The Morning Delivery

The Abraham Lincoln Reading List: Recommendations and Suggestions

Abraham Lincoln, champion of national unity, trailblazer of the Civil War, and emancipator of slaves, is certainly no stranger to the silver screen.

According to ``Abraham Lincoln on Screen: Fictional and Documentary Portrayals on Film and Television’’ (2nd edition) By Mark S. Reinhart, there have been more than 300 fictional and documentary portrayals of Lincoln on film and television.

Now another has been added to the Lincoln canon, only this one is already being hailed as a strong Oscar contender.

Steven Spielberg’s motion picture epic ``Lincoln’’ starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Mr. Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln , scheduled to hit the theaters nationwide November 16th will undoubtedly spark spirited discussions and lively debates about our country’s 16th commander in chief.  Was Lincoln the most revered U.S. president of all time? Was he really the Great Emancipator?

As even the most casual reader knows, these questions and many others are hotly debated in a voluminous number of books written about Mr. Lincoln; with new ones popping up like toasters.

According to Bowker’s Books in Print database, in 2010, there were 2,140 books written about Lincoln, which doesn’t include video and audio books.  As of November 12, 2012, the number of books about Lincoln (which includes biographies, autobiographies, histories, titles on specific topics, etc) has jumped to 2,515. The only other U.S. president which comes close to having that many books written about them is George Washington at 1,347.

A Footnote: A spokesperson from Bowker’s also informs me, since 2010, President Obama has leaped ahead of John F. Kennedy.  In 2010, there were 502 books written about Mr. Obama; that number has soared to 929 as of November, 2012. JFK has 784 books written about him.

Interestingly, Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th president of the United States) continues to outpace his fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the 32nd U.S. president) in the number of books written about him. There are currently 658 books written about TR, followed by FDR at 547.

So if Spielberg’s new creation inspires film goers to engage in more serious reading about the ``Rail Splitter’’, which books should they read? Since the film is based on historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln, ``Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln’’, which covers the final four months of his life; that probably would be a great start.

But what about other equally compelling biographies which attempt to peel away the saintly image and iconography surrounding Mr. Lincoln?

To help us with such a tall order, I reached out to some scholars and historians, who in addition to offering book recommendations, shared their favorite Abraham Lincoln anecdotes. 

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1.) James M. McPherson, the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He is the bestselling author of a number of books on the Civil War, including Battle Cry of Freedom , which won the Pulitzer Prize ; For Cause and Comrades, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize ; and Crossroads of Freedom.

Favorite Abraham Lincoln Biography:  ``Lincoln''  By David Herbert Donald 

Favorite Lincoln Anecdote: ``Perhaps one of my favorite stories about Lincoln is the dramatic midnight ride of three miles from the Soldiers Home (his summer White House) north of Washington to the War Department on September 23, 1863, for an emergency meeting with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, and others officials, where they decided to transfer the 11th and 12th Corps of the Army of the Potomac to Chattanooga to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland after its loss of the battle of Chancellorsville.  This decision led to the Union victory at Chattanooga two months later, that opened the route to Atlanta and ultimate victory in the war.''

2.) Louis P. Masur, Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University and author of ``Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union’’ (2012)

Favorite Lincoln Books:

• Richard Current, ``The Lincoln Nobody Knows’’

• David Herbert Donald, ``Lincoln’’

• Garry Wills, ``Lincoln at Gettysburg’’

• Douglas Wilson, ``Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln’’

• Doris Kearns Goodwin, ``Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln ‘’

• James M. McPherson, ``Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution’’

• Merrill D. Peterson, ``Lincoln in American Memory’’

Favorite Lincoln Anecdote: ``On April 4, 1865 Lincoln traveled to Richmond, the defeated capital of the Confederacy. He brought his son Tad, who turned 12 that day. They walked through throngs of people, up a hill, to the Confederate White House. He sat in Jefferson Davis' chair. The war was nearly over. All he said was, "I wonder if I could get a drink of water."

3.) Donald A. Ritchie, Historian of the U.S. Senate and author of a number of books, including: ``Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps'', ``Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents'' and ``Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932’’ (American Presidential Elections).

Favorite Lincoln Books: ``Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era'' by David Herbert Donald and Richard Hofstadter’s `The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It’’, which includes a chapter on Lincoln.

Favorite Lincoln Anecdote: ``At the White House, Lincoln astutely left his door open to correspondents.  He would talk to them at all hours of the day or night, although according to custom they could attribute nothing to him directly.  One Canadian reporter expressed surprise over his easy entry into the president’s office.  ‘Yes,’ Lincoln replied, ‘this ready means of access is, I may say, under our form of government, the only link or chord which connects the people with the governing power; and, however unprofitable much of it is, must be kept up.’”

4.) Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of ``The Civil War as a Theological Crisis ‘’(University of North Carolina Press, 2006); and ``America's God, from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln’’ (Oxford University Press).

Favorite Lincoln Books: Allen Guelzo, "Redeemer President" ; Richard Carwardine, "Lincoln:  A Life of Purpose and Power ; and Stewart Winger, "Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics."

Favorite Lincoln Anecdote: ``I think this one is pretty well attested and (as I remember) came from Lincoln himself.  So Lincoln tells his friends about two Quaker women who were discussing the great conflict, and one says "I believe that the South will win this war."  The second:  "Why dost thou believe that?"  Answer:  "Because Jefferson [Davis] is a praying man."  Reply:  "But so is Abraham a praying man.'  Reply:  "Yes, I know, but God will think he is joking."

5.) Glenn W. LaFantasie, a Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History in the Department of History at Western Kentucky University and author of ``Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground'' and ``Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates.''

Favorite Lincoln Books: David Herbert Donald's ``Lincoln'' and Benjamin Thomas's ``Abraham Lincoln:  A Biography''

Favorite Lincoln Anecdote: ``It's very hard to choose a favorite anecdote, since there are so many good ones.  But one fact most people aren't aware of is that he was a fairly good carpenter, and some of the furniture he and his father built today still survive in small numbers.

Abraham Lincoln Fast Facts

• Lincoln was the first president to die by assassination.

• Lincoln was the only president to receive a patent, for a device which would enable steamboats to maneuver over sand bars and navigate in extremely shallow waters. He received Patent No. 6469 on May 22, 1849.

• Lincoln was the first president to have worn a beard while in office, perhaps because Grace Bedell, an 11-year old from Westfield N.Y., wrote a letter to Lincoln, suggesting his chances of winning the presidency would be greatly improved if he let his ``whiskers grow. ‘’ The original letter from Bedell can be found in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library.

• At 6’ 4’’ Lincoln was the tallest U.S president.

• Lincoln's hat size was 7 1/8. His shoe size is listed as between 12 and 14.

• Lincoln weighed approximately 180 pounds.

• Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be born outside of the original thirteen colonies and the first president born in Kentucky.

• Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act of Congress, establishing the U.S. Department of Agriculture on May 15, 1862.

• Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, with the first one being celebrated on November 26, 1863.

• Lincoln vetoed or pocket vetoed only seven bills during his presidency.

• Lincoln was never photographed with his wife Mary, or with his family.

• There are about 130 different original photographs taken of Abraham Lincoln.

• One of Lincoln’s favorite books from the bible was Psalms; his favorite poem was ``Mortality’’ (1828) by William Knox.

• On November 9, 1863, Lincoln attended and sat in the presidential box at Ford's Theatre to see ``The Marble Heart’’ starring John Wilkes Booth.

• Abraham Lincoln died without a will. His estate, worth approximately $85,000, was divided into thirds: a third for his widow (Mary Todd), and a third for each of his sons.

• As a lawyer, Lincoln argued one case before the United States Supreme Court: In 1849, Lincoln argued in front of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and the associate justices of the Supreme Court in the case of Lewis v. Lewis.

• The carriage used by the Lincoln’s on the night of the assassination is on display at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana; The Chicago History Museum acquired the bed (from the Petersen Boarding House across from Ford’s Theatre) where Lincoln died.

• On May 30, 1859, Abraham Lincoln purchased the German language newspaper in Springfield, the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger for $400. He sold the newspaper on December 6, 1860.

• The last direct descendant of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the great-grandson of the 16th President, passed away on December 24, 1985. He was 81 and died in a nursing home in Saluda, about 45 miles from Richmond, Virginia.

• The Lincoln Penny was first issued in 1909 to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's 100th birthday, making it the first coin to display a U.S. president.

• Abraham Lincoln's salary as president was $25,000 a year

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
November 12, 2012

Abraham Lincoln Online Resources to Keep in Mind:

• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

• Abraham Lincoln Research Site

• The Lincoln Institute

• Searchable Database of Lincoln Speeches (Abraham Lincoln Association)

• Book Review (The New York Times) of ``Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln’’ By Doris Kearns Goodwin; published  November, 2005

• Film Review of Steven Spielberg’s ``Lincoln’’ published by The Boston Globe  November 8, 2012

Not Even Radio City Music Hall Would Dare to Show Citizen Kane

Orson Welles at the premiere of Citizen Kane

71 years ago, May 1, 1941, Citizen Kane premieres at the RKO Palace on Broadway in New York City.

The film starring and directed by Orson Welles, age 25, (his first feature film) is met with heaps of praise by film critics. The New York Times wrote that ``it came close to being the most sensational film ever made’’; while Newseek’s John O’Hara called Kane ``the finest film’’ he’d ever seen.

Kane was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, but only came away with one statue; for Best Screenplay. 

A Footnote: Since it was no secret that Charles Foster Kane was loosely based on William Randolph Hearst, the powerful business magnate and newspaper publisher refused to allow RKO Pictures to advertise in his newspapers. Hearst, in fact, went to great lengths to suppress the film from being released and labeled Welles a ``Communist.’’ Welles himself found himself under the radar of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Radio City Music Hall was even afraid to show the film, while RKO struggled mightily to find theaters to show it.

Kane ended up losing more than $150,000;  while Welles career suffered immeasurably by refusing to cave into pressures from Hearst;  film studios were reluctant to hire this gifted wunderkind for future films,  not even to direct.

In 1998 and 2007, Citizen Kane was ranked No.1 on the list of the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films of all time.

 
Bill Lucey
[email protected]
May 1, 2012

The Three Stooges: Feats, Facts, and Historic Firsts

If you’re victim of ``soicumstances’’ and usually find yourself fending off a battery of verbal attacks, including nitwit, numbskull, lamebrain, ignoramus, while having to endure your fair share of face slaps, a sharp poke in the eye, and an occasional banana cream pie thrown in your face, you might want to check out ``The Three Stooges,’’ the modern adaption depicting the American Vaudeville and comedy trio of the mid-20th Century, who never lost their cult status with millions of Stoogeoligists.

The film was directed and produced by two brothers: Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the same dynamic duo who gave us``Dumb and Dumber,’’ ``Hall Pass" and "Fever Pitch.’’ The film opens in theaters nationwide on April 13th.

The producers reportedly courted mega box office stars Jim Carrey and Sean Penn to star in the film before settling on relative newcomers: Will Sasso (Curly Howard) Chris Diamantopoulos  (Moe Howard) and Sean Hayes (Larry Fine).

In case you might want to brush up on how the Stooges first originated and their rise to instant fame before heading to the theater, I prepared some fast facts and a historic overview of one of the most influential slapstick comedy teams of American culture.

And if you do go to the theater, and ask for a ticket to the ``Three Stooges’’ don’t be surprised if the person behind the window responds: ``Soiteny!’’

Three Stooges Feats, Facts, and Historic Firsts:

• Moe Howard (born Moses Harry Horwitz ) and Shemp Howard (born Samuel Horwitz), brothers from Brooklyn New York, began their comedy careers acting separately in Vaudeville acts. By 1916, they first teamed as a comedy act performing a blackface routine.

• Beginning in 1922, Moe and Shemp team with comedian Ted Healy.

• After the trio discover comedian Larry Fine (born Louis Feinberg) performing in a comedy act, the ``Haney Sisters and Fine’’, they convince him to join their comedy troupe and call themselves ``Ted Healy and his Three Southern Gentleman’’, later ``Ted Healy and the Three Stooges.’’

• Healy, Moe and Shemp Howard along with Larry Fine make their film debut in 20th Century Fox’s ``Soup to Nuts’’ in 1930.

• Shortly after the release of Soup to Nuts, Moe and Shemp Howard and Larry Fine break away from Healy.

• Shemp Howard left the Three Stooges in 1931 to pursue a solo acting career.

• Jerry ``Curly’’ Howard (born Jerome Lester Horowitz), replaced his brother Shemp in 1932 on the condition he shave his head.

• March 19, 1934, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, and Moe Howard sign a contract with Columbia Pictures for a single two reel comedy for $1,000 with an option for an additional 8 two-reelers at a similar salary and officially become known as the Three Stooges.

• The trio of Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard made 97 films between 1934 and 1947.

• Between July 1, 1936 and May 15, 1937, Columbia Pictures paid the trio a total of $21,000.

• The Stooges appeared in 10 original feature length movies, more than 200 short films and more than 3,000 personal appearances on behalf of Columbia Studios.

• In 1934, the Three Stooges received their first and only Academy Award nomination (for Best Short Subject) for ``Men in Black’’ but failed to come away with the Oscar, losing to a cartoon, ``La Cucaracha.’’

• Beginning in 1941, the Stooges add the pie fight to their repertoire, their victims usually members of the upper class.

• Curly Howard suffered his first major stroke in 1945.

• The last film Curly Howard appeared in was ``Half-Wits Holiday’’ which was released on January 9, 1947.

• By 1950, Curly Howard was confined to a wheelchair after suffering a second stroke. In February, 1951, he was placed in a nursing home, suffering another stroke, his third, a month later. In April, 1951, he was admitted to North Hollywood Hospital and Sanitarium and died January 18, 1952 at the age of 48.

• In an effort to replace Curly, hundreds of actors test for the part, but none to the studios liking, prompting Shemp Howard to rejoin the Stooges in 1946.

• A young rising comedian, Buddy Hackett, was considered as a replacement for Curly.

• The first Three Stooges comedy featuring Shemp Howard after rejoining the Stooges was ``Fright Night’’ (1946).

• Shemp suffered a stroke, shortly after filming ``Loose Loot’’ (1953); and on November 22, 1955 suffered a cerebral hemorrhage followed by a massive heart attack, dying almost immediately at the age of 60.

• Joe Besser, a comedian, who appeared as ``Stinky’’ in the Abbot and Costello television show, joined the Stooges, replacing Shemp and first appears in ``Hoofs and Goofs’’ (1957).

• By 1958, Besser tires of the Three Stooges and is replaced by Joe DeRita (born Joseph Wardell), who officially becomes the sixth member of the Stooges and the third Curly. DeRita originally wore his hair long, parting it down the middle.

• In 1959, Larry, Moe, and CurlyJoe take in more than a million in income before taxes; and by the winter of that year were commanding a hefty fee at theaters and nightclubs, mostly standing room only venues.

• CurlyJoe (DeRita) makes his movie debut in ``Have Rocket Will Travel’’ (1959).

• The Stooges had a cameo in Stanley Kramer’s madcap blockbuster, `It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World’’ in 1963.

• The film, ``Kook’s Tour’’ released on February 5, 1970 would be the last Three Stooges film. Before filming was completed, Larry Fine suffered a stroke, paralyzing the left side of his body.  Fine died on January 24, 1975 at the age of 72.

• Moe Howard died on May 4, 1975, age 77, from lung cancer while working on his autobiography, ``I Stooged to Conquer.’’

• On March 1, 1988, Joe Besser, the comedian hired to replace Shemp Howard, died at the age of 80.

• CurlyJoe DeRita, the last surviving member of the Three Stooges, died on July 3, 1993 at the age of 83.

• In all, the Three Stooges made 217 films, including 190 15-minute shorts for Columbia Pictures.

• 23 of the Stooges 190 films contained military themes, eight directly related to World War II.

• December 17, 2002: The National Film Preservation Foundation selected the Three Stooges two-reel comedy ``Punch Drunk’’ (1934) for preservation in the Library of Congress.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
April 12, 2012

Source: ``The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of The Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time’’ By Jeff Forrester and Tom Forrester;  ``The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, from Amalgamated Morons to American Icons: ``by Michael Fleming

 

J. Edgar Hoover: A Primer

On November 11, ``J.Edgar’’, a motion picture epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Naomi Watts and directed by Clint Eastwood hits the screens  nationwide, giving audiences the opportunity to bear witness to a dramatic depiction of John Edgar Hoover,’s idealistic side, his dark side and most certainly his voyeuristic side as America’s top cop for almost 50 years gathers deeply guarded secrets and listens to wiretaps of the important and powerful from his FBI headquarters in Washington D.C.

With so much territory to cover during Hoover’s long tenure; from the Red Scare to the public shenanigans of John Dillinger, ``Ma'' Barker, Bonnie and Clyde to the explosive dossiers assembled on high profile public figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., it will be a tall order indeed for Mr. DiCaprio to capture the essence of arguably the most controversial FBI director in U.S. history.

Let’s just hope the film doesn’t disappoint and lives up to its all-star billing.

For those interested in catching up on some history on Mr. Hoover before heading off the theaters, I’ve assembled some facts, feats, and historic footnotes about the FBI’s former director.

John Edgar Hoover

• Born: January 1, 1895.

• Nickname: ``Speed’’, a boyhood nickname he earned after carrying groceries for elderly neighbors for just a few nickels.

• Early in his FBI career, Hoover liked to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes

• 1913: Graduated from Central High School in Washington D.C.

• In 1913, while attending law school, Hoover took a $30 a month job as a book cataloguer in the Library of Congress. It was here where he learned the value of maintaining a systemized coding system, which required placing the topic, title, author, and location on individual index cards in order to easily locate an item. Hoover applied a similar system in tracking criminals later in his career with the FBI.

• Hoover’s family lived in a two-story stucco house at 413 Seward Square in a neighborhood known as ``Pipetown’’, just seven blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

• 1917: Earned a law degree from George Washington University.

• In 1917, begins working at the Justice Department as a 21-year-old clerk.

• From 1919 to 1921, Hoover helped the Justice Department conduct the ``Palmer Raids’’ in which they rounded up a number of suspects in U.S. cities, who the Department believed were socialists, anarchists and radicals, charging them with attempting to overthrow the government.

• August 22, 1921: Hoover is named assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation.

• December, 1924: Hoover is named permanent director of the Bureau of Investigation; later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI.

• Shortly after assuming active control of the Bureau, Hoover turns a haphazardly stored finger printing collection he inherited into a national database that could be accessed by local and state law enforcement officials in order to match fingerprints at a crime scene.

• In 1930, Hoover establishes the Uniform Crime Report, which are national statistics used to determine whether there is a pattern to crimes being committed and whether it’s on the rise or is decreasing.

• By 1931, Hoover and the FBI had compiled 10 million sets of fingerprints; by 1974 it had surpassed 159 million.

• June 18, 1934: In response to gangsters like John Dillinger evading the law, Congress passed a number of federal crime laws, which for the first time gave Hoover and his agents the right to carry firearms with the authority to make arrests.

• July 22, 1934: John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI after exiting the Biograph Theater in Chicago, accompanied by his girlfriend Polly Hamilton after seeing the movie, ``Manhattan Melodrama’’ starring Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy.

• 1933: Hoover is believed to have coined the term ``G-Men ‘’ (government agent) in a newspaper article.
NOTE: According to The Oxford English Dictionary, ``G-Men’’ was first used in F.D. Pasley’s 1931 book, `` Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-made Man’’ when he writes: ``He offered a G man (Government agent) ten gran' to forget it.’’

• 1934: The FBI budget stood at $2, 589, 500.

• Beginning in 1935, Hoover establishes the FBI Police Training School; renamed the FBI National Police Academy in 1936 and the FBI National Academy in 1945.

• Hoover labeled American legendary crime figure Kate ``Ma’’ Barker, ``a she wolf…a veritable beast of prey.’’  Barker was killed with her youngest son, Fred, on January 16, 1935 at Lake Weir, Florida.

• James Cagney became the first actor to depict a Bureau agent in the 1935 motion picture ``G-Men’’ The success of the film immediately bestowed celebrity status to Hoover and his department, making them appear as heroes in the eyes of the American public.

• August 5, 1935: Time Magazine publishes the first of three cover stories on J. Edgar Hoover; the other two would come on August 8, 1949 and December 22, 1975.

• 1936: A detective magazine called ``Feds’’ published a feature on Hoover in which they dubbed him ``Public Hero Number One.’’

• May 1, 1936: J. Edgar Hoover makes his first and only arrest in New Orleans: that of an associate of the Barker gang-Alvin "Old Creepy" Karpis.

• In addition to ``Ma’’ Barker and Dillinger, other high profile criminals that were tracked down under Hoover's watch included: Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde.

• May 29, 1946:  Hoover informs President Truman of a suspected ring of spies in Washington ``noted for their pro-Soviet leanings, and all too eager to learn America’s atomic secrets, among them, Alger Hiss.

• 1948-49: Hoover is instrumental to California Congressman Richard M. Nixon with the investigation of Alger Hiss. In 1950, Hiss was convicted of perjuring himself during his testimony which centered on his involvement with a Soviet spy ring.

• In 1950, Hoover sanctions an FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The idea was actually hatched by International News Service (INS) reporter James Donovan who asked the FBI to provide him with the most dangerous criminals the FBI was currently tracking. The list appeared in the Washington Daily News on February 7, 1949.

• 1950-54: Hoover provides Senator Joseph McCarthy with a list of suspected Communists working within the U.S. State Department.

• Beginning in 1951, Hoover compiled a ``Sexual Deviates’’ index program, which was a list of known homosexuals of past and present employees of several department within the U.S. government.  When the ``Sexual Deviates’’ indexes were destroyed in 1977, the files numbered over 300,000 pages.

• Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted a campaign of domestic counterintelligence through a program called COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program) which initially targeted the Communist Party in the United States in 1950's; it then expanded in subsequent decades to include anti-Vietnam protestors, white supremacists and Civil Rights leaders. By 1960, the FBI had compiled 432,000 open files on subversives.

• January 10, 1964: The FBI begins transcribing tapes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., along with a few of his associates from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and two female employees from the Philadelphia Naval Yard at the Willard Hotel, drinking and engaging in sexual activity.  Wiretaps were additionally planted in King’s rooms on February 22, 1964 at the Hyatt House in Los Angeles. The conversations included King’s bawdy descriptions of John F. Kennedy’s sex life, along with a vulgar reference to JFK’s  wife, Jacqueline Kennedy.

• May 8, 1964: President Lyndon Johnson waves the FBI’s mandatory retirement requirement at age 70 in order for the 69 year-old Hoover to remain as director of the FBI. ``The nation cannot afford to lose you’’, the president said.

• In 1966, a Gallup poll found 84 percent of Americans in favor of the work the FBI’s office was doing. By 1975, it had dipped to 52 percent.

• By 1969, the FBI had compiled 754.000 personal files on individuals.

• Hoover died at his Washington D.C. home on May 2, 1972. Soon after his death , Helen Gandy, Hoover’s lifelong partner and executive assistant for 52 years, shredded or destroyed his most sensitive personal files.

• Hoover was buried in Congressional Cemetery, just 13 blocks from the home he was raised in as a young boy.

• High profile names Hoover had personal files of, included: Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller III, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.

• In all, Hoover remained director of the FBI for 48 years, served 11 presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Richard Nixon; and 18 Attorney Generals from A. Mitchell Palmer to John Mitchell.

• The FBI headquarters in 1975 contained 6.5 million files, filling 7,000 six-drawer file cabinets.

• By 1979 the FBI field offices housed an additional 300,000 cubic feet of files.

• According to Bowker's Books in Print database, there are currently 61 adult books, and 4 juvenile books published or distributed in the United States about J. Edgar Hoover.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
November 8, 2011

Source: The FBI Archives; ``PuppetMaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover’’ by Richard Hack; ``Young J. Edgar’’ by Kenneth Ackerman

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Web Sites to Keep in Mind:

The FBI J. Edgar Hoover Files

J. Edgar Hoover Foundation
 

Haven't We Seen This Movie?

 

Whenever you’re talking about the Kennedy’s,   a sex scandal is never far behind.

This time, though, the terminator is not a Kennedy. Maria Shriver, the daughter of Sargent Shriver, the principal architect of President Lyndon  Johnson’s ``War on Poverty’’ and Eunice Kennedy, the sister of John F. Kennedy, has been in the dark for over 14 years about her husband’s adulterous affair with their housekeeper at their Brentwood estate, which led to him ``fathering a child’’

Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr. Universe, former California Governor, and fittingly, the star of the motion pictures, ``True Lies’’, the ``Predator’’, and ``Collateral Damage’’, now finds himself swimming in a sea of sharks as he attempts to drive back a mob of inquisitive reporters and photographers, along with trying to answer to his wife and four children on how he plans to make amends for his infidelity.

His fall from grace and rehabilitation will require a herculean effort. Whether the seven-time Mr. Olympia champion will be equal to the task remains to be seen.

If Schwarzenegger is finding any solace these days, it’s in knowing that fathering a child with your housekeeper, has a long storied history among prominent public figures.

Author William A. Cook in his biography on Pete Rose, makes mention that Babe Ruth, the ``Sultan of Swat’’, fathered a child from his housekeeper.  And in March, 1923, the Babe was slapped with a $50,000 paternity suit, this one from Dolores Dixon, a 19 year-old Manhattan Department Store clerk, claiming he fathered her child. The suit, however, was later dropped.

The revolutionary socialist and German philosopher Karl Marx, author of the ``Communist Manifesto’’ and ``Capital’’ also was known to have fathered a child by his housekeeper, Helen Demuth;  but the co-author of his published works, Friedrich Engels, protected his friend by claiming he fathered the child. Marx’s  wife believed him enough to keep the housekeeper on the payroll. It wasn’t until he was on his deathbed, did Engels confess the truth and the details of the affair became known.

Before his death in 2003 at the age of 100, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond raised more than a few eyebrows when it was learned that in 1925, the segregationist and states’ right advocate fathered a child with his family’s 16-year-old black housekeeper, when he was 22.

The housekeeper, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a retired Los Angeles school teacher, decided to break her silence about her affair with Thurmond so her family would have a more accurate account of their heritage.

Of course, lurid tales of politicians fathering illegitimate children extends back to Thomas Jefferson and reports he fathered children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.

Rumors that Jefferson fathered her children  began circulating as early as 1802, when James Callender, a former supporter of Jefferson turned enemy when he was passed over for a government position, published the following letter  in the  Richmond Recorder on September 1, 1802: ``It is well known that the man whom it delighted, the people to honor, keeps and for many years past has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY...The African Venus is said to officiate as housekeeper at Monticello.''

And in 1998, DNA testing established a definitive link to the descendents of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Plantation records show Hemings gave birth to the following children: Beverly (1798), Harriet (1801) Madison (1805) and Eston (1808.)

During the presidential election of 1884, Republican operatives charged that Grover Cleveland, the bachelor son of a minister, ``Grover the Good’’ had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo. 

The Reverend George Ball published a letter in the Buffalo Evening Telegraph, chronicling how Cleveland seduced Maria Halpin in the cloak department of a Buffalo Department store. After becoming pregnant, according to Ball, Cleveland refused to take her hand in marriage as he previously promised and ``employed two detectives and a doctor of bad repute to spirit the woman away and dispose of the child."'. Cleveland was quickly labeled a ``moral leper’’ and in parades, strollers containing baby dolls were pushed down the street with chants, ``Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa.?’’ Cleveland finally came clean and admitted to paying child support to Halpin for their son, Oscar Folsom Cleveland.

And during a time when reporters were expected to withhold reporting salacious trysts of public officials, Jane Grey Swisshelm, early in her Washington reporting career, 1850, alleged that Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster had fathered two illegitimate mulatto children. Swisshelm wrote: ``Webster was supposed to be a moral as well as an intellectual giant," yet "his life was full of rottenness."   As reward for this juicy tidbit, Swisshelm was swiftly fired by her editor at the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley.

Most recently, former presidential candidate John Edwards admitted having an affair with his campaign cinematographer Rielle Hunter, who later give birth to a girl, Frances Quinn. And former Cincinnati Reds slugger Pete Rose, and American Civil Rights leader, Jesse Jackson Jr. also fathered illegitimate children, which were thoroughly hashed over in the press.

So no, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not alone in representing yet another sordid tale of men behaving badly; but considering that he belongs to the party so proud of championing family values; his fall from grace in the age of hypocrisy, might redefine the G.O.P from the Grand Old Party to the party of``Grand Old Philanderers.’’

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
May 18, 2011

Prime Cuts: Movie Scenes Left on the Cutting Room Floor

 

As was widely reported last week, real estate mogul and reality show star Donald J. Trump had a brief scene in Oliver Stone’s new box office smash ``Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,", but as luck would have it-The Donald’s vignette was mercilessly left on the cutting room floor. Stone told the N.Y Post the reason he cut Trump’s cameo was because  he found it ``distracting’’;  and structurally out of place since it came near the tail end of the movie.

The deleted scene involved Trump  and Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko) sitting in barber chairs in which Trump suggests to Gekko that he drop his gel look and get his hair done like his.

But all is not lost. Stone said Trump’s expunged scene will resurface in the DVD version of the movie.

The hair-challenged Trump shouldn’t take the deleted scene to heart. After all, even the mayor of New York City, Michael R. Bloomberg had his cameo cut from the motion picture ``Sex and the City’’ when the final version hit the theaters.

``It turned out that they wanted more sex and less city. That’s fine. Their loss.’’ Bloomberg joked with a crowd during a speech delivered at the World Science Summit at Columbia University in 2008.

So as I took a quick dip into the archives, I pulled out some other scenes over the years which also were found on the cutting room floor, including

  ·  In King Kong (1933) one deleted scene which was never to be found again involved Kong shaking four sailors off a log bridge, where they fall to their death after being eaten alive in a ravine by giant spiders. The movie was previewed in San Bernardino, Calif., where viewers either walked out or talked about the gruesome scene for the remainder of the movie.
 
·    In the Seven Year Itch (1955) the movie originally included a scene of Marilyn Monroe in the bathtub getting her toe stuck in the faucet. Although the blond bombshell remained covered by bubbles, the scene was rejected by the Hollywood censors, and had to be cut by director Billy Wilder.

 ·    In the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962) the film ended with Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) being attacked by crabs before being  rescued by Bond, played by Sean Connery. The crabs moved too slowly to look threatening, so the director reshot the ending without them.

 ·   In Woody Allen’s ``Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know about Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask’’ there is a segment of the film ``What makes a man a homosexual?  which stars Allen as a common spider eager to date a black widow (Louise Lasser) in which he does a mating dance on Lasser’s web.  Allen ends up making love to the widow, only to be devoured by her afterward. The scene was deleted because Allen couldn't come up with an appropriate ending for the vignette.

 ·   In The Big Chill (1983) a film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, there was a scene with Kevin Costner (playing Alex) that was shown at the first screening, but ended up being deleted from the final version. The scene was a flashback. Directors described it as embarrassing, made worse by bad wigs and makeup. Even in the DVD version of the film, released in 1999, which included deleted scenes, Costner’s flashback scene was nowhere to be found.

  ·   After a third of ``Back to the Future’’ (1985) had already been filmed, Director Robert Zemeckis and his team of writers realized that actor Eric Stoltz, who had been cast in the lead role playing Marty McFly wasn’t working out and had to be replaced by Family Ties mega-star Michael J. Fox.  Zemeckis had the painful task of informing Stoltz he was being dropped from the film, but he reportedly accepted it like a real trooper.

·  In another film directed by Zemeckis, Death Becomes Her (1992); scenes filmed with television actress and comedienne Tracey Ullman in which she played Toni the bartender were removed completely before the final version was released. In addition, after the film was sneak-previewed in Phoenix-the entire ending of the movie had to be reshot.  Zemeckis told Cinefex Magazine that Ullman’s scenes appeared to slow down the picture; and that fact she was known for her signature outrageousness and had to play a restrained level-headed character ``sent the story in a whole different direction. ‘’

 ·  In Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) there was a scene in which Nixon (played by Anthony Hopkins) is talking with businessman Jack Jones (played by Larry Hagman) who are looking at a bull and talking privately outside his Texas ranch.  The scene, Hagman’s only appearance, was sliced from the final version.
 
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
 
Source: ``The New Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information’’ By David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace; ``Cutting Room Floor: Movie Scenes Which Never Made It To The Screen’’ By Laurent Bouzereau

Angelina Jolie joins a long list of Female Spies

Marlene Dietrich

As the motion picture, ``Salt’’ starring Angelina Jolie opens in theaters on Friday, I thought I would do some digging and rummaging through the archives to find other films involving female spies and their dangerous espionage activities.

As you might imagine, there seems to be a bottomless supply of women spies in motion pictures. And of course, when you talk of women spies, treachery and deceit can’t be far behind.

The first movie I could find about a female spy is titled appropriately enough,`` The Female Spy’’ (1906), an 8-minute story with Louis Paglieri as the only cast member listed in which a woman spy is tied by her hair to a horse and dragged behind it.

Female spies in supporting roles, of course, are quite common, including France Nuyen in ``Dimension 5’’; (1966); Dorothy Provine in ``Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die’’ (1966); Joanna Petit in ``Casino Royale’’ (1967) and Sharon Tate in the ``Wrecking Crew’’ (1969).

Of course, the femme fatale, would- be- assassins come thick and fast while looking through any number of motion picture reference books,  including: Luciana Pauluzzi in ``Thunderball (1965); Daliah Lavi in the ``Silencers ‘’ (1966) ; Elke Sommer in ``Deadlier Than the Male’’ (1966), Erika Blanc in ``The Spy Kills Silently’’ (1966), Rosella Falk in ``Modesty Blaise’’ (1966) ; Karin Dor in ``You Only Live Twice’’ (1967); Carol Lynley in ``Danger Route’’ (1968), Nancy Kwan in the ``Wrecking Crew’’ (1969), and Gloria Hendry in ``Live and Let Die’’ (1973).

Recurrent throughout the catalog of the James Bond films are the duplicitous female spies, including  Daniela Bianchi in ``From Russia with Love’’ (1963), Honor Blackman and Shirley Eaton in ``Goldfinger’’ (1964), Claudine Auger and Luciana Paluzzi in in ``Thunderball ‘’ (1965), Mie Hama in ``You Only Live Twice’’ (1967); Dianna Rigg in ``On Her Majesty's Secret Service’’ (1969);, Jill St John and Lana Wood in ``Diamonds are Forever’’ (1971); and Jane Seymour and Gloria Hendry in ``Live and Let Die’’ (1973).

American actresses hardly have a monopoly when it comes to engaging in espionage on film. Several lesser known European actresses starred as spies, including:  Erika Blanc in ``Operation Atlantis’’ (1965); Dominque Boschero in ``Fury in Marrakesh (1966), Helene Chanel in ``Ring Around the World’’ (1966); Margaret Lee in ``Secret Agent Super Dragon’’ ((1965); Helga Line in ``Mission Bloody Mary’’ (1965); Beba Loncar in ``Some Girls Do’’ (`1969); Rosalba Neri in ``Upperseven, The Man to Kill’’ (1965); Janine Reynaud in ``The Spy Who Came From the Sea’’ (1966); Sylvia Solar in ``Danger!  Death Ray (1967); Yoko Tani in Goldsnake; ``Killers' Company (1966); Marilu Tolo in ``Espionage in Lisbon’’ (1965) and Ira Von Furstenberg in ``Matchless’’ (1966).

And there have been plenty of clunkers when it comes to females starring as spies.

Model Andrea Dromm played agent Jill Parsons  who is sent to the island of Jamacia to stop a madman from blowing up a U.S. carrier in ``Come Spy with Me’’ (1967), a film described in the Encyclopedia of American Spy Films as a ``weak comedy with bland songs.’’

Fathom (1967) starred Raquel Welch as the beautiful skydiver tricked into retrieving the ``Fire Dragon, which she thinks threatens U.S. security, but is actually a stolen piece of art.

 Caprice (1967) featured Doris Day, who plays Patricia Fowler, the daughter of spy who was killed in pursuit of drug smugglers.  Fowler is determined to find out who killed her father.

And considered by many as one of the worst motion pictures ever made, Lola Lane plays a Russian agent in ```Miss V From Moscow’’ (1942) in which she is dispatched to Nazi occupied Paris, posing as a German spy and told to work in concert with the French underground in order to learn the whereabouts of enemy submarines that have been threatening Allied supply ships. Lane successfully dupes the German high command long enough to gather vital information; and with the help of an American agent, escapes back to Russia

Going through motion picture archives, shows that female spies set during the American Civil War was a popular theme with a rich history.

The first popular spy film series of 1909-1910 consisted of the ``Girl Spy'' movies, starring Jean Gauntiett as a Civil War heroine fighting on behalf of the Confederacy.  In ``The Girl Spy before Vicksburg’’ (1911), the heroine of this short silent film disguises herself as a member of a munitions convoy and destroys the wagon, while  in ``Madam Who’’ (1918), a silent drama, Bessie Barricade, a young Confederate, engages in a dangerous act of espionage by traveling to Washington as a Confederate Spy and is invited to a reception attended by a number of important Northern generals and political leaders, including Abraham Lincoln (Clarence Barr) who addresses the crowd.

And In ``Operator 13’’, Marion Davies plays a secret agent working for the North to spy on Gary Cooper, a Confederate Spy.  Cooper soon catches on to Davies real identity and plans to have her court-martialed; but Cooper’s own life is saved by Davies when Union troops suddenly appear. The two decide to part ways so they can serve their respective causes; but are reunited, at long last, after Robert E. Lee’s surrender when they both vow to put the ravages of the war behind them.

Love and betrayal; honor, and duty to one’s homeland repeatedly shows up in films involving female spies.

In ``Her Beloved Enemy (1917), Dory Gray stars as a girl who falls in love with the Secret Service man who has killed her father, a spy. Based on a stage play, ``The Girl from Downing Street’’ (1918) was a British film with Peggy Marson as an accomplished female spy who's stolen vital German plans.

Diane Allen in ``The Amazing Lovers ‘’(1921) is a French secret agent infiltrating counterfeiters who escape to the United States. To disguise her identity, a fake marriage is arranged with an alcoholic young man who she naturally ends up falling madly in love with.

Merle Oberon played a Norweigan baroness in ``First Comes Courage’’ (1943) in which she marries a Nazi officer so she can funnel information back to England. In ``Five Steps to Danger’’ (1957) , a female secret agent, Ruth Roma,  gets a hold of secrets from the Reds in Europe and escapes with the help of a fisherman (Sterling Hayden, an actual veteran of the OSS).

The more prominent actresses starring as female spies on the brink of World War II, included Greta Garbo  in ``Mati Hari’’ (1932, ) who plays a notorious World War I German spy, posing as a dancer in Paris and her romantic machinations with a Russian general (Lionel Barrymore) who she dumps for a young Russian lieutenant (Roman Navarro). Garbo eventually stands trial in a French court where she’s convicted of espionage and sentenced to death in front of a firing squad.

In`` Dishonored’’ (1931) Marlene Dietrich plays an Austrian agent, X-27, where she goes on to expose an Austrian officer (Warner Oland) as a double agent and traitor; she then manages to capture an elusive Russian spy (Victor McLaughlin), Colonel Kranau, Russian agent H-14, also known as ``The Fox’’, but Dietrich falls head over hills for the Russian lug and allows him to escape.  Dietrich’s lapse of sound judgment results in her being put to death in front of a firing squad.  Her last gestures before the shooting begins, shows her lighting a cigarette and adjusting her garter.

In a remake of the 1932 German film ``Unter Falshe Flaggen, Fay Wray stars as a Russian spy in ``Madame Spy’’, who marries an Austrian diplomat (Nils Asther) in order to spy on him. Two Austrian agents, meanwhile, are in hot pursuit of a Russian spy, known only as B-24, who lo and behold turns out to be Asther’s wife.

In Dark Journey, 1937, Vivian Leigh is a W.W. I double agent, posing as a German sympathizer, working as a fashion designer, who is responsible for feeding information back to French and English authorities. Leigh ends up falling in love with a German soldier, Conrad Veidt, but in the end, unlike Dietrich, she puts duty and honor above love and has the German soldier captured.

Ilona Massey in ``International Lady’’ (1941), plays Carla Nillson, a Nazi spy who uses tonal phrases and musical notes in songs during her radio broadcasts to feed vital information back to Nazi U-boats. Massey is chased through the streets of London and New York City as agents from the F.B.I. and Scotland Yard join forces in order to uncover a dangerous international spy ring.

Constance Bennett and Gracie Fields star in ``Paris Underground’’ (1945), a film about an American and Englishwoman and their surveillance in the French underground in which they help more than 250 Allied airmen escape from occupied France, all while being pursued by the Gestapo, eventually captured, and finally rescued by Allied troops.

Not all motion pictures involving female spy females were pure fiction.

Ann Dvorak starred in the real life experiences of Claire Phillips during World War II. After Miss Phillips husband is killed in the Bataan death march in the Philippines  (1942) Mrs Phillips joins a band of guerrillas, masquerading as an Italian national and operates a Manila nightclubs, where she learns of important information which she conveys back to the leader of the guerillas movement (played by Gene Evans.) Phillips was eventually exposed and imprisoned, but is rescued by Evans and his forces before she is executed. Phillips, as it turns out, was the recipient of the Freedom Medal for her espionage activity.  ``I Was an American Spy’’ was based on ``Manila Espionage’’, a novel written in collaboration with Myron B. Goldsmith.

More recent female spies was Rosalind Russell in ``Mrs. Pollifax-Spy (1971), a widow who volunteers to spy for her country in which she’s sent  to Mexico City to get her hands on some highly sought after microfilm. Russell is captured by Communist agents and taken to Albania. Russell uses her charm and duplicity to free herself and her companion (Darren McGavin) from her captors.

Finally, ``In the Littler Drummer Girl’’(1984), based on a spy novel by John le Carré, Diane Keaton plays a pro-Palestinian actress living in London, where an Israeli intelligence unit plots to get her to fall in love with an Israeli. After some prodding, Keaton agrees to help the Israelis when she poses as a Palestinian agent and travels to Germany to hunt down a Palestinian terrorist, Sami Frey.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]

Source: ``Encyclopedia of American Spy Films'' by Larry Langman & David Ebner; ``Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage’’ By Wesley Britton; ``The Great Spy Films’’ By Leonard Rubenstein

Oscar Coverage on the Web

 
The clock is now ticking.

On Sunday, March 7, 2010, ABC will televise the 82nd annual Academy Awards from the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, beginning at 5 p.m. PT/ 8 p.m. ET with hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

If you find yourself away from your television set and still want to catch the live experience of Hollywood’s big night, don’t stress, there’s plenty of available options to you online. This is the age of the Internet, after all; when all things are possible as long as you have access to a computer or a smart phone.

At Oscar.com , for instance, the official site for the 82nd Academy Awards, users will be provided with an interactive Red Carpet experience through ``Facebook Connect’’, beginning Sunday from 3:00 to 5:00 pm PT, an online event which will be hosted by Lisa Guerrero and Brett Chukerman, along with “Modern Family” star Rico Rodriguez (‘Manny’), who will be reporting live from the Red Carpet Bleachers waiting anxiously for the arrivals and the crowds’ reactions.

In addition to watching stars parade down the Red Carpet, users will be able to read what other viewers are saying about the event through Facebook’s Connect application, while sharing their comments with other Facebook members.

And during the Sunday night ceremony, those logging on to Oscars.com will be able to view exclusive footage of backstage coverage of the night’s events from the ``Backstage Cam’’, capturing behind-the-scenes action,; a ``Thank You Cam’’ which allows Oscar winners an opportunity to thank their supporters immediately after they’ve left the stage; along with the ``Press Room Cam’’, featuring winners in the press area after they leave the stage.

As usual, The New York Times have rolled out a banquet of online coverage for viewers to feast on.

For beginners, The Carperbagger, Melena Ryzik is out in LA, and will be blogging throughout the weekend; as will A.O. Scott and others; and just on Friday, The Times launched an impressive interactive graphic that shows users all the major winners stretching back to 1975.

For those who like to compete, The Times has posted an interactive ``Oscar Ballot’’ , that let’s viewers see how they’re doing with their picks compared with other Times' users.

The Times also will be featuring their robust Twitter module in which staffers like David Carr, Dave Itzkoff, Ryzik, Scott and others will providing up to the minute updates, comments, and observations.

Meanwhile, The L.A. Times, has raised the curtain on a new celebrity blog,``Ministry of Gossip’’ in which a group of bloggers provide users with the latest from the Red Carpet, inside tips during the ceremony; and slices of gossip from the Oscar parties.

The Times additionally unveiled a new film blog ``24 Frames’’, which features the latest Hollywood news, videos from staffers, Oscar predictions and a ton of other useful tidbits.

The Times has assembled a striking blog `Gold Derby’’ in gathering links to some of the best Oscar reporting from not only the Times but from other national publications as well. Viewers will also want to pop in on Pete Hammond’s ``Daily Dose of Awards’’  for the latest Oscar buzz.

The Washington Post will be feeding readers with Red Carpet updates and chime in about things as they happen on their Celebritolgy blog

And for those who only watch the Oscars to see which designers the celebrities chose, both The Washington Post and L.A. Times will be featuring fashion galleries on Sunday night.

While Hulu.com won’t be providing live streaming, they do have a collection on of ``Oscar Picks’’ on their homepage; and on Monday they will feature Barbara Walters Oscar special, including Red Carpet footage provided by E! and TV Guide as it comes in. A small collection of short clips will be streamed live on Hulu as early as Sunday night; with the longer versions available on Monday.

E! Online have a fun new gallery,  Real Men Take (Red Carpet) Risks; and a Prediction Quiz, which allows user to find out  they’re a Box Office Brainiac, Red Carpet Rebel or Total Indie Nut . And beginning Sunday, E! Online will begin posting their TwitPics.

Finally, the popular entertainment blog, Gawker will be blogging away beginning on Friday night.

If you’re miffed I missed pointing out any other major Oscar night blogs, write your Congressman or Congresswoman; I did my best.

Enjoy the show!

-Bill Lucey
WPLucey@gmail.com

***

Oscar Footnotes:

• Douglas Fairbanks Sr. served as host when the first annual Academy Awards was held at the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929.
The winners had been announced three months prior to this black-tie awards ceremony, where approximately 300 guests were in attendance.

• In the 3rd year of the Academy Awards (November 5, 1930), a new selection criterion for selecting nominees had been established: winners would now be chosen by the full members of the Academy, numbering over 400, instead of a handful of judges. This policy would continue until 1936

• Song and Film Editing were introduced as new categories beginning with the 7th annual Academy Awards (February 27, 1935).

• Cinematographer Hal Mohr became the only write-in Academy Award winner during the 8th year of the awards (March 5, 1936). Write-ins on the ballot were discontinued the following year.

• Best supporting actors were recognized for the first time during the 9th annual Academy Awards (March 4, 1937) --but the awards came in the form of plagues, not full-sized statues. The first winners were Walter Brennan in Come and Get It and Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse. Full-sized statutes for supporting roles would not be handed out until 1943.

• Beginning with the 13th annual Academy Awards (February 27, 1941), the winners were not made known to anyone in advance, except a select few from the certified public accounting firm of Price Waterhouse & Co, until the envelopes were unsealed on the night of the awards. Thus, the Oscar tradition: ``The envelope please!'' came into being.

• During the 13th annual Academy Awards presentation (February 27, 1941), FDR addressed the Academy through a piped in radio address that lasted 6 minutes, making him the first U.S. president to address the academy.
NOTE: In order to give the Republicans equal time, Wendell L. Wilkie, the Republican nominee during the 1940 presidential election, was the principal speaker at the Academy Awards the following year.

• On March 13, 1947, for the first time in the Academy's history, the general public was allowed to buy tickets and attend the awards ceremony, which was held at the Shrine Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles.

• During the Academy's 25th Anniversary show (March 19, 1953), the awards were broadcast on television for the first time.

• Sophia Loren earned an industry milestone during the 34th annual Academy Awards (April 9, 1962), when she became the first Hollywood actress to win an Oscar in the best actress category for a non-English speaking film, for her role in the Italian film (Two Women).

• Make-up artists were recognized in a new category beginning with the 54th annual Academy Awards (March 29, 1982). The first film honored in that category was An American Werewolf in London.

Showstoppers

• April 9, 1962: During the 34th annual Academy Award ceremony, Stan Berman, a notorious gatecrasher, managed to slip past 125 police guards and presented MC Bob Hope with a hand-made Oscar.

• March 27, 1973: During the 45th annual Academy Awards, a shocked worldwide television watched as an Indian woman: Sachen Little-Feather (later identified as actress Maria Cruz) stepped to the podium and informed the audience that Marlon Brando, whose name had just been announced as best actor for his role playing Don Vito Corleone in the Godfather, was turning down the award due to the film industry's distorted depiction of American Indians.

• April 2, 1974: During the 46th annual Academy Awards, Ropert Opal, 33, came on stage directly behind presenter David Niven and dashed naked across the stage in front of an astonished auditorium and live television audience. As if on cue, Niven shot back in what is considered to be one of the best ad libs in Academy history, when he replied: ``Isn't it fascinating, to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off his clothes and showing his shortcomings.''
NOTE: Opal was found murdered five years later in a paraphernalia sex shop in San Francisco.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

• When Zbigniew Rybczynski won an Oscar during the 55th annual Academy Awards (April 11, 1983) for an animated Short Film (Tango), he became the first Oscar winner to spend time in jail the night of the Oscars. Rybczynski got into a fight with security guards after he tried to re-enter the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion after stepping out for a cigarette break. He was arrested and sent to jail. It was a brief stay. Once he was identified, charges were dropped.

• The 60th annual Academy Awards (April 11, 1988), made history for having a nominee on the ballot, who was actively being sought by police for grand theft involving an extensive collection of library books. Gustav Hasford, who was nominated but didn't win in the screenplay division for Full Metal Jacket, was either a no-show or he didn't make his presence known.

• On March 20, 2000, two employees of the Roadway Express Co., in Bell Ca., Anthony Keith Hart and Edward Ledent, both 38, were arrested for stealing 55 Oscar statutes. Willie Fulgear, a junk salvager, eventually found 52 of those statutes as he sifted through a garbage bin in L.A.'s Koreatown.

Other Oscar Records:

• Wings is the only silent film to win an Academy Award (1927-1928).

• Cimarron (1930-1) was the only western ever to win best picture.

• It Happened One Night became the first comedy to win best picture; and additionally became the first motion picture to sweep all 5 major awards.

• Gone with the Wind (1939) was the first motion picture in color to win an Oscar.

• Haitti McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar (Gone With The Wind, 1939); and Rita Moreno, the first Latina to win an Oscar (West Side Story. 1961).

• The only person to actually go home with an Oscar for playing a character who lost at the Academy Awards was Maggie Smith for California Suite (1978.)

• Ben Hur (1959) became the only remake to win Best Picture.

• The Apartment (1960) was the last black and white film to win an Oscar.
Note: Schindler's List (1993), another Oscar recipient, was partially shot in black and white

Oscar Primer

Who makes the Oscar?

R.S. Owens Co. of Chicago

Dodge Tropy Co., in Carson Calif., about 20 miles from Hollywood, originally began manufacturing the statutes in 1931 until it closed its operations in 1984.

How big is the statute?

13 and one half inches tall; it weighs 8 pounds and one half pounds

What is it made of?

The exterior is gold plated.: 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper

What happened to the statutes George C. Scott and Marlon Brando refused?

In reality, their names were never engraved. They were immediately returned and put back in stock.

Are the statues copyrighted?

Yes. As of September 2, 1941, when the statute officially became copyrighted, Oscar winners were prohibited from selling their statute without first offering it back to the Academy for $10.00.

Also, since 1949, the statutes were issued a number, which started with the number 501.

-Bill Lucey

Source: 70 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards'' By Robert Osborne