This Day in WWII 1 June 1940 - 1945

[Donster]

Packard Ad - June 1944

1940: All signposts which might be helpful to parachutists landing in Britain taken down. Unemployment in Britain falls 92,000 in May to 881,000, giving a total fall of 611,000 in a year.

1940: German onslaught continues at Dunkirk. General Lord Gort, C-in-C BEF, returns from Flander’s with another 64,400 troops who were evacuated off the beaches this day. However, in future, the evacuation will only continue during the hours of darkness due to the high losses of warships to daylight air attacks.

*Frances Gifford

1940: British forces evacuate the Bodo area of Norway, 120 miles S-W of Narvik.

1940: The British destroyers Keith, Basilisk and Havant and the transport Scotia are sunk by Luftwaffe dive bombers, near Dunkirk.

1940: Luftwaffe raids industrial centres in the Rhone Valley from Lyons to Marseilles.

Frances Gifford

1941: Clothes rationing introduced in Britain.

1941: The Luftwaffe carries out a night raid (110 bombers) on Manchester.

1941: The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen arrives in Brest.

Frances Gifford

1941: The evacuation of Crete is completed, with 17,000 British, Commonwealth and Greek troops being rescued, although the Australians lose more than half their contingent. Final figures for the British are 16,500 killed, wounded or captured, along with a large number of warships sunk or damaged, while the Germans lose about 6,200 men.

1941: Stukas sink the British cruiser Calcutta off Alexandria.

1941: British forces enter Baghdad and reinstate the Regent.

Frances Gifford

1942: America begins sending Lend-Lease materials to the Soviet Union. Convoy PQ-17.

1942: Mexico declares war on Germany, Italy and Japan.

1942: Himmler is put in charge of the German ARP system.

Frances Gifford

1942: The siege of Sevastopol by the 11th Army continues with a round-the-clock bombardment by heavy artillery and Luftwaffe bombers.

1942: Hitler arrives at Poltava, the HQ of Army Group South to approve Field Marshal von Bocks plan for the main offensive. A high level plan had been prepared to make the Russians believe that Moscow was still the objective, Goebbels organised leaks to this effect to the foreign press while Army Group Centre made overt preparations for an offensive under the cover-name of 'Kremlin'.

1942: Jews in Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania ordered to wear yellow stars.

1942: Rommel takes the fortified ‘box’ that is held by the British 150th Brigade in the Gazala defensive line and secures the 'Cauldron'. This enables him to get much needed supplies flowing. Rommel now turns the German 90th Light Division and the Italian Ariete Armoured Division against Bir Hacheim in an attempt to wipe out the Free French garrison which still holds out. He also distracts the British by sending the 21st Panzer Division northeast to operate nearer to Tobruk.

Frances Gifford

1943: Eden announces that Empire casualties in first three years of war are 92,089 killed, 226,719 missing, 88,294 wounded and 107,891 captured.

1943: The British actor Leslie Howard, flying back to Britain from a five-week lecture tour in Spain and Portugal boosting the Allied cause, is killed when his DC-3 airliner is shot down by German fighter planes over the Bay of Biscay. Although it came to be believed that the real target was Howard's manager, Alfred Chenhalls, who bore a passing resemblance to Winston Churchill, it now appears certain that Howard was the actual target. Alerted to Howard's presence in the Iberian Peninsula by German agents, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had ordered the plane shot down in order to silence the outspoken anti-Nazi actor.

1943: The allied 2nd Tactical Air Force is formed in UK.

Frances Gifford

1943: BdU (C-in-C U-boats) adopts a new policy of fighting back at Allied sub-hunting aircraft with the U-boats' own AA guns while crossing the Bay of Biscay on the surface. This tactic proves to be largely unsuccessful and is soon abandoned.

1943: The Red Air Force attacks German rear communications and airfields at Smolensk, Orel and Bryansk.

Frances Gifford

1944: The British Eighth Army captures Frosinone to the South East of Rome.

1945: Byrnes and Committee advise the President to drop the bomb.

1945: U.S. troops make new landings on Okinawa as forces from the East and West coasts link up South of Shuri.

Frances Gifford

*Mary Frances Gifford was born on December 7, 1920 in Long Beach, California and at the age of 16 had applied to UCLA School of Law with no intention of pursuing an acting career. With a friend, she visited the studios of Samuel Goldwyn to watch a film being made and while there was spotted by a talent scout who brought her to the attention of Goldwyn, who signed her for an acting contract. After only receiving minor roles, she moved to RKO where she was cast in several uncredited supporting roles in films of the late 1930s, including "Stage Door" (1937) starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.

In 1938 at the age of 18, she married character actor James Dunn and in 1939 landed her first leading role, in the low-budget "Mercy Plane", opposite her husband. A planned retirement was interrupted briefly when she played another uncredited role in James Stewart's break-out film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939). She played several more minor roles before she was, in 1941, loaned to Republic Pictures and cast in the role which would arguably produce her most enduring fame: as the semi-clad, Nyoka in "Jungle Girl", a 15-chapter movie serial, based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The role was the first time since Pearl White in the silent era that a female actor had played the lead in the movie serial genre. The following year, Republic made a sequel "Perils of Nyoka" but Gifford was no longer available and the heroine's part was played by Kay Aldridge. With Gifford's film career gaining momentum and Dunn's on the decline partly due to his battle with alcoholism, the marriage had failed by 1942. She left RKO for Paramount Pictures where she acted in several films including "The Glass Key" (1942). In 1943 she made another Tarzan type movie with Johnny Weissmuller in "Tarzan Triumphs" at RKO. That year she also left Paramount and moved to the prestigious Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio with the sponsorship of an MGM executive.

At MGM there was more success playing leading roles in such films as "Our Vines Have Tender Grapes" (1945) and "She Went to the Races" (1945) and the more notable "The Arnelo Affair" (1947). She also played in supporting roles including "Thrill of a Romance" (1945) with Esther Williams, and "Luxury Liner" (1948) with Jane Powell.

In 1948 Gifford was almost killed in a car accident, receiving severe head injuries, an event which sidelined her career and her health. She attempted a comeback in two early 1950s films, "Sky Commando" (1953) and "Riding High" (1950). However, during the 1950s her mental and physical health declined to the point where she was placed into Camarillo State Mental Hospital in 1958. She would spend almost the entire next 25 years in and out of various institutions.

In 1983 a journalist found her working in the Pasadena, California city library having apparently recovered. Gifford spent her final years in quiet obscurity and died of emphysema in a convalescent center in Pasadena on January 16, 1994 at the age of 73. Despite reports that she is the sister of football star Frank Gifford (also from southern California), the latter clearly indicates in his autobiography that his 'clan' consisted of a brother Waine and a sister Winona. Frances, evidently, was no relation.

[Stans]

Frances Gifford was certainly easy on the eyes.