Movies Archives
Mel Brooks Everybody loves to laugh. And growing up a Boomer, one of my most consistent sources of laughter was Mel Brooks. Melvin Kaminsky was born in 1928 Brooklyn to a father descended from German Jews and a mother whose lineage was Russian Jews. He was a sickly child who soon discovered...
The Beatles' Movies Let's face it, the lives of Boomer kids of the 60's were ruled by four lads from Liverpool that none of us ever hoped to meet in person. Whether it was singing their songs on the way to school, carrying their faces plastered all over our lunchboxes, or buying their...
Spaghetti Westerns The 60's was a decade of change for the movie industry. Films had been getting progressively more "mature" in their content since the mid 50's. This trend accelerated throughout the decade in which I first became aware of my surroundings and my place in the world. By 1968, the MPAA...
3D of the 50's The neighborhood movie theater was a welcome spot for rainy and/or swelteringly hot summer afternoons in the 50's. The drive-in theater was likewise a fond destination that many of us remember. One of the most amazing innovations that were enjoyed by the older members of the Boomer generation were 3D...
James Bond It all began in 1936. That year, a book was published called Birds of the West Indies. Novelist Ian Fleming, living in Jamaica, was a birder himself, and he was impressed with the volume. He was also impressed with the name of the book's author: James Bond. Fleming wrote a...
Brando Sends an Indian Maiden to the Oscars In 1972, a gritty mobster movie was all the rage. The Godfather, despite its running time of over three hours, was a huge hit all over the nation. The next year, when the Academy Awards show was televised, there was a lot of buzz in the air about the movie....
Ivan Tors The name is familiar, if you watched TV in the 60's. But you probably don't know a whole lot more about Ivan Tors than the fact that he was the producer of shows that we Boomer kids loved like Flipper, Gentle Ben, and Daktari. Ivan Tors was born in Hungary...
The Downtown Movie Theater It seems that every single town in the US with a population of at least, say, 2,500 had a single-screen theater located in its downtown area circa 1960. In the Northwest Arkansas area where I make my home, that was the case with every community. Unfortunately, it is also the...
Elvis Presley, Actor Colonel Tom Parker had quite a goldmine on his hands. He managed Elvis Presley, the most valuable commodity in the entertainment industry of the mid 1950's. Of course, even the most manipulative manager couldn't make his client do anything he didn't want to, at least not without getting him to...
Beach Party Movies Ah, sweet summers of the 60's. What could be more carefree than hanging out with Frankie, Annette, Fabian, Tab, and the rest of the gang on a sunny southern California beach with great rock and roll blasting in the background and, of course, a plethora of bikinis and muscular, bare-chested...
When We Went Nuts Over a Seagull Nowadays, New Age is everywhere. Some are into nature sounds (I particularly enjoy writing while "rain" falls all around me), some into crystals, others dig reflexology. But go back to 1970 and the concept of New Age was an obscure one. Some hippies were into Yoga, but by and large...
Suzanne Pleshette As I pen this, word has just been released that Suzanne Pleshette has just succumbed to lung cancer. Ms. Pleshette was just a few days short of her 71st birthday. And she will always be a treasured memory of Boomers who enjoyed her in TV and movies (and Broadway, for...
Star Wars Is Released George Lucas was still flying high in 1977 from the success of 1973's American Graffiti. However, Universal pictures turned down his latest idea: a science-fiction tale that had lots of cowboys and Indians, so to speak, and that might offend purists but which would appeal to the masses. Universal passed...
Where Were You in '62? Let's see, if we were to make a movie about life eleven years ago, it would be all about the exciting year of 1996. Who can forget the great music, the cruising, and the carefree times? Yeah, right. While each generation defines its own "good old days," the fact is...
When Movies Weren't Rated The movies reigned supreme over the entertainment business for a nice run of the 20th century. They knocked live Vaudeville performances out of the saddle, and never looked back. The movie industry didn't notice when Scotsman John Logie Baird sent a television signal over the wires from London to Glasgow...
By the Time I Got to Woodstock . . . The tensions of the 60's erupted in various ways. The most unfortunate were the riots, notable ones occuring in Watts, California, Detroit, Newark, Chicago, and Washington D.C. More peaceful statements were made by sit-ins and marches. But an amazing statement was made in the form of a three-day music festival...
Mary Poppins The year was 1964. I was five years old, and already terrified of fantasy movies. After all, those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz were giving me nightmares on a weekly basis. But a movie came out that year that mom forced my fifteen-year-old brother take me to see....
The Day After Most of the memories here are from my childhood. In 1983, when our generation was all grown up, this movie was shown on ABC TV. This was one of the last coups for network television, cable not quite having taken over yet. It was watched by 100 million people, the...
The Wizard of Oz on TV Every Year Every year, this movie was shown on network television. It was a tradition in my home to watch it, one I look back on with a variety of emotions. The primary feeling was TERROR! This movie scared the living daylights out of me. From the tornado scene (I lived in...
Bonny and Clyde This was one of those movies of the 60's that gave us the ratings system. If I recall correctly, this movie came out with a "M" rating. That meant recommended for mature audiences. That didn't stop a seven-year-old from getting into the Coleman Theatre in Miami, Oklahoma with his older...
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Remote Controls for our TV Sets:
We Boomers are buried in gadgets, as are all other generations running around in the early 21st century. In ten years, I've gone from reluctantly carrying a (heavy brick) cell phone to proudly sporting an Android phone that is more of a computer/multimedia center than anything else. We've seen TV's...
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