Teen Spirit smells mostly like middle age by now

Nirvana's album Nevermind was released on this date in 1991.



Once again - we are old.


September 24, 1938 -
This cartoon set the bar for outlandishness in animation - Porky in Wackyland was released on this date.

Watch it a few times to really get everything that's going on in this one.


September 24, 1945 -
Michael Curtiz' tense film noir, sometimes mislabelled as a 'women's picture', Mildred Pierce, was released on this date.



Michael Curtiz was initially less than keen at working with "has-been" star Joan Crawford (whose career had been on a downturn from a string of flops) as she had a reputation for being difficult. Curtiz was soon won over by Crawford's dedication and hard work.


September 24, 1958 -
The Donna Reed Show premiered on ABC-TV on this date. Ladies (and some men), don't you wears heels, pearls, and chic frocks to do the housework?



The first season opening credits of The Munsters were an outrageous parody of the opening credits of The Donna Reed Show, which always began with Donna Reed lovingly passing out lunches to her departing family members as they left the house one by one. Yvonne De Carlo, as Lily Munster, did the same thing. (Too bad Youtube won't let anyone run a clip of the Munsters opening.)


Today in History:
September 24, 1896 -
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.



On this date in 1896, a young Minnesota woman gave birth to a depressive young alcoholic named Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.

The boy did badly in school and went to train for war in 1918. While training at Camp Sheridan in Alabama, he fell in love with Zelda Sayre, the mentally unstable daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge.

The war ended before Fitzgerald could be sent overseas and shot, however, so he went to New York to become rich and famous. He became neither, so Zelda broke off their engagement.

Fitzgerald then moved back to Minnesota. A year later he became a famous writer. He moved to Connecticut, Zelda married him, and they became drunken celebrity wrecks.

They spent a lot of time in Europe. This lasted until Zelda went mad and Fitzgerald died.



Fitzgerald is best remembered for having said the rich were different, even though Hemingway made fun of him.



Oh yeah, he also wrote several books.

... Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves. Now, human respect--you don't call a man a coward or a liar lightly, but if you spend your life sparing people's feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can't distinguish what should be respected in them.


September 24, 1946 -
Charles Edward Greene, known as "Mean Joe" Greene, is a former all-pro American football defensive tackle who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL was born on this date.



He is considered by many to be one of the best defensive lineman to ever play the game and was the cornerstone of the famous "Steel Curtain" defense.

September 24, 1954 -
Steve Allen sat down at his piano and the Tonight Show premiered on NBC on this date.



Simply called Tonight, the show was a blend of comedy, interview and musical performance that set the basic template for future late-night television.


September 24, 1961-
Students of Great Comedy lined up around the block to enroll in Whatsamatta U when The Bullwinkle Show moved to primetime on NBC TV on this date.



Production budgets and time restraints were so tight that many times when actors flubbed a line and ad-libbed around it, it was included in the finished cartoon. In one infamous incident, announcer William Conrad couldn't finish the closing lines to the episode with the time limits. Producer Jay Ward then had Conrad read the script once again, and set fire to the bottom of the script as he read. Conrad quickly finished the lines before the flames reached his fingers.


September 24, 1964 -
We all visited 1313 Mockingbird Lane for the first time when The Munsters premieres on TV on this date.



After his death, it was reveal that Al Lewis was only a year older that Yvonne De Carlo and had added 11 years to land the role of Grandpa Munster.


September 24, 1969 -
The trial of the "Chicago Eight" (later seven) began. Demonstrations began outside the court house, with the "Weatherman" group proclaiming the "Days of Rage" in protest of the trial. The Chicago Eight staged demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to protest the Vietnam War and its support by the top Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. These anti-Vietnam War protests were some of the most violent in American history as the police and national guardsmen beat antiwar protesters, innocent bystanders and members of the press.



Five defendants (Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis) were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention; the convictions were ultimately overturned.


Luna 16 was the first robotic probe to land on the Moon and return a sample to Earth.. An automatic drilling rig was deployed and 101 grams of lunar soil was collected.

The samples were returned to Earth on September 24, 1970 and marked the first time lunar sampled were recovered by an unmanned spacecraft.

September 24, 1991 -
Theodor Seuss Geisel, an American writer and cartoonist best known for his classic children's books under the pen name Dr. Seuss, including The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, died on this date.



No greater tribute was given to the Doctor than when the Reverend Jesse Jackson appeared on SNL following his death -



And so it goes