CROWN JEWEL

An Affair to beat all affairs.

These two posters for The Thomas Crown Affair are among the more visually pleasing Japanese promos for Western films we’ve come across, both versions managing to capture the style and mood of the movie quite nicely. Directed by Norman Jewison, The Thomas Crown Affair was his follow-up feature to the bravura Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night and showed him in masterful command of his already razor sharp craft. And Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen aren’t too shabby either, as what begins as enmity between a career thief and a genius investigator quickly becomes one of cinema history’s most enjoyable mating dances.

Even if you’ve seen 1999’s redundant though palatable remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, Jewison’s radiant original is still a must see, and it’s different in enough details to keep viewers guessing. Direction, cinematography, editing, music, design, wardrobe, and script all combine self-consciously and expertly as if in an irresistibly decadent multi-layer cake baked by a top pastry chef. Good through and through, The Thomas Crown Affair opened in Japan today in 1968.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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