March 16, 1961: The Absent-Minded Professor premieres. Not to be confused with the 1963 film The Nutty Professor, this film is also a screwball comedy, based on the 1943 story "A Situation of Gravity" by Samuel W. Taylor. The film was produced by Walt Disney, directed by Robert Stevenson, and starring Fred MacMurray.
MacMurray plays Ned Brainard, a professor of physical chemistry at fictional Medfield College.
On his blackboard, he reverses a sign in the equation for enthalpy to energy plus pressure times volume. As a result, he accidentally invents a substance that gains energy when it strikes a hard surface. He names his discovery "Flubber," a portmanteau of "flying rubber." In the excitement of his discovery, he misses his own wedding to Betsy Carlisle (played by Nancy Olson), not for the first time, but the third.
He makes tires out of Flubber, and makes his Model T (already an old car by that point) fly. But he can't sell it that way, since cars are still relatively expenses. But everybody wears shoes, and he demonstrates Flubber by coating the soles of the sneakers of the Medfield basketball team with it. Now able to jump like Michael Jordan in Space Jam, 35 years later, they win. (Presumably, the NCAA stepped in after that, and banned its use.) Finally winning a government contract by flying his Model T over the U.S. Capitol, he can afford to marry Betsy.
The Absent-Minded Professor would have a sequel in 1963, Son of Flubber, and both films are set at Medfield College, thus producing one of the earliest "fictional universes" in pop culture. as the Disney films The Shaggy Dog, The Shaggy D.A., The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him, Now You Don't, and The Strongest Man in the World.
Keenan Wynn would play the film's antagonist, businessman Alonzo Hawk, again in Son of Flubber, and again in Herbie Rides Again, introducing the Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own, suggesting that the Herbie/Love Bug movies also take place in the same fictional universe. Wynn played a different, but similar, character in The Shaggy D.A.
Wynn and Robert Stevenson died in 1986, Fred MacMurray in 1991, Samuel W. Taylor in 1997. As of March 16, 1928, Nancy Olson is still alive.
The Absent-Minded Professor was remade in 1997, with Robin Williams in Flubber.
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March 16, 1961 was a Thursday. Comic book artist Todd McFarlane was born.
Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The Syracuse Nationals beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 115-114 at the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, New York. Wilt Chamberlain scored 32 points for the Warriors. After the next season, the Warriors moved to San Francisco, where they are now known as the Golden State Warriors. After one more season, the Nationals replaced them, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers.
And there was 1 game in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 5-2 at the Montreal Forum.
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