A Kid in the Choir

Gone with the Wind had its premiere on this day in 1939, at the Leow's Grand Theatre in Atlanta. The theatre front was turned into a plantation mansion for the three-day gala, complete with white pillars. Searchlights filled the sky. Crowds filled the intersection of Peachtree and Pryor. Newsreel cameras caught everything. Clark Gable chatted with the mayor, Vivien Leigh chatted with Margaret Mitchell. And somewhere in the commotion there was a boy's choir with a ten year-old member named Martin Luther King Jr. who probably thought this was the biggest day of his life, the most famous he would ever be. Martin Luther King Jr. appears four times in A Book of Ages. (Margaret Mitchell appears once, and Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh don't appear at all.)

Live Fast, Die Young

On September 30, 1955, James Dean died in a head on collision while driving his Porsche Spyder to a race in Salinas, California. He was 24. He'd starred in three films, all made within the previous year, East Of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause, and Giant, for which he received two Oscar nominations. James Dean appears four times in A Book of Ages.

Judy Garland

In September 1935 Judy Garland had a personal audition with Louis B. Mayer at MGM and was signed to a contract for $100 a week. She was 13, bright-eyed, pudgy, adorable and enormously talented. The talent came paired with a trembling vulnerability, the eyes almost on the verge of tears, the tremble in the voice. She starred in nine movies opposite Mickey Rooney, usually playing the true-hearted best friend, then in 1939 she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz; she was 16.

Louis B. Mayer thought her plumpness unattractive and he and other MGM executives urged her to lose weight. She was given pills to accomplish this. She grew thinner but became addicted to the pills. Pills and alcohol made her an unreliable performer on set and she was fired from several pictures during production, she suffered nervous breakdowns and paralyzing episodes of self-doubt, but she remained a galvanizing presence on stage. Audiences sat mesmerized while she performed on that narrow space between perfection and collapse, an apt metaphor for stardom if there ever was one. Judy Garland appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Jesse James

Today is the birthday of Jesse James, born in 1847 in Clay County, Missouri. When he was 15 he rode with Quantrill's Raiders in a raid on the abolitionist settlement of Lawrence, Kansas, during which one hundred and fifty men, women and children were murdered. Shortly after the Civil War he and his brother Frank joined up with the four Younger brothers to form a gang. They robbed banks, businesses and trains across Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, shooting bank clerks, bystanders, children and horses who got in the way.

In September 1876 they rode north into Minnesota to rob the bank in Northfield, but the townspeople shot back, killing two of the bandits and wounding the rest. The robbers shot the bank clerk dead as they escaped. 1876 is considered the high water mark of the Wild West. That same summer, Wild Bill Hickock was gunned down in Deadwood, South Dakota and George Armstrong Custer died with all of his men at Little Big Horn.

Jesse James was shot to death by one of his criminal associates, Bob Ford, in 1882. He was 34. The Robin Hood image attached to James grew after his death, but there's no evidence he shared any of his loot with the poor or with anyone. Tyrone Power, Robert Wagner, Robert Duvall, Rob Lowe, Colin Farrell and Brad Pitt are among the movie idols who have played him in more than twenty five films. Jesse James appears three times in A Book of Ages.

"I'm ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille"

Today's the birthday of Cecil B. DeMille, born in 1881, in the Berkshires where his parents were vacationing. He was 31 when he directed a film called The Squaw Man. It was the first feature produced by the Paramount film studio and one of the very first to come out of an obscure little town in southern California called Hollywood.

DeMille became the most famous film director in the world, his name associated with glamor and spectacle. He instructed famous actors how to act. He parted the Red Sea twice, or directed Moses to do so, in 1923 and again in 1956 when Charlton Heston played Moses.

DeMille played himself at the end of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, helping to lure the mad former film star Norma Desmond out of her mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Gloria Swanson ends the picture with the famous line "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille." Cecil B. DeMille appears three times in A Book of Ages.

Rin Tin Tin

On August 10, 1932, Rin Tin Tin died at his home in Los Angeles. In dog years he would have been 98. Popular legend has him dying in the arms of screen siren Jean Harlow. Tin had retired from pictures the year before. He starred in 40 feature films, 26 of them for Warner Brothers, and is credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. Rin Tin Tin appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Begin the Beguine

In July, 1938, Artie Shaw recorded Begin the Beguine for the Bluebird label. He was 28. It quickly became an enormous hit and and Shaw became more and more annoyed when concert audiences began requesting it over and over and over and over and over again in concert halls and dance pavilions. What could he do? It was hummable and you could dance to it. Within a year he would be making $60,000 a week. Then, suddenly, he quit the music business and moved to Mexico. It was the first of several retirements and unretirements that came almost as frequently as his serial marriages to glamorous film stars. Artie Shaw appears four times in A Book of Ages, but none of the entries answers the question "Who was better: Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman?" (Hint: the superior clarinetist's initials are A.S.)