptologist at California State University, Dr. Benson Harer, has come up with a dandy new idea: Tut was done in by an angry hippopotamus. Well, we all know what nasty tempers hippos have. They kill more people each year than lions, gorillas, you-name-it. And ancient Egypt was lousy with hippos — capsizing boats, stomping crops, stampeding through villages, chomping people in half with a single bite.

King Tut loved to hunt hippos, and every schoolgirl knows what dummies hippo hunters can be. We can imagine Tut happening upon a baby hippo: “Isn’t he cute? Let’s get closer. I wonder if his mother’s around somewhere.” Dr. Harer has a lot of scientific stuff that goes along with his theory, but what’s most interesting is the good doctor’s speculation that a coverup took place, with authorities stonewalling and concealing the pharaoh’s death by hippo for political reasons, fearing that the common folk might see Tut as less Trumplike, more Bidenlike — or that the gods always liked hippos best. There you have it, slippery slopers — Hippogate!

When it comes to mummies, they don’t make them like this anymore:

Radio for Dummies

edgarbergenandcharliemccarthyBorn February 16, 1903, Edgar Bergen, along with his cohorts, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, got his start in vaudeville and one-reel movie shorts, but his real success came on radio of all places. The popularity of a ventriloquist on radio, when no one could see the dummies or even whether Bergen’s mouth moved, is a puzzler. But popular they were. Seen at a New York party by Noel Coward, who recommended them for an engagement at the famous Rainbow Room, they were discovered by two producers who booked them for a guest appearance on Rudy Vallee’s radio program. That quickly led to their own show which, under various sponsors, was on the air from 1937 to 1956.  Bergen died in 1978.  Charlie lives on at the Smithsonian.  One might be tempted to think Charlie related to Congressional Republicans because — well, for obvious reasons — but he’s not.

February 15, 1914: Body Snatchers Everywhere

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Although he made more than 200 film and television appearances, actor Kevin McCarthy, born February 15, 1914, is forever linked to one film,  Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The 1956 sci-fi horror classic features McCarthy as a small town doctor who discovers an alien invasion in which plant spores from outer space have fallen to Earth where they grow into large pods.

Placed next to sleeping townspeople, the pods replicate their victims assuming their exact physical characteristics, memories and personalities but lacking any human emotion. One by one these pod people take over, leaving only Kevin McCarthy to warn the outside world: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!”

In a 1978 remake of the film, McCarthy makes a cameo appearance playing his original character as an old man still frantically warning passing motorists of the invasion.

McCarthy should not be confused with another Kevin McCarthy the former Republican Minority House Leader and most likely a pod person.

In yet another remake, The Creeping Menace from Mar-a-Lago, the pods attack the US Senate, sidling up to sleeping Republican Senators, sucking away not only their human emotions but their integrity as well. (They skip the House because there’s nothing to suck away.) And there’s no Kevin McCarthy (the actor) to warn them this time, his having died in 2010. But wait, there’s Mitt Romney who has traded in his Etch-a-Sketch for a conscience. For a moment, we think there’s a glimmer of hope for mankind, but then we spot Ted Cruz.

You Too, Fu

Novelist Sax Rohmer, born on February 15, 1883, is probably not as well-known as his famous villain, the evil genius Fu Manchu (not to be confused with the “stable genius”), “tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.” The 13 fast-paced adventures make lively reading if you can get past the frequent overt racial slurs.  And here we are back at Mar-a-Lago.

February 14, 278: Roses Are Red, Etc., Etc.

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How did St. Valentine’s Day become a day associated with hearts and flowers and all things romantic? One account puts a definitely sinister spin on the origin of this holiday. It begins back in the third century with a fellow named Claudius the Cruel. As you might guess, Claudius is not going to be the hero of this tale.

Claudius (II, if you’re counting) was the Emperor of Rome, a barbarian who proved that any young boy can grow up to be emperor if he believes. Valentinus, or Valentine, was not a saint at the time, but he was a holy priest.

Claudius, in addition to his barbarianism and cruelty, was a bit of a warmonger. Continually involved in bloody campaigns to destroy upstart nations throughout the region, Claudius needed to maintain a strong army.  But it was a constant battle to keep his military at full strength what with Christianity gaining a toehold and everyone  into family values. The men for their part were unwilling to be all they could be in the army because of their annoying attachment to wives and families.

Claudius had a fairly simple solution; he banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, part of whose livelihood was the performing of marriages, thought this decree unjust and defied the emperor by continuing to marry young lovers on the sly.  Claudius, as emperors will, got wind of Valentine’s doings and, true to his name, ordered that Valentine be put to death. Valentine was arrested and condemned to be beaten about the head, and then have said head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, 278.

Legend has it that while in jail, Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, with whom he had had a brief relationship (that will not be explored here), and signed it “From Your Valentine.”  There may have been other cute little Valentine poems as well,  but they have been lost to history.

For this, Valentine was named a saint and had a holiday created after him, though not a legal one with school closings and such. Conspiracy theorists will naturally jump up and down, saying there were several St. Valentines and the holiday could have been named after any one of them. Or it could have come from the pagan festival Lupercalia, a day of wanton carrying on. They should mind their own business.

February 13, 1862: Thaw Out the Holly

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With the giving and getting of gifts growing to a crescendo in late December, it is to many a glass of cold water in the face when the merriment suddenly gives way to a bleak long winter with scarcely a box or a bow in sight. The people of Norwich, a city on England’s east coast, a couple of centuries ago found a way to keep on giving by elevating February 13, St. Valentine’s Eve to a Christmas-like celebration.

According to an 1862 account, this Victorian tradition was evidently peculiar to Norwich: visitors to the city were often puzzled to find the shop windows crammed with gifts in early February and newspapers full of advertisements for ‘Useful and Ornamental Articles Suitable for the Season’ available from local retailers.

As soon as it got dark on St. Valentine’s Eve, the streets were swarming with folks carrying baskets of treasures to be anonymously dropped on doorsteps throughout the city. They’d deposit a gift, bang on the door, and rush away before anyone inside could reach the door. Indoors there were excited shrieks and shouts, flushed faces, sparkling eyes and laughter, a rush to the door, examination of the parcels.

Practical jokers  were everywhere as well, ringing doorbells and running off, leaving mock parcels that were pulled away by string when someone attempted to pick them up. Large parcels that dwindled to nothing as the recipient fought through layer after layer of wrapping, and even larger parcels containing live boys who would jump out, steal a kiss, and run away.

As with most holidays that involve children out after dark and mischief, the celebration of St. Valentine’s Eve fell out of favor, to be replaced by the Hallmark-inspired and saintless Valentine’s Day.

No Valentine, This One

Hal Foster had been drawing the Tarzan comic strip based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs for several years, but itched to create his own original strip. He began work on a feature called Derek, Son of Thane, set in Arthurian England. Before the strip had its coming out party on February 13, 1937, it had gone through a couple of name changes, first to Prince Arn and eventually to Prince Valiant.

Prince Valiant was five years old when his story began, a continuous story that has been told through 4,000 Sunday episodes. Without a whole lot of deference to historical accuracy, Val’s adventure’s take him throughout Europe, Africa, the Far East and even the Americas in a time frame covering hundreds of years. He does battle with Huns, Vikings, Sorcerers, witches and a slew of monsters from prehistoric to modern, but always big.

Foster drew the strip until 1971 and wrote the continuity until 1980. Since then, other artists have kept it alive. Foster died in 1982, at age 89.

Fore, I mean duck

Golf is thought of as relatively safe sport.  But for the safety of others, there are just some people who should not be allowed on a golf course.  Vice President Spiro Agnew had the dubious distinction of beaning not just one but three spectators on this day in 1971 during the Bob Hope Desert Classic.  On his very first drive, he sliced into the crowd for a two-bagger, bouncing off a man to nail his wife as well.  On his next shot, he hit a woman, sending her to the hospital.  The previous year, Agnew had managed to hit his partner in the back of the head.

 

February 12, 1924: Now You Has Jazz

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Advertised as an educational event, the “Experiment in Modern Music” drew a capacity crowd to New York City’s Aeolian Hall on the afternoon of February 12, 1924. Noted critics were in attendance as were such luminaries as John Phillip Sousa and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Organized by the conductor of the Palais Royal Orchestra, Paul Whiteman, the concert was intended to introduce the new form of music called jazz and show audiences that it was a musical form to be reckoned with. True to its billing as educational, most of the concert had consisted of mind-numbing rather than toe-tapping music, two dozen little lessons that began to dissolve into one another as the audience grew antsier and antsier. At last (second to last, actually) a young Broadway composer sat down at the piano to perform a brand new piece written for the occasion.

His composition had been hastily created.  Just over a month earlier, whilegershwin in a Manhattan pool hall, he had read in a newspaper that he was scheduled to perform a jazz concerto at the Whiteman soiree. Painted into the proverbial corner, he set to work. The framework of his concerto came to him on a train journey: “It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise . . . And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end.”

The piece opened with an “outrageous cadenza of the clarinet,” now instantly recognizable, and “Rhapsody in Blue” metamorphosed into a showstopper of American music history. George Gershwin himself would, as a New York Times critic lacking restraint put it, “go far beyond those of his ilk.”

And now you has rock

Forty years later, on February 12, 1964, New York City would again be home to musical history.  This time the venue was Carnegie Hall and the occasion a major skirmish in the British invasion as the Beatles held their first concert in the U.S.  And not everyone thought they would go far beyond those of their ilk:  “Visually they are a nightmare, tight, dandified Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically they are a near disaster, guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony and melody.” — Newsweek

 

FEBRUARY 11, 1847: TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC THINGUMAJIG

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With over a thousand inventions, many of which have touched the lives of nearly everyone in the world, Thomas Alva Edison is considered by many to be the greatest inventor of the modern era. But it wasn’t always thus. Al, as he was known, was a lousy student whose mother finally decided to home-school him. Edison’s first job was operating a newsstand on a train that ran from Port Huron to Detroit. To make the trips more interesting, he put together a chemistry lab in a boxcar (On the Atchison, Topeka and the Kaboom!). Then working as a telegraph operator, he continued to do scientific experiments in his free time. In 1869, he decided to devote himself full time to inventing.

     His first invention was patented that same year on June 1, a voting machine for use by legislative bodies such as Congress. Having heard that both the Washington, D.C., City Council and the New York State legislature were planning to install electric vote recorders, he stepped up to the plate. Edison’s somewhat Rube-Golbergish system, started with a switch that each legislator could move to either a yes or a no position. The vote would then be transmitted by a signal to a central recorder that listed the names of the legislators in two columns of metal type headed “Yes” and “No.” A recording clerk would then place a sheet of magic paper over the columns of type and move a metallic roller over the paper and type. As an electric current passed through the paper, chemicals in the paper decomposed, leaving the imprint of the name in a manner similar to that of chemical recording automatic telegraphs. Dials on the machine recorded the total number of yeas and nays.

     A fellow telegrapher bought a stake in the invention for $100 and took it to Washington, D.C. to demonstrate it before a Congressional committee. The chairman of the committee less than enthusiastically told him that “if there is any invention on earth that we don’t want down here, that is it.” It seemed legislators liked the slow pace of voting which allowed them to lobby or trade votes or do those other fun legislative things. Edison’s vote recorder was never used.

     Edison persevered, resolving never again to invent something that would not sell. His next invention, an improved stock market tickertape machine, earned him a tidy $40,000. And he went on to invent such other clever devices as the electric light bulb.

A Sport?  Really?

The Westminster Dog Show is the second longest running sports event in the United States, just two years younger than the Kentucky Derby.  More than 2,500 dogs competed in the 2003 running (walking? barking?), in which a Kerry Blue Terrier won for the first time.  Would you know one if you saw one?  The champ’s name was Torums Scarf Michael.  That’s a moniker that one might tire of in a hurry.  “Here Torums Scarf Michael.”  “Heel Torums Scarf Michael.”  “Sit . . .

February 10, 2024: Year of the Dragon

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Today is the beginning of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon.  It’s bound to be a bit more exciting than the departing year, that of the Rabbit.  The Rabbit makes nice, the Dragon makes noise.  To those who believe in the Chinese zodiac, dragons mean good luck, strength and power. They control the weather and water. Alas, they don’t breathe fire.  Western dragons on the other hand, all breathe fire.  They scorch, devour maidens, and whack knights.

According to those who study such things, dragons are the creations of our innate fear of snakes, big reptiles and other predators who dined on our primate ancestors. They lurked in dark caves’ deep pools and haunted forests. Their images were exaggerations of living creatures such as Komodo dragons, gila monsters, iguanas and alligators.

One of the most notable dragon legends features the dashing onward Christian soldier, St. George.  It seems that a nasty dragon was terrorizing the English countryside, demanding tribute from the local villagers.  They gave the dragon trinkets and livestock, but they eventually ran out of such stuff, so they began offering human tribute.  This worked out okay until a princess was chosen as the next offering.  St. George came to her rescue and killed that dragon.  Don’t you believe it, folks; dragons live forever, but not so little boys.  It says so right there in the song.

Here’s another take on the St. George legend:

Year of the Wolf

Struggling in the long shadow cast by his famous father, Lon Chaney, Jr. (Creighton Tull Chaney), born February 10, 1906, finally found his career in the 1930s after his father’s death. Cast mostly in small supporting roles for several years, his first major film role came in 1939, when he reprised his turn on the stage as Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men, a critical success.

Then in 1941, he starred as the tortured Larry Talbot, a role with which he would always be associated, in The Wolf Man. Like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, he would be a horror film actor for the rest of his life. (Chaney was the only actor to play all four of Universal’s heavyweight creatures: Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man)

Year of the Nose

Unlikely star entertainer Jimmy Durante was born February 10, 1893. Saiddurante critic Leonard Maltin about Durante: “The old ‘schnozzola’ was the living embodiment of the term ‘beloved entertainer’: Everyone adored him, but no one could ever really figure out just what it was he did. He sang, he danced, he played the piano and, of course, he clowned — but he wasn’t really great at any of these tasks. Mostly, it was the sheer force of his overbearing personality that won viewers over.”

 

February 9, 1909: I Make My Money with Bananas

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Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha was born February 9, 1909, in Marco de Canavazes, Portugal, not in Brazil, as is often assumed.  A year later, though, she did arrive in Rio de Janeiro, where her father opened a lucrative wholesale fruit  business, selling bananas of course.

One wouldn’t think a young girl could soak up much rhythm and culture from the good sisters of the  convent of Santa Teresinha, but by 17 she was singing in the cafes of Rio.  In 1929, using her mother’s surname to keep her career hidden from her disapproving father, Maria do Carmo made her first appearance as Carmen Miranda.  She was tiny in stature, standing only 5’1.”.  Nevertheless, she filled a stage with her Latin energy and machine gun delivery, melodic Brazilian bullets ricocheting everywhere.

She worked her way into singing on Brazilian radio and in movies.  She made her first recording, a romantic choro on one side, but oh on the other side —  a lively samba.

The samba was a lusty part of the social life of the people who lived in the hills beyond the urban refinement of Rio and its European influences.  Its rhythms were African, at once rustic and cosmopolitan, erotic and refined, measured and languorous.  And during the following years, she became the Queen of Samba (or Smiling Dictator of Samba according to one radio announcer).  Her crown an imposing tower of fruit.

She and her samba stormed the United States in 1939 – nightclubs, radio, and throughout the 40s and eary 50s, a string of movies – Down Argentine Way, That Night in Rio, Weekend in Havana, and the over-the-top Busby Berkeley musical The Gang’s All Here in which she sang “The Girl in the Tutti-Frutti Hat.” At age 36, with a salary of over $200,000, she was the highest paid woman in the nation, ninth on the Treasury Department’s salary list, ahead of Betty Grable, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Humphrey Bogart.

In 1955, it all ended.  After filming an appearance on the Jimmy Durante television show, at 46 years of age, she died of a heart attack.

Mama Eu Quero

An excerpt from the short story, one of 15 in Calypso, Stories of the Caribbean

The Tropicana was a frenzied, pulsating place, as animated as the tourists and Havana socialites who crowded the casino, bar, dance floor and every table, there to be entertained by a half dozen celebrities, three full orchestras and the Tropicana’s own ballet troupe. It had not been easy for Jorge to secure a table, and when he did, it was some distance from where Carmen Miranda would shortly perform. He liked the table just fine, not wanting to be conspicuous in such a place. Delia wished they were closer but couldn’t say anything, and just being here was the high point in her sixteen years plus four months. She looked as mature as any seventeen-year-old in the place, sipping the wine Jorge had bought her and wearing another bright outfit that Carmen herself might have worn, but without the tutti frutti hat, of course, for that would be presumptuous.
Miranda’s Boys broke into a spirited overture, and suddenly there was Carmen Miranda herself, bouncing to the beat of “South American Way.” Jorge turned to see the look on Delia’s face, but there was no look on Delia’s face because there was no Delia. He scanned the floor, fearing she had fainted in her excitement. Nothing. Then he spotted her, crawling on hands and knees between the tables, toward the stage. He closed his eyes afraid to watch but finally had to look again. He spotted her as she squeezed unnoticed between the chairs occupied by the sleek black-haired man and his sleek black-haired companion, disappearing under the table next to where Carmen Miranda sang and danced.