May 29, 1936 -
Fritz Lang's crime thriller, Fury, starring Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy, opened on this date.
Fritz Lang was the first filmmaker to use newsreel footage as a courtroom device in a motion picture, and may have done so before it was used in an actual court case.
May 29, 1942 -
The movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney, premiered at a war-bonds benefit in New York on this date.
Joan Leslie portrays Mary Cohan, aging from 18 to 57 throughout proceedings. Leslie turned 17 during the production of the film. The fact that she was still attending school during production caused numerous delays.
May 29, 1954 -
During the first 3-D craze of the 50s, Alfred Hitchcock releases his masterpiece, Dial 'M' for Murder, on this date.
Warner Bros. insisted on shooting the movie in 3-D, although the craze was fading and Alfred Hitchcock was sure the movie would be released flat. Hitchcock wanted the first shot to be that of a close-up of a finger dialing the letter M on a rotary dial telephone, but the 3-D camera would not be able to focus such a close-up correctly. Hitchcock ordered a giant finger made from wood with a proportionally large dial built in order to achieve the effect.
May 29, 1957 -
Try to follow along - On November 3, 1954, Japan released Gojira (Godzilla), the greatest fever dream and anti nuclear proliferation film ever made. On April 26, 1956, an American version of the film, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, was released. It had 40 minutes of the original excised (mostly the content dealing with World War II or the anti-nuclear message,) and had 20 minutes of the masterful deadpan stylings of Raymond Burr.
The American version did so well that Kaiju O Gojira (Godzilla, King of the Monsters) was released in Japan with Japanese subtitles on this date and did very well.
May 29, 1961 -
Ricky Nelson's song, Travelin' Man hits No. 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.
Depending on the criteria, Travelin' Man could be the song with the very first music video. Ozzie Nelson realized that whenever he had Ricky sing on their show The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, Ricky's record sales shot up the next day, so Ozzie tried to work it into the plot whenever Ricky had a new record out. As Ricky became popular and the demand for his songs was overwhelming, Ozzie realized that working his singing into the plot was going to be impossible, so Ozzie filmed Ricky singing Travelin' Man, superimposed some travelogue scenes over the film and tacked it onto a show episode at the end. Viola! The music video was born.
May 29, 1961 -
Daniel Petrie's film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's stage play, A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, John Fiedler, and Ivan Dixon premiered in NYC, on this date.
The play was originally brought to Sidney Poitier's attention by an old friend, Philip Rose, who would also produce the movie. The play was inspired by playwright Lorraine Hansberry's family's purchase of a house in an all-white Chicago neighborhood. (The community's reaction resulted in Hansberry vs. Lee, one of the most important housing cases to ever reach the Supreme Court.) Poitier was overwhelmed by the power of the material and was happy to play in it. It's been said that A Raisin In The Sun would never have been done if Poitier had not agreed to appear in it.
May 29, 1965 -
The Beach Boys single Help Me Rhonda became the No. 1 hit on the Billboard charts, making it their second chart-topping single, on this date.
Daryl Dragon, The Captain from The Captain & Tennille, played organ on this. As was the case with many of Brian Wilson's productions, he also used some of the top Los Angeles session players on the track, including Glen Campbell on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums, and Carol Kaye on bass.
May 29, 1969 -
Crosby, Stills & Nash release their eponymous debut album, on the Atlantic Records label, on this date.
The album had two Top 40 singles, Marrakesh Express and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, which peaked respectively at No. 28 the week of August 23, 1969, and at No. 21 the week of December 6, 1969, on the US Billboard Hot 100.
May 29, 1984 -
Tina Turner's big comeback album, (her fifth solo studio album,) Private Dancer, was released by Capital Records on this date.
It became a worldwide commercial success, earning multi-platinum certifications, and remains her best-selling album in North America
May 29, 1988 -
The story of Jan Scruggs' effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, To Heal A Nation, aired on NBC TV, on this date.
Although the role is credited as "Senator Bob Mathias," the character portrayed by Laurence Luckinbill was actually a Republican member of the US House of Representatives representing California for four terms, from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1975, and never ran (nor was he appointed) for the office of either California State Senator or United States Senator from California (or any other state). The role should have been credited as either Congressman Bob Mathias or Representative Bob Mathias.
May 29, 1995 –
Pink Floyd released their third live album, a 2-CD album, Pulse, in the U.K., on this date.
Pink Floyd toured in support of their recent album, The Division Bell, for eight months between March and October 1994. The album was the live, double CD document of that tour.
Another unimportant moment in history
Today in History:
May 29, 1453 -
Constantinople was taken by Ottoman Turks on this date, after a fifty day siege led by Sultan Mehmet II. The city defense of 10,000 men was no match for a force of 100,000 armed with heavy artillery.
It is the final gasp of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
Why is this important, you may well ask - it really isn't (this event is considered the end of the Middle Ages) but then again, neither is most of history.
Patrick Henry was born on May 29, 1736. Mr Henry was an American patriot best known for never having been able to make up his mind. Asked the simplest question, Mr Henry found himself befuddled for days. It therefore came as no surprise to anyone who knew him when, given the choice between liberty and death, he famously pronounced that either would be welcome.
History records his vow at St. John's Church in March of 1775 as "Give me liberty or give me death!" Eyewitnesses and other contemporaries claim he actually said, "Liberty, death, whatever, let's just wrap this puppy up."
May 29, 1913 —
Imagine, if you will, that you live in Paris and that, after a hard day of not working and drinking heavily (it's what most of the idle rich did in Paris at the time, in between bouts of sodomy, while they waited around for Marcel Proust to finish writing that damn book he was working on — but that's another story), you were dragged to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Tonight, the Ballets Russes was going to perform a new ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), with the international star Nijinsky serving as choreographer. You might have been expecting a brief snooze, but what you got instead was a full-out boxing match (not unlike an evening at Madison Square Garden).
The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd, and loud arguments erupted in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance, and Igor Stravinsky (the composer) himself was so upset by its reception that he fled the theater mid-scene, reportedly in tears. Fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns famously stormed out of the première (though Stravinsky later said, “I do not know who invented the story that he was present at, but soon walked out of, the premiere”), allegedly infuriated over the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet's opening bars.
I hate when they misuse the bassoon.
Stravinsky ran backstage, where Sergei Diaghilev was turning the lights on and off in an attempt to calm the audience, much like some kind of proto-DJ. Nijinsky stood on a chair, leaned out far enough that Stravinsky had to grab his coattails, and shouted numbers to the dancers, who couldn't hear the orchestra (this was especially challenging because Russian numbers become gloriously polysyllabic above ten — such as eighteen: vosemnadtsat). All of this could have been choreographed itself. It's a marvel the show continued at all.
Although Nijinsky and Stravinsky were despondent, Diaghilev (the ballet's impresario) commented that the scandal was “just what I wanted.” The music and choreography were considered barbaric and sexual, and are often noted as the primary causes of the riot, but many political and social tensions surrounding the premiere contributed to the backlash as well. The Rite of Spring eventually became a cornerstone of 20th-century music. It influenced generations of composers, filmmakers, and choreographers. What premiered as pandemonium now stands as a cultural revolution.
It was quite an evening.
In the early morning hours of May 29, 1914, the Canadian Pacific ocean liner Empress of Ireland was cruising the St. Lawrence, headed for Liverpool. Traveling the opposite way was the Norwegian collier Storstad, weighed down by a full load of coal.
The British passenger ship collided with a Norwegian freighter and sank, taking 1,012 passengers and crewmen with her, within fourteen minutes. At the time, it was considered one of the worst disasters in maritime history.
John F. Kennedy was born 106 years ago today in 1917, and is best remembered for telling Berliners "I am a jelly-filled donut" speech, delivered in Berlin (either that or "I am a small brimmed hat, usually worn in early spring" or "I like cheese"), an axiom that many Americans found problematic in the face of increasing cold war tensions, imminent nuclear war, an escalating presence in Vietnam, the troubled state of race relations, and the ubiquitous threat of poisonous snakes.
Mr. Kennedy should not be faulted for his mangling of the phrase, he was a pill-popping, philanderer (engaging in sexual congress with Hollywood starlets, two and three at a time) in constant pain from Addison's disease and shouldn't have been expected to stay on point in a foreign language with so many other things on his mind.
Born on the same day but several centuries earlier (in 1630), England's King Charles II was best known for the saying, "Give me back my throne."
May 29, 1953 –
Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday.
Following his ascent of Everest, Sir Hillary devoted much of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded. Through his efforts many schools and hospitals were built in this remote region of Nepal.
May 29, 1997 -
Singer songwriter Jeff Buckley disappeared after talking a swim in the Mississippi River, on this date. He was in Memphis recording his sophomore album at the time.
His body would be recovered on June 4, after being spotted by a passenger on a tourist riverboat.
And so it goes.
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