This week’s challenge word on the Monday Artday website is “family”. Years before Joseph Jackson was humiliating his kids into pop stardom, there was Murry Wilson. As a young man, Murry Wilson desperately longed to be a songwriter. He worked at a Goodyear factory and even suffered the loss of an eye in an industrial …
“Iceberg right ahead!” Those famous words were spoken by lookout Frederick Fleet aboard the the RMS Titanic on April 14, 1912. Just after seven bells, Fleet saw a black mass in the ocean ahead. He immediately struck three bells and telephoned the bridge. His report received the standard “Thank you” reply. While still on the telephone, the ship …
Dora Gerson was a singer and silent film actress in Berlin, Germany in the early 1920s. She was performing in an ensemble troupe when she met film director Veit Harlan. They married in 1922 and divorced in 1924. Harlan would eventually direct anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda films on orders of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In …
The current Monday Artday challenge is “gratitude”. Curt Flood spent most of his career as a center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. He led the National League in putouts four times. He won seven consecutive Gold Glove Awards. He also batted over .300 six times, and led the NL in hits in 1964. He retired …
Hope Summers made her Hollywood debut at the age of fifty, beginning a career of playing essentially the same character. Hope was the older, genteel neighbor in countless Westerns, sitcoms and medical shows in the early days of television. She was featured as Hattie Denton, the friendly and helpful proprietor of the North Fork general store, …
Thirty-year-old Erin Fleming was hired as secretary to eighty-year-old Groucho Marx in 1970. The two began a relationship. She persuaded Groucho to perform a one-man show that proved to be wildly popular. A performance at Carnegie Hall was recorded and released as An Evening with Groucho. That, too, was a huge success. Groucho’s son, Arthur, …
Charles Browning grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a huge baseball fan and he was pals with his uncle, “Old” Pete Browning, a 3 time batting champ, who stole 103 bases in 1887. Charles’ Uncle Pete’s commissioning of a bat provided the start of the Hillerich & Bradsby bat company, famous for their Louisville …
Willie Best arrived in Hollywood by way of Sunflower, Mississippi as chauffeur for a vacationing couple. He began performing with traveling shows in California. He became a regular character actor in Hollywood after a talent scout discovered him on stage. Along with black actors like Lincoln Perry (better known as “Stepin Fetchit”), Willie was usually …
Alberta Nelson played “Puss,” one of the Rat Pack Gang members behind dim-witted leader Eric Von Zipper, as played by Harvey Lembeck, in seven “beach” movies produced by American International Pictures in the middle 1960s. Alberta, the tall, leather-clad blond, had only a few lines of dialogue, but she was the only actress to appear in …
This week’s challenge on Monday Artday is “chicken”. In 1930, Harland Sanders owned a gas station in Corbin, Kentucky. He would cook chicken dinners, using his own secret recipe, for travellers stopping to refuel. He served his customers in his living quarters in the service station. Through word of mouth, his local popularity grew, and …
