Jack Lemmon

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In 1979, Merv Griffin interviews the big-name cast of The China Syndrome, a drama about a cover-up of security hazards at a nuclear power plant. The talk is largely a Hollywood ass-kissing session. Within a couple of weeks of the film’s release, a real-life version of the horrifying scenario played out as Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant melted down. Now that’s a tie-in.

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Lee Harvey Oswald shackled and clenched after his arrest in Dallas.

Briefly got my hands on a yellowing copy of the Long Island Press from November 22, 1963, the day after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The Press (which cost 5 cents) bore the headline: “Marxist Held As JFK Assassin; Johnson Meets With Rusk, Ike.”

The opening paragraph of the UPI story read: “Lee Harvey Oswald, an avowed Marxist and a Fidel Castro sympathizer, was charged today with the assassination of President Kennedy. Manacled, his face cut and bruised, his manner sullen, the 24-year-old political misfit and Marine reject was booked on a murder charge and jailed without bond. ‘This is ridiculous,’ Oswald said.”

The story unsurprisingly dominated nearly every section of the paper, from local (“Long Islanders React: He Was My Friend”) to sports (“AFL Erases Sunday Slate”). A few pre-packaged elements of the paper were untouched by the tragic events of the day. There was  an ad for the Jack Lemmon romantic comedy Under the Yum-Yum Tree, playing at the Prudential Drive-In. In the classifieds, you could rent  a 2 1/2 to 4 bedroom apartment for $109 in Jamaica, Queens; and a 2-story split colonial on Long Island cost $13,490. The Help Wanted ads were still openly sexist, with “Help Wanted–Male” clearly marked at the top of most of the advertisements.

The Long Island Press published for 156 years, going out of business in 1977.

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