October 12, 1960: "The Magnificent Seven" Premieres

Left to right: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz,

Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn

October 12, 1960: The Magnificent Seven premieres. It is a Western, directed by John Sturges, based on the Japanese film The Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa.

The title characters are gunfighters, hired by a small Mexican town to protect them from a gang of bandits, whose leader is played not by a Latino actor, but by the Brooklyn-born Austrian Jew Eli Wallach. (Wallach would also play a Mexican villain opposite Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; and had already played a Japanese interpreter for the U.S. Army in Teahouse of the August Moon.)

The Seven are played by Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and Horst Buchholz. I won't spoil the movie by telling you which ones survive.

Sturges had directed McQueen before, and wanted him again, but he was starring in the TV Western Wanted Dead or Alive. McQueen, like Paul Newman an avid auto racer, staged an accident, and claimed he needed time off to recover. He got it, and was free to appear. But he and Brynner, by far the 2 biggest stars at the time, did not get along.

Coburn had an affinity for Japanese culture, as he would show many years later as a guest star on The Muppet Show. He claimed to have seen Seven Samurai 15 times, and badly wanted to appear in this version. Vaughn was a friend, and put in a good word for Coburn.

Despite being the leader of the good guys, Brynner's Chris Adams wears all black, much like Zorro does, and like Richard Boone did as Paladin on the then-current TV hit Have Gun -- Will Travel. Brynner would pay homage to this role, playing a robot in Westworld, which spawned a sequel, Futureworld, and a TV series reboot.

Brynner would play Adams again in the 1966 sequel Return of the Seven, but would be replaced in the role by George Kennedy in Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and by Lee Van Cleef in The Magnificent Seven Ride (1972).

McQueen died in 1980, from cancer, only 50 years old. Brynner also died from cancer, in 1985, at 65, shortly after filming an anti-smoking commercial, saying, "Now that I'm dead, I'm warning you: Don't smoke." Coburn and Dexter lived until 2002, Bronson and Buchholz until 2003, and Wallach until 2014. Vaughn, later to star as Agent Napoleon Solo on the TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., turned out to be the last survivor of the actors, living until 2016, and was the only one of the good guys to outlive Wallach.

A Magnificent Seven TV series aired on CBS from 1998 to 2000, with Michael Biehn playing the leader, there named Chris Larabee. Vaughn played the man who hired the Seven in the pilot. In the 2016 remake, Denzel Washington played the leader, Sam Chisolm.

In 1980, the film Battle Beyond the Stars took the concept to space, with George Peppard playing "Space Cowboy," and Vaughn playing a variation on his character in M7. The planet they're hired to protect is named Akira, in honor of Kurosawa. Peppard would also star as John "Hannibal" Smith in The A-Team, after M7 veteran Coburn turned the part down. That show was devised as a combination of The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen. (Bronson was the only actor to be one of the M7 and the D12.)

Toshiro Mifune was Japan's Steve McQueen, its Harrison Ford, and its Clint Eastwood, before any of those men had become famous in America. In 1954, he starred in Seven Samurai, so he was McQueen as Vin Tanner. In 1958, he starred in The Hidden Fortress, which George Lucas used as a basis for Star Wars, so he was Ford as Han Solo. In 1961, he starred in Yojimbo, which Sergio Leone turned into A Fistful of Dollars, so he was Eastwood as "The Man With No Name." Not that Kurosawa was above doing an homage: In 1957, he made Throne of Blood, set it in feudal-era Japan, and cast Mifune as his Macbeth.

Mifune was in some English-language films, including John Frankenheimer's 1966 Grand Prix, John Boorman's 1968 Hell in the Pacific, and Steven Spielberg's 1979 film 1941. He died in 1997.

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October 12, 1960 was a Wednesday. It was the day of Game 6 of the World Series. Whitey Ford pitches a 7-hit shutout, and singles home the 1st run of a 12-0 New York Yankees rout of the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. There will be a Game 7 tomorrow, also in Pittsburgh.

The Yankees had won their 3 games 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0. The Pirates wins had been by scores of 6-4, 3-2 and 5-2. It seems as though a high-scoring game favors the Yankees. And the Yankees will score 9 runs in Game 7, while the Pirates hadn't yet scored more than 5. Sounds like a Yankee title. Except...

Football was in midweek. The NBA season didn't begin until November 1. There was 1 NHL game that day: The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-0 at the Chicago Stadium.

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.

July 4, 1963: "The Great Escape" Premieres

July 4, 1963: The film The Great Escape premieres, based on the 1950 non-fiction book by Paul Brickell, itself based on an actual event during World War II.

The real story: Stalag Luft III was a prisoner-of-war camp set up by Nazi Germany in Sagan, Lower Silesia, within German borders. Due to the changing borders after the war, the town is now in Poland, and named Żagań. The name "Luft," meaning "Air," indicates that all the prisoners were survivors of Allied planes that had been shot down.

On March 25, 1944, having dug 3 tunnels, codenamed Tom, Dick and Harry, 76 Allied prisoners escaped. All but 3 were quickly recaptured: Bram van der Stok of the Netherlands, and Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Müller. van der Stok, due to his language skills and contacts with the French resistance, found safety with the British consulate in neutral Spain. The 2 Norwegians made it to neutral Sweden by train and boat, with the help of friendly sailors. But of the 73 men captured, the Nazis executed 50. Bergsland lived until 1992, van der Stock until 1993, Müller until 1999.

Only 3 of the real escapees were Americans. But, given the nature of Hollywood, Americans were given starring roles in the film, some as foreigners. Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn were veterans of the 1960 Western film The Magnificent Seven.

Bronson, of Lithuanian descent, played a Polish pilot who had volunteered for Britain's Royal Air Force, and stands in for one of the successfully escaped Swedes. Coburn played an Australian. And James Garner played an American who had volunteered for the RAF. Among the British actors, not yet widely known among American audiences, were Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Donald Pleasance and David McCallum. McQueen's character, despite his famed motorcycle jump, was one of those recaptured. But, since McQueen was a big Hollywood hero, his character could not be among the executed, so the film ends with him planning his next escape.

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July 4, 1963 was a Thursday. This was also the day that the English Football League's maximum wage and retain-and-transfer clauses were abolished. I have a separate entry for that.

Baseball player José Oquendo was born. Obviously, the 4th of July is not a holiday in Britain, but it is one in America, traditionally one on which baseball teams played doubleheaders:

* The New York Yankees split with the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees won the opener, 9-1. Whitey Ford, who would have won the American League's Cy Young Award had it not then been a both-Leagues award, outpitched Gary Peters, who went on to be named the AL's Rookie of the Year. Roger Maris and Elston Howard hit home runs.

The White Sox won the nightcap, 4-2. Juan Pizarro outpitched Bill Stafford. Mickey Mantle was injured, and did not play in either game. Nor did Yogi Berra, who was in his last full season as a player.

* The New York Mets were swept by the Chicago Cubs, 2-1 and 3-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The only Met run in the 1st game came on a home run by Jim Hickman, who would be a part of the Cubs' 1969 "September Swoon." Other than that, Glen Hobbie allowed only 1 hit, a single by Ron Hunt. Paul Toth pitched a 3-hit shutout in the 2nd game. Over the 2 games, Ernie Banks went 1-for-6 with a walk.

* The Philadelphia Phillies swept the Pittsburgh Pirates, 1-0 and 5-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Don Demeter singled pitcher Art Mahaffey home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning of the 1st game. Mahaffey allowed only 2 hits over 10 innings, a triple to Roberto Clemente and a single to Donn Clendenon. He outpitched Bob Friend, who also went the extra distance.

In the 2nd game, Ryne Duren, previously known as a star Yankee reliever, went the distance for the win. The only run the Pirates scored was on a home run by Clemente.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Los Angeles Angels in a single game, 7-4 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-5.

* The Washington Senators swept the Kansas City Athletics, 2-1 and 3-2 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (D.C. Stadium was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.)

* The Cleveland Indians swept the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 and 7-5 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Jerry Kindall won the 1st game with a home run in the bottom of the 14th inning. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4 with 2 walks, then came back in the 2nd game to go 3-for-4 with a home run, a walk, and 2 RBIs.

* The Detroit Tigers swept the Minnesota Twins, 5-3 and 3-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Over the 2 games, Al Kaline went 3-for-8, and Harmon Killebrew went 1-for-5 with a walk.

* The Houston Colt .45s swept the Cincinnati Reds, 5-2 and 6-2 at Colt Stadium in Houston. Over the 2 games, Pete Rose, who was named National League Rookie of the Year, went 2-for-9. But Frank Robinson did not play. (The Colts became the Houston Astros in 1965.)

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-7 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The Dodgers scored 8 runs in the bottom of the 6th inning. Stan Musial, in his last season, went 2-for-5.

* And the Milwaukee Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 6-3 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Hank Aaron went 3-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Willie Mays went 4-for-5, and Willie McCovey hit a home run.

June 15, 1967: "The Dirty Dozen" Premieres

June 15, 1967: The Dirty Dozen premieres, based on the 1965 novel of the same title by E.M. Nathanson. It becomes one of the most popular films set in World War II, striking a chord with people tired of seeing news about the Vietnam War on television every night, and wanting to see American troops win.

The action begins in March 1944. The U.S. Army, in the person of Major General Sam Worden (played by Ernest Borgnine), wants to train some of its worst convicts, all serving life sentences in military prisons, into highly-skilled commandos to eliminate Wehrmacht officers near Rennes, France, disrupting the Nazi chain of command in northern France, thus making the planned D-Day invasion and the subsequent attempt to liberate France easier. If any of the convicts survive, they will be pardoned.

As the title suggests, there are 12 of them, under the command of Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin): Robert T. Jefferson (football star Jim Brown), Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), Archer J. Maggot (Telly Savalas), Vernon L. Pinkley (Donald Sutherland), Victor Franko (John Cassavetes), Pedro Jiminez (folksinger Trinidad "Trini" López), Samson Posey (Clint Walker), Glenn Gilpin (Ben Caruthers), Roscoe Lever (Stuart Cooper), Milo Vladek (Tom Busby), Seth K. Sawyer (Colin Maitland) and Tassos Bravos (Al Mancini). Their crimes ranged from murder (Jefferson and Wladislaw) to rape (Maggot) to Mob-related activities (Franko).

Brown was filming his scenes in London in June 1966 when Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns, called and told him to leave the set and report to training camp. Brown refused. Modell told Brown he would be fined every day he didn't show up. Brown, just 29 years old and the best running back in the game, retired. He was making more money, having more fun, and getting hit less, while making movies than he had been playing football.

Bronson was the only actor to have been one of The Magnificent Seven and one of The Dirty Dozen. Among the other well-known actors in the film: George Kennedy (as Major Max Armbruster), Robert Ryan and Richard Jaeckel.

Upon parachuting into northern France, Jiminez breaks his neck during the jump. With a man down, the mission proceeds with Reisman and Wladislaw, a Polish-American, both of them able to fluently speak German, infiltrating the chateau disguised as German officers.

The element of surprise is lost when Maggott breaks cover, and is subsequently killed. The sound of gunfire makes the Wehrmacht officers and their companions retreat to a locked underground bomb shelter, but the unit pours gasoline and throws grenades into the shelter through ventilation shafts, killing the officers.

Only Reisman and Wladislaw make it back alive. Back in England, a voiceover from Armbruster confirms that General Worden exonerated the sole surviving member of the Dirty Dozen, and communicated to the next of kin of the rest that "they lost their lives in the line of duty."

Many reviewers criticized the film's violence, especially the finale, in which not just the Germans, but their presumably innocent wives and girlfriends, are burned to death. But the depiction of atrocities mirrors the reality of war. The 1960s had already had an effect on film, and, while the Americans do "win," the film does show them to have a darker side.

The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, including Cassavetes, for Best Supporting Actor, but no wins.

Ben Carruthers died in 1983, Lee Marvin in 1987, John Cassavetes in 1989, Telly Savalas in 1995, Charles Bronson and Tom Busby in 2003, Al Mancini in 2007, Ernest Borgnine in 2012, Clint Walker in 2018, Trini López in 2020. As of June 15, 2022, four of the Dozen are still alive: Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland, Colin Maitland and Stuart Cooper. (UPDATE: Jim Brown died on May 18, 2023, and Donald Sutherland died on June 20, 2024 reducing the number to 2: Colin Maitland and Stuart Cooper.)

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June 15, 1967 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 2-0 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Mel Stottlemyre pitched a 5-hit shutout. Mickey Mantle hit his 509th career home run.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. The ChiSox took a 1-0 lead in the top of the 11th inning, but in the bottom of the 11th, Tony Conigliaro hit a 2-run home run to win it. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-5.

* A doubleheader was split at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Phillies won the opener, 4-1. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the nightcap, 5-2. Roberto Clemente only played in the 2nd game, going 1-for-4.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Jim Brewer pitched 5 innings, Don Sutton pitched 4, and, between them, they pitched a 4-hit shutout. Ernie Banks went 0-for-3.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-4 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run. Al Kaline went 1-for-3 with an RBI.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-5 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Reggie Jackson, who made his major league debut only 6 days earlier, singled home Josh Donaldson with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-5 with an RBI. Frank Robinson went 2-for-4 with a walk.

* The Houston Astros beat the San Francisco Giants, 6-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Willie Mays went 1-for-4.

* And the New York Mets, the Atlanta Braves, the Cincinnati Reds, the St. Louis Cardinals, the California Angels and the Cleveland Indians were not scheduled.