Use time as a tool, not as a couch

Did you remember to set all of the clocks back?

- the DVD player (I no longer have a VCR,) the microwave, the automatic coffee pot in the kitchen?



If you've already done so, you can watch this and amuse yourself to learn that screenwriters Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar were standing on the set one day when an extra standing next to them said, "I don't know who wrote this stuff but they ought to be arrested...they should be in a different business." Kalmer, who was known as a rational and calm man, said to Ruby, "I'm going over to hit him. Who does he think he is? He's just an extra!" But before fisticuffs erupted, Kalmer and Ruby were informed that Chico Marx had paid the extra to rib the screenwriters, just for the hell of it.


Do you have friend running the NYC Marathon today?



Don't forget to remind them that the first guy who ran one died at the finish line.


November 5, 1932 -
Hollywood's love of Oriental Exoticism reached it full flower when MGM released the film The Mask Of Fu Manchu, starring Boris Karloff and Lewis Stone premiered on this date.



In filming the scene where Fu Manchu injects his mind control drug into Terry Granville's neck, Boris Karloff actually pushed the syringe into a baked potato, which was lying on the table next to Charles Starrett's head, out of camera range. However, each time Karloff pressed the plunger down, the potato would explode. This happened on several takes, until Karloff and Starrett couldn't do the scene without laughing. Director Charles Brabin finally gave up and dismissed the two actors for the day, saying, "Never mind! We'll shoot it tomorrow morning!"


November 5, 1938 -
A very funny (but very un PC) B and W Looney Tunes Cartoon, Porky in Egypt, premiered on this date.



The camel steals the cartoon. Unfortunately, the camel never followed up his star turn in this one.


November 5, 1943 -
Robert Siodmak first feature for Universal Studios, Son of Dracula, from a script by his brother Curt and starring Lon Chaney, Jr., premiered on this date.



This is truly bizarre, and there's no precedent in the Universal "vampire lore": The second time Doc Brewster comes snooping around Dark Oaks, he discovers Alucard's/Dracula's coffin in the basement--- and in the coffin are chicken feathers--- and next to the coffin are chickens in cages.


November 5, 1953 -
Jean Negulesco romantic comedy, How to Marry a Millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, William Powell, David Wayne, Rory Calhoun, and Cameron Mitchell premiered on this date. The film was 20th Century Fox's first film to be shot in the new CinemaScope wide-screen sound process, although it was the second CinemaScope film released by Fox after the biblical epic film The Robe.



According to Nunnally Johnson, Lauren Bacall (who was known as "Betty" to her friends) and Betty Grable became instant pals: "I don't think Betty Bacall and Betty Grable had ever met before," he said, " . . . but Betty Bacall fell in love with Grable and now thinks she's the funniest clown she ever had the pleasure of knowing. Which is not far from true. Miss Grable is a real hooligan, and is a fine salty, bawdy girl, without an ounce of pretense about her. In addition, she's giving a better performance than anything she ever did before."


November 5, 1956 -
The Nat King Cole Show debuted on NBC-TV on this date. The Cole program was the first of its kind hosted by an African-American.



In the 1956 season, the show had a 15-minute running time. It was expanded to a 30-minute segment in 1957. The show originally aired without a sponsor, but NBC agreed to pay for initial production costs; it was assumed that once the show actually aired and advertisers were able to see its sophistication, a national sponsor would emerge.Unfortunately, none did. Cole famously said of the doomed series, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark."


November 5, 1964 -
An unsung minor masterpiece, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, premiered in the US on this date.



In an early draft of the screenplay, Billy and Myra were both male, with Director Bryan Forbes planning to cast Alec Guinness and Tom Courtenay as the homosexual couple. Courtenay agreed to play the role but Guinness, however, turned it down. Forbes decided then to completely re-write the screenplay.


November 5, 1965 -
The classic French New Wave film Pierrot le Fou, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, premiered in France on this date.



Despite continual claims that Godard shot the majority of his films without scripts or preparation, actress Anna Karina has subsequently claimed that they were in fact very carefully planned out to the smallest of details, with an almost obsessive level of perfectionism.


November 5, 1966 -
The Monkees' Last Train To Clarksville topped the pop-singles charts on this date.



This was written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, a songwriting team who came up with many songs for the Monkees. They also wrote songs for Chubby Checker and Jay and the Americans. Boyce and Hart wrote this as a protest to the Vietnam War. They had to keep this quiet in order to get it recorded, but it is about a guy who gets drafted and goes to fight in the war. The train is taking him to an army base, and he knows he may die in Vietnam. At the end of the song he states, "I don't know if I'm ever coming home."


November 5, 1974 -
The Eagles hit, Best of My Love, was released on this date. It did not reach #1 spot until March 1, 1975.



This song is often played at weddings and anywhere else one wants to demonstrate affection, but it's really a breakup song: "You see it your way, and I see it mine, and we both see it slipping away." No happy ending here, just a guy who gave it his best, but things didn't work out.


November 5, 1988 –
The Beach Boys' (except for Brian, whose therapist Eugene Landy wouldn't let him participate, but that's another story,) single, Kokomo goes to No. #1 on the Billboard charts, on this date.



Brian Wilson was the creative force behind The Beach Boys, but he had nothing to do with this song. He released his first (self-titled) solo album that year and came out with the first single, Love And Mercy, three weeks before this was released. The album peaked at #54 in America.


November 5, 1993 -
James Ivory's masterful adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, premiered on this date.



It was while shooting Mr. & Mrs. Bridge in Kansas City that Remak Ramsay, who was reading The Remains of the Day novel, while playing a part in the movie, gave the book to director James Ivory to read, thinking that its subject and setting might intrigue Ivory.

Another bookk from the back shelf of the ACME Library


Today in History:
On November 5, 1492, Christopher Columbus wrote in his journal that, in the interior of Cuba, there was a great deal of land "sowed with a sort of beans and a sort of grain they call Mahiz, which was well tasted, baked, dried, and made into flour."



Given how things worked out for them, the Native people should have kept maize to themselves.


November 5, 1605 -
Remember, remember the 5th of November



The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, or the Powder Treason, as it was known at the time, was a failed attempt by Guy Fawkes and a group of provincial English Catholics to kill King James I of England, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy in a single attack by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening on this date.



The conspirators had also planned to abduct the royal children, (who were surprisingly Protestant, as well) not present in Parliament, and incite a revolt in the Midlands. the conspirators were captured before the plot could take place. They were all drawn and quartered.



On November 5th each year, people in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries and regions celebrate the failure of the plot on what is known as Guy Fawkes Night, Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night, Cracker Night or Plot Night by getting drunk and setting things on fire.


November 5, 1895 -
George B. Selden was a lawyer and inventor who was granted the first U.S. patent (Patent No. 549,160) for an automobile, which he invented in 1877.

The idea of a horseless carriage was in the air during George's youth, but its practicality was uncertain. In 1859, his father, Judge Henry R. Selden, a prominent Republican attorney, moved to Rochester, New York, where George briefly attended the University of Rochester before dropping out to enlist in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry, Union Army. This was not to the liking of his father who after pulling some strings and having some earnest discussions with his son managed to have him released from duty and enrolled in Yale. George did not do well at Yale in his law studies, preferring the technical studies offered by the Sheffield Scientific School, but did manage to finish his course of study and pass the New York bar in 1871 and joined his father's practice. He married shortly thereafter to Clara Drake Woodruff, with whom he had four children. He continued his hobby of inventing in a workshop in his father's basement, inventing a typewriter and a hoop making machine.

Selden's father, Henry Selden, was chosen by Abraham Lincoln to be Vice President, but he turned it down (and in light of Lincoln's assassination, Henry Selden would have otherwise been the next American President).

He defended Susan B. Anthony in her 1873 trial for unlawfully voting as a woman (had she only voted as a honey badger, there would have been no problem.)

Who knew?


November 5, 1895 -
On that same day, the Prince of Wales, shortly to become King Edward VII and master of almost one-fifth of the land area of the planet, was roused from a nap after a long afternoon of whore mongering and a heavy lunch, remarks in a speech, 'We are all socialists nowadays'.
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As anticipated, his mother Queen Victoria was not amused.


November 5, 1911 -
Roy Rogers, singing cowboy (Happy Trails, Roy Rogers Show), was born on this date.



He was born as Leonard Franklin Slye in Cincinnati where his father worked in a shoe factory. He died in 1998 at age 86.


November 5, 1971 -
Elvis Presley kicked off a 15-date North American tour at the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington, MN. Announcer Al Dvorin uttered the well known phrase: "Elvis has left the building" at the end of the show.



He was asked to make the announcement in an effort to quiet the fans who continued to call for an encore.

So now you know


November 5, 2007 -
China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1, was launched on October 24, 2007, and successfully entered the Moon orbit on this date.



It orbited the Moon for more than one year as part of the first stage of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.


With 90 days between the equinox on September 22 and the solstice on December 21, we are halfway through the relevant seasons



(Autumn or Fall in the northern hemisphere; Spring in the southern hemisphere) on this day.


While you are considering that, keep this in mind:

Make your plans, as you see fit.


And so it goes