Today is the first day of Summer, also known as the Summer Solstice. It's the longest day of the year (and the shortest night). Everyone pat themselves on the back (now without gloves!) for having made it through the protracted lock down.
The actual moment of the solstice occurred at about 5:13 a.m. EDT, while the sun sat directly above the Pacific Ocean to the west of Hawaii. Don't brag about the good weather tomorrow; remember that it's the beginning of Winter in Australia. (Given most of the restrictions are being lifted in many places, the usual naked run may be mandatory - please celebrate responsibly.)
June 21,1955 -
The David Lean movie, Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi premiered in New York on this date.
Katharine Hepburn was more than impressed with her experience working with director David Lean. She even asked to sit in on the editing sessions with him to watch him at work. In her autobiography, she wrote, "(Summertime) was told with great simplicity in the streets, in the Piazza San Marco. We would shoot in tiny streets only a few feet wide. The sun would come and go in a matter of minutes. It was a very emotional part, and I tell you I had to be on my toes to give David enough of what he wanted practically on call. But it was thrilling... He seemed to me to simply absorb Venice. It was his. He had a real photographic gift. He thought in a descriptive way. His shots tell the story. He was capable of a sort of super concentration. It made a very deep and definite impression on me, and he was one of the most interesting directors I ever worked with. Wasn't I lucky to work with him?"
June 21, 1961 -
Walt Disney Productions released the original The Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills, (and Hayley Mills), Maureen O'Hara, and Brian Keith, in the US theatres, on this date.
The screenplay originally called for only a few trick photography shots of Hayley Mills in scenes with herself. The bulk of the movie was to be shot using a body double. When producer Walt Disney saw how seamless the processed shots were, he ordered the script reconfigured to include more of the visual effect.
June 21, 1977 -
Martin Scorsese's homage to movie musicals - New York, New York, premiered on this date.
Robert De Niro learned to play the saxophone (in three months) in order to make his performance look more authentic. Unfortunately, his sax playing still had to be overdubbed and it is veteran jazz musician George Auld who does the playing and also plays a band leader.
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, 1982 -
Paul McCartney released the single Take It Away from his album Tug of War, on this date.
The video looks like it's about the discovery of McCartney's group Wings, although they had broken up by then. The song is Paul McCartney's most successful as a solo artist in the early '80s.
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.
In order to include the ruby slippers as part of this film, Disney had to pay royalties to MGM, the studio which had produced The Wizard of Oz. The ruby slippers did not appear in L. Frank Baum's original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; they were invented for the 1939 film to better take advantage of the newly developed Technicolor process. Interestingly enough, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wore a pair of magical silver shoes which were lost when she used them to return to Kansas. In the subsequent novel Ozma of Oz, one of the books on which this film is based, Dorothy and her friends meet the Nome King who possesses a magical belt with properties similar to those of the silver shoes. Early drafts of the script for Return to Oz reflect this, with the Nome King cutting up the ruby slippers to make his magical ruby belt.
June 21, 1988 -
Robert Zemeckis' incredible advance in animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, opened in NYC on this date.
Since the movie was being made by Disney's Touchstone Pictures, Warner Bros. would only allow use of their biggest cartoon stars, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, if they got as much screen time as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. For that reason, they were always in pairs, such as the piano battle between Daffy and Donald and the parachute scene with Bugs and Mickey. This was continued with Porky Pig and Tinkerbell at the end of the movie.
June 21, 1991 -
Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures released the superhero film, The Rocketeer, starring Bill Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino, and Tiny Ron Taylor, in the US, on this date.
Dave Stevens, the writer/artist of the original graphic novel, gave the film's production designer Jim Bissell and his two art directors his entire reference library pertaining to the Rocketeer at that time period, including blueprints for hangars and bleachers, schematics for building the autogyro, photos and drawings of the Bulldog Cafe, the uniforms for the air circus staff, and contacts for locating the vintage aircraft that were to be used. Stevens remembers that they "literally just took the reference and built the sets".
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
June 21, 1854 -
The first Victoria Cross was awarded to Charles Davis Lucas, an Irishman and mate aboard the HMS Hecla for conspicuous gallantry at Bomarsrund in the Baltic. (The medal was made from metal from a cannon captured at Sebastopol.)
Lucas tossed a live Russian artillery shell overboard before it exploded. During his long naval career, he ultimately ascend to the rank of Rear Admiral before retiring in 1873. He died in 1914 at the age of 80.
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 117th 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, 1985 -
Ettore ‘Hector’ Boiardi - that jovial, mustachioed Italian chef, better known as Chef Boyardee, died on this date. In Italy, Hector started as a chef’s apprentice at age 11. In America, he took jobs in Greenbrier, West Virginia and New York City, and by age 17 had become a chef at New York’s Plaza Hotel alongside his brother, Mario (his other brother, Paul, was a waiter). Hector eventually became the Plaza’s head chef.
Boiardi went on to open a restaurant, Il Giardino d’Italia in Cleveland. The restaurant became an instant success, with lines frequently stretching down the block. He and his brother Paul, helped popularity Italian products in America after a former customer, named John Hartford, who happened to be the president of A&P supermarkets, encouraged them to sell their family pasta sauce. Chef Boy-ar-dee (they hyphenated the name to help with pronunciation) was soon on shelves at A&P supermarkets across the country.
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.
June 21, 1997 -
The first Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) game was played on this date, with the New York Liberty taking on the Los Angeles Sparks at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California.
A crowd of 14,284 watched as Sparks guard Penny Toler scored the first basket in WNBA history. The Liberty defeated the Sparks 67-57.
And so it goes.
indeed.
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