Today is also National Coffee Day. If you love coffee (I don't), there are a bunch of places you can score free or very low cost cups of joe!
If you're passing by a McDonalds, Krispy Kreme, or Dunkin Donuts today and see what their special deal for the day is. Starbucks is once again not really participating this year - Screw them. (Tuesday is International Coffee Day. The inclusion of alcohol in your coffee to celebrate is between you and your maker.)
September 29, 1948 -
Laurence Olivier's powerful interpretation of Shakespeare's melancholy Dane, Hamlet premiered in New York City on this day.
This is the only movie version of Hamlet that entirely omits the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Laurence Olivier was severely criticized for leaving them out of the movie, as they provide many opportunities for Hamlet to behave in a sarcastically humorous way toward them, and many felt that Olivier probably would have played these moments brilliantly. However, Olivier did retain a few of Guildenstern's lines ("put your discourse into some frame", et cetera) and gave them to Polonius.
September 29, 1953 -
The family comedy Make Room for Daddy, starring Danny Thomas, premiered on ABC TV on this date.
Penney Parker beat a then-unknown actress named Mary Tyler Moore for the role of Terry. According to Danny Thomas, the only reason Parker got the part was because he felt Moore's nose looked different enough from his so that nobody would believe she was his daughter.
September 29, 1954 -
The movie musical A Star Is Born, (the fourth version of the film, fifth, if you count What Price Hollywood) starring Judy Garland and James Mason, had its world premiere at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood on this date.
George Cukor offered Marlon Brando the role of Norman Maine on the set of Julius Caesar. "Why would you come to me?" asked Brando. "I'm in the prime of my life... If you're looking around for some actor to play an alcoholic has-been, he's sitting right over there"- pointing at his costar James Mason, who got the part.
September 29, 1954 -
United Artist released the Joseph L, Mankiewicz film, The Barefoot Contessa, starring Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart on this date. (If you haven't seen this movie, seek it out!)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz wanted James Mason, whom he had just directed in Julius Caesar, for the part of the nobleman. MGM executive Nicholas Schenck, who had had a vehement disagreement with the director, would not release Mason for the film. According to Mankiewicz, he ended up with Rossano Brazzi, "who cannot act, cannot be sensual . . . could hardly speak English . . . " Ironically, Rosemary Matthews, who was hired to help Brazzi with his English, and Mankiewicz later married.
September 29, 1955 -
The only film Charles Laughton directed, The Night of the Hunter opened in New York City on this date.
Later on in life, Robert Mitchum, who was usually indifferent to such matters, said that Charles Laughton was his favorite director and indicated that this was his favorite of the movies in which he had acted.
September 29, 1959 -
One of the first series that featured the lives of American teenagers, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, starring Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver and Tuesday Weld premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
A pilot for a "Zelda" spin-off starring Sheila James was produced in 1962, but was scrapped after James T. Aubrey, then head of CBS, rejected this. James was told by producer/director Rod Amateau that Aubrey found Zelda "too butch", a critique that deeply worried James, then a closeted lesbian. James, under her real name of Sheila Kuehl, went into law and politics after acting parts dried up, eventually becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California State Assembly and a California State Senator.
September 29, 1960 -
We were all welcomed into the Douglas household when My Three Sons, starring another of TV favorite alcoholic dads, Fred McMurray, premiered on ABC on this date.
The show was originally going to be named The Fred MacMurray Show, but Fred MacMurray didn't like the idea.
September 29, 1963 -
My Favorite Martian, starring Ray Walston and Bill Bixby premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
Ray Walston admitted later that he regretted taking the role of Uncle Martin. He took it for the money, and felt that it prevented him from getting substantial roles for many years. He enjoyed working with Bill Bixby, and they became lifelong friends.
September 29, 1967 -
Gerry Anderson's supermarionation take on superheroes, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons premiered on this date in the UK.
The face and voice of Captain Scarlet were both based on Cary Grant. In fact, Captain Scarlet's voice artist, Francis Matthews was chosen to voice the character based on the fact he could do a Cary Grant impression. In fact series creator Gerry Anderson came close to moving heaven and earth to get Matthews who had been either uninterested or unavailable.
September 29, 1969 -
Paramount Television's anthology comedy series Love, American Style, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.
This series had more direct and indirect spin-offs than any other American television series. The following series can trace their roots back to this show: Barefoot in the Park, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Blansky's Beauties, Mork & Mindy, Out of the Blue, Joanie Loves Chachi and possibly others.
September 29, 1985 -
The Sci-Fi anthology series created by Steven Spielberg, Amazing Stories, premieres on NBC-TV on this date.
Four directors who worked on the series, all of whom are best known as film directors, later won the Academy Award for Best Director: Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Robert Zemeckis.
September 29, 1986 -
American got to met the people who worked at the Sugarbaker & Associates design company went the CBS-TV series Designing Women, starring Dixie Carter, Delta Burke, Annie Potts, Jean Smart, and Meshach Taylor, premiered on this date.
According to creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason during the 2006 Designing Women Reunion the character of Anthony played by Meshach Taylor was supposed to be a one off. But fans loved the character of Anthony so much that he was offered a full time role on the show. He joined the main cast officially for the second season in 1987.
September 29, 1987 -
We all were forced to endure the trials and tribulations of some very oblivious baby boomers, when thirtysomething, starring Ken Olin, Mel Harris, Melanie Mayron, Timothy Busfield, Patricia Wettig, Peter Horton, and Polly Draper, premiered on ABC TV on this date.
The word "thirtysomething" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a direct result of its popular usage from this series.
September 29, 1991 -
MTV debuts Nirvana's video for their single Smells Like Teen Spirit on this date, giving most Americans their first look at the band. A little over a month later, the song is #1 on the Hot 100.
The girls who played the cheerleaders in the video were originally supposed to be very fat and unattractive (Cobain's idea). The director, Samuel Bayer, did not like this idea, but still allowed the cheerleaders to have "sleeve" tattoos and the symbol for anarchy on their shirts. He says he recruited them from a local strip club, which helps explain their unorthodox cheers. For a while, MTV refused to air the video. When they finally did, it was on their alternative show 120 Minutes. When the song became a hit, the video went into hot rotation.
Today in History:
September 29, 1399 -
... For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings...
Richard II was deposed on this date, which only served him right for having posed in the first place. He was succeeded by Henry IV Part I.
September 29, 1513 -
Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, on this date (although he may have discovered it four days earlier - I'm not sure what the Spanish Navy's stance was on the the whole rum ... question.)
It's Miguel de Cervantes' birthday today. Born in 1547, Cervantes is best known as the author of Don Quixote, a cunning satire on mental illness. The work is an epic treatment of the perennial question, "wouldn't the world be better off if we were all crazy?"
Ever since the publication of Don Quixote, the idea of improving through world through mental illness has taken root in the popular culture of the west. From the good soldier Svjek and Prince Myshkin to Chauncy Gardener, Elwood P. Dowd and Forrest Gump, western readers and filmgoers have a galaxy of benevolent lunatics to show them the way to a better, purer existence. Grand mal seizures, delirium tremens, and hallucinations are merely the price of admission to their wistful world of blissful ignorance.
The sane and hard-working do not come off nearly so well in film or literature. In fact, sane and hard-working people seldom even appear in film or literature. No one wants to read about them, or spend good money to watch them go about their plodding lives, because most of us are surrounded by sane and hard-working people already and know what they're like—they're just like us, only less so.
Early to bed and early to rise may make a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise, but it won't do a goddamn thing for his Nielsens. In fact, if you're healthy, wealthy, wise, and well-rested, you're only going to piss the rest of us off. Lighten up, slack off, drink up, and spend plenty of quality time with imaginary friends.
That's the real road to happiness—or at least our acceptance, without which you have no right to be happy.
September 29, 1957 -
An explosion at the Chelyabinsk-40 complex, a Soviet nuclear fuel processing plant, irradiated the nearby city of Kyshtym with strontium-90, cesium-137 and plutonium on this date.
This accident releases twice the radioactivity of the Chernobyl incident.
Oops
September 29, 1976 -
At his birthday party, musician Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally shoots his bass player Norman Owens twice in the chest, trying to open a soft drink bottle with a .357 magnum. Owens survived and files a lawsuit.
September 29, 1988 -
Stacy Allison was one of several female mountaineers who took part in a competition to see who could be the first to climb Mount Everest.
After harsh weather conditions forced the other participants to turn around midway through their climb, Allison surprised many (including herself) by reaching the peak of 29,000 feet, being the first American woman to do so on this date.
September 29, 1988 -
The Space Shuttle Discovery, (STS - 26) lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral to launch a communications satellite, on this date.
This is the first manned space mission since the space shuttle Challenger disaster two and a half years ago.
September 29, 1989 -
Zsa Zsa Gabor, a person famous for no apparent reason and with no visible means of support (It's too weird to think that Zsa Zsa and her sisters were the original Kardashians, without the sex tapes), was convicted of slapping a Beverly Hills police officer on this date.
Gabor later complains that she was denied a jury of her peers, saying "It was not my class of people, There was not a producer, a press agent, a director, an actor."
And so it goes
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