Sunday, November 26, 2017

If you didn't make it through the holiday


It's usually in aisle five.


November 26, 1922
-
The Toll of the Sea, starring Anna Mae Wong, the second two-strip Technicolor feature (it was the first one able to be projected through a normal movie projector and consequently the first to be given a wide release) was released on this date.



The film's story is a variation of Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, which premiered in 1904; except, the film takes place in China and the opera is set in Japan.


November 26, 1934
-
John M. Stahl's adaptation of  Fannie Hurst's novel, Imitation of Life, starring  Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Rochelle Hudson, Louise Beavers, and Fredi Washington, premiered on this date.



Fredi Washington was a light-skinned African-American. After playing this role, she was criticized by some in the black community who mistakenly believed that the actress herself practiced self-hatred and would rather 'pass' herself off as white. Ms. Washington was, in fact, an avid civil rights activist.


November 26, 1942
-
It's the 75th anniversary of one of the classic films of the 40s - Casablanca premiered in NYC on this date.



In the famous scene where the Marseillaise is sung over the German song Watch on the Rhine, many of the extras had real tears in their eyes; a large number of them were actual refugees from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were overcome by the emotions the scene brought out.


November 26, 1938 -
Michael Curtiz's crime drama, Angels with Dirty Faces, starring  James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and The Dead End Kids, premiered on this date.



The Dead End Kids terrorized the set during shooting. They threw other actors off with their ad-libbing, and once cornered co-star Humphrey Bogart and stole his trousers. They didn't figure on James Cagney's street-bred toughness, however. The first time Leo Gorcey pulled an ad-lib on Cagney, the star stiff-armed the young actor right above the nose. From then on the gang behaved.  


November 26, 1952 -
In Thrilling Color!

The first modern 3-D movie Bwana Devil, viewed with special glasses, premiered in Hollywood (you will need more that special glasses to see the trailer in color; I could only find a black and white version.)



The director, Arch Oboler traveled to Africa in 1948 to make audio recordings of native peoples. While in Africa, Oboler met William D. Snyder, a 16mm cameraman with his own industrial filmmaking company in Fargo, North Dakota. During their travels throughout Africa, Mr. Snyder shot the African footage that appears in Bwana Devil.


November 26, 1953 -
MGM
released the first musical in 3-D, Kiss Me Kate on this date.



For the famous spanking scene, Kathryn Grayson and costume designer Helen Rose played a joke on Howard Keel - Rose put a wooden board under Grayson's costume.


Another site along the lost highway


Today in History:
November 26, 1789
-
The first national Thanksgiving Day was observed in the United States in 1789, when recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress on this date, but we spoke all about this the other day.

The holiday wouldn't become an annual event until 1863 and wouldn't be signed into law until 1941 when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it an official, national holiday.


November 26, 1865 -



Oxford Don and nude child photographer, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, sends the manuscript for the psychedelic novel Alice in Wonderland to his 12 year old special friend Alice Liddell as an early Christmas present.



For some reason her parents did not notify the authorities.


November 26, 1965
Arlo Guthrie was arrested in Stockbridge, Mass., for dumping some trash following a Thanksgiving feast at a restaurant run by Alice Brock, on this date.



He wrote a song about the event that became a folk classic and was turned into a movie in 1969.



Yes kids, it really happened.


November 26, 1976 -
Anarchy in the UK
, (as a single) by the Sex Pistols is released.



The song later appeared on Never Mind the Bollocks.


And so it goes



1154

Don't forget:

Only at Dr. Caligari's Cupboard

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