Observations — 1943, TV Had Yet To Kill The Radio Star

Franklin Roosevelt, first U.S. president to visit a foreign country during wartime, and Winston Churchill met in Casablanca. But will they always have Paris?  Benito Mussolini was arrested. The Pentagon, the largest building in the world, was completed. Chiang Kai-shek became president of China. FDR named Dwight Eisenhower Supreme Commander of Allied Forces. Italy surrendered. Nazis advanced on Amsterdam where they killed Jews, homosexuals and communists.  They also raided a Jewish old folks home, (no doubt a major threat to the “homeland”).  Pope Pius XII welcomed the German ambassador to the Vatican.  In the U.S., the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. Race riots broke out in New York, L.A., Detroit and Beaumont, Texas.  “Amos ‘n’ Andy” radio show was cancelled after 4,000 shows. “Sorry, Wrong Number, “with Agnes Morehead, was a major radio success.  Jimmy Durante, Garry Moore, Groucho Marx and comic book character, Archie, premiered on radio. Oklahoma opened on Broadway. Joe DiMaggio enlisted in the military. Antibiotics were developed, as was the “Pap” test. Oklahoma opened on Broadway.  The Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Your Teeth. The Pulitzer for Literature went to Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair.   We also read The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas, So Little Time by John C. Marquand, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, Hungry Hill by Daphne Du Maurier and Mrs. Parkington by Louis Bromfield. At the movie houses we watched Sahara, Death Valley Rangers, Shadow of A Doubt, Jane Eyre, The Outlaw, Batman, and The Song of Bernadette.  We listened to “Paper Doll” by The Mills Brothers. “Pistol Packin’ Mama” by Al Dexter and His Troopers, “You’ll Never Know” by Dick Haymes, “I’ve Heard That Song Before” by Harry James, “There Are Such Things” by Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra, “That Old Black Magic” by Glenn Miller, and “Sunday, Monday and Always” by Bing Crosby.  We lost Leslie Howard, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Nikola Tesla, Frank Nitti, Beatrix Potter, Stephen Vincent Benet and Fats Waller. We gained Mick Jagger, Robert De Niro, George Harrison, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Christopher Walken, Joe Namath, Fabian, John Kerry, David Soul, Joni Mitchell, Penny Marshall, Ben Kingsley, Malcolm McDowell and Randy Newman.  If you were around, what were you doing during this year of the water sheep?