Mark Scott Smith's Blog: Enemy in the Mirror, page 75

Tales of the South Pacific

In 1948 James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for his series of short stories entitled Tales of the South Pacific. 

Derived from his experience with the US Navy in the New Hebrides Islands during the Pacific Campaign of World War II, the fascinating stories focus on interactions between interconnected American characters and a variety of indigenous people, immigrants and colonists in the islands.

 

 

 

In 1949 the book was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein into the Broadway musical South Pacific. Here is a clip from a 2008 revival.

 

 

In 1958 it was produced as the movie South Pacific starring Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi  (1869 –1948) led Indians in a nonviolent independence movement from British colonization. Known worldwide by his honorific Sanskrit title Mahātmā (high-souled, venerable) he was also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for father) and Gandhiji,

 

 

 

Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948 by right-wing conservative Hindu Nationalists who were outraged by Gandhi’s perceived appeasement of Muslims.

 

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Miracle On 34TH Street

 

Miracle on 34th Street  was a 1947 film written and directed by George Seaton and based on a story by Valentine Davies. It stars , , a very young and  as the charming Kris Kringle.

The heartwarming story, about a Macy’s department store Santa Claus who claims to be the real Chris Pringle, has become a  seasonal favorite in America.

Edmund Gwenn received an Academy Award for best actor in a supporting role; and Valentine Davies and George Seaton received awards for best original story, writing and screenplay.

 

A  modern remake of the film was released in 1994 – but Rotten Tomatoes gave it only 56% on the tomatometer (vs. 96% for the original 1947 version) and 62% audience score (vs. 87% for 1947 version).

 

In 2009 the 1947 film was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

 

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Meet The Press

Meet the Press has had the longest run of any television program in the United States. Although it began as a Saturday night program moderated by the charmingly Southern-accented Martha Rountree, it ultimately became a popular NBC Sunday morning show hosted by a series of male broadcasters.

Martha Rountree
1947–1953


Ned Brooks
1953–1965


Lawrence E. Spivak
1966–1975


Bill Monroe
1975–1984


Roger Mudd and Marvin Kalb

(co-moderators)
1984–1985


Marvin Kalb
1985–1987


Chris Wallace
1987–1988


Garrick Utley
1989–1991


Tim Russert
1991–2008


Tom Brokaw
2008


David Gregory
2008–2014


Chuck Todd
2014–present

 

 Recently,Tom Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell  reviewed the legacy of John McCain on Meet the Press .

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Spruce Goose

The largest wooden airplane ever constructed, the Spruce Goose was actually made from birch.  In the face of staggering losses to German U-boats in 1942, the steel magnate and shipbuilder Henry Kaiser asked Howard Hughes to design and build a massive flying transport.

Specifications:  

 crew: 3
 length 218 feet
 wingspan 320 feet
 height 79 feet
 Pratt and Whitney R-4360 radial engine, 4000 HP
 cruising speed 250 mph
 range 3000 miles
 ceiling 20,900 feet

 

The  airplane flew only once on November 2, 1947. With Hughes at the controls, the Spruce Goose flew just over one mile at an altitude of 70 feet for one minute.

After Kaiser withdrew from the project, Hughes retained a full crew to maintain the Spruce Goose in a climate-controlled hangar up until his death in 1976.

 

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Brigadoon

 

Brigadoon, a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe,  premiered on Broadway in 1947 and ran for 581 performances.  A 1954 film version starred Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, and a 1966 television version starred Robert Goulet and Peter Falk.

In the show, the American tourist Tommy  falls in love with Fiona whom he discovers in a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years.  Many of the tunes of Brigadoon, such as  Almost Like Being in Love  and Come To Me, Bend To Me are lovely and memorable.

This performance by Adam Lambert is breathtaking.

 

 

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Kon-Tiki

 

Inspired by reports from Spanish Conquistadors of Inca rafts, native legends and archaeological evidence suggesting contact between South America and Polynesia, the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. made a balsa wood raft journey across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Polynesian islands in 1947. The raft was named Kon-Tiki, another name for the Inca sun god  Viracocha.

 

 A dramatized film version of the voyage received many awards in 2012.

 

Heyerdahl’s popular book The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas was translated into 70 languages.

 

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Candid Camera

St. Louis Post Dispatch

In 1947 Allen Funt broadcast The Candid Microphone radio show, featuring practical jokes and situations, on ABC radio.

 

From 1948 -1954  CANDID MICROPHONE, hosted by Allen Funt, were produced by Ben and George Blake of the Columbia Movie Shorts Department.

 

 

As a hidden camera reality television series. Candid Camera appeared on television from 1948 until 2014.

 

 Here are more clips 

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Transistor Invented

 

In 1925, a Canadian patent was filed for the field-effect transistor principle by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld –  but no research was published, and his work was ignored by industry. In 1934, another field-effect transistor was patented by the German physicist Oskar Heil.  While there was no evidence any of these devices were built, subsequent work in the 1990s proved one of Lilienfeld’s designs to be effective.

During World War II, efforts to produce extremely pure germanium (a chemical element and semicondiuctor) “crystal” mixer diodes for radar and microwave units, preceded the development of the transistor.

After the war, a Bell laboratory team failed in several attempts to build a triode-like semiconductor device. In 1947 Bell Laboratory’s William Shockley and a co-worker Gerald Pearson built a successful triode-like semiconductor device that became known as the transistor.

Source: History of the transistor

 

WHAT IS A TRANSISTOR?

 A transistor is a miniature electronic device that acts either as an amplifier or a switch. When it works as an amplifier, it takes in a tiny electric current at one end (an input current) and produces a much bigger electric current (an output current) at the other. When it works as a switch, a tiny electric current flowing through one part of a transistor can make a much bigger current flow through another part of it.

 

 

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Hollywood Black List

In October 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (created in 1938) re-convened in Washington D.C. for public hearings on alleged communist infiltration within the American motion picture industry.

50 top Hollywood executives decided to suspend those who opposed the hearings (the “Hollywood Ten“) until their acquittal or declaration that they were not Communists. Artists and writers were barred from work if they refused to testify, expressed sympathy for Communism or held real/alleged membership in the  American Communist Party.

 

Hollywood Ten (Photofest)

in November 1947 Congress cited the Hollywood Ten as  being in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry. In April 1948, each of the Hollywood Ten was found guilty and sentenced to spend a year in prison and pay a $1,000 fine.

The blacklist lasted until 1960, when Dalton Trumbo (a member of the Hollywood 10) was credited as the screenwriter of the highly successful film Exodus, and later acknowledged as author of the screenplay for the movie Spartacus. However,  many of those blacklisted, remained barred from work in Hollywood for several  more years;

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