Saturday, August 24, 1946. Portents and changes.

Norma Jean Baker adopted the name of Marilyn Monroe for the firs time in a contract at the suggestion of Ben Lyon of 20th 'Century Fox.

For her stage name, she adopted the names of actress Marilyn Miller, and her mother, Gladys Monroe, who was a tragic figure.

Marilyn Miller

Miller had died in 1936 at the age of 37.  Hardly anyone remembers her now.  The choice of her name was a portent.  Miller, who was married four times (her first husband died leaving her a widow), had a sinus condition made worse by her alcoholism, which lead to her early death.

She was a major star of her day, but not like Monroe, who remains one to this very day.

May they perpetual light shine upon both Baker and Miller.

Philippine Communist leader Juan Feleo was stopped by a large band of "armed men in fatigue uniforms" in Gapan, Nueva Ecija and killed, in something that would result in fueling the Hukbalahap Rebellion.

The Japanese House of Representatives approve the new MacArthur drafted constitution.

Last edition:

Friday, August 23, 1946. British create North Rhine-Westphalia.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 at the movies, actors and actresses, Afghanistan, Alexander the Great, Allied Occupation of Germany, Germany, Movies, Westphalia

Friday, August 23, 1946. British create North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Big Sleep was released.

The British created North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, Germany's the populous state

Border guards at Khist-Tepe, Afghanistan, discovered Greek silver coins left behind by the armies of Alexander the Great.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 17, 1946. All The King's Men.

Labels: 1940s, 1942, 1946, Aircraft, German Luftwaffe, Huey Long, Populism, technology, The written word, U.S. Air Force

Monday, August 23, 1926. Rudolph Valentino passes, as does Dr. Charles William Eliot.

Legendary silent screen leading man Rudolph Valentino died of peritonitis at age 31.

A huge star of his day, he remains a well known figure of the era.

Dr. Charles William Eliot, the longest serving president of Harvard, died at age 91.  He transformed the university from a respected provincial college into a preeminent research university. 

Theodore Roosevelt called him "the only man in the world I envy."

Last edition:

Sunday, August 15, 1926. Martyrs of the Cristero War and open rebellion.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, 1926 Election, actors and actresses, Catholic, Christianity, Crime, Cristero War, Disease, Mexico, Movies, Politics, Railroads, religion

Sunday, August 15, 1926. Martyrs of the Cristero War and open rebellion.

He was rushed to hospital and operated on immediately for a ruptured appendix.

As noted yesterday, Father St. Luis Bátiz Sainz, Manuel Morales, David Roldán Lara, and Salvador Lara Puent were executed by firing squad.

In response, ranchers led by former colonel Pedro Quintanar seized the municipal treasury of Chalchihuites and declared themselves in open rebellion.

After attending a party the prior evening, recently ailing Rudolph Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City. 

A mail train was robbed in Wyoming:

I'm not sure what was going on with the local elections, but a candidate was really mad at a newpaper editor:

Last edition:

Saturday, August 14, 1926. More killings in Mexico.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Art, Catholic, Christianity, Cristero War, Ethel Hays, Exploration, Mexico, Norman Rockwell, religion, The written word, USSR, Women, Wrangel Island

Sunday, July 28, 1946. Wells exposes the assault of Sgt. Isaac Woodard, War Crimes in the Philippines, the passing of St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception.

Howard C. Petersen, Assistant Secretary of War, announced that 131,028 American and Filipino citizens, mostly civilians, had died "as a result of war crimes" from December 7, 1941 until the end of World War II.  All but 595 of that figure were Filipino.

St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception, an Indian native, died at age 35.  She is the first woman of Indian origin to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church, and the first canonized saint of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.

Orson Welles read the affidavit of Sergeant Isaac Woodard on his radio show.  Woodard had been blinded in a race based assault.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 27, 1946. No to a united India.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Bangladesh, British Empire, Ethnicities, Georgia, India, Pakistan, Racism

Tuesday, July 23, 1946. Last of the POWs sent home.

The United States released the last of 375,000 German POWs it had held in the United States, embarking 1,385 of them on the General Yates after transporting them from Camp Shanks, New York.

About ten POWs who had escaped during the war remained at large and were never accounted for.

The Zaibatsu, the Japanese corporations that had financed Japan's war effort, were abolished.

Many of them would be reconstituted starting in 1953, including Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo.

Frances Ramsden and her standard poodles were on the cover of Look.

Ramsden was a model who had a very brief acting career, appearing in only three films. She later married Egyptian millionaire Adel Sabit, a cousin of King Farouk, but had to abandon Cairo due to that association. She divorced in 1975 and returned to California, where she spent the remainder of her life, passing away in 2000 at the age of 80.

The prior day's bombing of the King David Hotel made the front page of American newspapers.

It's interesting that the press referred to the Irgun as "terrorists".  The label is appropriate in varying degrees, but the attack on the King David Hotel might have been a legitimate attack, in the context of a legitimate war, if this war is regarded as that.  Terrorism itself is never justified.

The original goal of the mission was to destroy materials that identified those who had participated in the destruction of bridges a bit earlier in the uprising.

Of course, the ultimate question is whether the uprising itself was justified.  I don't feel that it was.  It's certainly the case that the failure to accommodate both the Arab and Jewish populations has resulted in 80 years of strife, although such an accommodation may not have been possible.

United Airlines addressed its customers.

United is in the news again today, looking for a solution for its customers who do not wish to fly into Insurrectionist Seditionist Narcissist International Airport in Palm Beach.

An interesting surplus item.

Last edition:

Monday, July 22, 1946. The bombing of the King David Hotel.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Haganah, Irgun, Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, Palestine, Zionism

Sunday, June 30, 1946. Wartime powers expire.

The OPA's emergency wartime powers ended at midnight in spite of an effort by President Truman to extend them.

The Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) authority also expired at midnight as did the authority of the War Relocation Authority.

Surplus military vehicles  were being sold.

Sunday was apparently the cheesecake edition of the News.  A photo of an actress was given the full page treatment for no other discernable reason, while later in the paper the famous Jane Russell Outlaw poster was also.

And an add depicted teenagers advertising at home.

A sham election in Poland placed the country under the Communist Party and approved the post war borders with the USSR.

Last edition:

Saturday, June 29, 1946. Operation Agatha.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Art, British Army, Hagenah, Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, Operation Agatha, Palestine

Monday, June 28, 1976. First women in a service academy.

155 out of an entering class of 1,600 at the United States Air Force Academy were women, the first females to be so admitted.  This was the day of their admission.

They were also the first women to enter any US service academy, although the following week women would enter West Point and Annapolis.

Basic recruit training for the first class with women recruits.  Note that M1 Garands were still being used at the time.

The People's Revolutionary Tribunal of Angola found three American and ten Britons guilty of war crimes connected with their mercenary service in the Angolan Civil War.  Americans Daniel Gearhart and British citizens John Derek Barker, Andrew McKenzie and Tony Callan (Costas Georgiu) received the death sentence.

Gearhart was a Vietnam veteran who had advertised his services in Soldier of Fortune.  He arrived in Angola just days before his capture and may never have fired a shot in the war.  Callan, a Greek Cypriot, in contrast, was described by other mercenaries as a homicidal maniac.

Soldier of Fortune still exists, although you don't hear about it much anymore.  It was hugely destested in Africa at the time due to its embrace of mercenaries, with the 60s and 70s being highwater mark of a sort of romantic view of soldiers of fortune.

British character actor Stanley Baker died at age 48.

The News had a report about a hijacking.

And a hijacking of a French airliner.

Apparently Pride Week was already a thing, and Colorado had a pornography law back on the books.

Last edition:

Friday, June 25, 1976. President for life.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, Idi Amin, Uganda

Friday, June 28, 1946. First Hāfu (ハーフ).

The first recorded birth in Japan of a baby born of a Japanese mother and a father who was an American soldier occupying Japan, was announced on Japanese radio, barely more than nine months after the U.S. commenced occupation of Honshu.

The number of such children born during the American occupation from 1945 to 1952 is unknown, but best estimates put it at less than 5,000.  Small additional numbers had British and Australian fathers, with their fate being particularly harsh as British occupation authorities strictly prohibited liaisons with Japanese females and marriage was not an option.  Many of their children were given up for adoption as orphans.  In contrast,45,000 Japanese women became American war brides.

The entire matter was controversial in Japan, as generally it broke a strict cultural taboo regarding interacting with foreigners in this fashion. Cross cultural marriages were enormously looked down upon in Japan at the time and still somewhat are, albeit to a lesser degree.  The occupation period is the only instance in which Japanese women breached the taboo on a large scale.

In this case, the extremely rapid nature of the conception raises real questions about the nature of consent in the matter.

Comedian Gilda Radner was born in Detroit.

Actress Antoinette Perry form whom the Tony Awards are named died at age 58 of a heart attack. There were signs that it was coming, but as a Christian Scientist, she refused to see a doctor.  

She had been born in Denver, Colorado.

The Family Circle magazine featured a photograph of a cat in a wedding dress on the cover.

Last edition:

Wednesday, June 26, 1946. The Nationalist Chinese Strike.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Chiang Kai-shek, China, Chinese Civil War, Germany, Nationalist Chinese Army, Nazi Germany, People's Liberation Army, poster, United States, Weapons

Monday, June 28, 1926. Mel Brooks born in Brooklyn.

Mel Brooks (Melvin James Kaminsky) was born on a tenement kitchen table in Brownsville, Brooklyn to Katie (née Brookman) and Max Kaminsky.  His father was an American born Jew of German extraction, his mother was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant.

He'd barely know his father, who died two years later of tuberculosis.

A comedic giant, he's still alive.  Regarding his comedy, most of it is high refined high end Borscht Belt Comedy, reflecting the extent to which that tradition has hugely impacted American humor.

He served in Europe during World War Two.

William Lyon Mackenzie King resigned as Prime Minister of Canada after the Governor General, Julian Byng invoked his reserve power to refuse to sign the formal Order in Council to dissolve Parliament. 

Last edition:

Friday, June 25, 1926. Milk Cow Blues

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Blog Mirror, Calvin Coolidge, Music, The Blues, The Press

Tuesday, June 1, 1926. Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith.

Norma Jeane Mortenson was born in Los Angeles to Gladys Pearl Baker, nee Monroe, who was married at the time to her second husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, but who was not her father.

Newton Baker and Gladys had married when she was only 14 years old. Baker was reportedly abusive.  The couple had two children.  Interestingly, she was born to an American family living in Mexico but one that had strong connections to California, where she grew up.

In 1923 the Bakers divorced and obtained custody of all three of the couple's children.  He, however, kidnapped the oldest two and moved to Kentucky.  Baker was effected by the Roaring 20s and conducted herself to some extent as a flapper and participant in the early feminist movement, which then as later advocated sexual laxity.  She was pregnant when she married Mortensen, who she soon found to be boring, leading to divorce.

Norma Jean's father was likely Charles Stanley Gifford, Gladys's superior at RKO Studios, where she was working.

Gladys and Norma Jeane.

Baker was likely mentally unstable ,which seems to have run in her family.  Based on what evidence exists, it seems like that there was a genetic component to this and she's spend much of the later years of her life institutionalized.

The rest of this story is, of course, well known.  While its speculation, it would seem likely that at least some of the genetic component of her mental instabilities visited themselves upon her daughter, who of course lived a very disrupted early life.

She outlived her daughter and died in 1984.

Andy Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina.  He was at first a voice comedian and later a famous television actor, best remembered for the Andy Griffith Show.  He was strongly connected to North Carolina his entire life.

The Andy Griffith Show almost defines a certain vision of rural America to this day, and it retains a very strong following.  Unlike the Sheriff protagonist of the show, Griffith married three times and had an affair with one of the shows love interests while it was running.  Irrespective of those failings, he remains widely admired.

Last edition:

Sunday, May 30, 1926. An oral arrangement.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, British Empire, Iraq, Petroleum, Turkey

Thursday, April 18, 1946. Riding clubs, Yugoslavia, minor league baseball, teen queens.

The Powell Valley Riding club was formed in Powell Wyoming.

The League of Nations dissolved and transferred its assets to the United Nations.

Jackie Robinson appeared in his first minor league game in the farm teams for Major League Baseball.  He had previously played for the Kansas City Monarchs.  His current team was the Montreal Royals.

The US recognized the government of Tito in Yugoslavia.

The International Court of Justice held its first meeting.

English actress and 1960s Disney teen queen Haley Mills was born.

She managed to transition into adult roles after her Disney era and still acts.  Probably her most famous early movie was The Parent Trap.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 17, 1946. Syria becomes independent. Protests in Japan.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, French League of Nation Mandates, Japan, Occupation of Japan, Syria

Movies (Television) in History: Dawson's Creek.

Over this past weekend I was horrible sick with what was probably the "stomach flu".  My wife is now.  I'll write more on that latter.

Anyhow,  I woke up in a bad state (I'll spare the details) and spent most of the weekend on the sofa, falling asleep.  

A lost weekend.

Anyhow, my wife had Dawson's Creek on, which was on as one of the major actors, James Van Der Beek  recently tragically died of colon cancer, something I relatively recently dodged the bullet on myself.  FWIW, quite a few actors who were on the series have passed away, although he's the youngest (although barely so) to do so.  It was a tragic death.

Dawson's Creek, 1998-2003, sucks.

The question would be why I put it up here at all, and I don't have that much of a good reason, but it reminds me of how television shows featuring teenagers of recent years fit a pattern.  The other one is One Tree Hill.  

Their nighttime soap operas, but they're bad, and at worst, perverted.

All the characters, even the supposedly poor ones, are fantastically wealthy living in really good conditions.  They have nearly unlimited access to wealth that most middle class families in the real world struggle for and their lives are more or less unhindered by their parents, who are portrayed as a sort of older siblings, even in their appearance.  Nobody in this world has been worn down by age and responsibilities.  They're all beautiful. There's now an ugly duckling girls or awkward boy amongst them. Their entire lives involve endless love triangles, and at least in Dawson's Creek's case, statutory rape.  They're maudlin in the extreme.

All in all, they're a really weird look at the teenage years of Americans, and its weirder than people want to look back at teenagers that way.  It says something about our society, and not in a good way. That millions of adults would follow a series that deals, at least in part, with sexual encounters of minors, is weird.  Dramas, and comedies, focusing on youth have always been a thing, but not ones that focus on youth as well funded adults lusting or longing for each other.

As a complaint about television scripts, I suppose, it's interesting that television likes to keep a couple that should obviously be a couple nearly being a couple for years, and then conclude with them not being a couple.  This can be a legitimate dramatic element, as in the Western drama Wil Penny, but if its going to be done it ought to serve some purpose.  In television dramas, it simply tends not to.  The Wonder Years, well worth watching, provides another example.

On material details, this is set on the Eastern Seaboard which I don't know much about, but nearly 100% of the people depicted are white, which I don't think realistic.  Maybe my view of the Eastern Seaboard is off, however.  Made when it was, an obligatory sympathetically portrayed homosexual couple is included.

One thing I'll add to all of this is that this entire series' view seems summed up by its horrible theme song, which wasn't written for it, I Don't Want To Wait by Paula Cole.  Sung in such a muttering style that it hard to understand, the song is a lament that the singer's grandparents had to endure World War Two and her grandfather came back physically and mentally scarred by the war, and then seemingly implied that they had not lived their lives for the moment.  The lyrics are, in part:

o open up your morning light
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive
Then see the peace in every eye

She had two babies, one was six months, one was three
In the war of '44
Every telephone ring, every heartbeat stinging
When she thought it was God calling her
Oh, would her son grow to know his father?

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

He showed up all wet on the rainy front step
Wearing shrapnel in his skin
And the war he saw lives inside him still
It's so hard to be gentle and warm
The years pass by, and now, he has granddaughters

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be...

The I deserve happiness right now and can obtain it without repercussion sort of view was a common one with younger people at the time, memoirs of Gen X.  Indeed, the show is sort of Gen X Romeo and Juliet and the ballad fits that.  That sort of vapid view has really passed into the the rear view mirror and younger generations don't have it, been afflicted, as they are, by the real world.  The shallowness of the views expressed in Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, and Beverly Hills 90210 help explain the big turn towards inward conservatism in the generations that have followed. 

Anyhow, just skip this and watch 5-25-77 instead.  

Friday, March 1, 1946. Things that almost were.

Kim Il Sung, was saved from an assassination attempt when Red Army officer Y.T. Novichenko caught a hand grenade thrown at him.

Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu, was planned to commence on this day.

Bombshell actress Lana Wood, sister of Natalie Wood, was born.

Last edition:

Thursday, February 28, 1946. Ho Chi Minh asks Truman for help.

Labels: 1930s, 1938, 1939, 1940s, 1946, Franklin Roosevelt, French Indochina, French Indochinese War, Harry S. Truman, Ho Chi Minh, Hungary, Vietnam

Thursday, February 11, 1926. Calles attacks the Church.

Plutarco Elías Calles nationalized all property of the Catholic church in Mexico.

The degree to which the leaders of the Mexican Revolution were anti Catholic in a very Catholic nation is hard to overestimate, although at the same time, particularly in some regions, Catholic viewpoints were very represented amongst the revolutionaries.  Emiliano Zapata in particularly was notably Catholic.

Be that as it may, Madero was not a practicing Catholic and had peculiar spiritual views.  He was in fact a spiritualist and a Mason.  Still, his victory in the revolution, temporary though it was, was seen by Catholics as an opportunity to form a Mexican Catholic political party, which they did.  The Church condemned Madero's assassination.

It was that killing that sparked the second stage of the revolution.   Álvaro Obregón and Calles both featured prominently in that, and both were anti Catholic.  Calles was also a Mason.  In that phase of the revolution, moreover, democratic forces, which had brought about Madero's rise, started to wane and with the murder of Zapata and the victory of Carranza Mexico headed off in a much more radically leftist direction. In some ways the Mexican Revolution, in spite of its romantic portrayal in American cinema, was much more of a 20th Century European Revolution, many of which featured radically anti Catholic leaders against Catholic populations in favor of utopian leftism.

Calles fit that mold and was the sort example in the office of president of Mexico.  His anti clerical laws would lead to the Cristero War the following year.

Mexico remains a very Catholic country to this day and the Mexican people are very Catholic. But like other religious communities, the period of anti religious domination hurt the religious nature of the people nonetheless and the culture of the country.  Mexico has never really recovered from the anti religious views of the revolution.  Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of that has been Protestant Millennialism which has been successful in drawing in religious Mexicans who are unchurched, a byproduct of the revolution.

Actor Leslie Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan.  He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War Two as an aerial gunner, although he was not deployed overseas.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 10, 1926. Going to the League.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, German Weimar Republic, Italy, League of Nations, South Tyrol, Tyrol