CRIME-BUSTERS

September 19 in history:

On September 19th, 1934, a team of detectives arrested Bruno Hauptmann in New York City for the kidnapping and murder two years earlier of the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann was tried, convicted, and executed in New Jersey.

James A. Garfield died in New Jersey on this date in 1881, making him the second U.S. president to be assassinated.  Garfield had been in office only four months when he was shot on July 2nd of that year. Assassin Charles Guiteau was arrested immediately after the shooting, but doctors who attended Garfield for weeks were never able to locate a bullet that remained in his body.

Actor David McCallum, known for playing a crime-solving doctor on the TV show “NCIS,” was born on September 19th, 1933. McCallum portrayed crime-fighting spy Illya Kuryakin on “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and shares his September 19th birthday with another TV crime-fighter of the 60’s, “Batman” star Adam West (1928).

“Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon has played a costumed crime-fighter, as one of the “Ambiguously Gay Duo” in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. Fallon was born on this day in 1974. Another September 19th baby co-starred with Jimmy Fallon on SNL in the late 1990s:  Cheri Oteri (born 1962), who played Arianna of the Spartan Spirit cheerleaders.

SIX DEGREES OF JFK

September 15 in history:

September 15th of 1901 was Theodore Roosevelt’s first full day as president, after the assassination of William McKinley.  Roosevelt had been vice president for only six months before succeeding McKinley.  It was the 44th birthday of William Howard Taft, who would follow T.R. into the Oval Office eight years later.

Taft is one of only two U.S. presidents buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  The other is John F. Kennedy.  Two men associated with the 1991 movie “JFK” were both born on September 15th, 1946:  the film’s director, Oliver Stone, and actor Tommy Lee Jones.

The Hollywood star most closely associated with JFK filmed what is probably her most famous movie scene on this date in 1954. Early that morning. Marilyn Monroe stood over a subway grate on Lexington Avenue in New York as air from the grate blew her skirt above her knees, for a scene in “The Seven Year Itch.”  The actual New York footage was not used in the movie.  The scene was re-created on a Hollywood lot.