Remember - A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy (or Paris - pick your poison.)
(As always, please celebrate responsibly.)
It's the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua. One of the most beloved of saints, his images and statues are ubiquitous. Proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on January 16, 1946, he is sometimes called the Evangelical Doctor.
While it may be hard to be a saint in the city, the people of Beaumont, Texas take comfort in having a saint to pray to.
June 13, 1941 -
Fritz Lang wartime thriller, Man Hunt, starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine and Roddy McDowall premiered in NYC on this date.
This was one of several films mentioned in the September 1941 Senate subcommittee hearings on Propaganda in Motion Pictures, where isolationist Senators Nye, Clark and Wheeler attacked Hollywood for "war-mongering." Senator Nye, who testified before the committee, had not seen most of the films mentioned. The subcommittee did not reconvene due to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December.
June 13, 1942 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Hold the Lion, Please, directed by Chuck Jones, starring Bugs Bunny, debuted on this date.
Chuck Jones explicitly established a rule starting with this short that Bugs must always be provoked in order to give the rabbit a valid reason to torment his enemies.
June 13, 1952 -
The seventh collaboration of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Pat and Mike, was released on this date.
The husband and wife writing team of Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon were close friends of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. They wrote this script especially for them to capture the essence of their real-life personalities and relationship as well as to showcase Hepburn's athletic abilities. Tracy really was cranky but lovable, and Hepburn really was a terrific athlete. She was excellent at golf and one of the best tennis players in Hollywood.
June 13, 1953 -
Another classic 50s drive-in movie, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, directed by Eugène Lourié, with stop motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, and starring Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey, Lee Van Cleef, and King Donovan, opened on this date.
While visiting his friend Ray Harryhausen on the set, Ray Bradbury was given a copy of the script (with the working title Monster From the Sea ) and asked if he could do some rewriting on it. After reading the script, Bradbury remarked about a scene of the monster destroying a lighthouse, which seemed very similar to a short story that he'd had published in The Saturday Evening Post several years earlier called The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Bradbury's story was about a dinosaur that destroys a lighthouse. The next day he received a telegram offering to buy the film rights for $2,000. After the sale, the film's title was changed to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. When Bradbury's story was reprinted years later, he changed its title to The Fog Horn. When the film was released, Bradbury's name was used heavily in promotional advertising.
June 13, 1959 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Backwoods Bunny, directed by Bob McKimson, starring Bugs Bunny, debuted on this date.
This is the first of two cartoons featuring the hillbilly buzzards Pappy and Elvis, alongside The Dixie Fryer, a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, the following year.
June 13, 1962 -
The fantasy adventure film, Jack the Giant Killer, directed by Nathan H. Juran, and starring Kerwin Mathews, Judi Meredith, and Torin Thatcher, opened in the US on this date.
When Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen were looking for a producer for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, one of the hopefuls was Edward Small, who turned them down. When Sinbad proved to be a huge hit, Small was determined to duplicate the former movie with the same director and stars. Although he couldn't get Harryhausen, Jim Danforth came close to duplicating Sinbad's monsters with Cormoran, the flying dragon, and the Imp instead of the Cyclops, Dragon, and Genie.
June 13, 1962 -
Stanley Kubrick's take on Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Lolita, premiered on this date.
Stanley Kubrick held a special screening for Vladimir Nabokov a few days before the film's premiere. It was at this time the author learned that most of his screenplay had been jettisoned, but he reported himself very happy with the finished picture, praising Kubrick, and the cast.
June 13, 1967 -
The fifth film in the James Bond series, You Only Live Twice, directed by Lewis Gilbert, and starring Sean Connery, opened in the US on this date.
The henchman that Bond fights in Osato's office was played by Samoan pro wrestler Peter Fanene Maivia, known by his ring name "The High Chief". Maivia also served as the film's fight choreographer, and is the grandfather of wrestler Dwayne Johnson.
June 13, 1970 –
The Beatles song, The Long and Winding Road becomes their last U.S. number one hit on this date.
The Beatles recorded this in January 1969 as a fairly simple ballad. By 1970, The Beatles were breaking up and and Phil Spector was brought in to go through the tapes and produce the album. Spector was known for his "Wall Of Sound" recording technique, where he added many instruments and layered the tracks to create a very full sound. On this track, he took out most of The Beatles instruments and added a string section and choir (The Mike Sammes Singers). The result was very different from what the group originally had in mind.
Even though he wrote this song, Paul McCartney didn't go to the sessions where Spector produced it. When McCartney heard the results, he made it clear that he hated what Spector did to his song, and tried to get the original version, which was mixed by engineer Glyn Johns, on the album. The band was already falling apart, and this caused further turmoil within the group, as Harrison and Lennon both supported Spector. Paul has not changed his stance over the years, and still believes Spector butchered it.
June 13, 1970 -
The Mungo Jerry song, In The Summertime hit #1 in UK, on this date.
The song was written by Ray Dorset, who was the group's lead singer and guitarist. He penned the song in 1968 when he was working for Timex in the UK - his band was just getting started and music was more of a hobby at the time. Dorest says that the famous melody just popped into his head one day, and the next day he wrote the lyrics very quickly.
June 13, 1980 -
Meatloaf displayed the range of his talents when he played a roadie in the film Roadie, which opened in the U.S. on this date.
It's been mistakenly reported that screenplay was inspired by Alice Cooper's 1977 song Road Rats (a tune about roadies which he re-recorded for the film). Originally, Cooper's role was written for Mick Jagger.
June 13, 1989 -
The 16th (by some counts) James Bond film, License to Kill, starring Timothy Dalton premiered in London, on this date.
Throughout the franchise, Q is constantly reprimanding Bond for damaging or losing his equipment. Here, as a touch of irony, after he uses his rake/radio, he blithely tosses it in the bushes and walks away. This was Desmond Llewelyn's idea.
June 13, 1995 -
Alanis Morissette's third studio album, Jagged Little Pill, is released on this date.
Alanis Morissette started out as a dance-pop singer, releasing her first album in her native Canada in 1991 when she was 16. Another album was released a year later, but then she was dropped from her label. Looking to change direction, she went to Los Angeles and met with producers, looking for someone to help fulfill her vision. She found her man in Glen Ballard, who worked for Quincy Jones' label and produced the first Wilson Phillips album.
June 13, 2008 -
The Coldplay single Viva la Vida released on this date, goes on to become their first US No. 1 hit.
A little-known US group called Creaky Boards accused Coldplay of stealing this song's melody from a number they wrote in 2007 called, ironically, The Songs I Didn't Write. Andrew Hoepfner, Creaky Boards' singer and songwriter, alleged that Chris Martin attended a Creaky Boards concert in New York in October 2007. Coldplay vigorously denied the allegations claiming that on the night Martin was supposed to be watching them, he was actually working at the Air Studio in London. Additionally this song was written and demoed seven months before the night in question.
Today in History:
June 13, 1381 -
In Medieval England, the famous Wat Tyler's Rebellion began, on this date.
Since most of you reading this don't live in England, most of you don't give a damn.
June 13, 1865 –
In case it should come up in conversation today -
William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures in 20th century literature, was born on this date. He won the Nobel Prize in 1923.
He was brother of the artist Jack Butler Yeats, the son of John Butler Yeats, and along with J. M. Synge and Sean O'Casey, was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival. Together with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, he founded Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright.
June 13, 1886 -
The recently-deposed monarch of Bavaria wasn't having a great day today.
Mad King Ludwig II, who wasn't so much mad as homosexual, had been under house arrest ever since his uncle, Prince Luitpold von Bayern, staged a coup a few days earlier, let it be known that he wasn't happy about his current situation.
That afternoon, the bodies of the King and his physician, Dr. Gudden, were discovered floating face-down in Lake Starnberg.
It's always a problem when you're the King of Bavaria and your family can't accept your lifestyle.
June 13, 1917 -
18 German Gotha bomber planes flew over London in the first aerial bombardment in history (not counting Zeppelins). They were met by over 90 British fighters, but not one Gotha was brought down. This bombing raid caused 162 deaths.
On June 13, 1944, Germany commemorated the anniversary by launching the first of its V-1 flying bombs, also called the Doodlebug (Fieseler Fi-103), on southern England. Only one of the four missiles London saw that day caused any casualties, but a steady stream of V-1s causing severe damage and casualties increased in London in coming months.
On June 13, 1990, East Germany began officially tearing down the Berlin Wall. The date apparently has some significance in the Teutonic psyche.
June 13, 1920 -
The United States Postal Service ruled that children may not be sent via Parcel Post on this date. Before that, children had been clogging the mail chutes of America.
June 13, 1934 -
Two months before becoming Fuhrer, Hitler meets Mussolini in Venice. Unfortunately, Mussolini refuses to have an interpreter and his German was not good, so neither man could understand the other.
After a midnight gondola ride (or two), Mussolini began to refer to the German leader as "a silly little monkey."
June 13, 1966 -
In 1963, Ernesto Miranda was accused and convicted of abduction and rape due to a seemingly coerced confession that he later recanted. The Supreme Court determined on this date in Miranda v. Arizona, that all criminals must be informed of their rights before interrogation. This evolved into the standard language provided in a Miranda warning
The Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but he was retried and convicted again in 1966. He was released from prison in 1972 and later stabbed to death in a men's room at a bar where he was playing poker in 1976.
June 13, 1971 -
Next to the White House wedding photo of President Nixon's daughter Tricia, the New York Times ran its first story on the Pentagon Papers, a top secret DoD analysis authored by the RAND Corporation detailing every mistake and deception made during the 30-year history of the Vietnam War.
Attorney General John Mitchell manages to block any further publication of the embarrassing documents, but the court order is countermanded two weeks later in a Supreme Court decision. (Once again, I am reminded (by a very loyal bunkie) of a quote, attributed to Tom Lehrer, about John Mitchell: If you like John Mitchell, you'll love Ed Meese.)
And so it goes.
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