November 20, 1943: “Winged Victory” Premieres

Poster for the film version

November 20, 1943: Moss Hart's war-effort play Winged Victory premieres at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre in New York. The theater, at 216 W. 44th Street, was demolished in 1945.

The story is about 5 friends who enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the hopes of becoming pilots. (The Air Force would not be separated from the Army until 1947.) One fails the eye test, and becomes a gunner instead. One crashes and dies in a test flight. The others are still alive at the end of the play -- but, of course, in real life, World War II was ongoing, so we don't know if they survived the war in full.

A staggering amount of future stars would appear in the play during its run, including Red Buttons, Lee J. Cobb, Mario Lanza, Brad Dexter (of The Magnificent Seven), John Forsythe, Karl Malden, Kevin McCarthy (of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Gary Merrill, Barry Nelson (the first man to play James Bond, in a 1955 U.S. TV production), George Reeves (the Superman of 1950s TV), Martin Ritt, and Victor Sen Yung (Hop Sing on Bonanza).

In 1944, it was made into a film, starring Lon McCallister, Jeanne Crain and Edmond O'Brien, and also including Cobb, Buttons, Nelson, Merrill and Reeves.

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November 20, 1943 was a Saturday. Actress Veronica Hamel was born. So was Suze Rutolo, who appeared on the cover of the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, as she and Bob were then dating.

Ordinarily, the 3rd Saturday in November would begin 8 days of college football's major rivalries. But World War II was on, so this was, as the First Lady at the time, Eleanor Roosevelt, put it, it was no ordinary time. Military bases had teams that took on college teams. These were among the games played that day:

* Number 1 Notre Dame beat Number 2 Iowa Pre-Flight, 14-13 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. Iowa Pre-Flight was a U.S. Navy flight school, operated on the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City. But not as a substitute for the Iowa team (or Iowa State's). This was the only game that IPF lost all season, as they beat Big Ten schools Iowa, Illinois, Ohio State and Minnesota; and also Iowa State. They also beat Missouri, who lost their coach, and eventually the namesake of their stadium, Don Faurot, to IPF.

With their quarterback, Angelo Bertelli, being awarded the Heisman Trophy, Notre Dame lost the next week, to another military team, Great Lakes Naval Training Station, located in the northern suburbs of Chicago. This ruined Notre Dame's undefeated season. And they didn't go to a bowl game, refusing all invitations, as they always did between the seasons of 1925 and 1968. They were still awarded the National Championship.

* Rivalry: Number 3 Purdue beat Indiana, 7-0 at the original Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana. (That facility was replaced by the current one in 1960.)

* Rivalry: Number 4 Michigan beat Ohio State, 45-7 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

* Number 5 Navy did not play that week. Number 7 Army beat Brown, 59-0 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. The Air Force had not yet been separated from the Army, let alone given its own academy, with its own football team.

* Rivalry: Number 6 Duke beat North Carolina, 27-6 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

* Number 8 USC and Number 10 Washington had the week off. Due to wartime travel restrictions, for once, the Rose Bowl featured 2 West Coast teams, and USC beat Washington, having not played them during the regular season.

* Rivalry: Number 9 Northwestern beat Illinois, 53-6 at Dyche Stadium in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois.

* Number 14 Texas had the week off. In the Cotton Bowl, they were held to a tie by Randolph Field, an Army Air Forces team based in San Antonio.

* Number 15 Georgia Tech beat Clemson, 41-6 at Grant Field in Atlanta. Number 19 Tulsa had the week off. Tulsa went into the Sugar Bowl undefeated with a tie, but Georgia Tech beat them.

* Rivalry: Villanova beat Temple, 34-7 at Temple Stadium in Philadelphia.

* Rivalry: Penn State beat the University of Pittsburgh, 14-0 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* Rivalry: Minnesota beat Wisconsin, 25-13 at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis.

* Rivalry: Tulane University beat Louisiana State University, 27-0 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans. Texas A&M had the week off. Texas A&M went on to beat LSU in the Orange Bowl.

* Rivalry: Kansas beat Missouri, 7-6 at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, Kansas.

* Rivalry: Iowa beat Nebraska, 33-13 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. While Iowa Pre-Flight had a fine season, this was the only game that Iowa won all season.

* Columbia was the only New York City school playing that season, and they lost to Colgate, 41-0 at Baker Field in Upper Manhattan. Fordham, NYU and CCNY suspended their programs for the season.

* And among the New Jersey schools, Princeton lost to Number 20 Dartmouth, 42-13 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton; and Rutgers lost to Lafayette, 9-2 at Fisher Field in Easton, Pennsylvania. Due to wartime travel restrictions, Rutgers played both Lafayette and Lafayette's arch-rivals, Lehigh, twice -- and they played each other twice. All of this was done again in 1944.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 7-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

July 28, 1954: "On the Waterfront" Premieres

Eva Marie Saint (left) and Marlon Brando

July 28, 1954: On the Waterfront premieres, directed by Elia Kazan. It is regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made.

The film is widely considered to be Kazan's answer to those who criticized him for identifying 8 Communists in the film industry before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952. Budd Schulberg, who had previously written about boxers (and would again), wrote the script, after Kazan's friend, playwright Arthur Miller, backed out. Leonard Bernstein composed the musical score.

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) was a former boxer, who never made it, because his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), desperate for cash, made a deal with a corrupt union leader, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), who strong-armed Terry into throwing a fight. In a famous scene in the back of a taxicab, Terry tells Charley, "You don't understand! I coulda had class! I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody! Instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it."

(When people do impressions of Brando, they have multiple choices. It's often this scene. But they also do Stanley Kowalski yelling, "Stella!" from A Streetcar Named Desire; Colonel Kurtz's last words, "The horror... " from Apocalypse Now; and and various quotes from Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.)

In saying this, Terry, now a poor longshoreman on the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, tells Charley that he's going to testify against Friendly before the Waterfront Crime Commission. This is in revenge for Friendly having coerced him into luring Joey Doyle, a fellow dockworker, onto a rooftop, where Friendly's thugs pushed him to his death for testifying.

Terry had been dating Joey's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint, in her 1st film role). She talks a local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden), into rallying the dockworkers against Friendly. But they are more afraid of Friendly than than they are of God, and refuse. That fear grows the next day, when another boxer-turned-dockworker "owned" by Friendly, Timothy "Kayo" Dugan, testifies behind closed doors, in an attempt to keep his identity hidden, but it gets out, and he is killed.

Terry is subpoenaed, and Friendly sends Charley to tell him not to testify, leading to the conversation in the cab. Having failed in his mission, Charley is killed by Friendly, and left on a hook for Terry to see, as one final warning not to testify, meaning, if he does, he will be the next to go.

My mother told me her parents took her to see this movie, because they wanted to see it and they couldn't get a babysitter. She was 7 years old, and she said the sight of Charley on the hook traumatized her. I was 17 when I first saw it, and I can understand why.

The murder has the opposite effect on Terry: He is more determined than ever, and he does testify. The next day, He appears at the dock for the daily ritual where workers are chosen from the assembled longshoremen. Everyone is called to work except Terry, who taunts Friendly outside the nearby shack, shouting that he is proud of testifying. They get into a shouting match, and start fighting. Terry is winning until Friendly's thugs beat the hell out of him, leaving him all but dead.

Finally, the other dockworkers get it: They tell Friendly that they're on strike until Terry goes back to work. In his condition, he can't. Father Barry tells him that he lost the battle, but has a chance to win the war if he can walk into the warehouse. Father Barry and Edie get him on his feet, and he stumbles up the gangway to stand before the warehouse, where the boss nods to Terry, letting him in, and tells them to get to work. The men follow Terry inside, ignoring Friendly. Friendly threatens them all, but it's over: Even his thugs are no longer afraid of him, so his power is gone, and he is completely ignored.

Tony Galento, Tami Mauriello and Abe Simon, all of whom had fought Joe Louis for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, played dockworkers in this film. Fred Gwynne, later to star on The Munsters, played dockworker Mladen "Slim" Sekulovich. Mladen Sekulovich was Karl Malden's real name.

(Malden would also play the warden in The Birdman of Alcatraz, and "Sekulovich" was one of the names he rattled off in solitary confinement along with Burt Lancaster's Robert Stroud, the titular birdkeeper.)

The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards. It won 8, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, and Best Director for Kazan. Saint did not attend the award ceremony: She was pregnant, and her son Darrell Hayden was born 2 days later. Eva and director Jeffrey Hayden had one of the longest marriages in Hollywood history, marrying in 1951, and were still married when he died in 2016. In addition to Darrell, they later had a daughter, Laurette.

In 1999, Malden played a priest on an episode of The West Wing. Onto their Oval Office set, he brought the same Bible he'd used in On the Waterfront.

Cobb died in 1976, Bernstein in 1990, Steiger in 2002, Kazan in 2003, Brando in 2004, Malden and Schulberg in 2009. As of July 28, 2022, Saint is still alive, the last surviving actor from the film.

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July 28, 1954 was a Wednesday. Hugo Chávez, dictatorial President of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, was born on this day.

And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Mickey Mantle went 3-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Yogi Berra went 4-for-5 with an RBI. Still, Eddie Lopat only lasted 1 inning, and the Yankees trailed 5-1 after 7 innings, before coming from behind, scoring 3 runs in the 8th and 3 more in the 9th. Bob Grim was the winning pitcher in relief.

* The New York Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-0 at the Polo Grounds. Johnny Antonelli allowed 10 hits, but only 1 walk, and kept the shutout. Dusty Rhodes hit 3 home runs. Willie Mays added 1.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-1 at Ebbets Field. Roy Campanella hit a home run. Jackie Robinson went 0-for-3, but drove in a run with a bases-loaded walk. The only Cub run came on a home run by Ralph Kiner. Rookie Ernie Banks went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Redlegs, 3-2 at Connie Mack Stadium. (That ballpark had been Shibe Park until the year before. The Reds called themselves the Redlegs from 1953 to 1958, because of the Red Scare.)

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Rookie Hank Aaron went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs, although he did not hit a home run.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 2-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Early Wynn was the winning pithcer. Ted Williams went 2-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 10-2 at Briggs Stadium (renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961) in Detroit. Bud Souchock hit 2 home runs, and Al Kaline went 1-for-4.

March 20, 1957: “Fear Strikes Out” Premieres

March 20, 1957: Fear Strikes Out premieres, starring Anthony Perkins as baseball player Jimmy Piersall. This was one of the first mainstream movies to take a serious look at mental illness.

Born in 1929 in Waterbury, Connecticut, Piersall was a center fielder, known for superb fielding but not much for hitting. He debuted with the Boston Red Sox in 1950, but in 1952, he got into several fights, including with his own teammates. He was demoted to the minor leagues, but his bizarre behavior didn't stop. He was taken to Massachusetts' leading psychiatric hospital, Westborough State, and given electroshock treatment, and was an early recipient of the drug Lithium.

He missed the rest of the 1952 season, but recovered enough to make the All-Star Game in 1954 and 1956. He wrote a book about his experiences, Fear Strikes Out, in 1955, and it was filmed in 1957. Perkins played Piersall, and Karl Malden played the domineering father who drove him to both baseball success and a nervous breakdown.

This was the era when, if you were making a sports movie, you cast an actor, not a guy who looked like an athlete. Comedian-actor Billy Crystal has called it the worst baseball movie of all time, because Perkins looked less like a ballplayer than any real athlete ever. Nevertheless, he did a great job playing a guy battling mental illness. This led to him being cast in the film Psycho.

Piersall remained in the major leagues until 1967, and later served as a broadcaster for several teams, best known for his 1977 to 1981 teamup with Harry Caray with the Chicago White Sox. He later served as a roving minor-league instructor for the Chicago Cubs, for whom Caray had gone to broadcast. He wrote another memoir in 1985, The Truth Hurts, and lived until 2017.

Anthony Perkins may have been typecast. Certainly, the Red Sox' uniform Number 37 was typecast: It was later worn by another guy whose head wasn't quite screwed on right, Bill Lee, the pitcher known as "the Spaceman."

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March 20, 1957 was a Wednesday. Film director and basketball fanatic Shelton "Spike" Lee was born.

Baseball was in Spring Training, so maybe the movie should have been released later, to match up with Opening Day. Football was out of season. No games were scheduled for the NBA. One was scheduled for the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.