October
13, 2021
William
Shatner goes to space
Actor
William Shatner—best known for his iconic “Star Trek” role as Captain
Kirk—boards Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space shuttle with three other people, and
becomes the oldest living person to travel into space at age 90. News
stations broadcast the
historic launch.As
exciting as exploring space may seem, despite the dangers, Shatner returned
from his adventure with a surprise emotion: grief. He said the journey into
space filled him with “overwhelming sadness.”
In
his memoir Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,
Shatner says that he felt anxious when the space-flight day arrived, despite
numerous preparatory simulations and training courses that he took with his
fellow voyagers: Glen de Vries, a tech mogul; Audrey Powers, Blue Origin's vice
president; and Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer.
jShatner
said he kept thinking about the Hindenburg disaster,
when an airship crashed on May 6, 1937 in New Jersey. Yet he was committed to
the flight, so he pushed himself to do it, despite doubts about whether his
nonagenarian’s body could handle it. The g-pressure increased to painful levels
right after takeoff. Then, the shuttle reached the point beyond gravity where
the crew was weightless, and while his fellow travelers were enjoying floating
around the vessel, Shatner just wanted to get to a window and look at what was
outside.
“I
love the mystery of the universe,” Shatner wrote in his book. “I love all the
questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and
hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later;
black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas
thought to be devoid of matter entirely … all of that has thrilled me for
years.”
Then,
after a few moments of looking out the window, Shatner felt sadness about the
destruction of the Earth because of mankind’s interference.
“But
when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no
majestic awe to behold … all I saw was death,” Shatner wrote. “I saw a cold,
dark, black emptiness.”
The surprise grief Shatner felt, he wrote, is not
uncommon among astronauts, including Sally Ride. It’s called the “Overview Effect,” which is what happens when a space traveler
views the Earth from orbit and feels the overwhelming awareness of our planet’s
fragility. Author Frank White is credited with coining the term in 1987 when he
wrote in his book The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human
Evolution: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those
that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and
concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and
the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
October 15, 1951
TV's first long-running sitcom hit, I Love Lucy.
Ball starred as a ditzy
wife on the radio show My Favorite Husband from 1948 to 1951. CBS
decided to launch the popular series on the relatively new medium of TV. Lucy
insisted Desi be cast as her husband in the TV version, though the network
executives said no one would believe the couple were married. Desi and Lucy performed
before live audiences and filmed a pilot, convincing network executives that
audiences responded well to their act, and CBS cast Desi for the show.At the time, most television shows were broadcast live from New York City,
and a low-quality 35mm or 16mm
kinescope print was made of the show to
broadcast it in other time zones. Because Ball was pregnant, she and Arnaz
insisted on filming the show in Hollywood.
The duo, along with co-creator Jess Oppenheimer, then decided to shoot the
show on 35 mm film in front of a studio audience, with three cameras, a technique now standard for
most present-day sitcoms. The result was a much sharper image than other shows
of the time, and the audience reactions were far more authentic than the "canned laughter" used on most filmed
sitcoms of the time. The technique was not completely new — another CBS comedy
series, Amos 'n' Andy,
which debuted four months earlier, was already being filmed at Hal Roach Studios with three 35mm cameras
to save time and money. Hal Roach Studios was also used for filming at least
two other TV comedies as early as 1950, both airing on ABC, namely Stu Erwin's The
Trouble with Father, and the TV version of Beulah; the original
1949/50 Jackie Gleason TV version of The Life of Riley on NBC was also
done on film, not live. There were also some dramatic TV shows pre-dating I
Love Lucy which were also filmed, not live. But I Love Lucy was the
first show to use this film technique in front of a studio audience.
Arnaz persuaded Karl Freund, an Academy Award -winning cinematographer of
such films as Metropolis
(1927), Dracula (1931), and The Good Earth
(1937), as well as director of The Mummy
(1932), to be the series' cinematographer.
Scenes were often performed in sequence, as a play would be, which was
unusual for comedies at that time. Retakes were rare and dialogue mistakes were
often played off for the sake of continuity.
I
Love Lucy became one of the most
popular TV situation comedies in history, ranking in the top three shows for
six years and turning the couple's production company, Desilu, into a
multimillion-dollar business. Ball became president of the company in 1960,
after she and Desi divorced. She also starred in several other "Lucy"
shows, including The Lucy Show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for six
seasons, and Here's Lucy, in which she starred with her two children
until the show was cancelled in 1974. A later show, Life with Lucy,
featuring Lucy as a grandmother, was cancelled after only eight episodes. Ball
worked little in the last years of her life. She died of congestive heart
failure following open-heart surgery in 1989.
October 16, 1946
Suzanne Somers is
born Suzanne Marie Mahoney.
The American actress, author and businesswoman, best known for her roles on Three's Company and Step by Step.
Somers later became the author of a series of best-selling self-help books, including Ageless: The
Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (2006), a book about bioidentical
hormone replacement therapy. She has also released two
autobiographies, four diet books, and a book of poetry entitled "Touch
Me" (1980). She currently features items of her design on the Home Shopping
Network. During the 1980s, Somers became a Las Vegas entertainer. She was the
spokeswoman for the Thighmaster, a
piece of exercise equipment
that is squeezed between one's thighs. Thighmaster was
one of the first products responsible for launching the infomercial concept. During this period of
her career, she also performed for U.S. servicemen overseas.
October
13, 2021
William
Shatner goes to space
As
exciting as exploring space may seem, despite the dangers, Shatner returned
from his adventure with a surprise emotion: grief. He said the journey into
space filled him with “overwhelming sadness.”
In
his memoir Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,
Shatner says that he felt anxious when the space-flight day arrived, despite
numerous preparatory simulations and training courses that he took with his
fellow voyagers: Glen de Vries, a tech mogul; Audrey Powers, Blue Origin's vice
president; and Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer.
jShatner
said he kept thinking about the Hindenburg disaster,
when an airship crashed on May 6, 1937 in New Jersey. Yet he was committed to
the flight, so he pushed himself to do it, despite doubts about whether his
nonagenarian’s body could handle it. The g-pressure increased to painful levels
right after takeoff. Then, the shuttle reached the point beyond gravity where
the crew was weightless, and while his fellow travelers were enjoying floating
around the vessel, Shatner just wanted to get to a window and look at what was
outside.
“I
love the mystery of the universe,” Shatner wrote in his book. “I love all the
questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and
hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later;
black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas
thought to be devoid of matter entirely … all of that has thrilled me for
years.”
Then,
after a few moments of looking out the window, Shatner felt sadness about the
destruction of the Earth because of mankind’s interference.
“But when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold … all I saw was death,” Shatner wrote. “I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness.”
The surprise grief Shatner felt, he wrote, is not uncommon among astronauts, including Sally Ride. It’s called the “Overview Effect,” which is what happens when a space traveler views the Earth from orbit and feels the overwhelming awareness of our planet’s fragility. Author Frank White is credited with coining the term in 1987 when he wrote in his book The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
October 15, 1951
TV's first long-running sitcom hit, I Love Lucy.
At the time, most television shows were broadcast live from New York City,
and a low-quality 35mm or 16mm
kinescope print was made of the show to
broadcast it in other time zones. Because Ball was pregnant, she and Arnaz
insisted on filming the show in Hollywood.
The duo, along with co-creator Jess Oppenheimer, then decided to shoot the
show on 35 mm film in front of a studio audience, with three cameras, a technique now standard for
most present-day sitcoms. The result was a much sharper image than other shows
of the time, and the audience reactions were far more authentic than the "canned laughter" used on most filmed
sitcoms of the time. The technique was not completely new — another CBS comedy
series, Amos 'n' Andy,
which debuted four months earlier, was already being filmed at Hal Roach Studios with three 35mm cameras
to save time and money. Hal Roach Studios was also used for filming at least
two other TV comedies as early as 1950, both airing on ABC, namely Stu Erwin's The
Trouble with Father, and the TV version of Beulah; the original
1949/50 Jackie Gleason TV version of The Life of Riley on NBC was also
done on film, not live. There were also some dramatic TV shows pre-dating I
Love Lucy which were also filmed, not live. But I Love Lucy was the
first show to use this film technique in front of a studio audience.
Arnaz persuaded Karl Freund, an Academy Award -winning cinematographer of
such films as Metropolis
(1927), Dracula (1931), and The Good Earth
(1937), as well as director of The Mummy
(1932), to be the series' cinematographer.
Scenes were often performed in sequence, as a play would be, which was
unusual for comedies at that time. Retakes were rare and dialogue mistakes were
often played off for the sake of continuity.
I
Love Lucy became one of the most
popular TV situation comedies in history, ranking in the top three shows for
six years and turning the couple's production company, Desilu, into a
multimillion-dollar business. Ball became president of the company in 1960,
after she and Desi divorced. She also starred in several other "Lucy"
shows, including The Lucy Show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for six
seasons, and Here's Lucy, in which she starred with her two children
until the show was cancelled in 1974. A later show, Life with Lucy,
featuring Lucy as a grandmother, was cancelled after only eight episodes. Ball
worked little in the last years of her life. She died of congestive heart
failure following open-heart surgery in 1989.
October 16, 1946
Suzanne Somers is born Suzanne Marie Mahoney.
