Tomorrow, the last Saturday before Christmas (a.k.a Super Saturday or Panic Saturday) is a major day of revenue for American retailers, marking the end of the shopping season which begins on Black Friday. Super Saturday typically nets approximately $15 billion in retail sales.
So now you know
December 22, 1932 -
Universal Pictures released the horror film The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff on this date.
Boris Karloff was virtually unknown when he appeared as the creature in Frankenstein. He created such a sensation that when this was made, only a year later, Universal only had to advertise "KARLOFF . . . 'The Mummy'."
December 22, 1944 -
The Mummy's Curse, the follow-up film to The Mummy's Ghost was released by Universal Pictures on this date.
The famous sequence in which Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine) rises from the dead in the swamp is slightly undercranked - a process that speeds up the action - which gives an eerie, unreal quality to her movements. The trick is given away by the overly fast movements of the branches around her.
December 22, 1948 -
The film version of Maxwell Anderson's play (Joan of Lorraine,) Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman opened in Los Angeles on this date.
According to some biographies of Ingrid Bergman, Howard Hughes saved her from possible injury during a visit to the set when she fell off her horse. He caught her, but rather awkwardly, with one hand firmly on her crotch.
Shades of the former president...
December 22 1958 -
The song by Dave Seville and The Chipmunks, The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late), hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts, on this date, and stayed there for four weeks. (Sorry about the ear worm.)
The song, written and performed by Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (a.k.a. David Seville) who varied the tape speeds to produce high-pitched chipmunk voices, went on to win three Grammy Awards.
December 22, 1959 -
Joseph L. Mankiewicz' film version of Tennesse Williams' strange one act play (about rape, incest, homosexuality, and cannibalism - I know that was probably a huge selling point,) Suddenly, Last Summer, premiered on this date.
The filmmakers were given special dispensation by the Breen office so that the homosexuality of Sebastian Venable could be "inferred, but not shown."
December 22, 1965 -
David Lean's Russian epic, Dr Zhivago, starring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Siobhán McKenna, and Rita Tushingham, premiered in the US, on this date.
This movie was shot in Spain during the regime of General Francisco Franco. One day, while filming the scene with the crowd chanting the Marxist theme (at 3:00 a.m.), police showed up on set thinking a real revolution was taking place, and insisted on staying until the scene was finished. Apparently, people who lived nearby had awoken to the sound of revolutionary singing, and mistakenly believed that Franco had been overthrown. The secret police surveyed the crowd as the extras sang the Internationale for a protest scene, so many extras pretended they didn't know the words.
December 22, 1975 -
A beautiful study of love and madness (and the razor's edge between them), L'histoire d'Adele H, opened in the US on this date.
In 1988, Isabelle Adjani played the title role in Camille Claudel, playing another historical character who suffered from schizophrenia. A major scene in that movie depicts the announcement of the death of Victor Hugo, Adele Hugo's father.
December 22, 1975 -
Archie Bunker's "little girl" Gloria gave birth to a son, Joseph Michael Stivic, on CBS's All in the Family, on this date.
The birth occurred in the second part of a two-part episode, The Baby, which begins with Edith and Archie (Jean Stapleton and Carroll O'Connor) beating Mike and Gloria (Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers) to the hospital — with Archie, who had been scheduled to appear in a skit at his lodge, arriving in black face.
December 22, 2000 -
Joel and Ethan Coen's purported adaptation of The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning, premiered in the US on this date.
George Clooney, upon reading the script did not immediately understand his character and so sent the script to his uncle Jack, a tobacco farmer who lived in Kentucky, and asked him to read the entire script into a tape recorder. Unknown to Clooney, in his recording, Jack, a devout Baptist, omitted all instances of the words "damn" and "hell" from the Coens' script, which only became known to Clooney after the directors pointed this out to him in the middle of shooting. Jack had never been on a plane before flying in for the premiere.
Today's holiday special - Celebrate the music, not the man.
Today in History:
December 22, 1879 -
It's Stalin's birthday (again)! Hey, when you're a dictator, you get to celebrate your birthday on more than one day. Unfortunately, the proper way to celebrate - oppress, torture and murder millions of your fellow country men - is frowned upon.
So smack someone upside the head for no reason.
December 22, 1894 -
Claude Debussy's symphonic poem for orchestra Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (L. 86), known in English as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, was first performed in Paris on this date.
It is considered a turning point in the history of Western art music. Please feel proud as punch for knowing that - offer yourself a Peppermint Patty.
December 22, 1937 -
The Lincoln Tunnel was originally proposed in the late 1920s and early 1930s as the Midtown Hudson Tunnel. The tubes of the Lincoln Tunnel were constructed in stages between 1934 and 1957. The center tube of the Lincoln Tunnel was opened to traffic today, charging 50¢ per passenger car.
Some of those cars are still trying to get through the tunnel.
December 22, 1940 -
Strange death of the day - Author Nathanael West and his wife, Eileen McKenney, died in an auto accident on this date.
December 22, 1955 -
The corpse of Evita Peron was stolen by anti-Peronistas on this date. For 26 years, her corpse makes a world-wind turn before it's returned for burial in Buenos Aires.
30 years later (to the day), Madonna's Like a Virgin single goes #1 for weeks.
Make of the coincidence what you will.
December 22, 1971 -
The renown international aid group Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) was founded by Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists in Paris on this date. One of their first missions after its formation in Paris was to Afghanistan in 1980.
Doctors Without Borders was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, and within the past two years coordinated more than 30,000 personnel — mostly volunteer medical professionals — to treat the poor and war-ravaged population in 70 countries.
December 22, 1977 -
File this under: Yes Virginia, there are Christmas miracles.
Thomas Helms, a 27-year-old artist from Hawaii, climbed to the edge of the observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, and jumped, intending to kill himself on the streets 1000s of feet below.
December 22, 1984 -
Bernhard Goetz shot four teenage boys on the NYC subway after one of them asks him for money.
Again, this practice is frowned upon, so instead, smack someone upside the head.
December 22, 2001 -
Richard Reid attempted to blow up an American Airlines transatlantic flight by igniting a plastic explosive concealed in his shoe. Other passengers beat the living daylights out of him.
They knew - they smacked him upside the head.
And so it goes
The happiest of holidays to the good Dr. and all his minions. Keep up the good work (and please accept this is a friendly long-distance smack upside the head).
ReplyDeleteThank you for the smack in the back of my head, I needed one. And we are remembering to listen to the great Tom Waits tune "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis."
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas to one and all of my bunkies!