July 24, 1974: “Death Wish” Premieres

July 24, 1974: Death Wish premieres. Charles Bronson, previously the only man to be a member of both The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen, stars as an urban vigilante, starting a franchise that stretched to 5 movies.

Bronson plays Paul Kersey, an architect at a Manhattan firm. Three men posing as deliverymen invade his house, murdering his wife Joanna (Hope Lange) and raping his daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan), after finding out they have only $7.00 between them. On the way back from Joanna's funeral, Paul is accosted by a mugger, but fights him off with an improvised weapon, and is energized by the encounter.

Over the next several weeks, Paul walks through the city looking for criminals, killing several muggers by luring them into a confrontation by presenting himself as an affluent victim, or when he sees them attacking innocent people. The police notice a decrease in crime following the killings, and decide not to investigate.

Finally, Paul is wounded in a shootout, and the man he shot gets away. At the hospital, he makes a deal with the police: Get out of town, and they'll let him. They arrange for his company to transfer him to Chicago. Greeted at Union Station by a company representative, he notices hoodlums harassing a young woman. He excuses himself and helps her. As the hoodlums mock him, Paul smiles while making a finger-gun gesture at them. That's the image above, ending the film.

Among the other actors in the film are Chicago Seven defendant Tom Hayden as a doctor, Vincent Gardenia as a police inspector, Paul Dooley and Olympia Dukakis as cops, a young Christopher Guest as a cop, Munsters Grandpa Al Lewis as a security guard, Sesame Street actress Sonia Manzano as a grocery clerk, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Eric Laneuville as muggers, and a young Jeff Goldblum as "Freak #1."

In 1978, Bronson was the subject of a question on the TV show Match Game. Both host Gene Rayburn and panelist Richard Dawson mentioned that they were a friend of Bronson's. Dawson, said, "He plays such an animal," but, "He's a very gentle man."

Somebody recently posted a meme of The Warriors, from the 1979 decaying-New-York film of the same title, on the Subway with Paul Kersey, and asked what would have happened if they'd met. It should be obvious: The Warriors were looking to avoid trouble, just to get home -- just like Kersey. They would have left each other alone, and nothing would have happened.

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July 24, 1974 was a Wednesday. Major League Baseball was in its All-Star Break. The night before, the National League beat the American League, 7-2 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

But there was one score on this historic day: The Canadian Football League opened its season. In the opening game, the Montreal Alouettes beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, 20-12 at the Autostade in Montreal.