Radio Show for June 18, 2021
Special Holidays
International Sushi Day
Sushi has become a global phenomenon over the past 30 years or so. In the U.S. sushi emerged from communities in Little Tokyo and became popular among Hollywood celebrities which led to it gaining major attention. International Sushi Day was proclaimed for June 18 in 2009. How to celebrate? Try making sushi yourself. You will need a rice cooker, a bamboo mat, and a sharp knife as well as the ingredients, or you can go to your nearest grocery and pick some up ready to go. Most have a fresh sushi counter with plenty to choose from. Don’t forget the chopsticks!
International Picnic Day
How to celebrate? Have a picnic of course! Find a new park to have that picnic. Chances are there may be hidden parks all over your surrounding area that you haven’t had the chance to check out. Get your cooler, folding chairs, sandwhiches, prepared chicken, drinks, snacks, trash bags and paper towels. It can be simple or as fancy as you want. It’s easy to set up and best of all nobody needs to clean up the house afterwords. What kind of holiday is better than one that is centered directly around eating food?
Ugliest Dog Day
Ugliest Dog Day celebrates the pups out there with a face only a mother could love. But when it comes to man’s best friend, is there really a dog that can’t be considered adorable? No matter how they look the antics of animals will always be cute. A “World’s Ugliest Dog Contest” is an annual contest held in Petaluma as part of the Sonoma Marin Fair. Past winners include Scamp the Tramp, Zsa Zsa, Quasi Modo, Peanut and Mugly. So no matter how unphotogenic your dog is celebrate that mut’s mug and strut him around and be proud today and everyday.
Birthdays…..June 18
Richard Boone…June 18, 1917-1981
Richard Allen Boone was an American actor who starred in over 50 films and was most notable in Westerns.
Richard was born in Los Angeles to a corporate lawyer and 4th great grandson of Squire Boone who was a brother to frontiersman Daniel Boone.
He graduated from Hoover High in Glendale and attended Stanford University. He dropped out of Stanford prior to graduation and worked as an oil-rigger, bartender, painter and writer. He joined the Navy and served on three ships in the Pacific during World War II.
After the war he studied acting at the Actors Studio in New York. His Broadway debut was in “Medea” starring Judith Anderson and John Gielgud and ran 214 performances. Director Elia Kazan used Boone to feed lines to an actress for a film screen test and was not impressed with the actress but was impressed with Boone’s voice to send him to Hollywood where he was given a contract with 20th Century Fox Studios.
Richard made his screen debut in “Halls of Montezuma” and several other roles followed, one of which was in the first motion picture to be filmed in the widescreen Cinemascope process..“The Robe”.. and following “Beneath the 12 Mile Reef” filmed in the same process.
He became friends with Jack Webb who was producing tv’s “Dragnet” at the time. Boone starred in the film version in 1954, as well as a lead role in Webb’s tv’s medical drama “Medic” in which Richard received an Emmy nomination for Best Actor. He continued to get parts in film and tv mostly westerns.
Boone’s next series made him a national star…”Have Gun Will Travel” which ran from 1957 to 63 and earned him two Emmy nominations.
Richard Donner, Ida Lupino, Richard Boone and William Conrad among others directed episodes for the show, Boone directing 28 of them. Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek creator) wrote 24 episodes, other writers included Richard Matheson as well as Sam Peckinpah. Filming locations were on Irving Street just below Melrose Avenue as well as locations in Bishop, Lone Pine and Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. Guest stars were Charles Bronson, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., Angie Dickenson, Peter Falk, Vincent Price, Harry Dean Stanton to name a few. Bernard Herrmann composed and conducted the opening theme.
Boone was nominated 5 times for Primetime Emmy awards.
Short list of Richard’s films
The Robe…1953, starred Richard Burton and Victor Mature, film won 2 AA awards and 3 AA award nominations, film was first to be released in widescreen Cinemascope
Beneath the 12-Mile Reef…1953, also released in widescreen Cinemascope and starred Robert Wagner, Gilbert Roland and Peter Graves
Dragnet…1954, Directed and starred Jack Webb, Dennis Weaver, Lee Marvin and Leonard Nimoy
I Bury The Living…1958, Horror author Stephen King listed this film as one of his favorite films
The Alamo…1960, directed by and starred John Wayne, also starred Richard Widmark, Ken Curtis (from Gunsmoke), and Laurence Harvey, film won 1 AA award and nominated for 6 AA awards
Hombre..1967, directed by Martin Ritt (The Long Hot Summer, Hud, Sounder, Norma Rae) starred Paul Newman, Frederic March and Barbara Rush (It Came From Outer Space)
The Big Sleep..1978, starred Robert Mitchum as detective Phillip Marlow, Oliver Reed, James Stewart, Joan Collins
The Last Dinosaur…1977, a Japanese/American production, Boone played a big-game hunter owning a multimillion dollar company that drills for oil under the polar caps, this time he is searching for a T-Rex.
Roger Ebert…June 18, 1942-2013
Roger was an American film critic, film historian and journalist. He reported for the Chicago Sun times from 1967 until is death. Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and the first film critic to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He was born in Urbana, Illinois and had an interest in journalism in high school where he was a sportswriter for the local news gazette, however, he began his writing career with letters of comment to the science fiction fanzines of the era. After college Ebert sold freelance pieces to the Daily News and was hired as a reporter and feature writer at the Chicago Sun Times reviewing over 200 movies a year.
He and critic Gene Siskel hosted shows “Sneak Previews” (1972-1982) and “Siskel and Ebert at the Movies” (1986-1999). These were movie review shows that made their “thumbs up- thumbs down” gestures iconic.
Art Bell…..June 17, 1945 - 2018
Arthur William Bell III was an American broadcaster and author. He was the founder and the original host of the paranormal themed radio program Coast to Coast AM.
He was born in North Carolina and was always interested in radio. At the age of 13 he became a licensed amateur radio operator. After leaving military service he worked as a disc jockey for a radio station in Okinawa, while there he set a Business World Record staying on the air for 116 hours and 15 min. The money raised for this event allowed him to charter a plane to Vietnam and rescue 120 orphans stranded in Saigon and eventually brought to the US and adopted by American families.
After returning to the US he worked in cable television and began to host Coast to Coast AM with 460 stations. He earned praise from those who felt the paranormal deserves a mature outlet as well as those simply amused by the nightly parade of bizarre and fringe topics. Among those he interviewed were Dean Koontz, Chris Carter (X-Files), Leonard Nimoy, Dan Akroyd, Casey Kasem, physicist Michio Kaku, astronomer Seth Shostak, Willie Nelson, Gordon Lightfoot and George Carlin to name a few.
In 1996 Bell was criticized for reporting rumors that Comet Hale-Bopp was being trailed by a UFO.
In 1997 a caller into the show claimed he had discovered an unknown threat and conspiracy from Area 51 and his life was in danger by even talking about it. For unknown reasons Bell lost connection to his transmitter during the call and the alleged voice became more and more agitated then the entire broadcast dramatically went silent, a confused Bell restored the signal about 20 minutes later. It was mentioned on another show that the caller hoaxed the whole discussion…or did they? It had never been fully explained.
Honorable Birthday Mentions
Paul McCartney…June 18, 1942, won 18 Grammy Awards
Sammy Cahn..Lyricist, songwriter…for Broadway and film…(Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Doris Day)…June 18, 1913-1993
Kathleen Turner…June 19, 1954…Romancing the Stone, Body Heat, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit
On This Day…
The Wild Bunch released on June 18, 1969. This western was directed by Sam Peckinpah and starred William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan. Other choices for William Holden’s part were Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck and Lee Marvin who originally accepted the role but declined as he was offered more money for “Paint Your Wagon”. The Wild Bunch was nominated for 2 AA awards. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence. The plot unravels an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico-US Border trying to adapt to the changing modern world of 1913 attempting to survive by any means possible.
The 10th Dr. Who first appeared June 18, 2005. David Tennant first came squeezing out of the Ninth Doctor in a big spurt of fire to appear and continue as the 10th Dr. Who made the show a colossal worldwide hit. David managed to be charming, whimsical and riddled with glee one moment and then pained, old and angry the next.
So who is Dr. Who? He is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels (frequently with companions) in time and space in the TARDIS (a time machine and spacecraft resembling a British telephone booth) At the end of life the Doctor regenerates.. as a result the physical appearance and the personality changes into the new actor playing the part. The first Dr. Who episode premiered in November, 1963.
Nasa Nelly…The Maury Island Incident
