This Week in History
Olivia Newton-John, Whitney Houston, “The Band Wagon”, Patricia Neal, Manson Family’s Mass Murder and dropping the Atom Bomb
Today marks the 70th anniversary of director Vincente Minnelli’s colorfully distinctive Fred Astaire musical The Band Wagon, co-starring Cyd Charisse with a musical number shaped by a Mickey Spillane novel. This is an innovative motion picture, (previously reviewed on my blog; read the review here).
The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 on a Monday morning—by the B-29 Enola Gay—followed by another at 11:01 in the morning of Thursday, August 9, by the B-29 Bockscar (accompanied by another plane) on Nagasaki, which was selected because the first target, Kokura, Japan, was covered by clouds. Read or preview my review of Universal Pictures’s biographical movie about the atom bomb’s inventor, Oppenheimer, here.
This week’s birthdays include actor Sam Elliott’s (read my 2006 interview with him here) on August 9—which is also the date in 1974 when President Nixon resigned—a birthdate Elliott shares with the late Whitney Houston.
This week also marks the loss of:
Actress Sharon Tate and others in the Manson Family’s 1969 mass murder in Los Angeles (August 8 and continuing)
Finally, this was the release week of an entertaining Lasse Hallstrom movie about food, love and life: The Hundred-Foot Journey, which debuted in theaters on August 8, 2014 (read my blog review).
Related Articles
Movie Review: The Band Wagon (1953)
Scott Holleran Interviews Sam Elliott (2006)
Travel and history: Richard Nixon Museum, Library and Birthplace (2011)
Movie Review: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022)
Series Review: Helter Skelter (Manson Family Mass Murder 2020 TV series)