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Old time Television series and TV stars

Television Firsts  

The first television picture was broadcast in
1926 from Arlington, Virginia to Washington,
D.C. The technological achievement was of 
a picture of a weather map.

Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, father of Candice
Bergen, was the first president of the Television 
Academy.

In 1950, the sitcom laugh track was introduced in
the U.S. on "The Hank McCune Show"; that TV
program was canceled during midseason.

The first televised tour of the White House, led 
by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and hosted by
Charles Collingwood, was broadcast simultaneously 
by CBS and NBC in 1962. The tour was watched by 
an estimated 46,500,000 viewers, offering them their
first opportunity to see many of the rooms of the
President's home.

The Avengers, which aired in the United States on 
ABC from 1966 to 1969, was the first British show 
ever to air in a U.S. network's prime time fall schedule. 
The tongue-in-cheek spy show starred Patrick Macnee
as John Steed, the urbane British undercover agent.

As a college sophomore, Oprah Winfrey was the first
African-American news co-anchor on a local U.S. 
TV station.

In 1990, Upjohn ran the first TV commercial in the U.S.
during which an actor said he had diarrhea.

Author: Vicki McClure Davidson

Film Firsts  

In 1912, French actress Sarah Bernhardt became
the first great actress of the stage to appear in the
new medium of films.

Silent film star Francis X. Bushman was the first
film actor to be called "King of the Movies." 
That label would later be affixed to Clark Gable, 
where it has since remained.

Theda Bara was American cinema's first "vamp," 
and its first female sex symbol. Born Theodosia 
Goodman, the exotic actress was born in
Cincinnati, Ohio.

Elmo Lincoln was filmdom's first Tarzan. Formerly 
an Arkansas policeman, bit actor Elmo Linkenhelt's
shirt was partially torn off while filming a fight scene, 
revealing his muscular chest. Reportedly, director
D.W. Griffith called him over and told him,
"That's quite a chest you have there." 
Griffith modified his screen name to Elmo
Lincoln and featured him in several of his films,
 including The Birth of a Nation. In 1918, Lincoln
was given the title role in Tarzan of the Apes a few
days after film production began. World War
I had just begun, and the man first contracted to
play the apeman --
 Winslow Wilson, a husky actor and ukelele player
-- unexpectedly quit and enlisted. Tarzan of the Apes
was a box office hit, one of the first movies to bring
in more than $1 million dollars.

The first film star to commit suicide during the height
of their career was the lovely and popular actress
Olive Thomas. The former Ziegfeld showgirl was the
main star at Selznick Studios by age 20, and she was
happily married to Jack Pickford, the successful 
actor-brother of Mary Pickford. In 1920, Thomas was
found dead from an overdose of mercuric chloride in 
Paris. Her tragic death made headlines around the
world. An investigation revealed her lurid private life,
including drug addiction, which was far removed
from the ingenue roles she believably portrayed 
on the screen.

Sterling Holloway was the first Hollywood actor 
drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II.
Actor James Garner was the first man from the 
state of Oklahoma drafted into the Korean War.

The first kiss in a Japanese film was finally
allowed in Twenty-Year-Old Youth in 1946.

James Dean was the first actor to be nominated
for an Oscar posthumously in 1956. Dean was
killed in an auto accident six months earlier, 
only a few days after he completed filming on 
Giant, the film for which he received his nomination. 
Dean did not win; Yul Brynner was the winner of the
Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the musical 
The King and I.

The 1987 Empire of the Sun was the first major 
Hollywood movie to be made in the People's 
Republic of China. This required long face-to-face 
negotiations that took about a year to complete.

Author: Vicki McClure Davidson


AFI's Top 50 Films  

Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation
on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965. 
This created the National Endowment for the Arts,
 which established the American Film Institute (AFI),
 an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to
preserving film and television heritage; identifying 
and training new talent; and increasing recognition 
and understanding of the moving image as an art form.

"The Top 100 Greatest American Movies," according 
to a poll of filmmakers and conducted by AFI, were 
announced on a CBS-TV special in 1998. 
The list below is comprised of the Top 50 films
from that list.

Trivia of note:

The Top 10 films include movies from every decade, 
from the 1930s to the 1990s, with the exception of the
1980s. The first film on the AFI list from the 1980s is
Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, at Number 24. 
Citizen Kane, starring Orson Wells, ranks as the
all-time Number 1 film in American history. 
The Godfather, Part II is the only sequel, at Number 
32, represented on the list. The Godfather (1972) 
ranked at Number 3. 
Singin' in the Rain is the highest-ranking musical 
on the list, at Number 10; West Side Story follows
at Number 41. 
D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation is the
highest-ranking silent film, at Number 44. 
The highest-ranking film from the 1990s is
Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, at Number 9.

List of AFI's Top 50 Films: 

1.  Citizen Kane (1941) 
2.  Casablanca (1942) 
3.  The Godfather (1972) 
4.  Gone with the Wind (1939) 
5.  Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 
6.  The Wizard of Oz (1939) 
7.  The Graduate (1967) 
8.  On the Waterfront (1954) 
9.  Schindler's List (1993) 
10.  Singin' in the Rain (1952)  
11.  It's a Wonderful Life (1946) 
12.  Sunset Boulevard (1950) 
13.  The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) 
14.  Some Like It Hot (1959) 
15.  Star Wars (1977)  
16.  All About Eve (1950) 
17.  The African Queen (1951) 
18.  Psycho (1960) 
19.  Chinatown (1974) 
20.  One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)  
21.  The Grapes of Wrath (1940) 
22.  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 
23.  The Maltese Falcon (1941) 
24.  Raging Bull (1980) 
25.  E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)  
26.  Dr. Strangelove, or 
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964) 
27.  Bonnie and Clyde (1967) 
28.  Apocalypse Now (1979) 
29.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) 
30.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) 
31.  Annie Hall (1977) 
32.  The Godfather Part II (1974)  
33.  High Noon (1952) 
34.  To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) 
35.  It Happened One Night (1934) 
36.  Midnight Cowboy (1969) 
37.  The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) 
38.  Double Indemnity (1944) 
39.  Doctor Zhivago (1965) 
40.  North by Northwest (1959)  
41.  West Side Story (1961) 
42.  Rear Window (1954) 
43.  King Kong (1933) 
44.  The Birth of a Nation (1915) 
45.  A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)  
46.  A Clockwork Orange (1971)  
47.  Taxi Driver (1976) 
48.  Jaws (1975) 
49.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 
50.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)  
Author: Vicki McClure Davidson





World War II Movies 
Movie  Year  Director  Domestic Box Office ($mil)  
Admissions  Adjusted Box Office Gross
(in millions of 2001 dollars)  

Pearl Harbor  2001  M. Bay  ?  ?  ?  
From Here to Eternity  1953  F. Zinneman  25.00  69,444,444  167.0  
Saving Private Ryan  1998  S. Spielberg  216.10  46,076,759  236.7  
Casablanca  1942  M. Curtiz  8.40  42,000,000  172.8  
The Bridge on the River Kwai  1957  D. Lean  27.20  40,000,000  172.8  
Guns of Navarone  1961  J.L. Thompson  25.00  32,467,532  149.3  
Patton  1970  F. Schaffner  42.00  28,000,000  193.2  
Twelve O'Clock High  1949  H. King  6.40  25,600,000  48.0  
Schindler's List  1993  S. Spielberg  96.10  23,212,560  118.7  
A Bridge Too Far  1977  R. Attenborough  50.80  22,780,269  149.6  
The Longest Day  1962  K. Annakin et al.  15.25  19,062,500  90.1  
U-571  2000  J. Mostow  79.10  14,675,325  82.0  
Judgment at Nuremburg  1961  S. Kramer  10.00  12,987,013  59.7  
The Great Escape  1963  J. Sturges  10.20  11,860,465  59.5  
Catch-22  1970  M. Nichols  18.50  11,212,121  85.1  
Tora! Tora! Tora!  1970  R. Fleischer et al.  14.50  9,666,667  66.7  
Enemy at the Gates  2001  J. Annaud  50.60  9,200,000  50.6  
The Thin Red Line  1998  T. Malick  36.40  7,761,194  39.9  
Memphis Belle  1990  M. Caton-Jones  27.40  6,492,891  37.4  
Empire of the Sun  1987  S. Spielberg  22.20  5,677,749  24.7  
Kelly's Heroes  1970  B. Hutton  8.40  5,600,000  38.6  
Swing Kids  1993  T. Carter  5.60  1,352,657  6.9  
 
Sources: Academy of Motion Picture Library;
National Association of Theater Owners;
Worldwideboxoffice.com.
Pre-1970 box office gross figures are 
estimated from studio rental receipts.
Figures for Casablance are speculative. 

http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0525pearl.html

More From Forbes On Pearl Harbor 
Pearl Harbor: How Real Is It? 
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0525pearlharbor.html

Sports Movies:

1. Bull Durham (1988)
The action and little details are perfect. 
And there's Susan Sarandon.

2. Raging Bull (1980)
It's so widely (and deservedly) praised that no 
one points out that the stylized boxing scenes
are utterly unrealistic.

3. Rocky (1976)
Director John Avildsen says Rocky's and Adrian's
skating scene resonates for him; we like 
Sly brutalizing a side of beef.

4. Hoosiers (1988)
Hackman, Hopper, Hershey and hoops.
It doesn't get much more heavenly than that.

5. Body and Soul (1947)
Few movie lines are colder than the one delivered
by the gangster (Lloyd Gough) as he studies a
boxer with a blood clot: "Everybody dies." 

6. The Hustler (1961)
The foreboding Twilight Zone ambience of this poo
film, with Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman, is riveting. 

7. Chariots of Fire (1981)
Who can forget Ian Holm, as coach Sam Mussabini,
punching his hand through his hat after his
student wins gold in the '24 Games?

8. Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
As the washed-up fighter trying to avoid selling out 
as a pro wrestler, Anthony Quinn gives an immortal
performance. 

9. Slap Shot (1977)
The tableau of the Hanson Brothers -- dried blood,
broken glasses, blank expressions -- standing at
rapt attention for the national anthem is priceless.

10. Jerry Maguire (1996)
Can a movie about an agent be a sports movie? 
Hey, check out the sports pages. What's more, 
Cameron Crowe's script is brilliant --
moving and real.

11. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
The film is so powerful that we barely care that 
Robert De Niro doesn't swing the bat like a major
leaguer, even a dying one. 

12. The Natural (1984)
The movie has a timeless aspect that, sentimentality
aside, makes it watchable again and again.

13. The Bad News Bears (1976)
The lovable underdogs sponsored by Chico's 
Bail Bonds. 

1. North Dallas Forty (1979)
A teammate tells a receiver (Nick Nolte) he has too 
much respect for his body to do drugs. The receiver 
answers, "You'll get past that."

15. Breaking Away (1979)
The Bloomington, Indiana, homeboys
(Dennis Christopher, Jackie Earle Haley,
Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern) make this 
biking movie click. 

16. Field of Dreams (1989)
Was Burt Lancaster ever in any film he didn't make 
a hundred times better?

17. Fat City (1972)
An ex-fighter (Stacy Keach) to his protégé 
(Jeff Bridges): "Before you get rolling, your life 
makes a beeline for the drain"

18. Damn Yankees (1958)
A baseball team singing You Gotta Have
Heart? Ridiculous but irresistible.

19. The Harder They Fall (1956)
The film ends with Humphrey Bogart once again
seeing someone off at the airport, but it ain't
Ingrid Bergman. 

20. The Set Up (1949)
There's an exquisite Playhouse 90 tautness to this
boxing drama, which was directed by Robert Wise. 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2001/movies/


Vietnam Movies
1.  Apocolypse Now, 
2.  Heaven On Earth, 
3.  Good Morning, Vietnam, 
4.  Forrest Gump, 
5.  Platoon, 
6.  The Deer Hunter, 
7.  The Green Berets, 
8.  Born On the Fourth Of July, 
9.  Coming Home, 
10.Purple Hearts, 
11.Casualties of War

More Vietname War Movies Database

War Movies Database