Gratuitous Brunette: Montgomery Clift

After a decade spent distinguishing himself on the Broadway stage, Montgomery Clift - who was born on this day in 1920 - arrived in Hollywood in 1948 only to distinguish himself there too; his debut in Red River brought a new credibility to Westerns, the acting in which hadn't generally involved any psychological depth up to that point.

Clift's career prior to 1956 combined his angelic looks, massive talent, and inner turmoil to guarantee box-office gold; opposite 19 year-old Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951) they fairly light up the screen, and in From Here to Eternity (1953) he added his considerable skill to what was already a powerhouse ensemble.

It was in May of that year, however, during principal photography for the antebellum epic Raintree County, that Clift was involved in a car accident which left him in chronic pain, his looks shattered... Before long they were calling his 'the longest suicide in Hollywood', as he added addiction upon addiction; while co-starring in The Misfits (1961) with Marilyn Monroe, she was quoted as saying that he was 'the only person I know who is in worse shape than I am.' Yikes!

Well, for what it's worth he managed to outlive her by four years, finally dying in July 1966. Ever since, armchair psychologists have attempted to understand Clift's torment, and most have put it down to his sexuality. Although he had always had affairs with both women and men, those who knew him best (like Taylor) felt that if he could have just found a nice man and settled down, he might have had at least a chance to be happy.

Just his luck, then, to be trapped in Hollywood, where nice men are said to be in as short a supply as quiet lives...
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Happy Birthday Margot Kidder

No matter how boring the movie she's in - and she's been in some real doozies! - you can bet she'll never be boring in it; whether it's because of her charisma or because her sheer viewability rivals that of Christopher Walken, well, who can say? Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Vaulted from obscurity* in 1978 - when she was cast to play Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in Superman - it turns out Margot Kidder really just hated the attention. As her fame grew so did her reputation for being difficult; as her reputation for being difficult grew her fame shrank... Problem solved! Or so it would seem, anyway. After clashing with director Richard Donner during Superman II, for instance, her part in Superman III was cut to less than five minutes. She got considerably more screentime in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, though. For what it's worth...

Whether the demons she's battled were the by-product of fame or within her all along (and whether the fame she found was toxic in and of itself or whether she was merely allergic to it) Margot Kidder is still with us, and therefore still likely to turn up in the strangest places; better yet, she's just as likely to be endearingly kooky - and cussing up a storm - when she does!

*AKA Canadian show business... >shudder<
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"My Oh My" by Aqua

Birthday wishes go out to supercute multi-ethnic pop phenom of yesteryear, René Dif - who was so effective in providing male vocals to Danish pop combo Aqua, and whose growly vocals have been in residence on my iPod ever since they first hit my CD player in the waning years of the 20th Century...

My Oh My was actually released as a single before Barbie Girl made the band an international sensation, owing to the litigiosity and corporate piggery of Mattel, Inc.; since I've already posted Barbie Girl here (on Barbie's birthday, natch!) I thought this video's jaunty pirate motif might make it most ideal to post in this Hallowe'en season. The song, of course, originated on the band's 1997 album Aquarium; although sung by René Dif and Lene Nystrøm Rasted, it was written by their fellow band members Claus Norreen and Søren Nystrøm Rasted. The video, like all five the band made in support of this album, was directed by Peder Pedersen.
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POPnews - October 17th

[Owing to a subway series between the Oakland Athletics and the
San Francisco Giants during the 1989 World Series, Game Three
- scheduled to be held at Candlestick Park on this day in 1989 -
had to be cancelled; it also marks the first time an
American earthquake had been televised.]
1091 - A tornado devastated central London.

1346 - Scotland's King David II was captured by England's King Edward III in Calais following the Battle of Neville's Cross and imprisoned in the Tower of London for 11 years before his country could afford to have him ransomed.

1456 - The University of Greifswald was established, making it only the second oldest such institution in northern Europe.

1604 - German astronomer Johannes Kepler began observing a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus, which later came to be known as Kepler's Star, despite the fact that the spectacular phenomenon had first been observed in northern Italy on October 9th.

1610 - France's King Louis XIII was crowned at the cathedral in Rheims.

1660 - The Regicides who had ordered the death of Charles I in 1649 - among them Adrian Scroope, Thomas Scot, Gregory Clement - were themselves executed at Charing Cross.

1806 - Haiti's despotic Emperor, Jacques I, was assassinated.

1814 - The London Beer Flood occurred at the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road in the London parish of St. Giles, killing nine.

1860 - The first playing of The Open Championship (referred to outside the UK as the British Open) was held at Scotland's Prestwick Golf Club; nowadays, of course, Britain's premier golfing event rotates between nine different courses. For the record, the winner of that first tournament was Willie Park, Snr., who was awarded a championship belt for his efforts.

1931 - Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion, apparently.

1933 - Albert Einstein, fleeing Nazi Germany, arrived in Princeton, New Jersey.

1956 - The world's first commercial nuclear power station was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II at Sellafield, in the English county of Cumbria; when it was finally shut in March 2003 the main reactor had been in continuous operation for nearly 47 years.

1961 - As many as 400 Algerian protesters were massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the city's Prefecture of Police.

1965 - The New York World's Fair closed after two years.

1967 - The musical Hair began its long run off-Broadway at the Public Theater.

1979 - Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1980 - Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to be received at the Vatican when she visited Pope John Paul II.

1989 - The San Francisco Bay Area was badly shaken by the Loma Prieta earthquake, a 7.1 magnitude reminder of the Earth's power which occurred at 5:04 PM local time, during that day's rush hour.

2005 - Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report debuted.
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"Higher Ground" by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Birthday wishes go out today to Michael 'Flea' Balzary - bassist and founding member of the LA-based noise makers Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose original instrument was the trumpet, and whose original aspiration was to play jazz. Taught to play bass by his friend (and future Pepper) Hillel Slovak, Flea was a member of Slovak's band Anthym for a time, before quitting in favour of punk combo Fear; in 1983 he united with Anthony Kiedis and Jack Irons and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were born.

Higher Ground is of course one of many huge hits popularized by Stevie Wonder, appearing first on his 1973 album Innervisions; RHCP's version gave the band the breakthrough it needed in 1989, when it was released along with their album Mother's Milk. As per usual, in lieu of the original video - unavailable for the same reasons as always* - I've posted a clip of the band performing the song at Woodstock 94.

*The damn suits!
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In Memoriam: Eugene O'Neill

The works of Eugene O'Neill are not merely renowned but acclaimed for their bitterness and cynicism; his characters are generally downtrodden, prone to the abuse of alcohol, and generally speaking something of a sorry lot. This is probably why I have always studiously avoided them, and him. After all, it should come as no surprise to even the most casual observer of the Pop Culture Institute that its author is rather obsessed with comedy, and the reason why ought to be obvious even to the most glib of pop psychologists.

Nevertheless, his is a name which recurs rather too often in the course of my research - especially since it so often appears in conjunction with other bold-faced names of 20th Century entertainment - and so for the sake of this blog I've decided to finally man up and face what amounts to one of my demons: the professional tragedian.

Born on this day in 1886 in a room of the Barrett Hotel in New York City's Times Square, as a child he was sent to Catholic boarding school, where naturally he found no solace in religion but plenty in books. A lengthy sojourn at sea ended when he contracted tuberculosis, following which he turned to writing to make his convalescence more bearable. A Greenwich Village bohemian long before it was a pose, in 1916 O'Neill discovered the Provincetown Players while on vacation in New England, and a memorable partnership was born...

At a time when the American theatre was still rather plagued by melodrama, O'Neill's stark realism was both a breath of fresh air and a challenge to the ruling orthodoxy - which simultaneously made him a bold innovator and a major threat. His first Broadway show was 1920's Beyond the Horizon, and its timing was propitious; as a nation embittered by its involvement in a European war entered the hedonistic Jazz Age and its government swore everyone off alcohol (wink, wink) O'Neill's dissipated vulgarians became contemporary archetypes seemingly overnight.

Many of Eugene O'Neill's plays were hugely successful both on Broadway and in repertory; a fair number were made into movies. The highlights of his literary career include The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie, Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness! (his only attempt at comedy), The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Given the lack of good examples from his life and the challenges he faced thanks to booze, it should be no surprise that Eugene O'Neill was never going to be either husband or father of the year; both husband and father of three, not only did his marriages scandalously overlap but his eldest son committed suicide, his middle child became a heroin addict (and also committed suicide), and his daughter Oona he disowned when she was just 18 for marrying 54 year-old Charlie Chaplin.

O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds; in life, O'Neill had been close friends with John Reed (and even closer to Reed's wife Louise Bryant, if you know what I mean). Reed, of course, was played by Warren Beatty and Louise Bryant by Diane Keaton. Both his Connecticut home (Monte Cristo Cottage) and his home in California (Tao House) have been designated national landmarks; even the site where he was born - at the epicentre of American entertainment, Times Square, now home to a Starbucks - is marked by a plaque. In addition to his numerous awards - including various Pulitzers as well as the Nobel Prize - The Eugene O'Neill Award named for him has been handed out annually in Sweden since 1956.

He died in November 1953.
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Remembering... Jean de Brunhoff

On this day in 1937 Jean de Brunhoff, creator of Babar, died - aged only 38; that's, like, younger I am now, man. Makes you think...

It's a funny thing, but while I really liked Babar as a child, I hadn't thought about him for more than twenty years* when, this past summer, I was walking past a display of stuffed animals and saw a 10-inch tall Babar in amongst the others. Naturally, as I am a creature who is absolutely dominated by whim, I bought it and gave it pride of place on the shelf where I keep my books suitable for youngsters.

Then, mere weeks ago, The New Yorker ran an article by noted Canadian Francophile Adam Gopnik not merely about Babar and what he means but also about the man who created him - Jean de Brunhoff.

Well! Turns out I was quite the dupe even as a child; it would never have occurred to me then that what I was reading was a blatant propaganda in favour of colonialism. I mean, I certainly never got that out of it then, and to be quite honest I'm a bit afraid to revisit the books now out of the fear that yet another of those favoured things from my childhood should be rendered obsolete by politics.

*And had probably never given a thought to the man who created him, then or now.
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Günther Grass Is Always Greener On the Other Side

Every so often I come up with a title so compelling I feel the need to publish a post, even if it's about someone whose basic details are unknown to me*; well, it's not like I know nothing about Günther Grass - I know he wrote The Tin Drum, for which he won my most coveted literary prize, the Nobel - but other than that, as with a lot of the work that has appeared here, I'm learning about two steps ahead of you.

Born on this day in 1927 in the Free City of Danzig Grass experienced first hand the upheavals that beset Poland and Germany during his youth. His later admission that he'd actually served with the Waffen-SS in the dying days of World War II was met with criticism both from his allies on the left and his enemies on the right; Grass easily brushed aside these critics, claiming youthful stupidity and pointed to a lifetime of work spent at undoing any damage he might have done in the service of National Socialism**.

Grass' Danzig Trilogy is the most openly critical of the tyranny in whose thrall he was briefly held; consisting of The Tin Drum (1959), Cat and Mouse (1961), and Dog Years (1963), it chronicles the life of its protagonist Oskar Matzerath through his interactions with the people of Gdansk, and does so with a deft magic realism which was rare in Northern Europe at the time, when a kind of brutal naturalism was favoured.

Grass continues to write this day, and his list of publications is prodigious: novels, plays, poetry, essays, speeches, and criticism. Add to that a 2007 memoir Peeling the Onion, and Grass proves he's anything but green.

*Or even if, like this one, it doesn't necessarily fit.
**Also, there's no telling what effect such an admission would have had on his future success had it been revealed in the 50s, as opposed to 2006.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Marie Antoinette

By the time of her death by guillotine on this day in 1793, the feel of cold steel on her neck might have seemed like a sweet release to Marie Antoinette, especially compared to the agony her life had become over the previous few years. That she should lose her head to the blade is only apt, as her reputation had by then already been the victim of a serious hatchet job for years...

Few stories fill me with such dread and loathing as those of the French Revolution, even when they're as well-written as they are in Antonia Fraser's excellent 2001 biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. In her book Fraser limns the life of the sheltered Austrian princess who again and again finds herself in over the head she would one day lose. It is a story told on a tumbrel of a woman who refused to believe in the depths of human evil, even as it was swallowing her whole.

At the birth of the Age of Reason there was an Age of Chaos: disguising mob rule as democracy, the newly 'freed' French went on a killing spree which at the time was unprecedented in the post-Renaissance era. It was only a matter of time, then, before the crowd caught up to its former Queen: both a foreigner and a woman, she would make a doubly good scapegoat. Utterly blameless and with no power to speak of, save the money she quietly distributed to orphanages and hospitals, Marie Antoinette was nothing less than a victim of her class, a martyr caught in the teeth of an unreasoning genocide...

Tales of her behaviour from those who knew her, even those who didn't like her, differ so greatly from the picture of her painted by scurrilous pamphleteers (none of whom had even met her) that only the most bigoted could believe the least of the allegations made against her. They are also testament to the corrosive effects of slander; 200 years later and her legend still calls out for understanding.

Yet xenophobia and misogyny are two of the oldest and therefore fondest of history's prejudices, and so might be the hardest ones to be overcome; Marie Antoinette faced them both with a poise that had been ingrained in her from birth. In fact, of her it could rightly be said she never once lost her head, right up until the moment she did.
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Oscar Wilde on "Monty Python's Flying Circus"

Here Graham Chapman plays Oscar Wilde, John Cleese plays James McNeill Whistler, and Michael Palin plays George Bernard Shaw in a somewhat anachronistic scene from Grandstand (aka Episode 39 of Monty Python's Flying Circus), given that Terry Jones is obviously playing Edward VII (they call him 'Your Majesty') even though the sketch is set in 1895, six years before the death of Queen Victoria.
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"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde

Because of the length of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, I've decided to publish only the first part here; however, feel free to follow the link at the bottom of the post and read the rest. ~ MSM

I.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

[To continue reading...]
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In Memoriam: Oscar Wilde

Novelist, poet, playwright, bon-vivant, and the foremost wit of the Victorian era, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on this day in 1854, in Dublin; his father was the noted ear and eye specialist William Wilde, his mother the successful writer Jane Francesca Elgee, an Irish nationalist who wrote under the name Speranza.

Wilde's precocity was evident from an early age; home-schooled until the age of nine, he was sent away to Portora Royal School first, then to Dublin's Trinity College. Having excelled at his schoolwork, Wilde was awarded a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied the classics and rowed crew.

At one time enamored of Florence Balcombe (who later married Bram Stoker), in May 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd; together they had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, who after their father's 1895 downfall would be known by the name Holland. Although Wilde had been aware of his attraction to men throughout his life (thanks to early liaisons with Frank Miles and Robert Baldwin Ross) it cannot be said for sure when he first engaged in 'the unspeakable vice of the Greeks', or with whom. However, it was his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas which was to prove both the apex of Wilde's homosexual life, even if their illicit love would also bring about the nadir of his reputation.

While it lasted, though, what a reputation it was! Built on such novels as The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and theatrical comedies of manners as Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and An Ideal Husband (1895) their aesthetic flamboyance and (for the times, anyway) racy dialogue was nothing compared to Wilde's own patented affectations - principally a wardrobe of velvet and satin combined with a flair for caustic witticisms. In a society for which the best-suited adjective will always be 'stuffy' Wilde was a breath of fresh air... Alas, Victorian society was stuffy for a reason, and those who'd made it that way increasingly sought to keep it stuffy at whatever cost.

It was at the beginning of April 1895, at the pinnacle of his greatest success - as author of the hugely successful play The Importance of Being Earnest - that Wilde sued Douglas' father, the irascible* Marquess of Queensberry, for libel; before the trial was over, thanks in no small part to the legal maneuvering of Edward Carson QC, not only was Queensbury's libel disproven but Wilde and his quick wit would be vanquished. Encouraged by the few friends he had left to flee to the Continent, Wilde refused.By the end of the month he'd been arrested outside Knightsbridge's Cadogan Hotel and would soon thereafter be sent to jail - first to Pentonville, thence to Wandsworth, and finally to Reading Prison (wherefrom sprang his famous Ballad). Released in 1897 after two years imprisonment, his health ruined, Wilde settled in Paris (often under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth); he died 3 and a half years later, in November 1900, in room 16 of the Hôtel d'Alsace - his condition apparently aggravated by the decor**.

Initially buried outside Paris at Cimetière de Bagneux, his body was later moved to its current resting place, at Père Lachaise Cemetery, within a tomb designed by Sir Jacob Epstein: as proof of the rehabilitation of Wilde's memory, his final resting place is today covered with lipstick traces, and is among the most visited in that hallowed ground.

Oscar Wilde has been best played onscreen by Stephen Fry in the 1997 biopic Wilde, which was itself based on Richard Ellmann's definitive 1989 biography; interest in Wilde, though, remains high - as evidenced by recent works like Oscar Wilde Discovers America: A Novel by Louis Edwards.

*Which is putting it mildly... He was, in fact, a major league prick - yet his other accomplishment in life were rules for fair play in the pursuit of pugilism.
**He did, after all, famously quip from his death bed: 'My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.' In truth, Wilde succumbed to cerebral meningitis.
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Happy Birthday Bob Mould

Contradicting the myth that all gay men are disco queens, Bob Mould broke the mould by forming Hüsker Dü; over the course of a dozen albums' worth of glorious noise, the band bridged the gap between punk and rock, their sound presaging alternative rock by a decade in a time dominated by hair metal...

Mould's solo projects have maintained the hallmarks of his work both with Hüsker Dü and Sugar, the band he formed in the 1990s, while showcasing his more experimental side. Walls of noise and outraged sentiment for diehard fans meet acoustic arrangements, introspective lyrics, and even the occasional foray into the dance and house sounds of his emerging oeuvre.

And so begins Act Three for Bob Mould, whose electronica-influenced Modulate was released under the name LoudBomb (an anagram of his name) to the usual mixed reviews that anyone with the willingness to try something new will often receive. Yet if there's one thing Bob Mould has proven time and again in his long career it's that he knows how to be ahead of the curve, and critics be damned.
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Pop History Moment: The Burning of Westminster

^{[The burning of the Palace of Westminster was painted from memory,
but witnessed first-hand by the painter J. M. W. Turner.]}

Most of the Palace of Westminster, seat of Britain's Parliament, burned to the ground on this day in 1834; as reported by Charles Dickens, the cause of the blaze was the burning of useless old tally sticks, which had formerly been used by both the Commons and the Lords in the tallying of votes. The only parts of the old Palace to survive were Westminster Hall, the Jewel Tower, the crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel, and the cloisters.

Rebuilding was begun in 1840, and continued officially until 1860, although further work would be done over the following decade as well; principal architect on the project was Charles Barry, aided by Augustus Pugin. The new Palace of Westminster, rebuilt in the Perpendicular Gothic style, is one of London's most popular and recognizable historic landmarks.
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POPnews - October 16th

[Since criticizing their country's abysmal progress with regards to civil rights at the Summer Olympics on this day in 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos have been labeled 'anti-American' and much, much worse - think n-words and lots of 'em! - more or less proving their original point.]

1841 - Queen's University was founded in Kingston, Ontario.

1859 - Abolitionist John Brown led an ill-fated raid on the Armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1869 - The Cardiff Giant was 'discovered' near Cardiff, New York; the petrified prehistoric man was later discovered to be a hoax, perpetrated by George Hull.

1905 - India's Partition of Bengal took place at the behest of the British viceroy, Lord Curzon.

1916 - Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood.

1923 - The Walt Disney Company was founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.

1934 - Chinese Communists began the Long March, which ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.

1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto was established.

1946 - Ten war criminals were hanged at Nuremburg, including: Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Julius Streicher. This is what's known these days as 'a good start'...

1949 - Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announced a 'temporary cease-fire', effectively ending the Greek Civil War.

1951 - The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in Rawalpindi.

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than at any other time during the Cold War, began.

1968 - American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked off their team for performing a Black Power salute during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The silver medalist, Australia's Peter Norman, wore a badge in support of them, but for obvious reasons did not perform the salute himself.

1970 - At the request of Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa and Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to deal with the burgeoning October Crisis.

1972 - Emmerdale - originally known as Emmerdale Farm - debuted on Britain's ITV; the show was created by Kevin Laffan.

1978 - Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II.

1984 - Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1995 - The Million Man March converged on Washington, DC.

2002 - Cairo's Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Mata Hari

Behold, the temptress of the ages: Mata Hari...



Born Margaretha Zelle in August 1876, by 1903 (when she moved to Paris) she'd already been married, had two children, and contracted syphilis. Once in Paris she parlayed a career as an exotic dancer into life as a high-profile courtesan.

Alas, her taste for men knew no boundaries, at a time when those very same boundaries were being fought for by the same men with whom she shared her bed. Affairs with French, Russian, and German military officers gave France just the distraction it needed to take everyone's mind off of how badly they were losing the war.

She was arrested in March 1917, given one helluva show trial, after which no one was too surprised she was found guilty of treason; on this day in 1917 Mata Hari died at the hands of a firing squad. Documents regarding her imprisonment and death are due to be released by the French government in 2017, at which time the truth about Mata Hari may finally be known...
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In Memoriam: P. G. Wodehouse

In a country well-known for its humourists, P. G. Wodehouse may be the king of them all; over a career as a writer spanning an incredible 70 years (!!!) Wodehouse created many indelible characters of fiction, many of which are still renowned today...

The most famous of these, Jeeves and Wooster, present a subversion of class that is so delicious they've been embraced by hidebound Edwardians and post-ironic Gen Xers alike. Their portrayals on television by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie became instant television classics when they began appearing in 1990.

Sadly, Wodehouse's reputation was one of the foremost casualties of the Second World War; a series of broadcasts made while he was interned by the Nazis in Poland led to accusations by his countrymen of collaboration. Among Wodehouse's most outspoken critics was A. A. Milne; to his defense came Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell.

Following the war, still stung by these accusations, Wodehouse moved to New York City, in whose vicinity he would remain for the rest of his life. He was granted US citizenship in 1955, and thereafter never returned to England.

Born on this day in 1881, when, at the age of 93, he found himself honoured with a knighthood and a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's, he said that he had no ambitions left; he died shortly thereafter, on Valentine's Day 1975.
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Larry Miller Explains "The Five Levels Of Drinking"

Birthday boy Larry Miller has long been one of my favourite comics, chiefly for the insightful brand of comedy he performs; the most famous of his bits is this classic - The Five Stages of Drinking, which he occasionally still hauls out as a party piece and perennial crowd-pleaser...

While he lost out on the plum role of George Costanza to Jason Alexander, Miller did get to voice the Pointy-Haired Boss on Dilbert in addition to many other movie and television roles stretching all the way back to the 1990 film Pretty Woman.
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Pop History Moment: The Rise Of Anwar Sadat

On this day in 1970 Anwar Sadat became President of Egypt, following the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser on September 28th; Sadat was the third to serve in this post following Muhammad Naguib and Nasser, all of whom had participated in the coup to overthrow King Farouk I during the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.

Sadat's presidency was remarkable chiefly for the changes undergone by Sadat himself throughout it; although he'd inherited a country demoralized by the loss of the Six-Day War in 1967, and one determined to see itself avenged by means of the October (or Yom Kippur) War in October 1973, for whatever reason Sadat quickly began to see himself as a peacemaker.

Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel in November 1977, during which time he held high-profile meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and addressed the Knesset. For daring to suggest that peace is possible between the Arab world and Israel he'd effectively numbered his days, just as he'd assured his place in history.

It was the Camp David Accords (facilitated by US President Jimmy Carter, and signed in September 1978) that really put Sadat on the world stage as a leader; he and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts at ending the state of total war that had existed in the Eastern Mediterranean since the creation of Israel in May 1948. For trying to broker peace in the region, Egypt was expelled from the Arab League in 1979, at which time that organization's headquarters were moved from Cairo to Tunis. Despite the all-around condemnation of Egypt by its traditional allies, the treaty signed on that day is still in effect. More extraordinarily, over the years countries such as Jordan and Morocco have also found their peace with Israel in their own ways...

Anwar Sadat was assassinated in October 1981 after a fatwa placed on him by Omar Abdel-Rahman was carried out by a radical cell within the Egyptian army led by Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli; he was temporarily succeeded by Sufi Abu Taleb, following which his Vice President Hosni Mubarak - who remains President of Egypt to this day - took over.

Sadat's killing had come after three years of increasing domestic tension within Egypt, during which time radical elements had carried out a campaign of terror against Western interests. They'd also begun a whispering campaign, suggesting corruption on the part of Sadat and his family. In an effort to contain the protest, Sadat ordered a roundup and imprisonment more than 1500 of the usual suspects - including many Jihad members, intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes, communists, Nasserists, feminists, Islamists, homosexuals, Coptic Christian clergy, university professors, journalists and members of student groups. All to no avail...

Anwar Sadat was portrayed by Oscar-winner Louis Gossett, Jr. in a 1983 American television miniseries about his life; it wasn't until 2001 that Egypt made its own film, starring Ahmed Zaki, whose portrayal of Sadat has been universally hailed as the best of his career.
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POPnews - October 15th

[In The Great Dictator Charlie Chaplin played Adenoid Hynkel, a European tyrant who disguises his ambition with bigotry; Chaplin's was the first work from a serious artist to decry the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and its effort blazed a trail for subsequent generations of satirists to render the bad-guy impotent by means of mockery - a technique which last worked, to great effect, on Kim Jong-Il in the film Team America: World Police.]
1764 - Edward Gibbon was moved to write his six-volume masterpiece The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire during a stroll amongst the ruins of Rome, apparently.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled for a second time, to Saint Helena - a British holding in the South Atlantic.

1863 - The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship, itself sank during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.

1864 - The Battle of Glasgow was fought during the American Civil War, resulting in the surrender of Glasgow, Missouri - along with the Union garrison of Chester Harding, Jr. - to the Confederate forces of John Bullock Clark, Jr. and Joe Shelby.

1888 - The 'From Hell' letter, apparently sent by Jack the Ripper, was received by investigators; unlike the earlier Dear Boss letter, the Saucy Jack postcard, and their imitators, though, it wasn't signed by him - although most Ripperologists concur that the killer probably did write it.  So, obviously, does writer Alan Moore, whose Ripper-themed comic book series-cum-graphic novel (and the 2001 film starring Johnny Depp derived from it) is entitled From Hell.

1894 - Alfred Dreyfus was arrested for spying, beginning 'L'affaire Dreyfus'.

1928 - The Graf Zeppelin landed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, having completed its first trans-Atlantic flight.

1939 - New York's Glenn H. Curtiss Airport was rededicated by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, giving the place its more familiar name.

1940 - Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator premiered.

1944 - The Arrow Cross Party, which was similar to Hitler's NSDAP, assumed power in Hungary.

1946 - On the eve of the Nuremberg Trials, Hermann Göring committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide.

1951 - I Love Lucy made its television debut.

1956 - Fortran - the first modern computer language - was shared with the coding community for the first time, apparently.

1966 - The Black Panther Party was created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.

1970 - Thirty-five construction workers were killed when a section of Melbourne's West Gate Bridge collapsed.

1987 - The Great Storm of 1987 hit France and England.

1989 - Wayne Gretzky became the all-time highest scoring player in NHL history, apparently.

1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2003 - The Staten Island Ferry Andrew J. Barberi collided with a pier, killing 10 instantly and injuring 71; an eleventh victim would die of her injuries later that year.
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