August 20 is the birthdate of Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. His works include the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. His firm began designing the TWA terminal in 1956 with the directive to capture "the spirit of flight." The structure featured a wing-shaped roof, tube-shaped departure-arrival corridors wrapped in red carpet, and huge windows to view jets. It was the first with enclosed passenger jetways, closed circuit television, a central public address system, baggage carousels, electronic schedule board and baggage scales, and satellite-clustering of gates away from the main terminal. It was dedicated in 1962, a year after Saarinen's death.
August 19 is the birthdate of French painter Gustave Caillebotte. A lawyer from a wealthy Parisian family, he decided to pursue painting after receiving a large inheritance. Friend of Renoir and Monet (and a patron of the latter), he was an Impressionist but painted in a far more realistic manner. His masterpiece, “Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877), captures late 19th-century urban life at an intersection near Gare Saint-Lazare, when the new boulevards had altered Paris life. The large canvas also reflects Caillebotte’s interest in photography as an art form, particularly in its emphasis on point of focus, severe cropping and the sense of a casual yet contrived snapshot. He stopped showing his work at age 34.
Happy birthday to actor Robert Redford, who is 76. Pictured: in the role of Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men” (1976). Filming could not be done in the Washington Post’s newsroom, so an exact duplicate was built in Hollywood. For authenticity, several tons of assorted papers and trash from the desks of the actual newsroom were shipped to California for props. The movie introduced the phrase “Follow the money,” suggesting a trail of corruption, to popular discourse; it was not present in Woodward and Bernstein’s book or in any Watergate documentation.
August 17 is the birthdate of actress, writer and sex symbol, Mae West. On Broadway, she wrote and starred in a play she titled “Sex” (1926), which, though highly successful, landed her in a workhouse on morals charges; she promptly dined with the warden and his wife. West made her first movie, “Night After Night” (1932), at age 38, and was allowed to rewrite her lines. Thus, in her first scene: Hat check girl to Mae, “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!” Mae to hat check girl, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.” By 1935, West was the highest-paid person in the United States after William Randolph Hearst. Pictured: with Cary Grant in "I'm No Angel" (1933).
August 15 is the birthdate of Thomas Edward (T.E.) Lawrence, an archaeologist who joined the British Army in 1914. He gained fame as a liaison in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule in 1916-18 in what's now Syria and Jordan. That role earned him the appellation “Lawrence of Arabia,” a title used for David Lean’s epic film (1962) that won seven Academy Awards. Lawrence’s adventurous public image was fostered by his autobiographical account of the revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922). He lost nearly all of the huge manuscript while changing trains in England, then rewrote the book from memory, having destroyed his wartime notes.
August 15 is the 100th birthday of Julia Child. Her TV cooking show, "The French Chef," ran on National Educational Television (later PBS) from 1963 to 1973. The August 27, 1968, episode (rerun from sometime in 1965) ended with the unexpected collapse of an Apple Charlotte.
On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock Festival opened on a farm in Bethel, NY. By the next day, the crowd numbered 500,000. Woodstock was intended as a profit-making venture, but when it ended, the four young organizers were dazed by the size of the event, $1M in debt and faced with 70 lawsuits. Revenues from the hit documentary of the Festival in 1970 covered only part of their losses. Little known fact: one of the organizers apparently asked Roy Rogers to close Woodstock with his signature song, “Happy Trails (To You).” Roy declined. The final act was Jimi Hendrix.
August 14 is the birthdate of Italian film director Lina Wertmüller. She was the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing, for her film “Seven Beauties” (1975). Main characters in her films are dedicated anarchists, communists, feminists or all of the above, and action centers on political or socioeconomic conflicts.
August 13 is the birthdate of English film director and producer Alfred Hitchcock. He directed more than 50 films over a period of six decades, most of which include depictions of violence, miscellaneous crimes including murder, psychological examinations of character and strong sexual undertones. Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958) was just ranked as the best film of all time by the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine, displacing Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (1941), which had occupied the top spot in the once-a-decade list since 1962.
On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer model 5150 in New York. The first PC cost $3,000 ($7,500 at today’s prices). Advertising focused on "Keeping up with Modern Times," using the image of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp as an Everyman, to reduce public fear of the computer, demonstrate its simplicity of operation and popularize its applications. The 5150’s open architecture created an entire ecosystem around the PC, but it also led to the eventual demise of the IBM PC itself and the rise of many clone computers. Within a few years, the 5150 was history. That rhymes.
