Your Ultimate Adventure to Yesteryear
“Tell me I’m beautiful, it’s nothing. Tell me I’m intellectual – I know it. Tell me I’m funny and it’s the greatest compliment in the world anyone could give me.” – Julie Newmar Julie Newmar is widely remembered for her role as Cat Woman on the iconic television series, Batman. Film buffs know her [...]
Read more
At the age of six, Margaret O’Brien turned to the director and asked, “When I cry, do you want the tears to run all the way or shall I stop halfway down?” A major child star of the 1940s, Margaret O’Brien was best known for her natural, emotional style and her startling facility for tears. [...]
Read more
If you don’t recall Johnny Crawford as one of Walt Disney’s original Mouseketeers in 1955, you certainly remember him in the role of Mark McCain, Chuck Connors’ sensitive young son on television’s The Rifleman. Connors became an acting mentor for Crawford, who later recalled: “He was my hero. I enjoyed being with him. He wasn’t [...]
Read more
When 20th Century Fox scored a hit with Marilyn Monroe, every movie producer wanted to cash in with their own platinum blonde. Diana Dors… Jayne Mansfield… and Mamie Van Doren come to mind. The latter of whom posed twice for Playboy in 1963 to promote her movie, 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964), [...]
Read more
Ed Asner is a television legend, the winner of seven acting Emmy Awards (which puts ties him with Mary Tyler Moore, both of whom rank second to their Mary Tyler Moore Show co-star, Cloris Leachman who has nine). In all, he has been nominated 20 times for an Emmy Award, with 17 nods for a [...]
Read more
The sock hop was an informal sponsored dance at American high schools, typically held in the high school’s own gym or cafeteria. The term sock hop came about because dancers were required to remove their shoes to protect the varnished floor of the gymnasium. These hops were a cultural feature of the 1950s and early [...]
Read more
by Brian Taves. Jules Verne’s classic novel, The Mysterious Island, first published in 1874, is best remembered not so much as a castaway saga, but as the story that the drew the adventures of Captain Nemo to a close. In The Mysterious Island, Verne explains that Nemo was born an Indian prince, who joined the [...]
Read more
Cinema history might have been very different had the first James Bond film not been Dr. No starring Sean Connery. Thunderball could have been directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Richard Burton as secret agent 007. It sounds preposterous and unbelievable, but it almost happened. It began way back in 1958 when maverick Irish producer [...]
Read more
by Brian Taves. For several generations, Citizen Kane (1941) has molded public memory of William Randolph Hearst. For younger filmgoers, however, a newer movie, The Cat’s Meow (2001), has begun to supplant Citizen Kane in etching the business magnate. Citizen Kane implied a fictional side by inventing new names for the characters loosely inspired by [...]
Read more
It all started on September 5, 2011, when Jennifer Mann of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the horrible news that spawned an internet sensation. “If Mike Meyer were a character in one of his favorite comic books, right about now he’d be looking up to see his red-caped hero swooping down,” Mann reported. “It’s Meyer’s [...]
Read more
by Martin Grams, Jr. I grew up watching The Three Stooges. Thanks to rabbit ears and a TV antenna, which did not limit me to the number of channel choices our local cable provider offers, I was able to pick up channel 17 or 29 from Philadelphia and tune in each week to watch three [...]
Read more
by Noralee Frankel. Gypsy Rose Lee capivated generations of her fans. Born in Seattle in 1911 Louise Hovick, as she was known, toured vaudeville with her driven stage mother and her younger sister. When her sister ran off to marry and with vaudeville dying, Louise performed in burlesque theaters. In 1931, Louise, now Gypsy Rose [...]
Read more
By Steven Beasley. Band leader Kay Kyser (real name James Kyser) recorded some of the biggest hits of the Big Band era. Titles such as “(I Got Spurs that) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle,” “Three Little Fishies,” “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” “Who Wouldn’t Love You” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” remain in the hearts of [...]
Read more
Phone: 443-286-6821
MANC, P.O. Box 52, Whiteford, MD 21160
E-mail: mmargrajr@hotmail.com
Written by