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Directed by Paul Goldman, this Australian/American co-production brings a satirical, lighthearted take on the true story of the intense week-long media circus dubbed the “Siege of Sinatra” during Frank Sinatra’s ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back’ tour in July 1974. Dennis Hopper…
Following a decade of weak record sales and a short-lived retirement, 58-year-old crooner Frank Sinatra arrived in Melbourne, Australia, via private jet on 9 July 1974 to perform five dates on his “Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back” comeback tour -…
After the 1970 breakup of the legendary folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, Paul Simon launched a diverse, critically acclaimed solo career. His self-titled 1972 debut album featured early elements of reggae fusion and world music, yielding iconic hits like Mother and Child…
1 9 9 3 – 2 0 0 1 (Australia) 400+ x 30 minute episodes This Australian lifestyle and home renovation television series aired on the Nine Network from 1993 until 2001. The show was presented by musician and former Skyhooks…
Audrey Hepburn stars as a young Belgian girl named Gabrielle van der Mal who enters a convent and becomes a nun – Sister Luke. More than her sisters, she struggles to keep her three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. The…
After a somewhat uncertain start in movies, pert-nosed Elizabeth Montgomery twitched her upturned proboscis to worldwide fame in Bewitched. She stayed in that happy state for some six years before the spell was broken and she cast new spells, not…
1 9 6 8 (UK) 6 x 30 minute episodes This long-forgotten kids drama series from Thames Television combined a psychedelic pop soundtrack with Get Carter director Mike Hodges, The Sweeney scriptwriter Mike Preston and Swinging London locations and fashions to great effect. The Tyrant…
1 9 6 4 (UK) 1 x 38 minute episode Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Muddy Waters braved the British rain for this one-off TV special from Granada Television, recorded live on location on 7 May 1964 at the disused railway station…
1 9 6 8 – 1 9 7 0 (USA) 31 x 50 minute episodes Few shows are remembered as fondly as The Banana Splits. Combining live-action, costumed hijinks, classical animation, and rock music with pre-teen psychedelic imagery at a breakneck pace, this…
1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 1 (USA) 17 x 30 minute episodes Between 1969 and 1977, Montreal-born brothers Sid and Marty Krofft produced seventeen live-action series for their own production company – spanning from Saturday morning children’s shows…
1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 0 (UK) 12 x 14 minute episodes “A town is full of buildings. Some tall, some short, some wide and some narrow. The buildings are flats and houses and factories and shops. They’re…
1 9 8 1 (Australia) 50 x 30 minute episodes Holiday Island was supposed to be a soap opera about a holiday resort on a tropical island. Dubbed “Horror Day Island” (and also “Arcade with palm trees”), it turned out to…
Formed in 1961 by a group of students at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, The Cyrkle started as a frat band called The Rhondells. During the summer of 1965, after Don Dannemann graduated with a degree in industrial engineering, the group…
Paul Simon was born in October 1941 in Newark, New Jersey, into a Hungarian Jewish family but moved to the middle-class area of Queens as a child. Art Garfunkel was born in Forest Hills in November of the same year.…
Formed in Deptford, South London, Squeeze came to prominence in the late ’70s, riding on the new wave created by the punk movement. The core of the group, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, originally met in 1973 when 17-year-old solicitor’s…
The Radio Birdman saga began in Sydney, Australia, in 1973 with The Rats – a band comprising Mick Lynne on bass, Rob Younger on vocals, Warwick Gilbert on guitar and Ron Keeley on drums. At the same time, Deniz Tek…
When the New Christs first formed in 1980, they only performed in a studio, releasing the searing acid-punk single Face A New God (1981). The original lineup comprised ex-Radio Birdman frontman Rob Younger on vocals (billed as ‘Rowdy Yates’), future Hoodoo Guru Clyde…
The summer of 1966 was on the way and all kinds of good and varied things had been topping the charts that year in Britain – The Spencer Davis Group’s Keep On Running, The Walker Brothers’ The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, plus the…
Jonah Levin (Paul Simon) is a faded folk-rock musician who was briefly famous with a single hit in the 1960s (hence the film’s title) and is now trying to create a new album in the face of a mendacious, slippery…
This made-for-TV movie for the NBC network was directed by 23-year-old former Happy Days star Ron Howard and was something of a family affair for the Howard family. Ron and his brother Clint co-wrote the film, and Clint had one of…
One of the most successful of all American-made-for-TV movies (it was the eighth most popular telefeature between 1964 and 1990 37) was NBC’s A Case of Rape (1974), directed by Boris Sagal with Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery as the victim…
Even the most amiable of families can sometimes fall out. In this case, the family is of the Mafia variety, tough and ruthless, yet kind and compassionate to its own. Kirk Douglas, sporting a flowing Cosa Nostra moustache, is Frank…
A superb film re-creation of Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows’s wonderfully acerbic stage musical, with all of Bob Fosse’s original choreography preserved on film by Dale Moreda. Robert Morse repeats his Broadway role in a marvellously wicked, devastatingly funny part…
In 1975, author Ronald McKie won the Miles Franklin Literary Award (Australia’s most prestigious annual literary prize) for the novel this film was based on. It was a fine and sensitive study of a boy growing up in a Queensland…
American-born promoter Lee Gordon arrived in Sydney in 1953 with a discount selling technique that had already made him a small fortune in the States. He found Australia just as receptive and, after setting the Sydney retail scene on its…
Fashion in the early 1970s seemed to have little rhyme or reason: both sexes wore tie-dyed shirts, ‘unisex’ bell-bottoms, and second-hand military attire (for an ironic-yet-stylish comment on the Vietnam War), while women also wore mid-calf hemlines and granny dresses. Women began to wear Hot Pants…
Nudie’s Rodeo Tailor on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles was an unusual place for a bunch of hippies to go shopping in 1969. Started by Ukrainian-born Nudie Cohn (real name Nuta Kotlyarenko) back in the days of Roy Rogers, Nudie’s…
Gloria Marie Steinem was born on 25 March 1934, in Toledo, Ohio. She grew up in a trailer home, and her mother, Ruth, spent long periods in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally ill. Her parents eventually divorced under…
While the first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s legal rights, especially the right to vote, the second-wave feminism of the Women’s Liberation movement, which became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, focused on equality…
Ms. magazine first appeared in 1972. Edited by noted feminist Gloria Steinem, it was radically different from publications such as Good Housekeeping. Steinem said Ms. would not tell you “how to make jelly, but how to seize control of your life”. The burgeoning strength…
January 01 – Dusty Hill of ZZ Top is accidentally shot in the stomach by his girlfriend, Jane Ellen Henderson. She is pulling his boots off when his gun falls to the floor and discharges. 02 – Paul McCartney turns down a…
January 01 – Eleven European countries replace their national currencies with the newly created ‘Euro’, a single European currency. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg all make the switch. The actual circulation of Euro…
January 01 – In Britain, Alf Ramsey is knighted and Bobby Moore gets an OBE in the New Years Honours. 01 – 48-hour ceasefire ends in Vietnam with B-52s attacking the DMZ. 01 – All Night Rave at The Roundhouse…
In August 1968, tanks from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary crossed the border into Czechoslovakia to crush what was known as “the Prague Spring”. Czech society had been becoming more liberal under the reforms of Czech premier Alexander…
January 02 – 22 die as hurricane winds rock Britain. 05 – The Khmer Rouge drafts a new constitution in Cambodia, renaming it Democratic Kampuchea. 05 – Former Beatles road manager Mal Evans is shot dead by Los Angeles police investigating a domestic…
January 01 – Spain and Portugal join the European Economic Community (EEC). 04 – Thin Lizzy bass player and vocalist, Phil Lynott dies of heart failure after laying in a coma for a week following a drug overdose. He is…
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Enjoy your trip in the time machine!
The first woman to scream for Hammer was probably Shirley Grey in William Hinds’ second film, The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (1936). Among notable actresses whose function was to look…
As The Beatles phenomenon grew in scale, it soon became clear that money could be made by catering to obsessed British teenagers. Eventually, millions of pounds were spent on Beatle-goods,…
Park the car, get out that picnic table and eat those spam sandwiches you made earlier. Sit back in that fold up chair and drink flask-stewed tea . . .…
It’s really quite simple: This is Moonbase (pictured above) – These are the folk who are supposed to stop the UFOs entering the Earth’s atmosphere in the first place This…
The image that endures is of a platinum-blonde picture of innocence silhouetted against a picture tube of pure evil. “They’re heeeere!” called out 5-year-old Heather O’Rourke as Poltergeist’s Carol Anne…
The term “Ozploitation” refers to low-budget Australian-produced exploitation genre filmmaking of the 1970s and 80s. From bawdy sex comedies like Alvin Purple (1973) to horror films like Patrick (1978) and…
Grant McLennan was born in Rockhampton, Queensland (Australia) on 12 February 1958. While studying at Queensland University he met a flamboyant dandy – and fellow drama student – named Robert…
In May 1978, following the split of The Victims, James Baker formed The Scientists with singer-guitarist Kim Salmon, who had previously founded Perth’s first punk band, The Cheap Nasties, in…
I first saw Le Hoodoo Gurus at some shitty little pub in Surry Hills – an inner-city suburb of Sydney – in 1982. There were probably just over a hundred…
Johnny O’Keefe produced more Top 40 hits than any other Australian recording artist. He had 29 hits spanning 1958 – 1974, including five number ones and eight more in the…
“In Australia, when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land. For months he must live from it. Sleep on it. Eat of its fruit and…
Canadian band The Pursuit of Happiness was formed in 1985 by frontman Moe Berg and drummer Dave Gilby, who were soon joined by bassist Johnny Sinclair and Winnipeg sisters Tam…
1 9 5 2 – 1 9 6 1 (Canada) 303 x 60 minute episodes Produced in Toronto for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), this weekly anthology presented standalone one-hour dramas…
1 9 6 4 – 1 9 6 9 (Canada) 33 x 60 minute episodes This television anthology series from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran from 1964 to 1969, offering…
1 9 5 8 – 1 9 8 5 (Canada) 3,000+ x 15 minute episodes “Look up! Waaaaay up!” The character of the Friendly Giant debuted on radio in Madison, Wisconsin,…
1 9 7 6 (Canada) 1 x 60 minute special 1 9 7 8 – 1 9 7 9 (Canada) 21 x 60 minute episodes The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC)…
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