While my mother continued to spend the next few days in hospital recovering from my birth, a noteworthy moment in the history of space travel took place.
Mankind landed on the moon for the sixth and final time, as the Apollo 17 lunar module, which had launched on December 7, touched down at the Taurus-Litrow crater at 1:54 p.m. Houston time. The three-member crew consisted of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module pilot Harrison Schmidt. The first moonwalk of the mission began approximately four hours after landing, at about 6:55 p.m.
Back on Earth, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union declared "Don't Buy Farah Day," which asked Americans nationwide to boycott the non-union Farah Manufacturing, one of the largest clothing makers in the United States, in protest over low wages and benefits. During the course of a strike that lasted from May 1972 to March 1974, Farah's sales dropped by twenty million dollars.
NHL player Daniel Alfredsson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. He would grow up to play for the Ottawa Senators and, later, the Detroit Red Wings.
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More Hot Rocks (big hits and fazed cookies) featured the hits that could not be shoehorned onto its predecessor, as well as many tracks that until now had only been available in the UK. The record eventually reached #9 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S. alone.
On a personal note, this album is one I have in my collection, making More Hot Rocks the first album that was released in my lifetime that I own.
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As I wrote in the previous blog entry, Hollywood's standard practice of releasing new movies into theaters on Fridays didn't exist prior to the mid-'70s, and, as such, new films could open any day of the week. Therefore, it wasn't uncommon in the early '70s for one to find, on any given week, a different new release opening in theaters every day, several days in a row. Such was the case during the first week I was born, with new films released every day from December 10-13. The second of those films, released when I was but three days old, was Man of La Mancha.
Man of La Mancha was based on the stage musical by Dale Wasserman, with music and lyrics by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion, which in turn was inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. The play had won numerous Tony Awards during its original Broadway production and has played in many other countries around the world. The show's success made it inevitable that a Hollywood film adaptation would eventually follow.
The film version starred Peter O'Toole as both Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote, Sophia Loren as the scullery maid and prostitute Aldonza, whom the delusional Don Quixote idolizes as "Dulcinea," and James Coco as both Cervantes' manservant and Don Quixote's "squire," Sancho Panza. The only member of the original Broadway cast to reprise his role was Gino Conforti, who played The Barber.
The movie had a troubled production history, with numerous casting changes, disputes between the play's creators and United Artists executives, and a revolving door of screenwriters and directors. (Arthur Hiller was the final, credited director.) As such, it's hardly surprising that the final product, like most films that go through several creative hands, was perceived as a colossal mess and a failure, and it received overwhelmingly negative reviews from most film critics. Even Dale Wasserman, the play's creator, strongly disliked the film, calling it "exaggerated" and "phony."
As for my own opinion of the film, although I liked Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren's performances, I thought the entire production reeked of artifice and cheap sentiment, the pacing was poor and plodding, the production design was sub-par, and the staging of the musical numbers lacked any real energy. I've never seen the original stage production, but I'm sure the material was much better served on the stage than it was on the screen.
I'd never seen the film version of Man of La Mancha before now. It was just one of those movies I'd never gotten around to seeing nor had any inclination to check out, even though Peter O'Toole is an actor I've always admired. When was the last time you were at a video store and either said or overheard someone saying, "Hey, let's rent Man of La Mancha!"? Now that I have seen it for the purposes of the Retrospective, I can now be thankful that I will never have any other reason to slog through it again.
This week's episode (#12), entitled "A Bloody Shade of Blue," was written by William Binn and directed by TV veteran E.W. Swackhamer. (Always loved that name.) The plot involved a pair of snipers who are shooting indiscriminately at anyone dressed in a police uniform. Webster becomes their most recent target and, although he survives the attempt on his life, he temporarily loses his eyesight.
And finally, on late-night TV, Johnny Carson continued to dominate the airwaves as host of The Tonight Show, the only late-night talk-show on television. Johnny's guests that night were legendary comedian Steve Allen (who also happened to guest star on tonight's episode of Laugh-In) and Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman, creator of the Stillman Diet.
Man of La Mancha was based on the stage musical by Dale Wasserman, with music and lyrics by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion, which in turn was inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. The play had won numerous Tony Awards during its original Broadway production and has played in many other countries around the world. The show's success made it inevitable that a Hollywood film adaptation would eventually follow.
The film version starred Peter O'Toole as both Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote, Sophia Loren as the scullery maid and prostitute Aldonza, whom the delusional Don Quixote idolizes as "Dulcinea," and James Coco as both Cervantes' manservant and Don Quixote's "squire," Sancho Panza. The only member of the original Broadway cast to reprise his role was Gino Conforti, who played The Barber.
The movie had a troubled production history, with numerous casting changes, disputes between the play's creators and United Artists executives, and a revolving door of screenwriters and directors. (Arthur Hiller was the final, credited director.) As such, it's hardly surprising that the final product, like most films that go through several creative hands, was perceived as a colossal mess and a failure, and it received overwhelmingly negative reviews from most film critics. Even Dale Wasserman, the play's creator, strongly disliked the film, calling it "exaggerated" and "phony."
As for my own opinion of the film, although I liked Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren's performances, I thought the entire production reeked of artifice and cheap sentiment, the pacing was poor and plodding, the production design was sub-par, and the staging of the musical numbers lacked any real energy. I've never seen the original stage production, but I'm sure the material was much better served on the stage than it was on the screen.
I'd never seen the film version of Man of La Mancha before now. It was just one of those movies I'd never gotten around to seeing nor had any inclination to check out, even though Peter O'Toole is an actor I've always admired. When was the last time you were at a video store and either said or overheard someone saying, "Hey, let's rent Man of La Mancha!"? Now that I have seen it for the purposes of the Retrospective, I can now be thankful that I will never have any other reason to slog through it again.
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Monday. The end of the weekend and the start of a new week. On TV, that meant the networks resumed their regular weekday programming.
Daytime television at this time consisted of children's shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company; game shows like The New Price is Right (with its new host, Bob Barker), The Newlywed Game, and The Hollywood Squares, among many others; daytime talk shows like Dinah's Place and The Mike Douglas Show; and soap operas such as All My Children, General Hospital, One Life to Live (on ABC) Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, Guiding Light (on CBS), and Days of Our Lives, The Doctors, and Another World (on NBC).
In the evening, CBS's primetime line-up consisted of new episodes of Gunsmoke (still on the air for an impressive 18th season!), Here's Lucy, and The Doris Day Show. NBC aired new episodes of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. And on ABC -- before NFL Monday Night Football, which broadcast a game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders (Oakland won, 24-16, for any interested parties) -- was the latest episode of their newest police drama, The Rookies.
Having begun as an ABC Movie of the Week back in March, The Rookies debuted as a weekly series on September 11. The show centered around three rookie police officers, Mike Danko (Sam Melville), Terry Webster (Georg Stanford Brown), and Willie Gillis (Michael Ontkean), and their superior officer/mentor, Lieutenant Ryker (Gerald S. O'Loughlin). Produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, each episode of the show would showcase highly dramatized versions of police cases and activities, often intertwined with the off-duty lives of the officers and their significant others, though Danko was the only rookie who was married, to Jill Danko (Kate Jackson), a registered nurse.
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| Back row: Michael Ontkean, Sam Melville, Georg Stanford Brown Front: a pre-Charlie's Angels Kate Jackson |
And finally, on late-night TV, Johnny Carson continued to dominate the airwaves as host of The Tonight Show, the only late-night talk-show on television. Johnny's guests that night were legendary comedian Steve Allen (who also happened to guest star on tonight's episode of Laugh-In) and Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman, creator of the Stillman Diet.
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