Question: What does it mean to be “long in tooth”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In the 1930’s, most of the Hollywood studio moguls were Jewish. Only one was not. Who was it?
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History for 12/4/2008
Birthdays: Chief Crazy Horse, Samuel Butler*, Thomas Carlyle, Lillian Russell, Vasilly Kandinsky, Buck Jones, Wink Martindale, Max Baer Jr.,Robert Vesco, Charles Keating, Wally George, Deanna Durbin, Pappy Boyington, Horst Bucholtz, Former South Korean Prime Minister Noh Tae Yoo, Jeff Bridges is 59, Marisa Tomei is 44, Tyrah Banks is 35, Johnny Lyon- 1948 of the band Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Jay-Z

*"Life is one long process of getting tired."- Samuel Butler

963AD- Pope John XII was beaten to death by the husband of a woman he was sleeping with. In Nominae Patrie- OUCH!..Et Filiae..OUCH!…Et Spitritu Sanctam..OUCH!

1154- Nicholas Breakspeare elected Pope Adrian IV, so far the only Englishman ever made pope of the Roman Catholic Church..

1534- Ottoman Turkish Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent occupied Baghdad.

1655- Jews had been expelled from England since 1291. This year Oliver Cromwell convened a conference at Whitehall to consider re-admittance of Jews into English society. Cromwell’s Puritans had great sympathy for “God’s chosen People” and one Roundhead legislator even proposed moving the Sabbath Day back to Saturday. But there was still too much anti-Semitic resistance to make the re-admittance official. Despite the failure of the government to make a decision from this time without official sanction Jews began returning to and settling in England. They were allowed their own Jewish Burial Ground in 1657 and in 1715 Solomon Medina became the first Jewish person to receive a knighthood.

1657-Painter Rembrandt van Rijn was evicted from his home. His kept out of debtor’s prison when his daughter and son-in-law auctioned most of his possessions to pay off his creditors.

1674- HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHICAGO! French missionary Jacques Marquette dedicated a mission house and trading post that will eventually become Fort Dearborn, then the Windy City. But who invented deep-dish pizza?

1777- Ben Franklin and the American commissioners in France were in despair. Nothing but bad news about British victories, and the French government was complaining about American privateers attacking British ships in French waters. Even sympathetic French newspapers called the American cause lost. Today with playwright-spy Pierre DuBeaumarchais in attendance, a courier from across the sea arrived. Jonathan Austin delivered the news of the Battle of Saratoga. That a British General Burgoyne and his entire army were defeated badly. Immediately the French, Dutch and Spanish governments started calling the Americans “our friends”, and began discussing an alliance.

1783- WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL- The American Revolution now ended, George Washington bid farewell to his officers at a dinner at Fraunces Tavern in New York. Creole cook Samuel Fraunces "Black Sam' was later invited by Washington to become the first presidential chef. The tavern is still there on the corner of Water and Pearl Streets.

1791- The London Observer, called the oldest continually published newspaper in the world, first published. True, the Times was begun in 1788 but t had a spotty release it’s first few years while it’s publisher would be thrown in prison for libel.

1829- The British in India abolished the custom of suttee- that a widow throw herself on her husbands funeral pyre and die also.

1875- William Marcy “Boss Tweed” escaped Ludlow Street jail and fled to Cuba. He had been the corrupt boss of New York City politics throughout the 1860s and 70s. He was rearrested in Spain by a Spanish policeman who spoke no English. When asked by American diplomats the Spaniard said he saw a newspaper cartoon by Thomas Nast of Tweed in prison garb with his hands on two young boys so he thought he was a kidnapper! Tweed was brought to justice by the one crime he probably never did.

1881- First issue of the Los Angeles Times.

1909- The first Canadian Football League championship the Grey Cup, U of Toronto defeated Toronto Parkdale 26-6

1915- HENRY FORD'S PEACE SHIP-The great industrialist was a livelong pacifist and was horrified by the carnage of the Great War. On this day he equipped a large yacht with neutral diplomats and other famous personages like Thomas Edison and sailed to Europe. Pundits had fun mocking his homespun naiveté' and local lunatics like Urban Ledoux, aka Mr. Zero, jumped into New York Harbor and swarm alongside the ship "to ward off hostile torpedoes." Ford docked in Oslo harbor hoping to use his influence to get the Kaiser, Czar and the other crowned heads to a bargaining table like some kind of board of directors negotiation. Nobody would meet with him. Young N.Y. politician Fiorello LaGuardia noted: "The only boy he managed to save from the trenches was his own son!"

1916-RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK KILLED- Several Russian noblemen resolve to rid their country of this Siberian peasant mystic who held such power over the Tsar and his family that he could dismiss government ministers at will. He once had an entire army offensive redirected because he was negotiating to buy the real estate they planned to fight over. A first cousin of the Czar, cross dressing Prince Youssuppov invited Rasputin to a late night party. He had a record player with Yankee Doodle playing in another room to convince the monk that a party indeed was in progress. Youssuppov gave Rasputin a glass of cyanide laced vodka. Rasputin drank it and finished the bottle. Then the conspirators rushed out, emptied a revolver into him, beat him with chains and heavy silver candlesticks, rolled him up in a rug and stuffed him into the ice clogged Neva River.

The official coroner's report said he had drowned. Shortly before his death Rasputin wrote a prediction in a letter to the Czar saying that 'if the peasants, my brothers, kill me, then you, Czar of Russia, have nothing to fear. But if your relatives kill me, not you nor any one of your family will remain alive longer than two years." Rasputin's prediction was off by about four months. Nicholas II and his 400 year old dynasty fell ten weeks later. The entire Imperial Family were murdered in July 1918.

1919- President Woodrow Wilson left the US by battleship for Europe to help chair the Versailles Peace Conference ending the Great War. Once there he surprised people by refusing to visit the battlefields and tour the horror and devastation. He said:” They want me to see red as they do. But I feel at least one of us should remain impartial.”

1927- The Cotton Club opened as a speakeasy nightclub in Harlem. Owners were New York ganglords Owney “The Killer” Madden and George “Big Frenchy” DeMange. Duke Ellington’s orchestra highlighted the opening night. When other gangsters tried to open a rival The Plantation Club Owney had his henchmen demolish the place. The Cotton Club was one of the great centers of the Harlem Renaissance, but African Americans were segregated from eating or drinking at the tables. Even W.C. Handy was once refused.

1931- James Whale’s macabre masterpiece film “Frankenstein” opened at the Mayfair theater in NY. English actor William Henry Pratt renamed Boris Karloff played the monster.

1932-BEFORE RUSH AND O’REILLY-“Good Evening Mr & Mrs North and South America and All the Ships at Sea! Let’s Go To Press!” Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell began his famous radio broadcasts on the NBC Blue Networks. Winchell became one of the most powerful voices in American society and politics for 23 years, later a strong voice of Anti-Communism and supporter of Joe McCarthy.

He once revealed his secret of his rapid fire delivery. Before a broadcast he would drink a large amount of water and the need to urinate made him talk faster.

1941- As Admiral Nagumo's carrier fleet approached Pearl Harbor, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox assured news reporters : "No matter what happens, the US Navy will not be caught napping !"

1941- film "Mr. Bug Goes to Town"-opened. Max Fleischer's last gamble to keep up with Disney and keep his studio alive. However the events of Pearl Harbor three days later not only sink the American Navy, but also Hoppity's box office and Paramount puts Max out of business.



1948- “Hey...Stella !! A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway with Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.

1950- President Truman gives General MacArthur in Korea direct orders not to open his big mouth and make any more public statements about the conduct of the war without checking with Washington first ! MacArthur was used to being on his own during World War Two and as proconsul of occupied Japan and didn't fret about being his own diplomatic corps as well as general. But now everything Dugout Doug said got him into trouble. He had been making statements in press that the U.S. should expand the Korean War into Communist China and Russia and he warned the Chinese that if they didn’t quit he planned to rain Atomic Fire upon their cities.

1952- A killer smog sickens thousands in the London area. Around 8,000 people become ill. London bans the use of coal, peat and wood fires to heat homes. A deadly smog covered Los Angeles in 1956 and accelerated the demand for development of unleaded gasoline.

1955- French mime Marcel Marceau appeared on American TV for the first time.

1958- Cocoa Puffs cereal invented.

1961- Someone at the Museum of Modern Art in NY noticed that they had hung Henri Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down. It had been that way for two months and until now nobody had noticed.

1963- The first Instant Replay camera used at a football game. It was an Army-Navy game.

1978- After the murder of Mayor Robert Mosconi, Dianne Feinstein became the first female Mayor of San Francisco.

1988- Actor Gary Busey almost died in a motorcycle accident on Olympic Blvd. In Los Angeles. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered massive head trauma. He later claimed to have an out-of-the-body experience at the scene.

1993- Rocker Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer at age 52.
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Yesterday’s Question: In the 1930’s, most of the Hollywood studio moguls were Jewish. Only one was not. Who was it?

Answer: Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox was of Dutch-Methodist ancestry.