Eric Hanson's Blog, page 22

Anne Frank

On June 6, 1944, 14 year-old Anne Frank is listening to the radio, in the secret annex at the address in Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, and hears the voice of General Eisenhower announcing the invasion of Europe. She records the news in her diary: “I have the feeling that friends are approaching.”

Anne Frank appears on pages 7, 29, 33, 35 and 45 in A Book of Ages.[image error]

D-Day

On June 5, 1944, 53 year-old Dwight Eisenhower knew that his success or failure in life, and the entire future of the free world, hinged upon the weather over the English Channel the next morning. In his pocket he had a carefully-worded address explaining his decision, and was prepared to take full responsibility for what happened next.

This might be my favorite entry in A Book of Ages, because it is a book about decisions and moments that become watersheds. Everything turned out all right. The

T. S. Eliot and Groucho have dinner

On June 3, 1964, T. S. Eliot sent a car to London’s Savoy Hotel to bring Mr. and Mrs. Groucho Marx to dinner. Eliot told Groucho that their friendship had greatly enhanced his credit with the grocer across the street. Eliot was 75, Groucho 73. Both were masters of the wisecrack, coiners of famous epigrams, now measuring out their lives in coffee spoons.

A Book of Ages is full of people meeting who you'd never thought met each other, or perhaps wondered if they had. Freud giving advice to Mahler,

Love & Marriage

In the month we all associate with weddings it's interesting to know that on June 3, 1989, 52 year-old Rolling Stone bass guitarist Bill Wyman married his 19 year-old girlfriend, Mandy Smith. The New York Daily News later reported that Wyman’s 28 year-old son was dating Smith’s 40 year-old mother. If they too had married, Wyman’s wife would have been her own stepmother-in-law and Wyman would have been his son’s stepson-in-law.

The Stones appear eleven times in A Book of Ages, the Who five times,

Fellow Travelers

In June 1943, 27 year-old Saul Bellow was fired from a film-reviewing job at Time magazine by fellow-traveler Whittaker Chambers. It’s said that Chambers disliked Bellow’s assessment of the poet Wordsworth. Bellow was able to find another job at Encyclopedia Britannica.

Saul Bellow appears six times in A Book of Ages. Whittaker Chambers twice, most famously at age 47 when he gives the House Un-American Activities Committee a tour of the pumpkin patch on his farm in Maryland.[image error]

Marilyn

Today is the birthday of Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson at Los Angeles County Hospital in 1926, but baptized Norma Jeane Baker. Because of her mother's mental illness, Marilyn's childhood was spent in a series of foster homes. She lived with her mother for the first time, and only briefly, when she was eight years-old, in a house was just of Highland Avenue in Hollywood.

Monroe appears eight times in A Book of Ages, marrying at 16; at 19 dyeing her hair blonde and signing a $125-a-we

Reliability

The last Model T automobile rolled off the assembly line on this day in 1927. Ford had produced 15,007,003 of them. Henry Ford was 64.

He'd formed the Ford Motor Company when he was 40. Ten years later he began building the Model T on an assembly line modeled after the disassembly line that Armour & Co. used to turn hogs into canned hams. In 1914 Ford began paying his workers the preposterous wage of $5 per eight-hour day. The auto worker was suddenly able to afford to buy what he made; as revol

007

Today's the birthday of Ian Fleming, the author of twelve James Bond novels, born in the posh Mayfair neighborhood of London in 1908. He appears seven times in A Book of Ages. Being blackballed from a social club at Eton, engaging in adultery and espionage (sometimes simultaneously) purchasing a book about the birds of the West Indies by an ornithologist named James Bond, and finally inventing the elaborate and enduring male fantasy which finally made him rich. A suave, companionable but cold-bl

Famous Childhoods

Watching eight adorable children tumble across the TV screen puts me in mind of earlier versions of the same thing. I sometimes wonder what America will be remembered for. Will it be Coca Cola or baseball or will it be famous children? They are the quintessential American product.

It's a familiar story: a family hoping to change its luck thrusts the cute youngster on the stage. Child saves the family farm. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney putting on a show in the old barn were only re-enacting the

The Big Bad Wolf

On this date in 1933 Walt Disney released an animated short featuring three enterprising pigs. Homeowners, if you will. The perils of home ownership and finance were something Americans had become deeply aware of since the onset of the Depression four years earlier. The film is most famous for the song it introduced. "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" expressed a new, almost jaunty, hopefulness. FDR had been in office for 84 days. The wolf might still be at the door but people had a new song to