You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx with his announcer George Fenneman, premiered on NBC-TV on this date. Its' run lasted 11 years.
It is part of Hollywood legend that one of the source recordings for the "laugh track" sounds heard on sitcoms since the 1960s originated from a particularly long bit of laughter that erupted during an episode of this series.
October 5, 1956 -
The huge, hulking, biblical spectacular, The Ten Commandments (the last film directed by the master showman, Cecil B Demille) opened on this date.
Cecil B. DeMille's 75th birthday fell during the production, making him the oldest working Hollywood director at the time. He planned to make another film after this one, but he died in 1959 while it was in preproduction and a week after he made an on-camera announcement about his upcoming film. The film would have been about the Boy Scouts and was to have starred David Niven as Scouting founder Lord Baden-Powell.
October 5, 1961 -
Blake Edwards' adaptation of Truman Capote's novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's, premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on this date.
Truman Capote maintained that he based Holly Golightly on Carol Grace (the former wife of William Saroyan and future wife of Walter Matthau), who had been a friend of his while living in New York.
October 5, 1962 -
Parlophone Records released the Beatles first single, Love Me Do, in England on this date. (The B side was, P.S., I Love You.)
By 1962, The Beatles were playing regular gigs at a club in Hamburg, Germany. They played a lot of Blues covers by famous American artists, and it was a big deal for them when they introduced this into their set, as they didn't know how it would hold up against songs by Little Richard and Ray Charles. The song was well-received and gave The Beatles a lot of confidence, which led to them writing and performing more original songs.
October 5, 1969 -
The British Empire had been on a long slow decline for many years. The last flourish of that dying world power happened on this date - Monty Python's Flying Circus made its debut on BBC-TV.
The first few episodes were filmed in front of an older audience, due to the BBC Program Planners. Apparently, some of these older people thought they were actually going to see a circus. Many of the audience members didn't really understand what was happening, and the cast realized they weren't laughing as much as they should. Consequently, they asked family and friends to come to the studio for tapings so that there would be more laughter. Eventually, the BBC Planners recruited younger audience members, but also aired the show at a later hour, making it difficult to get younger viewers at home. As a result, the Monty Python troupe were constantly poking fun at BBC Program Planners, insinuating that they were uneducated and dim: stupider than penguins, easily replaced by penguins, being unable to be a Planner if you've got a degree, and even an entire sketch in "The Light Entertainment War," where particularly stupid Planners sit around a table talking nonsense.
October 5, 1973 -
The seventh studio album by Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, (a double LP,) was release on this date.
In 2000, Q magazine listed it as #84 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever, and in 2003 Rolling Stone placed it at #91 in the magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. That same year the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
October 5, 1990 -
Henry and June, the first NC-17-rated film was released in the US on this date.
Phillip Kaufman first came into contact with Henry Miller's works during the 1950s while studying at the University of Chicago. Kaufman once recalled that Tropic of Cancer, which is mentioned in the film as the book Miller was in the process of writing, "was the ultimate secret book everybody was reading".
October 5, 2000 -
America was introduced to the inhabitants of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, when the WB premiered the Gilmore Girls on this date.
Scott Patterson, who plays Luke, was not originally hired to be a series regular. He was only signed on for the pilot episode, but it was only after the discovery of the undeniable chemistry between him and Lauren Graham that he was contracted for more episodes, and quickly became a series regular.
Today in History:
October 5, 1877 -
... I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking-glass is dead. Too-hul-hul-suit is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men, now, who say ’yes’ or ’no’[that is, vote in council]. He who led on the young men [Joseph’s brother, Ollicut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people--some of them--have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are---perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find;maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever! ....
Chief Joseph, exhausted and disheartened, surrendered in the Bears Paw Mountains of Montana, forty miles south of Canada ending the Nez Percé war. Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain was born in 1840 in the Wallowa Valley of what is now northeastern Oregon. He took the name of his father, (Old) Chief Joseph or Joseph the Elder. When his father died in 1871, Joseph or Joseph the Younger, was elected his father's successor. He continued his father's efforts to secure the Nez Percé claim to their land while remaining peaceful towards the whites.
October 5, 1880 -
Alonzo T. Cross was issued was issued U.S. Patent No. 232804 for the first ball-point pen, the Stylographic Pen.
October 5, 1902 -
Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) was born on this date.
Mr Kroc invented McDonalds, which caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and made us all fat, allowing us to buy sub prime mortgage properties, which ultimate will bring down the United States as a dominant world power.
October 5, 1930 -
The largest British dirigible, R101 crashed on a hill in Beauvais, France on this date. The ensuing fire killed all 48 of the passengers and crew.
The wreck of the R101 lay where it had fallen until well into 1931, becoming a sightseeing spot for air accident investigators and day trippers who wanted to see the near perfect skeleton of the largest airship in the world.
October 5, 1970 -
PBS became a network on this date.
October 5, 1974 -
David Kunst left Waseca, Minnesota on June 20, 1970 and completed the first journey around the world on foot, returning to Waseca, Minnesota, on this date, four years, three months and sixteen days later.
He crossed four continents, walked 14,450 miles and went through 21 pairs of shoes. On October 21, 1972, he and his brother were shot during their portion of the trek through Afghanistan (his brother, John, was unfortunately killed in the incident.) After four months of recuperation, Dave continued on his walk with his other brother Pete.
October 5, 1989 -
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for nonviolent efforts to free his homeland from China.
Oh great, I keep blowing my chance of being read in China.
And so it goes.
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