On June 6 in 1944, during World War II, around 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces crossed the English Channel and landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of Normandy, France. The deadly fight of D-Day thus began the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi dominance. By late August of that year, northern France would be liberated and the Allies would defeat the Germans the following spring.
One of the most famous depictions of D-Day occurred in Saving Private Ryan (1998), when the movie opened as the Allies arrive and land on Omaha Beach. The movie tries to capture the horrific and deadly chaos that the soldiers experienced as they made the historic landing.
Recently, CBS Sunday Morning featured a story about the Normandy invasion and some of its dark sides. The piece discusses the destruction of France and, as in almost any endeavor involving a large number of people, notes that some of the soldiers did not act honorably. [2016 Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available.]
Of course, the bad acts do not diminish the importance of the victory over the Nazis or the heroism of many others, but we should remember all aspects of the story to understand history. As Rick Atkinson, author of The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, notes near the end of the video, “war really flays open the soul.”
Many brave souls rose to the occasion after being thrust in a dangerous situation, but some later showed they were not perfect. So on this anniversary of D-Day, we celebrate the victories but also remember the many types of losses that are inevitable when humans go to war.
What will you do to remember D-Day? Leave your two cents in the comments.
May 24 is the anniversary of the 1883 opening of the Brooklyn Bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn across the East River. At the time, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge was seen as a great human achievement, resulting in the longest suspension bridge by more than 50% over any existing bridge. Well over a century later, it is still beautiful and fun to walk across.
The bridge has appeared in a number of movies, such as Moonstruck (1987), The Siege (1998), Godzilla (1998), and I Am Legend (2007).
The Brooklyn Bridge still has a pretty good movie record, and you may also check it out online with a live videocam. The bridge also appears in songs. For example, Frank Sinatra sang the song, “The Brooklyn Bridge.” Similarly, the bridge recently appeared in Lee Dewyze’s jazzy “Brooklyn Bridge.”
Below is Sinatra’s “The Brooklyn Bridge,” which was written by Sammy Cahn. The song was recorded for the movie It Happened in Brooklyn (1947), which also features Sinatra on the Bridge. The song was released as a B-side in 1947.
For more about the Brooklyn Bridge and its historical significance, a History Channel documentary in their Modern Marvels series tells the story of the bridge. [2015 Update: Unfortunately, that video is no longer available on YouTube, but below is a preview for the Ken Burns documentary about the bridge.]
On May 21 in 1901, Connecticut passed the first state speed law regulating motor vehicles. That first law limited city drivers to 12 mph but allowed drivers in the country to go up to 15 mph.
At the time, there had been other speed laws for non-motorized vehicles such as horse-drawn wagons, including laws banning such wagons from proceeding at “a gallop.” But the 1901 Connecticut law prompted other states to start passing similar laws, which eventually led to you getting that speeding ticket.
Some of our readers may remember the 1970s when rising gas prices caused states to lower speed limits, culminating with President Richard Nixon in January 1974 signing the National Maximum Speed Law, making the national speed limit 55 mph. At the time, there was a public service campaign designed to get drivers to obey the new laws.
One 1978 television commercial that stood out for me was one about Grinnell, Iowa. In my many years of driving, I have often thought about the commercial that makes a powerful argument for not driving too fast. The producers do a good job of drawing you in before hitting you with a powerful — and yes manipulative — message. In case you do not remember the commercial, check it out below.
By 1987, though, concerns about fuel supplies diminished and Congress passed a law allowing states to raise speed limits up to 65 mph. Then in 1995 the national speed limit was completely repealed, leaving it up to each state to set its own speed limits. Apparently, we decided we wanted to get to our destinations faster even if we were to wipe out poor Grinnell.
While many credit the 1987 increase and the later 1995 repeal to a drop in concern about fuel availability, I give full credit to a protest song by Sammy Hagar, “I Can’t Drive 55,” which was released in 1984 on his VOA album. It is one of the most famous songs written in response to Congressional legislation.
Hagar has explained that he came up with the idea for the song when he was driving in upstate New York at 2 a.m. after returning to the U.S. after a long plane trip. When an officer pulled over Hagar for going 62 mph on a four-lane highway, a weary and exasperated Hargar uttered the immortal words, “I can’t drive 55,” realizing immediately it was a great idea for a song.
As soon as Hagar arrived to his house in Lake Placid, he sat down and wrote the rest of the song. And the rest, like the national speed limit law, is history.
What is your favorite song about speeding? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The previews for 42, the new movie about baseball player Jackie Robinson, tempted me to wait until the movie came out on video. I feared that the movie would not have much that I did not already know, and the preview made me wonder if the movie was going to be more like a made-for-TV movie. But I love baseball movies and Jackie Robinson’s story is worthy of the big screen, so I headed out to the local movie theater. While the movie may not rise to the level of the best baseball movies, it is still entertaining and worth your time in the theater.
42 covers the story of how Jackie Robinson, played by Chadwick Boseman, came to break the code of Major League Baseball’s ban on black baseball players. The film does not cover all of Robinson’s career, but it covers his rise from the Negro Leagues through his first season in the Majors. Boseman does an excellent job of portraying the hero as a human being, and Nicole Beharie also does a great job of playing Robinson’s wife, Rachel. The most well-known actor in the cast is Harrison Ford, who in an unusual role for him, plays Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey.
Some have complained that writer-director Brian Helgeland focuses too much on the white men like Rickey. With no standing to defend the movie’s perspective, I do understand the complaint and would like to see a film that focused almost entirely on Robinson’s view. But 42 is trying to do something else by showing the historical context of Robinson’s great achievement. I also appreciated that Helgeland did not settle for showing stereotypes and that he featured some good people in the South as well as racists in New York.
One minor weakness in the film is that it only shows Robinson’s first season, and it left me wanting more. So 42 suffers from some of the problems with biopics that can only cover so much time.
42 also suffers a little from trying to fit into the baseball movie genre. Baseball films often end with an important baseball game win (or loss), and 42, like the recent Moneyball (2011), tries to fit in that genre but comes a little short because of real life. During Robinson’s first season in the Majors in 1947, his team did win the pennant and the movie portrays the climactic scene of Robinson hitting the home run to clinch it. But since the Dodgers won the division over the Cardinals by five games that season, it was somewhat lacking in drama. The movie does not follow Robinson into the World Series, apparently because the Yankees beat Robinson’s team four games to three. So reality took away a little of the traditional baseball climax, but, of course, the drama of 42 is really on Jackie Robinson succeeding when so much was against him, and the movie does a good job of telling the real story.
The movie does do an excellent job of showing some of the difficulties that Jackie Robinson encountered from opposing players, opposing managers, and his own teammates. And you get to see the true strength of a man who had the courage to turn the other cheek for a higher cause (although not depicted in the film, by 1949 when other black players were established in Major League Baseball, Robinson could finally fight back).
Conclusion: Overall, 42 is an engaging story about some things you knew about and probably some things you did not. It tells the story of a real hero and should be required viewing for every child in America. For a bonus video, here is Jackie Robinson appearing on What’s My Line? after he retired from baseball, and you can see at the end how he still speaks fondly of Branch Rickey.
Other Reviews Because Why Should You Trust Me?: Rotten Tomatoes gives 42 a critics rating of 77% and an audience rating of 88%, which makes sense because fans may appreciate the true-life story and care less if the movie is too predictable. Jeffrey M. Anderson at Combustible Celluloid says that 42 is “a wonderful, huge, glossy, mythical portrait of America’s growing pains.” By contrast, Rick Kisonak at Seven Days concludes that Jackie Robinson “deserves a movie that strives to be at least half as great as he was, a movie better than a cookie-cutter Hollywood biopic like this one.”
Bonus History Lesson: At the end of 42, Helgeland shows scenes of modern baseball players, starting with Yankee Derek Jeter for some reason, wearing Jackie Robinson’s number 42 on the annual Jackie Robinson Day. I wish, though, that Helgeland had shown a scene of the baseball player who actually inspired the idea of having players wear Jackie Robinson’s number on that day, Ken Griffey, Jr. How does “42” rank among the great baseball movies? Leave your two cents in the comments.
For these and other reasons, in recent years Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have stopped using capital punishment. Other state legislatures are considering bills to abolish the death penalty.
“Green, Green Grass of Home” and Its Twist Ending
Thinking about Maryland’s death penalty, I remembered a hit song from the 1960s called “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which is probably his biggest hit song along with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (he also co-wrote the George Jones song “He Stopped Loving Her Today”).
“Green, Green Grass of Home” belongs in a unique group of songs that have a twist ending. The song begins with the singer talking about a trip home, but in the last verse, we learn that it was all a dream. Although there is no specific reference to the death penalty or executions, the verse makes clear that the singer will die at the hands of the state in the morning. Then I awake and look around me, At the four gray walls that surround me, And I realize that I was only dreaming, For there’s a guard and a sad old padre, Arm in arm we’ll walk at daybreak, And at last I’ll touch the green green grass of home.
Putnam performs a clever sleight of hand in the song. He gets us to see the singer as a human being, one with feelings we can relate to, because everyone has been homesick. Only then does he let us know that the singer is on death row. Had the song begun by telling us the singer was condemned, we would have seen him in a different light and judged him as something other than human. But like Steve Earle’s “Over Yonder,” the song “Green, Green Grass of Home” lets us see the humanity even in the worst of us, which is pretty cool.
But Porter Wagoner was the first one to have a hit with “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1965. Check out this performance and note the subtle special effects where the prison bar shadows appear at the end.
Tom Jones Version
The next year in 1966, Tom Jones had a hit with the song. His version went to number 1 on the U.K. charts.
This TV rendition of the song goes for a less subtle approach than the Porter Wagoner shadows. Here, Tom Jones sings from a jail cell. The setting of the song, though, kind of spoils the surprise ending.
Jerry Lee Lewis Version
Tom Jones was inspired to record “Green, Green Grass of Home” after hearing it on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 albumCountry Songs for City Folk. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
Here is Lewis’s version.
Joan Baez Version
Joan Baez gives a unique version by being one of the rare woman’s voices to tackle the song. It is appropriate because there currently are approximately sixty women on death rows around the country.
Baez does a nice job in this performance from The Smothers Brothers Show.
Finally, in 2006, Lewis and Jones performed “Green, Green Grass of Home” together. While the lyrics of the song constitute a soliloquy that does not lend itself to being a duet, it was still cool to see the great Tom Jones singing with the legend who inspired him to record one of his biggest hits. [October 2014 Update: Unfortunately, the video of the duet is no longer available on YouTube.]
Capital Punishment After “Green, Green Grass of Home”
One may only speculate about the impact of the song on society or society’s impact on the song. But in 1965-1966 when the song was a big hit for Porter Wagoner in the U.S. and for Tom Jones in the U.K., the death penalty was at low levels of popularity in those countries.
Great Britain would abolish the death penalty on a trial basis in 1965 and abolish it permanently in 1969. In the U.S., executions ground to a halt in the late 1960s as courts considered court challenges to the U.S. death penalty.
Within a decade, after states passed new laws, the U.S. death penalty machine began chugging along in the late 1970s, even as other countries continued to abolish capital punishment. But more recently, since the turn of the century, several states have joined the other states and countries that have decided the death penalty is unnecessary, uncivilized, and wasteful of resources.
Maryland has now joined those civilized states and countries. The end of the death penalty, unlike “Green, Green Grass of Home,” is not a dream.
What is your favorite version of “Green, Green Grass of Home”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
May 24 is the 
album. It is one of the most famous songs written in response to Congressional legislation.
. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.