History

Today in History: Birthday Edition

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

At 6:37 p.m. EST on this date in 1968, I arrived. (Thank you, mom.) At that hour, I was a little late for dinner, which soon became a habit I cultivated through my teen years. Gary Sheffield, Owen Wilson, quite a few others, and I turn 48 today.

* * * *
Steamboat Willie, an animated short film by Walt Disney Animation Studios, premiered at Universal’s Colony Theater (now The Broadway Theatre) in New York City on this date in 1928.

It was Disney’s first animated short that featured fully synchronized sound, so it was an enormous success, and it also introduced two new characters: Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. Both Mickey and Minnie are 88 today. The film (after the jump):
Read More

Today in History: Nov. 17

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The “Heidi Game” was played on this date in 1968.

A late afternoon football game, New York Jets at Oakland Raiders, was on NBC. That network had been advertising the television debut of a new TV movie, Heidi, based on the children’s story, all week. It was an expensive movie, with one sponsor, Timex, footing the entire bill. A football game with interested viewers on both coasts was a great venue for advertising the movie.

The announcements about the movie continued all game long. But so did the game. At 7:00 p.m. EST, with the Jets in the lead 32-29 and very little time left on the clock, NBC started the broadcast of the movie, as advertised. The game was as good as over, as far as NBC executives were concerned.
Read More

Today in History: Nov. 16

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book …—Marcel Proust, the opening of Swann’s Way, transl. by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

On this date in 1913, French publisher Grasset published Swann’s Way (Du côté de chez Swann), the first volume of Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu, or In Search of Lost Time. (For decades, readers in English knew it as Remembrance of Things Past.)

Proust struggled to find a publisher for his work. Three prominent houses rejected it; Grasset only published it under an agreement with Proust that he would pay the cost of publishing it.

Proust’s work is not the longest novel, but it may be the longest very popular novel or the most popular very long one. It took a decade and a half to publish the entire work: seven volumes, 4000+ pages, 2000+ characters.
Read More