Genii aka Robin Williams walks the line

Gang, those of you who want to help the WGA writers in their strike, now is the time when they can really use your support. When the hububb and publicity is gone, when no settlement seems near, when picketers start to despair and turn on each other. Now if you see a picket line of WGA, go over and lend a hand. Shoulder a sign for awhile, or just wish them good luck. I've walked the pavement on a couple of picket lines. You'd be surprised how those good wishes go a long way.

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QUIZ: Why is a bunch of tubs of food along a wall where you serve yourself, called a buffet meal?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is the oldest snackfood known to mankind?
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History for 11/27/2007
Birthdays: Cornelius Vanderbuilt, Jimi Hendrix would have been 66, Bruce Lee- real name Lee Jun Fan would have been 67, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is 51, James Agee, Chaim Weizmann, Alexander Dubcheck, David Merrick, Marshal Thompson, Robin Givens, Judd Nelson, Buffalo Bob Smith

43BC-THE SECOND TRIUMVERATE- Marc Anthony, Octavian Caesar and Marcus Lepidus compel the Roman Senate to declare them The Board of Three with Consular Powers for the Organizing of the State. This legitimized what they were in fact anyway, the real rulers of the Roman Empire. They used this new pact to hunt down the killers of Julius Caesar, and they published a list of "Proscribed Persons". People who they declared enemies of the state. An estimated 4,000 Roman politicians and noblemen were executed including the philosopher Cicero.

176 AD- Marcus Aurelius named his son Commodus as co ruler and heir to the Roman Empire. Romes second Golden Age of Peace and prosperity called the Augustan Age ends. The Augustan Age was successful because the Emperors, who were mostly gay or bi-sexual, would adopt the best man for the job of emperor instead of picking a family member. So Rome enjoyed a series of excellent leaders- Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. But Marcus Aurelius spoiled the whole system by letting his natural son Commodus succeed him. Commodus turned into another sicko-tyrant like Nero and Caligula. It was rumored Commodus wasn’t even Marcus’ son but the Empress Faustina sired him with a gladiator, thus his fondness for their profession.

221AD- Today is the Feast Day of Saint James Intercisus, or Saint James 'Cut up into tiny pieces", which leaves but little speculation about the method of his martyrdom.

1519- Martin Luther squared off with Catholic scholar Dr. Johann Eck in a grand public debate in Liepzig. Audiences sat in bleachers and cheered like a sports match. The debate about Luther’s new Protestant views would go on until July 8th. Luther won the audience with his superior eloquence and logic but Eck succeeded in getting Luther to publicly speak heresy against Rome. The Reformation now moved from a small local argument about indulgences to a major challenge to the authority of the Vatican to rule the Christian world.

1582- William Shakespeare 27 married Ann Hathaway 25. They had a son who died and two daughters. In 1585 Shakespeare left his wife in Stratford on Avon, and by 1591 was known as an actor in London. He invested in land in Stratford and in 1616 retired to the country to spend time with his daughters and grandchildren but he never went back to Ann. It’s been speculated that she was a Puritan while Shakespeare enjoyed making fun of Puritans in Comedys like "Twelfth Night"."Just because thou art Virtuous thinks there shall be no more Cakes and Ale?"

1868- THE GREAT BATTLE ON THE WASHITA -as it was called in those days. Generals Sherman and Sheridan had had enough of chasing small bands of Indian warriors all over the prairie. They now ordered George Armstrong Custer to introduce to the plains their style of "Hard War"- that burned Atlanta and brought the Confederacy to it’s knees.
With the sound of a band playing " Gary Owen" shattering the pre-dawn quiet Custer and his 7th Cavalry surprise attacked the village of Chief Black Kettle. One name Indians had for Custer was Son of the Morning Star, not for poetic effect, but because his preferred time of attack was an hour before sunrise when everyone was still asleep. The warriors were out foraging anyway, so they mostly killed women and children. They even shot the Indian’s ponies. Chief Black Kettle had recently signed a peace treaty with the white-eyes and felt so safe he flew a U.S. flag over his teepee. Black Kettle had survived a similar attack in 1864 called the Sand Creek Massacre. The excuse for the attack was that a white woman homesteader kidnapped by renegade Cheyenne may have been deposited for awhile at Black Kettle's encampment. The Victorian horror over inferred sexual outrages committed on Christian maidens goaded the troopers to ruthless fury, however after the battle Custer freely encouraged his officers to divide up the prettiest squaws for themselves.
One legend says Custer took a mistress named Meotzsi who bore him a child. So when Custer died at the Little Big Horn the reason his body was not scalped and mutilated like the others was the Cheyenne considered him family.

1910- New York’s Penn Station opened.

1921- English writer Alastair Crowley proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order Templeis Orientalis- or Order of the Temple of the East. Alastair Crowley had spent years studying and mastering various occult devotions- Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Gnosticism, Iluminati in order to fuse them into his own form of black magick devotion- Thelema he called it based on the satires of the 1500’s French poet Rabelais. He boasted often that he wanted Crowleyism to eventually replace Christianity. He sold virility pills to men that contained a drop of his own semen in the formula. His own mother called him:"The Wickedest Man in the World".

1924- The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marvel of the parade were large displays that moved down the street thanks to small automobiles concealed under them. They seemed to "float",so they are called parade floats today. The huge balloons were added in 1934. Originally after the parade the balloons were let go to float away into the sky. Macy’s offered a bounty to people who found them after they landed, sometimes in rural New Jersey.

1933- Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Disney's, writes to fellow animator Bill Tytla encouraging him to move to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon!"

1936- Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor".

1941-While Admiral Yamamoto’s carrier fleet was getting it’s final orders to put to sea, at Pearl Harbor the U.S. army commander General Short got a top secret coded message from Washington: " Negotiations with Japan seem at an end for all practical purposes...future moves unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act...Measures should be carried out so as not to alarm the civilian population or disclose intent."

1942- Admiral Laborde had received orders from Vichy to put the French fleet at the Nazis disposal so they attack the Allied beachheads in North Africa. Instead Laborde scuttled the French fleet in Toulon Harbor.

1950- THE CHOSIN RESEVOIR- In Korea this day the US First Marine Division and British Commando 411 was cut off and attacked on all sides by massed Red Chinese armies. Commander Chesty Puller, a veteran of Guadalcanal, when told he was surrounded replied: "That just simplifies our problems of finding these people and killing them." The Marines slowly fought their way the trap in subzero cold across the frozen ice bringing out most of their wounded and some POWs. Survivors of the epic march refuse to call their campaign a retreat, they said they merely attacked in another direction. They called themselves "The Chosin Few" and the "Frozen-Choisin".

1953- Playwright Eugene O'Neill died of pneumonia and Parkinson's Disease at 65. He had been writing on cardboard laundry shirt boards because he needed something large to write on because his hands trembled so violently. When O’Neill realize his end was near he tore up six plays he was writing because he wanted no one else to complete them. He was staying at the Shelton Hotel in Boston. As his father was an actor his family traveled frequently. O'Neill's last words were : "I knew it! Born in a hotel room and G-ddammit I'm dying in a hotel room! "

1960 – Gordie Howe becomes the first NHL player to score 1000 goals.

1967- The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour.

1973- According to the X-Files this was the night Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted by aliens.

1975- Ross McWhirter, publisher of the Guinness Book of World Records, was killed by the IRA.

1985- Steven Speilberg married Amy Irving. They later divorced.
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Quiz: What is the oldest snackfood known to mankind?

Answer: Popcorn. Kernels of Popcorn have been found in Ice Age graves and campsites in the Americas.

Quiz: What is the oldest snackfood known to mankind?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is the origin of the word Okay, or OK?
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History for 11/26/2007
Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Tina Turner, Charles "Sparky" Schulz, Cyril Cusak the father of John and Joan Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Wendy Turnbull, Robert Goulet

311 A.D. -Saint Peter of Alexandria, known as the last saint to be martyred before Roman Emperor Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity in 312.

1716- In Boston the first African lion ever seen in America was put on exhibit.

1825-Kappa Alpha of Union College NY is established. The first college fraternity house.

1832- In New York the first public transportation began, a streetcar pulled along iron rails by a team of horses. A ticket cost 12 pennies. The last horse car bus stopped in 1926.

1865- Lewis Carroll sent a copy of the completed manuscript of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland to his12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. Carroll later published the book with his own money. This is one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate, scare or discipline them.

1868- The first baseball game played in an enclosed field. It was in San Francisco at Folsom & 25th St..

1896- AA. Stagg of University of Chicago invented the football huddle.

1913- THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMBROSE BIERCE- Ambrose Bierce was one of the more popular U.S. writers of the late 19th century . A savage wit and social critic , a combat veteran of the Civil War, he pioneered sardonic anti-war fiction long before Kurt Vonnegut. But by 1913 the 71 year old curmudgeon found himself alone, ill, his creative powers failing and not looking forward to old age. So on November 6th he announced his intention to travel to Mexico at the height of the revolution there and hopefully get killed: “Ah, to be an old gringo stood up before a Mexican firing squad, now that is Euthanasia!” This day he gave his last known newspaper interview in Laredo Texas, then disappeared forever. A niece claimed he sent her a letter from Chihuahua on Dec. 26th but that letter has never been found. The popular story is that he was executed by Pancho Villa but Villa and his people never recalled meeting Bierce. Plus Villa was followed around by so many American news correspondents that a person as famous as Ambrose Bierce there was sure to be noticed. Other theories abound- that he volunteered to spy for the State Dept.; he faked the Mexico story so he could quietly kill himself in the recesses of the Grand Canyon, even that he was carried off by a demon who wanted men named Ambrose, which is why nobody names their kids Ambrose anymore! As he planned, Ambrose Bierce has the last laugh. “I want no one to find my bones!” And no one ever has.
In 2007 inventor and aviator Steve Fossett pulled off a similar disappearing act. I wonder if it was for the same reasons?

1926- Potato Chips, or Crisps in the UK, were invented in the 1880’s and served in restaurants and fairgrounds. I remember in Brooklyn the Dugan’s Bakery Truck delivering potato chips in a large tin container. This day Ms Laura Scudder was the first to put potato chips in a bag and sold them as a handy snack food. She sold them out of the back of her pickup truck until the business picked up. She ran her own company until 1959.

1939- The first Woody Woodpecker Cartoon, "Knock-Knock.'.

1945- Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis recorded Ko-Ko, the first true BeeBop Jazz single. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card so after his riff Miles Davis dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”.

1975- Former Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford with a starters pistol.

1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.
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Answer to yesterday’s question: What is the origin of the word Okay, or OK?

ANSWER: Martin Van Bueren , President 1837-41, was a master political tactician and backroom dealer, under President Andrew Jackson. Van Bueren was born in Kinderhook New York. Whenever there was a delicate political or diplomatic tangle that needed fixing, you never had to worry if “Old Kinderhook” was on the job- it was “OK”, one theory of the origin of the phrase.

My old shipmate Jerry Beck has a great new book out, which will look great under the tree of many a Hanna Barbera fan.

It's the Hanna & Barbera Treasury from Random House, richly illustrated with great artwork from H&B's long history of television memories. I particularly enjoyed the character studies by Ed Benedict developing future stars like Snagglepuss, Barney Rubble and Lippy the Lion! Check it out on Jerry's website and order it along with Amid's UPA treasury. See their website cartoonresearch for how to order. Squiddly Diddley, Touche Turtle, Penelope Pittstop and the Anthill Mob, oh...beat still my heart! Maybe they'll have some of my cleanup keys for Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels. Euh! Hope not!



NOTE: I'll be on the road this week working with CLick & Clack and giving the Distinguished Alumni lecture at SVA in Noo Yawk, so if my blogg doesn't pop up on time, please cut me some slack. I'll be back on the beat by the end of the week.
Distinguished Alumni indeed!
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QUIZ: The term OK is understood all around the world. It’s some of the only English many recognize. What is the origin of the term- Okay or OK?

ANSWER TO yesterdays’ question, Why is your mug another nickname for a face?, below…..
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History for 11/25/2007
Birthdays: Lope de Vega, Pope John XXIII, Andrew Carnegie, Tina Turner, Joe Dimaggio, Carl Benz of Mercedes Benz, Virgil Thompson, Jeffrey Hunter, John Kennedy,Jr.,Percy Sledge, Ben Stein, Ricardo Montalban is 85, John Larroquette, Gloria Steinem, Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, Christina Applegate, Bucky Dent, Bill Kroyer

1758- In the Pennsylvania wilderness a British force including frontier scout Daniel Boone and militia captain George Washington captured Fort Duquesne from the French. They renamed for their current Prime Minister William Pitt, hence the name Pittsburgh.

1783- EVACUATION DAY- The treaties ending the American Revolution signed, the last British troops leave U.S. soil, sailing out of New York Harbor. This also marks the beginning of the exodus to Canada of Americans who sided with England, maybe as many as 130,000. United Empire Loyalists, or Tories as you prefer. They mostly populated Southern Ontario and Nova Scotia. One other little reported migration was of freed African slaves. Slavery would soon be eliminated in the British Empire and whenever redcoats would capture an American town they would liberate the slaves. About 3,000 requested to return to Africa and were sent to Sierra Leone.Among their number was a personal slave of George Washington’s, who bolted through the lines to the British the moment the offer was published. A large number also fought on the American side as well. Evacuation Day was a holiday in New York City for years afterwards.

1795- English architect Henry Latrobe left Europe for a life in the U.S. Latrobe was the architect who built the U.S. Capitol building .

1817- The first sword swallower performed in the US.

1864- In a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at New York’s Winter garden Theater the three Booth brothers- John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius Booth appeared together for the only time. Other famous acting families of the time included the Powers, who’s descendant was the movie star Tyrone Power and the Barrymores, who’s line continues down today from John to John Drew to Drew Barrymore.

1867- Alfred Nobel patented Dynamite. The riches he accumulated from this and Nitro-Glycerine he used to fund the Nobel Prize.

1869- Ned Buntline was a hack dime novelist who understood that selling stories about gunfighters of the west would be easier if you could occasionally produce one in the flesh. So on a trip to Nebraska he found among the cavalry scouts an accommodatingly colorful rogue named William Cody, who everybody called Buffalo Bill. This day Ned Buntline announced in the New York Weekly the first installment of a serial series “Buffalo Bill King of the Bordermen”. Buntline and Cody collaborated to make Buffalo Bill the first true American media star, entertaining millions including crowned heads until 1916.

1929- Alfred Hitchcock’s film Blackmail opened in London. It was the first full length talkie in Britain.

1932- A young school teacher at Sam Houston High School got a phone call. It was from Texas Congressman Richard Clayburgh. He needed a executive aide in Washington and heard this guy was a go-getter. The teacher said yes and packed his cardboard suitcase. Lyndon B. Johnson’s career in politics began.

1949- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sung by Gene Autry hit number one on the musical charts.

1952- The stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery the Mousetrap opened in London’s West End.

1956- Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 88 followers departed Mexico in a ramshackle boat called the Granma to start a revolution in Cuba.

1960- CBS cancelled it’s remaining five radio soap operas, most of them now on television.

1963- THE GREAT FUNERAL OF JOHN F. KENNEDY. The massed muffled drums, bagpipes, bands blaring Chopin’s Funeral March, the riderless horse with the boots in the stirrups turned inward, a tradition that went back to Genghis Khan, the black horse drawn artillery caisson modeled on Abraham Lincoln's. The day was also John Kennedy, Jr.'s birthday and a big party had been planned with lots of little tots. Jackie knew that John-John didn't understand the gravity of what had transpired so after the funeral she changed out of her widows weeds and ran a kiddie party.

1970- Japan's greatest modern poet-playwright Yukio Mishima committed suicide (seppuku) after attempting a coup at a military base where the Japanese Defense Force soldiers just laughed at him. He felt Japan was losing her spiritual soul to crass materialism and the ancient Bushido warrior code was the only way back. In a poll conducted in a magazine at the time about 75% of Japanese women said they would rather commit suicide than sleep with Yukio Mishima.

1971- Con man D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient passenger plane after stealing $ 200,000. He parachuted out of the 727 airliner with the money during a thunderstorm over Washington State and disappeared forever. Searchers found rotting bits of money in the forest but never a body. D.B.Cooper became a folk legend. In 1999 a man in South Carolina named Dwayne Weber was dying of liver cancer. Before he died he turned to his wife Jo and said “Before I go, I gotta tell ya something. I’m Dan Cooper” His wife said he loved singing at piano bars and his favorite song was “You’ll never know..”

1975- According to the first movie Rocky, this was the date of the first prizefight portrayed in the film where we meet Rocky Balboa.

1980- “No Mas!” Sugar Ray Leonard defeated Alberto Duran for the World Welterweight Boxing Championship.

1995- Legendary Corporate CEO Akio Morita resigned as the leader of Sony. Under his guidance Sony went from a little postwar maker of cheap electric rice cookers to the largest electronics giant in the world. His official reason was health problems but insiders said the real problem was his headaches with Sony's Hollywood studios -MGM, Columbia, TriStar losing $2 billion. By the time he died in 1999 the Sony movie studios had pulled out of their slump and were on top with movies like Men in Black.

1998- Pixar’s film A Bugs Life premiered.
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Yesterday’s question: Why is your mug another nickname for a face?

Answer: In London in the 1660’s politics were discussed in coffee houses on Fleet St. There only wealthy gentry could afford to dally over a cup of rare Java or hot cocoa imported from the Americas. And English King Charles II ‘s queen Catherine of Braganza introduced tea drinking. The opposition to the government’s policies was led by the Earl Of Shaftesbury. The Earl’s face was printed on coffee mugs by his partisans. Political arguments would include throwing or breaking these cups. This is when the word mug also came to mean a face:” I don’t like your mug!”

courtesty slumdance.com

I've always said that London and New York are cities of monuments, but LA is a city of ghosts. There are few plaques or statues to note the important places of the cities past, even while it is rapturously studied by fans the world over. The destruction of the Brown Derby inspired me to join Hollywood Heritage and the LA Conservancy to try and stop, or at least slow down the egregious despoiling of Los Angeles' few remaining historical sites.

Back in 1982, when Eric Goldberg and I were working in downtown Hollywood on an ABC special called Ziggy's Gift, we sometimes had lunch at a broken down old bar on Cherokee off Hollywood Blvd called BOARDNERS'. The food was passable but cheap, and it exuded a seedy Charles Bukowski ambiance. (it turned out the great barfly poet did drink there.) We noticed there were even posters and artwork up from old animation studios.

This week Jason Tucker, an editor friend of mine I met whilst working for the venerable Brothers Warner, sent me this interesting article about this last of the old Hollywood Watering Holes. It is by Mike Mikulan for the LA Weekly, and portions are reprinted here with their kind permission.

You can get the full article with much more info about Boardners and neighboring Italian restaurant Miceli's by going to http://www.boardners.com/boardners_story.php

Seven blocks west of Vine, the embers of Hollywood nightlife still glow at Boardner's, a snug little bar that has survived nearly every act of man and nature to become one of the town's unsung monuments to endurance.

It's been claimed, for example, that this was the last bar where Elizabeth Short drank before she stepped into the night and became the Black Dahlia; that an owner bailed out longtime customer Robert Mitchum after his famous 1947 pot bust; that a bartender once nailed the men's room door shut on an inebriated friend; that a ghost has been seen in the tiny women's room.

These and a thousand other tales, verifiable and fabulous alike, make up the Boardner's mythos. What's undisputed are the spare engineering details of its 1927 birth, noted in the hurried longhand of city building inspectors. The bar lies at the Cherokee Avenue foot of a two-story, 122-by-76-foot L-shaped structure that hinges the avenue with Hollywood Boulevard. Designed by Norman Alpaugh, the architect responsible for L.A.'s Sheraton Townhouse and Santa Monica's Elmiro Theater, the building bears some appealing Moorish flourishes carved above a series of narrow shops with deep-set show windows; the Moroccan theme continues on the back patio, with a cruciform, tiled fountain upon which William Powell once posed with some showgirls for a clothing-store promotion.

In 1948 Steve Boardner bought the property and opened his named bar.
It became a golden age for Boardner, a time when former Tommy Dorsey singer Jack Leonard (Scotch and water) would regularly drop in, as would Errol Flynn (beer), and members of Xavier Cugat's band after playing at their boss' club. Another big presence was Boardner's longtime friend, the singer and bandleader Phil Harris (coffee and anisette), whose routine was to say goodbye to his wife, Alice Faye, after the two dined at Musso & Frank, then head over to Boardner's for a rendezvous with his mistress. One day in 1946, regulars W.C. Fields and Wallace Beery were seated in a booth and ordered Coca-Colas. "Coke?" Steve joked. "Why, that stuff'll kill you." Within the year Fields would be dead. (Mikulan proceeds in the article to interview Boardner, now retired in Palm Springs).

STEVE BOARDNER TICKS OFF A roster of long-vanished boulevard bars as though they were still open: "Pickwick Books used to be a bar and restaurant called the Circle, where Lena Horne got started," he says, unaware that even the famed bookstore is now a distant memory. "Bob Perry's Brass Rail, on Vine and Hollywood, had singing waiters and sawdust on the floor. There was a place on Las Palmas called the Swing Club. You'd rap on the door and they'd let you in. It got changed to the 1710 Club and was only open after-hours. The Iron Horse in the Valley was where Gene Autry used to go to get his martini before breakfast. Yes, he was a pretty good rounder."

No-budget director Ed Wood (Scotch and water) was a Boardner's regular, as was Gilligan's Island's Alan Hale Jr. (double Jack Daniels). And athletes, great and obscure, retired and active, still made pilgrimages. Mickey Mantle (bourbon and ginger ale) once dropped in, as did Joe DiMaggio. But eventually the bar, like Hollywood itself, began to lose its luster.

Depending on who you speak to, Hollywood's nightlife was killed by "hippies" and panhandlers who scared away foot traffic, or by the proliferation of topless bars and porn shops, as well as by the presence of more desirable restaurants in Beverly Hills and La Cienega Boulevard's Restaurant Row. Steve began closing the bar down earlier and earlier, until it never stayed open past 10 o'clock.
He sold Boardners and retired in 1980.

1652 Cherokee is continually rediscovered, and it has become a favorite place to hold wrap parties and to shoot films. (Ed Wood, L.A. Confidential and Beverly Hills, 90210 are among many movies and shows filmed here.) Ed Wood’s original home was down the street on the corner of Cherokee & Selma. Boardners now has it's own website.

The animation connection is the artists of Hanna & Barbera used to come there in 1959-61 when H&B was still a little Hollywood storefront. When Eric and I were therein 82 the walls in the back were covered with production charts and posters from past animation houses like Quartet (Charlie Tuna) Playhouse( Tony the Tiger), UPA (Mr Magoo),and Snowball (Beany & Cecil). And the aforementioned Phil Harris of course was the voice for Walt Disney's Baloo, O'Malley and Little John.

Future owners interested in the place pledge to restore it to it's former glory, but I kinda hope it stays the way it is, gritty, a bit seedy, but steeped in the atmosphere of Old Hollywood. Like a James Ellroy or Dashell Hammett mystery come to life.



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Quiz: Why is a nickname for someone’s face a mug? Like you ugly mug?

Answer to yesterday’s Quiz below: Why are white people called Caucasian?
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HISTORY FOR 11/24/2007
Birthdays: Benedict Spinoza, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Scott Joplin, President Zachary Taylor “Old Rough & Ready”, William F. Buckley, John Lindsay, Dale Carnegie- author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, Carrie Nation, Dick Powell, Garson Kanin, Cass Gilbert-the architect of the first skyscraper, Steve Yeager, Denise Crosby, Billy Connolly is 65

800 AD- Charlemagne or Charles the Great, the King of the Franks ( France), arrived in Rome to spend the Christmas season with his old pal Pope Leo III. At the Christmas service Leo would crown Charles Emperor of the Romans.The name Romans was symbolic, since the Roman Empire had long since disappeared.

1221- The Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan destroy the army of Persian Shah Mohammed II in the Indus Valley in present northwestern Pakistan.

1859- Charles Darwin published the Origin of the Species.

1904- Alfred Steiglitz and William Steichen opened 291, the first art gallery dedicated exclusively to the art of photography.

1909- THE UPRISING OF THE TWENTY THOUSAND. Mary 'Mother' Jones led three fifths of the immigrant garment workers of New York out on strike to demand better conditions and recognition of their union, the ILGWU. Several Golden 400 socialites would meet the strikers at the old Water Tower in Greenwich Village to dispense food and day care. One of them was Betsy Morgan the youngest daughter of J.P. Morgan who was also involved in a lesbian love affair with designer Elzie DeWolfe….that must have helped her old man's blood pressure.!

1922- Irish writer Robert Erskine Childers was put up against the wall and shot by firing squad. Erskine Childers was the writer of the Riddle of the Sands, one of the first true spy novels, but he was also a leader of the IRA and after Irelands Treaty with Britain he sided with Eamon de Valera and the anti-treaty rebels in the Irish Civil War. Erskine Childers was executed by an Irish Army firing squad. His son became President of Ireland in 1973.

1933- The RKO movie Flying Down to Rio, the first pairing of the famous dance team Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

1937- The Andrew Sisters record their Boogie-Woogie version of the German song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon”.

1938- LENI DOES TINSELTOWN -Hitler's top filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl arrived in Hollywood to meet the film community and show off her new film 'Olympia". Nazis charges de’ affaires in L.A. Gerhard Gyssling had bragged to the press that all Hollywood was dying to meet Germany’s top film artist. But Hollywood had different ideas. Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, Fox and Goldwyn refused to speak to her and picketers hounded her every step. Well known Conservatives like Louis B. Mayer and Gary Cooper were polite but begged off the bad publicity. The only studio heads who would meet Leni Reifenstahl were Hal Roach and Walt Disney. Uncle Walt gave her a tour of the studio but begged off running her film, saying the IATSE union projectionist would make trouble. ( uh-huh....) Years later Disney said he didn't really know who she was. ( uh-huh..)

I recently talked to LA Historian Robert Nudelman who interviewed Reifenstahl shortly before she died at age 101. She told him that the reason Walt wanted to meet her was not about politics, but that he was still annoyed that his film Snow White lost out to her at the Venice Film Festival. He wanted to see it to know why.

1941- After suffering a strike and declining revenue because of the war in Europe Walt Disney’s studio was in trouble. Disney animator Ward Kimball noted in his diary for this day: “ 100 layoffs announced. Studio personnel from 1600 down to a Hyperion level of 300. Geez, It this the writing on the wall?” Disney saved itself with doing Defense films for the Army. After limping through the 1940’s with the release of Cinderella in 1949 Walt Disney was back on top..

1947-SIXTY YEARS AGO- THE WALDORF DECLARATION, THE START OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST- 50 Hollywood moguls like Harry Cohn, Jack Warner and Dori Charey meet at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to formulate a group response to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee anti-commie hearings that were targeting Hollywood. Besides the heat from the feds their stockholders were clamoring for them to get the Reds out! They agreed to enforce an industry-wide blacklisting of anyone refusing to cooperate with the HUAC Committee. Nothing was ever officially written down or published, if you were blacklisted you suddenly were unable to find any work.
Eric Johnston, spokesman for the Motion Pictures Assoc. said on this day: "As long as I live, I will never be party ot anything as unAmerican as a blacklist!”.
Two days later on Nov. 26th he said: " We will forthwith discharge and never again knowingly employ a Communist. Loyalty oaths for the Entertainment Industry are now compulsory." Many Hollywood artists signed Communist Party cards in the 1930's when it was chic' to be lefty and the Communists were the only open opponents of segregation and Hitler. One screenwriters’ excuse was CP parties had the prettiest girls. Out of an estimated 15,000 entertainment workers only around 300 were ever actually proven to be Communists. Famous blacklist victims included Zero Mostel, Lillian Hellman, Lloyd Bridges, Dashell Hammett, Gale Sondergaard, Edward G. Robinson, Sterling Hayden & Dalton Trumbo. Sidney Poitier was blacklisted for no other reason than he was friends with black activist-actor Canada Lee; 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' composer Yip Harburg was blacklisted for writing a song: 'You Gotta Friend Named Joe" which the committee took to mean Russian dictator Josef Stalin.

1948- Hib Johnson, the President of Johnson's Wax had just moved into a home designed for him by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Called Wingspread, it was considered the culmination of Wrights prairie style. But there was a problem. Johnson called Frank Lloyd Wright to complain that the roof was leaking rainwater onto his Thanksgiving dinner! The water was leaking right on Hib's head as he sat at the head of the table. He refused to budge, had the phone cord stretched so he could make the
call, and spoke to Wright with the drops splashing off his bald tome. What was Wright’s response? " So move the table..."

1950- The musical Guys & Dolls opened. “ I got da horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, I know a jock who tells me Never Fear, Can Do- Can Do..The Jock sez da horse can –do ”

1958- The musical film Gigi opened, music by Lerner & Lowe. Based on the writings of French author Collette, Collette herself had insisted young unknown Dutch actress Audrey Hepburn play the lead.

1963- To complete the surreal drama that shocked America into the Sixties, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is shot on nationwide T.V. by smalltime gangster Jack Ruby. He is taken to the same hospital and has the same doctors as Kennedy but still dies. Ruby, real name Jacob Rubenstein, always hung around the Dallas police station so no one thought it was unusual to see him around.

1968- Hey Jude by the Beatles topped the pop charts while Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man headed the Country & Western listing.

1976- The Band announced at the Winterland in San Francisco that this was their last concert.

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Yesterday’s Question: Why are white people called Caucasian?

Answer: In the slave markets of ancient Greece and Rome, the slaves from the Caucasus Mountains on the eastern coast of the Black Sea were valued for their physical condition. The men were exceptionally handsome and the women renowned for their beauty. When shopping for slaves a typical order would be :” Give men two Germans, a Nubian, a Greek tutor, and a few Caucasians…”

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. I recall when I was young, Thanksgiving morning meant the Macy Parade, but it also meant the only time that year you could see Laurel & Hardy in the March of the Wooden Soldiers, and Max Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels. They were in grainy black & white, because few had color TVs then. They usually ran on the local Metromedia NY stations like WPIX. It came to mean Thanksgiving to me as much as the cranberry sauce. So, if you have a copy available, take a look at these two old gems and start a family holiday tradition!

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Quiz: Why are white people called Caucasian?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: In Chuck Jones's cartoon "Tom Turk and Daffy" (1944) Daffy Duck helps to hide the Thanksgiving turkey, until Porky's description of how delicious his planned thanksgiving dinner will be seduces Daffy into revealing the turkey's hiding place. Tom Turkey comments on Daffy's betrayal by saying "Quisling..."Something a 1940’s audience would get. What does that mean?
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HISTORY FOR 11/23/2007
Birthdays: German Emperor Otto Ist 972AD, Edward Rutledge –Declaration of Ind signer, President Franklin Pierce, Krystoff Penderecki, Manuel DeFalla, William Henry Pratt better known as Boris Karloff, William Bonney better known as Billy the Kid, Susan Anspach, Victor Jory, Vincent Cassel,

Feast of Saint Clement Ist and Saint Columban.

1499- PERKIN WARBECK hanged for trying to overthrow King Henry VII Tudor. Warbeck maintained he was one of the murdered young "Princes in the Tower", allegedly done in by Richard III " a horse, a horse, etc." in 1485.

1654- BLAISE PASCAL was one of the great minds of French civilization. A scientist who invented an early computer. He loved debating science with Rene Descartes and Johannes Kepler. Descartes joked about Pascal’s championing the existence of a vacuum: “The only vacuum that exists is in Monsieur Pascal’s head!” This day he almost died when his carriage plunged off a Seine River Bridge. The carriage remained precariously perched above the water allowing Pascal to escape. That night in his trauma he had the first of several religious revelations. Blaise Pascal became a philosopher and one of the greatest Christian apologists and champions of established religion. He wrote of that night:” The God of Abraham and Issac appeared to me, The God of Jacob - Reassurance. Certainty. Peace.”

1874- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy first published.

1876- The first intercollegiate College Football association set up in Springfield Mass.

1889- The first Juke Box installed at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. Created by Louis T. Glass it used Edison cylinders instead of records and cost 5 cents a play. Juke comes from Juke Joint, a slang term for a dance hall.

1897-First Royal performance for Queen Victoria of a Cinematograph moving picture, at Windsor Castle. Also on the program was Monsieur Taffary's Calculating Dogs.

1903- Italian tenor Enrico Caruso made his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in Verdi’s Rigoletto. The great singer loved drawing caricatures, collecting police badges, pinching ladies bottoms and doing practical jokes like filling your hat with flour. Painter Norman Rockwell recalled when he was paying his way through school by being a Met stagehand Caruso liked to talk art with him and he asked about George Bridgemans class, the great anatomist.

1936- The first florescent lighting tubes are installed, in the U.S. Patent office.

1936- Time Magazine owner Henry Luce launched LIFE Magazine. The first picture on the cover was a dam photographed by Margaret Bourke-White. The second picture was a doctor slapping a newborn baby with the caption: “Life Begins!”

1938- Bob Hope recorded his signature tune “Thanks for the Memory” for the movie The Big Broadcast..

1942- PLAY IT AGAIN SAM- The movie CASABLANCA premiered. Based on an unproduced musical play “Everybody Comes to Ricks’, Howard Koch and the Epstein Brothers adapted the play into one of the most memorable Hollywood movies ever. It was never expected to be more than a rehash of the popular Charles Boyer film Algiers "come wiz me to ze Casbah!". George Raft was first offered the role of Rick but after he turned it down, it was given to Bogie. He described it to a friend:" Aw.. it's just some more sh*t like Algiers!". Humphrey Bogart acted opposite Ingrid Bergman, although he had to stand on boxes to appear taller than his Swedish leading lady. During the famous scene where the French exiles drown out the singing Germans with a stirring rendition of le Marseillaise the Germans are singing Watch On the Rhine. The director wanted them to sing the Nazi Party anthem the Horst Wessel Song but the Warner Legal Dept discovered it was copywrighted! Don’t want them Nazis to sue! .At this time the real Casablanca was still in a war zone so director Michael Curtiz and his art director Carl Jules Wyl had to fake what a North African French colonial city might look like. A decade later while filming in Spain he took the ferry over to Casablanca to see how close they came. Driving around Curtiz remarked “Carl, this doesn’t look anything like our movie!!”

1945- The U.S. government ends most wartime food and gas rationing.

1947- THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS- Prof E. L. Sukenik of Hebrew University in Israel was first told of a discovery made by two Bedouin sheperds in a cave near Qumran. Hebrew sacred scrolls dated from 200BC to 70AD, many were found to corroborate translated passages in the modern Bible. Sukenik risked his life crossing battle zones to buy more parts of the scrolls from antiquarian dealers.

1952- Animator Fred Moore, who drew Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and the Brave Little Tailor, died in an auto accident in the Tujunga Canyon area of Los Angeles.

1960- The Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated, featuring over 1,500 names- but not Charlie Chaplin, who was banned until 1972 because of his alleged lefty political views.

1963- The first episode of Dr.Who premiered on the BBC.

1966-The film “ Spinout “ premiered. Elvis Presley pioneered the genre movie of bored male movie stars who use their studio muscle to make us watch movies of them in racing cars. James Garner in Grand Prix-arguably the best one, Steve McQueen in LeMans, Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Sly Stallone in Driven, etc.

1990- 37 year old baseball catcher Bo Diaz was crushed to death by a large satellite dish he was trying to install.
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Yesterday’s question: In Chuck Jones's cartoon "Tom Turk and Daffy" (1944) Daffy Duck helps to hide the Thanksgiving turkey, until Porky's description of how delicious his planned thanksgiving dinner will be seduces Daffy into revealing the turkey's hiding place. Tom Turkey comments on Daffy's betrayal by saying "Quisling..."Something a 1940’s audience would get. What does that mean?

Answer: Vikdun Quisling was a Norwegian Nazi who agreed to run occupied Norway for the Germans. He was executed after the war. His name Quisling, became synonymous with traitor, like Judas or a Benedict Arnold.