Film of the Day
The Butler
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 7 March Police attack Alabama marchers, 1965 On this day in 1965, a day that subsequently became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers attacked civil rights demonstrators outside the town of Selma, Alabama. Between 500 and 600 demonstrators were marching to protest against the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black man who had been shot by a policeman after a previous civil rights march on 18 February. Any grouping of more than three civil rights campaigners had been declared illegal by a judge, and the local governor, George Wallace, went on to declare the march a threat to public safety. … Read more
The Passion of Joan of Arc
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 December Henry VI of England crowned king of France, 1431 On this day in 1431, Henry VI of England was crowned king of France. Born in 1421, Henry of Windsor had become king of England aged nine months. By 11 months, on the death of his grandfather, Charles VI, he had also been named king of France. Since he was a child and hardly in a position to do anything regal, two uncles ran the show for him. John of Lancaster (brother of the dead king, Henry V) became regent of France, while John’s brother Humphrey became Protector of England. … Read more
Sounds of Sand
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 27 August Anglo-Zanzibar War, 1896 On this day in 1896, the shortest war in world history was fought, between the United Kingdom and the Sultanate of Zanzibar. It lasted around 40 minutes and was caused by the death of the old Sultan, Hamad bin Thuwaini, who had been pro-British. According to a treaty of 1886, the Zanzibaris had to get British acceptance for any new sultan they chose. They didn’t. Instead they chose Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. The British immediately issued an ultimatum calling on Khalid to yield to their authority. He refused and barricaded himself in his palace. At 9am … Read more
The Grey
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 July Amelia Earhart disappears, 1937 On this day in 1937, the pioneering 39-year-old female aviator (aviatrix, if you prefer) disappeared on a flight circumnavigating the globe. Flying around the world can be accomplished by taking a variety of routes (Howard Hughes had “flown around the world” in 1938 by circling the northern hemisphere, and theoretically could be achieved by circling the North or South Pole, a minute’s work), but Earhart was planning to do it the longest way by circling the equator. Earhart had been breaking flying records almost since she had first learnt to fly, in 1920, her first … Read more
Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 August Woodstock ends, 1969 On this day in 1969, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair ended. Billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music” it was held at a dairy farm near White Lake, New York. 32 acts had played to 400,000 people who had paid $18 in advance ($24 at the gate). Richie Havens had been the first act on and Jimi Hendrix was the last act, playing a two hour set that included his version of the Star Spangled Banner – shocking both to those who didn’t want to hear it desecrated and to those … Read more
Super Size Me
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 April Ray Kroc opens the first McDonald’s, 1955 On this day in 1955, sanctioned by the McDonald brothers Richard and Maurice, Ray Kroc opened the first franchise of one of their McDonald’s hamburger restaurants, in Des Plaines, Illinois, USA. The ninth of a chain started by Richard and Maurice in 1948 in San Bernadino, California, the place was an immediate hit, taking hundreds of dollars in its first day. Kroc, a businessman by nature, itched to open more but the McDonalds weren’t particularly expansionist. So, in 1961, Kroc bought the entire company off them for $2.7 million and set about … Read more
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 4 November Genie the feral child found, 1970 On this day in 1970, the child known as Genie was discovered in Los Angeles, California, USA. Aged around 13, she had spent her life tied to a child’s toilet or tied up in a crib, unable to move except her hands and feet. Brought up by a progressively blind mother in thrall to a mentally ill and violent husband, Genie had been fed on nothing but soft or baby food since birth. Genie was the fourth child born to the couple. The first two had died – one of pneumonia from being … Read more
House of Tolerance
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 February Cynthia Payne acquitted of running a brothel, 1987 On this day in 1987, 54-year-old Londoner Cynthia Payne was acquitted of being a madam and living off the immoral earnings of others. She’d been arrested before, in 1978, when her suburban sex parties for pensioners had attracted the attention of the newspapers, not least because she accepted Luncheon Vouchers as payment for activities including being spanked by young ladies. On the first occasion she’d been sentenced to 18 months in prison, reduced to six months on appeal, of which she served four. Payne’s notoriety stemmed in large part from her … Read more
The House I Live In
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 December Prohibition ends, 1933 On this day in 1933, the USA ended one of its most disastrous experiments. The Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act, had been passed on 28 October 1919. It banned “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States…” It had required a change in the US Constitution to get the act passed, which the Congress had finally done on 16 January 1919, when it ratified the 18th Amendment. On 17 January 1920, America went dry. Except it didn’t. What happened instead is that … Read more
The Poseidon Adventure
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 April Ronald Neame born, 1911 On this day in 1911, a remarkable figure in cinema was born. Ronald Elwin Neame lived until 2010 and in his time was a cinematographer, a producer, writer and director. There are probably plenty of people who could line up a similar list of credits. But Neame was a cinematographer on Powell and Pressburger’s One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, a producer of Oliver Lean’s Oliver Twist, the writer of Lean’s Great Expectations and the director of The Poseidon Adventure, each one of them an important film, for different reasons. He also directed Judy Garland … Read more
Grave of the Fireflies
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 August US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima, 1945 On this day in 1945, about ten days after the US, UK and USSR had threatened Japan with “prompt and utter destruction”, an American B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, dropped the nuclear bomb “Little Boy” on the port of Hiroshima in Japan. The bomb killed around 80,000 people immediately and a further 10,000-60,000 in the following months, through injury and radiation sickness. It destroyed around 70% of the city’s buildings. Three days later another bomb, “Fat Man”, was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, causing an instant 22,000 to 75,000 deaths. Six days … Read more
Submarine
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 May USS Scorpion submarine sinks, 1968 On this day in 1968, a nuclear submarine called the USS Scorpion was lost at sea in mysterious circumstances with 99 crewmen on board. Scorpion had been built in 1958 and had gone into service in 1960. Operating on the US’s eastern seaboard, she mostly took part in patrols of the Atlantic coast as part of the on-going development of Cold War submarine tactics, though she did occasionally operate in European waters. In 1966 she filmed a Soviet missile launch after stealthily having made the “Northern Run” to Novaya Zemlya, a Russian archipelago on … Read more
