Author Archives: dcaligari

December 29, 1967 –Sergio Leone’s iconic Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach, premiered in the US on this date. The term originated in the 1960s, when it was cheaper to make movies in Italy than the United States. Moviemakers made their westerns thereContinue reading “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly premiered”

December 29, 1933 –One of their best remembered films, Laurel and Hardy’s Sons of the Desert, premiered on this date. During the shooting, Stan Laurel was also seeing someone else, Virginia Ruth Rogers, even though his divorce from his first wife was not yet final. Rogers even filled in as a crowd scene extra andContinue reading “Sons of the Desert premiered”

You currently have five golden rings, eight calling birds, nine French hens, ten turtledoves and five partridges in their respective pear trees (begin thinking preserves.) (The fifth day of Christmas is also the Feast of St. Thomas Becket who was the Archbishop of Canterbury and martyred on this date in 1170 AD.) The five goldenContinue reading “The official gift tally total (37 gifts)”

December 28, 1968 –Marvin Gaye’s song I Heard It Through the Grapevine hit number #1 on this date. The song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. Strong came up with the idea and asked Motown writers Holland-Dozier-Holland to work on it with him. They refused to credit another writer, so Strong took itContinue reading “I Heard It Through the Grapevine topped the charts”

It’s the Fourth day of Christmas and you’ve just received four calling bird, sometimes know as colly birds or collie birds (which are actually blackbirds). Today’s score: you currently have 22 gifts – four calling birds, six French hens, eight turtledoves and four partridges in their respective pear trees (when do these trees become aContinue reading “Allow the appropriate spacing in between the cages”

December 28, 1895 –Auguste and Louis Lumiere opened the first movie theater at the Grand Cafe in Paris, on this date . Other inventors, including Thomas Edison, were working on various moving picture devices at the time. But most of those other devices could only be viewed by one person at a time. The LumieresContinue reading “All those people, alone in the dark, for the first time”

December 28, 1945 –One of the first Hollywood films to deal with psychoanalysis, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound premiered in the US on this date. Alfred Hitchcock was a big admirer of Salvador Dalí’s work, and realized that no one understood dream imagery better. Producer David O. Selznick was opposed to using Dalí from an expense pointContinue reading “Spellbound premiered”

December 28, 1958 –Toho Company Ltd. released Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, starring Toshiro Mifune and Misa Uehara to theaters in Japan on this date. Akira Kurosawa was depressed after the lack of success of his last two films which he deemed heavy and tragic, he decided to take a new tone with this movie,Continue reading “The Hidden Fortress premiered”

December 27, 1961 –Tony Bennett, playing in the Venetian Room of the San Francisco Fairmont Hotel, made his first solo public performance of I Left My Heart in San Francisco, on this date. The song was written by George Cory and Douglass Cross in 1954 (Cory wrote the music and Cross wrote the lyrics) andContinue reading “Tony Bennett sang I Left My Heart for the first time in public”

The 12 acre complex in midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center developed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on land leased from Columbia University opened to the public on December 27, 1932. Radio City Music Hall (named for one of the complex’s first tenants, the Radio Corporation of America) opened with a spectacular stage show, featuringContinue reading “Rockefeller Center opened”