10 January: Summer Holiday

This date in 1963 was the Première of Cliff Richard's fourth feature film, Summer Holiday, London.

1. The film was Peter Yates's directorial debut, and produced by Kenneth Harper. The original screenplay was written by Peter Myers and Ronald Cass, who also wrote most of the songs.

2. One purpose of the film was to make Cliff Richard more popular in America, which was why an American actress, Lauri Peters, was cast as his love interest. Despite having been spotted in a stage production of The Sound of Music, her singing voice wasn’t deemed strong enough for the film and so Grazina Frame’s voice was dubbed on. Peters suffered so badly from homesickness that she’d fly home to the U.S. every Friday night, and jet back in on Monday morning.

3. The plot surrounds four bus mechanics, Don (Cliff Richard), Cyril, Steve and Edwin, who, one rainy British summer, decide to travel to the south of France on a London Transport bus. On the way they pick up various passengers – a girl band called Do-Re-Mi, a mime artist plus entourage and a young boy who stows away. They end up in Greece, having various adventures on the way. The boy stowaway turns out to be a girl called Barbara who is running away from her domineering mother. Once she is outed as a girl, Don falls in love with her.

4. It is sometimes said that the bus used in the film was a Routemaster, but it’s actually an AEC Regent 'RT'. Two of these buses had to be shipped to Greece – they couldn’t be driven there as there were low bridges on the route. When they eventually arrived, Customs held them for two days. The destination display on the front of the bus shows route 9 to Piccadilly.

5. Cliff Richard and Melvyn Hayes (Cyril) had to learn to drive the bus prior to filming. They received a mere 30 minutes of instruction before being expected to drive on Greek cliff roads with sharp bends. Cliff and Hayes were allegedly terrified during their driving scenes.

6. The title song, Summer Holiday, was written in just half an hour. Another big hit from the film, Bachelor Boy, was only added at the last minute because the film was too short. By this time, though, the set had already been pulled down and it was too expensive to fly everyone back to Greece for the sake of one scene, so they had to rebuild it in England. Melvyn Hayes had to wear a blond wig for this shoot, since he wasn’t a natural blond and had been having his hair dyed every ten days during the main shooting. By this time, all the dye had grown out.

7. This was the first film to feature the actress Una Stubbs, who was chosen for the role by Cliff himself because he liked her distinctive bobbed hairstyle.

8. The title sequence and first three minutes are in black and white and the rest is in colour.

9. Cliff didn’t make it to the premiere. He’d turned down a South African tour in order to attend, but when he arrived he was trapped in his limo by huge numbers of fans mobbing the car. The police told his driver to drive off with Cliff still in the back. That night Cliff sat in his manager's flat and watched a boxing match on TV.

10. Summer Holiday was the second most successful film at the British box office in 1963, after The Guns Of Navarone, and as a showcase for Cliff, it evidently worked as a movie industry survey that year showed Cliff Richard to be more popular than Elvis Presley, Sean Connery and Peter Sellers.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

11 January: Alexander Hamilton Quotes

Born this date in 1755 was Alexander Hamilton, inspiration for the show Hamilton and First secretary of the US Treasury, in the West Indies. Helped influence the adoption of the US Constitution. Died in 1804 after being mortally wounded in a duel. Said the following 10 things:

1. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.

2. When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

3. A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

4. Those who stand for nothing fall for everything.

5. There are approximately 1,010,300 words in the English language, but I could never string enough words together to properly express how much I want to hit you with a chair." (Alexander Hamilton, to Thomas Jefferson)

6. If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.

7. If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

8. If the sword of oppression be permitted to lop off one limb without opposition, reiterated strokes will soon dismember the whole body.

9. Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

10. Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

9 January: Gracie Fields

Born this date in 1898 was Dame Gracie Fields, singer and comedienne. 10 facts about her:

1. She is best known for her song Sally and the film Sally in our Alley. Her other hits include The Biggest Aspidistra In The World, We're All living at the Cloisters, Sing As We Go and Little Donkey.

2. She was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, above a Fish and chip shop owned by her grandmother.

3. She started performing as a child joining children's repertory theatre groups, and became known as “The Girl with the Double Voice”.

4. On her 18^th birthday, comedian and impresario Archie Pitt, with whom she was working on a touring show, gave her Champagne and wrote in her autograph book that he was going to make her a star. He became her manager and later her first husband.

5. She became famous after appearing in the West End of London, in a show called Mr Tower of London. Her first recording was My Blue Heaven, which sold 500,000 copies in 1928. By 1933, she’d sold four million records. She pressed the 4 millionth record herself.

6. Although she appeared in films, she much preferred appearing before a live audience. She found the film making process tedious. Her voice was such that opera star Luisa Tetrazzini suggested she might become an opera singer, but she declined, preferring to stay in the world she knew and which, she believed, gave more pleasure to her fans.

7. Archie Pitt wasn’t faithful. He had a mistress who even lived with them. They eventually divorced. Gracie donated their house to charity and soon after married again, Italian-born film director Monty Banks in March 1940. She couldn’t live in England with him because as an Italian during the second world war, he would have been imprisoned. The couple went to America instead. Banks died of a heart attack on the Orient Express in 1950. Gracie married for a third time in 1952, to Boris Alperovici, a Romanian Radio repairman. She said he was the love of her life, and proposed to him on Christmas Day in front of friends and family.

8. In 1933, she set up the Gracie Fields Children's Home and Orphanage at Peacehaven, Sussex, for children of people in the theatre profession who could not look after their children.

9. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979.

10. She died on 27 September 1979, aged 81.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

8 January: Brussels

Today is the feast day of Saint Gudula, patron saint of Brussels. 10 facts about Brussels:

1. The most common theory of the origin of the name Brussels is that it derives from Old Dutch words meaning 'marsh' and 'home, settlement', so it would translate as 'settlement in the marsh'.

2. It’s the capital city of Belgium. It’s also the de facto capital of the European Union, as its administrative-legislative, executive-political, and legislative branches have their headquarters there. Because of this, its name is sometimes used to mean The EU and its institutions, rather like “Buckingham Palace” is used to mean the British royal family or “Ten Downing Street” the UK government. The secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of NATO are also located in Brussels.

3. There are many museums in the city, including The Royal Museums of Fine Arts, The Magritte Museum, which houses the world's largest collection of works by Rene Magritte, and the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. There are also some more quirky museums such as a museum of musical instruments, a sewer museum, a French fry museum and a Comic Book Museum.

4. Famous people from Brussels include Hergé of The Adventures of Tintin fame (hence the comic book culture), Audrey Hepburn, Jean-Claude Van Damme (The Muscles from Brussels), musicians Plastic Bertrand and The Singing Nun, famous for the song Dominique. The Bronte Sisters went to Brussels in 1842 to finish their studies and improve their languages. Emily stayed for a year, Charlotte for two.

5. If you like Beer or Chocolate, this is the place for you. Brussels airport is the largest chocolate selling point in the world, and there’s the Delirium Cafe, which holds the Guinness World Record for offering the largest selection of beers in the world – over 2,000 different kinds.

6. You’ve probably heard of the famous Manneken Pis statue of a little boy peeing. This originated with a legend about a little boy who saved the city from burning down by weeing on the fire. You may not know that there is also a statue of a little girl having a wee and a dog cocking its leg.

7. Brussels sprouts originated in ancient Rome, but they were mostly grown in Belgium, which is how they got named for the city. In the 16th century, cultivation of the sprouts spread throughout most of northern Europe.

8. Brussels is home to the oldest shopping arcade in Europe which opened in 1847; the largest court house in the world, at 26,000 square metres, and until 2014, the deepest swimming pool in the world. (That title now belongs to the Y-40 pool in Padua, Italy.) You can also find a monument shaped like a giant molecule and a miniature of Europe, with many of Europe’s famous landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Big Ben.

9. The emblem of the city is the yellow Iris, which is native to the Brussels region. An annual celebration takes place on 8 May known as the Iris Festival. In August, a tradition dating back to 1308 takes place. There’s a procession through the city with a young Beech tree which is planted at the end of the procession with music and celebration. This is known as The Meyboom.

10. Brussels is twinned with a number of cities including: Atlanta and Washington DC, United States; Beijing, China; Berlin, Germany; Casablanca, Morocco; Kyiv, Ukraine; Madrid, Spain; and Prague, Czech Republic.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

7 January: Millard Fillmore

This date in 1800 was the birth date of the 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in a log cabin in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He was the second of eight children. He was given the name Millard because it was his mother’s maiden name. The family weren’t well off and he was persuaded, at 14, to leave school, not enlist in the army and to start work as apprentice to a clothmaker.

2. In due course, his parents realised he could do much better and managed to get him a job working for their landlord, Judge Walter Wood, as a law clerk. Fillmore worked as a teacher so that he could buy out his apprenticeship. His job as a law clerk only lasted 18 months, because he fell out with his boss after he’d advised a farmer in a law suit without Wood’s help. Wood tried to persuade him not to act unaided again, but Fillmore refused and quit. He went back to teaching and taking on small law cases which didn’t require him to be fully qualified.

3. He moved to Buffalo the following year and continued his study of law. In 1823 he was admitted to the bar. One of his teachers was a lady called Abigail Powers, who was just two years older than he was. They bonded over a mutual love of learning, fell in love and married in 1826.

4. He declined offers from the law firms in Buffalo, preferring to move to a small town and work independently as the only lawyer in town. He also claimed he didn’t feel confident enough to practice in a larger place.

5. Six years later, Fillmore was elected to the New York State Assembly and then to Congress where he served for ten years. He was comptroller of New York from 1848 until he was nominated as the vice presidential candidate under Zachary Taylor. He became president when Taylor died in office in 1850 and never gave an inaugural address.

6. Fillmore and his wife established the first White House library, and Abigail had the first "running-water Bathtub" installed.

7. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party and also the last not to be either a republican or a Democrat. At the end of his term, he ran for a second term, though not as a Whig as the party had fallen apart by then. Instead he ran for the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party, having refused to join the republicans, and lost to James Buchanan.

8. Fillmore was the first president to return to private life without independent wealth or possession of a landed estate. He intended to go on a grand tour of the south with Abigail and then return to practising law. The plans were scuppered, however, when Abigail died of pneumonia. A year later his daughter died of cholera. Eventually he re-married, a rich widow called Caroline McIntosh, which meant he no longer needed to work and the couple could concentrate on entertaining and supporting philanthropic causes like the Buffalo General Hospital, which he helped found.

9. Historians don’t rank him very highly. He has been described as weak and inept, trying to please everyone and not handling the slavery issue very well. Fillmore's name has become a byword in popular culture for easily forgotten and inconsequential presidents.

10. Millard Fillmore is one of two presidents who has double letters in his first and last names, the other is William H Harrison.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

6 January: The Bosporus

Today in Turkey there’s an Epiphany ceremony held on the shores of the Bosporus to bless its waters. 10 facts about the Bosporus:

1. The Bosporus is a strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It forms one of the continental boundaries between Asia and Europe. The city of Istanbul sits on its banks.

2. It’s 31 km (19 miles) long and 110 m (360 ft) deep at its deepest point.

3. The name comes from Greek mythology, specifically the story of Io. She was turned into a cow and condemned to wander the Earth until she crossed the Bosporus, where she met the Titan Prometheus, who told her she would be restored to human form by Zeus and become the ancestor of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles. It translates as “cow passage”, sometimes translated as “ox ford”. Incidentally, the name is sometimes spelt Bosphorus in English, although the ancient Greek name doesn’t justify adding the h.

4. It is 700 m (2,300 ft) making it narrowest strait in the world to be used for international navigation.

5. There are three bridges across the Bosporus: 15th July Martyrs Bridge completed in 1973, the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge (1988) and the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, completed in 2016. There’s also a railway tunnel underneath it as well as numerous ferries which cross daily. The possibility of building a tunnel beneath it was even being discussed in the time of the Ottoman Empire, according to historial records.

6. The strait is of great strategic importance, particularly for defending Istanbul, and so over the years emperors and sultans built castles and fortifications along its length, including the castle of Anadoluhisarı, constructed on the Asian shore by Bayezid I in 1390–91, and Rumelihisarı, built directly across the strait by Mehmed II in 1452.

7. In modern times, rich people build their mansions on the shore. Mansions built directly on the waterside are known as “yah”. The oldest surviving yah was built by grand vizier Amcazade Köprülü Hüseyin Pasha in 1699 on the Asian shore. The most expensive yah is Erbilgin Yalısı which Forbes magazine listed as the fifth most expensive house in the world, worth $100 million.

8. It’s a very busy waterway with an estimated 48,000 ships passing through every year (or 132 every day). Traffic in the strait increased after the signing of the Montreux Convention in 1936, which gives the right of free passage to merchant vessels, while the transit of warships is subject to restrictions. However, in 2002 there were restrictions placed on oil tankers – tankers more than 200m long were no longer allowed to pass through at night.

9. It’s also very important for the fishing industry. The currents (the waters in the upper layer of the Bosphorus flow from the Black Sea to the Marmara, the currents in the lower layer flow in the opposite direction) and temperature of the water are such that fish are attracted to it, and use it to migrate between the two seas, so the fish available to be caught vary according to the season.

10. There is an annual Swimming race and yacht festivals which take place here.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

5 January: Diane Keaton

This date in 1946 saw the birth of Diane Keaton, who would have turned 80 today. 10 facts about her:

1. Her parents were Jack Hall, a civil engineer, and Dorothy Keaton, a home-maker and amateur photographer.

2. Her birth name was Diane Hall, but she couldn’t use that as an actress because there was already a Diane Hall registered in the Actors Guild, so she used her mother’s maiden name instead. She did briefly call herself Dorrie Hall, after her sister.

3. Her career started on the stage in the original Broadway production of the musical Hair in 1968. She went on to appear in Woody Allen's comic play Play It Again, Sam, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

4. Her first film was Lovers and Other Strangers in 1970 but the role which brought her to fame was as Kay Adams in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in 1972.

5. She never married but was in significant relationships with three of her co-stars: Woody Allen, Al Pacino and Warren Beatty. She adopted two children when she was in her 50s.

6. She was an animal lover – she adopted several Dogs and spoke out against people having big cats as pets. She became a vegetarian in 1995.

7. Another of her interests was real estate – she’d renovate Hollywood mansions and sell them on. Madonna purchased a $6.5 million Beverly Hills mansion from Keaton in 2003. She was also involved in campaigns to save and restore historic buildings with the Los Angeles Conservancy, including Ennis House in the Hollywood Hills, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

8. In 2023, director Francis Ford Coppola did an “Ask Me Anything” session on Instagram. Keaton took that opportunity to ask, “Why on Earth did you choose me for The Godfather?” His response: “although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier and very interesting.”

9. She was also a director. One of her early directing jobs was Wildflower, a TV movie set in the 1930s, in 1991. One of the stars in that film was Reese Witherspoon, in her second ever role.

10. One of her most treasured possessions was a tile she took from James Stewart’s house when it was being demolished.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

4 January: Mork and Mindy

On this date in 1979 Robin Williams first appeared as Mork from the planet Ork on British TV in Mork and Mindy. 10 Mork and Mindy facts.

1. This show was a spin off from Happy Days. Mork first appeared as a guest on that show. This was in turn inspired by an episode of The Dick van Dyke Show called It May Look Like a Walnut, which featured an alien played by Danny Thomas. Happy Days producer Garry Marshall had a young son who was obsessed with Star Wars, and said he wanted to see more spacemen on TV. When his son said that, Marshall mentioned it to director Jerry Paris, who’d worked on The Dick Van Dyke Show, so they used the idea again.

2. Mork was Robin Williams’s first major acting role. He’d been spotted in an acting class and was invited to audition. Williams got into character immediately – when asked to take a seat at the audition, he sat in the Chair upside down. This netted him the part as he was “the only alien to audition.”

3. Pam Dawber, who played Mindy, on the other hand, didn’t audition for her role at all. She’d filmed one pilot for a show about a gang leader who found God and became a nun, but it flopped. She was still under contract and some scenes from the pilot were spliced with footage of Robin Williams as Mork as a demo. The idea was snapped up, and an article about it appeared in Variety without Dawber ever being consulted. She found out she had the part from reading the article.

4. Mork is an Ork from the planet Orkan. The Orkan race evolved from Chickens, and no humour is allowed on their world, which is why Mork was sent to study Earth by his superior, Orson.

5. Orson was named after Orson Welles as a tribute to him and his historic 1938 Radio broadcast of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.

6. Mork and Mindy’s residence was a real house in Boulder, Colorado, 1619 Pine Street, to be exact. Not a lot of thought had been put into the location for the show, but when they needed to come up with one, It was the first place that came to Garry Marshall’s mind because his niece was at school there. Mindy's father's music store was actually a book shop on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall. 1619 Pine Street is still there and has become a popular tourist attraction.

7. It was often said that much of the show was unscripted and the scripts had huge gaps where they just wrote “Robin does his thing.” The writers have been quick to point out that they worked very hard on these so called “ad-libs”.

8. At the beginning of the fourth season, Mork and Mindy got married and had a child. Orkan reproduction is rather different from ours, so Mork laid an egg which hatched into an elderly man, Mearth. Orkans age backwards, starting life as old people and regressing back to childhood.

9. At the end of season four, Mork and Mindy are stranded in prehistoric times, having arrived there by using a pair of magic time travelling Shoes. The plan for season five was that they would carry on travelling in time and meet historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. However, ratings had been declining for a while and this idea wasn’t enough to save the show from the axe.

10. Mork's greeting is "Na-Nu Na-Nu" with a hand gesture based on Mr Spock's Vulcan salute and a handshake. Mork says "KO" in place of "OK" and sometimes uses the interjection "Shazbat".

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

3 January: An Ideal Husband

On this date in 1895 Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband opened in London. 10 facts about the play:

1. One of the characters in the play is Lord Goring, who is named after Goring-by-Sea, the town Wilde was staying in when he wrote the first act.

2. The play was written as a commission for actor-manager John Hare. However, Hare didn’t like the play and rejected it.

3. So Wilde offered it instead to a rival theatre, the Haymarket, which did take it on.

4. It was billed as "A new and original play of modern life".

5. It ran at the Haymarket for 111 performances, regarded as a good run at the time. Audiences loved it, but critics weren’t so keen. HG Wells wrote: “It is not excellent; indeed, after Lady Windermere's Fan and The Woman of No Importance, it is decidedly disappointing.”

6. The plot concerns a politician with an untarnished reputation, and whose wife believes he is an ideal husband. However, he made a transgression early in his career that no-one knows about – he sold secrets about the Suez Canal. A woman called Mrs Cheveley shows up uninvited at a dinner party and threatens to spill the beans.

7. When the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre. Oscar Wilde’s name was removed from the programmes and posters, because, on its last day at the Haymarket, Wilde had been arrested for gross indecency. Unlike today when the play would be cancelled entirely, it went ahead without him.

8. The play was published in book form a few years later as "By the author of Lady Windermere's Fan".

9. The play has been made into a movie at least five times. Three of the adaptations were British, one German and one from the Soviet Union.

10. The BBC has broadcast seven Radio adaptations since in 1926.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

2 January John Wyndham Quotes

Today is National Science Fiction Day.

Here are 10 quotes from John Wyndham (1903–1969), author of Day of the Triffids.

1. Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.

2. The essential quality of life is living, the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it.

3. Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's?

4. Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.

5. What is a planet but an island in space?

6. Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.

7. The dove is not a coward to fear the hawk; it is simply wise.

8. It is because nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation.

9. You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.

10. Once an idea has been planted no one can tell when and where it will stop growing.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/