From 1975: Movie star Rhonda Fleming took time out from presiding over the “grand opening” of the Fox Theater (as a triplex) to give an interview about her experiences in Hollywood.
She had begun her career as a leading lady in the 1940s and 1950s, but now she said that strong roles for women were few and far between.
“But I believe it’s going to change,” she said. “We have a woman as president of the Screen Actors Guild and more women are writers now. And as writers, they naturally will be more sensitive to the woman’s viewpoint.”
She said her first love was singing and her first role in a musical was opposite Bing Crosby in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
“He kept coming up to me and telling me to sing an octave lower,” she said, “Little did he know – because I was so new and scared I couldn’t tell him – that my singing teacher had always told me never to sing like Bing Crosby.”
From 1925: Amos Burg Jr., a daredevil canoeist, barely escaped with his life when he was thrown from his canoe at the Cascade Rapids in the Columbia River near Cascade Locks, Oregon.
Burg was attempting to canoe from the headwaters of the Snake River to the ocean. A film crew was recording his progress. The Cascade Rapids was one of the final obstacles on the trek.
“For a few seconds the craft withstood the boiling maelstrom, then capsized,” wrote a correspondent. “With death apparently unescapable, young Burg made a wonderful recovery and succeeded in getting a hold on his canoe, only to have it wrenched from his grasp time and time again as it was tumbled and pitched about by the mad waters, Three miles below, wearied to the point of exhaustion, he was barely able to pull himself upon an island. The canoe floated on down the Columbia River.”
