On this date in 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson, a nationally known evangelist, disappears from Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. Police dispatched planes and ships in an effort to find her, but she was nowhere to be found. Authorities later discovered that radio announcer Kenneth Ormiston, a friend of McPherson, had also vanished. McPherson was the Billy Graham of her time. In 1923, she opened Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, where she consistently amassed overflowing crowds. McPherson claimed to have faith-healing abilities and put on wonderfully entertaining shows for the public. Because of her religious nature, McPherson’s relationship with Ormiston created something of a scandal in 1925, and their disappearance in 1926 made headlines across the country. A month later, McPherson turned up in Agua Prieta, New Mexico, with a wild tale of being kidnapped, but reporter’s quickly uncovered information to prove that she had been with Ormiston the entire time. Although obstruction of justice charges were filed against her, they were later dropped, allegedly because McPherson came up with $30,000 to appease law enforcement officials. McPherson attempted a comeback evangelism tour after the scandal had died down, but it flopped and she slowly faded from the public’s memory.

On this day in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California. The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful MGM film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the film industry. Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was the actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners of the first Oscars–as the coveted gold-plated statuettes later became known–were announced before the awards ceremony itself.

At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer–one of the first “talkies”–was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films. The first official Best Picture winner (and the only silent film to win Best Picture) was Wings, directed by William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with a budget of $2 million, the movie told the story of two World War I pilots who fall for the same woman. Another film, F.W. Murnau’s epic Sunrise, was considered a dual winner for the best film of the year. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise.

A special honorary award was presented to Charlie Chaplin. Originally a nominee for Best Actor, Best Writer and Best Comedy Director for The Circus, Chaplin was removed from these categories so he could receive the special award, a change that some attributed to his unpopularity in Hollywood. It was the last Oscar the Hollywood maverick would receive until another honorary award in 1971.

The Academy officially began using the nickname Oscar for its awards in 1939; a popular but unconfirmed story about the source of the name holds that Academy executive director Margaret Herrick remarked that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. Since 1942, the results of the secret ballot voting have been announced during the live-broadcast Academy Awards ceremony using the sealed-envelope system. The suspense–not to mention the red-carpet arrival of nominees and other stars wearing their most beautiful or outrageous evening wear–continues to draw international attention to the film industry’s biggest night of the year.

On this date in 1856, angered by the shooting of a prominent journalist, San Franciscans form their second vigilance committee to combat lawlessness. The need for vigilance committees in San Francisco was obvious. Only two years after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, San Francisco had grown from a sleepy little village with 900 inhabitants to a booming metropolis with more than 200,000 residents. The sudden influx of people overwhelmed the city. Harried law enforcement officials found it nearly impossible to maintain law and order, and chaos was common in the streets, which were lined with saloons and gambling parlors. Attracted by the promise of gold, marauding bands of Australian criminals called “Sydney ducks” robbed and extorted the people of San Francisco with near impunity.

San Franciscans formed their first vigilance committee in 1851. About 200 vigilantes enrolled, most of them from the elite professional and merchant class of the city. They had headquarters along Battery Street, where they could temporarily imprison criminals, and the ringing of the city’s fire bell would summon the vigilantes to action. A handful of men who were found guilty of serious crimes like murder were hanged from a nearby derrick normally used to haul freight into the second story of a warehouse. More commonly, though, the vigilantes simply deported criminals like the “Sydney ducks” back to their homelands.

Whether due to the vigilante actions or because conventional law enforcement became more effective, things eventually quieted down in San Francisco and the first vigilance committee disbanded. In 1856, however, a rigged election put an Irish-Catholic politician named James P. Casey on the city board of supervisors. James King, a crusading editor of the Daily Evening Bulletin, accused Casey of being involved in criminal activity in the city. On May 14, 1856, Casey confronted King in the street and fatally wounded him with a Colt navy revolver. The next day, angry San Franciscans created the second vigilance committee. This time, however, they could not claim that the city government was not enforcing the law–the sheriff had already arrested Casey and put him in the county jail pending trial. Acting more like a raging mob than an instrument of justice, 500 vigilantes surrounded the county jail and removed Casey from the sheriff’s custody on May 18. After a short but reasonably fair trial, they hanged him.

Some historians have argued that the second vigilance committee was less interested in suppressing crime than in attacking its political enemies. Casey’s election signaled a shift in power to the dominant faction of recently immigrated Irish-Catholic Democrats. The vigilantes, who were largely native-born Protestants, reasserted their control by arresting and exiling their political opponents from the city. As before, they hanged several men. Regardless of the vigilantes’ true motives, a number of Irish Catholic leaders did leave the city and the Protestant elite managed to regain control of the government. Late in 1856, the vigilance committee formally disbanded and never again became active.

On this day in 1907, actress Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut.
Because of her performances in such films as The Philadelphia Story and On Golden Pond, will become one of the most celebrated actresses of the 20th century. The daughter of New England intellectuals who stressed rigorous exercise and independent thinking, Hepburn studied at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and went on to become a stage actress. She first gained notice on Broadway in 1932, for her performance in The Warrior’s Husband. After a screen test, Hepburn signed with RKO studios and landed her first role, in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), starring John Barrymore and directed by George Cukor, who would become Hepburn’s frequent director and one of her closest friends. Critics and fans alike immediately took note of the young actress, with her unconventional beauty and upper-crust New England accent, as a fresh presence on screen. For Morning Glory (1933), only her third movie, Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress. It was the first of 12 Oscar nominations she would garner over the course of her career, a record that would stand until 2003, when Meryl Streep received her 13th nomination. Hepburn would win three more Oscars—for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), A Lion in Winter (1968) and On Golden Pond (1981)—but never attended the ceremony to collect any of them.

Hepburn’s next few films with RKO had mixed results, and she became personally unpopular with many for her refusal to play along with the “rules” of fame and glamour that governed the industry. Fiercely independent and strong-willed, she wore trousers and no makeup, and refused to pose for pictures, grant interviews or sign autographs. By then recognized as one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood, Hepburn also earned a reputation for being arrogant and self-absorbed on-set. She appeared more sympathetic in Stage Door (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938), although audiences failed to respond to the second film, co-starring Cary Grant and now regarded as a beloved classic.
Though her career was stalled, Hepburn refused to give up; instead, she decided to change gears by buying out her contract at RKO. The change gave her far more control than other performers—and especially other actresses—in the age of the studio system. Hepburn returned to Broadway in 1938′s The Philadelphia Story, written especially for her by Philip Barry. Hepburn’s sometime lover, Howard Hughes, bought the screenplay rights for her, and she sold them to Louis B. Mayer at MGM on the condition that she star. With Grant and Jimmy Stewart signed on, the 1940 film was a huge hit.
In 1942, Hepburn played a political journalist who falls in love with a sportswriter in another hit, Woman of the Year. Her co-star in the film was Spencer Tracy, with whom Hepburn began a romantic relationship that would become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated love stories. A devout Catholic, Tracy was unwilling to divorce his wife, but he lived quietly with Hepburn for the next 27 years. The couple acted in nine films together, including Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). Tracy died just weeks after shooting was completed on the last film. Hepburn, who had withdrawn from filmmaking for a period of several years to care for her ailing lover, didn’t publicly discuss the relationship until after Tracy’s widow died in 1983. She was married once, to the Philadelphia broker Ludlow Ogden Smith, from 1928 to 1934.

Hepburn continued to appear in films and on television through the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s, though she frequently announced that this or that performance would be her last. She also returned to Broadway late in her career, winning praise for her roles in Coco (1969), A Matter of Gravity (1976) and The West Side Waltz (1981). In 1991, she published a bestselling autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, which impressed fans with its characteristic forthrightness and brisk candor. Hepburn made her final screen appearance in 1994′s Love Affair, a remake of the classic 1939 film. She died on June 29, 2003, at the age of 96.

On this date in 1812, Spencer Perceval, prime minister of Britain since 1809, is shot to death by demented businessman John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons. Bellingham, who was inflamed by his failure to obtain government compensation for war debts incurred in Russia, gave himself up immediately. Spencer Perceval had a profitable law practice before entering the House of Commons as a Tory in 1796. Industrious and organized, he successively held the senior cabinet posts of solicitor general and attorney general beginning in 1801. In 1807, he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post he continued to hold after becoming prime minister in 1809. As prime minister, Perceval faced a financial crisis in Britain brought on by the country’s extended involvement in the costly Napoleonic Wars. He also made political enemies through his opposition to the regency of the Prince of Wales, who later became King George IV. Nevertheless, the general situation was improving when he was assassinated on May 11, 1812. His assassin, though deemed insane, was executed one week later.

On this date in 1977, legendary actress Joan Crawford dies at her New York City apartment. Born Lucille Fay Le Sueur (her birth year has been variously recorded as 1904 or 1908), Crawford was a nightclub dancer who broke into Broadway musicals in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. She first twisted her way into Hollywood stardom as a vivacious flapper in the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters. She made a series of similar pictures, including Dancing Lady (1933), which co-starred Fred Astaire in his silver-screen debut. Crawford’s seamless transition into the sound film era made her one of the most popular and by the late 1930s was one of the highest-paid leading ladies in Hollywood. She fought for more varied and less stereotypical parts, winning dramatic roles in films such as The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), Strange Cargo (1940) and A Woman’s Face (1941). In 1945, just when her career appeared to be on the wane, Crawford turned in the performance for which she would most be remembered, playing the title role in Mildred Pierce. As the waitress and single mother who makes her fortune with a chain of restaurants, Crawford won an Academy Award for Best Actress and established herself as a respected dramatic actress. She would be nominated for another Best Actress Oscar for 1947’s Possessed and a third for 1952’s Sudden Fear.

By the late 1950s, Crawford had become a representative for the Pepsi-Cola Company, whose board chairman and chief executive, Alfred N. Steele, she married in 1955. Three previous marriages–to the actors Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone and Phillip Terry–had ended in divorce. When Steele died in 1959, Crawford was named the first female director of Pepsi-Cola’s board. In 1962, the tenacious actress made a celebrated foray into the horror genre with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, co-starring Bette Davis. Having always enthusiastically welcomed and cultivated her fame, Crawford published her autobiography, A Portrait of Joan, that same year. She went on to make a number of thrillers in the last years of her career, as well as occasional appearances in television dramas. Less than two years after Crawford’s death in 1977, her adopted daughter Christina published Mommie Dearest, in which she alleged that the famous actress had been emotionally and physically abusive to Christina and her adopted brother. The book was later made into a critically panned film, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford.

On this date in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI). By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century. Hoover first became involved in law enforcement as a special assistant to the attorney general, overseeing the mass roundups and deportations of suspected communists during the Red Scare abuses of the late 1910s. After taking over the FBI in 1924, Hoover began secretly monitoring any activities that did not conform to his American ideal. Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr. While Hoover’s success at legitimate crime fighting was modest, his hold over many powerful people and organizations earned him respect and kept him in power. He was extremely successful at attracting attention and favorable press to the FBI. It wasn’t until after his death in 1972, right before the beginning of the Watergate scandal, that Hoover’s corruption became known.

On this date in 1671, Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer better known as “Captain Blood,” is captured attempting to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
Blood, a Parliamentarian during the English Civil War, was deprived of his estate in Ireland with the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. In 1663, he put himself at the head of a plot to seize Dublin Castle from supporters of King Charles II, but the plot was discovered and his accomplices executed. He escaped capture. In 1671, he hatched a bizarre plan to steal the new Crown Jewels, which had been refashioned by Charles II because most of the original jewels were melted down after Charles I’s execution in 1649.

On May 9, 1671, Blood, disguised as a priest, managed to convince the Jewel House keeper to hand over his pistols. Blood’s three accomplices then emerged from the shadows, and together they forced their way into the Jewel House. However, they were caught in the act when the keeper’s son showed up unexpectedly, and an alarm went out to the Tower guard. One man shoved the Royal Orb down his breeches while Blood flattened the Crown with a mallet and tried to run off with it. The Tower guards apprehended and arrested all four of the perpetrators, and Blood was brought before the king. Charles was so impressed with Blood’s audacity that, far from punishing him, he restored his estates in Ireland and made him a member of his court with an annual pension. Captain Blood became a colorful celebrity all across the kingdom, and when he died in 1680 his body had to be exhumed in order to persuade the public that he was actually dead.

On this date in 1963, Dr. No premieres and moviegoers get their first look at the super-spy James Bond (codename: 007), the immortal character created by Ian Fleming in his now-famous series of novels and portrayed onscreen by the relatively unknown Scottish actor Sean Connery.

Connery had acted in Repertory Theater and television and scored some bit parts in films before landing his first significant role, opposite Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place (1958). Bigger roles followed, notably in Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959). Harold Saltzman and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the producers of Dr. No, had other actors in mind to play Bond, including Cary Grant and James Mason; Fleming himself preferred another leading candidate, David Niven but after winning the role, Connery swiftly made it his own. Costarring Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman and Jack Lord, Dr. No sends Bond, a British Secret Service agent, to Jamaica to investigate the murders of a fellow agent and his secretary. There, he is forced to confront the villainous Chinese scientist Dr. No (Wiseman) with the help of a bikini-clad seashell collector, Honey Ryder (Andress) and a CIA agent (Lord). Dr. No established many signature elements of the Bond film series, including its distinctive theme song, fast-paced action sequences, sexy “Bond girls”–both good and bad, Bond’s fondness for vodka martinis “shaken, not stirred” and his introduction of himself as “Bond. James Bond.”

Connery went on to appear in six more Bond films, including From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and (after a 10-year hiatus) Never Say Never Again (1983). The title of the last film, an “unofficial” remake of Thunderball, was a self-mocking reference to Connery’s past statements that he had finished with the Bond franchise. Though he was a major box-office attraction after the overwhelming success of Goldfinger, Connery had reportedly already tired of playing Bond by the time he made Thunderball (1965). Afraid of being pinned down to his famous alter ego, he began seeking out different and more challenging roles, scoring hits with such films as The Man Who Would Be King (1975). With acclaimed turns in The Name of the Rose (1986) and The Untouchables (1987), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Connery moved fully out of the Bond spotlight and emerged one of Hollywood’s most venerable leading men.

Meanwhile, other actors kept the Bond franchise going over the years, with varying degrees of success. George Lazenby played Bond in only one film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), while Roger Moore had a well-received run of seven films, beginning with Live and Let Die (1973) and ending with A View to a Kill (1985). After two films starring Timothy Dalton (1987’s The Living Daylights and 1989’s Licence to Kill), Pierce Brosnan was credited with breathing new life into the franchise with his debonair portrayal of Bond in four films: GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002). Daniel Craig, a brawnier Bond, made his debut in the hit Casino Royale (2006) and continued in Quantum of Solace (2008).

On this date in 1896, Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of America’s first well-known serial killers, is hanged to death in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although his criminal exploits were just as extensive and occurred during the same time period as Jack the Ripper, the Arch Fiend–as Holmes was known–has not endured in the public’s memory the way the Ripper has. Born with the unfortunate moniker Herman Mudgett in New Hampshire, Holmes began torturing animals as a child. Still, he was a smart boy who later graduated from the University of Michigan with a medical degree. Holmes financed his education with a series of insurance scams whereby he requested coverage for nonexistent people and then presented corpses as the insured. In 1886, Holmes moved to Chicago to work as a pharmacist. A few months later, he bought the pharmacy from the owner’s widow after his death. She then mysteriously disappeared. With a new series of cons, Holmes raised enough money to build a giant, elaborate home across from the store. The home, which Holmes called “The Castle,” had secret passageways, fake walls, and trapdoors. Some of the rooms were soundproof and connected by pipes to a gas tank in the basement. His bedroom had controls that could fill these rooms with gas. Holmes’ basement also contained a lab with equipment used for his dissections. Young women in the area, along with tourists who had come to see the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and had rented out rooms in Holmes’ castle, suddenly began disappearing. Medical schools purchased many human skeletons from Dr. Holmes during this period but never asked how he obtained the anatomy specimens. Holmes was finally caught after attempting to use another corpse in an insurance scam. He confessed, saying, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.” Reportedly, authorities discovered the remains of over 200 victims on his property. Devil in the White City, a book about Holmes’ murder spree and the World Fair by Erik Larson, was published in 2003.

On this date in 1901, Gary Cooper, the star of High Noon and other classic Westerns, is born in Helena, Montana. Born Frank James Cooper, he was the son of well-to-do lawyer who eventually won election to the Montana Supreme Court Justice. The family owned a 500-acre ranch near Helena, where Cooper became a skilled horseman. As a young man, Cooper put his backcountry skills to good use as a guide at Yellowstone Park, but his real dream was to become a cartoonist for a big city newspaper. After attending Grinnell College in Iowa for several years, Cooper moved to Los Angeles in 1924. At the time, Hollywood was churning out countless low-budget western movies that catered to the American fascination with a mythic west of noble cowboy, brave cavalry soldiers, and vicious outlaws. In a city dominated by cars, however, the studios found it difficult to find skilled horsemen to ride in these so-called “horse operas.” On a lark, Cooper had applied for work as a movie extra. When producers discovered he had grown up riding horses on a Montana ranch, they quickly put him to work as stunt rider and a cowboy heavy. Soon after, he abandoned the dream of becoming a cartoonist for the glamorous world of Hollywood.

Cooper appeared in a string of low-budget two-reel Westerns for the next two years before he finally caught the eye of Sam Goldwyn of the famous MGM studio. Goldwyn gave him a small role in the popular 1926 movie The Winning of Barbara Worth, which earned Cooper favorable reviews and bigger roles. Three years later, Cooper won the lead part in a movie version of the famous Owen Wister western novel The Virginian. Cooper’s laconic, understated style of acting was well suited to portraying the Virginian, a coolly competent cowboy who avoided trouble when he could but was quick with a gun when his honor was at stake. Generations of subsequent cowboy actors, from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood, borrowed many elements of Cooper’s Virginian for their own characters.
The success of The Virginian made Cooper one of Hollywood’s leading male actors. He went on to star in a number of films, including A Farewell to Arms (1932), Beau Geste (1939), and The Pride of the Yankees (1942). Cooper never abandoned the genre that began his career, though, and he continued to appear in successful Westerns like The Plainsman (1937) and The Westerner (1940). Appropriately, one of Cooper’s last great roles was in a Western that is generally considered a classic of the genre. In High Noon, Cooper plays an aging town marshal who faces a showdown with four killers arriving by train at noon. Despite having honorably served the citizens of the town for years, Cooper’s marshal is unable to convince any of the cowardly townspeople to stand with him as he confronts the outlaws. As the hands of a loudly ticking wall clock inch towards high noon, the marshal prepares to fight alone. A profound meditation on the dangers of social conformity and cowardice, High Noon was also a hugely entertaining and successful western tale of suspense. Cooper won his second Academy Award for Best Actor with High Noon (his first had come in 1941 for Sergeant York), confirming his status as one of the most talented actors in western movies. Cooper was 51 years old when High Noon was released. During the next decade, he made several other films, though none were as successful as his earlier works. In 1961, the Motion Picture Academy gave Cooper a special Academy Award for career achievement. When his friend Jimmy Stewart rose to accept the award for Cooper, Stewart broke down and revealed that the actor was seriously ill with cancer. Cooper died shortly after at the age of 60.

On this date in 1911, George Maledon, the man who executed at least 60 men for “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker, dies from natural causes in Tennessee. Few men actively seek out the job of hangman and Maledon was no exception. Raised by German immigrants in Detroit, Michigan. Maledon moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, in his late teens and joined the city police force. He joined the Union Army during the Civil War, and he then returned to Fort Smith where he was appointed a U.S. deputy marshal. The town also had occasional need of an executioner, and Maledon agreed to take on the grisly task in addition to his regular duties as a marshal. Maledon wound up with more business than he expected. In 1875, President Grant appointed a young prosecuting attorney named Isaac Parker to be the federal judge of the Western District of Arkansas. Headquartered at Fort Smith, the Western District was one of the most notoriously corrupt in the country, and it included the crime-ridden Indian Territory to the west (in present-day Oklahoma). Indian Territory had become a refuge for rustlers, murderers, thieves, and fugitives, and Parker’s predecessor often accepted bribes to look the other way. Assigned an unprecedented force of 200 U.S. marshals to restore order, Parker began a massive dragnet that led to the arrest of many criminals. A friend of the Indians and more sympathetic to the victims of crimes than the criminals, Parker doled out swift justice in his court. In his first months in session he tried 91 defendants and sentenced eight of them to hang. It was Maledon’s job to carry out Judge Parker’s death sentences. Paid $100 for each hanging, Maledon willingly accepted the work. He tried to be a conscientious hangman who minimized suffering with a quick death. Maledon said he considered the job “honorable and respectable work and I mean to do it well.”

In all, Maledon is believed to have hanged about 60 men and to have shot five more who tried to escape. Subsequent sensational accounts of the Fort Smith “Hanging Judge” unfairly painted Parker as a cruel sadist with Maledon as his willing henchman. Yet, it is well to keep in mind that 65 marshals were also killed in the line of duty attempting to bring law and order to Indian Territory during Parker’s term. After Parker died from diabetes in 1896, Maledon met a publicity-seeking attorney named J. Warren Reed, who had written a lurid account of the Fort Smith court entitled Hell on the Border. Attracted by the promise of fame and money, Maledon joined Reed in a promotional tour for the book. He willingly played the role of the ghoulish hangman, displaying ropes he had preserved and telling which were used to execute various outlaws. After a year of touring, Maledon tired of the limelight and used his earnings to purchase a farm. A small man with a weak constitution, he did not have the strength to work the farm profitably, and soon after entered a soldier’s home at Johnson City, Tennessee, where he remained until his death in 1911.