It's all color and lights

Today is International Animation Day. The day commemorates the first public performance of Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique at the Grevin Museum in Paris in 1892.



So Kids make sure you grab a bowl of the sugary breakfast cereal and watch your favorite cartoons.


October 28, 1947 -
An overlooked yet still powerful film-noir, Nightmare Alley, starring Tyrone Power was released on this date.



The studio built a full carnival set on the back lot at Twenieth Century-Fox covering ten acres, and hired over 100 sideshow attractions and carnival workers.


October 28, 1950 -
The eternally 39-year old Benjamin Kubelsky (who was actually 56 at the time,) transitioned his successful radio program to television on this date when The Jack Benny Show premiered on CBS-TV.



Most of Jack Benny's original radio cast appeared on television with him, including Don Wilson, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Dennis Day, and his real-life wife Mary Livingstone made several guest appearances.


October, 28, 1957 -
Federico Fellini's Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) opened in the US on this date. (A good friend of mine named her daughter after Giulietta Masina. )



The American musical, Sweet Charity (choreographed and directed by Bob Fosse) was based upon this film. The ending used in Charity (which parallels this film's ending) was deemed too 'depressing' by the studio, who demanded am upbeat ending, instead. Though it was filmed, test audiences reacted poorly, so the original - 'Cabiria-like' ending which leaves her future unanswered was restored.


October 28, 1978 -
The group KISS, may have thought that they had dodged a huge career bullet when they turned down appearing in the disasterous BeeGee's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band fiasco, due to being contractually obliged to star in another feature. Karma though had other thoughts - The Hanna-Barbera produced KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Peter Criss was dubbed because he wouldn't show up for post-production dialogue looping sessions. His voice was dubbed by voiceover artist Michael Bell, who did a lot of work for Hanna-Barbera.


Word of the day


Today in History:
October 28, 4004 BC -
You never call, you never write - God.



According to Biblical calculations by our pal, Archbishop James Ussher,



God created Adam and Eve five days after finishing the rest of the universe.


October 28, 1886 -
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated at Liberty Island, New York, by President Grover Cleveland on this date. The statue weighs 225 tons and is 152 feet tall. It was originally known as Liberty Enlightening the World. Lady Liberty, as she came to be called, quickly become a symbol of America, partly because she was such a striking visual symbol of our national reverence for liberty, partly because of the five-dollar hot dogs and ten-dollar plastic replicas sold at her feet.

The statue's inscription was written by poet Emma Lazarus, and attributes the following exhortation to Lady Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!



(Certain misinformed administrative officials misunderstand exactly for whom the light of liberty shines. May I humbly suggest the light shines directly for certain administration officials to be shone the door.)


Exactly thirty-three years later, in 1919, Congress passed a law prohibiting alcohol (The Volstead Act.)



Ultimately, it resulted in toxic, bootlegged alcohol that killed more people than legal alcohol had. With alcohol outlawed, only outlaws had drinks and the atmosphere fosters Mafia encroachment into legitimate businesses. Fortunately there were an awful lot of them and they overturned the law as soon as they were sober enough to vote.


October 28, 1922 -
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini seizes power in Italy, with the assistance of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XI declared Mussolini is a man sent by divine providence.



In return for this endorsement, the silly dictator signs the Lateran treaty, restoring papal sovereignty over the Vatican.

But at least the trains ran on time.


October 28, 1948 -
The Nobel committee announces that Swiss chemist Paul Müller had won the 1948 chemistry prize on this date.



He discovered the unusual insecticidal properties of 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2- bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane. Thanks to Mueller, the world embraces the phenomenal bug-killer... until somebody discovers that the hydrocarbon, popularly known as DDT, also excels at causing cancer.


October 28, 1955 -
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle on this date.



With the world uneasiness, Bill's agressive coupon clipping has helped him deal with his drop from the number one position to number two on Forbes' world billionaire list. I believe he is holding his own with the 1%ers.


October 28, 1962 -
The Cuban Missile Crisis officially ended when Nikita Khrushchev formally agreed to dismantle the Soviet missiles and remove them from Cuba. In exchange, the US agreed not to invade Cuba and respect its sovereignty.



The world breathed a sigh of relief as the tense situation that almost caused a nuclear war came to an end.


October 28, 1963 -
A New York DJ, Murray Kaufman, played a song from a little known British group on this date.

It is believed that Murray the K's playing of She Loves You by The Beatles on this date, was the first time a Beatles song was played on an American radio station.


October 28, 1965 -
Pope Paul VI issued a decree, Nostra Aetate, which among other things, absolved Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

I can chart my moral decline to this date.  When informed of this a few years later, I told my seventh grade religious teacher, "Gee, that was awfully big of him."


October 28, 1965 -
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, the tallest memorial in the US, was completed on this date. The famous arch, designed by architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel, is 603 feet (about 184 meters) tall and 630 feet (about 192 meters) wide.



The memorial was built as a monument to Thomas Jefferson and all those pioneers for who St. Louis was the Gateway to the West.


And on a personal note:

Happy Birthday Olivia

And so it goes


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