Calendar: August 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of August

The Shooter

August 18, 1933 is the birthdate of film director, Roman Polanski.

Roman Polanski attended the National Film School in Lodz, Poland. He began acting in the 1950s, appearing in Andrzej Wajda’s 1954 “A Generation”. During the same year, he was in Silik Sternfeld’s “Enchanted Bicycle”. Polanski’s directorial debut was the 1955 short film “Rower”, a semi-autobiographical feature film referring to a real-life violent altercation with a known Polish felon who severely beat and robbed Polanski. He graduated from the National Film School with recognition from his two films “Two Men and a Wardrobe” and “When Angels Fall”.

Polanski’s first feature-length film, “Knife in the Water”, was also one of the first significant Polish films after the Second World War that did not have a war theme. A dark and unsettling work, Polanski’s debut film subtly revealed a profound pessimism about human relationships with regard to the psychological dynamics and moral consequences of status, envy and sexual jealousy. “Knife in the Water” was a major commercial success in the West and gave Polanski an international reputation. The film also earned director Polanski his first Academy Award nomination, Best Foreign Language Film in 1963.

Polanski made three feature films in England, based on original scripts written by himself and Gerard Brach, a frequent collaborator. The 1965 film “Repulsion” was a psychological horror film focusing on a young Belgian woman living in London with her older sister. Its visual motifs and effects reflected the influence of early surrealist cinema as well as horror films of the 1950s. The 1966 “Cul-de-Sac” was a bleak nihilist tragic comedy. The third film was the 1967 “The Fearless Vampire Killers”, a parody of vampire films. Ironic and macabre, it was the first feature film of Polanski to be photographed in color which emphasized the striking visual fairy-tale landscapes of the film.

Roman Polanski made many famous films in his career, such as “Chinatown” and “The Ghost Writer”; however, the one that stands out for many is the 1968 “Rosemary’s Baby”, based on Ira Levin’s novel. Paramount Studio had brought Polanski to the United States to direct “Downhill Racer”; but studio head Robert Evans wanted Polanski to see if a film could be made from Levin’s novel. Polanski read it non-stop through the night and the following morning decided he wanted to write as well as direct it. He wrote the 272-page screenplay for the film in slightly longer than three weeks.

Polanski’s film, “Rosemary’s Baby”, was a box-office success and became his first Hollywood production, thereby establishing his reputation as a major commercial filmmaker. The film, a horror-thriller set in trendy Manhattan, is about Rosemary Woodhouse, a young housewife who is impregnated by the devil. Polanski’s screenplay adaptation earned him a second Academy Award nomination for Best Writing for a screenplay form another medium.

Calendar: August 17

A Year: Day to Day Men: 17th of August

The Birdcage

August 17, 1590 marks the date Governor John White returned to the Roanoke Island colony, only to find it abandoned.

The first attempted settlement at Roanoke Island was headed by Ralph Lane in 1585. Sir Richard Grenville had transported the colonists to Virginia and returned to England for supplies as planned. The colonists were desperately in need of supplies and Grenville’s return was delayed. While awaiting his return, the colonists relied heavily upon a local Algonquian tribe. In an effort to gain more food supplies, Lane led an unprovoked attack, killing the Secotan’s chieftain Wingina and effectively cutting off the colony’s primary food source. As a result, when Sir Francis Drake arrived at Roanoke, the entire population abandoned the colony and returned with Drake to England.

In 1587, a group of 120 English men, women and children now led by John White tried to settle in Roanoke Island again. At this point in time the Secotan Tribe and their Roanoke dependents were totally hostile to the English; but the Croatoan tribe, who were on better terms with the previous settlers, remained allies. Manteo. the Croatoan chief, remained aligned with the English and attempted to bring the English and his Croatoan tribe together. John White, father of the colonist Eleanor Dare and grandfather to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, left the colony to return to England for supplies. He expected to return to Roanoke Island within three months.

Instead, England itself was attacked by massive Spanish Invasion; all ships were confiscated for use for defending the English Channel. White’s return to Roanoke Island was delayed until 1590, by which time all the colonists had disappeared. The settlement was left abandoned. The whereabouts of Manteo and his people after the 1587 settlement attempt were also unknown.

Speculation has suggested that Manteo left with his people to live on Croatoan island. The only clue White found was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a post, as well as the letters, “CRO” carved into a tree. Before leaving the colony three years earlier, White had left instructions that if the colonists left the settlement, they were to carve the name of their destination, with an added Maltese cross if they left due to danger.

Croatoan was the name of an island to the south, now known as Hatteras Island where the Croatoan people, still friendly to the English, was known to live. The 1587 colonists might have tried to reach that island. However, foul weather kept White from venturing south to search on Croatoan for the colonists, so he returned to England. White never returned to the New World. Unable to determine exactly what happened, people referred to the abandoned settlement as “The Lost Colony.” The fate of those first colonists remains unknown to this day and is one of America’s most intriguing unsolved mysteries.

Calendar: August 16

A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of August

Builder of Dams

August 16, 1892, was the birthdate of Canadian-American cartoonist, Harold Foster.

Harold Foster, as a youth, captained a sloop through the Atlantic, and learned to hunt and fish in the wilds surrounding Halifax from his stepfather, cultivating a love for nature that is readily apparent in his art. He left school at an early age. Foster’s career as a professional artist began when he was about eighteen, producing catalog art for the Hudson Bay Company, but before and after that he made his living in the Canadian wilderness as a fur trapper, hunting guide, and gold prospector.

Foster studied at the Chicago Art Institute and other schools and eventually landed a job at an advertising firm that allowed him to move his wife and two sons to the city. But when the Great Depression hit, work slowed to a crawl. Despite his reservations about entering the field of comic strips, when Foster was given the chance to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan of the Apes”, he took it.

Debuting in 1929, the “Tarzan of the Apes” daily heralded a new age for comic strips. A fine artist to his bones, Foster introduced dynamic action, perfect anatomy and fluid body movement to the comics page. Through his hands, the titular character was imbued with a balance of nobility and visceral barbarity, and Hal Foster’s dramatically-lit chiaroscuro panels, accurate nature drawing, and raucous action ensured that “Tarzan of the Apes” was a hit.

Hal Foster produced hundreds of pages, and continuing to adapt his illustrative approach to cartooning, but he grew tired of the material. If he was going to continue working in a medium he didn’t care for, at minimum he wanted creative control over his output. So Foster began working on a story set in Arthurian England that he intended to span decades. After months of research and planning, he pitched his new story to United Features Syndicate, distributor of “Tarzan”, and they turned him down. He made the same pitch to William Randolph Hearst and was offered an unprecedented portion of ownership.

“Prince Valiant”, debuted in 1937 and quickly became the gold standard of the Sunday cartoons. The story begins with Val as the five-year-old son of a deposed king and follows him to manhood, through battles with ancient monsters and beasts, knighthood with King Arthur in Camelot, fatherhood, and adventures all across myth, history, and the globe. It is epic, swashbuckling, painterly, ornate, endlessly clever, and brilliantly plotted story, and without the intrusion of word balloons to muck up the panels. Every frame of Prince Valiant is like a story unto itself: beautifully designed, and rendered with a precision. In the golden age of the newspaper strip it was considered by many to be the pinnacle of achievement in the medium.

Calendar: August 15

A Year: Day to Day Men: 15th of August

Behind Door One

August 15, 1939 marks the Hollywood premier of the film “The Wizard of Oz”.

In January 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” from Samuel Goldwyn, who had toyed with the idea of making the film as a vehicle for Eddie Cantor who would play the Scarecrow. The final draft of the script was completed on October 8, 1938, following numerous rewrites from many screenwriters; Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf received the film credits.

In his book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, Frank Baum describes Kansas as being “in shades of gray”. Effectively, the use of monochrome sepia tones for the Kansas sequences was a stylistic choice that evoked the dull and gray countryside. Much attention was given to the use of color in the production, with the MGM production crew favoring some hues over others. Consequently, it took the studio’s art department almost a week to settle on the final shade of yellow used for the yellow brick road.

Though Judy Garland was set for the part, Nicholas Schenck, head of Loew’s Inc., MGM’s controlling parent company, felt box-office security in the person of Shirley Temple was needed to ensure a financial return against Oz‘s big budget. At an unofficial audition, MGM musical mainstay Roger Edens listened to Temple sing and reported that she lacked the robust vocal chops required for the extravaganza being prepared. So, the part of Dorothy remained Judy Garland’s, as intended.

Gale Sondergaard, a recent Academy Award winner, was originally cast as the Wicked Witch; however, she became unhappy when the witch’s persona shifted from sly and glamorous into the familiar “ugly hag”. She turned down the role and was replaced on October 10, 1938, just three days before filming started, by MGM contract player Margaret Hamilton. After the filming of “The Wizard of Oz”, both Hamilton and Garland started filming the Busby Berkeley musical “Babes in Arms” with Hamilton playing a role similar to the Wicked Witch.

An extensive talent search produced over a hundred little people to play Munchkins. They were each paid over 125 dollars a week, equivalent to 2200 dollars today. The MGM costume and wardrobe department, under the direction of costume designer Adrian Greenberg, had to design over 100 costumes for the Munchkin sequences. They then had to photograph and catalog each Munchkin in his or her costume so that they could correctly apply the same costume and makeup each day of production.

The Hollywood premiere was on August 15, 1939 at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. While the earnings for the film were considerable, the high production cost, in association with various distribution and other costs, meant the movie initially recorded a loss of over one million dollars for the studio. It did not show what MGM considered a profit until a 1949 re-release earned an additional $1.5 million. The film has been inducted into National Film Registry of the Library of Congress and is listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Calendar: August 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of August

Tropical Paradise

August 14, 1951 was the release date for the film “A Place in the Sun”.

“A Place in the Sun” is a 1951 American drama film based on the 1925 novel “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser. It was directed by George Stevens from a screenplay by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson. The starring roles were played by Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters; supporting actors included Anne Revere and Raymond Burr.

This noir masterpiece merges suspense and romantic tragedy with director George Stevens composing each shot and scene with an eye for detail. Montgomery Clift plays George Eastman, a financially poor but personable young man, who lands a job in his wealthy uncle’s business. He begins dating Alice, played by Shelley Winters, who works on the factory floor. Clift, however, falls in love with a beautiful socialite, played by Elizabeth Taylor, and must rid himself of the affections of Alice. Her death ensues from a boating trip and the detective, played by Raymond Burr, appears with questions.

Montgomery Clift reached the peak of his Hollywood career with Steven’s “A Place in the Sun”, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His physical beauty and the emotional intensity of his performance as the doomed lover, especially in his scenes with costar Elizabeth Taylor, confirmed his status as a romantic screen idol. Clift’s performance is regarded as one of his signature method acting performances. He worked extensively on his character. For his character’s scenes in jail, Clift spent a night in a real state prison to seek the right mood.

Although the film was released in 1951, it was shot in 1949. Paramount Studios had already released its blockbuster “Sunset Boulevard” in 1950 when this film wrapped. The studio did not want another possible blockbuster competing for Oscars with “Sunset Boulevard” so it waited until 1951 to release “A Place in the Sun”. This wait actually pleased director George Stevens as he would use the extra time to edit the film. His painstaking methods of producing resulted in more than 400,000 feet of film to edit. Stevens and editor William Hornbeck worked on cutting the footage for more than a year.

The film “A Place in the Sun” was a critical and commercial success, winning siX Academy Awards and the first-ever Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture-Drama. However to many, the film’s acclaim did not completely hold up over time. Reappraisals of the film find that much of what was exciting about the film in 1951 is not as potent now. Critics cite the soporific pace, the exaggerated melodrama, and the outdated social commentary as qualities present in “A Place in the Sun” that are not present in the great films of the era, such as those by Hitchcock and Kazan, although the performances by Clift, Taylor, and Winters continue to receive praise.

Calendar: August 13

A Year: Day to Day Men: 13th of August

White Roses

August 13, 1860 was the birthdate of Phoebe Ann Mosey, known to history as the American sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Annie Oakley began trapping before the age of seven, and shooting and hunting by age eight, to support her six siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunted game to locals in Greenville, Ohio, such as shopkeepers who shipped it to hotels in Cincinnati and other cities. Oakley also sold the game herself to restaurants and hotels in northern Ohio; she paid off her mother’s house mortgage by the age of fifteen.

On Thanksgiving Day of 1875, the Baughman & Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Traveling show marksman Frank E. Butler placed a $100 bet per side with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost that Butler could beat any local fancy shooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match between Butler and the 15-year-old Annie Oakley , saying, “The last opponent Butler expected was a five-foot-tall 15-year-old girl named Annie.” After missing on his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet. He soon began courting Annie and they married.

Annie Oakley and Frank Butler joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in 1885. This three-year tour only cemented Oakley as America’s first female star. She earned more than any other performer in the show, except for Buffalo Bill Cody himself. In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot of France and other crowned heads of state. Oakley supposedly shot the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II at his request.

Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898, offering the government the services of a company of fifty lady sharpshooters who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain. Oakley’s offer was not accepted.

In 1901, Annie Oakley was badly injured in a train accident, but recovered after temporary paralysis and five spinal operations. She left the Buffalo Bill show and in 1902 began a less taxing acting career in “The Western Girl”, a stage play written especially for her. Oakley played the role of Nancy Berry who used a pistol, a rifle and rope to outsmart a group of outlaws.

Annie Oakley continued to set records into her sixties. She hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards at age 62 in a 1922 shooting contest in North Carolina. Oakley also engaged in extensive philanthropy for women’s rights and other causes, including the support of young women whom she knew. Oakley’s health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of 66 on November 3, 1926. Her husband Frank Butler, greatly grieved, died eighteen days later and is buried next to Annie Oakley in Brock Cemetery near Greenville, Ohio.

Calendar: August 12

A Year: Day to Day Men: 12th of August

Key to Life

August 12, 1927 was the release date of “Wings”, the only silent film to win an Oscar.

The American silent war film “Wings” was a romantic action-war movie set during the First World War. It starred Clara Bow, Charles”Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen. The film was shot on location at Kelly Field, a military facility in San Antonio, Texas, from September of 1926 to April of 1927 on a budget of two million dollars.

Producers Lucien Hubbard and Jesse L. Lasky hired director William Wellman as he was the only director in Hollywood at the time who had World War I combat pilot experience. Actor Richard Arlen and writer John Monk Saunders had also served in World War I as military aviators. Arlen was able to do his own flying in the film and actor Charles Rogers, a non-pilot, underwent flight training during the course of the production, so that, like Arlen, Rogers could also be filmed in closeup in the air. Director Wellman was able to attract War Department support and involvement in the project, and displayed considerable prowess and confidence in dealing with planes and pilots onscreen.

Primary scout aircraft flown in the film were Thomas-Morse MB-3s standing in for American-flown SPADs and Curtiss P-1 Hawks painted in German livery. Developing the techniques needed for filming closeups of the pilots in the air and capturing the speed and motion of the planes onscreen took time, and little usable footage was produced in the first two months. Wellman soon realized that Kelly Field did not have the adequate numbers of planes or skilled pilots to perform the needed aerial maneuvers, and he had to request technical assistance and a supply of planes and pilots from Washington.

Hundreds of extras were brought in to shoot the picture, and some 300 pilots were involved in the filming. If possible, Wellman attempted to capture footage in the air in contrast to clouds in the background, above or in front of cloud banks to generate a sense of velocity and danger. During the delays in the aerial shooting because of weather conditions, Wellman extensively rehearsed the scenes for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel over ten days with some 3500 infantrymen. A large battlefield with trenches and barbed wire was created on location for the filming. Wellman took responsibility for the meticulously-planned explosions himself, detonating them at the right time from his control panel. At least 20 young men, including cameraman William Clothier, were given hand-held cameras to film anything and everything during the filming.

On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927–1928. “Wings” was entered in a number of categories and was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; Roy Pomercy, the special effects artist for the film, won Best Engineering Effects for that year. For many years, “Wings” was considered a lost film until 1992 when a print was found in the film archive of Cinémathèque Française in Paris. It was quickly copied form nitrate film to safety film stock and is shown again in theaters, sometimes accompanied by Wurlitzer pipe organs.

Orthodox Calendar

OC (Orthodox Calendar)

OC (Orthodox Calendar) is the title of wall calendars and videos first published in 2012, featuring nude and semi-nude photographs of members of the Orthodox Church. The calendar is the brainchild of a group composed mostly of Orthodox eastern Europeans of the former communist region. The primary goal was to create the very first organized global effort against homophobia in the Orthodox Region. At the same time, the calendar takes an ironic approach to the Orthodox Church itself, which in recent years has been embroiled in artist repression, questionable behavior and homophobia.

Through their unconventional and bold images, OC’s creative Team seeks to counteract the negative and outdated influences of most of the Orthodox Church leadership. While recognizing that change might not come quickly to the official Orthodox Church position, OC nonetheless believes that at least it can encourage people (believers or not) to reflect and realize that there is an urgent need for an update in values as part of the modern society.

Additional information can be found at the site: https://www.orthodox-calendar.com

Calendar: August 11

A Year: Day to Day Men: 11th of August

Smoke in the Air

August 11, 1866 marks the opening of the first roller rink in the United States.

The four-wheeled turning roller skate, or quad skate, with four wheels set in two side-by-side pairs (front and rear), was first designed, in New York City by James Leonard Plimpton, a New York city furniture dealer, in an attempt to improve upon previous designs. Instead of being directly attached to the sole of the skate, the wheel assembly was fastened to a pivot with a rubber cushion. The pivoting action allowed the skater to skate a curve just by pressing his weight to one side or the other, most commonly by leaning to one side.

James Plimpton received a patent for the design in 1863. A modification of leather straps and metal side braces was added to the design in 1866. This addition to the quad skate allowed easier turns and maneuverability, and the quad skate came to dominate the industry for more than a century.

James Plimpton started the New York Roller Skating Association (NYRSA) and leased the The Atlantic House Hotel in Newport, converting the dining room into a skating area. On August 11th in 1866, the first roller rink opened to the public in the United States. The sport was not promoted for the masses but as an acceptable supervised activity for young ladies and gentlemen. To control the quality of his clientele, Plimpton did not sell his skates, but rented them. As rinks proliferated, James Plimpton toured them in the 1870s, giving lessons to new and current skaters for two dollars a week, which included the skate rental.

In America, roller skating was most popular first between 1935 and the early 1960s. When polyurethane wheels were created and disco music made its appearance, roller rinks were again the rage in the 1970s. Roller skating made a third resurgence with in-line outdoor roller skating, thanks to the improvement to the skates by Scott and Brennan Olson.

In 1979, seeing the potential for off-ice hockey training, the Olson brothers redesigned inline skates, made in the 1960s by the Chicago Roller Skate Company, using modern materials and attaching ice hockey boots. A few years later they began to heavily promote the skates and launched the company, Rollerblade, Incorporated. The Rollerblade skates became synonymous in the minds of many with “inline skates” and skating, so much so that many people came to call any form of skating “Rollerblading”.

Calendar: August 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of August

Leaves of Green

August 10, 1628 marks the sinking of the Swedish warship Vasa.

King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus, who was a keen artillerist, saw the potential of ships as gun platforms, and large, heavily armed ships made a more dramatic statement in the political theater of naval power. Beginning with the Vasa, he ordered a series of ships with two full gundecks, outfitted with much heavier guns. The Vasa was built simultaneously with her sister ship Applet; the only significant difference was Vasa’s three foot increase in width.

King Gustavus Adolphus ordered 72 24-pound cannons for the Vasa on the 5th of August 1626, and this was too many to fit on a single gun deck. Since the king’s order was issued less than five months after construction started, it would have come early enough for the second deck to be included in the design. The French Gallon du Guise, the ship used as a model for Vasa, according to Arendt de Groote, also had two gun decks. Laser measurements of Vasa’s structure conducted in 2007–2011 confirmed that no major changes were implemented during construction, but that the centre of gravity was too high.

On 10 August 1628, Captain Söfring Hansson ordered Vasa to depart on her maiden voyage to the naval station at Alvsnabben. The day was calm, and the only wind was a light breeze from the southwest. The ship was hauled by anchor along the eastern waterfront of the city to the southern side of the harbor, where four sails were set, and the ship made way to the east. The gun ports were open, and the guns were out to fire a salute as the ship left Stockholm.

As Vasa passed under the lee of the bluffs to the south, a gust of wind filled her sails, and she heeled suddenly to port The sheets were cast off, and the ship slowly righted itself as the gust passed. At Tegelviken, where there is a gap in the bluffs, an even stronger gust again forced the ship onto its port side, this time pushing the open lower gun ports under the surface, allowing water to rush in onto the lower gun deck. The water building up on the deck quickly exceeded the ship’s minimal ability to right itself, and water continued to pour in until it ran down into the hold; the ship quickly sank to a depth of 105 ft only 390 ft from shore.

Survivors clung to debris or the upper masts, which were still above the surface, to save themselves, and many nearby boats rushed to their aid, but despite these efforts and the short distance to land, 30 people perished with the ship, according to reports. Vasa sank in full view of a crowd of hundreds, if not thousands, of mostly ordinary Stockholmers who had come to see the great ship set sail. The crowd included foreign ambassadors, in effect spies of Gustavus Adolphus’ allies and enemies, who also witnessed the catastrophe.

Calendar: August 9

A Year: Day to Day Men: 9th of August

Sleep Position Number Eight

On August 9, 1930, Betty Boop makes her first appearance in film.

Betty Boop made her first appearance in the cartoon “Dizzy Dishes”, the seventh installment in producer Max Fleischer’s Talkartoon series. Although Clara Bow is often given as being the model for Boop, she actually began as a caricature of singer Helen Kane, who in turn gained fame by imitating the style of black singer Baby Esther Jones. Betty Boop appeared as a supporting character in ten cartoons as a flapper girl with more heart than brains. Betty Boop’s voice was first performed by Margie Hines; but the voice most known was done by Mae Questel who voiced Betty from 1931 until 1938.

Betty Boop is regarded as one of the first and most famous sex symbols on the animated screen; she is a symbol of the depression era, and a reminder of the more carefree days of the Jazz age flappers. Her popularity was drawn largely from adult audiences, and the cartoons, while seemingly surreal, contained many sexual and psychological elements, particularly in the 1932 Talkartoon “Minnie the Moocher”, featuring Cab Calloway and his orchestra.

Betty Boop was unique among female cartoon characters because she represented a sexual woman. Many other female cartoons were merely clones of their male co-stars, with alterations in costume, the addition of eyelashes, and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels, a garter, and her breasts were highlighted with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage.

Betty Boop’s best appearances are considered to be in her 1930 -1933 years due to her “Jazz Baby” character and innocent sexuality, which was aimed at adults. However, the content of her films was affected by the National Legion of Decency and the Production Code of 1934. This production code imposed guidelines on the Motion Picture Industry and placed specific restrictions on the content films could reference with sexual innuendos, thus greatly affecting the Betty Boop cartoons. Joseph Breen, the new head film censor, ordered the removal of the suggestive introduction which had started the cartoons because Betty Boop’s winks and shaking hips were deemed “suggestive of immorality”.

While these “restricted” cartoons were tame compared to Betty Boop’s earlier appearances, their self-conscious wholesomeness was aimed at a more juvenile audience, which contributed to the decline of the series. Much of the decline was due to the lessening of Betty’s role in favor of her less suggestive cartoon co-stars. The last Betty Boop cartoons were released in 1939, with Betty making a total of 110 cartoon appearances in her early career.

Calendar: August 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of August

Lounging on White Cotton

August 8, 1907 was the birthdate of jazz saxophonist Bennett Lester Carter.

Bennett Carter appeared on record for the first time in 1927 as a member of the Paradise Ten led by Charlie Johnson. He did arrangement work for recordings by Fletcher Henderson and his band. Carter’s arrangement of the 1930 “Keep a Song in Your Soul” for Henderson was very complex and a significant song in his career. After leaving Fletcher, Carter became leader of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in Detroit until he formed his own band in New York City. The songs “Lonesome Nights” and Symphony in Riffs” written in 1933 show Carter’s masterful writing for saxophones.

By the early 1930s Bennett Carter was considered one of the leading alto saxophonists. He also became known as a leading trumpet player, having rediscovered the instrument from his childhood. Carter’s orchestra played the Harlem Club in New York but only recorded a few records for Columbia, Okeh (under the name of “The Chocolate Dandies”), and Vocalion.

In the middle 1940s, Bennett Carter made Los Angeles his home, forming another big band, which at times included Max Roach, JJ Johnson, and Miles Davis. But this would be the last big bands he would lead. With the exception of occasional concerts, performing with Jazz at the Philharmonic, and recording, he ceased working as a touring big band bandleader. Los Angeles provided him many opportunities for studio work, and these dominated his time during the next decades. He wrote music and arrangements for television and films, such as “Stormy Weather” in 1943. During the 1950s and ‘60s, he wrote many arrangements for vocalists such as Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee.

In 1969, Carter was persuaded to spend a weekend at Princeton University by Monroe Berger, a sociology professor at Princeton who wrote about jazz. This led to a new outlet for Carter’s talent: teaching. For the next nine years he visited Princeton five times, most of them brief stays except for one in 1973 when he spent a semester there as a visiting professor. In 1974 Princeton gave him an honorary doctorate. He conducted teaching at workshops and seminars at several other universities and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard.

Bennett Carter had an unusually long career. He was perhaps the only musician to have recorded in eight different decades. Another characteristic of his career was its versatility as musician, bandleader, arranger, and composer. He helped define the sound of alto saxophone, but he also performed and recorded on soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and piano. Carter received the Jazz Masters Award in 1986 given by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts created by the United States Congress.

Calendar: August 7

A Year: Day to Day Men: 7th of August

Roses and Arrows

August 7, 1927 was the birthdate of American singer and actor, Carl Dean Switzer, best known for his character “Alfalfa”.

As a child, Carl Switzer and his brother Harold became famous in their hometown for their musical talent and performances. Both of them could sing and play a number of instruments. In 1934, while the family traveled to California to visit relatives, they did some sight seeing at the Hal Roach Studios. After the tour and at the studio’s public cafeteria, Carl and Harold gave an impromptu performance which was seen by Hal Roach. Roach signed both brothers to appear in the studio’s “Our Gang” series. Harold was given the nicknames “Slim” and Deadpan”; Carl was dubbed “Alfalfa”.

Carl Switzer’s first appearance was in the 1935 “Our Gang” short film titled “Beginner’s Luck”. At the end of 1935, Carl, as Alfalfa with his hair in a cowlick, was one of the main characters; his brother Harold was relegated to a background actor. Although Carl was an experienced singer and musician, his character Alfalfa was often called upon to sing off-key renditions of popular songs, most often those of the popular singer Bing Crosby.

By the end of 1937, Carl Switzer as Alfalfa had surpassed George “Spanky” McFarland, the series’ nominal star, in popularity. While the boys got along, the two stars’ fathers argued constantly over their sons’ screen time and salaries. However, Carl Switzer was known for being abrasive and difficult on the set. He would often play cruel jokes on the other actors and hold up filming with his antics.

Carl Switzer’s role in the “Our Gang” series of films ended in 1940, when he was twelve. He continued to appear in films in various supporting roles including the 1944 movies “Going My Way”, which won Best Picture award for the year, and “The Great Mike”, in the role of eight-year old “Speck”, the movie hero’s dim-witted friend. He reprised his ‘Alfalfa’ character in the “Gas House Kids” comedies produced in 1946 and 1947. Switzer had a small role in the 1946 Christmas film “It’s A Wonderful Life” playing the dance date of Mary Hatch, performed by Donna Reed, in the film’s beginning.

In 1953 and 1954, Carl Switzer co-starred in three William Wellman directed films: “Island in the Sky” and “The High and the Mighty” both starring John Wayne, and “Track of the Cat” starring Robert Mitchum. In 1956 he co-starred in the “Bowery Boys” film “Dig That Uranium” followed by a small part in “The Ten Commandments”. His final film role was in the 1958 drama “The Defiant Ones”.

Besides acting, Carl Switzer bred and trained hunting dogs and guided hunting expeditions Among his clients were Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, James Stewart and Henry Fonda. Switzer was fatally shot in January of 1959 in a dispute over a fifty dollar reward for a returned missing hunting dog. The shooting was very controversial but was officially judged to be self-defense. Later testimony by a third witness brought up questions of murder; but the case was never reopened. Carl Switzer is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Calendar: August 6

A Year: Day to Day Men: 6th of August

A Bed of Flowers

August 6, 1874 was the birthdate of American writer and researcher, Charles Hoy Fort.

During 1915, Charles Fort, an experienced journalist with wit and a contrarian nature, began to write two books, titled “X” and “Y”, the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars were controlling events on Earth, and the second with the postulation of a sinister civilization in existence at the South Pole. These books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser who attempted to get them published, but to no avail.

Discouraged by this failure, Charles Fort burnt the manuscripts, but was soon renewed to begin work on the book that would change the course of his life, the 1919 “The Book of the Damned”, which Dreiser helped to get published. The title referred to “damned” data that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account and that was thus rejected or ignored.

For more than thirty years, Charles Fort visited libraries in New York City and London, assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines, collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by the accepted theories and beliefs of the time. He marveled that seemingly unrelated bits of information were, in fact, related. The notes were kept on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes, in a cramped shorthand of Fort’s own invention.

From this research, Charles Fort wrote four books. These are: “The Book of the Damned” published in 1919; the 1923 “New Lands”, a theory on the Super-Sargasso Sea: “Lo!“ published in 1931 dealing with astronomy and teleportation; and the 1932 “Wild Talents” describing Fort’s new theory of psychic and mental powers.

Examples of the odd phenomena in Charles Fort’s books include many occurrences of the sort variously referred to as occult and paranormal. Reported events include: teleportation; the falling of frogs and fishes from the sky; spontaneous human combustion; ball lightning; levitation; unexplained disappearances; and giant wheels of light in the ocean, among others. His books offered many reports of out-of-place objects found in unlikely locations and out of their place in time. He was an early proponent of extraterrestrial spacecraft and the first to explain human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction.

Suffering from poor health and falling eyesight in the early 1930s , Charles Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of a cult following. The Fortean Society was initiated at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City on January 26, 1931 by some of Fort’s friends, many who were also writers. Fort rejected the official society but met informally with many members. Distrusting doctors, Fort did not seek medical assistance for his worsening health. After he collapsed on May 3rd of 1932, he was rushed to the Royal Hospital in the Bronx, dying only hours afterward, most likely from untreated leukemia. He was interred in the family plot in Albany, New York. More than 60,000 of his handwritten notes are in the New York Public Library.

Calendar: August 5

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of August

Searching for Socks

August 5, 1887 was the birthdate of John Reginald Owen, the English character actor.

Reginald Owen studied at Sir Herbert Tree’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his professional debut on stage in 1905. When he was still a young actor, he met the author Mrs. Clifford Mills. Upon hearing her idea of a children’s play to be called a Rainbow Story, Owen persuaded her to turn it into a play. This became the play “Where the Rainbow Ends” which opened on December 21st of 1911 starring Owen as Saint George. It received good reviews.

John Reginald traveled to the United States in 1920, originally working on Broadway in New York. He later moved to Hollywood and began a lengthy career in many Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer productions. Owen is perhaps best known today for his role as Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 film version of “A Christmas Carol” , a role he inherited from Lionel Barrymore who suffered a broken hip.

Owen was one of only five actors to play both Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson. He first played Watson in the 1932 film “Sherlock Holmes” opposite Clive Brooks. In the 1933 film “A Study in Scarlet”, Owen played Sherlock Holmes opposite Warburton Gamble in the character of Doctor Watson. Owen also has the odd distinction of playing three classical characters of Victorian fiction- Scrooge, Holmes, and Watson- only to have those characters taken over and personified by other actors, namely Alastair Sim as Scrooge, Basil Rathbone as Holmes, and Nigel Bruce as Watson.

Owen appeared, later in his career, on the television series “Maverick” in two episodes and also guest starred in episodes of the series “One Step Beyond” and “Bewitched”. He was featured in the 1964 film “Mary Poppins” and had a small role in the 1962 film production of the Jules Verne novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon”. John Reginald Owen died from a heart attack at age 85 at his home in Boise, Idaho in 1972, after a film career totaling over one hundred films, many of which are today listed as classics- “Of Human Bondage”, “Anna Karenina”, “A Tale of Two Cities”, “The Great Ziegfeld” and “The Call of the Wild”.