Calendar: March 29

A Year: Day to Day Men: 29th of March

A London Morning

March 29, 1959 was the release date of the film “Some Like It Hot”, directed and produced by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon.

“Some Like It Hot” was shot in California during the summer and autumn of 1958. Many scenes were shot at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado which fit the look of the movie’s 1920s period and was near Hollywood. The soundtrack created by Adolph Deutsch has an authentic 1920s jazz feel using sharp, brassy strings to create tension.

For the cinematography, Billy Wilder chose to shoot the film in black and white as Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed in full drag costume and make-up looked ‘unacceptably grotesque’ in early color tests. Despite Marilyn Monroe’s contract requiring color film, she agreed to film in black and white after seeing the early color tests of the make-up.

The film is notable for featuring cross dressing, and for playing with the idea of homosexuality, which led to its being produced without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code. The code had been gradually weakening in its scope during the early 1950s, due to increasing social tolerance for previously taboo topics in film, but it was still officially enforced. The overwhelming success of “Some Like It Hot” is considered one of the final nails in the coffin for the Hays Code, the moral guidelines that was in effect from 1930 to 1968.

It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list ‘AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs’ in 2000. In 1989, this film became one of the first twenty-five films inducted into the United States National Film Registry. Though sometimes said to have been “condemned” by the Roman Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency, that body gave the film its less critical rating as “morally objectionable”. In 2017, the BBC conducted an international survey for the best comedy in film history among 253 film critics from 50 countries, which ranked “Some Like It Hot” as number one.

Note: The studio United Artists hired Barbette, a famous female impersonator, to coach Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis on gender illusion for the film. Barbette, whose greatest fame came from his performances in Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s, may have been the inspiration for the 1933 German film, “Viktor und Viktoria”, which features a plot about a woman pretending to be a female impersonator, whose gimmick was removing her wig at the end of her act (Barbette’s signature gesture).

Calendar: March 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of March

Tightly Stretched in the Sun

On March 28th in 1890, Paul Whiteman was born in Denver, Colorado. Originally a violinist, he became an American bandleader, later known as the King of Jazz for popularizing a musical style during the 1920s and 1930s that contributed to the introduction of jazz to mainstream audiences.

During 1917 and 1918, Whiteman conducted a forty-piece United States Navy band and, after the war, formed the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. In 1920, he moved his popular dance band to New York City where they made recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company. The popularity of these recordings led to national fame. Whiteman became the most popular band director of that decade. While most bands consisted of six to ten men, his band was more imposing with as many as thirty-five musicians. By 1922, Whiteman was overseeing twenty-eight ensembles on the East Coast and earning over a million dollars a year.

While most musicians and fans considered improvisation essential to the jazz style, Paul Whiteman thought that jazz could be improved by orchestrating the best of it with formal written arrangements. His recordings were popular both commercially and critically; his style was often the first form of jazz most heard during the era. Over the course of his career, Whiteman wrote over three-thousand arrangements.

Whiteman hired the best jazz musicians for his bands; these included such notables as Frankie Trumbauer, Joe Venuti, Steve Brown, Wilbur Hall, Jack Teagarden and Bunny Berigan. He encouraged talented and upcoming African-American musicians and planned to hire many of them; however, his management persuaded him not to do so due to America’s segregation at that time. In 1925, Whiteman hired the team of Bing Crosby and Al Rinker to perform intermittently with his band to break up the selections.

Paul Whiteman provided music for six Broadway shows and produced more than six-hundred phonograph recordings. in 1942, he joined Capitol Records and produced such records as “I Found a New Baby” and “Trav’lin Light” which featured Billie Holiday. Whiteman appeared in the 1945 George Gershwin bio-film “Rhapsody in Blue”, the 1947 Dorsey Brothers bio-film “The Fabulous Dorseys” and as himself in the 1940 “Strike Up the Band”, among others.

After a long and prolific career as a band leader, Whiteman disbanded his orchestra in the early 1940s. He worked as a music director for the ABC Radio Network and hosted several television shows for ABC. The Paul Whiteman’s TV Teen Club from Philadelphia and Grady and Hurst’s 950 Club proved to be the inspiration for WFIL-TV’s afternoon dance show called American Bandstand.

Calendar: March 24

A Year: Day to Day Men: 24th of March

Tensile Strength of Cotton

March 24, 1887 is the birthdate of Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, an American comedian and film director.

At twenty years of age Roscoe Arbuckle was already a veteran of carnivals, vaudeville, and traveling stock companies, with an act that consisted of jokes, songs, acrobatics, and magic tricks. Weighing between 250 and 300 pounds for most of his adult life, he amazed audiences with his physical prowess and gained a reputation for versatility.

Roscoe Arbuckle was hired by Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedy studio in 1913. Appearing opposite such seasoned clowns as Ford Sterling, Mabel Normand, and Charlie Chaplin, “Fatty” Arbuckle quickly emerged as one of Keystone’s top attractions. From late 1914 onward he wrote and directed virtually all the comedies in which he starred, including such classics as “Fatty and Mabel Adrift” and “He Did and He Didn’t”.

In 1917 Arbuckle took creative control of producer Joseph M. Schenck’s Comique Film Corporation, for which he directed and starred in a series of knockabout two-reelers. During this period he also discovered and nurtured the talents of the young Buster Keaton who costarred in several Arbuckle films. With “The Round Up” in 1920, Arbuckle became the first major comedy star to make the transition from short subjects to feature films. Though most of his subsequent features tended to downplay slapstick in favor of situational humor, his popularity grew unabated.

After completing three films back to back in September 1921, an exhausted Arbuckle attended a weekend party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. A few days after the drunken festivities, one of the participants, movie starlet Virginia Rappe, died of a ruptured bladder. On the basis of questionable “eyewitness” testimony, Arbuckle was accused of rape and manslaughter by a battery of politically ambitious prosecutors. He also endured a prejudicial “trial by headline,” orchestrated largely by newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Ultimately, three court trials were held; the first two ended in hung juries, but the third resulted in a full acquittal.

This verdict notwithstanding, Hollywood’s top executives, hoping to deflect attention from other scandals in the motion picture industry, persuaded censorship czar Will Hayes to ban Arbuckle from the screen. Throughout the 1920s and early ’30s, Arbuckle found work as a film director using the pseudonym William Goodrich (his father’s name) and enjoyed modest success in vaudeville and as co-owner of a popular California nightclub. He made an impressive screen comeback in 1932 as the star of a series of Vitaphone two-reel comedies. On the evening of June 29, 1933 after signing a lucrative feature film contract with Warner Brothers, he died in his sleep.

Calendar: March 23

A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of March

Blades of Grass

March 23, 1910 was the birthdate of Japanese film director and screenwriter Akira Kurosawa, regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in cinema history.

Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film “Sanshiro Sugata”, known as “Judo Saga”. After the war, the critically acclaimed film “Drunken Angel” made in 1948, in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director’s reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan.

His film “Rashomon”, which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion Award, the highest prize at the 1952 Venice Film Festival. The film’s multiple conflicting eye-witness testimonies, the sound complexity, and the experimental cinematography combined to produce a classic film. The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers.

Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as “Ikuro” in 1952, “Seven Samurai” in 1954, and “Yojimbo” in 1961. After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including his final two epics, “Kagemusha” in 1980 and “Ran” in 1985—continued to win awards, though more often abroad than in Japan. These two epic films, particularly “Ran”, are often considered to be among Kurosawa’s finest works. After the release of “Ran”, Kurosawa would point to it as his best film, a major change of attitude for the director who, when asked which of his works was his best, had always previously answered “my next one”.

Akira Kurosawa wrote the original screenplays “The Sea is Watching” in 1993 and “After the Rain” in 1995. While putting finishing touches on the latter work in 1995, Kurosawa slipped and broke the base of his spine. Following the accident, he would use a wheelchair for the rest of his life, putting an end to any hopes of him directing another film. After his accident, Kurosawa’s health began to deteriorate. While his mind remained sharp and lively, his body was giving up, and for the last half-year of his life, the director was largely confined to bed, listening to music and watching television at home. On September 6, 1998, Kurosawa died of a stroke in Setagaya, Tokyo at the age of 88.

“One thing that distinguishes Akira Kurosawa is that he didn’t make one masterpiece or two masterpieces. He made, you know, eight masterpieces.”- Francis Ford Coppola

“Let me say it simply: Akira Kurosawa was my master, and … the master of so many other filmmakers over the years.”- Martin Scorsese

Calendar: March 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of March

The Fire Fighter

The Emerald Buddha was moved with great ceremony on March 22, 1784 to His current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand.

Phra Kaeo Morakot, the Emerald Buddha, is considered the palladium of the Kingdom of Thailand; an figure of great antiquity on which the safety of Thailand is said to depend. The figure of the meditating Buddha seated in a yogic posture is made of semi-precious jade, clothed in gold and 26 inches tall in His seated position. Historical sources indicate the the figure of the Buddha surfaced in northern Thailand in the Lanna kingdom in 1434.

In 1779, the Thai General Chao Phraya Chakri put down an insurrection, captured Vientiane, the capital of Laos where the Buddha had resided for 214 years, and took the Emerald Buddha to Siam. It was installed in a shrine close to Wat Arun in Thonburi, Siam’s new capital. Chao Phraya Chakri took control of the country and founded the Chakri Dynasty of Rattanakosin Kingdom. He adopted the title ‘Rama I’ and shifted his capital across the Menam Chao Phra River to its present location in Bangkok.

There Rama I constructed the new Grand Palace including Wat Phra Kaew within its compound. Wat Phra Kaew was consecrated in 1784, and the Emerald Buddha was moved with great pomp and pageantry to its current home in the Ubosoth, the holiest prayer room, of the Wat Phra Kaew temple complex on 22 March 1784.

The Emerald Buddha is adorned with three different sets of gold seasonal costume; two were made by King Rama I, one for the summer and one for the rainy season, and a third made by King Rama III for the winter or cool season. The clothes are changed by the King of Thailand, or another member of the royal family in his stead, in a ceremony at the changing of the seasons – in the first waning of lunar months around March, August and November.

King Rama I initiated this ritual for the hot season and the rainy season, Rama III introduced the ritual for the winter season. The robes, which adorn the figure of Buddha, represent those of monks and the King, depending on the season, a clear indication of highlighting its symbolic role “as Buddha and the King”, which role is also enjoined on the Thai King who formally dresses the Emerald Buddha image. The costume change ritual is performed by the Thai king who is the highest master of ceremonies for all Buddhist rituals.

Calendar: March 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of March

Hot Water with Bubbles

On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly” is published as a book.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist. Her book featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. Stowe was inspired to write this anti-slavery book by the narrative story of Josiah Henson, a formerly enslaved black man who escaped slavery in Maryland by fleeing to Ontario, Canada. There he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient; and there he wrote his memoirs. In 1853 Stowe acknowledged that Henson’s writings inspired “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

Because of the story’s popularity when it appeared as a serial in ‘The National Era”, an abolitionist periodical, the publisher John P. Jewett contacted Stowe about turning the serial into a book. Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel sold 3000 copies on that day alone, and sold out its complete print run. A number of other editions were soon printed including a deluxe edition in 1853 with illustrations by the artist Hammatt Billings. In the first year of publication, 300,000 copies of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were sold.

The book was translated into all major languages, and in the United States it became the second best-selling book after the Bible. A number of the early editions carried an introduction by Reverend James Sherman, a Congregational minister in London noted for his abolitionist views. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” sold equally well in Britain, with the first London edition appearing in May 1852 and selling 200,000 copies. In a few years over 1.5 million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain.

In recent years, the negative associations with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a vital anti-slavery tool. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, the first widely-read political novel in the United States, was dominated by a single theme: the evil and immorality of slavery. While Stowe weaves other sub-themes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the redeeming possibilities offered by Christianity, she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery.

In 1853, Stowe went further in her fight against slavery by publishing “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in which she criticized how the legal system supported slavery and licensed owners’ mistreatment of slaves. Thus, she put more than slavery on trial; she put the law on trial. This continued an important theme of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”- that the shadow of law brooded over the institution of slavery and allowed owners to mistreat slaves and then avoid punishment for their mistreatment.

Calendar: March 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of March

White Anchors on Black

March 19, 1928 was the birthdate of Patrick Joseph McGoohan, an American-born Irish actor, writer and director.

In 1959, ITC Entertainment production executive Lew Grade approached Patrick McGoohan about a television series in which he would play a spy named John Drake. Having learned from bad contract experiences in the past, McGoohan insisted on several conditions in the contract before agreeing to appear in the program: all the fistfights should be different, the character would always use his brain before using a gun, and, much to the horror of the executives, no kissing. The series debuted in 1960 as “Danger Man”, a half-hour program geared toward an American audience. Production lasted a year and 39 episodes.

Patrick McGoohan was one of several actors considered for the role of James Bond in the movie “Doctor No” and later for the James Bond role in “Live and Let Die”, but turned both of them down. After he had also turned down the role of Simon Templar in “The Saint”, Lew Grade asked him if he would like to give John Drake another try. The show was resurrected in 1964 as a one-hour program, now known by the name “Secret Agent”. The scripts now allowed McGoohan more range in his acting. The popularity of the series led to McGoohan becoming the highest-paid actor in the UK, and the show lasted almost three more years.

Knowing of McGoohan’s intentions of leaving “Secret Agent”, Grade asked if he would at least work on something for him. McGoohan gave him a run-down of what would later be called a miniseries, about a secret agent who resigns suddenly and wakes up to find himself in a prison disguised as a holiday resort. Grade asked for a budget, McGoohan had one ready, and they made a deal over a handshake early on a Saturday morning to produce “The Prisoner”. Apart from being the star of “The Prisoner” in his role as Number Six, McGoohan was the executive producer, forming Everyman Films with series producer David Tomblin, and also wrote and directed several episodes, in some cases using pseudonyms.

Patrick McGoohan appeared in many films and television series: “Ice Station Zebra” in 1968, “Silver Streak” in 1976, “The Man in the Iron Mask” in 1977, “Escape from Alcatraz” in 1979, and received two Emmy Awards for his performances on the show “Columbo”. His last film role was as the voice of Billy Bones in the animated film, “Treasure Planet”, released in 2002. That same year, he received the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for his show “The Prisoner”.

Calendar: March 15

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

Flesh Against Teal

On March 15, 1972, the film “The Godfather” has its New York City premiere.

“The Godfather” is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola based on Mario Puzo’s best selling novel of the same name. Published in 1969, it became the best selling published work in history for several years. Paramount Pictures originally found out about Puzo’s novel in 1967 when a literary scout for the company contacted then Paramount Vice President of Production Peter Bart about Puzo’s sixty-page unfinished manuscript. Bart believed the work was “much beyond a Mafia story” and offered Puzo a $12,500 option for the work, with an option for $80,000 if the finished work were made into a film. Despite Puzo’s agent telling him to turn down the offer, Puzo was desperate for money and accepted the deal.

Paramount Pictures wanted the film to be directed by an Italian American to make the film “ethnic to the core”. Sergio Leone was Paramount’s first choice to direct: but Leone turned down the option to work on his own gangster film. Paramount had offered twelve other directors the job with “The Godfather” before Coppola agreed. Coppola agreed to receive $125,000 and six percent of the gross rentals.

Coppola’s request to film on location was observed; approximately 90 percent was shot in New York City and its surrounding suburbs, using over 120 unique locations. Several scenes were filmed at the Filmways Studio in East Harlem. The remaining portions were filmed in California, or on-site in Sicily, except for the scenes set in Las Vegas because there were insufficient funds to travel there. Savoca and Forza d’Argro were the Sicilian towns featured in the film. The opening wedding scene was shot in a Staten Island neighborhood using almost 750 locals as extras.

The world premiere for “The Godfather” took place in New York City on March 15, 1972, almost three months after the planned release date of Christmas Day in 1971, with profits from the premiere donated to The Boys Club of New York. Before the film premiered, the film had already made $15 million from rentals from over 400 theaters. The following day, the film opened in New York at five theaters.

Calendar: March 5

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

The White Stetson

On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” is added to the index of Forbidden Books by the Roman Catholic Church.

“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” is the seminal work on the heliocentric (sun-centered) theory of the solar system by the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy’s geocentric system (earth-centered), which had been popular since ancient times.

Copernicus argued that the universe comprised eight spheres. The outermost consisted of motionless, fixed stars, with the Sun motionless at the center. The known planets revolved about the Sun, each in its own sphere, in the order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The Moon, however, revolved in its sphere around the Earth. What appeared to be the daily revolution of the Sun and fixed stars around the Earth was actually the Earth’s daily rotation on its own axis.

Very soon, Copernicus’ theory was attacked with Scripture and with the common Aristotelian proofs. In 1549 Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s principal lieutenant, wrote against Copernicus, pointing to the theory’s apparent conflict with Scripture and advocating that “severe measures” be taken to restrain the impiety of Copernicans. The works of Copernicus and Zúñiga—the latter for asserting that Copernicus’ book was compatible with Catholic faith—were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of March 5, 1616 (more than 70 years after its publication).

Copernicus’ book was not formally banned but merely withdrawn from circulation, pending “corrections” that would clarify the theory’s status as hypothesis. Nine sentences that represented the heliocentric system as certain were to be omitted or changed. After these corrections were prepared and formally approved in 1620 the reading of the book was permitted. But the book was never reprinted with the changes and was available in Catholic jurisdictions only to suitably qualified scholars, by special request. It remained on the Index until 1758, whenPope Benedict XIV (1740–58) removed the uncorrected book from his revised Index.

Calendar: March 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of March, Solar Year 2018

Warmth of the Light

A preview by invitation of “Nosferatu” premiered on March 4, 1922 in the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Garden.

The studio behind “Nosferatu”, Prana Film, was a short-lived silent-era German film studio founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist-artist Albin Grau. Although the studio’s intent was to produce occult and supernatural themed films, “Nosferatu” was its only production. It declared bankruptcy in order to dodge copyright infringement suit from Bram Stoker’s widow Florence Balcombe.

Albin Grau had the idea to shoot a vampire film, the inspiration of which had risen from a war experience: in the winter of 1916, a Serbian farmer told him that his father was a vampire and one of the undead. Diekmann and Grau gave Henrik Galeen, a disciple of the German author Hanns Heinz Ewers, the task to write a screenplay inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”, despite Prana Film not having obtained the film rights.

For cost reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative. Murnau, the director, followed Galeen’s screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters. Nevertheless, the director completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen’s text was missing from the director’s working script.

This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the Sun. Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting.

The film was praised for its visual style; Murnau’s nature shots were praised as “mood-creating elements”. However, the Bram Stoker estate, acting for his widow, won the copyright infringement case against Prana Film Company. The court ordered all existing prints of “Nosferatu” burned, but one purported print of the film had already been distributed around the world. This print was duplicated over the years, kept alive by a cult following of viewers, making it an early example of a cult film. The film is regarded as one of the most foreboding and influential horror films in the history of cinema- a classic.

The Heat of the Afternoon

Photographer Unknown, (Heat of the Afternoon)

“The heat of late afternoon closed in around us like an animate thing; you could feel it on your skin, warm and moist, like a great beast panting. The air was so dense it seemed to require a huge effort even to inhale it. It lay thick in the lungs and seemed to give no refreshment.”

-Geraldine Brooks, March