Today in History: Nov. 3

“Let the kids stay up with the entire family,” the ad copy reads. The Wizard of Oz, MGM’s 1939 film classic, became the first Hollywood movie to be broadcast uncut on a television network 60 years ago tonight when CBS showed it as the final episode of its anthology program, Ford Star Jubilee.

Liza Minnelli, the 10-year-old daughter of the star of The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, and Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion, served as hosts and introduced the film.

To this day, the film is afforded special respect when any television channel broadcasts it. It remains an event on American television.

* * * *
Presidents of the United States elected on November 3: John Adams, Ulysses Grant (1868), William McKinley (1896), William Howard Taft, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1936), Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton (1992).

William Jennings Bryan lost to McKinley on this date in 1896 and to Taft in 1908 on this date. He also lost to President McKinley in 1900, but that election was on November 6 that year. Bryan is either the most-successful unsuccessful major party candidate or the least-successful, period, as he lost three national elections.

* * * *
Annie Oakley died 90 years ago today. Henri Matisse died on this date in 1954. Mary Martin died on this date in 1990. Sir Ernst Gombrich died 15 years ago today.

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William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 on this date. André Malraux was born on this date in 1901. Walker Evans was born on this date in 1903. Charles Bronson was born 95 years ago today. Jeremy Brett was born on this date in 1933.

* * * *
Monica Vitti is 85 today. Ken Berry is 83 today. Governor Michael Dukakis is 83. Terrence McNally is 78. Tom Shales is 72. Ken Holtzman is 71. Lulu is 68 today. Larry Holmes is 67. Joe Queenan is 66 today. Roseanne Barr is 64. Dennis Miller is 63. Kate Capshaw is 63. Kathy Kinney is 62. Adam Ant is 62. Phil Simms is 62. Dolph Lundgren is 59. Elizabeth Smart is 29. Colin Kaepernick is 29 today.

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