#OnThisDay, June 16, in 1931, Al Capone pleaded guilty to income tax evasion & 5,000 prohibition violations in a trial at the Chicago Federal Building (depicted in The Untouchables, 1987)
#OnThisDay, June 15, in 1215, overseen by a council of barons, King John of England put his seal to Magna Carta, a cornerstone of the idea of the liberty of citizens (depicted in Ironclad, 2011)
#OnThisDay, June 9, 1954 was the turning point for Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade, when Army counsel Joseph Welch asked him, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” (depicted in Tail Gunner Joe, 1977)
"Black Barbie: A Documentary" produced by Shonda Rhimes, will be released on Netflix on June 19. TODAY shares this clip, featuring Kitty Black Perkins, the designer of Black Barbie, and Beulah Mae Mitchell, who worked on the production line at Mattel, remembering conversations with Barbie creator Ruth Handler. “(Handler) would say, ‘Do you have any suggestions?’” Mitchell recalled. “I was able to say, ‘We want a Black Barbie.’”
Very cool! I do not use Gem, but perhaps at some point the #film will be available in other form/sources.
I am more of a #reader (though I particularly love good #animation,) so of course I immediately picked up on the opening parallels to #RobertLouisStevenson's #TreasureIsland, which is why I bought it and read it. A ghost story! Excellent. I have not re-read it recently - I keep telling myself to find what else #WilliamGilkerson has written!
So #MadameWeb. I actually liked it. The actors give good performances. I would love to see Dakota Johnson in more stuff, she's great.
Now yes, this #movie is begging for a franchise. It brings the #film down. But I would love for a version with less of that stuff. Stunts were great. I loved how the seeing-the-future was used here. There was good-to-decent (always enjoyable) char work. Props.
#OnThisDay, May 16, 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots fled to England seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Queen Elizabeth I (depicted in Mary Queen of Scots, 2018)
Early in the morning on the 24th March 1914 two trains arrived at the Railway station in #Belgrade carrying the first generation of recruits from the newly liberated regions, Old #Serbia and Southern Serbia. After the official reception, the recruits headed via central city streets towards the barracks in the Upper Town of Kalemegdan Fortress.
Today in Labor History May 2, 1919: Soldiers of the Freikorps murdered Gustav Landauer, anarchist, pacifist, and Education Minister, in the short-lived Bavarian Workers Republic. The Freikorps were right wing veterans of World War I. Many went on to become Nazis. Landauer believed that social change could not be won solely through control of the state or economy, but required a revolution in interpersonal relations. "The community we long for and need, we will find only if we sever ourselves from individuated existence; thus we will at last find, in the innermost core or our hidden being, the most ancient and most universal community: the human race and the cosmos." Landauer’s grandson is the acclaimed film director, Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood). British writer Philip Kerr wrote the novel, “Prussian Blue,” in which Hitler is one of the Freikorps militants who murdered Landauer.