.
How you celebrate is between you and your god.
August 3, 1929 -
Four famous vaudevillian performers took a chance on the new medium of 'talking pictures' with the general release of the film, The Cocoanuts, starring the Four Marx Brothers --
When The Marx Brothers were shown the final cut of the film, they were so horrified they tried to buy the negative back and prevent its release. Paramount wisely resisted - the movie turned out to be a big box office hit, with a $1,800,000 gross making it one of the most successful early talking films.
July 30, 1946 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Bacall to Arms, directed by Bob Clampett, was released on this date.
Originally, the audio track for the To Have and Have Not parody featured the actual audio of Bogart and Bacall from the film. However, the Warner Bros. legal department informed the producers that they could actually not re-use the film's audio track, so it had to be re-recorded with impersonators.
August 03, 1947-
The Merrie Melodies short, A Pest in the House, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd, was released on this date.
The film is notable for featuring a sort of "in-between" interpretation of Daffy Duck. He is not necessarily the zany, impish interpretation used famously by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, nor is he the greedy, self-preservationist version that Chuck Jones later popularized in the 1950s.
August 3, 1963 -
Allan Sherman released Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp), in the US on this date.
Sherman was a writer on The Steve Allen Show and created the game show I've Got a Secret. He went on to record comedy albums. The song won a 1964 Grammy Award for comedy.
And somehow in the same universe, The Beach Boys’ Surfer Girl was released on this date as well. (This is the first song Brian Wilson ever wrote and the first one he produced.)
Ah, sweet mysteries of life. (The B-side of the single was Little Deuce Coupe.)
August 3, 1966 -
Following the end of the series, Columbia Pictures released the animated film, The Man Called Flintstone, directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and featuring the voice work of Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, Jean Vander Pyl, and Gerry Johnson, on this date.
This was the last Hanna-Barbera theatrical cartoon for Columbia Pictures, as well as the last after Hanna-Barbera productions stopped making theatrical cartoons while focusing on animated TV projects. In 1966, Hanna-Barbera was later acquired by Great American Broadcasting when the animation studio began producing their Saturday Morning cartoons.
August 3, 1968 -
The revisionist Western film, Hang 'Em High, directed by Ted Post and starring Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, Ed Begley, and Pat Hingle, was released on this date.
Clint Eastwood's first leading role in a Hollywood film. He was already 38 years old. Hang 'Em High is also notable for being Eastwood's first assignment as a producer.
August 3, 1970 -
Shelved for two years after a disastrous test screening at which audiences yelled at the screen and walked out of the theater, Warner Brothers finally released Performance, directed by Donald Cammell, and Nicolas Roeg, and starring James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and Michèle Breton, on this date in New York City.
Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (mainly responsible for the 'look' of the film) also benefited from a lack of interference from Warner Bros. studio executives, who believed they were getting a Rolling Stones equivalent of A Hard Day's Night, Instead, they delivered a dark, experimental film which included graphic depictions of violence, sex and drug use.
August 3, 1973 -
Stevie Wonder released his 16th studio album Innervisions, on this date. Wonder played nearly all instruments on six of the album's nine tracks.
Three days after the album's release, Wonder was in a terrible car accident and lay in a coma for four days before his friend and tour director Ira Tucker was able to get a response from him: "I got right down in his ear and sang 'Higher Ground'. His hand was resting on my arm and after a while his fingers started going in time with the song. I said yeah, yeah!! This dude is going to make it!"
August 3, 1979 -
A sequel to the George Lucas film American Graffiti, More American Graffiti, directed by Bill L. Norton and starring, Candy Clark, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin Smith, Bo Hopkins, and Harrison Ford, opened in the US on this date. George Lucas was the executive producer of the film.
George Lucas came up with the idea of shooting each of the four storylines in a different aspect ratio. Milner's Drag racing was in the 1950's exploitation style using a wide angle, stationary camera. The Vietnam sequences were shot on 16-milimeter film, like the television reports of the time. Laurie and Steve's campus riot resembled a Hollywood version of student rebellions like The Strawberry Statement or Getting Straight. Debbie's trip were in multiple-image split-screen, inspired by Woodstock.
August 3, 1979 -
The Talking Heads release their third album, Fear of Music, on this date.
The album, produced by Brian Eno, was recorded in Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth's New York City loft where the band often rehearsed. They parked a mobile recording unit outside to record the tracks as they played from the loft.
August 3, 1985 -
Tears For Fears found themselves again on the Billboard charts when Shout hit No.1 on this date, (Everybody Wants To Rule The World was their first hit.)
This was written by Tears For Fears frontman Roland Orzabal and keyboard player Ian Stanley. In the liner notes to the single, Orzabal explained: "The song was written in my front room on just a small synthesizer and a drum machine. Initially I only had the chorus, which was very repetitive, like a mantra. I played it to Ian Stanley, our keyboardist, and Chris Hughes, the producer. I saw it as a good album track, but they were convinced it would be a hit around the world."
August 3, 1991 –
Pearl Jam plays the club RKCNDY in Seattle on this date. The show is filmed and used to create their first video for the song Alive. The audio from the show was used in the video, as the band hated the idea of lip-synching.
The instrumental demo of this song was titled Dollar Short. Eddie Vedder's lyrics went in a direction the band didn't expect, but they loved what they heard and quickly agreed that he should be their lead singer - only one other guy had been auditioned. Reflecting on how everything came together so quickly, the band credited timing and fate for Vedder's arrival. Eddie said that it took him 12 hours to write and record the songs for the demo, and he could have easily blown it off.
August 3, 1996 -
The Macarena by Los Del Rio appeared at #1 on the pop charts on this date. (For God sake, please don't listen. Save yourself from the ensuing madness.)
This was originally released on a local label in Spain in 1993, where it did fairly well. The next year, the American label BMG bought the Spanish label and set out to make Macarena a hit in America. They marketed an English language version to dance clubs and cruise ships, then released it as a single in 1995. It was a minor hit until the summer of 1996, when the Macarena dance craze hit America.
August 3, 2001 -
Disney's surprise comedy hit, The Princess Diaries, directed by Gary Marshall and starring Julie Andrews, Héctor Elizondo, and introducing Anne Hathaway, went into general release in the US on this date.
One of the waiters in the dinner scene when Mia breaks the water glass says, "It happens all the time." The same actor played a waiter in Pretty Woman, and said the same line when Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) flings the snail and the waiter catches it. Both movies were directed by Garry Marshall, as well as featured Hector Elizondo and Larry Miller.
Word of the Day.
Today in History:
August 3, 1492 -
File this under: more lies my teacher told me.
Christopher Columbus famously sailed from the port of Palos de la Frontera, in southern Spain across the ocean blue in a fleet of three ships: the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. (Every thing else you think you know about Columbus is a lie.)
August 3, 1921 –
Under the direction of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Lt. John A. Macready, a U.S. Army pilot, made the first application of 175 pounds of lead arsenate pesticide with a modified Curtiss JN-6 "Super Jenny.", thus creating crop dusting.
August 3, 1926 -
I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.
The world is obviously a little less bright now that we've lost Tony
August 3, 1941 -
Martha Kostyra, business magnate, television host, author, magazine publisher and ex-con was born on this date.
Remember folks, please don't piss off Martha - she's a woman of a certain age, who raises her own poultry, hold her hard liquor, hangs out with rappers, and has her own line of CBD products.
August 3, 1943 (I have seen this event posted as happening on August 30th)-
Gen George Patton bitch slapped shell-shocked private Charles Kuhl, in the hospital accusing him of cowardice, on this date.
The incident nearly ended Patton's career; he was ordered by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to apologize for this and a second, similar episode. It seemed to help Francis Ford Coppola's career though.
August 3, 1946 -
Santa Claus Land, the world's first themed amusement park, opened in Santa Claus, Indiana, on this date.
The park offered a Santa, a toy shop, toy displays, a restaurant, and themed children's rides, one of which was The Freedom Train. Santa Claus Land didn't charge admission until 1955 and changed its name to Holiday World & Splashin' Safari in 1984.
On August 3, 1958, the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole.
The world's first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dove at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world.
August 3, 1966 -
Comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce died of a morphine overdose in his Hollywood Hills home on this date, two years after his original obituary was published in The Realist.
At the time of his death, Bruce was being maliciously harassed by police and districts attorney in various states for his groundbreaking standup performances, causing great difficulty in finding venues at which to perform. After his death, he became a cult hero, many other comics, like George Carlin and Richard Pryor, considering him a martyr to the cause of free speech.
August 3, 1977 –
Tandy Corporation announced the TRS-80, one of the world’s first mass-produced personal computers.
The basic model originally shipped with 4 KB of RAM.
And so it goes.
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