Christmas Every Day

 

534 BC The first actor in a written play

Say kids, ever wondered why actors are called “thespians”? Sure you did. It’s because the earliest known person to appear on a stage speaking lines written for him in the character of another was Thespis of Icaria. By stepping out from the traditional chorus and as a soloist and wearing masks that allowed him to portray different characters, Thespis essentially invented Greek drama at the Athenian festival to Dionysos in 534 BC. He also invented the theatrical tour, taking his show on the road with his props and costumes in a wagon.

Other notable thespians associated with November 23 are

Boris Karloff, né William Henry Pratt, and best known as the original film Frankenstein, was born on this day in 1887 in London. He began his theatrical career in Canada before achieving fame in Hollywood.

The next year saw the birth of  Adolph Marx, better known as Harpo, the silent Marx Brother.

To the list we can add Victor Joy (b. 1902), Susan Anspach (b. 1942), Diana Quick (b. 1946), and Namthip Jongrachatawiboon (b. 1982)

Departing this vale of tears on November 23 was the  unspeakably lovely Merle Oberon (d. 1979).

1922 Death of Marcel Proust

Any list of famous but essentially unread novels must include À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. Translated variously as In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past, it emerged in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. It has been called the greatest novel ever to be written and is reputed to be highly influential among 20th-century writers. Try to find someone who can truthfully say he has read all of it.

1928 The birthday of Mickey Mouse

The addition of sound to motion pictures was a novelty when Walt Disney decided to make “Steamboat Willie”, a short black-and-white cartoon. The combination of synchronized sound effects and music was a big hit when it was premiered in New York. The film propelled Disney to prominence and led to a host of imitators. Though this was the third appearance of the cartoon rodent, the Disney Corporation considers this film to be Mickey’s birthday.

1558 Death of Bloody Mary and Accession of Elizabeth I

Mary Tudor was born in 1516, the only child of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon to survive. She was considered a princess and heir to the throne until her father divorced her mother (essentially for failure to provide a male heir) and married Anne Boleyn. Mary was stripped of her title, deemed legally a bastard, and was forced to wait upon her half-brother Edward, the product of her father’s third marriage.

Mary clung fiercely to her Roman Catholic faith through her father’s renunciation of the pope and her brother’s Protestant era. She refused to marry a Protestant and her father and brother refused her permission to become the bride of a foreign Catholic prince so she remained single. When Edward died in 1553, Mary survived a palace coup that put Lady Jane Grey on the throne for nine days and was proclaimed Queen of England. She was now 37. In 1554 she persuaded Parliament to allow her to marry Prince Philip of Spain, but the notion of a foreign Catholic prince produced a series of short-lived rebellions. Her groom, eleven years younger than she, was more enamoured of the throne than of his bride who was besotted with him.

Mary was determined to return England to the Catholic fold but had to wait on Parliamentary approval which she obtained late in 1554. The next year her government embarked on the extermination of the Protestant religious leadership of the country; those who did not flee to Europe were arrested and burnt at the stake. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, and bishops Latimer, Ridley, Hooper all went to the fire but so did over 200 ordinary English men and women: bricklayers, weavers, farmers, maids and widows. This policy, which was disliked by her husband’s Spanish advisers, earned her the nickname Bloody Mary.

Despite two episodes in which she appeared to be pregnant Mary remained childless. Philip stayed out of the country as much as he could except when he needed English support for a European war. She grew increasingly ill, perhaps from uterine cancer, and died in November 1558. She begged her half-sister Elizabeth (with whom she was never on good terms) to bury her next to her mother, to keep the country in the Catholic faith, to pay her debts, and provide marriage portions for her maids. Elizabeth, who was not at all a nice person, honoured none of her wishes. The two queens are, ironically, buried in the same Westminster Abbey tomb.

It is this tomb that contains a fictional manuscript on which my novel Neddy and the Virgins is based. Look for it after I find a publisher.

565

The death of Byzantine ruler Justinian I. The last of the Eastern Roman emperors to speak Latin as his native tongue, Justinian was born in 482 in what is now Macedonia and moved to the capital Constantinople after his adoption by his uncle Justin, a prominent general. When at the age of 70 in 518, Justin became emperor, Justinian grew to be a power behind the throne and an important army commander. On his uncle’s death in 527 he was crowned emperor. His reign, though not always successful, was one of the most significant in Byzantine history.

Justinian believed in religious unity, which to him meant persecution of pagans, Jews, and Christian dissidents. His wife, Theodora, who had risen to become imperial consort from low beginnings as an actress/prostitute (in the 6th century these were much the same thing), supported Monophysitism but Justinian clung to the orthodox Chalcedonian position. He closed the Academy in Athens, founded by Plato in the 4th century BC, causing the philosophers there to scatter to exile in Persia. When the Nike riots of 525 destroyed much of Constantinople, Justinian rebuilt splendidly, particularly Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom which for 1,000 years was the greatest edifice in Christendom.

His most influential decree was the recodification of Roman law, which was still a mishmash of ancient mandates from the days of the kings, the laws of the Republic, and the pagan Empire as well as the legislation of Christian emperors since Constantine. The result was a unified and rational body of law which forms the basis of many of the world’s legal systems today.

His ambition to drive back the western barbarians and reclaim the lost western empire outstripped his treasury and the talent of his generals. Though early success won North Africa, Italy and parts of Spain, continuous resistance from the Ostrogoths, new invasions of Lombards, and pressure from the Persian front drained the public purse and swamped much of the reconquered territories. A catastrophic plague in 541-42 depopulated the empire and gutted the army so that at his death Justinian left behind a weakened and bankrupt state.

1775 Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation

In order to hinder the rebellion of some American colonists in Virginia, British Governor John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, issues a proclamation calling loyal citizens to arms and offering to free any slaves who will serve the crown militarily. Perhaps as many as 2,000 slaves flee the plantations and take up Dunmore’s offer. The move outraged many prominent Virginians (loyal and disloyal) who supported slavery. They in turn issued proclamations that threatened runaway slaves with death. In the end, Dunsmore and hundreds of freed slaves were forced out of the colony but throughout the conflict the British kept offering freedom to escaping slaves whether they joined the army or not. When the revolutionary war ended, thousands of black slaves migrated to the loyal colony of Nova Scotia and slavery continued to plague America until the 1860s.

1839 The Newport Rising. The last significant rebellion in Britain was crushed on this day when police and army units faced thousands of armed peasants and workers supporting democratic reform and attempting to liberate some jailed rebels in Newport, Wales. Firing broke out in which 22 demonstrators were killed and 50 wounded.

1922 British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s (King Tut’s) tomb.

1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. A mob of students attacks the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 90 hostages and starting a major diplomatic standoff that lasted until early 1981.

1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a Jewish extremist who opposed Rabin’s peace proposals.

1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Thirty bloody seconds in an alley in Tombstone, Arizona created an enduring legend of the Old West.

In 1881, Tombstone was a prosperous town of 7,000 near the Mexican border, rich from a silver boom and full of legitimate merchants and their families, rubbing shoulders with smugglers, rustlers and murderers. The nature of social life may be be deduced by the presence of 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, numerous brothels and four churches. Such law as existed was provided by the Earp clan, brothers Wyatt (a deputy US Marshal), James, Vergil, Morgan, and Warren, and dissolute dentist “Doc” Holliday.

Providing a touch of colour and menace to the neighbourhood were “the Cowboys”, a gang of rustlers and smugglers led by Johnny Ringo, including Billy and Ike Clanton, “Curly” Bill Brocius, and the McLaury brothers. Animosity between them and the Earps was overt with the Cowboys making death threats against the lawmen. To some extent, the trouble stemmed from ranchers’ resentment of the dominance by townsfolk of local politics and the economy.

On the night of October 25, the animosities were fuelled by heavy drinking and threats against the Earps and Holliday by Ike Clanton who told listeners that on the morrow he would gun down his enemies. On the 26th Virgil and Morgan encountered Clanton, who was armed in violation of town ordinances; they pistol-whipped and arrested him. Later that day Wyatt also assaulted Tom McClaury. As more Cowboys drifted into town they heard the news and became incensed, loading themselves up with ammunition.The Earps decided to disarm them.

In a side-street, Doc Holliday with Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp confronted five Cowboys who ignored a call to hand over their weapons. Firing broke out at a distance of about 6′ and when the smoke cleared Ike Clanton and Billy Clairborne had fled, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury and his brother Frank were dead; Virgil and Morgan were wounded slightly.

Public opinion at the time was divided, with some feeling the Earps had been justified and others claiming that the Cowboys had been ambushed. A trial cleared the Earps but the armed hostility continued. More Earps and Cowboys were to die.

1415 St Crispin’s Day Battle of Agincourt

The Hundred Years War pitted England against France, a a conflict that should easily have been won by the French, a much larger and richer nation. France, however, was militarily hampered by relying on their cavalry of heavily armoured aristocrats in an age when English longbow men could dominate a battle field. After years of a truce, Henry V of England decided to press his (dubious) claim to the French throne and invaded France. On this day in 1415 his small army of 5,000 archers and 800 men-at-arms was forced to meet a much larger French army (perhaps 20,000-30,000 men) in a muddy field near the village of Agincourt.

The English fought on foot with a line stretched between two forest groves that would protect their flanks. In front of their line the archers had hammered in sharp stakes to deter the French horsemen. The French relied on their cavalry, knights eager to be in the first lines so as to benefit from the ransoms they hoped to take from English prisoners. It was a vain hope. Waves of French cavalry were cut down by the archers; those who fell drowned in the mud or had their throats cut by nimble English infantry. Those who were taken prisoner and moved to the rear were murdered when Henry feared they might escape. After losing about 10,000 men in four hours the French retreated and Henry’s force was allowed to slip away with rich booty and high-ranking prisoners.

Today this bloody encounter is remembered by English-speakers mostly for the speech that Shakespeare puts in Henry’ mouth on the eve of the battle but at the time this was the song that was on the lips of folks back home, the “Agincourt Carol”:

Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!

[Give thanks, England, to God for victory!]

Owre Kynge went forth to Normandy

With grace and myght of chyvalry

Ther God for hym wrought mervelusly;

Wherefore Englonde may call and cry

Chorus

Deo gratias!

Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!

He sette sege, forsothe to say,

To Harfleur towne with ryal aray;

That toune he wan and made afray

That Fraunce shal rewe tyl domesday.

Chorus

Then went hym forth, owre king comely,

In Agincourt feld he faught manly;

Throw grace of God most marvelsuly,

He had both feld and victory.

Chorus

Ther lordys, erles and barone

Were slayne and taken and that full soon,

Ans summe were broght into Lundone

With joye and blisse and gret renone.

Chorus

Almighty God he keep owre kynge,

His peple, and alle his well-wyllynge,

And give them grace wythoute endyng;

Then may we call and savely syng:

Chorus

1943 The Provisional Government of Free India is formed

Though most people associate the non-violent methods of M.K. Gandhi as the means by which India achieved its independence, there were many in the movement who were prepared to use force against their British rulers. Among those was Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been the charismatic president of the Indian National Congress in the pre-war years. When war broke out in 1939, Bose was put under house arrest by the British but he escaped and made his way to Nazi Germany. His view was that he would cooperate with anyone who could bring about an end to the British Raj.

Attempts by Bose and the Germans to set up an army drawn from the ranks of Indian soldiers in the British army who had been taken prisoner proved to be a failure, so Bose and his Nazi hosts decided he could be better employed in Asia. He journeyed by submarine to Japanese-occupied territory and set about to form an Indian puppet government and construct an army from prisoners held by the Japanese. On this day in 1943 the Provisional Government of Free India was formed, with its own currency, postage stamps, courts and laws but its only territory being a couple of islands in the Indian Ocean.

Troops of Bose’s new Indian National Army (INA) accompanied the Imperial Japanese army in its invasion of Burma and India but they met little success. British and Indian troops loyal to the British blunted the Japanese attack and pushed them back through the jungles of Burma, killing over half the INA in the process. Bose could see that the Japanese attempt to form a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and its plans for a free India were doomed. He planned to defect to the Soviet Union but died in 1945 in a plane crash on Taiwan.

Free India failed in its war-time efforts but within a few years the British agreed to withdraw from the Indian subcontinent where Bose is now regarded as a national hero.

1947 HUAC begins its investigation of Communism in Hollywood

Since World War I the American House of Representatives had set up a number of committees to investigate foreign subversion in the United States. Their scrutiny fell on supporters of both fascism and communism, or anyone who might incite disloyalty, such as Japanese residents of California during World War II.

In 1945 these ad hoc investigations were replaced with a permanent format: the House Committee on Un-American Activities which came to be known as HUAC. It was HUAC that would unmask Alger Hiss as a Russian agent who had worked in the White House, and in 1947 the committee turned its attention on Communist infiltration of Hollywood.

This set of hearings found easy pickings. Hollywood was full of those who had supported the Soviet Union at one time or other, particularly during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and during World War II when the Soviets were an ally. Having been associated with such pro-Stalin movies as Mission to Moscow (1943), which praised the infamous show trials and accused Leon Trotsky of collaborating with the Nazis, or one of the groups set up to send aid to the Spanish Republic, now left many open to charges of sympathizing with Bolshevism. And, to be sure, there was no shortage of genuine Communists and party members in Hollywood, especially among screenwriters and the craft unions. (See the Coen brothers’ comedy Hail Caesar for an exploration of this.)

The committee summoned a string of Hollywood luminaries to testify about their experience with Communism in the film industry. Some of them such as Walt Disney identified others who were suspected of party membership or sympathies but some refused to testify at all. This group, known as the Hollywood Ten included no actors but prominent screenwriters and directors: Herbert Biberman, Ring Lardner Jr, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dymytryk. They made no apologies about their left-wing sympathies – one of them, Alvah Bessie, boasted that he had inserted pro-Soviet propaganda “subversive as all hell” into his work – but stood on their First Amendment Rights. They were convicted on contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in jail.

These hearings led to a blacklist of the Ten and hundreds of other perceived Communist sympathizers who were not permitted to openly work in the film industry for decades. Though HUAC had successfully exposed pro-Soviet elements in Hollywood, popular culture would come to view it as part of a witch hunt and make heroes of those who refused to “name names”.