John Ford

I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.

John Ford, who died on this date in 1973, was perhaps the greatest of all  American film directors.

Ford is remembered mostly as a director of Westerns.  Ford won the "Best Director" Oscar four times -- more than any other director -- but never won it for one of his Westerns.  

It's hard to believe that he wasn't even nominated for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or The Searchers -- "a darkly profound study of obsession, racism, and heroic solitude" that stars John Wayne as a very different kind of hero than he usually portrays -- which is now widely considered to be the greatest Western ever made.  Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Jean-Luc Godard, and several other well-known directors have paid homage to The Searchers in their movies.  

Ingmar Bergman, who many would say is the greatest movie director of all time, said Ford was the best.  After viewing Ford's The Informer, Jean Renoir reportedly told another director, "I learned so much today . . . I learned how to not move my camera."  When Orson Welles was asked to list his favorite directors, he said, "I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

Thomas Hardy

There is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in [love].  Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.

From his 1874 novel, Far from the Madding Crowd.  The haughty young heroine of the novel first rejects the suit of an up-and-coming shepherd, and later turns down a prosperous farmer's proposal.  Instead, she marries a dashing young soldier who impresses her by demonstrating his expert swordsmanship.  (That's about as Freudian as it gets, n'est-ce pas?)  The soldier later tells her that his former lover -- who has died giving birth to his illegitimate child -- "is more to me, dead as she is, than you ever were."  He then disappears and is presumed to have drowned, but suddenly reappears years later -- after the heroine has agreed to marry the prosperous farmer.  The farmer kills the soldier with a shotgun, and is packed off to an insane asylum.  Finally, the heroine does marry the shepherd.  If only she had done that in the first place!

Poster for the 1967 movie

Led Zeppelin

If it keeps on raining, 
Levee's going to break 

If it keeps on raining, 
Levee's going to break 

When the levee breaks, 
Have no place to stay . . .

Crying won't help you, 
Praying won't do you no good 

Crying won't help you, 
Praying won't do you no good 

When the levee breaks, 
Mama, you got to go

(On this date in 2005, Hurricane Katrina's storm surge caused 53 levee breaks in New Orleans.)

Hugh Cornwell

Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? 

He got an ice pick 

That made his ears burn

From the Stranglers' 1977 single, "No More Heroes."

Leon Trotsky was a major figure in the Russian Revolution, second only to Lenin in importance.  But when he opposed some of Stalin's policies, he was exiled from the Soviet Union, and resided in Turkey, France, Norway, and Mexico successively.

At the first of the Moscow "show trials" in 1936, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia for having conspired to assassinate Stalin.  Trotsky was murdered in his home in Mexico City 1940 by a Soviet secret police agent who whacked him on the head with an ice axe.  Not exactly the same thing as being stabbed in the ear with an ice pick, but we must allow a little artistic license.

Today is the 62nd birthday of Hugh Cornwell, the founder of the Stranglers and the lead singer on "No More Heroes." 

Theodore Dreiser

She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her own and the world’s opinions, and saw a worse.  Between these two images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.

From his novel about turn-of-the-century urban life, Sister Carrie (1900).

Theodore Dreiser was a great novelist but a fairly mediocre stylist -- his novels are all substance and no style.  

Sister Carrie is the story of a beautiful and innocent country girl who goes to the big city (Chicago) to live with her older sister.  Thanks to her beauty, she quickly loses her innocence.  

After becoming a traveling salesman's "kept woman," she then has an affair with a married man.  The couple move to New York City, where the book takes an interesting turn.  Her lover's fortunes wane, while hers wax -- his business fails and he becomes a homeless beggar after she leaves him, while she ends up as a star on Broadway.  But do fame and fortune bring her true happiness?  What do you think?  

One perceptive reviewer praised Sister Carrie because it was “absolutely free from the slightest trace of sentimentality or pettiness, and dominated everywhere by a serious and strenuous desire for truth.”  Some readers were offended by the book because it portrayed characters engaging in illicit sexual relationships without negative consequences.  Others simply found it bleak and depressing.   (Oprah would have hated it, I think.)

Dreiser was born on this date in 1871.

Theodore Dreiser

50 Cent

It's like Paul McCartney's stuck in my head,

He fell in love with a bitch, 
She walked away on one leg,

She ain't even have to run to get away with the bread

From his 2009 song, "Do You Think About Me?"  50 Cent -- who was born Curtis James Jackson III -- is not one of your more politically correct rappers.

The woman that "Fittie" is rapping about here, of course, is Heather Mills, a model who lost part of her left leg when she was hit by a motorcycle in 1993 and who married Paul McCartney in 2002.  A London judge awarded Mills £24.3 million (which is the equivalent of about $39 million) when the couple were divorced in 2008. 

But don't cry for Sir Paul.  His net worth at the time was estimated at £450 million (roughly $720 million).  He can afford quite a few more bad romances.

Bruce Springsteen

Baby, this town rips the bones from your back

It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap

We gotta get out while we're young

'Cause tramps like us,

Baby, we were born to run

(The Born to Run album was released on this date in 1975.  I think Bruce Springsteen is the most overrated rock star of all time.  All Springsteen songs are essentially the same song.)