Toots Shor: Saloonkeeper To The Stars

Bernard 'Toots' Shor - born on this day in 1903 - was fond of calling himself a saloonkeeper, when in fact he was actually a restaurateur and more of an impresario than anything else; while it was open, Toots Shor's Restaurant gave him more than just the ideal perch from which to watch a passing parade of stars, it gave him a staging area to help launch a nightly spectacle featuring those famous faces in the crowd.

In keeping with that fine Manhattan tradition of restaurant owners keeping their celebrated clientele humble with a clever facade of contempt - a tradition made famous during Prohibition by Texas Guinan, who greeted patrons with a cheery 'Hello suckers!' - Shor referred to his bold-print friends as 'crum-bums'. Of course, he saved this sobriquet for the ones he really liked...

In 2006 Shor's grand-daughter Kristi Jacobson made a documentary about her famous ancestor, the trailer for which appears above; the film's accompanying website appears you know where.
*
share on: facebook

Pop History Moment: Queen And Miterrand Open Chunnel

On this day in 1994 Britain was joined to Europe by a permanent rail ink when the Chunnel was opened jointly by The Queen and French President Francois Mitterrand. The ceremony was actually two; first, the Queen travelled to Calais via the tunnel, where her train was met nose to nose by one bearing the French President. Once the French side was opened the two travelled to Folkestone to open the English side.

The idea of a tunnel linking France and England was first suggested as long ago as 1802, only to be nixed by what was then a very real fear that the tunnel could have been used by Napoleon to invade England.
*
share on: facebook

Pop History Moment: Princess Margaret Married Antony Armstrong-Jones

On this day in 1960 a television audience estimated at 20 million watched as The Queen's sister Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones at a lavish, glamourous wedding in Westminster Abbey; it was the first televised royal wedding in history, much as the coronation seven years earlier had been the first ceremony of its kind ever on television. The wedding - like the coronation and the wedding of Princess Margaret's sister - was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher.

The following year Armstrong Jones was created Earl of Snowdon in advance of the birth of their children, David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (now Lady Sarah Chatto).

The Earl and Countess were divorced in May 1978 amid mutual accusations of adultery, their marriage having long since broken down...
*
share on: facebook

"Where Have All The Flowers Gone" by Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich - who died on this day in 1992 - was so fond of Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson's song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? she sang and recorded it in French, German, and English; whereas she could have larded her cabaret act with those classics from the 1930s and 40s for which she'd become a legend, she liked to keep current...

Dietrich is seen here performing the song during the Royal Variety Performance in November 1963* at the height of her cabaret career, a dozen years before her retirement from the stage**, which saw her sink into reclusion at her Paris apartement in the Avenue Montaigne.  Her privacy was most famously invaded by Maximilian Schell, whose 1984 documentary Marlene features her voice only and provides a fascinating perspective on a cantankerous star in her declining years.

*In the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
**She broke her leg onstage at a concert in Sydney in September 1975, following which she never performed live again; Dietrich's last film appearance was in the bizarre 1979 David Bowie vehicle Just a Gigolo.
*
share on: facebook

In Memoriam: Orson Welles

Born this day in 1915, Orson Welles first attained prominence following the October 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, which caused widespread panic.

His masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941) was nominated for 9 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and Welles himself for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. This achievement alone established him as a major Hollywood presence. In the end, he won only Best Original Screenplay, which he shared with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Citizen Kane is generally regarded as one of the finest American films ever made.

Despite a run of films including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady From Shanghai (1947), The Third Man (1949), and Touch of Evil (1958), Welles was hampered by the studios, who viewed him as a major troublemaker.

He died in October 1985.
*
share on: facebook

Pop History Moment: The Hindenburg Explodes

Shortly after 7:25 PM on this day in 1937, during the second transatlantic flight of its second season in service*, a German zeppelin named Hindenburg helmed by Captain Max Pruss spectacularly crashed and burned while docking at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, 13 passengers and 22 crew died; 1 member of the ground crew was also killed, bringing the day's death toll to 36. It took less than a minute for the ship to be completely engulfed in flames and destroyed; the cause of the blaze has never been sufficiently determined.

Much of the hyperbole concerning the disaster comes from radio commentator Herbert Morrison's live coverage of the airship's arrival. The first half of his broadcast contains the famous lines 'Oh the humanity' and is made all the more compelling by the emotion in Morrison's voice; during the second half of his recording however, which takes place after he'd had time to compose himself, he was sounding more circumspect and considerably calmer. Morrison's audio recording, however, was manipulated after the fact; not only was it sped up (to give it a more frantic tone) it was later paired with filmed footage of the disaster, misrepresenting the event for mass consumption.

No matter... Of all the damage done that day the worst of it was to public confidence in airships; despite the fact that a single airplane crash can claim many times the lives lost in the Hindenburg Disaster and whereas the Graf Zeppelin had flown 1.6 million km (1 million miles) including a circumnavigation of the globe without incident air and noise polluting planes soon came to dominate the aviation industry, as well as claiming untold hectarage of precious arable land for airports.

*It had already flown from Germany to Brazil and back at the end of March 1937 in addition to 17 round trips across the Atlantic Ocean in 1936 for a total of 308,323 km (191,583 miles) with 2,798 passengers and 160 tons of freight and mail. All without incident.
*
share on: facebook