December 14, 1944: “National Velvet” Premieres

December 14, 1944: National Velvet premieres, based on the 1935 novel by Enid Bagnold. It stars a 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney. Each of them would end up getting married 8 times – but never to each other.

Taylor plays Velvet Brown, a 12-year-old horse-crazy girl, who lives with her family in Sewels, a village in Sussex, in the South of England. She wins a gelding in a raffle, naming him "The Pie." In the book, the horse is a piebald, and thus is given the name "The Piebald" or "The Pie" for short. In the movie, Pie is a chestnut, and his previous owner had called him "The Pirate," and "The Pie" is short for that.

Velvet dreams of training him for the Grand National, a steeplechase race held annually at Aintree Racecourse in Aintree, outside Liverpool. Founded in 1839, it runs 4 miles and 2½ furlongs,  with horses jumping 30 fences over two laps.

Rooney plays Michael "Mi" Taylor, a disillusioned jockey, helps her train The Pie. Famously only 5-foot-2, Rooney had previously played jockeys, traditionally a sport for short and slight men (and would play another on an episode of The Twilight Zone). But, when fully grown, Taylor was also just 5-foot-2, and it is Velvet who rides The Pie.

This being old Hollywood, of course, Velvet and The Pie win the race. But an exhausted Velvet falls off her mount just after the finish. Thus, they are disqualified, for violating the rule requiring the winning jockey not to dismount before reaching the enclosure.

When the English media finds out that there's a 12-year-old girl as one of the race's jockeys, she becomes a sensation. But she turns down all offers of fame and fortune, because it would require The Pie to go with her, and she thinks he wouldn't understand, and would be traumatized.

The film was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, winning 2, including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Revere as Araminty Brown, Velvet's mother. Angela Lansbury, Arthur Treacher and Reginald Owen were also in the film.

From 1960 to 1962, NBC ran a TV series version of National Velvet, starring Lori Martin. In 1978, there was a sequel, International Velvet. Velvet's brother Donald, played by Jackie Jenkins in the original, had gotten married, and moved to Arizona, where he had a daughter named Sarah Velvet Brown, named for his sister. But Donald and his wife are killed in a car crash, and Sarah, played by Tatum O'Neal, goes to England to live with her aunt Velvet, played here by Nanette Newman.

The sequel fudges the original story: In all previous versions, The Pie was a gelding, unable to father children; but in this version, he is retired to stud, and his last colt is born right after Sarah's arrival. She names him Arizona Pie. She trains him, and rides him in the Olympics, winning a Gold Medal for Great Britain, then marrying an American medalist.

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December 14, 1944 was a Thursday. Russian painted Vassily Kandinsky died on this day. It was also the day that actress Lupe Vélez committed suicide. I have a separate entry for that 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.

November 7, 1963: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" Premieres

November 7, 1963:  It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World premieres, produced and directed by Stanley Kramer. It was a "cast of thousands" movie, and a caper film, with everyone in pursuit of $350,000 buried by a dying crook played by Jimmy Durante. (That's worth about $3.4 million in 2022 money.)

Aside from Durante, the main cast includes Spencer Tracy, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas and Jonathan Winters. (Apparently, Tracy wanted top billing rather than alphabetical order, despite some other rather large egos involved.)

In supporting roles: Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Jim Backus, William Demarest and Peter Falk. In cameos: Rochester's longtime "boss" Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Selma Diamond, Norman Fell, Stan Freberg, Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys, Sterling Holloway, Edward Everett Horton, silent film legend Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Jerry Lewis, ZaSu Pitts, Madlyn Rhue, Arnold Stang, future "Maytag Repairman" Jesse White, and all of the last lineup of the Three Stooges: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Joe DeRita.

Actress-dancer Barrie Chase, 89, is the last surviving member of the cast.

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November 7, 1963 was a Thursday. English soccer star John Barnes was born.

Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. One NBA game was played: The New York Knicks lost to the San Francisco Warriors, 110-88 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California. Wilt Chamberlain had a quiet night by his standards: 23 points and 16 rebounds.

The NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 1-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Montreal Canadiens and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 4-3 at the Boston Garden.

April 14, 1937: "Babes In Arms" Premieres On Broadway

Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the film version

April 14, 1937: Babes In Arms premieres on Broadway, at the Shubert Theatre. Written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, its text is not memorable. Most of its actors, led by Mitzi Green, aren't, either. But it did include brothers Harold and Fayard Nicholas, black men known for spectacular dance routines, as you can see if you check out the 1939 film version, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

It was the 1st of 10 movies that Rooney and Garland would make together. Typically, they would be teenagers deciding to put on a show together, while their parents are either absent -- due to death, or being out of town -- or looking on bemusedly.

The songs include "Where Or When," "My Funny Valentine" and "The Lady Is a Tramp." Considering those 3 songs alone, and what they would eventually mean to his repertoire, in retrospect, Frank Sinatra was right when he sang, "When I was 21, it was a very good year."

"Where Or When" would also be a major hit in 1960 for Dion & the Belmonts.

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April 14, 1937 was a Wednesday. The baseball season began 5 days later. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The Stanley Cup Finals were in progress, and, the next day, the Detroit Red Wings beat the New York Rangers, 3-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit, to win the Stanley Cup. So there were no scores on this day.

February 4, 1943: "The Human Comedy" Is Published

William Saroyan

February 4, 1943: The Human Comedy by William Saroyan is published. It becomes the best-remembered novel set in American on "the home front" during World War II.

Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 in Fresno, California, 186 miles southeast of San Francisco, and 219 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Until the rise of Cher -- and, later, of the Kardashian family -- he was the leading American of Armenian descent, one of many who settled in Central California to escape the Ottoman Empire.

He gained fame in 1934, with his short story collection, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and, other than The Human Comedy, is best known for his other collections of short stories. In 1940, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for his play The Time of Your Life. In 1948, it was filmed, with James Cagney starring. He published The Human Comedy, and almost immediately, was approached to write a screenplay for the film. It premiered on March 2, a mere 26 days after the book did.

The novel and film are set in the fictional town of Ithaca, which, like the real-life and larger Fresno, is in the San Joaquin Valley. The story is narrated by Matthew Macauley (Ray Collins) -- who has been dead for 2 years as the story begins.

It is set around his 14-year-old son, Homer (played in the film by Mickey Rooney, already 22 years old, but just 5-foot-2, so he could still pass for 14). Homer's older brother, Marcus, is off to war. (A scene depicting Marcus and his pals overseas shows Marcus played by Van Johnson. One of the pals is played by a young Robert Mitchum.)

Mickey Rooney in the film

So, to his mother Katie (Fay Bainter), his elder sister Bess (Donna Reed), and his 4-year-old brother Ulysses (Jackie Jenkins), Homer believes he has to be the man of the family. (Homer and Ulysses, Saroyan laying the ancient literary references on a bit thick.) Mary Arena (Dorothy Morris), a neighbor, Bess' friend, and the girlfriend that brother Marcus left behind, also figures in the story.

Homer is in school, and has a night job delivering telegrams from the telegraph station, owned by Willie Grogan (Frank Morgan, better known as the title character in The Wizard of Oz) and managed by Tom Spangler (James Craig), whose girlfriend, Diana Steed (Marsha Hunt), gets worked into the story. Sometimes, these telegrams are bad news, notifying families that a member has died in The War.

Homer's family, and his history teacher, Miss Hicks (Mary Nash), give him an almost instinctive sense of right and wrong, which keeps him honest and hopeful despite the family's reduced numbers and finances. But the novel and the film end with word being received of Marcus' death.

The film was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including for Best Picture, Best Director for Clarence Brown, and Best Actor for Rooney. It won 1: Best Story, for Saroyan. He was 34 years old, and already had an Oscar and a Pulitzer.

Unfortunately, Saroyan was an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, and had to keep writing to feed these habits. His marriage to actress Carol Grace ended in divorce. Their children were son Aram, who also became a writer, and also a musician; and Lucy, who became an actress. William died on May 18, 1981, at 72, of cancer, in Fresno. Carol and Lucy both died in 2003. As of February 4, 2022, Aram is still alive.

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February 4, 1943 was a Thursday. Baseball and football are out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet.

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

This was also the day that the NHL's 1st President, Frank Calder, died. I have a separate entry for that event.