November 1, 1967: “Cool Hand Luke” Premieres

November 1, 1967: The film Cool Hand Luke premieres. Good thing I told you, or what we would've had here was failure to communicate.

Stuart Rosenberg directed. As the title suggests, it features Paul Newman at his all-time coolest. He plays Lucas Jackson, sentenced to 2 years' hard labor in a Georgia prison (though filmed in California's San Joaquin Valley) for cutting the heads off parking meters in an act of drunken mischief.

Lucas refuses to observe the established order among the prisoners, and quickly runs afoul of their leader, Clarence Slidell, a.k.a. Dragline (played by George Kennedy). When the two have a boxing match, the much smaller Lucas is severely outmatched, but refuses to give up. Dragline stops the fight, with Lucas having won his respect, and the other prisoners follow. (They include men played by Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton, Ralph Waite, Wayne Rogers, Anthony Zerbe, Joe Don Baker and James Gammon.)

Lucas later wins a poker game by bluffing with a hand worth nothing, and Dragline christens him "Cool Hand Luke." Luke brags that he can eat 50 eggs in 1 hour, and Dragline arranges the challenge, which Luke wins. (Note: Do not try this. You do not have a Hollywood scriptwriter aiding you, and you will die.)

Having received a visit from his mother (Jo Van Fleet) earlier in the film, Luke is given word that she has died. In order to prevent him from trying to escape to attend her funeral, he is put in "the box," a tight, hot, air-restricted form of solitary confinement.

Before this, he was doing okay, and had never tried to escape. After this, he does, and is caught. The warden (Strother Martin), and his "Walking Boss," Godfrey (Morgan Woodward), who always wears sunglasses and is thus known to the prisoners as "The Man With No Eyes," fit Luke with leg irons, and throw him into a ditch in front of the other prisoners. The Captain says, "What we have here is... failure... to communicate."

He tries 2 more escapes, and is finally tortured to the point where he is broken, and becomes the guards' errand boy, losing the other prisoners' respect. But this new job gives him another opportunity to escape, including stealing a truck. Dragline joins him.

After abandoning the truck, they agree to separate. Luke enters a church and talks to God, whom he blames for sabotaging him so he cannot win in life. Police cars appear moments later, and Dragline arrives to tell him that he will not be hurt if he surrenders peacefully.

Instead, Luke, comes out, and repeats the Captain's line: "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." Godfrey kills him with a rifle shot to the neck. Dragline carries Luke outside and surrenders, but charges at Godfrey and strangles him until he is subdued by the guards. The car taking Luke's body away runs over Godfrey's shades, crushing them.

Lalo Schifrin composed the music for the film. The theme played during one of the prisoners' brush-clearing scenes became the theme song for Eyewitness News on ABC stations. Like Schifrin's theme for the TV show Mission: Impossible, it was composed with the unusual time signature of 5/4.

The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, including Newman for Best Actor and Schifrin for Best Original Music Score. Only Kennedy won, for Best Supporting Actor.

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November 1, 1967 was a Wednesday. Singer Sophie B. Hawkins was born.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 5 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 129-113 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Willis Reed scored 53 points, and had 18 rebounds.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 136-111 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The St. Louis Hawks beat the Cincinnati Royals, 101-96 at the Cincinnati Gardens.

* The San Francisco Warriors beat the Detroit Pistons, 137-132 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.

* And in a battle of the NBA's 2 new expansion teams, the San Diego Rockets beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 139-125. This game was played on neutral ground, at the Portland Memorial Coliseum, to see if Portland was a good market for further expansion. The NBA decided it was, and the Portland Trail Blazers began play in 1970. The Rockets moved to Houston in 1971, and San Diego only had the Clippers from 1978 to 1984, while the Sonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008. So, of the 3 cities, only Portland remains.

There were 2 games in the brand-new American Basketball Association. The New Jersey Americans, forerunners of the Nets, lost to the Indiana Pacers, 123-113 at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis. And the Pittsburgh Pipers beat the Denver Rockets, 112-103 in overtime at the Denver Auditorium Arena. In 1974, in correct anticipation of soon joining the NBA, who already had the Houston Rockets, the Denver Rockets became the Denver Nuggets.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Oakland Seals, 2-0 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-0 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Minnesota North Stars, 4-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Boston Bruins, 5-1 at the St. Louis Arena.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks, the Detroit Red Wings, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Los Angeles Kings were not scheduled.