December 16, 1974: “The Towering Inferno” Premieres

December 16, 1974: The Towering Inferno premieres, directed by John Guillerman and produced by Irwin Allen, "The Master of Disaster." Within the past 2 years, the 1,368-foot, 110-story World Trade Center had opened in New York; the 1,454-foot, 110-story Sears Tower had opened in Chicago; and the 1,815-foot CN Tower in Toronto, with a 1,122-foot-high observation deck, had begun construction.

It's a film with "a cast of thousands." Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were two of the biggest stars in the movies at the time, and each wanted top billing. So a compromise was reached: Their names were staggered on the posters, so that McQueen was listed on the left, but Newman's name was higher, allowing each man to claim top billing. Each man was paid $1 million -- about $5.75 million in 2022 money.

The film was based on the novels The Tower by Richard Martin Stern, and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. In the film, the skyscraper is known as the Glass Tower, designed by architect Doug Roberts (Newman). It's 1,688 feet high (a height that wouldn't be reached in real life until 2007) and 138 stories above the streets of San Francisco.

The Tower's electrical system gets overloaded, and a fire starts on the 81st floor. McQueen plays Battalion Chief Michael O'Hallorhan, leading the firefighters. Maureen McGovern, previously in Allen's disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, plays a singer, and, as she did in the previous film with "The Morning After" (which hit Number 1 for her in 1973), sings the theme song.

Older stars: Fred Astaire, William Holden, Jennifer Jones, Olan Soule. Younger stars: Richard Chamberlain, Dabney Coleman, Faye Dunaway, Susan Flannery, Mike Lookinland, Felton Perry, Gregory Sierra, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner... and football star O.J. Simpson.

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December 16, 1974 was a Monday. Despite this, ABC did not air a Monday Night Football game, having aired a Saturday night game 2 nights earlier. Baseball was out of season. No games were played in the NBA, the ABA, the NHL or the WHA. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 27, 1976: "Network" Premieres

Peter Finch as Howard Beale

November 27, 1976: The film Network premieres, directed by Sidney Lumet, with a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. It becomes recognized as a great satire of the television industry -- and, sadly, all too prophetic about what TV would become.

Howard Beale is the anchorman for the evening news at fictional network UBS, the United Broadcasting Service. (He was played by Peter Finch, born in London, raised in Sydney, Australia, but made a good New Yorker.) On September 23, 1975, he announces, live on the air, that he's going to commit suicide in one week's time, also live on the air.

He and his best friend, his producer, Max Schumacher (William Holden), are sure he'll be fired, maybe committed. But the network gets so many phone calls that they're sure the ratings for the next night will be through the roof. So Howard is given one last broadcast. He begins it as follows:

Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast.

Yesterday, I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide -- admittedly, an act of madness.

Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit.

(He pauses.) Am I still on the air? (He sees the red light on the camera is still on, and knows he is, and resumes.)

I really don't know any other way to say it, other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone, somewhere, who does know. That's the God bullshit.

And then, there's the noble man bullshit: That man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit.

I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was married for thirty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So, I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.

The switchboard at network HQ lights up like a pinball machine. People want Beale kept. He's kept. The ratings go through the roof. And then comes the night when he shows up without having gotten dressed and made up for the broadcast, still wearing his raincoat, his hair soaked with rain, and he says this:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work, or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street. And there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe, and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad. Worse than bad: They're crazy. It's like everything, everywhere, is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and, slowly, the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least, leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that, first, you've got to get mad! You've got to say, '"I'm a human being, God damn it! My life has value!"

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up, right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

I want you to get up, right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But, first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

And, all over the country, people do it. And, instead of getting Beale the help his clear mental breakdowns need, the network, particularly executive Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), exploit him. She and Max have an affair, she leaving the boyfriend she has at the start of the film, he leaving his wife. But he dumps her at the end. Noticing that she's roughly the same age as television itself (Dunaway was born in 1941), he tells her:

You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you.

Including Howard Beale. She sees to it that he gets his own prime-time show where he can say whatever he wants. But then, he exposes ties between the corporation that owns the network and business interests in Saudi Arabia, whose oil price hikes had caused the nasty recession of 1973-75, which Beale calls "the depression."

Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the network's chairman, takes advantage of Beale's deteriorating mind, and tells him that the only true god is money. Beale believes him, and changes his tune, and starts telling the people that their lives don't have value, and humanity is in irreversible decline. And so, his ratings go down.

And so, having caused Beale to fall into their trap, and give them what they consider to be just cause, the network hires terrorists to assassinate Beale: He gets the on-air death he predicted, but not how. The voice-over narration by actor Lee Richardson concludes by saying, "This is the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."

Sadly, life came all too close to imitating art: Peter Finch suffered a heart attack and died on January 14, 1977, at the age of 60, just a few weeks after the movie premiered. This is the story of Peter Finch, the first instance of a human being who won a posthumous Academy Award for acting in a leading role. Dunaway also won an Oscar, for Best Actress.

Network taught real-life TV networks the wrong lesson. Beale's show, and Diana's and Jensen's responses to it, led to "reality TV" and Fox News Channel, where the truth doesn't matter, even when you call it "the news."

Paddy Chayefsky, also the author of the novels that became the films Marty and Altered States, died of cancer, even younger than Finch, age 58 -- on August 1, 1981, the day that MTV debuted. What a twist of fate that was!

William Holden also died in 1981, Wesley Addy in 1996, Lee Richardson in 1999, Beatrice Straight in 2001, Sidney Lumet in 2011, Conchata Ferrell in 2020, and Ned Beatty in 2021. As of November 27, 2022, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall are still alive. So is Kathy Cronkite, daughter of CBS anchorman Walter. She tended to be cast in politically-themed films, including this one, before leaving acting to become a psychologist. Her father, ABC anchorman Howard K. Smith, and NBC anchorman John Chancellor are all shown in the film, at the beginning, and at the end. (UPDATE: Duvall died in 2026.)

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November 27, 1976 was a Saturday. Actor Jaleel White, best known for playing Steve Urkel on the sitcom Family Matters, was born.

It was Thanksgiving weekend, and the conclusion of college football's rivalry week. Among the games played were these:

* The day before, in a big rivalry, Number 1 University of Pittsburgh beat Number 16 Penn State, 24-7 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* Also the day before, in another big rivalry, Number 8 Oklahoma beat Number 10 Nebraska, 20-17 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

* Number 3 Southern California (USC) beat Number 13 Notre Dame, 17-13 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* Rivalry: Number 4 Georgia beat Georgia Tech, 13-10 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia.

* Rivalry: Number 7 Houston beat Rice, 42-20 at Rice Stadium in Houston.

* Number 9 Texas Tech beat Arkansas, 30-7 at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas.

* Rivalry: Number 18 Alabama beat Auburn, 38-7 at Legion Field in Birmingham.

* Rivalry: Boston College beat Holy Cross, 59-6 at Alumni Stadium outside Boston in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

* Rivalry: Tennessee beat Vanderbilt, 13-10 at Dudley Field (now FirstBank Stadium) in Nashville, Tennessee.

* Rivalry: Arizona State beat Arizona, 27-10 at Arizona Stadium in Tucson.

* And in the greatest rivalry of them all, Navy beat Army, 38-10 at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia.

There were 8 games played in the NBA: 

* The New York Knicks lost to the Boston Celtics, 123-109 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Mets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 96-91 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Buffalo Braves, 101-94 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Houston Rockets beat the San Antonio Spurs, 125-116 at The Summit (now the Lakewood Church Central Campus) in Houston.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-104 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Indiana Pacers, 122-113 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. David Thompson led all scorers on the day with 37 points,

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 119-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Washington Bullets, 103-95 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

There were 6 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 4-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The New York Islanders beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-1 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Washington Capitals, 6-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Buffalo Sabres, 3-2 at the St. Louis Arena.

* The and the Montreal Canadiens beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Cleveland Barons, the Vancouver Canucks, the Atlanta Flames and the Colorado Rockies were not scheduled.

There were 5 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The Minnesota Fighting Saints beat the New England Whalers, 3-1 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Indianapolis Racers beat the Quebec Nordiques, 8-2 at the Colisée de Québec.

* The Cincinnati Stingers beat the Birmingham Bulls, 2-1 at the Riverfront Coliseum (now the Heritage Bank Center) in Cincinnati.

* The Phoenix Roadrunners beat the Edmonton Oilers, 4-2 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the San Diego Mariners beat the Calgary Cowboys, 2-0 at the Stampede Corral in Calgary.

And in English soccer, North London's Arsenal went to the Midlands, and beat Coventry City, 2-1 at Highfield Road in Coventry.

August 13, 1967: “Bonnie and Clyde” Premieres

Faye Dunaway (left) and Warren Beatty

August 13, 1967: Bonnie and Clyde premieres, directed by Arthur Penn, and starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Also starring Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Estelle Parsons, and, in his 1st film, Gene Wilder.

Unlike the 1920s, and every other decade in the 20th Century from the 1940s onward, there was never really a "nostalgia wave" for the 1930s, because of the Great Depression. The TV version of The Untouchables was more of a "Roaring Twenties" thing, and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which came out in 1969, was not exactly a romanticization of the period.

Even the Godfather movies, released a few years later, ignored the 1930s, when, according to Mario Puzo's novel, the Corleone family really became powerful, looking rather at their 1920s origins and their 1940s and '50s difficulties. Nor did Chinatown, released in 1974 but taking place in 1934, try to make the era look glamorous.

Indeed, Bonnie and Clyde might be "the exception that proves the rule": While it understated the reality of the actions of the real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and overdid the romance angle -- it was still Hollywood, after all -- Penn refused to shy away from how hard life was, for both the victims and the perpetrators, including the ending.

This film was one of the most violent ever released to that point, and was a direct challenge to the longstanding Hays Code. Within a year, the Code was gone, and the MPAA rating system (G, PG, R, X) was put into place.

And the film opened the door to things like "revisionist Westerns" and "anti-heroes." Without Bonnie and Clyde, it would have been a lot harder to make the aforementioned Godfather films (with James Caan's Sonny Corleone taking as many bullets in his ambush as Bonnie and Clyde combined took in theirs), the aforementioned Chinatown, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Easy Rider, Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, vigilante films like Death Wish and Walking Tall, and "blaxploitation films" like Shaft and Coffy, and even comedies like Silver Streak and Smokey and the Bandit.

Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for 9 Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Actor for Beatty, since he was also the producer, and that's who Best Picture goes to, the winning film's producer (or producers); Best Director for Penn; Best Actress for Dunaway; Best Supporting Actor for Hackman and Pollard; Best Supporting Actress for Parsons; Best Original Screenplay for David Newman and Robert Benton; Best Cinematography for Burnett Guffey; and Best Costume Design, as prominent period pieces usually get nominated for, for Theadora Van Runkle. But only Parsons and Guffey won.

How many people did the real Barrow Gang kill? It's not clear, but at least 9 police officers died as a result of their actions, before the FBI finally ambushed them in Louisiana in 1934.

It was because of his clothes, including fedoras that made them think of Beatty in this film, that made his New York Knick teammates call Walt Frazier "Clyde."

Arthur Penn, and starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Also starring Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Estelle Parsons, and, in his 1st film, Gene Wilder.

Penn died in 2010, Wilder in 2016, Pollard in 2019. As of August 13, 2022, Dunaway, Beatty, Hackman and Parsons are still alive. (UPDATE: Hackman died in 2025.)

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August 13, 1967 was a Sunday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 15-11 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Yes, that's a baseball score, not a football score. Fred Talbot only lasted 4 innings, while Sam McDowell lasted under 6. Fritz Peterson ended up as the winning pitcher.

Bob Tillman hit the only Yankee home run, going 2-for-5 with 6 RBIs. Horace Clarke went 4-for-6 with 2 RBIs. Rubén Amaro went 4-for-4 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs. These are not names normally associated with the Yankees. Mickey Mantle, who is, went 1-for-2 with 4 walks. Max Alvis hit 2 homers for the Tribe.

* The New York Mets swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-0 and 11-9. In the opener, rookie Tom Seaver pitched a 4-hit shutout. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 in the opener, and drew a walk as a pinch-hitter in the nightcap. Over the 2 games, Willie Stargell went 3-for-8 with a home run, a walk, and 2 RBIs.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros, 8-4 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron hit his 471st career home run.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Sammy Ellis pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Don Drysdale. Pete Rose went 2-for-4.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 3-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 1-for-3 with a walk. Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson both went 0-for-4.

* The Chicago Cubs swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2 and 1-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Fergie Jenkins pitched a 4-hit shutout int he 2nd game, outpitching Rick Wise. Over the 2 games, Ernie Banks went 1-for-7.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-2 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-3 with a walk. Rookie Rod Carew did not play.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Willie Mays went 1-for-4.

* The Washington Senators beat the Kansas City Athletics, 2-0 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Frank Bertaina pitched a 5-hit shutout.

* And the California Angels beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4.