CHINA DOLL

She fizzled on the screen, but achieved immortality in song.

A nice piece of Chinese pulp fell into our hands. It’s a shot of Ukrainian actress Anna Sten, née Anna Stenska or Anna Sudakevich, from a Chinese newspaper circa 1934. Sten began in silent movies in Germany, transitioned smoothly into talkies, but saw her career founder after mogul Samuel Goldwyn brought her to Hollywood to make her a star. It was the accent that did her in. She tried like hell but couldn’t shake it. But even if she never wowed them in Tinseltown, and her roles are mainly forgotten, she lives forever in song thanks to Cole Porter, who mentioned her in his timeless hit “Anything Goes.” Anna’s bit comes in about two thirds through, with the lines:

When Sam Goldwyn can with great conviction,

instruct Anna Sten in diction,

then Anna shows,

anything goes.

Not quite a star on the Walk of Fame, but as consolation prizes go, it’s pretty damned good. Anna Sten died today in 1993, aged 84.

China, Ukraine, Hollywood, Germany, Anna Sten, Anna Sudakevich, Anna Stenska, Samuel Goldwyn, Cole Porter, deaths

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.