Archive for the ‘Nostalgia’ Category

I bet you’ve never seen a Barbie like this.

On this day in 1987, Danny Kaye passed away at the age of 74.

If I did half the stuff Danny Kaye did, I would need a joint supplement just to get out of bed in the morning. That man could sing and dance, and move all over the stage. We have musicians and actors today, but sadly to say we lack a lot in the “entertainer” department. Danny Kaye was a true entertainer.

On this day in 1984, Johnny Bench’s uniform was retired. I was a huge Reds fan when I was little, but I always thought Johnny looked like someone who would be selling me something, like car insurance. I don’t know why, but I still think of that when I see his name in the news.

John Lee “Johnny” Bench (born December 7, 1947) is a former American Major League Baseball player for the Cincinnati Reds from 1967 to 1983. He is currently on the Board of Directors for the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.

Bench, a 14-time All-Star selection and the National League’s Most Valuable Player in the 1970 and 1972 seasons, was a key member of the “The Big Red Machine”, the Reds teams of the 1970s which won six division titles and World Series championships in 1975 and 1976.

On this day in 1940 Bugs Bunny made his debut.

Some of the graphics in this video remind me of the outdoor furniture covers that used to be around the pool where my grandparents used to live. Talk about a flashback.

I don’t care how old the Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes get, the comedy in them is timeless.

On this day in 1946, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first appeared as a team. They will definitely go down in the history books as one of the greatest comedy duos ever.

Crooner Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis staged their first show as a team this day in 1946 at Club 500 in Atlantic City, NJ. Actually, the two had met while performing — separately — at the Glass Hat in New York City and decided to try an ad-lib act together. The rest is entertainment history.

The duo went from earning $350 a week to $5,000 a week in under eight months, with Martin playing the romantic straight man opposite Lewis as his goofy, unpredictable partner. Ten years later, the curtain came down on their final team performance at the Copacabana in New York. Over that decade, the zany two made seventeen movies including My Friend Irma, That’s My Boy, The Caddy, Pardners, Jumping Jacks and The Stooge.

You can find out more about this day in history at Those Were The Days, and InfoPlease.

On this day in 1937, Daffy Duck made his debut.

Who doesn’t love Daffy Duck?

On this day in 1939, Betty Grable appeared on Life magazine.

Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born Dec. 18, 1916, in St. Louis. Her father became a successful grain broker and her mother Lillian pushed Betty into dancing and vaudeville at an early age. In 1929 she and Betty moved to Hollywood when the Golden Age of sound movies, the Star-Studded Revue and the Technicolor musical was beginning. Although only 5′4″ tall and 13 years old, Betty was hired as a Fox chorus girl at $50 a week to dance in Happy Days and Let’s Go Places. After working in films for Eddie Cantor and Busby Berkeley, she signed a 5-year contact in 1934 with RKO. Betty worked for most of the major studios in the 1930s but did not become a star until 1939: she signed with Darryl F. Zanuck at Twentieth Century Fox in July; divorced Jackie Coogan in October; starred in a Broadway play that opened Dec. 6; appeared on the cover of Life magazine Dec. 11.

On this day in 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed in New York City.

On this day in 1905, the original stage production of Peter Pan opened in New York. Of course, I couldn’t find video of the original performance, but here is a clip of the trailer for later performances.

Those were the days, when you could afford to pay to see a show with cash, and you didn’t need to make sure your balance transfer credit card had enough funds available. It didn’t take 3 months to pay off the balance either!

On this day in 1880, the actor known as W.C. Fields was born. Here he is in his first short film, Pool Sharks, from 1915.

W.C. Fields was one of a kind. These days he would be considered his own “franchise“, as they like to say. He had a way of making people laugh, even though, when you look back on things, he wasn’t really that funny at all. It just shows you that nothing has really changed in Hollywood, except the faces.