Go out and eat some raw cookie dough to celebrate (ignore the feelings of shame and worries of salmonella poisoning due to the raw cookie dough.)
May 15, 1928 -
Plane Crazy was the first animated cartoon to feature Mickey Mouse as well as Minnie Mouse (Mickey's girlfriend). The short was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.
Iwerks was also the main animator for this short and reportedly spent six weeks working on it. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were credited for assisting him; these two had already signed their contracts with Charles Mintz, but he was still in the process of forming his new studio and so for the time being they were still employed by Disney.
The cartoon was pretty much produced in secret, as Walt Disney was still contracted to the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series for Universal.
May 15, 1953 -
Another Luchino Visconti neorealism classic, Bellissima, starring Anna Magnani opened in New York City on this date.
In the final scene of the film, Anna Magnani hears the film playing outside her room and remarks that she hears Burt Lancaster. Magnani would win an Oscar four years later for The Rose Tattoo, in which she would costar with Lancaster.
May 15, 1958 -
Vincente Minnelli's lush valentine to the La Belle Époque era, Gigi premiered in NYC on this date. (Just try not thinking the whole teen-age prostitution angle of the film and you'll enjoy it.)
Leslie Caron enjoyed working with Louis Jourdan, though he could sometimes be a challenge. She recalled, "Louis Jourdan, one of the handsomest men in Hollywood, was not comfortable with his image, yet his wit and self-deprecating humour were rare and unique.... He tended to express his angst with constant negative comments about Minnelli's staging, but instead of having it out with Vincente, he poured his grudges out on me. I was quite exhausted to hear, every time the camera stopped, his litany of grievances."
May 15, 1976 -
The Rolling Stones' 13th British and 15th American studio album, Black and Blue, goes to No. 1 on the Billboard Albums Chart on this date.
The working title for the album was Hot Stuff until they decided on Black And Blue.
May 15, 1979 -
Fans wept their bitter tears when ABC TV aired the last episode of Starkey and Hutch: Sweet Revenge on this date.
Both David Soul and Paul-Michael Glaser were affected by the "life imitates art" phenomenon. Years after Soul would find himself living in France just like Hutch was living sandwiched between French businesses, Glaser would marry a second wife, whose name, Tracy Barone, sounded exactly like (or rhymed with) the name of Starsky's first love, Rosey Malone.
May 15, 1981 -
Look, there was no real reason for this but The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island premiered on NBC on this date.
According to both Sherwood Schwartz and Dawn Wells, It was a very emotional day on set when Jim Backus filmed his brief scene. He was thin and very shaky, but he still dominated his character and few lines, as before. After Backus finished filming, he asked Dawn if he was funny, and she assured him that he was, but it broke her heart to see how poor his condition was to not be able to tell.
May 15, 1982 –
Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney started a seven week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with their single Ebony And Ivory, on this date.
While it was a big hit in the US, listeners quickly tired of the song, and it got very little radio play after it dropped off the charts. In the following years, the song was often mocked as superficial and maudlin, a stark contrast to the many McCartney and Wonder songs that have stood the test of time. In 2004, Blender magazine ranked it #10 on their list of the worst songs of all time.
May 15, 1993 -
Janet Jackson's (Miss Jackson, if you're nasty,) single, That's The Way Love Goes, goes to #1 on this date. It remains No. 1 for eight weeks - longer than any other single by either Janet or her famous brother.
James Brown demanded approval of the lyrics before he would allow Janet to sample his hit Papa Don't Take No Mess because he was angry at rap groups for splicing his songs with foul language. He didn't raise any fuss over Janet's sweet and seductive lyrics, though, and swiftly gave his permission.
May 15, 2011 -
Michel Hazanavicius' amazing salute to the passing of the silent film era, The Artist, starring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, and James Cromwell, premiered at the Cannes Film festival, on this date.
The character of George Valentin is based on two silent movie stars, Douglas Fairbanks and John Gilbert. Both actors starred in silent movie swashbucklers, and both saw their careers decline with the introduction of sound films.
Another The ACME Safety Film
Today in History:
May 15, 1886 -
Emily Dickinson finally heard the buzzing of that damn fly and gave up the ghost on this date.
Miss Dickinson died in Amherst, Mass. in the same house, where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.
This day is little remembered and yet of great import. It was on May 15, 1916, that Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France, with Russia's assent, confirmed their agreement to carve up the tottering Ottoman Empire between them.
Most of the mess that was the 20th Century can be traced back to the accord. In brief, here are some of the some of the issues these knuckleheads were trying to sort out -
Russia vs Turkey vs Greece over Constantinople, the Straits and Thrace: Russia sought control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, a strategic desire going back to the Tsars. The Allies had promised Russia Constantinople — but that fell apart with the Bolshevik Revolution.
France vs the Arabs vs Turkey over Syria: France eyed Syria and Lebanon (their "Zone of Influence"), clashing with Arab nationalist aspirations, especially after the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria under Faisal was crushed by the French in 1920.
Britain vs France vs the Arabs vs the Zionists over Palestine: Palestine became a tangle of competing promises—the Sykes-Picot framework, the Balfour Declaration (1917, promising a Jewish homeland), and vague pledges to Arab leaders.
Greece vs Turkey vs Italy over Smyrna and southwest Asia Minor: Postwar, Greece landed troops in Smyrna with Allied backing, leading to the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). Mustafa Kemal's nationalists pushed them out in a brutal reversal.
Britain vs France vs the Arabs vs Turkey over Kurdish northern Iraq: The area around Mosul was contested not only for its strategic location and oil but also because of the Kurdish question, which remains unresolved.
France vs Turkey over southeastern Asia Minor and Alexandretta: A French mandate area that eventually went to Turkey in 1939, sowing lasting resentment in Syria.
Russia vs Turkey over Armenia and the southeast Black Sea coast: The Armenian Genocide, Turkish-Russian conflicts, and the later Soviet-Armenian tensions all converged here.
America, for once, had no dog in this fight.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement remains infamous not just for what it did but for how it did it: in secrecy, over the heads of the people who actually lived there, setting the stage for a century of mistrust, rebellion, and border disputes.
May 15, 1918 -
The US Post Office Department (later renamed the USPS) begins the first regular airmail service in the world (between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.).
Of course this new service was a rousing success - the plane got lost and the mail finally had to be sent via train days later.
The Postal Service had already begun running in the red and it has not improved much since then
May 15, 1930 -
Ellen Church, a young nurse from San Francisco, became one of the first airplane stewardess on this day. She was actually certified as a pilot, but she and seven other nurses began flying on a US Airways flight from Oakland, California, to Chicago, Illinois. Miss Church was on the job for 18 months.
May 15, 1942 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation, that when into effect on this date, establishing the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
The act, signed into law some five months after the United States entered World War II, created a voluntary enrollment program for up to 150,000 women to join the war effort in noncombat roles.
May 15, 1960 -
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik IV, a three-ton spacecraft containing a "dummy cosmonaut," (There is a consistent rumor that there was an actual cosmonaut on-board but the Soviets have denied this.) The mission goes fine until they attempt to retrofire.
May 15, 1972 -
On February 16, 1972, Arthur Bremer quit his job as a janitor. Two weeks later, he began his diary on March 1 with the words, "It is my personal plan to assassinate by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace". His purpose was "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see".
In his haste, the gunman forgets to yell his carefully-chosen catchphrase, "Penny for your thoughts!" And when Gov. George Wallace survived the assassination attempt, albeit confined to a wheelchair, Bremer's name was soon forgotten.
And on a personal note -
Happy Birthday Michael.
And so it goes
1 comment:
My dear old mother was one of the first to enlist in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. When she met the man who would become my father (at an Army base during WWII), she outranked him. Throughout their marriage, she frequently reminded him of that fact!
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