'Every director,' said Sam Goldwyn today in 1939, 'bites the hand that lays the golden egg.' He may have made more quotable gaffes than anybody else in Hollywood but what did he care? On the same day he bought out millionaires Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford to take control of the huge United Artists Studio.
'Bring on the empty wallets,' as the man himself almost said.
In other news ...
Lionel 'Buster' Crabbe, Navy frogman and oddball, disappeared today in 1956 while diving in Portsmouth Harbour near the Russian warship that brought Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev on a state visit. A headless, handless corpse was found some time later but it has still not definitely been identified as that of Commander Crabbe. Perhaps one day the former USSR will tell us what actually happened.
