The British Invade…and No One Seems to Mind

After arriving in America on February 7 1964, the Beatles made their American television debut on February 9^th to an estimated audience of 74 million viewers (roughly 40% of the population).  In the weeks before their appearance, the Ed Sullivan show received over 50,000 requests for tickets to fill a studio that held 703. The Beatles invaded and American culture would never be the same again.

Whether they liked the Beatles or not, people recognized that their appearance on Ed Sullivan was an event not to be missed. Some historians have even cited a dip in crime numbers across the country during the time of the show to depict the hold of the Beatles over American culture. Whether those numbers are accurate or not, it’s hard to deny that the show marked a major shift in American pop culture history. After the Beatles broke through in American markets, they were quickly followed by other British acts including the Rolling Stones and countless sound alikes. The Beatles began to compete with the American icons of rock and roll they originally modeled themselves on including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and countless others.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “Hey, she just did a post on the Beatles two days ago, maybe she needs to get off this topic.” To which I say, this is my blog. Truth be told, had I been alive in 1964 I would have been recreationally stalking the Beatles just like the girls in the audience at the Ed Sullivan Show.

Where were you when the Beatles debuted on American television? If you’re closer to my age, how about your parents? Who’s your favorite Beatle?

Here is the Beatles 1^st appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show where they performed “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Notice that during the performance, the television stations identified each band member by name. When the camera turned to John Lennon, the caption read “Sorry girls, he’s married.”

[Images via VirginMedia and MichaelManning]

  

Premiere of The Birth of a Nation

On February 8, 1915, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation premiered in Las Angeles under the title The Clansman (it was based on a book of that name). The film has become more famous for its depiction of 20^th century racial stereotypes than the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction era that it sought to depict. The NAACP protested the film from its debut, citing its racist depiction of African Americans. View an article from the Cleveland Advocate protesting the showing of The Birth of the Nation upon its initial release here. 

            The plot of the film revolves around two white families from the north and south during and after the Civil War. It recasts Lincoln as a figure sympathetic to the south and shows a post war south ruined by carpetbaggers, free men and radical Republicans. In the film, the south is only redeemed by the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan emerge as heroes in the film. In fact, due to their positive depiction in the film, the KKK used it a recruiting tool until the early 1970s.

            Black filmmakers who were unsuccessful in banning The Birth of a Nation set out to make their own films to correct the racism they saw in Griffith’s film. A group of independent black filmmakers released director Emmett J. Scott’s The Birth of Race in 1919 as a counter argument to Griffith’s depiction of African-Americans, but it was largely ignored.

 With such strong racism throughout the film, you might be asking why this film is remembered at all? Why don’t we just let it die off in historical memory? Well, the film is also one of the first in film history to make use of close-ups, the iris effect, cross cutting between scenes to create suspense, and featured an original score to be performed live in the theater by an orchestra. These innovations, among others, continue to land The Birth of a Nation on lists of the all time best films. The film was also one of the earliest attempts to construct a history using the medium of film, as opposed to print culture.

Birth of a Nation was the first film to be viewed in the White House, and when President Woodrow Wilson saw it he said it was “like writing history with lightning.” We may find the kind of history Griffith depicted in The Birth of a Nation to be morally repugnant, but it did lay a foundation for filmmakers to use film as a way of getting at historical issues and questions.

Here is trailer of The Birth of a Nation:

[Image via moviegoings]

The Beatles Are Coming!

Today in 1964, the Beatles arrived at JFK Airport in New York City to an enthusiastic welcome. The band had previously been offered chances to tour the United States, but refused to come until they had a #1 song on the American charts. They’d seen other British acts come to the states and fail because no one was familiar with their music. By 1964, the Beatles had a #1 hit with “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and felt primed to take America by storm. Check out this video of their arrival at JFK, where they had a rabid reception from fans.           

Before 1964, George Harrison visited the states on his own to see his sister. For the rest of the band, it was their first time in the country that spawned a majority of their musical influences. Here is a British newsreel showing their first press conference after they landed. Notice the numerous questions about their “long” hair.

[Image via monroegallery]

Golfing at the Most Exclusive Country Club in the World (make that Solar System)

On February 6, 1971 Astronaut Alan Shepherd hit a golf ball on the moon. His fellow astronaut Edgar Mitchell also threw a “javelin” during the same moonwalk. The golf ball and javelin landed in the same crater where they remain to this day.

For Alan Shepherd, this moonwalk and impromptu golf session were the icing on the cake of his astronaut career. He was an Annapolis grad who served on a destroyer during World War II. After the war, he worked as a test pilot and later became part of burgeoning space program. On May 5, 1961, Shepherd became to first American to be launched into space as part of Project Mercury. His flight in Freedom 7 lasted 15 minutes and took him a distance of 301 miles. As commander of the Apollo 14 landing, Shepherd became the fifth person to walk on the moon. In 1974, Shepherd retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy. I guess after you golf on the moon, what else is there to shoot for?

Take a look at Shepherd’s lunar golfing skills:

           

[Image via dailyradar]

Roosevelt, Bankruptcy and the Scary Side of Preservation

The NY Times recently published an article about the ongoing battle to secure the papers of one of FDR’s last secretaries, Grace Tully, for the Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Grace Tully began working for Roosevelt in 1929 when he was governor of New York, and served as his personal secretary from 1941 until his death in 1945. Her papers, which include photographs, official correspondence and handwritten notes, was left to her estate upon her death. Conrad M. Black, now serving time in a Florida prison for a fraud, bought the papers from her estate in 2001. His company, which at the time owned The Chicago-Sun Times, bought the papers from a rare-book dealer for an estimated $8 million. He was collecting the largest amount of FDR papers still in private hands for an FDR biography he planned to write. (“Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom,” published in 2003).

In recent years, Black attempted to auction the papers off at Christies but was stopped when the government accused Black of selling documents which belonged to the National Archives. (The National Archives oversees Presidential Libraries) Still with me?  Since then, the papers have been stored at the Roosevelt Presidential Library, which all parties seem to think will be their eventual home. However, since the ownership of the papers is still being worked out, archivists and researchers have been forbidden to open the sealed boxes to explore what appraisers have called “very, very valuable papers.” I’m not sure how Cynthia Koch, the head of the Roosevelt Presidential Library, can stand having those priceless items so close and yet so far. If it were me, I’d be in there in the middle of the night with a flashlight Watergate style dying to find out what the secretary’s papers could tell us about such an extraordinary time in our nation’s history. Real nerd stuff. Maybe there are revelations in that collection which could confound, complicate, or confirm our understanding of FDR. Who knows? Only time will tell…

The Day The Music Died…

On February 3, 1959, Charles “Buddy” Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. The three musicians were touring the mid-west together as part of “The Winter Dance Party” – a tour covering 24 midwestern cities in three weeks. The bus hired to take the musicians from city to city was faulty, and the heating system died out causing most of the musicians to develop frostbite. In an attempt to bypass another cold bus ride, Buddy Holly chartered a small plane to take his band from Iowa to their next tour stop in Moorhead, Minnesota. Each band member would be charged $36 for the plane ride.

            In what has become a subject of rock and roll legend, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson asked one of Holly’s band members, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane as he was suffering from the flu. Ritchie Valens had never flown in a plane before, and asked Holly’s other band mate, Tommy Allsup, if he could have his seat. Allsup said he would let a coin toss decide, and Valens won the seat. When Buddy Holly heard that his band mate Waylon Jennings would not be accompanying him on the plane, he teased, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up,” to which Jennings responded, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.” These words would haunt Jennings for the remainder of his life.

            The passengers boarded the plane around 12:40 AM and the plane took off around 12:55 AM. People observing the plane from the control tower in Clear Lake saw the taillight of the plane descend at 1:00 AM. That morning, search teams found the wreckage in a field near Clear Lake, Iowa; all three musicians and the pilot died instantly upon impact. An investigation blamed the crash on a combination of bad weather and pilot error. A large pair of horn rim glasses, like those worn by Buddy Holly, now marks the entrance to the crash site.

            Here is a newsreel showing crash site footage:

            The death of these musicians was a huge loss to rock music, and their legacies are apparent in the influence their music has had on other musicians. The Beatles cited Buddy Holly as a large influence, and they covered his music on Beatles for Sale. Don McLean wrote “American Pie” about “the day the music died.” In more recent years, Weezer named checked Buddy Holly in a song. To celebrate their memory, here is Buddy Holly performing “Peggy Sue” on the Arthur Murray Dance Party. I particularly enjoy the host’s defense of this new thing called rock and roll in her introduction.

[Images via ruhrtalcruising and wikimedia]

Sometimes You Have to Sit Down to Stand Up

To kick off a month in which we remember black history, we would be remiss in neglecting the importance of sit-ins to the civil rights movement. Sit-ins motivated activists, young people in particular, to take up the cause for equal rights by staging sit -ins at restaurants that only offered segregated service. Under the Jim Crow laws in the south, black and whites were expected to use different restrooms, water fountains, schools, and even be served at separate counters at restaurants (among countless other indignities). Sick of being segregated to lesser standards because of the color of their skin, African-American students in the south decided to combat these practices through peaceful protest.

On February 1, 1960, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond (all freshmen at North Carolina A&T University) took seats at the lunch counter of a F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C. and requested service. The waitress refused their request because of their race. Nonetheless, the four sat steadfast until the close of the store. The next day, the four returned with about 25 more protestors. The sit-in inspired other similar sit-ins across the state, and eventually, throughout the south. By that July (and after an estimated loss of $200,000 worth of business), Woolworth’s integrated all of its stores and allowed blacks to be served at lunch counters.

Today, the site of the first sit-in at the Greensboro, N.C. Woolworth’s was re-opened as an international civil rights museum. Here is a video of the opening along with interviews of the four participants of the February 1^st sit-in.

For more information, please visit the Civil Rights Movement Veterans’ timeline. 

[Image via americanhistory]