Hubert Selby
October 11, 1964: Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. is published. It is a series of 6 stories that takes place in the slums of Brooklyn in 1953, when Selby was 25.
Because of its edgy subject matter, the book was banned in Italy, and was the subject of an obscenity trial in Britain. It took until 1989 for it to be filmed, directed by Uli Edel.
The 6 stories:
* "Another Day, Another Dollar": A gang of young Brooklyn hoodlums hang around an all-night diner and get into a vicious fight with a group of Army soldiers on leave.
* "The Queen Is Dead": Georgette, a sassy transvestite prostitute -- today, she would be called "transgender" -- is thrown out of the family home by her homophobic brother, and tries to attract the attention of a ruthless hoodlum named Vinnie at a party where nearly everybody was taking the amphetamine benzedrine, a.k.a. "Bennies." In the film, Georgette was played by Alexis Arquette, for whom life imitated art: She eventually underwent gender reassignment surgery.
* "And Baby Makes Three": A story told by an unknown narrator about a couple, Suzy and Tommy, who have a baby out of wedlock, their wedding, and the baby's christening party, which is quickly thrown by Suzy's parents. In the film, John Costelloe played Tommy, while Suzy was renamed Donna, and played by Ricki Lake. Burt Young played Joe, Donna's father and one of the striking factory workers.
* "Tralala": The title character of an earlier Selby short story, she is a young Brooklyn prostitute, who makes a living propositioning sailors in bars and stealing their money. In perhaps the novel's most notorious scene, she is brutally gang-raped after a night of heavy drinking. She is left for dead in a vacant lot. In the film, she was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh.
* "Strike": Harry, a machinist in a factory, becomes a local official in the union. He is a closeted gay man, he abuses his wife, and he tries to boast of his accomplishments and his high status to anyone who might listen, believing this will offset his view of himself as less than a man, which is how he was taught to view homosexuals.
He gains a temporary status and importance during a long strike, and uses the union's money to entertain the young street punks and buy the company of drag queens and gay men. He is ultimately beaten viciously by the hoodlums from the opening chapter, after he forcibly fellates a 10-year-old boy. In the film, Harry was played by Stephen Lang, and the union leader, Boyce, was played by Jerry Orbach.
* "Landsend": Described as a "coda" for the book, this section presents the intertwined, yet ordinary day of numerous denizens in a housing project, a concept that grew up in New York and other cities during and after World War II as an answer to slums. As Will Rogers said of Prohibition and Communism, it was a great idea but it didn't work.
Among the other actors in the film were Stephen Baldwin and Sam Rockwell and Ricki Lake.
In 1965, the year after the novel was published, Gene Pitney had a hit song titled "Last Chance to Turn Around," which included the line, "Last exit to Brooklyn." In 1986, The Smiths took the title The Queen Is Dead for the title of one of their albums.
Selby published 6 more novels, including Requiem for a Dream in 1978, which was also made into a controversial film, in 2000. Selby lived long enough to see it, dying in 2004.
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October 11, 1964 was a Sunday. Game 4 of the World Series was played at Yankee Stadium. The New York Yankees scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 1st inning, and Al Downing kept that 3-0 lead into the 6th inning, before giving up a grand slam home run to Ken Boyer, to give the St. Louis Cardinals a 4-3 lead. Roger Craig and Ron Taylor held that lead for the rest of the game, to tie up the Series. The Cardinals won in 7 games.
The NHL season began the next day; the NBA season, 5 days later. These games were played in the NFL:
* The New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys played to a tie, 13-13 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
* The Baltimore Colts beat the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals, 47-27 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.
* The Washington Redskins beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 35-20 at District of Columbia Stadium (later Robert F. Kennedy Stadium) in Washington.
* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat their arch-rivals, the Cleveland Browns, 23-7 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
* The Chicago Bears beat the Los Angeles Rams, 38-17 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The Green Bay Packers beat the San Francisco 49ers, 24-14 at Milwaukee County Stadium.
* And the Detroit Lions beat the Minnesota Vikings, 24-20 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
There were 2 games in the American Football League. The Buffalo Bills beat the Houston Oilers, 48-17 at Jeppesen Stadium (later Robertson Stadium) in Houston. And the Denver Broncos beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 33-27 at Bears Stadium (later Mile High Stadium) in Denver.
