Who was born on this date:

Actor Karl Malden was born Mladen George Sekulovich on March 22, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Street Car Named Desire, for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor; On the Water Front; and One-Eyed Jacks. Among other notable film roles were Archie Lee Meighan in Baby Doll, Zebulon Prescott in How the West was Won, and General Omar Bradley in Patton. His best-known role, though, was on television as Lt. Mike Stone on the 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was also the spokesman for American Express. He died on July 1, 2009 from natural causes and is buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

On this date in 1984, seven teachers at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are indicted by the Los Angeles County grand jury after hearing testimony from 18 children. Included among the charged are Peggy McMartin Buckey, the head of the school and her son Ray Buckey, after seven years and millions of dollars, the case against the teachers came to a close with no reputable evidence of wrongdoing and no convictions.

The McMartin school debacle began on August 12, 1983 when Judy Johnson reported to the police that she believed her 2-1/2-year-old son had been molested at the McMartin Preschool. The first major blunder occurred less than a month into the investigation. On September 8, the Manhattan Beach Police Department sent out a form letter to more than 200 families, alerting them of an investigation into the allegations of child molestation and naming Ray Buckey as a suspect. The latter set off a wave of hysteria in the community and compounding the problem, virtually every child who attended the school was sent to the Children’s Institute International, an organization that claimed it could get children to reveal abuse even when they didn’t want to talk about it. Unfortunately, CII was also capable of getting easily manipulated children to reveal abuse when it had never actually happened.

The allegations that CII produced grew more bizarre every day. They reported that they had been taken to a cemetery where dead bodies were dug and hacked to pieces (causing blood to spurt out). The local Catholic Church invited an expert on Satanic cults to talk to the congregation in the wake of the allegations. Of course, there wasn’t any corroboration of these wild allegations from any witnesses although the school often had visitors and guests. The truth or falsity of the allegations mattered little to the community at large. The McMartin School was burned down in an arson attack and seven other local preschools closed down as people who worked with children began to fear that they would be the next accused. Unfortunately for other child care workers around the nation, the abuse scare of the early 1990s found many victims. More recent research has demonstrated that questioning techniques of children can easily be manipulated so that the child will give the answer that the questioner desires.

On this day in 1980, J.R. Ewing, the character millions love to hate on television’s popular prime-time drama Dallas, is shot by an unknown assailant. The shooting made the season-ending episode one of TV’s most famous cliffhangers, inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” for the next eight months. On November 21, 1980, the premiere episode of Dallas’s third season solved the mystery, identifying Kristin Shepard, J.R.’s mistress (and his wife’s sister), as the culprit.

The CBS television network debuted the first five-episode pilot season of Dallas in 1978; it went on to run for another 12 full-length seasons. The first show of its kind, Dallas was dubbed a “prime-time soap opera” for its serial plots and dramatic tales of moral excess. The show revolved around the relations of two Texas oil families: the wealthy, successful Ewings and the perpetually down-on-their-luck Barnes clan. The families’ patriarchs, Jock Ewing and Digger Barnes, were former partners locked in a years-long feud over oil fields Barnes claimed had been stolen by Ewing. To make matters more interesting, Ewing’s youngest son Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and Barnes’ daughter Pam (Victoria Principal) had married, linking the battling clans even more closely. The character of J.R. Ewing, Bobby’s oldest brother and a greedy, conniving, womanizing scoundrel, was played by Larry Hagman.

In the wake of the season-ending cliffhanger episode, “A House Divided,” audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting; J.R. had a host of enemies. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national lexicon, becoming a popular T-shirt slogan, and heightening anticipation of the soap’s third season, which was to come in the fall. Much to the dismay of Dallas fans, the premiere was delayed because of a Screen Actors Guild strike. When it finally aired, the episode revealing the shooter became one of television’s most-watched shows, with an audience of 83 million people, and helped put Dallas into greater worldwide circulation. It also popularized the use of the cliffhanger by TV writers.

The shooting of J.R. was not Dallas’s only notorious plot twist. In September 1986, fans learned that the entire previous season, in which main character Bobby Ewing had died, was merely a dream of Pam’s. The show’s writers had killed the Bobby character off because Duffy had decided to leave the show. When he agreed to return, they featured him stepping out of the shower on the season-ending cliffhanger, and then were forced the next season to explain his sudden reappearance. The last new episode of Dallas aired on May 3, 1991. A spin-off, Knots Landing, aired from December 27, 1979, until May 13, 1993. Dallas remains in syndication around the world.

On this date in 1963, Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners.

At it’s peak period of use in 1950s, “The Rock, or “”America’s Devil Island” housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable. The twelve-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San Francisco, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates who had to do time at Alcatraz. Nearly complete silence was mandated at all times.

Alcatraz was first explored by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who called it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelicans) because of all the birds that lived there. It was sold in 1849 to the U.S. government. The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz. It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907. The end of its prison days did not end the Alcatraz saga. In March 1964, a group of Sioux claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969 when a group of eighty-nine Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island. They stayed there until 1971 when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities. The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism.

On this night in 1953, for the first time, audiences are able to sit in their living rooms and watch as the movie world’s most prestigious honors, the Academy Awards, are given out at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California.

Organized in May 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was envisioned as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the film industry. The first Academy Awards were handed out in May 1929, in a ceremony and banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The level of suspense was nonexistent, however, as the winners had already been announced several months earlier. For the next 10 years, the Academy gave the names of the winners to the newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards ceremony; this changed after one paper broke the tacit agreement and published the results in the evening edition, available before the ceremony began. A sealed envelope system began the next year, and endures to this day, making Oscar night Hollywood’s most anticipated event of the year.

Public interest in the Oscars was high from the beginning, and from the second year on the ceremony was covered in a live radio broadcast. The year 1953 marked the first time that the Academy Awards were broadcast on the fledgling medium of television. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) TV network carried the 25th annual awards ceremony live from Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre. Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies, while Fredric March, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actor (for 1932’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives), presented the awards. The statuette for Best Picture went to Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, while John Ford won Best Director for The Quiet Man. Winners in the top two acting categories were Gary Cooper (High Noon) and Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba).

Hope, a star of stage and screen who tirelessly performed in United Service Organization (USO) shows for American troops during World War II, would become a mainstay of the new TV medium. He was also the most venerated Academy Awards host, playing MC no fewer than 18 times between 1939 and 1977. NBC broadcast the Oscars until 1961, when the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) took over for the next decade, including the first awards broadcast in color in 1966. Although NBC briefly regained the show in the early 1970s, ABC came out on top again in 1976 and has broadcast every Academy Awards show since. The network is under contract to continue showing the Oscars until 2014.

Ratings for the Academy Awards have been notoriously uneven, with larger audiences tending to tune in when box-office hits are nominated for high-profile awards such as Best Picture. When Titanic won big in 1998, for example, the Oscar telecast drew 55 million viewers; the triumph of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004 drew 44 million. The 80th Academy Awards ceremony, held in February 2008, drew the lowest ratings since 1953, with a total of about 32 million viewers–just 18.7 percent of America’s homes–tuned in to the telecast. Analysts blamed the relative obscurity of the Best Picture nominees–the winner, No Country For Old Men, made a relatively puny $64 million at the box office–and the lingering effects of a Hollywood writers’ strike for the poor viewer turnout.

On this day in 2011, 26-year-old Raymond Clark III, a former animal research assistant at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, pleads guilty to the murder and attempted sexual assault of 24-year-old Yale graduate student Annie Le. On September 13, 2009, Le’s partially decomposed body was found stuffed behind a wall in the university research building where she was last seen five days earlier.

Le, a doctoral student in pharmacology from Placerville, California, was found dead on the day she was scheduled to be married, prompting initial speculation after her September 8, 2009, disappearance that could be a runaway bride. However, that theory soon appeared to be largely ruled out by investigators. Surveillance video showed Le entering the Yale lab building, which was accessible only by electronic keycard, but never leaving it. Her money, cell phone and ID were found in her office, located in a separate building.

Le’s disappearance set off a massive investigation that included more than 100 officers from university, state and local police and the FBI. The case also garnered national media attention. A break came on September 12, when investigators found bloody clothing above ceiling tiles in the lab building. The following day, Le’s body was discovered behind a wall in the building’s basement. It was determined the 4-foot-11-inch, 90-pound Le had been strangled.

Middletown, Connecticut, resident Raymond Clark, who cared for the animals in the lab where Le worked, soon sparked the suspicions of police after he was observed scrubbing the seemingly clean floor in the room where Le was last seen. On September 17, police arrested Clark, after finding DNA and other evidence they said linked him to the crime. Among the evidence was a bloody sock with both Clark’s and Le’s DNA on it, as well as a pen found under Le’s body with Clark’s DNA. Additionally, investigators discovered scratches on Clark’s body (which he claimed were from a cat), and found keycard records placing him and Le in the same room in the lab building on the day she was reported missing.

In January 2010, Clark pleaded not guilty to murder. However, on March 17 of the following year, after negotiations between the prosecutor in the case and Clark’s lawyers, the former lab technician pleaded guilty to charges of murder and attempt to commit sexual assault, in order to avoid a trial. He did not specify a motive, and the reason for his actions remains unclear. On June 3, 2011, Clark was sentenced to 44 years in prison without the possibility of early release.

The Jilted Lover Murder – 1881

Francisco “Chico” Forster is shot to death on downtown Los Angeles street by his jilted lover, eighteen-year old Lastania Abarta. The forty-year old Forster was the son of wealthy Los Angeles land developer and considered one of the city’s most eligible bachelors despite his reputation for womanizing and poorly treating women. Abarta worked in her parent’s pool hall, where she sang, played the guitar, and met frequent customer Forster. On March 14, she was invited to perform at a party given by Pio Pico, California’s last Mexican governor. The former politician had just lost a sizable tract of land near San Diego to Chico Forster’s father. During a song, Abarta changed the lyrics to mock Pico and then ran off with Forster to the Moiso Mansion Hotel.

Apparently, the couple made love after Forster promised to marry Abarta. But when Forster disappeared and didn’t return with a ring or priest to perform the ceremony, Abarta and her sister Hortensia started to comb the city in search of him. They finally found him at a race track gambling and dragged him to their carriage for a trip to the church. But Forster got out of the cab on the way, the women closely following behind until Abarta suddenly pulled out a gun and shot him through the eye. Outraged by his son’s untimely death, Forster’s father hired a special prosecutor to make sure that Abarta was properly punished. Abarta’s lawyers tried a novel defense, they ran with America’s 1880s obsession with “female hysteria.” Medical theories of the time held that women could be driven crazy because of their reproductive system. Their first step was to introduce in evidence the blood stained sheets from the hotel where Abarta lost her virginity to Forster. The lawyers then trotted out no less than seven medical experts who expounded their hysteria theories. They testified that Abarta was clearly displaying classic “hysterical symptoms” caused “because her brain was undoubtedly congested with blood,” when she killed Forster.

However, the most important testimony came from Dr. Joseph Kurtz who received applause from the spectators in the courtroom when he stated that “Any virtuous woman when deprived of her virtue would go mad, undoubtedly.” The jury, all men of course, took just twenty minutes to acquit Abarta, who left town and disappeared out of sight.

Judge Roy Bean Dies – 1903

Roy Bean, the self-proclaimed “law west of the Pecos,” dies in Langtry, Texas. A saloonkeeper and adventurer, Bean’s claim to fame rested on the often humorous and sometimes-bizarre rulings he meted out as a justice of the peace in western Texas during the late 19th century. By then, Bean was in his 50s and had already lived a life full of rough adventures. Born in Kentucky some time during the 1820s, Bean began getting into trouble at an early age. He left home in 1847 with his brother Sam and lived a rogue’s life in Mexico until he shot a man in a barroom fight and had to flee. He next turned up in San Diego, where he enjoyed playing the dashing caballero. Again he shot a man during a quarrel and was forced to leave town quickly. He fell into the same old habits in Los Angeles, eventually killing a Mexican officer in a duel over a woman. Angry friends of the officer hanged Bean in revenge, but luckily, the rope stretched and Bean managed to stay alive until the woman he had fought for arrived to cut him down. Bearing rope scars on his neck that remained throughout his life, Bean left California to take up a less risky life in New Mexico and Texas. For about 16 years, Bean lived a prosperous and relatively legitimate life as a San Antonio businessman. In 1882, he moved to southwest Texas, where he built his famous saloon, the Jersey Lilly, and founded the hamlet of Langtry. Saloon and town alike were named for the famous English actress, Lillie Langtry. Bean had never met Langtry, but he had developed an abiding affection for the beautiful actress after seeing a drawing of her in an illustrated magazine. For the rest of his life, he avidly followed Langtry’s career in theatre magazines. Before founding Langtry, Bean had also secured an appointment as a justice of the peace and notary public. He knew little about the law or proper court procedures, but residents appreciated and largely accepted his common sense verdicts in the sparsely populated country of West Texas. Bean was often deliberately humorous or bizarre in his rulings, once fining a dead man $40 for carrying a concealed weapon. He threatened one lawyer with hanging for using profane language when the hapless man referred to the “habeas corpus” of his client. Less amusing was Bean’s decision to free a man accused of killing a Chinese rail worker on the grounds that Bean knew of no law making it a crime “to kill a Chinaman.” By the 1890s, reports of Bean’s curmudgeonly rulings had made him nationally famous. Travelers on the train passing through Langtry often made a point of stopping to visit the ramshackle saloon, where a sign proudly proclaimed Bean to be the “Law West of the Pecos.” Bean fell ill during a visit to San Antonio. He returned to Langtry, where he died on March 16, 1903. Lillie Langtry, the object of Bean’s devoted adoration, visited the village named in her honor only 10 months after Bean died.

Journalist Terry Anderson is kidnapped – 1985

In Beirut, Lebanon, Islamic militants kidnap American journalist Terry Anderson and take him to the southern suburbs of the war-torn city, where other Western hostages are being held in scattered dungeons under ruined buildings. Before his abduction, Anderson covered the Lebanese Civil War for The Associated Press (AP) and also served as the AP’s Beirut bureau chief. On December 4, 1991, Anderson’s Hezbollah captors finally released him after 2,455 days. He was the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. Although his seven-year ordeal was the longest of the 92 foreigners abducted during Lebanon’s civil war, he was saved the fate of 11 hostages who died or were believed murdered. Anderson spent his entire captivity blindfolded and was released when the 16-year civil war came to an end. In 1993, Anderson published Den of Lions, a memoir of his time in captivity. In 2002, he won a lawsuit against the Iranian government and was granted a multi-million dollar settlement. The next year, Anderson ran for the Ohio Senate as a Democrat, but was defeated.

Actor Robert Blake is acquitted of his wife’s murder – 2005

On this day in 2005, after a three-month-long criminal trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a jury acquits Robert Blake, star of the 1970s television detective show Baretta, of the murder of his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. Blake, who was born Mickey Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, made his movie debut at the age of six, in MGM’s 1939 movie Bridal Suite; the studio soon featured him in its Our Gang series of short films. After changing his name to Robert Blake, he starred in the 1960 gangster movie The Purple Gang and numerous other films. In 1967, Blake memorably portrayed Perry Smith, one of two real-life murderers at the center of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, when the book was adapted for the big screen. As an actor, Blake was best known for his Emmy-winning work as the street-smart plainclothes policeman Tony Baretta in the ABC series Baretta. The show ran from 1975 to 1978, and Blake won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series at the end of its first season. During his criminal trial, Blake’s defense team portrayed the aging actor as a rather pathetic figure and argued that Bakley had a pattern of sending letters and nude photos of herself to famous men and had trapped Blake into marrying her by becoming pregnant. The couple’s daughter, Rose, was born in June 2000, and though Bakley initially claimed that the child was fathered by Christian Brando, son of the celebrated actor Marlon Brando, a paternity test proved the baby was Blake’s. Blake and Bakley married that November. Their brief, unhappy union lasted until May 4, 2001, when Bakley was shot to death as she sat in a car outside a Los Angeles restaurant.

Blake was arrested for the murder, and the prosecution produced two former stunt doubles who claimed the actor had recruited them to kill his wife. During cross-examination, the stuntmen were revealed to be cocaine and methamphetamine users. In their acquittal of Blake, the jury made it clear they didn’t believe the stuntmen’s statements, and also concluded that the prosecution had failed to place the murder weapon in Blake’s hands. In November 2005, eight months after the criminal trial ended, Robert Blake was found guilty in a civil trial of “intentionally” causing Bonny Lee Bakley’s death; he was ordered to pay $30 million to Bakley’s children. Rose remained in the care of Blake’s eldest daughter, Delinah. Though he did not testify in the criminal trial, Blake did take the stand during his civil trial to deny the accusations.

Who died on this date:

On March 14, 1975, actress Susan Hayward died. She was born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone with the Wind (1939). Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s, the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live (1958). Following her Oscar-winning performance, her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died on March 14, 1975 from brain cancer. There is speculation that she may have been affected by radioactive fallout from atmospheric atomic bomb tests while making The Conqueror with John Wayne. Several production members, as well as Wayne himself, later succumbed to cancer and cancer-related illnesses. Her cremated remains are interred at Our Lady of Perpetual Care Help Cemetery in Carrolton, Georgia.

On this day in 1950, the Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of a wire service news story in 1949 about the “toughest guys” the FBI wanted to capture. The story drew so much public attention that the “Ten Most Wanted” list was given the okay by J. Edgar Hoover the following year. As of 2011, 465 of the criminals included on the list have been apprehended or located, 153 as a result of tips from the public. The Criminal Investigative Division (CID) of the FBI asks all fifty-six field offices to submit candidates for inclusion on the list. The CID in association with the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs then proposes finalists for approval of by the FBI’s Deputy Director. The criteria for selection is simple, the criminal must have a lengthy record and current pending charges that make him or her particularly dangerous. And the the FBI must believe that the publicity attendant to placement on the list will assist in the apprehension of the fugitive.

Generally, the only way to get off the list is to die or to be captured. There have only been a handful of cases where a fugitive has been removed from the list because they no longer were a particularly dangerous menace to society. Only eight women have appeared on the Ten Most Wanted list. Ruth Eisemann-Schier was the first in 1968. The FBI also works closely with the Fox television show America’s Most Wanted to further publicize the effort to capture dangerous felons.

Who was born on this date:

Actor Gordon MacRae was born on March 12, 1921 in East Orange, New Jersey. He is best known for his appearances in the film Oklahoma (1955) and Carousel. In 1951, he starred with Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay, followed by the sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon in 1953. MacRae made numerous TV appearances. He died on January 24, 1986 from cancer of the mouth and jaw and is buried at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Who died on this date:

On March 12, 2007, actress Betty Hutton died. She was born Elizabeth June Thornburg on February 26, 1921 in Battlecreek, Michigan. In 1939 she appeared in several musical shorts for Warner Bros., and appeared in a supporting role on Broadway in Panama Hattie and Two for the Show. In 1942, Hutton was signed with Paramount Studios and appeared in The Fleet’s In, co-starring Dorothy Lamour. Hutton was an instant hit with the movie-going public. Paramount did not immediately promote her to major stardom, however, but did give her second leads in, Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), and another Lamour film. In 1943 she was given co-star billing with Bob Hope in Let’s Face It and with the release of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek the following year, Hutton attained major stardom. By the time Incendiary Blonde was released in 1945, she had supplanted Lamour as Paramount’s number one female box office draw. Hutton made 19 films from 1942 to 1952 including the hugely popular The Perils of Pauline in 1947. She was billed above Fred Astaire in the 1950 musical Let’s Dance. Hutton’s greatest screen triumph came in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) for MGM, which hired her to replace an exhausted Judy Garland in the role of Annie Oakley.

Her career as a Hollywood star ended due to a contract dispute with Paramount following the Oscar-winning The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and Somebody Loves Me (1952). The New York Times reported that the dispute resulted from her insistence that her husband at the time, Charles O’Curran, direct her next film. When the studio declined, Hutton broke her contract. Hutton’s last completed film was a small one, Spring Reunion, released in 1957, a drama in which she gave an understated, sensitive performance. Unfortunately, box office receipts indicated the public did not want to see a subdued Hutton. Hutton got work in radio, appeared in Las Vegas and in nightclubs, and then tried her luck in the new medium of television.

After the 1967 death of her mother in a house fire and the collapse of her last marriage, Hutton’s depression and pill addictions escalated. She divorced her fourth husband, and declared bankruptcy. Hutton had a nervous breakdown and later attempted suicide after losing her singing voice in 1970. After regaining control of her life through rehab, and the mentorship of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Peter Maguire, Hutton converted to Catholicism and took a job as a cook at a rectory. She made national headlines when it was revealed she was working in a rectory.

Her last known performance, in any medium, was on Jukebox Saturday Night, which aired on PBS in 1983. Hutton stayed in New England and began teaching comedic acting at Boston’s Emerson College. After the death of her ally, Father Maguire, Hutton returned to California, moving to Palm Springs in 1999. Hutton hoped to grow closer with her daughters and grandchildren. She died from colon cancer on March 12, 2007 and is buried at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.