Showbiz History: The Help, Madame Butterfly, and the first superhero comic?
Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 9:00AM 7 random things that happened on this day, February 17th, in showbiz history...
1904 Puccini's beloved opera Madame Butterfly premieres in Italy in what was essentially rough draft form. After audiences booed, he revamped it for four months and the streamlined version became a global success. The opera was based on the play by David Belasco. The story has made it to the big screen six times beginning with the silent film era. Two of the subsequent films were versions of the opera itself, one a Japanese film in 1954 and the other a French film in 1995. Have you seen any film version of this or the opera itself?
1936 The daily newspaper comic strip The Phantom launches (and is still running if you can believe it) essentially giving rise to the superhero genre...