It's a Summer with lots to commemorate, and my three favorites all have a television component.
Turner Classic Movie has pitched in their part with a new documentary hosted by Kenneth Branagh called 1939 ... (from the press release):
If you don't know (and you really should, this always comes up at parties) 1939 was an outstanding year for English-speaking cinema with The Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Stagecoach, The Women (all gay men are required by law to see this movie), and Wuthering Heights, among many others.
Just check this entry at Wikipedia.
TCM is devoting Thursdays to the year, which, yes, I do realize was yesterday. This Thursday's films, however, are Stanley & Livingstone, Beau Geste, Golden Boy and Gunga Din, one of my dad's faves.
Click below to purchase The Women from Amazon.
The first clip after the jump is the trailer for this documentary, which is currently on my DVR and airs next on July 30, check your listings.
Secondly, it's the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, which if my great grandfather Walter Keperling was still alive he would tell you never happened. It was all staged on a movie set, he kept saying.
All I know is that I can still remember exactly where I was (my parents' house in Valley Stream, on the couch, ready to cover my eyes because I was sure something bad was going to happen. Aliens? Technical errors that result in a man's head exploding inside a helmet? I don't know what I thought, but I remember being relieved when it all turned out okay.
Click here for a whole bunch of stuff from Discovery.com about the anniversary. Right here, an excerpt from Irene Klotz's interview with Buzz Aldrin, second man to stand on the moon:
IK: Why did you say that NASA's current plan to the moon is a detour?
BA: It's going back to do the things that we have done before and other nations are capable of doing that right now. It seems to me that we leave ourselves open to other nations being able to claim that 'Oh look, we beat the Americans back to the moon. They're just not going to be leaders in the 21st century.' We need to chart what I think is a new course.
IK: So you're saying that the United States wouldn't be respected for doing the same thing that it did before. It needs to do something different to gain world respect?
BA: I don't think we get our money's worth out of investing and doing something that other people can do, when there's rather questionable return -- commercial return or the knowledge that we get -- by having humans back on moon to justify the large expense of their habitation.
This is why I was so flummoxed by our former President's announcement in 2004 that he wanted to go back to the moon. But I decided to presume that he meant himself and I was happy for a while.
After the jump, watch Neil Armstrong set his foot down on the lunar surface and say those famous words, and what happened for the next minute and some.
Finally, in 1969 I was a little boy on Long Island and the NY Mets were about to do what anyone and everyone thought was an impossibility, the ragtag group under Gil Hodges beat the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series.
My brother Bill was at the final game and was one of many who grabbed a piece of Shea Stadium turf. My dad planted a fig tree in that ground and that tree is still with him here in Southern California, it made the trip with us.
I would certainly hope that there will be some programming around the anniversary, but for now we have some interview footage from a recent Mets alum reunion in Yonkers, with, interestingly, Ron Swoboda (who was famous for an amazing catch in that series, see the image above) talking about both the Mets AND the moon landing.
Clips after the jump.
