Marilyn Monroe in debt before her death, Edward Heath accused of ‘murdering’ Mozart, and the Pope unhappy with royal divorce: headlines from 40 years ago
- A journey back through time to look at significant news and events reported by the South China Morning Post from this week in history
Marilyn Monroe being in debt months before her death, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath being accused of “murdering” Mozart, and Pope John Paul II showing dissatisfaction towards a royal divorce made the headlines 40 years ago this week.
August 17, 1980
● Marilyn Monroe was US$372,000 (about HK$1,860,000 at the time) in debt when she died in 1962, according to newspaper reports. But they also revealed that, according to documents filed in a state court, a final accounting of her estate further showed that cumulative royalties from her films Some Like It Hot and The Misfits had added US$746,000 to her estate. Monroe was paid US$300,000 to star in The Misfits, which was filmed in 1961.
August 18, 1980
● Pope John Paul II was unhappy that Princess Caroline of Monaco, 23, and her husband, Philippe Junot, 40, might ask the Vatican to annul their marriage. A Vatican official told a British weekly that the Pope could not accept that people of such a high cultural and educational background had failed to understand the solemnity of their actions when they took their marriage vows.
● Lives could be at risk in Hong Kong because of substandard and dangerous drugs that were being dumped in the city, a top pharmacist had claimed. Hazardous drugs, banned in other countries, could slip into the city because import and sales controls were lax.
August 19, 1980
● Former British Prime Minister Edward Heath “murdered Mozart” when he conducted an orchestra earlier that week in Paris, a French music critic complained. The concert was given by the European Common Market Youth Orchestra, founded by Heath in 1978, at the medieval Abbey of Fontevrault in southwestern France. Heath conducted Mozart’s The Magic Flute overture. Heath was the last prime minister to have had a Steinway grand piano wheeled into No. 10 and played the organ at Holy Trinity Brompton.
● Pope John Paul II, who once earned his living as a worker in a Polish stone quarry, was following the Polish strike closely, Vatican sources said. But the 60-year-old former Archbishop of Cracow had not yet made any public statement to the events in his homeland.
August 20, 1980
● South Korea’s military-backed government ordered the closure of 617 publishing firms, a quarter of the nation’s total, as part of an official anti-corruption campaign led by army strongman General Chun Doo-hwan. The move followed the closure a month earlier of 172 periodicals for what the government said were “corrupt, obscene, depraved or distorted reports liable to cause social decay, juvenile crime and social unrest”.
● Hollywood film star James Stewart, 72, was under observation in a Los Angeles hospital after complaining of an irregular heartbeat, a spokesman said. His public relations agent said: “Jimmy hasn’t had a heart attack and I don’t think it’s anything serious.”
August 21, 1980
● Otto Frank, whose daughter Anne wrote a teenage diary of Nazi persecution that shocked the world, died at the age of 91. The German-born senior Frank was the sole survivor of a family of four ferreted out in 1944 by Nazi raiders from the back room of a Dutch warehouse, where they had been hiding for more than two years in an attempt to escape the holocaust.
August 22, 1980
● Hong Kong would have its first airport hotel at Kai Tak, despite studies into the feasibility of relocating the airport to Chek Lap Kok off north Lantau.
● Japanese authorities, fearing radioactive leaks, warned ships to steer clear of a Soviet nuclear submarine crippled by fire off southern Japan. The government had asked the Soviet Union for a full report on the fire, which killed at least nine crew members and injured three.
August 23, 1980
● A concerted wave of bomb attacks swept Manila in apparent protest at the martial law rule of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Police said bombs were planted in the toilets of three banks, three government offices, two private businesses and a shopping mall. All the bombings occurred within half an hour.
Remember A Day looks at significant news and events reported by the Post during this week in history