Bob Hope Honored as he Honors Others

1966 - Bob Hope did it again after six years! He both hosted and received an award at the 38th Annual Academy Awards celebration at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles. This time he received a gold medal, the Honorary Award for unique and distinguished service to the film industry and the Academy. Other award recipients included Shelley Winters for her Best Supporting Actress role in A Patch of Blue; Martin Balsam, Best Supporting Actor for his performance in A Thousand Clowns. The Best Actor Oscar went to Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou); and Julie Christie picked up the Best Actress Oscar (Darling). The Oscar for the Best Music/Song from a 1965 movie was The Shadow of Your Smile from The Sandpiper (Johnny Mandel-music, Paul Francis Webster-lyrics). It’s a good thing that the Oscars were being broadcast in color this night (the first time) because the Best Director and Best Picture winner was The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, producer and director). We don’t think the hills wouldn’t look very alive in black and white.

"The House That Ruth Built"

1923 - Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx, NY as the hometown team, the NY Yankees, hosted the Boston Red Sox. A record crowd of 74,000 fans saw the action at the first three-level stadium in the U.S.

"The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere"

At about 10 p.m. on this day in 1775, three men took to their horses to ride from Boston to Concord, MA to warn the citizens of the approaching British army. Most of us know of just one of those riders, one Paul Revere. The famous poem, Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, glorified the Bostonian as the lone rider. He was, in fact, accompanied by William Dawes and Samuel Prescott.
We think it’s time they should get some recognition too! After all, it wasn’t their fault that their partner in the midnight ride was already well known, having been a member of the Sons of Liberty; incited the British by publishing an engraving of the Boston Massacre; carried messages for the Committees of Correspondence, an underground organization; and having been a participant in the Boston Tea Party.

Incidentally, only Prescott made it all the way to Concord. Revere was nabbed by a British cavalry patrol near Lexington, MA (Dawes and Prescott escaped). We’re not sure what happened to Dawes but Revere was released and returned to Lexington -- without his horse. There was lots of running/riding around that night, but suffice to say, when British forces arrived in Lexington, they found the minutemen waiting for them.

In honor of this midnight ride, get out your Revereware and make a pot of tea.

The Start of a Legend

On January 17, 1871, San Franciscan Andrew Smith Hallidie patented the first cable car, ultimately sparing many horses the excruciating work of moving people over that city's steep roadways. Using metal ropes he had patented, Hallidie devised a mechanism by which cars were drawn by an endless cable running in a slot between the rails which passed over a steam-driven shaft in the powerhouse.

After gathering financial backing, Hallidie and his associates constructed the first cable railway. The track ran from the intersection of Clay and Kearny Streets along twenty-eight hundred feet of track to the crest of a hill 307 feet above the starting point. At five o'clock on the morning of August 1, 1873, a few nervous men climbed aboard the cable car as it stood on the hilltop. With Hallidie at the controls, the car descended and arrived safely at the bottom.

Martin Luther Defiant at Worms

In 1521, Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, defied the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V by refusing to recant his writings. He had been called to Worms, Germany, to appear before the Diet (assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire and answer charges of heresy.

Martin Luther was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. In 1517, he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling "indulgences," or forgiveness of sins. Luther followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers across Europe. In 1521, the pope excommunicated him, and he was called to appear before the emperor at the Diet of Worms to defend his beliefs. Refusing to recant or rescind his positions, Luther was declared an outlaw and a heretic. Powerful German princes protected him, however, and by his death in 1546 his ideas had significantly altered the course of Western thought.

NEWLY RESTORED: The facility that treated millions of newcomers and taught doctors about health issues in the U.S. melting pot.

Ellis Island’s recently reopened Ferry Building is just north of the hospital complex, most of which is still in disrepair. At its peak, the hospital had 22 disease wards, plus a general complex with operating rooms and other facilities. This week, that history will come back to life in "Future in the Balance: Immigrants, Public Health and Ellis Island's Hospitals," an exhibit in the just-opened Ferry Building, the latest phase in a planned restoration of all the buildings on the island.
(Carolyn Cole / LAT)

The Beautiful and Majestic California Coast

Tide pools are a source of photographic inspiration at Point Lobos State Reserve. Photographer Minor White thought Edward Weston’s last Point Lobos photos “may parallel in content the last quartets of Beethoven.”
(© David Keaton/CORBIS)
Many memorable works attached to the Weston name are in black and white, but this scene at Point Lobos, where hikers maneuver through green brush atop rocks, seems to cry out for color. “I can’t even describe the color the water was this morning,” remarked state reserve docent Patty Oglietti. “There is no name for that shade of blue.”
(Christopher Reynolds / LAT)
Along a rugged Central California coastline that is a touchstone in American photography, Garrapata Beach offers a lonely landscape that can tempt whoever is holding a camera. Edward Weston, haunting Monterey County in the 1930s and ’40s, went on to win worldwide respect for fine-art photography with his meticulous, unsentimental, often nearly abstract images of nature. His sons Brett and Cole also forged estimable reputations in the art. Ansel Adams, who captured iconic images of Yosemite, also lived in the area for the last 22 years of his life.
(Christopher Reynolds / LAT)

Don't bet on beating a slot machine

Written by Marc Cooper, Los Angeles Times.

THE more you play slot machines, the more you will lose. It's common wisdom, but still it bears repeating.

I wasn't three minutes into one of the slot tournaments that can be found throughout this city when I swear that the woman competing next to me had broken out in a sweat. Furiously pounding the "Spin Reels" button, hunched over the screen and chanting, "Come on, big numbers! Big numbers!"

I was doing pretty much the same, except I was embarrassed enough to keep my praying silent.

So let's get right to the point about America's favorite gambling devices. Slots should be played only for fun and entertainment — and absolutely never with any expectation of winning. Anyone who tells you he has a system to beat the slots is on tilt. There are no systems. There is no such thing as a hot or cold machine. And there isn't a single machine among the 800,000 in the U.S. that is "due" to pay out in the next five minutes — or even the next five days. And when one does erupt, it might do it again two minutes later. Or maybe not for two more years.

The steely, unforgiving heart at the center of each machine is a micro-processor called an RNG, a "random number generator." It's precisely programmed to determine how much of the gross intake the machine will return to the players and what the frequency of those payoffs will be. Even while the machine isn't in play, it's coldly clicking through an astonishing 200 million numerical combinations per second. The instant you pull the handle or push the button on the machine, your fate is sealed.

Forget about luck or even about loose gears in the reels. The mechanical reels or video readouts on the machine are but visual presentations of the internal computer's predetermined outcome of the spin.

So the only real choice is how you most prefer to lose your money.

The Center for Art and Media Technology is Impressive

Karlsruhe, Germany


ZKM. It may sound like a new model of souped-up Mercedes, but people in this industrial city in southern Germany know it as the self-proclaimed largest media arts museum in the world.


It's officially called the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, or Center for Art and Media Technology, but it's commonly called the ZKM. It's housed in a giant converted 1918 munitions factory, and its 10 large atriums contain three art museums and several art institutes.


During a freebie day early this year as part of the ZKM's 10-year anniversary celebration, about 5,000 visitors browsed through the block-long facility. (Usually, the daily visitor count is around 300.)

1956 : Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier

American actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco in a spectacular ceremony. It was 1956.

Kelly, the daughter of a former model and a wealthy industrialist, began acting as a child. After high school, she attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts in New York. While she auditioned for Broadway plays, she supported herself by modeling and appearing in TV commercials.

In 1949, she debuted on Broadway in The Father by August Strindberg. Two years later, she landed her first Hollywood bit part, in Fourteen Hours. Her big break came in 1952, when she starred as Gary Cooper's wife in High Noon. Her performance in The Country Girl, as the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic songwriter played by Bing Crosby, won her an Oscar in 1954. The same year, she played opposite Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.

While filming another Hitchcock movie, To Catch a Thief (1955), in the French Riviera, she met Prince Rainier of Monaco. It wasn't love at first sight for Kelly, but the prince initiated a long correspondence, which led to their marriage in 1956. She became Princess Grace of Monaco and retired from acting. She had three children and occasionally narrated documentaries. Kelly died tragically at the age of 52 when her car plunged off a mountain road by the Cote D'Azur in September 1982.

A Night of Terror

1912 - “Up in the crows nest, Frederick Fleet was staring into the darkness. It was around 11:30 p.m. on a very odd calm moonless night when he noticed a black object immediately in their path, he knew it was ice!” The Royal Mail Steamship Titanic of the White Star Line struck an iceberg at approximately 11:40 p.m. The great ship, on its maiden voyage, sank just under three hours later. 1,517 passengers were lost at sea.

FIRST LADY OF THE AMERICAN SCREEN

What a night this was back in 1969! All the egos and glamour of Hollywood were gathered together in one place for the annual Academy Awards presentation. All in the theatre and those watching the extravaganza on television could feel the electricity in the air as the envelope, announcing the Best Actress Award, was opened.

It was the 11th nomination for Katharine Hepburn, an academy record! And, the Oscar goes to ...

For the first time in the history of the Academy Awards, a tie resulted in two stars sharing the Best Actress Oscar. Barbra Streisand for her performance in Funny Girl had reached the top, only to share the honor with the ‘First Lady of the American Screen’, Katharine Hepburn for her starring role in The Lion in Winter.

Hepburn also broke the record that night as the only actress to win three Best Actress Oscars. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner awarded the previous year and Morning Glory [1932-33] were the other films. She was also only the third person to win two years in a row. Hepburn added a twelfth nomination and a fourth Oscar in 1981 for her performance in On Golden Pond with co-star Henry Fonda. She earned three of these awards after her sixtieth birthday.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this, “He who laughs last, laughs best.” Not all of Katharine Hepburn’s peers were admirers. After completing her first film (A Bill of Divorcement) in 1932, she told her lecherous, co-star John Barrymore that she would never act with him again. His reply, “Really, my dear? I didn’t know you ever had.” Hepburn, who had made her stage debut on Broadway in 1928, was reviewed by columnist Dorothy Parker for a 1933 performance as “running the gamut of emotions from A to B.” And, in 1938 she was labeled “box-office poison.” Obviously Hepburn has had the last laugh.

Her most memorable performances include Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story opposite Cary Grant; Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, Pat and Mike with co-star and significant other, Spencer Tracy; The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Suddenly Last Summer opposite Montgomery Clift. Long Day’s Journey into Night earned her a 1962 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress award.

From Broadway to Hollywood to television ... 1975 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in her ABC Theatre performance, opposite Laurence Olivier, in Love Among the Ruins ... to literature ... two best-sellers, The Making of "The African Queen" or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind and her autobiography, Me, Katharine Hepburn remains a star, the idol of independent, talented young women in their search for fame and fortune.

Osprey Headed For Iraq

WASHINGTON — Ten new V-22 Osprey planes will be in Iraq for combat by September, the Marine Corps said Friday.

Built by Boeing Co. and Bell, a unit of Textron Inc., the planes' deployment marks a significant reversal for an aircraft program that was nearly scrapped after two deadly test crashes and a history of mechanical failures.

The medium-size tilt-rotor airplane, which takes off vertically like a helicopter and flies likes a plane, replaces the CH-46 Sea Knight, an assault helicopter first used in the Vietnam War.

Gen. James T. Conway, Marine Corps commandant, said 171 Marines would accompany the aircraft, set for deployment to Al Asad airfield in northern Iraq.

The deputy commandant for aviation rejected concerns that the Osprey might not be safe, saying it had been extensively tested and was fully operational.

(From the Associated Press)

Have You Forgotten About Tiny Tim and his Ukulele -- you probably haven't even though you've tried.

In 1932, Tiny Tim (aka Darry Dover, Larry Love) (Herbert Khaury), ukulele playing, falsetto singer who will always be remembered for "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" was born. He made frequent guest appearances on TV's "Laugh In" and the "Tonight Show." He died Nov 30, 1996.

New York's Fabled Hippodrome

In 1905 the Hippodrome Theatre opened in New York City with the gala musical revue, "A Yankee Circus on Mars."
And here is the great Irish tenor John McCormack, on 28th April, 1918, singing, again without amplification, to the packed Hippodrome Theatre in New York. He would sing there something like ten times a season.

Jacarandas in Full Bloom

The Jacarandas in the South Bay don't look like this yet -- but they will, soon.

Rising Star Feeling the Pressure

SHIA LABEOUF is under Hollywood's microscope these days. He's got a lot at stake.

The weight of three high-profile films rests on his young shoulders: the "Rear Window"-esque thriller "Disturbia," which opens Friday, the animated penguin film, "Surf's Up," due out in June, and the latest Michael Bay extravaganza, "Transformers," opening July 4.

Although the 20-year-old actor exudes fearlessness and self-confidence, LaBeouf acknowledges feeling the heat. "This is a lot of pressure," he said.

The Submarine Emerges

On April 11, 1900, the U.S. Navy acquired its first submarine, a 53-foot craft designed by Irish immigrant John P. Holland. Propelled by gasoline while on the surface and by electricity when submerged, the Holland served as a blueprint for modern submarine design. By the eve of World War I, Holland and Holland-inspired vessels were a part of large naval fleets throughout the world.

Designs for underwater boats date back to the 1500s. In the nineteenth century, the first truly practical submarines began to appear, with a period of intense development occurring at the end of the century as nations strived to establish their sea power. Seizing upon the latest military technology, the United States used subs in both the War of 1812 and the Civil War. It was not until World War I, however, that submarines emerged as major weapons. Some early submarines are pictured above.

The First Submarine to Sink a Battleship

Horace Lawson Hunley (1823-1863) of New Orleans was one of the developers of the Confederate submarine known as the H.L. Hunley. Four feet wide and about forty feet long, with a hull height of four feet and three inches, the H.L. Hunley was the first sub to sink a ship in battle. (For more information on the Hunley, use the "Search" window at the top of this page.)

MILK offers an unforgettable GELATO and other luxuriously sumptuous treats

The flavors here are mostly old fashioned, but done luxuriously: sumptuous strawberry, Valrhona chocolate, coffee-toffee crunch made with house-made toffee. Bret Thompson, the owner of MILK is a former executive chef for the Patina Group. Thompson makes a mean banana split and a dreamy Milky Way malt, but there's also hand-dipped bon bons and ice cream sandwiches (shown above) made with classic French macarons. You'll find MILK (a bit of heaven) at 7290 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 939-6455.

It may be the ultimate Beverly Hills teardown.

British developers paid $500 million Tuesday for the once-grand Robinsons-May department store in one of the priciest property sales ever in Southern California.

The buyers said they would proceed with the previous owner's plans to raze the store at 9900 Wilshire Blvd. and build a condominium and retail complex designed by Richard Meier, architect of the Getty Center.