Sid was given the nickname Cookie Monster when he ate his very first cookie, and it's stuck ever since!
So now you know
Today is the first full day of Summer
Hopefully your day goes better than Martin's does.
June 21,1955 -
The David Lean movie, Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi premiered in New York on this date.
Katharine Hepburn's apartment is actually an amalgam of three different locations. The door through which she enters the apartment belongs to the Trattoria Sempione, a restaurant that still exists today. Her bedroom belongs to an apartment two miles away in the suburb of Dursoduro, and the terrace was a purpose-built set in Campo San Vio.
June 21, 1977 -
Martin Scorsese's homage to movie musicals - New York, New York, premiered on this date.
The original song titled Theme from New York, New York was scrapped at the insistence of Robert De Niro. Grudgingly, John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote a new version, which has since become one of the most famous and often recorded songs in history. Kander and Ebb have often expressed extreme gratitude to De Niro for his influence.
June 21, 1977 -
Marvin Gaye's song Got To Give It Up, reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, replacing Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, on this date.
This song was the subject of a landmark court case filed by Marvin Gaye's estate in 2013 against the writers of Robin Thicke's hit Blurred Lines. Gaye's family argued that Blurred Lines sounded too similar to Got To Give It Up" and in 2015 a jury agreed, awarding a stunning $7.3 million in damages. Gaye, who died in 1984, left the copyrights to his songs to his children, so the beneficiaries in the case are his kids Marvin III, Frankie and Nona.
June 21, 1985 -
Walt Disney released the only directorial effort by film editor Walter Murch, Return to Oz, starring Nicol Williamson, Jean Marsh, Piper Laurie, and Fairuza Balk, on this date.
Disney actually fired director Walter Murch about a week into production due to budget concerns. The studio found dailies lacking and Murch's slow shooting pace disheartening. Murch contacted friends Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for help, and all three directors lobbied Disney to rehire Murch. Lucas even offered to take over directing himself should Murch fall behind schedule. Murch finished the film on schedule, though while in post-production studio management changed. The new executives had little faith in the movie, and doomed it with limited promotion and a short theatrical run.
June 21, 1988 -
Robert Zemeckis' incredible advance in animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, opened in NYC on this date.
With an estimated production budget of $70 million, this was the most expensive film produced in the 1980s, and had the longest on-screen credits for a film. The first test audience was mostly 18- and 19-year-olds, who hated it. After almost the entire audience walked out of the screening, Robert Zemeckis, who had final cut, said he wasn't changing a thing.
Word of the day
(I have some personal errands to do today, so it's an abbreviated posting) Today in History:
June 21, 1877 -
The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants who were labor activists, are hanged at Carbon County Prison in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Author and Judge John P. Lavelle of Carbon County said of this, "The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty...A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows."
June 21, 1893 -
The first Ferris Wheel debuted at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, on this date. The Ferris Wheel was designed by George W. Ferris, a bridge-builder from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The exposition commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing in America. The Chicago Fair's organizers wanted something that would rival the Eiffel Tower. Gustave Eiffel had built the tower for the Paris World's Fair of 1889, which honored the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
June 21, 1905 -
It would have been the 116th birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre today.
But what the hell does he care; he's dead and it doesn't mean anything anyway.
June 21, 1913 -
Georgia 'Tiny' Broadwick was the first woman to make a successful parachute jump from an aircraft on this date. Glenn L Martin flew her up to 2000 feet above Griffith Park in Los Angeles, CA.
In 1914, she demonstrated parachutes to the U.S. Army, which at the time had a small, hazard-prone fleet of aircraft. The Army, reluctant at first to adopt the parachute, watched as Tiny dropped from the sky. On one of her demonstration jumps, the static line became entangled in the tail assembly of the aircraft, so for her next jump she cut off the static line and deployed her chute manually, thus becoming the first person to jump free-fall.
June 21, 1982 -
Using an innovative Jodie Foster defense, John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, on this date.
June 21, 1989 -
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning is indeed protected speech under the Constitution,
prompting Congress to put forth an endless series of amendments to ban the activity.
And so it goes.
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