Peanut Butter Comics

Skippy is an American comic strip written and drawn by Percy Crosby, and published from 1923 to 1945. A highly popular, acclaimed and influential feature about rambunctious fifth-grader Skippy Skinner, his friends and his enemies, it was adapted into an Oscar-winning 1931 film starring Jackie Cooper, a novel and a radio show. An early influence on cartoonist Charles Schulz and an inspiration for his Peanuts, Skippy is considered one of the classics of the form. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in the comic strips. The brilliance of Skippy was that it was the first kid cartoon with a definable and complex personality grounded in daily life.

Today, the most well-known extension of the Skippy name is peanut butter. When the California food packer Joseph L. Rosefield began to sell its newly developed hydrogenated peanut butter in 1932, it was labeled "Skippy" without Crosby's permission, resulting in Crosby invalidating the trademark in 1934. Rosefield persisted in using the name. After Crosby was committed to a mental institution and after the passage of the Lanham Act in 1946, Rosefield was granted rights to the trademark.

Rosefield sold the brand to Best Foods in 1955. Its successor companies claimed rights to the trademark over the objection of Crosby's heirs, and much litigation has occurred on this point over the decades. Skippy is currently manufactured by Hormel Foods, which bought the brand from Unilever in 2013. Skippy is the second oldest leading peanut butter brand after Peter Pan (1920).

Noted Television Themes

 

Bruce Broughton (1945-) is an American orchestral composer of television, film, video game scores and concert works. He has composed several highly acclaimed soundtracks over his extensive career. Broughton has won eleven Emmy Awards and has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score for Silverado. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series, Hawaii Five-O, Dallas, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, to name three. Boughton won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music in 1995 for JAG and was nominated for the same award in 2002 for First Monday.

JAG theme

First Monday theme 

Bruce Broughton bio

Questioning Your Identity

On this date in 1945, My Name is Julia Ross premiered in New York City. The sixty-four-minute suspense drama from Columbia Pictures was directed by Joseph H. Lewis and starred Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, and George Macready. Set in London, Ross takes a position with an employment agency but soon discovers someone(s) are attempting to convince her to question her own identity. Based upon the 1941 novel, The Woman in Red by Anthony Gilbert, the psychological twists and fast-paced, tense action has been played out in many films before and since, but it is worth watching for the convincing cast.

The Reynolds Rocket

On this date in 1945, American commercial traveler and enterprising businessman, Milton Reynolds, the initial batch of the successful ballpoint pens. He realized reliable ballpoint pens would succeed if he mastered their mass production. Hungarian, László Bíró, made a ballpoint pen in the many years earlier that would not dirty hands and clothes of writers, and not leave blots or smudge. Reynolds was quick to patent Bíró’s invention in the USA before the inventor and his partner, Eversharp, did. Sold under the brand Reynolds Rocket in Gimbels department store in New York City at the cost of $12.50, fifty police officers had to maintain order. With eight million made by Reynolds international pen company, over ten thousand sold out in days.

Note: An outraged Bíró sued Reynolds but did not defend the October 30, 1888 patent rights by John J. Loud, inventor of the first "ball tip" pen. In court, Reynolds referred to the earlier patent and his modification of the 1888 pen. He said his pen was a reduced copy and Bíró’s construction has nothing to do with it.

Being Ejected for The First Time

 

On this date in 1945, while flying at more than 300 miles per hour at 6,000 feet over Patterson Field, Ohio, First Sergeant Lawrence Lambert, U.S. Army Air Forces became the first person to eject from an aircraft in flight in the United States. The test aircraft was a modified Northrop P-61B-5-NO Black Widow night fighter, redesignated XP-61B. The airplane was flown by Captain John W.McGyrt and named Jack in the Box. The ejection seat was placed in the gunner’s position, just behind and above the Black Widow’s pilot. A 37 mm cartridge launched the seat from the airplane at approximately 60 feet per second with Lambert experiencing 12–14 Gs acceleration.

The Year's Big Comedy Hit

 

On this date in 1945, the romantic comedy, Christmas in Connecticut, premiered nationally. Barbara Stanwyck plays an unmarried big-city magazine food writer whose popular articles and recipes about her fictitious Connecticut farm, husband, and baby are admired by housewives nationally. Stanwyck's writing charade must assume the role of her character, however, in order to save her career from scandal. She has no idea how to prepare a meal for a returning war hero, Dennis Morgan. 

The film is directed by Peter Godfrey from a story by Aileen Hamilton. The film also stars Sydney Greenstreet as Stanwyck's editor and S.Z. Sakall as her uncle and chef, and Reginald Gardiner as her dull potential husband to help cover her charade. Saving her from that marriage, however, Morgan arrives early then his fiancée unexpectedly arrives. The film was a huge financial success, earning over 3 million domestically.

From Tennessee to New Mexico

 

On this date in 1945, the Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico, became the location for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was the codename for the American effort to develop and test nuclear weapons during World War II. Run by General Leslie Groves, the construction of the actual bomb was overseen by Robert Oppenheimer, who was head of the Los Alamos Laboratory where it was developed. In 1939 a letter written by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein was delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The letter urged the United States to develop uranium stockpiles and commence research efforts, especially as Nazi Germany might do the same.

The work was carried out with extreme secrecy with many of those working on the project having no idea what they were working towards. Despite the security, Soviet spies managed to penetrate the project and were aware that the US had developed the bomb. Less than a month later, President Harry Truman authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unwilling to surrender, Japan did not acknowledge the singular bomb. However, the second bomb brought about a swift end to World War II without the need for a catastrophic invasion of Japan.

Note: The "Calutron Girls" are shown monitoring a mass spectrometer, used for separating the isotopes of uranium, during the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The women were mostly high school graduates. In the foreground is Gladys Owens. Almost difficult to comprehend, she did not know what she was involved with until seeing this picture on a tour fifty years later.

Operation Meetinghouse

 

On this date in 1945, the XXI Bomber Command, Twentieth Air Force, began launching 325 Boeing B-29 Superfortress from airfields on Guam and Saipan on a two-night incendiary bombing of Tokyo, the capital city of the Empire of Japan and the most populous city on Earth. Under Major General Curtis LeMay's command, the Superfortresses would bomb at low altitude at night. As the construction of Japanese cities made them vulnerable to fires, the bombers would carry incendiary bombs rather than high explosives. Operation Meetinghouse was the single deadliest and most destructive air attack in history. 279 airplanes reached Tokyo. 12 were shot down and 42 damaged with 96 crewmen either killed or missing in action.