December 16, 1974: “The Towering Inferno” Premieres

December 16, 1974: The Towering Inferno premieres, directed by John Guillerman and produced by Irwin Allen, "The Master of Disaster." Within the past 2 years, the 1,368-foot, 110-story World Trade Center had opened in New York; the 1,454-foot, 110-story Sears Tower had opened in Chicago; and the 1,815-foot CN Tower in Toronto, with a 1,122-foot-high observation deck, had begun construction.

It's a film with "a cast of thousands." Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were two of the biggest stars in the movies at the time, and each wanted top billing. So a compromise was reached: Their names were staggered on the posters, so that McQueen was listed on the left, but Newman's name was higher, allowing each man to claim top billing. Each man was paid $1 million -- about $5.75 million in 2022 money.

The film was based on the novels The Tower by Richard Martin Stern, and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. In the film, the skyscraper is known as the Glass Tower, designed by architect Doug Roberts (Newman). It's 1,688 feet high (a height that wouldn't be reached in real life until 2007) and 138 stories above the streets of San Francisco.

The Tower's electrical system gets overloaded, and a fire starts on the 81st floor. McQueen plays Battalion Chief Michael O'Hallorhan, leading the firefighters. Maureen McGovern, previously in Allen's disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, plays a singer, and, as she did in the previous film with "The Morning After" (which hit Number 1 for her in 1973), sings the theme song.

Older stars: Fred Astaire, William Holden, Jennifer Jones, Olan Soule. Younger stars: Richard Chamberlain, Dabney Coleman, Faye Dunaway, Susan Flannery, Mike Lookinland, Felton Perry, Gregory Sierra, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner... and football star O.J. Simpson.

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December 16, 1974 was a Monday. Despite this, ABC did not air a Monday Night Football game, having aired a Saturday night game 2 nights earlier. Baseball was out of season. No games were played in the NBA, the ABA, the NHL or the WHA. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 27, 1976: "Network" Premieres

Peter Finch as Howard Beale

November 27, 1976: The film Network premieres, directed by Sidney Lumet, with a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. It becomes recognized as a great satire of the television industry -- and, sadly, all too prophetic about what TV would become.

Howard Beale is the anchorman for the evening news at fictional network UBS, the United Broadcasting Service. (He was played by Peter Finch, born in London, raised in Sydney, Australia, but made a good New Yorker.) On September 23, 1975, he announces, live on the air, that he's going to commit suicide in one week's time, also live on the air.

He and his best friend, his producer, Max Schumacher (William Holden), are sure he'll be fired, maybe committed. But the network gets so many phone calls that they're sure the ratings for the next night will be through the roof. So Howard is given one last broadcast. He begins it as follows:

Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast.

Yesterday, I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide -- admittedly, an act of madness.

Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit.

(He pauses.) Am I still on the air? (He sees the red light on the camera is still on, and knows he is, and resumes.)

I really don't know any other way to say it, other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone, somewhere, who does know. That's the God bullshit.

And then, there's the noble man bullshit: That man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit.

I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was married for thirty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So, I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.

The switchboard at network HQ lights up like a pinball machine. People want Beale kept. He's kept. The ratings go through the roof. And then comes the night when he shows up without having gotten dressed and made up for the broadcast, still wearing his raincoat, his hair soaked with rain, and he says this:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work, or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street. And there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe, and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad. Worse than bad: They're crazy. It's like everything, everywhere, is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and, slowly, the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least, leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that, first, you've got to get mad! You've got to say, '"I'm a human being, God damn it! My life has value!"

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up, right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

I want you to get up, right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But, first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

And, all over the country, people do it. And, instead of getting Beale the help his clear mental breakdowns need, the network, particularly executive Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), exploit him. She and Max have an affair, she leaving the boyfriend she has at the start of the film, he leaving his wife. But he dumps her at the end. Noticing that she's roughly the same age as television itself (Dunaway was born in 1941), he tells her:

You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you.

Including Howard Beale. She sees to it that he gets his own prime-time show where he can say whatever he wants. But then, he exposes ties between the corporation that owns the network and business interests in Saudi Arabia, whose oil price hikes had caused the nasty recession of 1973-75, which Beale calls "the depression."

Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the network's chairman, takes advantage of Beale's deteriorating mind, and tells him that the only true god is money. Beale believes him, and changes his tune, and starts telling the people that their lives don't have value, and humanity is in irreversible decline. And so, his ratings go down.

And so, having caused Beale to fall into their trap, and give them what they consider to be just cause, the network hires terrorists to assassinate Beale: He gets the on-air death he predicted, but not how. The voice-over narration by actor Lee Richardson concludes by saying, "This is the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."

Sadly, life came all too close to imitating art: Peter Finch suffered a heart attack and died on January 14, 1977, at the age of 60, just a few weeks after the movie premiered. This is the story of Peter Finch, the first instance of a human being who won a posthumous Academy Award for acting in a leading role. Dunaway also won an Oscar, for Best Actress.

Network taught real-life TV networks the wrong lesson. Beale's show, and Diana's and Jensen's responses to it, led to "reality TV" and Fox News Channel, where the truth doesn't matter, even when you call it "the news."

Paddy Chayefsky, also the author of the novels that became the films Marty and Altered States, died of cancer, even younger than Finch, age 58 -- on August 1, 1981, the day that MTV debuted. What a twist of fate that was!

William Holden also died in 1981, Wesley Addy in 1996, Lee Richardson in 1999, Beatrice Straight in 2001, Sidney Lumet in 2011, Conchata Ferrell in 2020, and Ned Beatty in 2021. As of November 27, 2022, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall are still alive. So is Kathy Cronkite, daughter of CBS anchorman Walter. She tended to be cast in politically-themed films, including this one, before leaving acting to become a psychologist. Her father, ABC anchorman Howard K. Smith, and NBC anchorman John Chancellor are all shown in the film, at the beginning, and at the end. (UPDATE: Duvall died in 2026.)

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November 27, 1976 was a Saturday. Actor Jaleel White, best known for playing Steve Urkel on the sitcom Family Matters, was born.

It was Thanksgiving weekend, and the conclusion of college football's rivalry week. Among the games played were these:

* The day before, in a big rivalry, Number 1 University of Pittsburgh beat Number 16 Penn State, 24-7 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* Also the day before, in another big rivalry, Number 8 Oklahoma beat Number 10 Nebraska, 20-17 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

* Number 3 Southern California (USC) beat Number 13 Notre Dame, 17-13 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* Rivalry: Number 4 Georgia beat Georgia Tech, 13-10 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia.

* Rivalry: Number 7 Houston beat Rice, 42-20 at Rice Stadium in Houston.

* Number 9 Texas Tech beat Arkansas, 30-7 at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas.

* Rivalry: Number 18 Alabama beat Auburn, 38-7 at Legion Field in Birmingham.

* Rivalry: Boston College beat Holy Cross, 59-6 at Alumni Stadium outside Boston in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

* Rivalry: Tennessee beat Vanderbilt, 13-10 at Dudley Field (now FirstBank Stadium) in Nashville, Tennessee.

* Rivalry: Arizona State beat Arizona, 27-10 at Arizona Stadium in Tucson.

* And in the greatest rivalry of them all, Navy beat Army, 38-10 at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia.

There were 8 games played in the NBA: 

* The New York Knicks lost to the Boston Celtics, 123-109 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Mets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 96-91 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Buffalo Braves, 101-94 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Houston Rockets beat the San Antonio Spurs, 125-116 at The Summit (now the Lakewood Church Central Campus) in Houston.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-104 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Indiana Pacers, 122-113 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. David Thompson led all scorers on the day with 37 points,

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 119-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Washington Bullets, 103-95 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland.

There were 6 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 4-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The New York Islanders beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-1 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Washington Capitals, 6-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Buffalo Sabres, 3-2 at the St. Louis Arena.

* The and the Montreal Canadiens beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Cleveland Barons, the Vancouver Canucks, the Atlanta Flames and the Colorado Rockies were not scheduled.

There were 5 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The Minnesota Fighting Saints beat the New England Whalers, 3-1 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Indianapolis Racers beat the Quebec Nordiques, 8-2 at the Colisée de Québec.

* The Cincinnati Stingers beat the Birmingham Bulls, 2-1 at the Riverfront Coliseum (now the Heritage Bank Center) in Cincinnati.

* The Phoenix Roadrunners beat the Edmonton Oilers, 4-2 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the San Diego Mariners beat the Calgary Cowboys, 2-0 at the Stampede Corral in Calgary.

And in English soccer, North London's Arsenal went to the Midlands, and beat Coventry City, 2-1 at Highfield Road in Coventry.

August 10, 1950: "Sunset Boulevard" Premieres

Left to right: Erich von Stroheim,

Gloria Swanson and William Holden

August 10, 1950: Sunset Boulevard is released by Paramount Pictures. Occasionally, Hollywood turns the camera back on itself, only likes part of what it sees, and makes a movie about the movie industry. This may be the best of them, showing the industry for all its glory, and all its venality.

Sunset Boulevard, the street, runs from the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, through the cities of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, through several districts in Los Angeles, including Hollywood (which, unlike Beverly Hills and "WeHo," is not a separate city), sub-including "the Sunset Strip," east to Figueroa Street, a north-south street on which the Crypto.com Arena, and, further south, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Banc of California Stadium (on the site of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena) sit. (UPDATE: In 2023, the soccer facility was renamed BMO Stadium.)

Sunset Boulevard, the film, was directed by Billy Wilder, who had already proven himself a master of both drama and comedy. There's not much comedy in this film. It's narrated by William Holden as Joe Gillis, a screenwriter who needs money now, especially because his car is about to be repossessed. Even in late 1949, when the movie begins, a car was necessary to get around Southern California.

(The 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has the L.A. streetcar line, known as the Red Car, discontinued in 1947. In reality, the Red Car did exist, but it kept running until 1961, and its "Western District" did run to Hollywood, Burbank and Beverly Hills, all the way to Santa Monica -- roughly the route of today's Metro D or E lines on Los Angeles' subway system. The film takes more dramatic license: The Red Car was not discontinued so that freeways could be built, to accommodate the increase in automobile traffic. It was the other way around: The increased traffic had already happened, and some of the freeways had already been built for it, making the Red Car obsolete.)

Joe hides his car in a secluded house at 10086 Sunset Blvd., 14 miles west of Los Angeles City Hall. (The address does not actually exist, but there is a driveway off Sunset that includes 10060 and 10100, so 10086 would be there.) It turns out to be the home of Norma Desmond, once one of the biggest stars in the business, but she hasn't made a film since the "silents" gave way to the "talkies." Joe tells her, "You used to be big." She says, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

She's played by Gloria Swanson, a silent-film star who did successfully make the transition, though many didn't. She was 50 years old when filming began, but seems much older. In modern Hollywood, she would have kept on working until around 50, and then gone from playing romantic leads to playing bosses, mentors and vixens, like Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep and Catherine Zeta-Jones have done.

Her house is run by Max, who, Joe eventually learns, is her ex-husband and ex-director, who "discovered her." He's as creepy as she is. He is played by Erich von Stroheim, who had been one of the silents' top directors, and an actor who specialized in playing villains, billed as "The Man You Love to Hate." To show Norma's earlier career, a clip is shown of Queen Kelly, a 1929 silent film in which von Stroheim directed Swanson.

Norma offers Joe a job as a "script doctor," editing a script she's written for her big comeback. Joe lives there, and Max takes care of his needs as well as hers. Joe soon realizes that Norma has fallen in love with him. He does not return her affections, and she attempts suicide. Joe and Max save her. Soon after this, Joe and Norma begin fooling around. Max knows, but he's still in love with her, and does not interfere with the first happiness she has found in a long time.

Max drives Norma and Joe, in her 1929 Isotta Franchini car, to the Paramount Pictures studios, where they meet another of her former directors, Cecil B. DeMille, who plays himself. He treats Norma with deference, but he doesn't want the script. The studio doesn't want to use the script, or her, just the car.

Finally, Norma discovers another script that Joe has been writing, with his other girlfriend, this one too young for him rather than too old, a studio script reader named Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), who had been the girlfriend of another screenwriter, Artie Green (future Dragnet star/producer Jack Webb). Norma telephones Betty to sabotage that relationship. Joe tells Norma he's leaving her, and that her bid for a comeback has already failed. She pulls a gun, and he tells her that he doesn't believe she will kill herself. He's right: She kills him instead, and he falls into the pool.

It is then that we discover that the dead body in the pool at the beginning of the film is Joe himself: He is narrating even though he is dead. The police arrive, and so do the newsreel cameras. Norma comes down the stairs, dressed in her old finery, and tells everyone, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!" (The line is often misquoted as, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!")

The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture for producer Charles Brackett, Best Director for Wilder, Best Actor for Holden, Best Actress for Swanson, Best Supporting Actor for von Stroheim, and Best Supporting Actress for Olson. None of those won: It only won 3, although 1 was for Best Story and Screenplay, which Brackett and Wilder shared with D.M. Marshman Jr.

In addition to DeMille, Warner Brothers studio head H.B. Warner, gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Sidney Skolsky, silent film stars Buster Keaton and Anna Q. Nilsson, and songwriters Ray Evans and Jay Livingston played themselves.

von Stroheim died in 1957, DeMille in 1959, Brackett in 1969, Holden in 1981, Webb in 1982, Swanson in 1983, Wilder in 2002, and Marshman in 2015. A young Jack Warden appeared in the film, and he lived until 2006. As of August 10, 2022, Olson is still alive.

In 1999, Kevin Spacey starred in American Beauty, and became the 2nd actor nominated for an Oscar, and the 1st to win one, for playing a dead narrator -- and an amoral narrator.

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August 10, 1950 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-3 at Yankee Stadium. Alex Kellner outpitched Eddie Lopat, who was relieved by a rookie named Whitey Ford, who pitched 4 scoreless innings. Sam Chapman and Paul Lehner hit home runs for the A's. Joe DiMaggio went 0-for-4.

* The New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-5 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Granny Hamner led off the bottom of the 10th inning with a single. Andy Seminick singled, and the Giants' center fielder mishandled the ball, allowing Hamner to come all the way around to score.

That center fielder had gone 2-for-5 in the game, but was not a good outfielder. The next season, he lost his job to a rookie named Willie Mays. The former center fielder was moved to 3rd base. His name was Bobby Thomson.

Jim Konstanty was the winning pitcher for the Phils. They went on to win the National League Pennant, and he became the 1st relief pitcher to be named either League's Most Valuable Player.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Boston Braves, 4-3 at Braves Field in Boston. Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella hit home runs in support of Elwin "Preacher" Roe, who outpitched Johnny Sain. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* A doubleheader was split at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The Washington Senators won the opener, 11-2. The Boston Red Sox won the nightcap, 4-3. Ted Williams had been injured in that season's All-Star Game on July 11, and did not return until September 7.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Bucs got home runs from Ralph Kiner, Wally Westlake and Clyde McCullough.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 10-6 at Comiskey Park in Chicago, in the 1st game of a doubleheader. The 2nd game was called due to rain after 7 innings, with the score tied, 1-1.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Bob Lemon was the winning pitcher.

* And the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled.