September 23, 1952: Richard Nixon's "Checkers Speech"

September 23, 1952: Senator Richard Nixon of California, the Republican Party's nominee for Vice President, has been accused of receiving a personal use fund of $18,000 – about $200,000 in 2022 money. (My, how quaint it now sounds.) But since the Republicans have been hammering the Democratic Party over the issue of "corruption," Nixon and their Presidential nominee, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, look like massive hypocrites, and it's hurting them.

Nixon had been elected to Congress in 1946, from Orange County, California, to the east of Los Angeles, already becoming one of the most conservative places in the country. The local Republican Party wanted someone to defeat Jerry Voorhis, a 10-year Congressman loyal to the New Deal of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And, like so many other newly-elected Congressmen that year, including John F. Kennedy in Massachusetts, he was a veteran of World War II. He accused Voorhis of being a Communist sympathizer, which was a lie, but it worked, and he won.

In 1948, Nixon was on the House Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated former State Department official Alger Hiss for espionage, but could only charge him with perjury because the statute of limitations had run out. Nixon wanted the public, viewing Congressional hearings on television for the first time, to believe he had real a microfilm that had become known as "The Pumpkin Papers." But the tide was turning in America, and, had that microfilm been released before the Presidential election, it likely would have meant the defeat of President Harry Truman and the win of Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

In 1950, Nixon tried to get promoted to the Senate, as did another Representative, former actress Helen Gahagan Douglas. Since Communists were "Reds" and Communist sympathizers were "pinks" or "pinkos," Nixon's campaign released "the Pink Sheet," detailing all of Douglas' left-wing associations. He even said something that wouldn't have been allowed in movies at the time, due to the Hays Code: "She's pink, right down to her underwear."

The Douglas campaign struck back, claiming he was a tool of California's archconservative newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times and The Oakland Tribune. An editorial cartoon showed the publishers of those papers operating Nixon like a marionette. (The San Francisco Examiner, as then run by William Randolph Hearst, could also have been so accused.) It didn't work: He won in a landslide, with 59 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, she gave him the nickname that stuck to him for the rest of his life: "Tricky Dick."

At the 1952 Republican National Convention in Chicago. Eisenhower, the great hero of World War II, was nominated for President, a nominating process then controlled by the GOP's Eastern liberal elites. But the Party's conservatives, based in the Midwest and the West, tired of losing under Eastern liberal elites like Wendell Willkie (1940, from a small town in Indiana but known as a "Wall Street lawyer") and Dewey (1944 and 1948, from a farm in Michigan but a New York politician), demanded an archconservative running mate. And so Nixon, only 39 years old, was the choice.

It seemed like a bad choice on September 19, when the New York Post -- now an archconservative paper, but, up until the mid-1970s, known as a paper for liberal intellectuals -- blasted a headline about a "Secret Nixon Fund!" which kept him in a lifestyle his Senatorial salary could not afford.

This is the best picture that I could find of the headline.

Outgoing President Truman, speaking for the Democrats, said, "This will help us, but I'm sorry to see it happen, for it lowers public opinion of politics." But the response from their nominee to succeed Truman, Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, was weak: "Condemnation without all the evidence, a practice all too familiar with us, would be wrong."

Letters and telegrams -- the latter being faster than regular mail but slower than 21st Century emails -- came to the Republican National Committee, demanding that Nixon be dropped from the ticket. After 20 years of Democratic Presidents FDR and Truman, Eisenhower was expected to easily defeat the Democratic ticket of Stevenson and his Vice Presidential nominee, Senator John Sparkman of Alabama. And it was also expected to sweep the GOP into control of both houses of Congress. But now, Nixon's presence on the ticket was putting all of that in jeopardy.

So the RNC bought a half-hour block of national television time on NBC, spending $75,000 – over 4 times the cost of the fund – to allow Nixon to explain himself. They rented what was then named the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles.

He laid out what he and his wife Pat had, in terms of bank accounts and assets, and what they owed, proving that, contrary to the general image of Republicans -- and to the fact that Stevenson was from a wealthy family, including his grandfather and namesake, who was Vice President under Grover Cleveland from 1893 to 1897 -- they were not rich, and never had been.

In a nod to a recent scandal that involved campaign donors giving Democratic politicians mink coats to give to their wives, Nixon said, "Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat." And then, Nixon mentioned a gift:

One other thing I probably should tell you, because, if I don't, they'll probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it.

(At this line, Nixon choked up a little.) You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it "Checkers."

And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.

Richard Nixon, holding Checkers

It just so happened that this speech came 8 years to the day after FDR delivered a speech defending "my little dog, Fala." His wife, Eleanor, had inherited Fala, who died earlier in 1952. Perhaps Nixon saw a mention of the Fala speech in a newspaper. Or, maybe another Republican did, and thought that mentioning the greatest Democratic President's dog would get the Democrats' goat.

Having defended himself, Nixon then went into full attack mode, and assailed the Democrats, including Truman, Stevenson, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whom the Republicans directly blamed for "losing China":

I think the only man that can save America at this time is the man that's running for President, on my ticket: Dwight Eisenhower. You say, "Why do I think it is in danger?" And I say, look at the record. Seven years of the Truman-Acheson Administration, and what's happened? Six hundred million people lost to the Communists. And a war in Korea in which we have lost 117,000 American casualties.

And I say to all of you that a policy that results in the loss of 600 million people to the Communists, and a war which cost us 117,000 American casualties, isn't good enough for America. And I say that those in the State Department that made the mistakes which caused that war, and which resulted in those losses, should be kicked out of the State Department just as fast as we get them out of there.

And let me say that I know Mr. Stevenson won't do that, because he defends the Truman policy. And I know that Dwight Eisenhower will do that, and that he will give America the leadership that it needs.

Take the problem of corruption. You've read about "the mess in Washington." Mr. Stevenson can't clean it up, because he was picked by the man, Truman, under whose Administration the mess was made. You wouldn't trust the man who made the mess to clean it up. That's Truman. And, by the same token, you can't trust the man who was picked by the man that made the mess to clean it up. And that's Stevenson.

And so I say, Eisenhower, who owed nothing to Truman, nothing to the big city bosses -- he is the man that can clean up the mess in Washington.

It became known as the Checkers Speech, although Nixon always called it "The Fund Speech" in his various books. He closed with this:

And now, finally, I know that you wonder whether or not I am going to stay on the Republican ticket or resign. Let me say this: I don't believe that I ought to quit, because I am not a quitter. And, incidentally, Pat's not a quitter. After all, her name was Patricia Ryan and she was born on St. Patrick's Day, and you know the Irish never quit. (Nixon was also of Irish descent.)

But the decision, my friends, is not mine. I would do nothing that would harm the possibilities of Dwight Eisenhower to become President of the United States. And, for that reason, I am submitting to the Republican National Committee tonight, through this television broadcast, the decision which it is theirs to make. Let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt. And I am going to ask you to help them decide. Wire and write the Republican National Committee whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off. And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.

Nixon asked viewers to contact the RNC -- not Eisenhower himself, or his campaign staff. That infuriated Eisenhower. But the contacts to the RNC came in 10 to 1 in Nixon's favor. So, the next time they saw each other, late that night, Ike said to him, "Dick, you're my boy!"

Nixon stayed on the ticket. As it turned out, his presence had no effect on the election at all. Eisenhower won in a landslide. On January 20, 1953, 11 days after his 40th birthday, Richard Milhous Nixon was sworn in as Vice President of the United States.

Checkers lived until 1964, never making it to the White House with Nixon when he finally got there in 1968-69. Television saved Nixon's career in 1952, stopped it short in 1960, seemed to end it with his "last press conference" in 1962, revived it in 1968, ended it in 1974, buried his historical reputation with his interviews with David Frost in 1977, and, try as he might, he couldn't use it to save his reputation by the time he died in 1994.

Every so often, after this, we would hear that there was a "New Nixon," one who was not a vicious partisan attack dog. It always turned out to be a hoax. In 1968, his Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, brought up the occasional references to "The New Nixon," and said, "My fellow Americans, anybody who has had his political face lifted that often can't possibly be very new."

After losing the 1960 Presidential election, Nixon set about writing a book about his political experience thus far. He titled it Six Crises, and listed the Checkers/Fund Speech as one of them, along with the Alger Hiss case, President Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack, his troubled 1958 tour of South America, his 1959 "Kitchen Debate" with Nikita Khrushchev, and his defeat to Kennedy.

The El Capitan Theatre opened in 1927, under the name The Hollywood Playhouse, with a seating capacity of 1,500 that has always been maintained. At the time of the Checkers Speech, it was owned by NBC, and was the filming location for The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Lawrence Welk Show, which switched to ABC in 1955; the game show Truth Or Consequences, which launched host Bob Barker to stardom; and one of the earliest TV reality shows, This Is Your Life.

ABC bought the building in 1963, and renamed it The Hollywood Palace, broadcasting a variety show of the same title there from 1964 to 1970, a taped, West Coast, Saturday night counteroffer to CBS' live, New York-based, Sunday night Ed Sullivan Show. ABC moved Welk's show back to the building, but sold the building in 1978. On August 6, 1996, The Ramones played what turned out to be their last show there.

Since 2004, the theater has operated as a dance club under the name Avalon Hollywood. It is at 1735 N. Vine Street, across from the Capitol Records Tower, 1 block from the famous corner of Hollywood & Vine, and 10 blocks east on Hollywood Boulevard from Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

*

September 23, 1952 was a Tuesday. Jim Morrison was born that day. No, not the lead singer for The Doors. This Jim Morrison was a major league infielder, usually a backup, from 1977 to 1988. Also born that day was major league pitcher Dennis Lamp. And this was the day that Rocky Marciano won the Heavyweight Championship of the World, knocking out Jersey Joe Walcott. I have a separate entry for that event.

Only 10 Major League Baseball teams were in action that day:

* A doubleheader was split at Ebbets Field. The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the opener, 5-4. Johnny Rutheford outpitched Karl Drews. George "Shotgun" Shuba hit a home run. This game clinched the National League Pennant for "Dem Bums."

The Phillies won the nightcap, 1-0. Billy Loes pitched 10 shutout innings, and Curt Simmons pitched 11. Johnny Wyrostek doubled home Eddie Waitkus in the top of the 12th, making a winning pitcher out of Kent Peterson, and a losing pitcher out of Jim Hughes.

In the 1st game, Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4 with an RBI; and Duke Snider went 1-for-3 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Both went 0-for-1 in the 2nd game, and then were rested the rest of the way.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Washington Senators, 4-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 10-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Detroit Tigers, 3-1 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Stan Musial doubled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

September 23, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Fala Speech"

September 23, 1944: The President of the United States, running for re-election, makes his dog an issue in the campaign. Why not? They started it.

On April 7, 1940, a litter of Scottish terrier puppies was born at Wilderstein, in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York. This mansion was the home of, among others, Margaret Suckley. Known as Daisy, she lived 10 miles up the Hudson River from Springwood, the Hyde Park home of her 6th cousin, the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whose wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was a 5th cousin, and a niece of a previous President, Theodore Roosevelt. (FDR's own parents, James Roosevelt and Sara Delano, were 6th cousins. The Hudson Valley of the time saw quite a bit of inbreeding, often closer than that.)

Among the puppies was one that Daisy named Big Boy, although Scottish terriers, a.k.a. "Scotties," are not very big. She trained the dog to sit, roll over, and jump. She was closer to FDR than their blood relationship would suggest, although their physical distance wasn't much. (It was rumored that they were, how shall I put this, a little too close, but this has never been proven.) As a Christmas present, she gave the dog to FDR.

FDR, like many members of old, established New York State families, had (and many of those who didn't, claimed) patrilineal Dutch descent. But he also had Scottish descent, with a grandfather named John Aspinwall, and the Scottie reminded him of an ancestor, known as Murray the Outlaw of Falahill. This became the dog's formal name with the American Kennel Club. FDR called him "Fala" for short, and took him back with him to the White House, to which he had just been elected to an unprecedented 3rd term.

Within a few weeks, Fala was taken to a veterinary hospital. As it turned out, he had figured out how to reach the kitchen, and was being overfed. FDR gave orders to everyone, from kitchen staff to West Wing employees: No one but the President was to feed Fala.

In his 2nd campaign for President, in 1936, the Republicans relentlessly attacked FDR. They also attacked Eleanor, for various reasons. They even printed campaign buttons reading, "And that goes for Eleanor, too!" These attacks got harsher in 1940.

As America entered World War II, FDR's sons entered military service. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. served in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, served in combat, commanded the destroyer USS Ulvert M. Moore, and earned the Silver Star (for exposing himself under fire to carry a critically wounded sailor to safety), the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart, and the nickname "Big Moose." FDR Jr. was a legitimate war hero.

Elliott Roosevelt, named for Eleanor's father and TR's brother, was also genuinely heroic in The War. (As my grandmother, who lived through it, explained, "It was always Capital T, Capital W.") He was classified 4-F, unfit for service, due to poor eyesight. He asked his father, as Commander-in-Chief, to overrule this so he could serve. He was given a Captain's commission in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and flew 89 combat missions, earning the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He later became, like actor and hero pilot Jimmy Stewart, a Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

James Roosevelt, named for FDR's father, was already a military aide to his father before the attack on Pearl Harbor got America into The War, a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served in combat in the Makin Raid (at what's now named Butaritari, in the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati) of August 17, 1942, received the Navy Cross (then as now, the Marines were part of the Department of the Navy), was promoted to full Colonel, and became a postwar Brigadier General in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Youngest son John Aspinwall Roosevelt was talked out of seeking conscientious objector status. He received an Ensign's commission in the Navy, and, according to brother James, "John was the only one of us who had no opportunity to lead a fighting unit, yet he, too, served under fire." He received the Bronze Star, and reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander. (Franklin and Eleanor also had a daughter, Anna, and a son, the 1st Franklin Jr., who died as an infant.)

Any or all of the 4 Roosevelt sons could have taken the easy way out. They could have gotten out of serving, by taking necessary (or "necessary") government jobs. They could have been given military posts that would have kept them stateside, or even in either the European or the Pacific Theater of Operations, but away from combat. Indeed, James already had a stateside, non-combat post. But they all served in combat, all were legitimately decorated, Franklin Jr. was wounded, and all but John were awarded commands.

Still, as FDR ran for a 4th term, the Republicans, who had nominated Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York for President and Governor John Bricker of Ohio for Vice President (with the slogan, "Win the war quicker with Dewey and Bricker"), noted that all 4 sons started out as officers, not enlisted men working their way up. Which, as college graduates (except for Elliott: He refused to attend college, but the other 3 graduated from Harvard like their father), they were qualified to do, if not entitled.

Noting that all but John had received commands, and that any Naval officer who commands any unit is addressed by his crew as "Captain," regardless of his actual rank, the GOP made campaign buttons reading, "I wanna be a Cap'n too!" Never mind that Elliott and James weren't even in the Navy.

It got worse. There was a "whispering campaign" that FDR was dying. As it turned out, he was: The stress of The War, and his incessant smoking, had given him heart disease and very high blood pressure. But the details were kept out of reach of the media.

The GOP even spread a rumor that, while on an inspection tour of a base in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, FDR had left Fala behind, and had, at significant cost to U.S. taxpayers, ordered a destroyer to get Fala and bring him back to the mainland. The story spoke to both corruption and a sense of entitlement on the Roosevelts' part.

The story was a total lie, as Republican rumors about the Democrats tend to be. FDR was angry. But Orson Welles, a great actor and director but not really known for comedy, suggested to the President that he use comedy on the Republicans.

In those days, before Primaries became deciding factors, and before "exploratory committees" became vital, Presidential campaigns didn't start nearly 2 years before the election. Sometimes, candidates didn't launch their official campaigns until after their nominating conventions. FDR not only could do this in 1944, but, given The War, he pretty much had to.

And so, his 1st campaign speech took place on September 23, in Washington, at a dinner of the International Teamsters Union, to emphasize his long connection with the labor unions. It lasted half an hour, and was broadcast by all American radio networks. He made the audience laugh, both in the room and in the living rooms:

Well, here we are, together again, after four years. And what years they have been!

You know, I am actually four years older, which is a fact that seems to annoy some people. In fact, in the mathematical field, there are millions of Americans who are more than eleven years older than when we started in to clear up the mess that was dumped in our laps in 1933.

We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor – who even attack labor as unpatriotic – they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason, they change their tune, every four years, just before Election Day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor, and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends...

The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the Depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.

Now, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but I am afraid that, in this case, it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud!...

Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not. We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus, but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on his back.

He moved on to foreign policy, and the conduct of The War:

There are some politicians who kept their heads buried deep in the sand while the storms of Europe and Asia were headed our way, who said that the Lend-Lease bill "would bring an end to free government in the United States," and who said, "only hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy, or Japan contemplates war on us."

These very men are now asking the American people to entrust to them the conduct of our foreign policy and our military policy. What the Republican leaders are now saying in effect is this: "Oh, just forget what we used to say. We have changed our minds now. We have been reading the public opinion polls about these things, and now we know what the American people want."

And if that wasn't enough, he addressed the rumor about his dog:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala!

Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them!

FDR, and Daniel J. Tobin,

President of the International Teamsters Union

FDR waited for the laughter to subside, to provide the full effect for the radio audience, and continued:

You know, Fala is Scotch, and, being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers -- in Congress, and out -- had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian Island, and had sent a destroyer back to find him, at a cost to the taxpayers of two, or three, or eight, or twenty million dollars... his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since.

The next line wasn't funny in the slightest, but it still drew laughter from the room:

I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself. But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog!

After that, Dewey's only chance was if FDR had died before the election. He did not. But he did die on April 12, 1945, less than 3 months into his 4th and final term.

After his death, Eleanor took Fala home with her to Val-Kill, her home in Hyde Park. (She and Franklin each had separate "retreats" away from the main Hudsonside mansion, Springwood. His was called Top Cottage.) Once, in her nationally-syndicated newspaper column, My Day, she wrote, "Fala accepted me after my husband's death, but I was just someone to put up with until the master should return."

Eleanor and Fala, 1951

In 1952, Fala's health began to fail. He was euthanized on April 5, 2 days before his 12th birthday, and was laid to rest on the grounds of Springwood, next to a previous Roosevelt dog, Chief, not far from where Franklin was buried, and where Eleanor would follow in 1962. Statues of Fala were placed at the entrance to the visitor's center at the FDR Library on the Springwood grounds, and at the FDR Memorial in Washington.

The FDR Memorial

Fala remains the most famous Presidential pet, though not for a lack of trying. On September 23, 1952, 8 years to the day after the Fala Speech, when his integrity was challenged, Richard Nixon, then the Republican nominee for Vice President, mentioned a gift he'd received from a supporter: A cocker spaniel that his daughter, Tricia, had named Checkers. The intention was to remind people of Fala, thinking it would annoy Democrats and thrill Republicans. Checkers lived until 1964, not making it into the White House when Nixon was eventually elected President in 1968.

Both George Bushes had dogs, and when the father's dog (actually, his wife Barbara's dog) Millie had puppies, the father said, "Those puppy pictures saved my first hundred days!" One of those puppies was adopted by the son, who named it Ranger after the baseball team he owned. By the time George W. became President, he had his own Scottish terrier, named Barney.

*

September 23, 1944 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 7-2 at League Park in Cleveland. Nick Etten hit a home run in support of Bill Bevens. Most of the Yankees' stars were serving, including Joe DiMaggio and Red Ruffing in the Army Air Force, Bill Dickey and Phil Rizzuto in the Navy, Tommy Henrich in the Coast Guard, and Charlie Keller in the Merchant Marine. Yogi Berra was also in the Navy, but hadn't yet made his major league debut. He had already participated in the D-Day invasion, and would become the only man who had done so to also play in the major leagues. Indians ace Bob Feller was in the Navy.

* The New York Giants lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-4 at the Polo Grounds. Mel Ott, both player and manager by this point, was too old to be drafted. However, he did not put himself into this game.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 12-3 at Ebbets Field. Manager Leo Durocher had retired as a player, and was too old to be drafted. But Pee Wee Reese, his successor as shortstop and already the team's Captain, was in the Navy, as was Cookie Lavagetto. Pete Reiser was in the Army. So was Jackie Robinson, but the Dodgers didn't know about him yet, unless they knew he'd played college football at UCLA.

* The Boston Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-0 at Braves Field in Boston. Al Javery pitched a 6-hit shutout. Warren Spahn had made his debut for the Braves in 1942, but didn't win a single game, then went into Army, where he was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. Then he came back, and won 363 games in the major leagues.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Stan Musial went 2-for-4. The Cards were hit less by the manpower drain of The War than any other team. Hence, they won the National League Pennant every year from 1942 to 1946, except 1945, the year that Musial was in the Navy. However, they did lose Enos Slaughter to the Army Air Corps, where he served in action in the Pacific.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-2 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Tigers superstar Hank Greenberg was in the Army, while the Red Sox' Ted Williams was in the Marines.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Washington Senators, 5-4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* And the St. Louis Browns, about to win their one and only Pennant under that name, beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

All NFL games that weekend were played the next day. And it was too early for the basketball and hockey seasons. But there were college football games played that day. Among them:

* Army, understandably on its way to the National Championship, did not open its season until the following week. Nor did Navy, also understandably one of the best teams in the country. They would be ranked Number 2 when they faced Number 1 Army at Municipal Stadium in Baltimore, a game won by Army. Notre Dame also did not open its season until the following week, and would also be Number 2 when they lost to Number 1 Army.

* Ohio State did not open its season until the next week. It won the Big Ten Conference title and finished undefeated. It did not play in a bowl game, and was ranked Number 2 behind Army.

* Oklahoma did not open its season until the next week. It won the Big Six Conference title (a forerunner of the Big 12), but did not play in a bowl game.

* Georgia Tech did not open its season until the next week. It won the Southeastern Conference title.

* Two other SEC teams went to bowl games that season. Tennessee did not open its season until the next week. Like Georgia Tech, they went undefeated in SEC play, and did not play Tech, but a tie with Alabama cost them the title.

* Alabama also did not open its season until the next week. Despite going 3-1-2 in SEC play, they were 5-2-2 overall, and were invited to the Sugar Bowl.

* Duke beat the University of Richmond, 61-7 at Duke Stadium (now Wallace Wade Stadium) in Durham, North Carolina. then they lost 4 straight games, although 1 was to Army and the other was to Navy. They won the Southern Conference title, a precursor to the Atlantic Coast Conference, and beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. (It could have been called the Wallace Wade Bowl, since Wade had coached both schools.)

* The University of Tulsa beat North Texas Agricultural, now known as the University of Texas at Arlington, 47-6 at Skelly Field in Tulsa. They went on to beat Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl.

* Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) beat West Texas State (now West Texas A&M), 41-6 at Lewis Field (now Boone Pickens Stadium) in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

* Texas Christian beat Kansas, 7-0 on neutral ground at Ruppert Stadium, later renamed Kansas City Municipal Stadium. TCU won the Southwest Conference title, but lost to Oklahoma A&M in the Cotton Bowl.

* The University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles played to a 13-13 tie at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. USC rebounded from this, and, due to wartime travel restrictions, played only on the West Coast, including a rematch with UCLA, winning 40-13, to win the Pacific Coast Conference, a forerunner of the Pac-12. USC went on to beat Tennessee in the Rose Bowl.

* There wasn't much local action in the New York Tri-State Area. In New York City, Fordham suspended its program for the duration of The War. Columbia opened its season the following week, New York University (NYU) the week after that. In New Jersey, Rutgers only played 5 games, and didn't play their 1st until October 28. Princeton only played 3 games, and didn't start until November 11.