On this date in 1910, Chicago publisher William Dickson Boyce filed incorporation papers in the District of Columbia to create the Boy Scouts of America.
Oh wait a minute, this may not be the right video for the anniversary.
February 8, 1936 -
Warner Brothers released the classic film The Petrified Forest starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart on this date.
Warner Brothers was afraid that the original ending would be too depressing for audiences, so it shot an alternative happy ending as well as the original ending. The trade reviewers loved the tragic original ending, so this was put in the movie.
February 8, 1968 -
Planet of The Apes premiered in NYC on this date, confirming Charlton Heston's position as one of the greatest "One Note Actors" of his generation.
All the ape actors and extras were required to wear their masks even during breaks and in between shots because it took so much time to make them up. Because of this, meals were liquified and drunk through straws.
February 8, 1973 –
The cult classic film The Harder They Come (the breakthough film for Reggae music in the US,) was released in New York by Roger Corman's New World Pictures, on this date.
The movie is in Jamaican Patois, a creole language which can be understood to some extent by English speakers. There are subtitles in English for much of the movie on the original theatrical print.
February 8, 1974 -
The spin-off from the sitcom Maude, that wasn't quite a spin-off, Good Times, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
Norman Lear hired artist Ernie Barnes to paint the pictures which J.J. used in the show. Barnes' work displays elongated African-American subjects in everyday scenes. Eddie Murphy owns the original The Sugar Shack painting by Barnes.
February 8, 1975 –
Ohio Players' single Fire went to No. # 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.
Lead Ohio Player Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner, who also wrote the lyrics about getting hot for a smokin' woman, recalled how the song came to life in the studio. "We were in the studio making tracks and all of a sudden, it leaped out," he told Fred Bronson, author of The Billboard Book Of #1 R&B Hits. His bandmates came up with the title "Fire" and he ran with it. "They come with the names and I have to write to them. If the music is good, it doesn't take long to get inspired," he explained. The inclusion of the telltale fire-truck sirens was a no-brainer. He added: "To use all the effects one could use on a track like that, the fire engines and all that seemed very apropos to what was going on on the albums of that era. Other people were using babies crying and kids singing and street sounds. A lot of people were using sound effects of various natures, so we thought about that also."
February 8, 1976 -
Martin Scorsese's elegy to the swiftly disappearing squalor of 70's New York, Taxi Driver premiered on this date.
Director Martin Scorsese claims that the most important shot in the movie is when Bickle is on the phone trying to get another date with Betsy. The camera moves to the side slowly and pans down the long, empty hallway next to Bickle, as if to suggest that the phone conversation is too painful and pathetic to bear.
February 8, 1979 -
The Garry Marshall sitcom Angie, starring Donna Pescow, Robert Hays, and Doris Roberts, premiered on ABC TV, on this date.
While appearing in this series, Robert Hays co-starred in Airplane! in which he danced to The Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive, the song that opened Saturday Night Fever in which Donna Pescow made her feature debut.
February 8, 1986 -
John Woo's hugely influencial crime drama, A Better Tomorrow, starring Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-fat premiered in Hong Kong on this date.
The movie is actually a remake of a 1967 Cantonese film called The Story of a Discharged Prisoner. The film's producer, Hark Tsui had been toying with the idea since his days in the TV business, but because of an overwhelming workload, had to pass the directorial reigns to John Woo.
Another job posting from the ACME Employment Agency
Today in History:
February 8, 1587 -
After some 19 years in prison, Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded on this date.
She had spent the last hours of her life in prayer and also writing letters and her will. She expressed a request that her servants should be released. She also requested that she should be buried in France. The scaffold that was erected in the great hall was three feet tall and draped in black. It was reached by five steps and the only things on it were a disrobing stool, the block, a cushion for her to kneel on, and a bloody butcher's axe that had been previously used on animals. At her execution she removed a black cloak to reveal a deep red dress - the liturgical color of martyrdom in the Catholic Church.
The execution was badly carried out. It is said to have taken three blows to hack off her head. The first blow struck the back of her head, the next struck her shoulder and severed her subclavian artery, spewing blood in all directions. She was alive and conscious after the first two blows. The next blow took off her head, save some gristle, which was cut using the axe as a saw.
Various improbable stories about the execution were later circulated. One which is thought to be true is that, when the executioner picked up the severed head to show it to those present, it was discovered that Mary was wearing a wig. The headsman was left holding the wig, while the late queen's head rolled on the floor. Another well-known execution story concerns a small dog owned by the queen, which is said to have been hiding among her skirts, unseen by the spectators. Following the beheading, the dog rushed out, terrified and covered in blood. It was taken away by her ladies-in-waiting and washed, but it did not survive the shock.
All of this must have been a pretty sight.
February 8, 1861 -
The southern states which had seceded from the United States agreed to reunite in The Confederate States of America.
This caused the Civil War, a period of unprecedented bloodshed in American history, which surely could have been avoided through a rigorous U.N. regimen of plantation inspections.
Co-incidentally, or not
February 8, 1915 -
D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) premiered in Los Angeles on this date.
It is widely believed that after viewing this film in the White House, President Woodrow Wilson remarked that it was "like writing history with lightning." However, the reality is that Wilson disapproved of the "unfortunate production". It is believed by some of Wilson's aides that the apparent endorsement and approbation was a ruse generated by Thomas F. Dixon Jr., the author of the original novel.
February 8, 1924 -
Breathe deeply.
The first person to die in Nevada's new gas chamber was Chinese born Gee Jong on this date for the murder of Tom Quong Kee, a member of a rival gang. His lawyers had fought a long battle in the courts to show that the gas chamber was a "cruel and unusual punishment" and as such was illegal under the Eight Amendment to the Constitution.
February 8, 1942 -
Robert Klein, comedian and actor, was born on this date.
Really, please stop writing him, Mr. Klein has run out of records starting with the letter D.
February 8, 1960 -
Beer heir Adolph Coors III (who was ironically allergic to beer), was killed after a failed kidnapping attempt in Colorado on this date. By October, Joseph Corbett Jr. was arrested in Canada after an national manhunt.
I guess Mr. Corbett didn't get his deposit back.
February 8, 1968 -
Gary Coleman, actor, security guard, perp and ultimately, a corpse was born on this date.
What else is there to say.
Before you go - Today's Super Bowl commercial preview - what's becoming a tradition, the Paramount Plus commercial:
Did you notice that the stone Stallone had more facial expressions than the actual Stallone. Sly, lay off the plastic surgery!
And so it goes
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