As the clock ticks toward All Hallow’s Eve, we’ll wind down where we began in last month’s episode of Breaking Walls, with the October 30th, 1957 episode of LIFE and the World on NBC.
The October 14th LIFE Magazine cover featured Little Central High School in Arkansas; the October 21st cover featured American scientists plotting Sputnik’s orbit; while the October 28th’s cover featured Queen Elizabeth opening Canadian Parliament.
This episode features a speech by poet Carl Sandburg and a rare interview with Frank Lloyd Wright, both speaking about Chicago.
Both Sandberg and Wright spent significant time in Chicago. Sandburg was back in Chicago debuting a new poem about the city. His speech from the banquet by The Chicago Dynamic Committee, was recorded.
Frank Lloyd Wright settled in Chicago shortly after the Great Fire of 1871. He was ninety at the time of this interview, and as passionate as ever. His Guggenheim Museum was under construction in New York, while he dreamed of a mile-high office building for Chicago.
On October 29th, 1957, head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer died of leukemia. He was seventy-three.
The next day, Variety Magazine carried his obituary. Although Mayer was often disliked and even feared by many, director Clarence Brown said, “he made more stars than all the rest of the producers in Hollywood put together.
“He knew how to handle talent; he knew that to be successful, he had to have the most successful people in the business working for him. He was like Hearst in the newspaper business. He made an empire out of this thing.”
However, both movie studios and the entertainment industry were rapidly changing. As was America.
But the only way passed is through. So, forward we go, in time that is, in the next episode of Breaking Walls.
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