August 11, 1973: "American Graffiti" Premieres

August 11, 1973: American Graffiti premieres. It takes people's minds off Watergate and the post-Vietnam hangover, and boosts the nostalgia wave for the 1950s.

Which makes it odd that the film does not take place in the Ike Age. The tagline is, "Where were you in '62?" It had been only 11 years. It would be a film in the Trump years celebrating... the 2nd term of George W. Bush. Something tells me that's not the period they mean when they say they want to "make America great again."

There was already a nostalgia wave for the Fabulous Fifties. Music promoter Richard Nader had been producing "Garden Party" shows at the new Madison Square Garden in New York since it opened in 1968. He sold the place out. One of the surprisingly popular acts at Woodstock in 1969 was Sha Na Na, a bunch of intellectuals from Columbia University who stylized themselves as greased-up doo-woppers. The Hippies loved them. And, of course, 1969 was also the year that Elvis Presley, who owned 1956 and 1957, took over Las Vegas.

That was only 12 and 13 years earlier, but it was nostalgia. People wanted to forget Watergate. They wanted to forget Vietnam. They wanted to forget race riots. They wanted to go back to the era when Dwight D. Eisenhower was America's grandpa, or at least to the era when John F. Kennedy was America's big brother. When the biggest thing they had to worry about was whether they had a dime for the jukebox at the malt shop after school.

And while the film was set in 1962, it leaned heavily on the original rock and roll music of 1955-59: "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & the Comets, "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, "That'll Be the Day" by Buddy Holly & The Crickets, "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry; plus a cover of "At the Hop" by Danny & The Juniors, done by a group brought together for the film, Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids.

George Lucas, with science fiction in the back of his mind, directed a film set in Modesto, in central California, with 3 interconnected stories. Ron Howard had already played Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, but this was before he was cast as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, which took the nostalgia wave to television a year later.

Also in the cast, and later becoming stars, were Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, Kathleen Quinlan, Susan Richardson, Kay Lenz, Debralee Scott, Joe Spano, and, most iconically, listed in the credits only as "The Blonde," Suzanne Somers. Wolfman Jack, based out of Los Angeles, was already a well-known disc jockey in the West, but the film made him widely known in the East. Soon, he would be a regular guest-host of NBC's late-night music show The Midnight Special.

Hot rods. Diners. Rock and roll. It was a sanitized version of 1962, with no Cold War, no worry about getting drafted, no civil rights struggles. And, since it was California, you didn't have to worry about the local baseball team moving: The team had already moved, and had come to you.

(Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. San Francisco is 90 miles west of Modesto, and Los Angeles is over 300 miles southeast. When the A's moved to Oakland, and made Modesto the home of one of their farm teams, they were "only" 70 miles west.) 

The Baby Boomers still embrace American Graffiti, now that they actually are old. But their initial embrace of it, when many of them were still in college, showed that, even then, they were lamenting a lost youth, and afraid of getting old. They were the generation that JFK told to look to the future. Instead, they have spent half a century looking backward.

I don't blame George Lucas, any more than I blame "Cousin" Brucie Morrow, Dick Clark, Richard Nader, Wolfman Jack, or any other person who actively benefited from, and promoted, the late 1950s and early 1960s nostalgia wave. Let's be honest: Even the surviving members of that generation of the Kennedy family did that. But it does seem like, through their devotion to nostalgia, the Baby Boomers (the elder half of them, anyway), if not betraying their former forward-looking ideals, have frequently let them down.

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August 11, 1973 was a Saturday. This was also the day that DJ Kool Herc hosted a party in The Bronx that has become known as "the birth of hip-hop." I have a separate entry for this event.

Kind of a strange combination of events: It's like the past, the present and the future all collided.

These Major League Baseball games were played on that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Oakland Athletics, 7-3 at Yankee Stadium. Vida Blue outpitched Mel Stottlemyre. Gene Tenace hit a home run. Reggie Jackson went 3-for-4 with a walk and an RBI for the A's. He would, of course, later star for the Yankees. It was Old-Timers Day, and 46,293 fans came out. I don't know how many were at Herc's party a few hours later.

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 8-7 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Bobby Bonds singled home Garry Maddox, off Tug McGraw, with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning. Bonds had also hit a home run. Don Hahn and John Milner hit home runs for the Mets.

Running out the string for the Mets, Willie Mays doubled to lead off the 9th in a pinch-hitting appearance for his former team. It was the 3,286th hit of his career. There would be only 7 more, plus 3 more in the 1973 postseason.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the California Angels, 2-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Roger Moret outpitched Nolan Ryan. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Frank Robinson went 1-for-3 with an RBI.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-3 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Dusty Baker hit 2 home runs, Darrell Evans 1. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4, but it was a single, not a home run. Willie Stargell went 2-for-3 with a walk.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Baltimore Orioles, 9-4 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-2 before being replaced by a pinch-runner. George Brett had made his major league debut for the Royals 9 days earlier, but did not play in this game.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 3-for-3 with a home run, a walk, and 2 RBIs.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Minnesota Twins, 7-6 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Tony Oliva went 2-for-4 with a home run, a walk and 3 RBIs. Rod Carew went 1-for-5 with an RBI. Harmon Killebrew did not play.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-5 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The Reds led 4-1 going into the bottom of the 9th, but Lou Brock's 3-run home run sent the game to extra innings. The Reds scored 3 in the top of the 10th, including an RBI triple by Johnny Bench. The Cards were only able to respond with 1 run, on a home run by Ted Simmons. Pete Rose went 3-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Texas Rangers, 5-2 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the Montreal Expos and the San Diego Padres were not scheduled. 

June 20, 1975: "Jaws" Premieres

June 20, 1975: Jaws premieres, turning Steven Spielberg into a star director, and inventing the "Summer blockbuster film."

It was based on the novel of the same title, by Peter Benchley, grandson of Robert Benchley of Algonquin Round Table fame. He later regretted writing the book, because the movie led people to go out and kill sharks who had done nothing wrong.

Steven Spielberg was only 27 years old during filming, but he was already a genius, capable of out-Hitching Alfred Hitchcock for fear, suspense and characterization.

The movie was filmed on Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts, and "The Vineyard" stood in for the fictional Amity Island.

Roy Scheider, having previously played a second banana in The French Connection, proved that you didn't have to look like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman or Robert Redford to be an action hero.

Richard Dreyfuss, having played teenagers in American Graffiti and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, was so much better playing a young, thoughtful scientist like Hooper than being a rotten old man. It's one thing to play a mean old Republican, like he did in The American President and W., and he was damn good at both. It's another thing to be one.

English actor Robert Shaw played Quint, who became a shark-hunter after surviving the shark attack on the survivors of the Japanese attack on the USS Indianapolis in the waning days of World War II. Surviving a harrowing wartime experience should make a man less of a jerk, not more. Quint never figured this out.

Murray Hamilton played Mayor Larry Vaughn, a coward who pandered to local businesses. He would have made a great modern Southern Republican. In contrast, as Chief Brody, Scheider gives off serious "I'm a Republican of conscience, and that's why I'm now a guest on MSNBC at least 3 times a week" vibes.

Look, I get why some people root for the shark. Frankly, I wept not at all when it chomped Quint up. I would have cheered if it had gotten that useless Mayor, the real villain of the movie. But you're not supposed to root for the shark, any more than you root for the witch in The Wizard of Oz, or Barzini in The Godfather, or Darth Vader in Star Wars, or Thanos in the Marvel movies.

"Smile, you son of a bitch!" is a better "I'm about to kill you!" line than was ever delivered by John Wayne, and neither Clint Eastwood, nor Sylvester Stallone, nor Arnold Schwarzenegger, nor Bruce Willis has ever topped it, either. Nor will they, in whatever time is left to them.

There were 3 sequels by 1987. The less said about them, the better.

Shaw died in 1978, Hamilton in 1986, Scheider in 2008. As of June 20, 2022, Spielberg, Dreyfuss, and Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody, the Chief's wife, are still alive.

I don't like horror movies, and Jaws has too much screaming for me to buy some people's argument that it's a "perfect movie." But it's a great movie, one proven by both the post-9/11 hysteria and COVID to have stood the test of time.

If had not been made then, and were made today, would it have the same impact? Probably not, since we've been desensitized to some forms of fear. Except... You're gonna need a bigger bank account.

In a 2014 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Spielberg. It became a "battle royale" of film directors, with Peter also playing Michael Bay, while "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Alfred Hitchcock, rapper Michael "Wax" Jones played Quentin Tarantino, and rapper Ruggles Outbound played Stanley Kubrick.

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June 20, 1975 was a Friday. These Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 10-9 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Rudy May didn't get out of the 1st inning, as the Tigers tagged him for 7 runs. But the Yankees nearly came back against Vern Ruhle, with 6 runs in the top of the 9th. Mickey Stanley's home run in the 7th made the difference. Graig Nettles and Bobby Bonds, in his only season with the Yankees, hit home runs. Nettles and Walt "No Neck" Williams each got 3 hits.

* The New York Mets lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-1 at Shea Stadium. Tom Seaver and Brooklyn native John Candelaria had a pitcher's duel going, until Willie Stargell hit a home run in the top of the 7th. The Mets tied it in the bottom of the 8th. Met manager Yogi Berra brought Tom Hall in to pitch the 9th, and he had nothing, and neither did Bob Apodaca, and the Bucs scored 3 runs, to make a winning pitcher out of Candelaria.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Rick Burleson hit a sacrifice fly to score Doug Griffin with the winning run in the top of the 12th inning. Carl Yastrzemski went 3-for-3 with 3 walks. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-5.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Montreal Expos, 7-4 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Greg Luzinski hit a home run. Mike Schmidt did not play.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-2 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Jim Slaton pitched a 6-hit shutout. Robin Yount went 2-for-4 with a walk. Hank Aaron was available for the Brewers, but did not play. Nor did Cleveland player-manager Frank Robinson insert himself into the game. So that's 2 men with a combined 1,321 career home runs who could have played in this game, but didn't.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Rod Carew went 2-for-5 for the Twins, while Steve Brye hit a home run. Bucky Dent went 3-for-4 for the White Sox, while Ken Henderson hit a home run.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Cago Cubs, 8-3 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Astros, 7-3 at the Astrodome in Houston. Pete Rose went 2-for-5. Johnny Bench went 1-for- 4 with a walk.

* The San Diego Padres beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Willie McCovey, who never looked right in a Padre uniform -- then again, in the 1970s, nobody did -- hit a home run.

* The California Angels beat the Texas Rangers, 12-11 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). The Rangers scored 6 runs in the 1st inning, before the Angels even came to bat, chasing Bill Singer. But Gaylord Perry couldn't hold it, and the Angels led 8-7 after 6.

The Rangers sent the game to extra innings, and scored 3 runs in the top of the 11th. But the Angels scored 4 in the bottom half, the winning run scoring when 2nd baseman Mike Cubbage mishandled Jerry Remy's ground ball. Morris Nettles, no relation to Graig (Morris was black), had an RBI double in the inning.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Reggie Jackson went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs. George Brett went 0-for-4.