March 31: "Oklahoma!"

On this date in History ..... 1943:

A Broadway show opened that many felt was a flop from the start and wouldn’t make it. In fact, a newspaper columnist saw a preview and sent the to his paper, a message about the show of “No girls.  No legs.  No chance.”

But on March 31, 1943, the show that had been originally titled “Away We Go” opened on Broadway under the new title of “Oklahoma!” and began a run that would last 15 years and set a Broadway record of 2212 performances.

Why was the show considered risky?  To start with, there were no big name stars in the show.  It was also the first time that Rogers teamed up with Hammerstein. It also chanced combining “music and dance in service with storytelling rather than spectacle.”  At the time, most Broadway shows opened with a huge musical number but this show opened with a lone cowboy singing about the weather and corn with the song "Oh What a Beautiful Morning". 

The title song “Oklahoma!” had been changed from a solo number to a “full cast show stopper” just weeks before the opening.   At the end of the show, the applause was so deafening and it just kept on and on.  The cast returned for two encores. Members of the cast didn’t think they would ever stop applauding.

It was the first Broadway musical in which every single song had a direct relation to the plot, and in which there were none that were simply musical interludes.  The 1955 movie was Shirley Jones’s film debut. The film’s soundtrack album became one of the most successful movie musical albums ever released and continues to be a popular seller today.


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March 30: Seward's Folly

On this date in History .... 1867:

William Seward, U.S. Secretary of State, signs a treaty with Russia to purchase the vast landmass of Alaska, adding over half a million square miles to the U.S.

 

He had trouble convincing Congress of the value of the deal, even with a purchase price of about two cents an acre.  The Senate finally ratified the deal by just one vote. Congress and the press called it “Seward’s Folly” and President Andrew Jacksons “polar bear garden.” 

 

The territory was slow to become populated by the U.S. citizenry (only about 2000 people lived there in 1867), but when gold was discovered about 30 years later, there became a huge influx of people to the new territory. Between 1890 and 1900, the population doubled from around 30,000 to 63,000.  Less than 1% of those who ventured to Alaska came away rich with gold.

March 29: The National Road

On this date in History .... 1806:

 

Congress authorizes a survey to begin constructing the Cumberland Road, which began in Cumberland Maryland and stretched west.

 

The Army Corp of Engineers did the survey and also did the construction which started in 1811. It took seven years to complete the road through the Appalachians to Wheeling, W. Virginia. 

 

Stagecoaches and other traffic filled the road and by 1850 the road, which had earned the name “The National Road”, had extended all the way west to Indianapolis. The road today is known as U.S. 40 and stretches to California. 

 

As a footnote to this story, you may recall my October 28^th posting/blog about the Madonna of the Trail statues that were placed along The National Road.

 

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March 28: Three Mile Island

On this date in History ..... 1979:

The worst nuclear accident in U.S. commercial nuclear history occurred at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

The failure was a mechanical failure compounded by “design oversight” which caused plant operators’ failure to recognize the “loss of coolant” accident.  It was a hidden indicator light that caused the operator to just override the cooling system. The loss of nuclear release was so small that not even one case of cancer was attributed to this accident, even tho’ the accident was rated 5 on a scale of 7 on the Nuclear Accident Scale.

The clean-up took 14 years and over $1 billion. Ironically, the accident occurred just 12 days after the release of the movie “The China Syndrome” about a nuclear reactor incident.

March 26: Gary Heidnik's Torture Chamber

On this date in History ..... 1987:

Philadelphia police respond to a 9-1-1 call and find a torture chamber in the basement of a former mental patient where three naked women were chained to pipes. 

Gary Heidnik was a mental patient and sex offender who had become a wealthy investor, driving a Rolls Royce and amassing over half a million dollars from his investments.  He had avoided paying any taxes by becoming a self-appointed bishop of his own church. A sign hung outside the torture chamber home identifying it as a church. 

He papered some of his walls in the house with one and five dollar bills, and had glued pennies over about half of the kitchen walls.

In 1986 he began kidnapping women for his "harem". He told his first victim of his intent to get ten women and have each of them bear him a child.  He wanted to have a large family of ten children.

The women barely survived on the food he gave them which ranged from bread and water to stale hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches, He finally just solved the food problem by feeding them canned dog food, beating the women until they ate it.

He killed one woman by putting her in a pit of water with a live electrical wire; another by starving her to death while remained chained to the wall; another by dismembering her, cooking and feeding body parts to the other captives.

He was convincted in 1988, received the death sentence and was executed in 1999.

March 25: Elvis & the USS Arizona

On this date in History ..... 1961:

Elvis Presley performs a charity concert to raise money for the building of the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. 

 

The fundraising for the memorial had slowed down tremendously. Elvis’s concert raised over $50,000 but more important than that, it lit a second fire under the fundraising efforts and the donations again began pouring in, reaching the $500,000 that was needed.  One year later, on Memorial Day in 1962, the memorial was dedicated. Two days after the concert, Elvis began filming the movie “Blue Hawaii”. 

 

In 1973, Elvis’s 1973 pre-broadcast rehearsal show for the “Aloha from Hawaii” concert was free but asked that attendees pay what they could. The money went to the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in Hawaii.

March 24: "The Godfather"

On this date in History .... 1972:

The movie “The Godfather” is released.  Coming in way over its $2M budget at an estimated $6M, it grossed almost $250M (as of 1997), becoming the highest grossing movie, a record that had been held by “Gone With the Wind” since 1939. (“Jaws” displaced Godfather in 1975). While previous Mafia movies had looked at the gangs from the perspective of an outraged outsider, this movie presents the gangster's perspective of the Mafia as a response to corrupt society. Some interesting trivia includes:

· The studio thought more violence would help the “dark, boring” movie, so the scene where Connie smashed dishes was added just for this reason. 

· The quote “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” was ranked the #2 movie quote, following Rhett Butler’s “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”  ( click here to see the clip.) 

· The studio also wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal for the part of Michael, but director Francis Ford Coppola held out for Pacino, who looked more Italian-American. (seriously? Some studio head honestly said, “Let’s get some blonde, California-beach type of guy to play the Italian part!”?)

· The cat that Brando holds in the opening scene was just some cat that had been hanging out the set. It was dropped in Brando’s lap at the last minute.

· The horse head, which drew great criticism from animal rights groups, was sent to the studio from a dog food company.  A horse was not specifically killed for this scene.

· Real life crime-family members altered their actions to that in the movie, i.e. one who would swear and use poor grammar began to copy Corleone by speaking properly and philosophizing more.