Princess Grace (Kelly) Dies

Daily Mirror dated Wednesday 15th September 1982

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Born into a rich Philadelphia family Grace Kelly took up acting at school. She went on to work in the theatre and first appeared on television in 1950. She made her film debut in ‘Fourteen Hours’ in 1951 and played Gary Cooper’s wife in ‘High Noon’ in 1952. She left TV acting behind when she took the role of the wife in Hitchcock’s ‘Dial M for Murder’.  She went on to make only 11 films, the last being, appropriately, ‘High Society’, then she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956. See this post.

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It is believed that she had a stroke whilst driving on the twisting mountain roads, so the men from British Leyland could sleep easy knowing that the reputation of Rover was untarnished.

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John DeLorean formed his car company in 1975 and, with financial backing from the British Government, started producing the gull-wing DMC-12 in Northern Ireland in 1981.

Within a year the company was in trouble. DeLorean himself was set-up by the FBI and the DEA who pretended to be investors with drug money to launder. He went to trial but was found not guilty due to entrapment. The car company went broke and into receivership.

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In 1982 the coal-miners accepted a 5.2% pay-rise and in doing so rejected their union leaders’, particularly Arthur Scargill’s, call to strike action. Two years later the announcement that 20 pits were to be closed triggered the 2 year long Miners’ Strike.

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On a family trip to Ayers Rock in Australia, 9 week-old Azaria Chamberlain disappeared. Her mother, Linda, claimed that a wild dog (dingo) had taken the baby.  No body was ever found.  Linda was tried for murder and her husband as an accessory after the fact.  They were both found guilty with Linda getting life in prison and the father a suspended sentence.

In 1986 a police hunt involved in a separate case found bits of Azaria’s clothing in a dingo lair at Ayers Rock. After further investigations both convictions were over-turned and Linda was released.

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The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II had taken place in May 1981, in St. Peter's Square. The Pope was shot 4 times by Mehmet Ali Agca who was caught immediately, and later sentenced to life in prison. He was pardoned by the Italian president at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in 2000.

As with all assassinations, conspiracy theories abound. Check out Wikipedia.

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Change the names and this could be from any decade since 1970.

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According the BBC Onthisday site –

19^th June 1982

The body of a top Italian banker has been found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.

            Known as God's banker for his links with the Vatican, 62-year-old Roberto Calvi was the chairman of 

               Banco Ambrosiano in Milan and a central figure in a complex web of international fraud and intrigue.

He had been missing for the last nine days before his body was discovered by a passer-by hanging from scaffolding on a riverside walk under the bridge.

Police are treating the death as suicide.

It was later revealed that Roberto Calvi was found with five bricks in his pockets and had in his possession about $14,000 in three different currencies.

On 23 July an inquest jury returned a verdict of suicide. This was overturned in 1983 when a second inquest delivered an open verdict on the death.

In October 2002 forensic experts appointed by Italian judges concluded that the banker had been murdered.

They said his neck showed no evidence of the injuries usually associated with death by hanging and his hands had never touched the stones found in the pockets of his clothes. American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was sought for questioning but was granted immunity as a Vatican employee. He retired in 1990 and died in 2006.

In October 2005 five people went on trial in Rome. They were Sardinian financier Flavio Carboni, his former girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig, Roman entrepreneur Ernesto Diotallevi, Calvi's former bodyguard, Silvano Vittor and convicted Cosa Nostra treasurer Pippo Calo.

They were acquitted in June 2007. 

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Just an excuse to mention that I once shared a lift with Botham, who I believe was a cricketer, in the St John’s Wood Hilton.  We were going down to breakfast and he had his own personal cameraman with him.

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Only one word – ‘Who?’

Get My 3 Kids Out Of Russia says Mrs Maclean

Sunday Pictorial dated Sunday 12th January 1958

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Donald Maclean was one of the Cambridge group, along with Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, who spied for Soviet Russia.

Maclean and Burgess defected to the USSR in 1951 having been alerted by MI6 agent Kim Philby that arrests were probable.

Maclean left his pregnant wife and two children behind, but they joined him in Moscow in 1953. Maclean’s heavy drinking and affairs, along with Melind’a dis-satisfaction with life in Russia, probably led to this plea to get her children back to England.  In fact they all stayed in Moscow until 1979 when she and the now grown up children left for the West. Donald Maclean died in Moscow in 1983 and Melinda died in New York in 2010.

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The 19-year-old au-pair from Holland, Mary Kriek, was found murdered in a ditch near Colchester. She disappeared on the 5th January 1958, after getting off a bus only yards away from the house where she was employed, and her body was found the next day 10 miles away. She had been viciously beaten about the head.  Despite a wide-ranging investigation the case remains, to this day, unsolved

In January 1961 the body of 20 year-old Jean Constable was found close to where Mary Kriek’s had been.

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R-875 or Dextromoramide was discovered in 1956 and was used to treat pain and, in combination with other drugs, as an anaesthetic. Its main proprietary name was Palfium but was discontinued in the UK in 2004 because of how addictive it was compared to morphine.

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It beggars belief that a member of the Local Council can be so out of touch with reality that he doesn’t realise that increasing someone’s rent from one sixth of their income to one third would cause financial problems. Actually, then as now, it doesn’t really surprise.

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The threat of Nuclear oblivion aside, the 1950’s were an optimistic time especially when it came to the benefits computers were going to bestow on our world. They would solve all the World’s problems, give us more leisure time than we’d know what to do with and even replace politicians. Pity the hardware looked like something out of an early episode of ‘Dr Who’.

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For only £10 9s 6d you can become the next Rock’n’Roll sensation, but don’t forget to pick a suitable name – Marty Wilde, Cuddly Dudley, Red Price, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager, Conway Twitty, Rory Storm, Wee Willy Harris, Billy Fury, Eden Kane, Screamin’ Lord Sutch – sorry all taken.

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I see a great answer for Alexander Armstrong’s  ‘Pointless’ quiz. If the question were to name as an obscure as possible presenter of London Palladium’s Beat the Clock surely the portly actor Robert Morley would get you a zero.

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The English Coronet Camera Co. introduced this stereo camera in 1953 and it produced 4 pairs of 3D photographs on a reel of 127 type film.

If you are interested (and know where to get some 127 film (and get it processed)) there are a couple of these cameras on E-bay at the time of posting.

Anyway I was a Scott's Porridge Oats lad myself. With the cream off the top of the milk and Golden Syrup! They hadn't invented cholesterol in 1958.

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If you want to hear this gem you’ll need a copy of the CD ‘Just About as Good as It Gets! Great British Skiffle Vol. 3’.  By the way the ‘B’ side of the single was that old whistle-along favourite ‘Boodle-Am-Shake’.  

Alcock and Brown Win Atlantic Prize

Daily Mail dated Monday June 16th 1919

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A back page rather than a front this time because the front is all adverts. This is the real news of the day. Flyers Alcock and Brown complete the first non-stop Atlantic crossing.

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The Viscount Northcliffe owned Daily Mail put up the prize of £10,000, which would be the equivalent of around £1,400,000 today

Captain Alcock didn’t live very long to spend the money; he was killed in a plane crash in December 1919.  A W Brown, on the other hand, lived until 1948.

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If you have ever moaned about the leg-room, food or anything else on a transatlantic flight try reading this account of Alcock and Brown’s experiences.

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This reads like something from a John Buchan novel but the real story was that IRA member Seán Hogan, was arrested on 12th May 1919 and was being moved by train to Cork when 8 IRA gunmen attacked the train at Knocklong and rescued Hogan.

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So 3000 people gathered and attacked a coffee shop, did extensive damage to the property and tried to lynch a ’negro’. So of course the Arab shop owner was charged with ‘allowing his premises to be conducted in a disorderly manner’.

See the post ‘A Week in April 1919’ for the Liverpool riot.

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Miss Chrissie White’s career of 186 films lasted from 1908 to 1933. She married her co-star Mr Henry Edwards and died in 1989 at the age of 94. 

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On the other hand the IMDB list only 3 films for Garrick Aitken, all made in 1919. Alas his leading part at 3 is lost in the mists of time.

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The R34 airship made her first flight on the 14th March 1919. The trip written about here lasted from the 17th to 20th June, and was followed, in July, by a transatlantic crossing taking 108 hours. I wonder if the in flight movies were ‘The Birth of a Nation’ followed by ‘Intolerance’? (they were both very long)

In 1921 she was written off after a forced landing in bad weather.

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Well I’ll be…  As a life long non-smoker I suppose this is why my subconscious interests are always well and truly suppressed.

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“By Gad, Sir… I betcha didn’t know I was a male model in me salad days, what!  That’s me on the right looking a proper prannie. Still it paid for the odd snort of cocaine, doncha know!”

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That’s a journey of 25 miles from just east of Guilford to Putney Bridge and it’s not the number of cars and motorbikes that amaze me, it’s the 217 bicycles he saw.  I wonder if they were all riding on the pavements.

Interesting arguments from J S Redmayne -

‘Nature never intended it’ – nor for men to fly (try telling that to Messrs Alcock and Brown)

‘great men and women spring from large families’ – ever heard of Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Franklin D Roosevelt, Hans Christian Andersen; all sibling-less children

‘nations that practice birth control decline’ – all nations decline over time. Ask the Greeks.

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A very good friend’s mother once told me that her father drove a Foden Steam Lorry in the 1920’s on a regular run from London to Nottingham and back.  It took 3 days each way.

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This is an advert for the British Heavyweight Boxing Championship bout between the current holder (since 26^th May 1919) Percy Goddard and Joe Beckett.  Beckett won the bout and held the title until 1923, when Goddard regained it and held it until 1926.

Beckett had originally taken the title off Bombadier Billy Wells who, for those old enough to remember, was the man who banged the giant gong at the beginning of all the J Arthur Rank films.   

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I am aware of cooking temperatures in the form of ‘Gas Mark 5’ and ‘200 degrees Centigrade’, but ‘a good clear fire’ is a new one on me.  Who was this recipe written for – cavemen?

Nixon Resigns

(London) Evening Standard dated Friday August 9th 1974

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Richard Milhous Nixon had been Dwight Eisenhower’s Vice President from 1953-1961, had run for President in 1960 against John F Kennedy and had lost, and finally won the 1968 Presidential Election against Hubert Humphrey.

On 17^th June 1972 there was a break-in at the Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate Complex and two Washington Post journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, investigated. They uncovered a link between the burglars and the White House.  At first the big question was did Nixon know the break-in was going to happen? This later became regardless of whether he knew, is the President trying to cover up White House involvement?

Nixon blustered his way through the next two years but, facing a Senate Impeachment trial on a charge of obstruction of justice, finally he resigned.

Even so he could still have been indicted on criminal charges relating to conspiracy to break into the Watergate, but in September 1974 the new President, Gerald Ford, controversially pardoned Nixon.

Only two Presidents actually faced Impeachment trials – Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 and both were acquitted.

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If you really want to you can listen to this speech on Youtube and read what you will into his choice of words and tone of voice. The HistoryCommons channel 2 part upload has the full speech.

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As predicted in this article front-runner Nelson Rockefeller became Ford’s Vice-President.

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 The film ‘All the President’s Men’ was released in 1976 starring Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Robert Redford as Woodward. The film won 4 Oscars including best supporting actor for Jason Robards. It also got 10 BAFTA nominations.

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Doris (Dolly) Kray was having an affair with George Ince who, in May 1973, had stood trial for the Barn Restaurant Murder that happened in 1972 in Braintree, Essex. Ince was found not guilty and part of his alibi was that he was in bed with Dolly Kray at the time. She testified on his behalf with the approval of her husband Charles.

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This was pretty well the Osmonds’ last gasp as a chart-topping group before going into their separate careers. Their last UK top ten single ‘Love Me for a Reason’ was released that year.

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Traffic curbs.. geddit?? Curbs. Traffic. Oh forget it!

The congestion charge hinted at here finally came into force in 2003. London traffic problems are nothing new.  Back in the late 1950’s I travelled about 10 miles by bus through East London to get to school. One day there was a hold up and my friends and I were complaining about being late, when an old woman said, “You should have been here when it was all horses. Those were real traffic jams and they happened every day.” Or words to that effect.

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Veggie eating, astrology believing, Nixon hating hippie buys fur coat! Even stereotypes are allowed a mistake once in a while.

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Born in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, Raft became first a dancer then a movie actor. In the 1930’s he was one of the biggest stars of Gangster films alongside James Cagney and Edward G Robinson. In the 40’s his career flagged. He turned down ‘High Sierra’ and ‘The Maltese Falcon’, both leading roles that went to Humphrey Bogart.

In the 1950’s he worked as a ‘greeter’ at the Capri Casino in Havana, Cuba, which he partly owned along with Mafia men Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.  

In 1967 he was denied entry into the UK (where he was to have been Casino Director at the Colony Club) due to his gangster associations.

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One of my favourite films and one of my favourite film posters.

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Roman Polanski was born in France of Polish parents and was brought up in Poland.  World War II started when he was 6 and the Nazis interned his parents. His father survived but his mother died in Auschwitz.

After the War he attended the National Film School and went on to appear in and to direct Polish films. After trying and failing to make a mark in France he made 3 films in England (‘Repulsion’, ‘Cul-de-Sac’ and ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’) and then ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ in the USA.

Three years after ‘Chinatown’ he was accused and found guilty of sexual assault on a 13 year-old girl during a photo-shoot. To avoid a jail sentence he fled to France and, as a French citizen, has lived there ever since.

According to Wikipedia –

The victim, Samantha Geimer, during a television interview on 10 March 2011, blames the media, reporters, the court, and the judge for causing "way more damage to [her] and her family than anything Roman Polanski has ever done." She adds that the media were "really cruel," stating that the judge was using her and a noted celebrity for his own personal gain from the media exposure.

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I'm always a bit suspicious of round figures like £3000000 in articles like this so I got my calculator out – at £25 per ounce 3 UK tons which is 6720lb (3 * 2240) and therefore 107520 ounces (16 * 6720) would cost £2688000.  Call it 2.7 extra large and we have a deal, OK Squire?