There are 29 days until summer.
May 22, 1931 -
The Pre-code adaptation of the classic tale Trilby, Svengali, starring John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, and Donald Crisp, premiered in the US on this date.
In this film, John Barrymore became one of the first actors to wear contact lenses in motion pictures. The lenses were one of the earliest versions of hard contacts. Although clumsy and uncomfortable to wear, the lenses added a supernatural element to his performance.
May 22, 1947 -
David Lean's classic, Great Expectations, premiered in NYC on this date.
Charles Dickens wrote a much harsher ending to the novel for its original publication, in which Pip and Estella remain apart. He was forced to substitute the more famous ending when it was published as a book later on, because the first one upset his readers. This appears to be the only time he ever changed the ending to one of his novels.
May 22, 1961 -
Ernie K Doe went to No.1 on the US singles chart with Mother In Law, on this date.
The song was written and produced by Allen Toussaint who also played the piano solo.
May 22, 1965 -
The Beatles single, Ticket to Ride hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts on this date.
Most Americans at the time, concluded the "ticket" was from British Railways, and "ride" was the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. McCartney confessed to his biographer Barry Miles that they were partly right. Paul had a cousin who ran a bar in Ryde and he and John had visited them there. Paul later mentioned that although the song was primarily about a girl riding out of the life of the narrator, they were conscious of the potential for a double meaning.
May 22, 1967 -
Guests on the show were often surprised to find that although Rogers was just as gentle and patient in life as he was on television, he was nevertheless a perfectionist who did not allow "shoddy" ad-libbing. He believed that children were thoughtful people who deserved programming as good as anything produced for adults on television.
May 22, 1971 -
The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers album, with a working zipper on the cover, hits #1 in the US, on this date.
Andy Warhol designed the Sticky Fingers album cover. Before he started working on it, Mick Jagger send Warhol a note warning that a complicated design could cause nasty production delays, but nonetheless giving him total creative control. The artist responded with a cover that contained an actual working zipper, which of course was a production nightmare. The cover, however, was one of the most memorable ever made. It showed a man wearing very tight jeans behind that working zipper - many folks assumed this was Mick Jagger, but it was actually Joe Dallesandro, a actor and Warhol cohort.
May 22, 1974 -
There is no real explanation - perhaps gambling debts - can explain the pairing of Julie Andrews and Jackie Gleason in the TV special, Julie Andrews & Jackie Gleason: How Sweet It Is, which air on ABC TV on this date.
This special was produced specifically for the American market (with Jackie Gleason's famous catchphrase making up half the title). Because Gleason was not as well known in England at the time, the program was re-titled Julie Andrews and Jackie Gleason...Together when it was shown on British television three months after its US broadcast.
May 22, 1980 -
Namco released the phenomenally popular arcade game, Pac-man (known as Puck-man), in Japan on this day.
An instantaneous hit, Pac-man is still considered a landmark in video gaming history.
May 22, 1985 -
14th James Bond film (if you are counting them in a certain way), A View to a Kill, starring Roger Moore (in his last appearance as James Bond), Grace Jones, and Christopher Walken, premiered in San Francisco, on this date.
Roger Moore said that he decided to end his run as James Bond when he realized that Tanya Roberts' mother was younger than he was. However, producer Albert R. Broccoli said he wanted a younger actor for the next movie, The Living Daylights, and would not have kept Moore as Bond anyway.
May 22, 1992 -
The man most of America went to bed with every night for 30 years, finally got tired of having to try to satisfy so many people.
Johnny Carson's final appearance on The Tonight Show was broadcast on this date. The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson remained a fixture on NBC through the administrations of seven U.S. Presidents: John Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush.
May 22, 1995 -
The cast of the TV series, Laverne and Shirley somehow put their personal animosity with each other aside and reunited to appear on The Laverne & Shirley Reunion on ABC TV on this date.
Watching the special, may leave you not so much basking in the glow of fond memories as much as start asking yourself, Did I really watch this many episodes of Laverne & Shirley?
May 22, 2001 -
NBC aired the final episode of Third Rock From The Sun, The Thing That Would Not Die on this date.
The pilot was originally shot for ABC, but they didn't put it on their fall schedule. NBC took a look and liked what they saw.
May 22, 2019 -
The biographical film Rocketman, starring Taron Egerton as Elton John, debuts in the UK, on this date.
One of the biggest challenges that Elton John faced in trying to get this project moving forward is that many producers told him they wanted to make a PG 13 rated film. John told them all the same thing: that he had not led a PG 13 rated life.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
May 22, 337 -
Emperor Constantine died on this date. Although quite dead, his embalmed corpse continues to act as head of state, receiving state dignitaries and daily reports from ministers as if nothing had changed. Constantine's macabre leadership continues through winter.
Sometimes, it's good to be the King, even after you're dead.
May 22, 987 -
Louis V le Faineant, known as the Lazy, king of France (all of 20 years old,) was allegedly poisoned by his mother, on this date. It was reported that he fell off his horse during a hunting accident the day before.
May 22, 1813 -
One of the most controversial personalities of the nineteenth century, Richard Wagner was born on this date. Wagner wrote some of its most controversial music. Hitler is said for most of his life to have kept only three books on his nightstand: Wagner's autobiography, Machiavelli's The Prince, and Young Aryan Youth, lederhosen around their ankles, sitting in a tub of Chocolate Pudding. (How Hitler ended up with Wagner's nightstand is a question best left alone.)
Wagner considered it his life's mission to create a new and purely German music, in German, about Germany, for Germans, and is therefore best known for having scored the helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now.
May 22, 1856 -
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was beaten unconscious with a cane on the Senate floor by South Carolina’s Preston Brooks on this date.
Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat, attacked Senator Sumner, a Republican abolitionist from Massachusetts, so badly that he was unable to resume his duties for three years. Brooks resigned from his seat but was re-elected.
And you thought, things were contentious in the Senate now-a-days.
May 22, 1906 -
The Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were granted a U.S. patent for their “new and useful improvements in Flying Machines.” (US No. 821,393)
May 22, 1907 -
Laurence Kerr Olivier, director, producer and one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th Century, was born on this date.
Interestingly, Olivier is buried alongside some of the people he has portrayed in theatre and film, for example King Henry V, General John Burgoyne and Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.
May 22, 1939 -
Italy and Germany allied themselves with the Pact of Steel on this day, forming the basis for the Axis powers, which would later include Japan.
Despite the fact that the two became allies, Hitler and Mussolini still did not trust each other, so the pact was a very uneasy alliance even after the Tripartite Agreement Pact in 1940, when Japan joined.
May 22, 1962 -
A bomb, placed by Thomas G. Doty in the lavatory of Continental Airlines Flight 11 (a Boeing 707-124 ), carrying 45 passengers and crew, exploded, tearing the airliner apart. This had the unfortunate distinction of being the very first sabotage of a commercial jet airliner in the world.
Wreckage rained down from south of Cincinnati to Unionville, Missouri where the major sections of the aircraft crashed. One passenger managed to survive that terrible night but died early the next morning from his injuries. He was 27 year old Takehiko Nakano, an engineer from Illinois.
May 22, 1962 -
The first revolving restaurant in the U.S., La Ronde, opened in 1961 in Honolulu, atop the Ala Moana Building. La Ronde was soon followed by the Space Needle, built for the 1962 Worlds Fair in Seattle.
The Top of the Needle restaurant, which opened on this date, was the world's oldest revolving restaurant until it closed in September 2017 as part of the landmark’s renovation project. The space reopened in 2021 as the Loupe Lounge, a cocktail lounge.
May 22, 1964 -
Lyndon B. Johnson formally outlined his goal to create a "Great Society" through social reform during commencement exercises at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, on this day.
Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and of racial injustice. The most long-lasting programs of the Great Society include Medicaid and Medicare.
May 22, 1969 -
The lunar module of Apollo 10 (named Snoopy, with Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan aboard) separated from the command module, on this date, (named Charlie Brown piloted by John W. Young) and flew to within nine miles of the Moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.
Later that day, a disaster was averted after the Lunar Module separated from the descent stage began to roll violently due to the crew accidentally duplicating commands into the flight computer. Quick action by the crew saved them from crashing into the Moon (on live TV, no less.)
And so it goes.
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