Mark R. asks: Was there a real “McDonald” that started McDonald’s or is it like the fictitious Betty Crocker? McDonald’s is, without question, the most successful, popular, and influential fast-food restaurant chain in recorded history. The name most commonly associated with McDonald’s is Ray Kroc. Kroc was the entrepreneur who founded the McDonald’s corporation. So how did it come to […]
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It was early May of 1965, the Beatles were busy in Twickenham studios in London, working on their second movie “Help!” During a break in filming, their manager, Brian Epstein, showed up in a dither and assembled them in a dressing room. “I’ve got some news for you, the Prime Minister and the Queen have awarded you an M.B.E.” If […]
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Ask most movie fans, “What was the first ‘talkie’?” The most frequent reply tends to be “The Jazz Singer” starring Al Jolson. This is a “sort of” correct answer, but not really. The earliest “sound” movies were made by synchronizing motion pictures to phonograph records. In 1926, (a year before “The Jazz Singer”) Warner Brothers re-released the previously silent film […]
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This is where Beatlemania begins. Along with the then “shocking” Beatle haircuts, this song is “the” symbol, “the signature tune” of the early Beatles- the four happy, cheerful, chipper, and harmless moptops. This is the Beatles before drugs, before Yoko Ono, before the facial hair, before the in-house fighting and bickering, before John said they were “more popular than Jesus.” […]
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Barbara Baker’s earliest recollections of John Lennon were of little John perching up in a tree and shooting arrows at her and all the other girls passing by. Later, she also recalled encountering Lennon’s youthful “charm” one day as she was walking home, her hair done up in a ponytail. “Oh there’s horseface! Horse’s tail and horse’s face!” He was […]
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In 1967, the Beatles filmed their only made-for-TV movie. It was called “Magical Mystery Tour“. The film itself is an interesting, checkered, odd little movie directed and edited by the Beatles themselves. It was, basically, the boys riding out in the country on a “magical mystery tour” bus with an eclectic bunch of characters. They just rode around and filmed […]
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It was February 18, 1964. The Beatles had arrived in America just 11 days earlier and had taken the nation by storm. They already had the number one record on the charts and several others quickly catching up. They had appeared on the Ed Sullivan show before 73 million awestruck and curious fans. It was the highest rated television broadcast […]
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There have been four assassinations of U.S. Presidents to date. Two are very famous and two not as well-known. The first assassination of a President is both well-known and well-documented. On April 14, 1865, actor and southern advocate John Wilkes Booth shot the 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s theater. Lincoln died from his wounds the next day. (Incidentally, […]
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Robert Osbourne David Denver was born in new Rochelle, New York, on January 9, 1935 (that is exactly one day after the birth of Elvis Presley.) Just as his “distinguished-sounding” real name seems a bit incongruous for the actor who was to achieve worldwide fame playing a perennial goofball named “Gilligan”, so the real-life Bob Denver was almost a direct […]
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Dorothy “Dot” Rhone, a quiet girl from Liverpool, England, was abused by her heavy drinker father. She also had a very emotionally distant mother. She grew up terribly shy, introverted and withdrawn and didn’t think she was at all pretty. As she said, I never thought I was pretty at school because my sister always said my nose would spread […]
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When John Lennon and Yoko Ono stepped into New York’s “The Hit Factory” on August 7, 1980, it was quite the occasion. John was returning to the music-making game after a five year absence. After being “under contract” since he was 21, John had walked away from making music in 1975 to become a “househusband”- instead of being a musician, […]
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A former teammate of Babe Ruth’s once recalled the Bambino by saying, “You’ve got to remember, this guy wasn’t born. He fell out of a tree.” Ruth grabbed life by the throat (or maybe it was another part of life’s anatomy) and shook it up… frequently. Ruth spent a good portion of his youth cooped up in St. Mary’s industrial […]
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It was March of 1960. The teenagers of the world were rejoicing. Why? Because Elvis was getting out of the army. Yes, Elvis “The Pelvis” Presley, Rock ‘n’ Roll’s greatest rebel iconoclast, was finally leaving the U.S. Military and taking up his career as the sneering, hip-swiveling Rock ‘n’ Roller. Elvis’ film career was foremost in the minds of his […]
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“The Brady Bunch” was a hugely successful sitcom which ran for 5 seasons (117 episodes) from 1969 to 1974. One of the show’s stars was Robert Reed, a Shakespearean trained stage actor. Previous to “The Brady Bunch”, Reed had also been a co-star of a very successful drama called “The Defenders” with E.G. Marshall in the early 1960s. Usually when […]
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OK. Here’s your “Question of the day”: What popular product “mascot” was discontinued almost 40 years ago for being overly offensive to Mexicans? Answer: The Frito Bandito. Everybody loves Fritos corn chips, right? But even a popular product like Fritos can make questionable decisions, which they did with their one time product mascot. In 1967, the good folks at Frito-Lay […]
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This Day In History: August 11, 1964 On this day in history, 1964, what would later be called one of the 100 greatest films of all time by Time Magazine, the Beatles “mockumentary”, A Hard Day’s Night, debuted in the United States. (Warning: There be spoilers in the A Hard Day’s Night facts ahead! So if you haven’t seen it, […]
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It is, without question, one of the most oft-quoted anecdotes in the history of comedy. It goes, pretty much, like this: A woman with 10 (or 12 or 14 or 16 or whatever) children makes a guest appearance as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s quiz show You Bet Your Life (which started out on the radio and later found its […]
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What is the strangest thing ever found on the set of a TV show? I’m going to go with “a human body”. Yes, a real live (or should I say “dead”?) human corpse. And that’s only part of the strangeness of this tale. In 1977, The Six Million Dollar Man was a hit TV series starring Lee Majors. That year, […]
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