Lady, my flag may be down, but you're making my pole go up. Originally published in 1948 by E. P. Dutton & Co. as My Flag is Down: The Diary of a New York Taxi Driver, this 1949 Bantam paperback titled simply My Flag Is Down tells the story of a New York taxi driver and his nocturnal passengers. We gather the author James Maresca was a real cabbie who kept a diary for seven years before converting it into a novel, and what he ended up with is a jargonized and loosely structured log of socialites, deviants, unhappy couples, strippers, and hustlers all behaving as though the cab is either a confessional or a motel room. The excellent cover art is by Casey Jones, and an earlier Bantam cover from the year previous, with the cabbie looking considerably less thrilled with the action in his back seat, appears below.
Scorsese and DeNiro drive the message home. And as long as we’re on the subject of movie posters, above you see the amazing Japanese promo for Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro’s noir-influenced howl of anguish Taxi Driver. After being released Stateside in early 1976 it premiered in Tokyo today the same year, and it is simply one of the best pieces of cinema ever produced in the U.S. In a country where outrage is increasingly an accepted form of communication, its story of a broken soul trying to cope with his own formless anger—not using his mind, but using his gun—resonates ever more strongly each day. People see DeNiro’s character Travis Bickle differently. Some see him as a fairly regular guy. Others see him as a mutant. Maybe it depends on one’s own level of anger. Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader aren’t ambiguous about it—Bickle is a mutant who can blend in only because he’s surrounded by people so overworked or beaten down or self-involved or dwarfed by circumstance that they don’t notice that something is very wrong with him. Taxi Driver shows a man dealing with a sickness of anger, suggesting that the urge to commit violence is a cancer that could infest anyone if they aren't careful. It's a good message for times like these.
Who can turn the world on with her smile? American model and actress Cybill Shepherd, who took cinema by storm in The Last Picture Show and appeared in the hit comedy The Heartbreak Kid, as well as in the defining film Taxi Driver, seen here circa 1973.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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