March 4, 1994
John Candy dies.
The larger-than-life comedic star John Candy dies suddenly of a heart attack on this day in 1994, at the age of 43. At the time of his death, he was living near Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, a Western comedy co-starring the comedian Richard Lewis.
Born in 1950, Candy's first professional acting work was in children's
theater in his native Canada. In 1972, he was accepted into the prestigious
Second City comedy troupe in Toronto, where he would become a regular writer
and performer for the group's television program, SCTV, alongside other
rising comics like Eugene Levy (later Candy's co-star in Splash) and
Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters). When SCTV moved to network
television in 1981, Candy moved with it; that year and the next, he won Emmy
Awards for writing for the show. Candy's recurring (and most famous) SCTV persona
was Yosh Shmenge, a clarinet player in a polka band. He would reprise the
character in a mock documentary, The Last Polka, on HBO in 1985 and
would also play a polka musician in the smash hit Home Alone (1990).
Candy made his big break into movies with Splash (1984), in which he
stole most of his scenes as the idle, high-living brother of the main
character, played by Tom Hanks. The film, directed by Ron Howard, was a smash
hit, jump-starting the careers of Candy, Hanks, Darryl Hannah and Levy. In one
particularly memorable scene, Candy throws himself with abandon around a
racquetball court, using his hefty frame to full comedic effect. Six-foot-three
and weighing as much as 275 pounds, he struggled with dieting over the years,
but his heft undoubtedly contributed to his success as a comic performer.
After Splash, Candy was in high demand as a lovable oaf. He starred
in a number of box-office hits over the next 10 years, including Spaceballs
(1987), and collaborations with the writer, producer and director John Hughes
in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988)
and Uncle Buck (1989). A devoted sports fan and co-owner of the Toronto
Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, he was also part owner of House of
Blues, with the actors Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. In 1993, Candy won praise
for his role as the sensitive coach of an unlikely Jamaican bobsled team in Cool
Runnings (1993).
At the time of his death, Candy had just completed his directorial debut,
the Fox Television movie comedy Hostage for a Day. He had performed
two-thirds of his scenes in Wagons East, which was finished after the
filmmakers' insurance company paid a reported $15 million settlement. Another
recently wrapped movie, Canadian Bacon, was released in 1995. Candy was
survived by his wife, Rosemary, and their two children, Jennifer and
Christopher.
March 8th, 1974
The last episode The Brady Bunch aired
"The Hair-Brained Scheme"
Bobby is convinced he can get rich by selling Neat & Natural Hair Tonic. Bobby sells Greg a container which turns Greg's hair bright orange on the eve of his high school commencement. Greg is forced to go to the beauty parlor and dye his hair back before going to graduation.
Note: Robert Reed does not appear in this episode, due to dispute over the story involving the non-FDA approved bottle of hair tonic, which he thought was inane slapstick. After Reed wrote a large memo to the staff and Paramount, Sherwood Schwartz wrote him out of the episode.
March 9,
1954
Edward R. Murrow See it Now
"A Report on
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy"
Edward R. Murrow may not have scored the first blow against Joseph McCarthy, but he landed a decisive one. For that, he always will be linked inextricably with the Wisconsin senator, and remembered by Americans as a champion of liberty and democracy. As early as 1950, Murrow observed on the air that "the weight of the public testimony has tended to show that so far, Senator McCarthy's charges [againstsuspected communist subversives] are unproven." On March 9, 1954, Murrow, then the most respected journalist in America, engaged in a tough exposé of the senator and his tactics; the last paragraphs of his presentation are indelibly etched into our history as is the rhetoric of McCarthy himself. In the interest of the “fairness doctrine,” McCarthy was given an equal amount of time for a rebuttal, which he delivered in his classic acerbic style on April 6, 1954. This was the beginning of McCarthy’s downfall.
March 9, 1959
The International Toy Fair in New York premiered Barbie.
That event was followed by 50 years of Barbie commercials during Saturday morning cartoons.
No comments:
Post a Comment