Brooklyn Today for November 5
Good morning. Today is the 310th day of the year. It is Election Day, the second Tuesday in November. Don’t forget not only to vote for the candidates of your choice, but to vote on the propositions on the other side of the ballot.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle for Nov. 5, 1902, contained an article, with drawings, about musical comedy offerings in Brooklyn. The musical comedies of that era were closer to what we know today as operettas. Of the musicals listed, most have long been forgotten. One that was phenomenally successful, however, was “Floradora,” famed of its chorus line of “Floradora Girls.” The Floradora Girls were lampooned during the 1930s, when they were the basis of a joke in one of the “Our Gang” comedies, and as late as 1949, when they were again mentioned as a joke in the Frank Sinatra-Gene Kelly movie “On the Town.”
Well-known people who were born today include singer-songwriter Bryan Adams (“The Summer of ‘’69”), musician-songwriter Glenn Frey of the Eagles, film and stage director-producer Mike Nichols, broadcast journalist Maria Shriver, U.S. Secretary of Justice Anne Duncan and reality TV star Kris Jenner.