“Saturday Night Fever” Remembered

The film “Saturday Night Fever” opened in New York City on this date (December 14) in 1977. As assistant arts editor, I had the first read on the original manuscript, “Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night,” written by British journalist Nik Cohn and illustrated by James McMullan, that appeared in New York magazine on June 7, 1976.

The magazine’s staff attended the film’s premiere and then we all headed off to Tavern on the Green for the first-night party and dinner. What fun!

We were not required to wear the platform shoes and the garish polyester outfits favored by the Bee Gees, who composed the score and performed the songs, and the disco dancers of the day. 

Mozart

The 35-year-old Mozart died on this date in 1791. “The greatest tragedy in the history of music,” said the distinguished musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon. In the months leading up to his death, Mozart composed a prodigious catalog of swan songs: The Magic Flute, his final piano concerto and string quintet, the Clarinet Concerto, Ave Verum Corpus, and the unfinished Requiem. Did any other artist ever finish on a more exalted note!

JFK and Roger Staubach on Life

John F. Kennedy, the 35^th President of the United States, was assassinated on this day (November 22) in 1963 in Dallas. People around the world remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the tragic news. One such person was Roger Staubach, at the time the junior quarterback of the U.S. Naval Academy.

“I heard people screaming in the hall that the president’s been shot,” Staubach told Joe Trahan of WFAA in Dallas/Fort Worth in an interview that ran on wfaa.com back in 2013. “And as I’m walking to class down Stribling Walk, people were yelling back and forth that [Kennedy’s] been shot and it doesn’t look good.

“Everybody was sick. You didn’t care about football. You didn’t care about the Heisman. You didn’t care about anything. Just wondering what the heck is going on here.”

Staubach had met the president a year earlier, at Navy’s preseason football camp, and then spoke to him when JFK visited the Navy team locker room following its victory over Army near the end of that season.

“He became really close to our team, relatively speaking, on a good basis,” Staubach told Trahan. “It was pretty neat having him there. Just [the president] being at the game was great.”

Life Replaces Staubach With JFK

Staubach was inextricably linked to JFK in another, perhaps less-well-known, way. As the nation’s best college football player (he would be voted the winner of the Heisman Trophy), Staubach was the cover subject for Life magazine for the November 29, 1963 edition. The issues, a reported 7 million of them, were recalled after the print run when Kennedy was assassinated. A photograph of JFK replaced that of Staubach on the cover with new editorial content added. Staubach talked about that in a conversation I had with him a few years ago.

“That’s correct,” Staubach said. “That Friday afternoon, the magazines were on their way out, and [Life] pulled them back. I have a few copies, but most of them were destroyed, and they just redid the whole cover.”

Staubach went on to make his mark in football and in Dallas. He graduated from the Naval Academy and fulfilled his military service requirement (including a year in Vietnam). In 1969, as a 27-year-old rookie, he joined the Dallas Cowboys, who had drafted him in 1964. He led the Cowboys to nine consecutive winning seasons, including their first Super Bowl championship in 1972, for which he was named the game’s MVP.

The First "Hail Mary" Pass

Staubach was well known for his ability to rally the Cowboys, directing them to 23 come-from-behind victories in the fourth quarter, including 14 in the final two minutes of regulation. Less well-known perhaps is the fact that he threw the very first “Hail Mary” pass. 

“That term had never been used by the press or anybody else,” Staubach said. “In the past, if you threw a pass at the end of the game, it was the alley-oop or the bomb or whatever you wanted to call it.

“We were playing the Vikings in a playoff game and were behind 14-10. Drew Pearson made a heck of a catch—it wasn’t a great throw—and went in the end zone and we won 17-14. After the game, the press asked me what I was thinking about at the time.

“When I threw the ball I got hit. So I said, ‘I just closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.’ The next day, the press wrote ‘Hail Mary Pass Wins Game.’ ”

Not Mean Enough

Staubach revealed one other secret during our conversation. Remember the commercial with ex-Pittsburgh Steelers great Joe Greene and the little boy who famously offered Mean Joe his bottle of Coke? That aired during Super Bowl 14. It was a memorable spot. Less memorable is the footnote that Staubach was the original choice for the Greene role. The All-America quarterback, however, projected the wrong image.  

“Somebody asked me about that and said that I turned it down,” Staubach said, “but that’s not the case. I would have loved to do it. Some creative guy must have evaluated the concept and said, ‘Hey, we need a mean guy. It would be better to have Joe Greene than Staubach because Staubach’s a nice guy.’ 

“It probably made more sense, gave a more cuddly feeling to it, to have this big old tough football player give his jersey to this little boy. It turned out, I guess, it was the right decision, but I would have loved to do it.”

Staubach retired in 1979 with the NFL's No. 1 passer rating. Six years later, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Albert Camus at 100

“Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness,” wrote Albert Camus, one of the indisputably great literary minds of the 20^th century.

Born 100 years ago today (November 7, 1913) in French Algeria, the brilliant and eloquent humanist (he refuted the label of existentialist to describe his philosophy) was a journalist and member of the Resistance who publicly denounced the German occupation of France during World War II. More famously, Camus was an influential novelist, philosopher, and dramatist whose life ended absurdly at age 46 in a car accident.

“You know what charm is,” poses the judge-penitent in The Fall. “A way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.” In The Rebel, Camus asks, “What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” His best-known works, including The Stranger, The Plague, and The Myth of Sisyphus, continue to offer insights into our attempts to find meaning in everyday life.

Why We’ll Miss Mariano

• He never shot an imaginary arrow into the air after the final out.
• Cameron Diaz didn’t feed him popcorn at the Super Bowl.
• He never threw a jagged bat barrel at Mike Piazza.
• He didn’t drink beer and eat wings in the dugout when he wasn’t pitching.
• He never carried an unlicensed handgun in his sweatpants into a nightclub and shot himself in the leg.
• He didn’t change his name to Metta World Peace.
• He never shimmied and pirouetted off the mound after the final out.
• George Steinbrenner never called him “a fat pussy toad” or referred to him as “Mr. May.”
• He didn’t hold a press conference to announce that he was taking his talents to South Beach.
• He never backflipped off the mound and spiked the ball.
• He didn’t marry a Kardashian.
• He never had to testify before Congress about steroids or HGH.
• He didn’t name his children “North” or “Apple” or “Ivy Blue.”
• He never buttfumbled the ball.
• He didn’t bore the pants off anyone by discussing sabermetrics or his fantasy team.
• He never angrily untucked his jersey after the final out.
• His obliques were not hidden behind layers of fat.
• He never jogged a double into a single.
• He never bit off part of an opponent’s ear.
• Suzy Kolber didn’t have to ward off his attempt to kiss her.
• He never called anyone “dawg.”
• He never guaranteed a victory.
• He didn’t get a tattoo on his calf while vacationing in Hawaii.
• Fireman Ed never sat on his shoulders.
• He never blew on his finger after a third strike or mimed holstering a gun after the third out.
• He never said of the Yankees, “The ship be sinking.”
• He didn’t father multiple children with different women.
• He never appeared on Dancing With the Stars.
• He tolerated countless clown questions from beat reporters.
• He never told us that TBS is “very funny.”
• He never called an umpire “the absolute pits of the world.”
• He never uttered a primal scream after the final out or pounded his chest to declare he had heart.
• He was never less than a credit to his number, his team, and his profession.