Clinton “Clint” Eastwood, Jr. (May 31, 1930 – )
Clint Eastwood is an American film actor, director, producer, composer, pianist, businessman, investor, and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide.
Posted in The Big Screen
May 25, 1977, Memorial Day weekend opens with an intergalactic bang as the first of George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars movies hits American theaters.
Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen
Joseph Campanella (November 21, 1924 – May 16, 2018)
Joseph Anthony Campanella was an American character actor. He appeared in more than 200 television and film roles from the early 1950s to 2009. Campanella was best remembered for his role as Joe Turino in Guiding Light and as Harper Deveraux on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, a role he starred in from 1987 to 1988.
Posted in News, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (May 14, 1944 – )
George Lucas is an Academy Award-nominated American film producer, screenwriter, director and chairman of Lucasfilm Ltd. He is best known for being the creator of the epic Sci-Fi franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones.
Posted in The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
Miracle on 34th Street (also titled The Big Heart in the UK) is a 1947 film which tells the story of a gentle old man, working as a Santa Claus at Macy’s department store in New York City, who contends that he is the real deal.
Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen
Ronald Lee Ermey (March 24, 1944 – April 15, 2018)
Actor R. Lee Ermey has passed away at the age of 74 after battling pneumonia. His manager Bill Rogin made the announcement on the actor’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
It is with deep sadness that I regret to inform you all that R. Lee Ermey (“The Gunny”) passed away this morning from complications of pneumonia. He will be greatly missed by all of us. It is a terrible loss that nobody was prepared for. He has meant so much to so many people. And, it is extremely difficult to truly quantify all of the great things this man has selflessly done for, and on behalf of, our many men and women in uniform. He has also contributed many iconic and indelible characters on film that will live on forever. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman of Full Metal Jacket fame was a hard and principled man. The real R. Lee Ermey was a family man, and a kind and gentle soul. He was generous to everyone around him. And, he especially cared deeply for others in need.
There is a quote made famous in Full Metal Jacket. It’s actually the Riflemen’s Creed. “This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”
There are many Gunny’s, but this one was OURS. And, we will honor his memory with hope and kindness. Please support your men and women in uniform. That’s what he wanted most of all.
Semper Fi, Gunny. Godspeed.
The Kansas native was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his memorable performance in “Full Metal Jacket,” immortalizing lines like “What is your major malfunction?” He also voiced the little green army man Sarge in the “Toy Story” films and played a helicopter pilot in “Apocalypse Now,” among many other roles.
Rogin says that while his characters were often hard and principled, the real Ermey was a family man and a kind and gentle soul who supported the men and women who serve.
Ermey, who was well known for his acting roles as characters in the U.S. military, served in the United States Marine Corps for 11 years. The actor rose to Staff Sargeant and was given honorary rank by the Marine Corps as Gunnery Sergeant, according to IMDb.
“The Gunny” served in Vietnam and Japan, committing to 14 months during the Vietnam War. Most recently, he was a voice actor in the videogame “Disney Magic Kingdown” in 2016 as well as “The Simpsons” in 2015. IMDb says he has over 120 credits as an actor of some capacity.
The Hollywood Reporter says Ermey took acting classes in order to learn his craft. After taking the courses, he starred as a pilot in the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now” before landing the 1987 well-known movie “Full Metal Jacket.” He was originally brought on to advise the eventual actor on the movie but was given the role himself because of his performance.
“I’d say fifty percent of Lee’s dialogue, specifically the insult stuff, came from Lee. You see, in the course of hiring the marine recruits, we interviewed hundreds of guys,” director Stanley Kubrick said in a 1987 interview with Rolling Stone. “We lined them all up and did an improvisation of the first meeting with the drill instructor. They didn’t know what he was going to say, and we could see how they reacted. Lee came up with, I don’t know, 150 pages of insults.”
Posted in News, The Big Screen
On this day in 1965, The Sound of Music was released in the United States.
March 2, 1965
Posted in The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
First 2019 Bullitt sold for $300,000 at auction
Ford rolled out the 2019 Mustang Bullitt edition at the 2018 NAIAS in Detroit last week. Pricing for the special edition Mustang hasn’t been revealed yet but the very first Bullitt Edition just sold for a fair bit above MSRP.
On Friday night at the 2018 Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson auction, the very first production 2019 Ford Mustang Bullitt topped out at $300,000. That’s quite a lot of money for what is essentially a slightly more powerful green Mustang GT. Fortunately, all of the proceeds from the auction went to Boys Republic, a school specializing in at-risk kids that Steve McQueen of Bullitt fame also attended.
Posted in Planes Trains and Automobiles, The Big Screen
The 2018 Ford Mustang Bullitt has shown up just in time for the 50th anniversary of the film and its epic car chase scene. Between the green paint, dark grille and signature fuel cap, I think Steve McQueen himself would be stoked to jump it off some steep streets.
Posted in Planes Trains and Automobiles, The Big Screen
It’s a Wonderful Life is a 1946 Frank Capra film, produced by his own Liberty Films and released originally by RKO Radio Pictures. Dubbed by the American Film Institute one of the best films ever made, it placed #1 on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Cheers, a list of the most inspirational American movies of all time. It ranks 11th on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films. The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The movie is the story of the life of everyman George Bailey, as told to his guardian angel Clarence Oddbody, who has been recruited to save him in his moment of need.
The film premiered on December 20, 1946 in the New Globe Theater on Governors Island.
Dear George: — Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love Clarence.
Posted in Because I Can, The Big Screen
Rose Marie Mazetta (August 15, 1923 – December 28, 2017)
Rose Marie, best known for her role as Sally Rogers on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” who had a nine-decade career in show business, died Thursday in Van Nuys, Calif. She was 94.
Publicist Harlan Boll confirmed her death.
Rose Marie was Emmy nominated three times for her work on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” in which she played part of the writing team, led by Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie, for the fictional “Alan Brady Show.” The actress began a five-season stint as Sally Rogers in 1960.
The recent documentary “Wait For Your Laugh” by director Jason Wise chronicled her long career. Late in life she enjoyed communicating with her fans on social media. Her official account tweeted just a few hours before her death about playing the Flamingo in Las Vegas.
Decades earlier, she had been a child singing star under the name Baby Rose Marie. She began her career at 3, starring in her own show on NBC radio by the age of 5, cutting records and appearing in vaudeville, in shorts including 1929’s “Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder” and in Paramount’s 1933 feature “International House” with W.C. Fields.
Variety founder Sime Silverman himself mentioned Rose Marie in its pages for “The Child Wonder,” writing, “Though but a kidlet, she seemed to have an idea of her own.”
Later, as a teenager, she became a nightclub singer before returning to radio as a comedienne.
In the early 1950s Rose Marie appeared on television variety shows as a singer and dancer, and she returned to the bigscreen in 1954, starring opposite Phil Silvers in “Top Banana,” an adaptation of Silvers’ Broadway show about a TV comedian.
The actress recurred on “The Bob Cummings Show” as Martha in 1958-59, and she was a series regular on a brief TV adaptation of “My Sister Eileen.” After “The Dick Van Dyke Show” she guested on a variety of TV shows, including “The Monkees” and “My Three Sons,” and she recurred on “The Doris Day Show.”
During the 1960s she also appeared onstage in “Bye Bye Birdie” and in a pair of features, starring opposite her “Van Dyke” co-star Morey Amsterdam in “Don’t Worry, We’ll Think of a Title,” and appearing in “Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round,” starring James Coburn.
Rose Marie made a steady stream of TV appearances from the early 1970s until the early 2000s, appearing, for example, on “Adam-12” and “Kojak”; recurring as Hilda the sandwich delivery lady on “S.W.A.T.”; appearing repeatedly in different roles on “The Love Boat”; guesting on “Cagney and Lacey” and “Murphy Brown”; appearing as a series regular on the brief 1994 sports comedy “Hardball”; and guesting on “Caroline in the City” (with Amsterdam), “Wings” and “Suddenly, Susan.” She was also a semi-regular on “Hollywood Squares” in the 1980s and ’90s.
Onstage, she starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O’Connell and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue “4 Girls 4,” which toured the U.S. and made television appearances for several years beginning in 1977.
In the 2000s she appeared in another comedienne’s HBO special, “Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales,” and returned to the “Van Dyke” fold for Carl Reiner’s animated “The Alan Brady Show” and for 2004’s “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.”
Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City. She was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until his death in 1964.
She is survived by a daughter, Georgiana Marie “Noopy” and her son-in-law Steven Rodrigues. Donations may be made to Thrive and Heaven Helper’s Rescue.
Posted in Because I Can, News, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
On December 28, 1895, the world’s first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.
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Posted in Gadgets, On This Day, The Big Screen
