December 29, 1933: The Debut of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

December 29, 1933: The film Flying Down to Rio premieres. It is the 2nd film for Fred Astaire, the 22nd film of Ginger Rogers, and their 1st film together.

Frederick Austerlitz was born on May 10, 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska. Sidney Zion, a columnist for the New York Daily News, listed him as one of "The Century Seven," 7 people born in 1899, the last year of the 19th Century, whose work guided American popular culture through much of the 20th Century. They were: Duke Ellington, born on April 29; Fred Astaire, May 10; James Cagney, July 17; Alfred Hitchcock, August 13; Hoagy Carmichael, November 22; Noël Coward, December 16; and Humphrey Bogart, December 25.

He started dancing professionally with his sister, Adele. Their mother suggested a change of surname to "Astaire," after an uncle's nickname. In 1914, Fred met the brothers George and Ira Gershwin, and they worked together for the rest of George's life.

Virginia Katherine McMath was born on June 16, 1911 in Independence, Missouri, outside Kansas City. Independence became famous as her hometown before it became known as the hometown of President Harry S Truman: He was 27 years older, but she became nationally famous first.

A cousin had trouble saying, "Virginia," and it came out "Ginger." When her parents split up, and her mother remarried, Ginger took her stepfather's surname, Rogers. She was discovered in 1925 by vaudeville legend Eddie Foy.

In 1930, the Gershwins' musical Girl Crazy debuted on Broadway. Rogers appeared in it, and Astaire helped with the choreography. They met then, but they didn't star together until Flying Down to Rio. Despite being 12 years younger, Rogers actually become a film star first, earlier in the year, with Gold Diggers of 1933, with its signature song, "We're In the Money."

Fred & Ginger made 10 films together. Flying Down to Rio in 1933; The Gay Divorcee, featuring the song "Night and Day," in 1934; Roberta, featuring "I Won't Dance (Don't Ask Me)" and "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," and Top Hat, featuring the title song and "Cheek to Cheek," in 1935; Follow the Fleet and Swing Time, the latter featuring "The Way You Look Tonight," in 1936; Shall We Dance, featuring "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "They Can't Take That Away From Me," in 1937; Carefree in 1938; The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, featuring "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," in 1939; and The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949.

Despite playing real-life couples in the last 2, they were never romantically involved with each other. With the rise of feminism in the 1970s, a joke developed: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels."

Rogers retired from acting in 1965, and ran a ranch in Oregon. Astaire continued to dance into the 1970s, and acted as late as 1981. Rogers married and divorced 5 times, and had no children. Astaire married, was widowed, and, many years later, married the much younger female horse-racing jockey Robyn Smith. Fred Astaire Jr. became a pilot and (interestingly, like Rogers but not his father) a rancher. Ava Astaire maintains her father's commercial legacy.

Astaire died on June 22, 1987, at the age of 88, the last survivor of the men that Sidney Zion called "The Century Seven." Rogers died on April 25, 1995, at 83. As of December 29, 2022, both Astaire children are still alive.

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December 29, 1933 was a Friday. This was also the day the Laurel & Hardy film Sons of the Desert premiered. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball and football were in the off-season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And while the NHL season was in progress, no games were scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

December 26, 1951: "The African Queen" Premieres

Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart

December 26, 1951: The African Queen premieres, based on the 1935 novel by C.S. Forester, and directed by John Huston. It stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

The film is set in August 1914, in German East Africa (now the nations of Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania). Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) and his sister Rose (Hepburn) are British missionaries. They are occasionally supplied by the steamboat African Queen, piloted by Charlie Allnut, not exactly a missionary's kind of guy. (He was a Cockney in the book, but Bogart didn't think he could do the accent, so the character was rewritten as a Canadian, so he was still a citizen of the British Empire.)

Charlie tells them that war has broken out (the one that would later be known as World War I), and that they should get out of German territory. They refuse, but German colonial troops burn down the village, and Samuel is killed. Charlie helps Rose bury him, and takes her upriver.

Charlie says the British are unable to attack the Germans because of the presence of a large gunboat, the Königin Luise (Queen Louise, named for the wife of King Frederick William III of Prussia), patrolling a large lake downriver. Rose comes up with a plan to convert the African Queen into a torpedo boat, and sink the Königin Luise. After first thinking that she's nuts, Charlie goes along with the plan.

The Königin Luise returns, and Charlie and Rose steam the African Queen out onto the lake in darkness, intending to set her on a collision course. A strong storm strikes, causing water to pour into the African Queen through the torpedo holes. Eventually the boat capsizes, throwing Charlie and Rose into the water. Charlie loses sight of Rose in the storm.

Charlie is captured and taken aboard the Königin Luise, where he is interrogated by German officers. Believing that Rose has drowned, he makes no attempt to defend himself against accusations of spying, and the German captain sentences him to death by hanging. Rose is brought aboard the ship just after Charlie's sentence is pronounced. The captain questions her, and Rose proudly confesses the plot to sink the Königin Luise, deciding that they have nothing to lose. The captain sentences her to be executed with Charlie, both as British spies.

Charlie asks the German captain to marry them before they are executed, as is allowed by the law of most countries. The captain agrees, and after conducting the briefest of marriage ceremonies, is about to carry out the execution when the Königin Luise is rocked by a series of explosions, quickly capsizing. The ship has struck the overturned submerged hull of the African Queen and detonated the torpedoes. The newly married couple is able to escape the sinking ship and swim to safety together.

Much of the film was shot on location in Uganda and the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). This was unusual for that era, especially for a color film that used large, cumbersome "Three-Strip" cameras. The cast and crew endured sickness and spartan living conditions during their time on location, and Huston used his off-time to do a lot of hunting. This led to Clint Eastwood directing and starring in the thinly-disguised 1990 film White Hunter Black Heart.

Hepburn got sick. Bogart later said that he and Huston were the only members of the cast and crew who didn't, because they were drinking whiskey, not the local water. Given Bogie's well-known proclivities, I believe him.

The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards: Bogart for Best Actor, Hepburn for Best Actress, Huston for Best Director, and Huston and James Agee for Best Screenplay. Only Bogart won. It was his only win.

The small steamboat used to depict the African Queen was contemporary to the time, built in 1912 in Britain, for service in Africa. At one time it was owned by actor Fess Parker, best known for playing Davy Crockett. The boat was restored, and is now on display in another location connected with Bogart: Key Largo, Florida.

In 1977, CBS aired a TV-movie with the same title, but as a sequel to the original film, with Warren Oates as Charlie and Mariette Hartley as Rose. The film was meant as the pilot for a series, but it was not picked up.

In 1999, Shakespeare in Love won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In that film, Judi Dench played Queen Elizabeth I. The ceremony was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, who came out in costume as Elizabeth I, complete with whiteface makeup, and said, "I am the African Queen!"

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December 26, 1951 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Milwaukee Hawks, 78-76 at the Baltimore Coliseum. This was the 1st half of a doubleheader. The Knicks had reached the NBA Finals the previous year, and would again, while the Hawks were a lousy team, and moved to St. Louis in 1955, and then to Atlanta in 1968. Nevertheless, the Hawks won this game.

* In the nightcap, the Baltimore Bullets beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 103-99 in triple overtime. So fans could pay for 48 minutes of basketball, and ended up getting 111 minutes.

* And the Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Boston Celtics, 94-86 at North Side High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As late as 1952, an NBA team was playing its home games in a high school gymnasium.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 1-0 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Boston Bruins and the Chicago Black Hawks were not scheduled.

And in English soccer, at a time when teams played back-to-back, home-and-home games on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, North London team Arsenal had beaten Hampshire team Portsmouth 4-1 the day before, but Portsmouth gained a 1-1 draw on this day, at Fratton Park.

December 23, 1971: "Dirty Harry" Premieres

December 23, 1971: The film Dirty Harry premieres, directed by Don Siegel. Clint Eastwood, having already created one iconic film character with his Western hero known only as "The Man With No Name," creates another: Inspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department.

As with SFPD Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, played by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt, Callahan was based on Inspector Dave Toschi (1931-2018), who worked on the case of the serial killer known as the Zodiac, a case that, to this day, has never been solved.

In Dirty Harry, the killer becomes known as The Scorpio Killer. He is played by Andy Robinson. Robinson got so much hate mail from this role that he had to change his Screen Actors Guild name to Andrew J. Robinson. He is now best known for having played Elim Garak -- not a tinker, but a tailor, a soldier, and a spy -- on the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The film includes Callahan chasing Scorpio through San Francisco's trolley system, and also through Kezar Stadium, which had been the home of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers from 1946 to 1970.

Twice during the film -- once near the beginning after breaking up a robbery, and again near the end, facing Scorpio down -- Callahan delivers these lines, written by the husband-and-wife team of Harry and Rita Fink:

I know what you're thinking, punk: "Did he fire six shots, or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.

But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?"

Well, do ya, punk?

The first time, the robber doesn't feel lucky, and puts his gun down, but says, "Hey, I got to know." Callahan pulls the trigger, but the gun is empty. The second time, Scorpio feels lucky, and goes for his gun. As it turned out, Callahan had one bullet left, and used it. Both outcomes suggest that Callahan was lying, and that he knew exactly how many bullets were left both times.

Eastwood was 41 years old at the time, a little young to be an Inspector in a major city's police department, equivalent to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Navy and Colonel in the other branches of the U.S. armed forces. For comparison's sake: In the last episode of the TV series Barney Miller, in 1982, Barney was 52, and had been a Captain in the NYPD for at least the last 7 years, and, after having been passed over a couple of times, was promoted to Deputy Inspector.

A sequel to Dirty Harry was made in 1973, titled Magnum Force. This was followed by The Enforcer in 1976. In 1983, Sudden Impact was released. It led to Dirty Harry's other well-known quote. Callahan was no longer a 1970s-style "antihero": He was a hero for the Reagan Years. He was no longer interested in whether you felt lucky. He was giving you a direct order, punk: "Go ahead. Make my day."

In 1984, Eastwood starred as a New Orleans detective, Wes Block, in Tightrope. When asked if Block was like Dirty Harry, he said, "I don't think Dirty Harry would even like this guy."

The 5th and last Dirty Harry film came in 1988, The Dead Pool. By this point, Eastwood was 58 years old, and too old to be playing a cop running around chasing killers. But advancing age didn't stop him from playing a very active Secret Service Agent in the 1993 film In the Line of Fire.

Then again, Roger Moore last played James Bond at 58, and was mocked for being too old to do so. Eastwood last played Harry Callahan at 58, and nobody said anything. As 2022 comes to a close, Tom Cruise is 60, and filming movies in his Mission: Impossible franchise; Liam Neeson, who co-starred in The Dead Pool, is playing Raymond Chandler's private eye Philip Marlowe in Marlowe, still taking down bad guys at 70; and Harrison Ford is filming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at 80. Only Ford is facing mockery about his age.

Dirty Harry was released 4 days after the film version of A Clockwork Orange. How would Harry Callahan have handled Alex DeLarge?

Today, the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum, with a bullet .06 inches wider than the .44, is considered the most powerful handgun in the world.

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December 23, 1971 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was in the middle of its Playoffs. There 3 were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 120-117 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Walt Frazier scored 36 points.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 115-110 at the Cleveland Arena. 

* And the Chicago Bulls beat the Phoenix Suns, 117-108 in overtime at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

There were 5 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The New York Nets lost to the Pittsburgh Condors, 124-123 in overtime at the Island Garden in West Hempstead, New York. John Brisker scored 44 for the Condors.

* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Virginia Squires, 139-123 at The Scope in Norfolk, Virginia. Dan Issel matched his uniform number by scoring 44 points.

* The Miami Floridians beat the Carolina Cougars, 125-109 at the Greensboro Coliseum.

* The Utah Stars beat the Memphis Pros, 112-104 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. Willie Wise scored 32 for the Stars.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Denver Rockets, 104-101 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis. Ralph Simpson (not to be confused with Ralph Sampson) scored 37 points in defeat for the team that became the Denver Nuggets in 1974.

There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres played to a tie, 4-4 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

December 21, 1937: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" Premieres

December 21, 1937: Walt Disney Productions' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Directed by David Hand, at 1 hour and 23 minutes, it was the 1st full-length animated feature film.

The source of the Snow White legend has not been definitively found, but most suggestions seem to have come from German-speaking places, such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The Brothers Grimm first published a version in 1812.

Many of the Disney tropes are here: The princess in distress, the dead mother (in this case, the father is dead, too), the evil or "wicked" stepmother (always referred to here as the Queen), a witch-like creature (the Queen transformed into an old woman, although she's never called a "witch" in the film), an odd group of good guys assisting the heroine (the Seven Dwarfs, although the correct plural form is "dwarves"), magic both good (a mirror) and evil (assisting the Queen), a near-death experience for the princess, a "Prince Charming" who saves her, and the film ending as a love story.

Ever since, people have copied the Queen's question: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall: Who's the fairest of them all?" But, as with many other movie quotes, they get it wrong: It's "Magic mirror on the wall... "

The Carthay Circle Theatre also hosted the premiere of Disney's Fantasia in 1940. It was demolished in 1969. A replica was built at Disneyland in Anaheim in 2012. While I'm on the subject: Neither Disney park's castle is officially Snow White's. Disneyland's is said to be Sleeping Beauty's, while the one at Walt Disney World outside Orlando is Cinderella's.

Most people think they can name all 7 Dwarfs, but tend to get stuck on one. The one I usually forget is Bashful. The others are Doc, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy and Dopey.

From 1921 to 1964, the New York Yankees won 29 of the 44 available American League Pennants. From 1938 until the expansion of 1961, some people called the 8-team AL "The Yankees and the Seven Dwarfs."

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December 21, 1937 was a Tuesday. This was a big reason in Hollywood for another reason, although no one would know it for many years: Actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda was born, the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the sister of actor Peter Fonda.

Baseball season was over. The NFL Championship Game had been played 9 days earlier, with the Washington Redskins beating the Chicago Bears. No college football bowl games were played. And the NBA hadn't been founded yet. One game was played in the NHL: The Boston Bruins beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-1 at the Boston Garden. Despite this defeat, the Hawks went on to win the 1938 Stanley Cup.

December 16, 1970: "Love Story" Premieres

December 16, 1970: The film Love Story premieres, based on the novel of that year by Erich Segal, and directed by Arthur Hiller. It becomes one of the most popular films of its time.

Oliver Barrett IV (played by Ryan O'Neal), heir of an American upper-class East Coast family, attends Harvard University, where he plays hockey. He meets Jennifer Cavilleri (Ali McGraw), a quick-witted, working-class student of classical music at adjoining Radcliffe College. At the time, Radcliffe was considered the women's version of Harvard. The schools did not merge until 1977.

Oliver and Jenny fall in love, despite their differences. She accepts his marriage proposal, but his parents are judgmental and unimpressed. Oliver's father (Ray Milland) says he will cut him off financially if he marries Jenny, but after graduation, they marry.

Jenny works as a teacher, but without his father's financial support, the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School. Oliver graduates third in his class, and takes a position at a respectable New York City law firm. Jenny undergoes blood tests, to determine why she hasn't yet conceived a child. Oliver is told the reason: She is terminally ill.

Oliver attempts to continue as normal without telling Jenny of her condition, but she confronts her doctor and finds out the truth. Oliver buys tickets to Paris, which she has always wanted to visit, but she declines to go, wanting only to spend time with him. Oliver seeks money from his estranged father to pay for Jenny's cancer therapy. His father asks if he has "gotten a girl in trouble." Oliver says yes, and his father writes a check.

Jenny makes funeral arrangements with her father from her hospital bed. She tells Oliver to not blame himself, insisting that he never held her back from music, and it was worth it for the love they shared. Jenny's last wish is for Oliver to embrace her tightly as she dies.

A grief-stricken Oliver leaves the hospital and he sees his father outside, who has rushed to New York City from Massachusetts to offer his help after learning about Jenny's condition. Oliver tells him, "Jenny's dead," and his father says "I'm sorry," to which Oliver responds with something that Jenny had once told him: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

The film split public opinion. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 4 stars, and called it "infinitely better than the book." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's the telling that matters: the surfaces and the textures and the charm of the actors. And it is hard to see how these quantities could have been significantly improved upon in Love Story."

But Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune, who would later pair with Ebert to review films on the nationally-syndicated TV show At the Movies with Siskel & Ebert, wrote, "Seeing the characters in the movie... makes us want to know something about them. We get precious little, and love by fiat doesn't work well in film."

Vincent Canby of The New York Times hated it: "The only really depressing thing about Love Story is the thought of all the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it." Judith Crist of New York magazine, which permitted its writers to use profanity, called it "Camille with bullshit."

Despite these criticisms, the film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Hiller, Best Actor for O'Neal, Best Actress for McGraw, Best Supporting Actor for John Marley (for playing Jenny's father, Phil Cavilleri), and Best Screenplay for Segal. But it only won 1, Best Original Score, for Francis Lai.

It launched O'Neal and McGraw to stardom, and helped set the template for what became known as the "chick flick": A movie that women would love, and men would endure to make their women happy. Andy Williams had a hit with "(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story," the film's main song.

In 1971, as a result of the film, Jennifer became the most popular baby girl's name in America. It would hold this position for 14 years. In the 1973-74 TV season, NBC broadcast Love Story, an anthology series. Aside from having the same title, and using the same theme song, it had no connection to the film.

In 1977, Segal wrote a sequel, Oliver's Story. It was filmed in 1978. O'Neal and Ray Milland reprised their roles. Ed Binns replaced Marley as Phil. Oliver tries to lose himself in his work, until he finds love again, with Marcie Bonwit (Candice Bergen), the heir to the Bonwit Teller department store fortune. It doesn't work out, but he does finally reconcile with his father. Suffering from comparisons to the original, Oliver's Story did poorly with both critics and audiences.

Marley died in 1984, Milland in 1986, Binns in 1990, Segal in 2010, Hiller in 2016. As of December 16, 2022, O'Neal and McGraw are still alive. (UPDATE: O'Neal died on December 8, 2023.)

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December 16, 1970 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 108-84 at the Cleveland Arena.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the San Diego Rockets, 128-117 at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum (now the McCamish Pavilion) in Atlanta.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 118-102 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Wilt Chamberlain scored 35 points and grabbed 18 rebounds.

* And the San Francisco Warriors beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 108-91 at the Civic Auditorium (now the Bill Graham Auditorium) in San Francisco.

There were 2 games played in the American Basketball Association. The Kentucky Colonels beat their arch-rivals, the Indiana Pacers, 125-110 at Freedom Hall in Louisville. And the Utah Stars beat the Memphis Pros, 145-101 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City.

And there were 6 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Buffalo Sabres, 4-0 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Los Angeles Kings, 6-4 at the Boston Garden.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the St. Louis Blues, 8-3 at the Chicago Stadium. Stan Mikita scored 4 goals, and the brothers Bobby and Dennis Hull each scored a goal.

* The Montreal Canadiens and the Minnesota North Stars played to a tie, 1-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The California Golden Seals beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-2 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* And the Philadelphia Flyers and the Vancouver Canucks were not scheduled.

December 15, 1944: "Hollywood Canteen" Premieres

Joan Crawford and Dane Clark

December 15, 1944: Hollywood Canteen premieres, providing World War II-era audiences with more stars than General Patton could shake his riding crop at.

It was technically a companion film (if not a sequel) to the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen. The real-life Stage Door Canteen operated at the 44th Street Theatre at 216 West 44th Street in New York from March 2, 1942 to December 31, 1945, after which the building was demolished.

Its West Coast equivalent, the Hollywood Canteen, was at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard, just south of Sunset Boulevard, in Los Angeles, running from October 3, 1942 to November 22, 1945 (Thanksgiving Day). The club offered food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen, usually on their way overseas. It was open to servicemen of allied countries, as well as women in all branches of service, and admission, and everything else, was free to those in uniform.

The driving forces behind its creation were actors Bette Davis and John Garfield, along with Jules Stein, President of Music Corporation of America. (Not to be confused with Jule Styne, a great songwriter of that era.) The movie, directed by Delmer Davis, was filmed on location, and starred Davis, Garfield, and, among others, these performers, all of whom had volunteered for the real thing, in alphabetical order: The Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Kitty Carlisle, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Dorsey (but not his brother Tommy), Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Malone, Janis Paige, Barbara Stanwyck and Jane Wyman.

And, yes, in his role of Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, Jackie Gleason was right: Hollywood Canteen was produced by Warner Brothers, and it premiered the cowboy song "Don't Fence Me In," written by Cole Porter, and introduced by… Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers! They also sang their theme song, "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds." Roy even rode his famed horse Trigger onstage.

Oh, yes, there's an actual plot among the musical numbers. But, the place being Hollywood, and the time being World War II, it's not a complicated plot: Robert Hutton plays Slim Green, the 1 millionth "GI" to be admitted, and he wins a date with actress Joan Leslie. He's on leave with his buddy, Sergeant Nolan, played by Dane Clark, who gets to dance with Crawford.

Speaking of whom: If you're looking for evidence of the feud between Crawford and Davis, you won't find any in this film.

A CNN studio and a parking lot are now on the site of the Hollywood Canteen.

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December 15, 1944 was a Friday. It was also the day that the Battle of the Bulge began, Glenn Miller disappeared over the English Channel on the way to a series of holiday concerts in Paris, and the first five-star Generals were promoted. I have separate entries for those events.

Baseball was in the off-season. The NFL Championship Game was played 2 days later, with the Green Bay Packers beating the New York Giants, 14-7 at the Polo Grounds in New York. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And, while the NHL was in-season, no games were scheduled for that day. So there are no scores on this historic day.

December 15, 1939: "Gone With the Wind" Premieres

December 15, 1939: The film Gone With the Wind premieres at the Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, the city where most of the film's action takes place.

Until July 1940, the film played only advance-ticket engagements at a limited number of theaters, with a ticket price of $1.00, more than twice the price of regular features in those days -- $20.06 in 2022 money, so a bit more than most movie prices now.

Counting promotion costs, it took $7 million to make the movie -- about $140 million today. It has made over $390 million. It would remain the highest-grossing movie of all time until 1975, surpassed by Jaws. But, with inflation factored in, it's still the highest-grossing movie ever, at $7.8 billion. In comparison, Avengers: Endgame has generated $2.8 billion; Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) has made $776 million, so with inflation from 1977, that's $3.6 billion, still not half as much as Gone With the Wind.

It was the most popular movie of its era because the novel on which it was based, published by Margaret Mitchell in 1936, was the most popular book of the era. It was a story of the Southern aristocracy before, during, and after the American Civil War, and it totally idealizes that culture. It aided the myth of the “Lost Cause,” suggesting that the Confederacy was honorable, just, and heroic. It also indulged in the stereotypes of Southern black people of the era, and does nothing to suggest that slavery was bad. It was. And it does nothing to suggest that the South deserved to lose the war. It did.

And let's say it: There is no hero in this movie: Scarlett O'Hara is a spoiled bitch, and Rhett Butler is an ass -- who ultimately decides that she is too much even for him. It's easy to take his side when he leaves Scarlett, and responds to her question about what she'll do without him by saying, in a line the producers fought the Hays Code to keep in the film, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (The line, minus the word "Frankly," was in the book.)

The screenwriter, Sidney Howard, died before the premiere. On August 23, 1939, he was working on his farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts. He had turned his tractor on in his garage, but had neglected to put the brake on, and after he got out, it lurched back, and pinned him against the wall. He was only 48 years old. Having already received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1924 play They Knew What They Wanted, he received a posthumous Oscar.

Leslie Howard (no relation to Sidney), who played Ashley Wilkes -- both "Leslie" and "Ashley" were considered masculine names in 1860s America, when and where the story was set, and in 1890s Britain, when and where he was born -- was killed in action in 1943, when his plane was shot down by the Nazis.

Mitchell was killed in 1949, hit by a car in Atlanta. Also dying that year was director Victor Fleming, who also directed The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, died in 1952. George Reeves, who played Stuart Tarleton, and would go on to play Superman on television, died of a gunshot wound in 1959, officially a suicide, but this is widely doubted. Clark Gable, who played Butler, died in 1960. Producer David O. Selznick died in 1965. Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett, battled mental illness and alcoholism, and died in 1967.

Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, who played Prissy, lived until 1995. Cammie King, who played Scarlett and Rhett's daughter, Bonnie Butler, lived until 2010. Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Wilkes Hamilton, lived to be 104 years old, dying in 2020 (not of COVID).

The last surviving castmembers? Mickey Kuhn, who died on November 20, 2022, at 90, was the last credited one. He played Beau Wilkes, son of Melanie and Ashley. Patrick Curtis died 4 days later, at 83. He played Beau Wilkes as a baby, but was not credited. He went on to become a film producer, and was, for 5 years, the 2nd of the 4 husbands of actress Raquel Welch. Caren Marsh Doll, 102, was an uncredited extra. Earlier in the year, she was Judy Garland's dance stand-in for The Wizard of Oz, making her the last surviving castmember of that film.

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December 15, 1939 was a Friday. Singer Cindy Birdsong was born on this day. She sang with Patti LaBelle's Bluebelles from 1961 to 1966, then replaced replaced Florence Ballard in The Supremes, singing with them until 1977.

It was the off-season for baseball. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were no NHL games played that day. And the pro football season had just ended 5 days earlier, with the NFL Championship Game. The Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants, 27-0, at the Dairy Bowl in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin. The stadium has since been converted into an auto racing track called the Milwaukee Mile. So there were no scores on this historic day.

December 14, 1944: The Suicide of Lupe Vélez

December 14, 1944: Lupe Vélez commits suicide, with an overdose of sleeping pills. The Mexican film star was 36.

María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez was born on July 18, 1908 in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. At the age of 13, her parents sent her to a school in Texas to learn English and dance. By 1926, La Niña Lupe was appearing in silent films in Hollywood, as spirited Latin women. In spite of her accent, she had no trouble making the transition to talking pictures.

She also had no trouble finding boyfriends, having affairs with actors Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, John Gilbert and Errol Flynn; novelist Erich Maria Remarque; and former Heavyweight Champions Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey. She was briefly married to Olympic swimmer turned Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller.

In 1934, she appeared in Hollywood Party, starring the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Jimmy Durante, the Three Stooges, and, in a partly animated sequence, Mickey Mouse, voiced by Walt Disney himself. Hardy directed.

In 1939, she starred in The Girl from Mexico, as Carmelita Fuentes, a singer, who marries radio man Denny Lindsay, played by Donald Woods. This earned Vélez the nickname "Mexican Spitfire," and it resulted in a series of movies with Vélez as Carmelita Lindsay: Mexican Spitfire and Mexican Spitfire Out West in 1940; The Mexican Spitfire's Baby in 1941; Mexican Spitfire at Sea, Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost and Mexican Spitfire's Elephant in 1942; and Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event in 1943.

If the titles "Baby" and "Blessed Event" confuse you, here goes: In the former, the Lindsays are set to adopt a war orphan, but she turns out to be a grown woman who was orphaned in World War I; in the latter, it's Carmelita's cat that has had kittens, but one thing leads to another, and she has to pretend to have had a baby. In neither film did she have a baby.

But in real life, in 1943, she dated Austrian actor Harald Maresch, whose stage name was Harald Ramond. It has been rumored that she also re-ignited her affair with Gary Cooper. She found herself pregnant, and didn't know which man was the father. She announced her engagement to Ramond, then broke it off, and kicked him out of her house.

As it turned out, while she wasn't too Catholic to fool around outside of marriage (including with married men) or to commit suicide, it appears she was too Catholic to have a child out of wedlock, or to have an abortion.

On the evening of December 13, 1944, Vélez dined with two friends, the silent-film star Estelle Taylor (ex-wife of one of her ex-boyfriends, Jack Dempsey) and Venita Oakie (then married to actor Jack Oakie). In the early morning hours of December 14, Vélez retired to her bedroom, where she consumed 75 Seconal pills and a glass of brandy. Her secretary, Beulah Kinder, said that she found the actress's body on her bed later that morning.

A suicide note, addressed to Harald Ramond, was found nearby. It read:

To Harald, May God forgive you and forgive me too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him. – Lupe.

On the back of the note, Vélez wrote:

How could you, Harald, fake such a great love for me and our baby when all the time, you didn't want us? I see no other way out for me, so goodbye, and good luck to you, Love Lupe.

It has been reported many times, including on the pilot episode of the sitcom Frasier in 1993, that she drowned herself by sticking her head in a toilet bowl. It wasn't true. And yet, because she lived so long ago, before the TV era, we probably know her more for the salacious lie about her death than for the wild truths about her life.

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December 14, 1944 was a Thursday. Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky also died on this day, although much older, 77. This was also the day the film National Velvet premiered, making a star out of 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. I have a separate entry for this event.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 2-2 at the Montreal Forum.

December 8, 1923: The HOLLYWOOD Sign

December 8, 1923: The HOLLYWOOD Sign begins operating. Or, as originally constructed, the HOLLYWOODLAND Sign.

It's become the most famous sign in the world. And it was only supposed to be temporary. As the saying today goes, it had one job.

That one job was to advertise "Hollywoodland." No, not "Hollywood," the section of Los Angeles where the film industry had already set up, due to the kind of climate that allowed studios to make movies all year long. (And which, like Bel Air, is part of the City of Los Angeles, not a separate city, as Beverly Hills is.) Rather, it was a new housing development, named Hollywoodland, set up at the bottom of Mount Lee, in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, not far from the famous Observatory.

Thomas Fisk Goff (1890-1984) set up 13 white letters, 30 feet wide and 50 feet high, facing south. The letters had 4,000 light bulbs, that would flash: First "HOLLY," then "WOOD," then "LAND," and back to "HOLLY," in sequence. The sign outlasted its need, because people liked it. The lighting was switched off in 1933, to save money during the Great Depression.

On September 16, 1932, Peg Entwistle, a Welsh actress who had come to America and starred on Broadway, but had seen her 1st film role, in Thirteen Women, severely cut, climbed to the top of the H in the sign, and jumped to her death. She was 24, and remains the sign's only suicide.

In 1944, high winds blew the H over, wrecking it, leaving the sign as "OLLYWOODLAND." In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce made a deal with the City of Los Angeles, and rebuilt the sign, dropping the last 4 letters, so that it read "HOLLYWOOD." It has, ever since.

With some exceptions. Pranksters have occasionally altered it. Marijuana activists have placed black tape over the capital O's, turning them into lower-case e's. And, on at least one occasion, with the USC-UCLA football game coming up, USC students have altered the sign to read "BEAT UCLA." Other football fans, usually with their teams playing in the Rose Bowl, have altered the sign.

By the time the New York Yankees played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1977 World Series, the sign was in bad shape, as shown by stock footage of Los Angeles at the time that was included in ESPN's 2006 miniseries The Bronx Is Burning.

This led Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner to raise money for the sign's restoration. This included replacing the original wooden letters with metal ones, 44 feet high. It was restored again in 2005, and will be restored again in time for its 100th Anniversary in 2023.

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December 8, 1923 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were no college football games. The NFL played the next day, concluding its season, with the Ohio-based Canton Bulldogs repeating as NFL Champions. And the NHL didn't open its season for another 7 days. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 29, 1981: The Death of Natalie Wood

November 29, 1981: Natalie Wood dies from drowning at age 43, on Santa Catalina Island, California.

She was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, as Natalie Zacharenko. Not yet 8 years old, she starred as Susan Walker in the original 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street. She played troubled teenagers in Rebel Without a Cause and The Searchers. She moved into musicals, starring in West Side Story in 1961 and Gypsy the next year. Being Russian, she didn't make a convincing Puerto Rican in West Side Story, and Marnie Nixon did her singing for the film. So, for Gypsy, she insisted on doing her own singing, and she was fine.

I'd still like to know how Gypsy, a film about strippers, got past the Hays Code. Not to mention her 1964 film Sex and the Single Girl, based on the memoir of Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown. By 1969, the Code was gone, and she was able to star as Carol alongside Robert Culp as Bob, Elliott Gould as Ted, and Dyan Cannon as Alice in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

In 1957, only 19 years old, she married 27-year-old actor Robert Wagner. They divorced 5 years later. In 1969, she married British film producer Richard Gregson. Natalie then went into semi-retirement to raise their daughter, Natasha Gregson. Natalie and Richard split up in 1972, and she then remarried Robert Wagner. They had a daughter, Courtney Wagner, and Natalie's first daughter was renamed Natasha Gregson Wagner.

Natalie returned to acting in 1979, taking the Deborah Kerr role in an NBC remake of From Here to Eternity. Although she had been nominated for an Academy Award 3 times without winning, for this role, she won a Golden Globe Award. She became the first actress to be taken seriously as a child, a teenager, a young adult, and a middle-aged woman (she was 41). That same year, she appeared in the science fiction disaster film Meteor, playing a diplomat -- and, for the 1st time, playing a Russian, and speaking the Russian language, which she did in real life, fluently.

In 1981, she was making the science fiction film Brainstorm, which also starred Christopher Walken. For her next role, she had signed to star in a musical stage version of Anastasia, the story of the woman who claimed to be a princess who survived the massacre of the Russian imperial family in 1918. So she would have played a Russian again, and had the hope of adapting it into a film. (Ingrid Bergman had won an Oscar for the 1956 film Anastasia.)

On November 29, Natalie, Robert, known to his friends by his initials, "R.J.," and Walken were aboard the yacht Splendour while it was moored near the isthmus of Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California. Walken's wife Georgianne was not there.

According to R.J., Natalie was not there when he went to bed, and, according to his spokesman, he thought she had taken off on a small inflatable boat by herself, as she had done before. Her body was found about a mile away from the yacht, while the inflatable boat was found beached nearby. The autopsy report revealed that Wood had 39 fresh bruises on her body, including an abrasion on her left cheek.

Later, in his memoir Pieces of My Heart, R.J. acknowledged that he had an argument with Natalie before she disappeared, but had calmed down and gone to bed. The autopsy found that her blood alcohol content was 0.14 percent -- .04 above the legal prohibition for operating a motorized vehicle, including a boat -- and there were traces of two types of medication in her bloodstream: A motion-sickness pill and a painkiller, both of which increase the effects of alcohol. Two witnesses, who had been on another boat nearby, stated they had heard a woman scream for help during the night.

Following his investigation, Los Angeles County medical examiner Thomas Noguchi, the famed "coroner to the stars," ruled her death an accident by drowning and hypothermia.

She was 43 years old. She left her husband, 2 children, a sister, actress Lana Wood, and several great films. Lana has claimed that R.J. murdered Natalie. Others have made that claim as well. The evidence, as thus far released to the public, is flimsy. Both Natasha and Courtney have publicly defended R.J.

Life works out strangely sometimes: Aside from being Natalie's sister, Lana Wood is best known for appearing in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, as Plenty O'Toole. Also in that film, as the female lead, Tiffany Case, was Jill St. John. Briefly, before Britain's Eon Productions decided to go ahead with making Bond films, they had considered selling the film rights to the Bond novels to an American company, which was considering Wagner to play Bond. In 1990, Robert Wagner married Jill St. John.

In 2004, Peter Bodganovich directed the feature film The Mystery of Natalie Wood. Natalie was played by Justine Waddell. R.J. was played by Michael Weatherly. Shortly thereafter, R.J. began playing Anthony DiNozzo Sr., father of Weatherly's character, on NCIS. When my mother began watching NCIS, not yet knowing of R.J.'s connection, she noticed the resemblance immediately. I didn't.

As of November 29, 2022, R.J., Jill and Lana are still alive, and R.J. and Jill are still married. Natasha Gregson Wagner became an actress, and married 7th Heaven star Barry Watson. They have a daughter, Clover Watson. In 2020, Natasha released a documentary, Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind. It did not shed any new light on her mother's death, focusing instead on her life. Courtney Wagner is a jewelry designer, with no children. Katie Wagner, R.J.'s daughter with actress Marion Marshall, and therefore Natalie's (and Jill's) stepdaughter, is an entertainment reporter. She has a daughter, Riley John Wagner-Lewis.

In 1997, 20th Century Fox made a cartoon musical version of Anastasia. In 2017, a stage version of that film premiered on Broadway. It wasn't quite Natalie Wood's vision for the story, but she might have wanted to see it. She would have been 78 years old. She did not get the chance to be taken seriously as an old actress.

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November 29, 1981 was a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. These games were played in the NFL:

* The New York Giants lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 17-10 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* The New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts, 25-0 at Shea Stadium.

* The football version of the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New England Patriots, 27-20 at Schaefer Stadium (later Sullivan Stadium and Foxboro Stadium) in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts.

* The Buffalo Bills beat the Washington Redskins, 21-14 at Rich Stadium (later Ralph Wilson Stadium) in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, New York.

* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Los Angeles Rams, 24-0 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* The Cincinnati Bengals beat their arch-rivals, the Cleveland Browns, 41-21 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Minnesota Vikings, 35-23 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the New Orleans Saints, 31-14 at the Superdome in New Orleans.

* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Houston Oilers, 31-27 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The San Diego Chargers beat the Denver Broncos, 34-17 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego.

* The Oakland Raiders beat the Seattle Seahawks, 32-31 at the Kingdome in Seattle.

* The next night, on ABC Monday Night Football, the Miami Dolphins beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 13-10 at the Orange Bowl in Miami.

* And 3 days before this day, it was Thanksgiving. The Detroit Lions beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 27-10 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.

And the Dallas Cowboys beat the Chicago Bears, 10-3 at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.

There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the San Antonio Spurs, 105-89 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Kansas City Kings beat the Golden State Warriors, 104-100 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Houston Rockets, 122-104 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Chicago Bulls, 114-109 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

And there were 5 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers and the Quebec Nordiques played to a tie, 4-4 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 5-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Hartford Whalers, 6-3 at the Montreal Forum.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 6-3 at the Joe Louis Arena.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 10-3 at the Winnipeg Arena. Paul Coffey -- a defenseman -- had 2 goals and 3 assists. Wayne Gretzky had a goal and 3 assists.

November 29, 1945: "The Lost Weekend" Premieres

November 29, 1945: The Lost Weekend premieres, based on the novel by Charles R. Jackson, and directed by Billy Wilder. It is Hollywood's classic portrayal of alcoholism. And the title is a little misleading: Although it wraps around a weekend, it runs from Thursday afternoon to Tuesday morning, so The Lost Week might have been a better title.

Ray Milland plays Don Birnam, an alcoholic writer from New York, preparing for a weekend vacation with his brother Wick. Jane Wyman plays his girlfriend, Helen. He goes out for a drink, but, as so often happens, one drink becomes many, and he misses the train for his vacation.

Don tells Helen that he's 2 different people: "Don the Writer" and "Don the Drunk." He's lying, both to her and to himself, proving it by pawning his typewriter on Saturday so he can buy more booze. He wakes up in the alcoholics' ward of a hospital on Sunday. On Monday, he falls victim to delirium tremens, a.k.a. "The D.T.'s." His screams alert a neighbor, who calls Helen, who nurses him through the night. He commits to being Don the Writer, and begins to write his novel based on the events of the "weekend."

Milland won the Academy Award for Best Actor, preceding Richard Burton as the 1st actor from Wales to win one. He later appeared in Dial M for Murder and Love Story, directed for television, and became one of TV's finest character actors. He died in 1986, as a result of substance abuse -- not alcohol, but tobacco.

Wyman later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Johnny Belinda. She was married to Ronald Reagan from 1940 to 1949, and was the mother of his daughter Maureen. Together, they adopted a son, Michael. She was already a Republican, so his political switch, from liberal to conservative, was not one of the reasons they split. She later remarried, and starred on the TV series Falcon Crest. She lived until 2007.

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November 29, 1945 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. No games were scheduled for the NHL.

There were 2 games in college football. Number 10 Texas beat their arch-rivals, Texas A&M, 20-10 at Kyle Field in College Station. And the University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) beat the University of Mississippi (a.k.a. Ole Miss), 31-6 at Chamberlain Field in Chattanooga, Tennessee.