Today is the anniversary of Cleveland, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969.
If that is too disturbing a holiday to commemorate, it's also National Chocolate Eclair Day.
June 22, 1946 -
Another of the classic 40s Daffy Duck cartoons, Hollywood Daffy, was released on this date.
The director of the cartoon was an uncredited effort by Friz Freleng.
June 22, 1955 -
Disney's first film about dog breeding, The Lady and the Tramp, was released on this date.
Walt Disney originally didn't want to include the 'Bella Notte' spaghetti-eating scene, now one of the most iconic moments in the whole Disney canon.
June 22, 1961 -
A great old-fashion thriller, The Guns of Navarone, was released on this date.
There was some surprise that Stanley Baker, who, along with Dirk Bogarde in 1960, was considered the most popular British movie star, accepted the relatively small supporting role of Private "Butcher" Brown. Baker revealed that he wanted to be in the movie because he was impressed at how anti-war the screenplay by the blacklisted writer Carl Foreman was.
June 22, 1966 -
Mike Nichol's first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opened on this date.
Mike Nichols later realized that his insistence on location shooting at an actual college campus had been unnecessary. All of the scenes could have easily been recreated on the studio back lot. It was one of many lessons he was to learn as a first time film director. "I was a New York theater director," he said. "I was cocky and I was afraid of Hollywood. I did really stupid things, like shooting the title sequence in Northampton. They tried to tell me I could have done it right on the back lot. But I didn't know anything about movies."
June 22, 1966 -
The first screenplay of Woody Allen that was produced, What's New Pussycat?, starring Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers (and co-starring Woody Allen) premiered in the US on this date.
The film was originally created by Warren Beatty, who saw it as a comedy about male sex addiction and was going to star in it as Michael James. The film's title What's New, Pussycat? was a line Beatty said to his girlfriends when talking to them on the telephone. However, production did not go the way Beatty wished: he wanted his then-girlfriend Leslie Caron to appear in the film, but Capucine was cast instead, and later he said that Woody Allen, whom he had hired to work on the film, was expanding his role in the film at the cost of Beatty's role. Beatty left, and was replaced with Peter O'Toole.
June 22, 1968 -
This Guy's in Love with You by Herb Alpert topped the charts on this date.
Alpert sang this to his first wife in a 1968 TV special called The Beat of the Brass. The sequence was taped on the beach in Malibu. The song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the TV special, thousands of telephone calls to CBS asking about it convinced label owner Alpert to release it as a single two days after the show aired.
June 22, 1984 -
Another underdog story directed by John G. Avildsen, The Karate Kid, starring Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, and Elisabeth Shue, was released by Columbia Pictures on this date.
The studio wanted to drop the "drunk Miyagi" scene, feeling it slowed the pace down. Director John G. Avildsen argued for it and has felt it was the scene that got Pat Morita nominated for an Oscar.
June 22, 1984 -
The atmospheric black-comedy, The Pope of Greenwich Village, starring Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Daryl Hannah, and Geraldine Page, premiered on this date.
Michael Cimino was asked to direct this film, but didn't think it was a good fit for him. As a favor to the producers, who were on a deadline, he went to New York and did all the pre-production. When they were set to begin shooting, the producers again asked Cimino to direct, but considering the budget, he thought that they needed someone who could work faster than he was used to working. They hired Stuart Rosenberg.
June 22, 1993 -
Liz Phair released her debut album, Exile In Guyville, on this date. The indie rocker approached the project as a track-by-track response to The Rolling Stones' 1972 album, Exile On Main St.
Her candid perspective on sex and relationships earns her favor with critics and a growing fanbase and Guyville is hailed as one of the best albums of the decade.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
June 22, 1633 -
The Holy Office in Rome strong-armed Galileo Galilei into recanting his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.
This was the second time he was forced to recant Earth orbits Sun by the Pope. Almost immediately, on October 31, 1992, the Vatican admitted it was wrong.
June 22, 1906 -
Billy Wilder was born on this date. Not surprisingly, Mr. Wilder would go on to produce Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, all of whom frolicked giddily on the beach in bikinis. Mr. Wilder, you see, was comfortable in his season.
Not like some people. Some people had to force it. Some people had to prove something. Some people were like Brian Wilson, who was born the day before Summer (June 20) in 1942, and subsequently became a "Beach Boy" and released an album called Endless Summer.
June 22, 1918 -
The worst circus train wreck in history occurred just outside Hammond, Indiana on this date. A seriously over-tired engineer, Alonzo Sargent, fell asleep at the throttle of a trainload of empty Pullman cars and slammed into the rear of the 26-car Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train.
85 of the 400 performers and workers on board were killed. There were no reports on whether or not the crowd at the previous days performance was greater than the gawkers at the scene of the wreck.
June 22, 1940 -
Eight days after German forces overran Paris, France was forced to sign an armistice on this date; hilarity ensues.
Adolf Hitler forces the instrument of surrender to be signed in the very railcar in which the French inflicted the humiliating World War I Treaty of Versailles upon the Germans. (In a bizarre co-incidence, it was also the anniversary of Napoleon's second abdication in 1815.)
June 22, 1941 -
The German Army invaded Russia on this date, quickly destroying five Russian armies and one fourth of the Red air force. At completion of the war in 1945, nearly 27 million Soviets were dead.
Thus ended the German- Soviet "Peace and Friendship" Treaty.
(Let's not discuss Hitler for the rest of the week.)
June 22, 1949 -
According to our president, one of the most over-rated actresses of her generation, Mary Louise Streep, was born on this date.
She originally applied to Law School but slept in on the morning of her interview and took it as a sign she was destined for other things.
Imagine if she applied herself, how far her career would go.
June 22, 1969 -
The patron saint of perpetual bachelors of a certain age, Judy Garland died of a barbiturate overdose in her London apartment, either by accident or suicide.
Folks, she did not do a header into the toilet and drown.
June 22, 1993 -
All lives have triumphs and tragedies, laughter and tears, and mine has been no different. What really matters is whether, after all of that, you remain strong and a comfort to your loved ones. I have tried to meet that test.
The patron saint of long suffering political wives and good Republican cloth coats, Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon died on this date.
And so it goes.
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