Tag: History

Time Flies October 6

Arrivals:

1846 – George Westinghouse, whose story is both complicated and boring but essential to everybody in the 21st century.  In a nutshell: when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he was absolutely convinced that it should be powered by direct current electricity (or DC.)  On the other hand, Westinghouse knew that this method wouldn’t work and proposed using alternating current (or AC.)  A huge feud ensued, but — long story short — Westinghouse was right and Edison was wro…wro… not right.  So, thank God for Westinghouse; if it hadn’t been for him, we’d all be watching television in the dark.

1914 – Thor Heyerdahl, an ethnographer who came up with this wild theory that the people of the South Seas (Polynesia) had actually come from Peru.  Most people pooh-poohed the idea but rather than sit in his office and argue about it, Heyerdahl decided to prove it.  He built a raft out of balsa wood, called it the Kon-Tiki, and set sail west from South America.  After about 3 months at sea, he eventually hit an island in the South Seas and thus proved it could be done.  This adventure made Heyerdahl really,  really famous.  However, recent DNA testing has proven that Heyerdahl was really, really wrong.  Oh, well!  At least he gave it a try.

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1889 – Joseph Oller opened The Moulin Rouge, a night club in Pigalle, the red-light district of Paris.  It was the saucy Belle of the Belle Epoque.  Legend has it that both the can-can and the striptease were invented at the Moulin Rouge.  This isn’t true.  However, they were both perfected there.  Originally a place for prostitutes to demonstrate their wares, the Moulin Rouge rapidly gained a reputation for its risqué performances.  Actually, this was its undoing.  As more and more of the gentry came to take a walk on the wild side, the shows became tamer and tamer until eventually the management actually hired real dancers.  Today, the Moulin Rouge is a weary tourist-trap with a fantastic show (like the Tropicana in Havana).  But you can still feel what it was like way back when, in the Moulin Rouge posters painted by the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

1927 – The Jazz Singer premiered at the Warner Theatre in New York.  It was the first mainstream movie with sound.  There had been sound in films before this but nothing so realistic or synchronized.  From the moment Al Jolson says “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”, “silent” movies just faded away, and “Talkies” became what people wanted to see.  It was the end of an era and of many actors’ careers, when their voices couldn’t bear the scrutiny of the new technology.  The great Charlie Chaplin laughed at sound and thought it was just a phase.  He believed comedy was essentially pantomime and continued to make “silent” movies until 1940 when the public’s overwhelming expectations forced him to change. 

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Departures:

1892 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Victorian poet who, in 1854, wrote “The Charge of Light Brigade”, which has become an indictment of senseless war in general and Imperial adventures in particular.

Actually, Tennyson wrote it to glorify courage, honour and fortitude in the midst of brutality and war.  He saw nobility in duty and singular distinction in defying overwhelming odds.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
  All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
  Noble six hundred!

It’s amazing what 150 years of high tech slaughter will do to high ideals!

1951 – Will Keith Kellogg, the guy who started the gigantic breakfast extravaganza, Kellogg’s, in Battle Creek Michigan.  With about a million different kinds of cereal Kellogg’s owns breakfast the way Donald Trump owns real estate.  Unlike other early food companies who diversified over the years, Kellogg’s mainly stuck with breakfast.  Recently, however, they’ve had to modify their product to accommodate commuters who can’t handle a bowl full of milk while they’re travelling to work.  They’ve met the challenge with cereals squashed into bars that can be eaten one-handed.  Incredibly, Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes started out as health food – and it actually was.  Today, with all the salt and sugar and hydrogenated-whatever added, you might be further ahead to eat the box.

Time Flies September 22

Arrivals:

1885 – Erich von Stroheim, an actor and director much honoured and wildly overrated (mostly by people who’ve never seen his work).  He was the persona of evil as a Hollywood German in films made during World War I and he was really good in Sunset Boulevard but that’s it — the rest is reputation.   He was however, the first actor to be referred to as “the man you love to hate” and the quote “In Hollywood…you’re only as good as your last picture.”

1903 – Joe Valachi, a cheap crook in an expensive suit.  It was Joe Valachi’s testimony before Congress in 1963 that confirmed what everybody already knew – that there was a socio-economic group in America called the Mafia and that they were mad, bad and dangerous to know.  He was lionized by Peter Maas in his book The Valachi Papers and nobody really knows why he suddenly decided to rat out all his old buddies.

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1957 – The cowboy world was turned upside down when Maverick premiered on ABC.  The show was full of Old West faux pas.  First of all, Bret Maverick (James Garner) showed up wearing a black hat, a good guy no-no in 1957.  A self-confessed coward, our hero was more apt to talk his way out of trouble than shoot it out with the bad guys.   Worse he didn’t even appear in every episode!  He was often replaced by his brother Bart (Jack Kelly).  Despite all this, the show was incredibly successful — even when it committed the ultimate frontier sin and permanently replaced Bret with his cousin Beau — Roger Moore (with a heavy English accent).

 1927 – One of the greatest controversies in 20th century sports is the famous Jack Dempsey – Gene Tunney “Long Count” Heavyweight Championship boxing match at Soldier Field in Chicago.  The fight was literally the event of the decade.   There was coast-to-coast radio coverage, newsreel cameras and gate receipts that totalled more than two million dollars.  There were even rumours of an Al Capone fix.  Long before instant replay and video review the controversy was fuelled around the world because it was against the law to transport boxing films across state lines.  So if you didn’t live in Illinois you never saw the fight.  Today, we don’t have that problem, so just go to YouTube and make up your own mind.

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Departures:

1989 – Irving Berlin, the greatest American songwriter of all time.  He started in Tin Pan Alley where he wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911 – an instant success.  Over the next 4 decades he wrote more than 1,500 songs including “Blue Skies,” “What’ll I do,” “There’s no Business like Show Business,” “Happy Holidays,” “White Christmas” and “God Bless America,” and on and on.  No other songwriter even comes close.  Oddly enough Berlin could neither read nor write music.

2007 – Marcel Marceau, a world famous French entertainer who had one serious drawback: he was a mime.  All of his acting was done in mimodramas (that’s a real thing), like The Glass Cage, Walking against the Wind and Climbing a Rope.  He is still considered without peer in mimedom, and legend has it that when he died, mimes all over the world honoured him with a moment of noise.