Goodbye to our old 78's
A CBS employee named Edward Wallerstein walked into a room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York with Goddard Lieberson, the president of Columbia Records and publicly unveiled its new long-playing phonograph record, the 33 1/3, on this date.
Unlike the standard 10-inch 78 rpm record, which could play about 3 1/2 minutes on one side, the new “LP” could hold 15-plus minutes on one side of a 10-inch record and up to 25 minutes on one side of a 12-inch disc. Also, these new records were made of a vinyl compound rather than the easily breakable shellac of 78s. The larger discs were originally meant for classical music and the smaller for non-classical, but by 1955, the 10-inch LP had been superseded by the 12-inch version.
Once again,I ask you to ponder, but not too deeply, all the pleasure brought to you by that big 12".
June 18, 1956 -
The pilot episode for the quiz show To Tell the Truth premiered on CBS on this date. The series debuted on CBS on December 18, 1956.
The series outlasted most of the others of the period, especially after the 1958 quiz-show scandal, partly because every contestant was supposed to be untrustworthy.
June 18, 1959 -
Fred Zinnemann's quiet religious drama The Nun's Story, starring Audrey Hepburn, Colleen Dewhurst, Dean Jagger, Peggy Ashcroft, Peter Finch, and Edith Evans, premiered in NYC on this date.
Audrey Hepburn met the real Marie-Louise Habets - inspiration for the novel and film - while she was preparing for the role. The two actually became great friends and Habets later nursed Hepburn back to health after her near-fatal horse-riding accident on the set of The Unforgiven.
June 18, 1966 -
The Beach Boys release the single Wouldn't It Be Nice (with God Only Knows on the flip side of the 45), on this date. Brian Wilson wrote the song with contributions from vocalist Mike Love and lyricist Tony Asher. Asher wrote all of the lyrics except for the "Good night, my baby, sleep tight, my baby" lines at the end of the song, which were Love's contribution.
Mike Love sang the bridge; Brian Wilson did the verses. Love explained in the liner notes for the Pet Sounds boxed set that Brian Wilson made him do over 30 takes singing one background section of this song. Around the 20th take, Love started affectionately calling him "dog ears," as he could hear things other humans couldn't. "Brian must have been part canine because he was reaching for something intangible, imperceptible to most, and all but impossible to execute," wrote Love.
June 18, 1969 -
Sam Peckinpah's violent western elegy, The Wild Bunch, premiered on this date.
Robert Ryan's incessant complaints about not receiving top billing so annoyed director Sam Peckinpah that he decided to "punish" Ryan. In the opening credits, after freezing the screen on closeups of William Holden's and Ernest Borgnine's faces while listing them, Peckinpah froze the scene on several horses' rear ends as Ryan was listed.
June 18, 1977 -
Fleetwood Mac's third single from their album Rumours, Dreams, hit the no. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Dreams sold more than one million copies and was the band's only No. 1 hit.
Stevie Nicks recalled to The Daily Mail October 16, 2009: "I remember the night I wrote 'Dreams.' I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsey. It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano. Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. We were couples who couldn't make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other - and we got some brilliant songs out of it."
June 18, 1980 -
... We're on a mission from God.
After the concert, the State Troopers chase the Blues Brothers back to Chicago. The scene in which several troopers' cars crash off the highway embankment was filmed at a closed section of Illinois State Highway 53 in Palatine, Illinois. They had trouble getting the cars to flip over when they went down the embankment, so they dug a hole into the embankment to help the cars flip over as they hit it.
June 18, 2001 -
The first in seemingly hundreds of installations of The Fast and the Furious franchise, starring Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and Michelle Rodriguez premiered in the US, on this date.
Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and Eminem were all considered for the part of Brian O'Connor before Paul Walker was cast.
June 18, 2010 -
Pixar's very successful second sequel (and surprisingly, a deeply moving children's film,) Toy Story 3 premiered on this date.
Tom Hanks and Tim Allen insisted that they record their lines together, which they had previously done for one day during the making of the original Toy Story, but which is rarely done with animated films. They loved the chemistry their characters shared on-screen.
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
June 18, 1155 -
Pope Adrian IV crowned Frederick I (AKA Fred Barbarossa) Holy Roman Emperor at St Peter's Basilica in Rome on this date, to the acclamation of his German army.
European history would have been dramatically different if only for a higher fiber diet.
The battle was commemorated by Swedish sensation ABBA in their 1970s hit, Waterloo.
ABBA's interpretation of Waterloo's significance has been controversial from the start, as it tended to focus less on the military and political implications of the battle than on the feelings of euphoria typically incited by hormonal rushes of erotic excitement.
On June 18, 1817, Waterloo Bridge was opened over the River Thames in London,
This was all in anticipation ABBA performed Dancing Queen at a televised all-star gala on this date in 1976, held at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, Sweden, on the eve of the wedding between Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and Silvia Sommerlath. I'm sure the Sweden King consumes plenty of muesli and yogurt, keeping him quite regular and on the throne for these 51 years.
(This will all be on the test.)
June 18, 1900 -
The Empress Douairiere, Dowager of China orders all foreigners killed on this date. Among those meeting this fate are the foreign diplomats, their families, as well as hundreds of Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts.
June 18, 1913 -
The one I tell everyone, the one I'm very, very proud of is 'Call Me Irresponsible.' Simply because I want to say and it's not as facetious as it sounds. It has five syllable words in it..
Samuel Cohen (Sammy Cahn), one of American's foremost tunesmiths was born on this date. Over the course of his career, Cahn was nominated for 23 Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, an Emmy and a Grammy.
June 18, 1940 -
The "This was their finest hour" speech was delivered by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on this date.
It was given shortly after he took over as Prime Minister of Britain on May 10th, in the first year of World War II.
June 18, 1940 -
Across town, on the same day, Charles de Gaulle galvanized the Free French Forces in one of the most important speeches of the 20th century, on this date. Known as L’Appel du 18 Juin (The Appeal of 18 June), it is often considered to be the origin of the French Resistance movement during the German occupation in World War II.
De Gaulle spoke to the French people from a BBC studio in London one day after the fall of France. He fled to England as his shattered government brokered an armistice deal with the advancing Nazis. He obtained special permission from Winston Churchill to broadcast a message to his countrymen—and in his speech, de Gaulle declared that the war for France was not over yet. He reminded the French people that the British Empire and the U.S. would support them militarily and economically, and it rallied the country in support of the Resistance.
June 18, 1942 -
Sir James Paul McCartney, CH, MBE, singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record and film producer, poet, painter, and animal rights activist, was born on this date.
McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history." And now it appears that he has been reduced to playing nostalgia tours around the world.
June 18, 1952 -
I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the ocean.
Isabella Rossellini, one of Hollywood's' most intelligent and beautiful actresses was born on this date.
June 18, 1959 -
Based on his erratic behavior, the Governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, was committed to a state mental hospital.
Long responds by arranging for the hospital's director to be fired, and the new director proclaims him perfectly sane. (It is no secret that the man was completely nuts.)
June 18, 1967 -
Famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix burnt his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival on this date.
There had to be a better way to toast marshmallows.
June 18, 1971 -
The Nike "swoosh" logo was created in 1971 by a graphic design student Carolyn Davidson and was purchased by Blue Ribbon for $35.
The intention was to convey motion in its design. it was first used by Nike on this date. (She was later given around 500 shares in the company which are now estimated to be worth over a cool $1M.)
June 18, 1983 -
Almost 20 years to the day after the USSR sent Valentina Tereshkova into orbit, the United States sent its first woman astronaut into space. Sally Ride, an astrophysicist from Stanford University, and four other colleagues lifted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
During the six-day mission, Ride operated the robot's arm, which she had helped design. Ms. Ride dedicated her life to be an inspiration for young women wanting to enter the field of science
And on a personal note:
And so it goes.
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