Retro. Vintage. Nostalgia. Paraphernalia. Ephemera. Pop culture. Exploring the past. Original photos, scans, reviews, writings. Blogging from Australia, so a lot of the content will be from downunder.
First of a series. Now watching and rewatching programs, movies, documentaries and specials on The Beatles. Making an effort to watch something every week. So much out there but beginning with this one which I highly recommend. Free on Tubi.
The AHMM was a crime and mystery short story digest that began in the 1950s and is still in production today. It served as an outlet for quality short fiction and for the longest time featured Hitchcock on the cover mugging it up. This selection of covers gives you some idea of the dark humorous tone. Very Hitchcock!
Sammy Davis Jr was something a a gun enthusiast and practised a quick draw routine that he incorporated into his stage act. Here he is in a pictorial for Duke magazine showing off his new skills
Retro Reflections 28 (New releases from [G]old artists)
Artists from the 1960s to the 90s are delivering fresh new albums gaining critical praise and fan appreciation. Here's a sample of what I've been listening to this year.
NOTE: The internet police are really keen to ban that Madonna cover, even after I cropped it.
Note: YES i know the Pink Floyd album isn't new material from the band. I just thought I'd put it here.
In 1975, the series hit the air and received this colourful promotion in TV Week.
CASTAWAYS IN A TERROR WORLD OF APES!
THE television series Planet Of The Apes takes up where the popular Ape movies left off.
Two more astronauts take over from Charlton Heston, flying through the same time warp to arrive on earth 2000 years ahead in time.
There are references to the previous humans who have crashed through the time barrier, but it is still the simians who rule the planet.
So the scene is set for dramatic action as the astronauts fight to keep alive and to get back to their own time.
The astronauts are played by James Naughton, a medical student turned actor, and Ron Harper, a Princeton graduate who also turned his back on learning for the perilous game of acting.
Roddy McDowall is the star of the series, playing the same role as he did in the movies.
He appeared in all five movies, as the friendly ape Galen, and carries on in the same fashion in the series.
For the countless fans of those Ape movies, the main characters in the simian fold will be familiar.
The same masks were used for the various ape characters, and the actors beneath them had to go through the same arduous make-up procedures.
This meant a 5 am start for make-up and a gruelling three hour session in the chair before starting.
Another problem the actors faced was eating. Once those masks were on there was no taking them off again until the end of the day.
Which meant the only way to eat was by poking small pieces of food skewered on the end of a stick through the mask and into the mouth.
A preview of the Planet of the Apes TV series that was, at that stage, in development.
THE APES HEAD FOR TV STARDOM!
FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IN HOLLYWOOD
THERE are plenty of people around who insist Hollywood television is going to the dogs, but, of course, they are wrong. It's going ape.
One of the new season’s biggest stars, in fact, could well be an ape, gorilla or an orang-outang if the television adaptation of Planet Of The Apes turns out anything like the phenomenally successful series of movies.
"Our television series will be based on the original movie," executive producer Herb Hirschman explained.
"We’re now casting the three regular roles — two astronauts and a friendly ape along the lines of the anthropologist Roddy McDowall created in the movie.
"There will also be a gorilla as chief of police and a wise old orang-outang, and these are tough roles. Many actors cannot take the three-and-a-half-hour make-up job and the claustrophobia of wearing those suits."
The five Planet Of The Apes films, drawn from French novelist Pierre Boulle’s saga of astronauts escaping a time warp and returning to a world now ruled by a simian civilisation in which humans are subservient, won a surprisingly diverse following.
A large ape cult has grown up around the films, and its ranks include every type of person ranging from scientists and lawyers to salesmen and mechanics, which critics trace to an ability to please almost every taste.
On one level the movies are parodies of human behavior, rich in allegory and symbolism, while on another, they are pure escapist entertainment, abounding in spectacle and action.
"In the series we won't preach, but by no means will it be a kids’ show," Herb Hirschman promised. "We’re aiming it at the entire family and while we will concentrate on entertainment there will be ample opportunity to make comment on the world today."
Planet Of The Apes is being tipped as the potential big hit of the new season, but ironically when it was first proposed two years ago it was flatly rejected by network executives whose interest was finally aroused after two ape movies attracted huge audiences.
But this would have been no surprise to the late Arthur Jacobs, the producer of the movie series, who died after completing the recent Battle For The Planet Of The Apes. Jacobs spent some four years trying to get the original film made.
"I took it to every major production company in America and Europe, and everyone of them turned me down at least once," he once recalled.
"They insisted that even if I licked the technical problems, no one was going to see a picture about talking apes."
The realistic ape mask was the biggest, but hardly the only problem the producer confronted when pre-production work on Planet Of The Apes finally began in late 1966.
In creating a believable simian civilisation and technology, he had to have everything specially designed even down to walls and chairs.
It took more than six months laboratory work by John Chambers, drawing on his extensive work in prosthetics for mutilated military veterans, to create his Oscar-winning ape make-up.
For the first ape movie more than a million dollars, a fifth of its budget, was allocated for make-up and still shorthanded after employing every available make-up man in Hollywood, the producer had to specially train others.
"Experience with the ape faces—and they're not masks in the usual sense of the word — has allowed us to effect some economies," Arthur explained on the set of his final movie.
"But it still takes three and a half hours to apply full make-up. On the first picture it was much longer and we had as many as 150 make-up men at one time."
Playing one of the apes is one of the toughest assignments in Hollywood and Herb Hirschman, in fact, has taken the unusual step of warning actors through trade papers just how tortuous it is.
But according to Roddy McDowall, even that is understating it. He found playing major ape roles in four of the Apes movies not only physically but mentally debilitating at times.
"Once I became so depressed Arthur ordered me off the set for a couple of days to get back to normal," he said.
"The monkey-suits got to me because I’m slightly claustrophobic and you're completely encased.
"It’s hot and uncomfortable and you’re in it all day. If you itch, you can’t scratch. You can't eat. You can only take liquid through surgical straws."
Yet the former child-star only once turned down an Apes movie and then because he was already committed to direct another film and there has never been a shortage of top names eager to play apes.
Battle Of The Planet Of The Apes lured Claude Akins as the gorilla leader of an insurrection, veteran actor and Oscar-winning director John Huston played the orang-outang lawgiver and Lew Ayres the custodian of the ape city arsenal.
The films, as undoubtedly the television series will, had sporting and social celebrities and such non-acting stars as singer Paul Williams flocking to play cameo roles.
This was an interesting period for the celebrities below. All appearing on the covers of Australian women's magazines.
Joan Collins, already an established actress, would enter the 1980s and find TV fame on DYNASTY. In 1977 Carrie Fisher had the galaxy far far away at her feet and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI were in her near future. Margot Kidder was flying high from SUPERMAN with SUPERMAN 2 on the horizon. Jessica Lange was known as the girl from KING KONG but the 1980s would see her star in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, TOOTSIE, FRANCES and other prestige films. Sigourney Weaver, just back from outer space, would return there again in several films and also star in GHOSTBUSTERS and GORILLAS IN THE MIST. Dolly Parton, an established country music singer, would go on to star with Burt Reynolds, Jane Fonda and Sylvester Stallone in the 1980s and find fresh success on the commercial charts.
Retro Magazine Gallery No 8: Australian Pix Magazine
Australian Pix magazine began life in the late 1930s and was another general interest pictorial magazine. It had a long run, lasting into the 1970s, when it was merged with another similar magazine. Striking covers to grab your attention.
Above: 1948 issues featured Esther Williams in a glamour pose, a cute baby photo and wrestlers in action. 1955 sees a cute puppy pic. Brigette Bardot graces the cover of this 1961 issue. By 1970, the magazine was getting a bit more sensationalist and raunchy. This issue features a Marilyn Monroe lookalike.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
turnnoffyourmind
gracieabrams
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline