Here is your open thread for March 22, 2020.
Stephen Sondheim turns 90 today.
On March 22, 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the possession of dice and playing cards. Eight years later, on March 22, 1638, the colony expelled Anne Hutchinson for what the authorities said were unacceptable religious beliefs. These two things are related by more than the date.
On March 22, 1871, North Carolina Gov. William Woods Holden was impeached and removed from office for the crime of trying to keep white terrorists from taking over the state. After the Klan lynched a black police officer and assassinated a state senator, Holden formed a militia to put down the terrorists’ insurrection. That militia won its battles with the Klan — the so-called “Kirk-Holden War” — but the terrorists still managed to suppress the black vote through lethal violence, leading to the white-supremacist majority in the state legislature that impeached Holden and removed him from office.
The Kirk-Holden War seems ripe for a big Hollywood movie. Even better, a miniseries following the adventures of the special detective unit Gov. Holden formed to combat the Klan. Two dozen detectives, black and white, commissioned by the governor to defend democracy from white-supremacist terrorists. I want to see that show.
On March 22, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that non-married people had a legal right to purchase contraceptives. That was 48 years ago. On the other hand, that was only 48 years ago.
Leonard Joseph “Chico” Marx was born 133 years ago today. He even made playing the piano funny.
Louis L’Amour was born 112 years ago today. I never read any of his very popular westerns, but — once you accept the impossibly perfect protagonist — his 12th-century historical novel, The Walking Drum, is pretty terrific.
Werner Klemperer was born 100 years ago today, in Cologne, Germany. His family emigrated to America in 1935, when he was a teenager, and his father was named the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Klemperer served in the US Army in World War II. He’s best known as Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes, but if you want to see what the man could do as an actor, check him out in Judgment at Nuremberg.
Marcel Marceau would have been 97 years old today. (Marceau passed away, quietly, in 2004. The rest is …)
Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson turns 90 today. Robertson won four states in the 1988 Republican primaries.
William Shatner turns 89 today. Canonically, today also is/will be the birthday of Capt. James T. Kirk, who will be born in Iowa 113 years from today.
Former Sen. Orrin Hatch turns 86 today. Hatch is the duplicitous slug who said that he would happily vote for a Supreme Court nominee “like Merrick Garland” and then violated convention, the law, and his oath of office by refusing to allow such a vote.
M. Emmet Walsh turns 85 today. You’ve seen him in at least a dozen different roles. You’ve never seen him anything other than terrific.
George Benson turns 77 today. Like Orrin Hatch, he was born in Pittsburgh. Unlike with Orrin Hatch, Pittsburgh is proud of that fact. Here’s “Breezin‘.”
Wolf Blitzer turns 72 today. So does Andrew Lloyd Weber. Lena Olin turns 65. I hope they renew “Hunters” as a birthday present, because she seems to be having so much fun playing the villain on that show. Matthew Modine turns 61. Reese Witherspoon turns 44.
Today is the feast day of St. Epaphroditus, an early church figure who worked with the Apostle Paul and is mentioned in the New Testament book of Philippians. There seem to have been several probably different people named Epaphroditus in the early church of the first and second centuries and we seem to have pretty much bundled them all together into one guy whose saintliness we remember today.
OK, one more from Sondheim. I’m not much of a singer, so the only Sondheim I’ve ever been in was Forum, in which I played the procurer, Marcus Lycus. This is the slightly less-lecherous of the two numbers I got to do:
Talk amongst yourselves.
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