December 14, 1936: “You Can’t Take It With You” Premieres

Scene from the 1938 film version

December 14, 1936: You Can't Take It With You, a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, premieres at the Booth Theatre, which still stands at 222 West 45th Street. It is directed by Kaufman, and stars Henry Travers as Martin Vanderhof, a.k.a. Grandpa, and becomes one of the biggest comedies in Broadway history.

It was filmed in 1938, with Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Stewart, Jean Arthur, Spring Byington, Ann Miller, Mischa Auer, Eddie Anderson (Jack Benny's "Rochester"), and, uncredited, dance icon Arthur Murray. It won Best Picture, and Best Director for Frank Capra, who in 1945 would direct It's a Wonderful Life, including Stewart, Barrymore and Travers (Clarence the angel -- and who also appeared in "The Bells of St. Mary's," which was showing at the Bedford Falls Bijou in IAWL).

I saw a version on CBS in 1979, with several veterans of the network: Art Carney, Jean Stapleton, Blythe Danner, Harry Morgan, Robert Mandan, Barry Bostwick, Howard Hesseman, and Alice castmembers Polly Holliday (Flo) and Beth Howland (Vera). CBS tried to make it a series in 1987, with Morgan as Grandpa, but set it in the present day, so that, instead of never having paid income taxes (the 16th Amendment had only passed 23 years before the play's debut), he hadn't paid any since 1962.

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December 14, 1936 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football season was over, except for the New Year's Day bowl games. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

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.

October 16, 1939: “The Man Who Came to Dinner” Premieres

Bette Davis and Monty Woolley in the film version

October 16, 1939: The Man Who Came to Dinner premieres at the Music Box Theatre in New York. The play is written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

It was based on their mutual friend, theater critic Alexander Woollcott, leader of the Algonquin Round Table, visiting Hart's country home outside Philadelphia, and making a nuisance of himself. Hart told Kaufman he was lucky Woollcott hadn't broken his leg and gotten stuck there (there was no hospital within miles at the time), and Kaufman thought it would be great comedy -- should it happen to somebody else!

Monty Woolley was cast in the Woollcott role, named Sheridan Whiteside. The original cast also included Gordon Merrick as the Hart analogue, Richard Stanley; a young Mary Wickes, later known for battleaxe roles and appearing as a Match Game panelist, as Miss Preen; John Hoysradt (later known as John Hoyt) as Beverley Carlton, based on Noël Coward; and David Burns as "Banjo," a character obviously based on another friend of Kaufman and Hart, Harpo Marx.

The play was filmed in 1942, with Woolley reprising his role, Jimmy Durante as Banjo, and Ann Sheridan and Bette Davis also starring. It was filmed again in 1972, with those roles filled by, respectively, Orson Welles, Don Knotts, Lee Remick and Joan Collins.

Kaufman and Hart died a few months apart in 1961, Woollcott in 1943, Woolley in 1963, Burns in 1971, Merrick in 1988, Hoyt in 1991, and Wickes in 1995.

The Music Box Theatre is still open, at 239 West 45th Street. It hosted the premieres of Of Thee I Sing, Dinner at Eight, As Thousands Cheer, Merrily We Roll Along, Stage Door and Of Mice and Men in the 1930s; I Remember Mama and Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke in the 1940s, The Male Animal and Bus Stop in the 1950s, A Far Country and There's a Girl In My Soup in the 1960s, Sleuth and Deathtrap in the 1970s, Agnes of God and A Few Good Men in the 1980s, August: Osage County in the 2000s, and Dear Evan Hansen in the 2010s.

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October 16, 1939 was a Monday. Baseball season had ended 8 days earlier, with the New York Yankees sweeping the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season started 17 days later. So there were no scores on this historic day.