Once again, I will not suggest that you go as a sociopath - we've had enough of them recently.
I'd have written more but I'm way behind in adding dead mice and ground glass into kids candy bags.
(For all you parents - if your kids went trick or treating, sort your kids candy later tonight. It is not a crime to save all the good chocolate for yourself. Tell'em you have to test it for the corona virus.)
October 31, 1912 -
The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Elmer Booth, Lillian Gish, Clara T. Bracy and Walter Miller, premiered in the US on this date. The film is thought to be the first film about organized crime.
Most likely the first film to ever use follow-focus. D.W. Griffith convinced his most trusted cameraman, G.W. Bitzer, to fade out the background when the three gangsters walk towards the alley in the opening scene.
October 31, 1945 -
René Clair's adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic murder mystery And Then There Were None was released in the US on this date.
In recent years it has come to light that much of Agatha Christie's plot appears to have been inspired by a little-known 1930 play by Owen Davis titled The Ninth Guest, which utilized the same framework of people being brought together by an unknown host who proceeds to kill them one-by-one. Columbia Pictures' atmospheric 1934 movie version, The Ninth Guest, has never been released on home video, but is now in the public domain.
October 31, 1949 -
Cecil B. DeMille's wonderfully campy (although not intentional) version of Samson and Delilah, starring Hedy LaMarr and Victor Mature premiered on this date.
For the scene in which Samson kills the lion, Victor Mature refused to wrestle a tame movie lion. Told by Producer and Director Cecil B. DeMille that the lion had no teeth, Mature replied, "I don't want to be gummed to death, either." The scene shows a stuntman wrestling the tame lion, intercut with close-ups of Mature wrestling a lion skin.
October 31, 1970 -
Led Zeppelin started a four week run, on this date, at No.1 on the Billboard album chart with Led Zeppelin III, the bands second US chart topper.
Although critics were typically confused over the change in musical style and gave the album a mixed response, Led Zeppelin III has since been acknowledged as representing an important milestone in the band's history and a turning point in their music.
October 31, 1992 -
The Boyz II Men single End Of The Road was the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for the 12th consecutive week, on this date, breaking the record held by Elvis Presley's two-sided Don't be Cruel/Hound Dog, which was #1 for 11 weeks in 1956.
Boyz II Men's bass singer, Michael McCary, got a spoken interlude on this song where he tells the girl he knew she was cheating but stayed with her anyway because he loved her so much. This section is an homage to vocal groups of the '50s and '60s that would often give their bass singer a similar spoken part.
October 31, 1986 -
Roland Joffé's powerful historical drama, The Mission, starring, Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Aidan Quinn, and Liam Neeson, premiered in the US on this date.
The film was released four years after its uncredited source book The Lost Cities of Paraguay by Father C. J. McNaspy was published. McNaspy also acted as a historical consultant to the film, which was loosely based on McNaspy's work.
Another book from the back shelves of the ACME Library
Today in History:
Oct 31, 1517 -
The papacy was earning a good income by the indulgences system that allowed Christians to purchase remission from penance in purgatory. Appalled at the indulgences system, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Palace All Saints’ Church, on this date.
Although he was a terrible anti-semite, Luther was one of history’s most significant figures, rocking the religious world when he penned a document attacking the Catholic Church’s corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. His writing signaled the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Protestantism in general, shattering the external structure of the medieval church and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe.
October 31, 1926 -
Harry Houdini died in room 401 of Grace Hospital in Detroit on this date.
The escape artist was killed by diffuse peritonitis, after having undergone an emergency appendectomy.
Contrary to popular belief, the fatal appendicitis could not have been caused by a punch to the stomach.
October 31, 1941 -
The carving of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota, USA was completed on this date after 14 years of construction by Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum and 400 stone masons.
The total cost of the project was $989,992.32, and 85 percent of that cost was funded by Congress. Despite the dangerous nature of the job, none of the crew died during construction.
October 31, 1950 -
You don't pay an actor to act. An actor will do that for free because we love to act. You pay an actor to wait.
John Franklin Candy, the great Canadian comedian and actor, was born on this date.
October 31, 1956 -
Humans set foot at the South Pole for the first time since Captain Robert F. Scott and his team in 1912, when a party led by Admiral George J. Dufek of the US Navy landed there in an R4D-5L Skytrain aircraft, on this date.
The purpose of the flight was to survey the South Pole for the construction of a scientific research station there.
October 31, 1963 -
On Halloween night, hundreds gathered to watch the Holiday on Ice show at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds Coliseum on this date. (Perhaps not how I would be spending my evening, but to each his own.)
In the final minutes of the show, a leaking 100-pound propane tank exploded beneath a seating area. The blast sent spectators and large pieces of debris flying into the air. Seventy-four people were killed and more than 400 were injured. It definitely put a crimp in their evening.
October 31, 1963 -
The Beatles returned to London today in 1963 from a short tour of Sweden, their first outside England. They were greeted at Heathrow airport by photographers, journalists, and hundreds of screaming fans, adding to the growing evidence that Beatlemania was going to be around for more than a few weeks.
Ed Sullivan was there headed back to the States after a vacation, and was impressed. He was fully aware that he had missed out on being the first to put Elvis Presley on television and determined not to repeat the mistake, had his people look into getting them on his show.
October 31, 1984 -
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was not having a good day. Daughter of Nehru, the first prime minister of the newly independent India and fashion plate of the 60s, Mrs. Gandhi was running late for an interview with Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. Two Sikh members of her bodyguard, annoyed with her involvement in the storming of the Golden Temple (The holiest of Sikh sites) took this moment to express their vexation with their boss and assassinated her on the spot.
This sparked Hindu-Sikh clashes across the country. Four days of anti-Sikh rioting followed in India. The government said more than 2,700 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed, while newspapers and human-rights groups put the death toll between 10,000 and 17,000.
Once again, people should be checking the references of their bodyguards more carefully.
October 31, 1993 -
Federico Fellini, considered as one of the most influential and widely revered film-makers of the 20th Century, passed away on this date.
He made some 24 films, including La Strada, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Amarcord, all hallmarks throughout the 50s and 60s Art House world.
October 31, 1993 -
The young phenom River Phoenix had an unfortunate time at the Viper Room in West Hollywood on this date.
An apocryphal story at the time was that River's last words were supposedly, "No paparazzi, I want anonymity", although the quote has become something of an urban legend. In fact, according to witnesses, River stumbled out of the nightclub and fell hard, face-first, onto the sidewalk (experts believed he likely died at that moment) before spasming violently against the pavement for eight minutes, never having uttered a word.
October 31, 1999 -
He sailed from Melbourne, Australia, on December 8, 1998 (at age 17), sailing south of New Zealand, through the South Pacific, around South America, north on the Atlantic, back south past Africa, through the Indian Ocean and back to Melbourne, and returned on this date, taking 327 days 12 hours 52 minutes.
Before you steal all of your kid sister's Halloween candy,
Remember that Christmas is in 55 days!
and there are 28 days until Hanukkah
And so it goes
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