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Widely considered the blueprint for the British girl group, this vocal trio consisted of three real-life sisters from East London – Joy (the eldest) and identical twins Teddie and Babs. Coincidentally, despite being born three years apart, all three sisters…
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…
Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) is rejected by her fiancé after she is hit by a meteorite on her wedding day and grows to be 50 feet tall in this lovely animated homage to 1950s sci-fi films from DreamWorks. Captured…
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…
Shady museum curator Rico Sarno (Stephen Lee) steals five ancient, sacred dinosaur eggs from a forbidden temple in South America. Meanwhile, widowed raisin farmer and amateur archaeologist Frank Taylor (Brett Cullen) is trying to make a living selling fossils Due…
1 9 8 1 – 1 9 8 6 (New Zealand) 36 x 30 minute episodes 1 9 9 0 (New Zealand) 26 x 30 minute episodes Born William Taitoko, Māori comedian Billy T James first captured New Zealand television audiences…
1 9 6 4 – 1 9 6 5 (USA) 1 9 6 4 (UK) 13 x 25 minute episodes 1 9 6 9 (Australia) 1 9 7 6 – 1 9 7 7 (Australia) This charades-based game originated in the US…
1 9 7 9 – 1 9 8 8 (UK) 43 x 30 minute episodes 22 x 45 minute episodes 6 x 60 minute episodes “Rock on Tommy” Having been given their major TV break on Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night in…
1 9 5 2 (UK) 3 x 60 minute episodes 1 9 5 5 (UK) 2 x 60 minute episodes 1 9 5 7 (UK) 1 x 60 minute episode Fresh from a triumphant tour of the Far East, Frankie Howerd returned home…
1 9 6 5 – 1 9 7 0 (UK) 64 x 25/45 minute episodes 1 9 7 0 – 1 9 7 5 (UK) 38 x 30/50 minute episodes Premiering on 5 June 1965, this long-running BBC variety show starred…
1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 3 (UK) 83 x 30 minute episodes The Sunday evening God Slot went on the road with this ITV series, sending Harry Secombe on a musical journey round the UK to share a…
1 9 5 6 – 1 9 6 1 (UK) Dave King (pictured above), one of the most popular comedians in Britain, was a regular celebrity in Val Parnell’s Saturday Spectacular, which usually focussed on a single star per broadcast.…
Born Irma Lee in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, Thomas had been married twice and had four children by the time she was nineteen. Bandleader Tommy Ridgley discovered her while she worked as a waitress in the Pimlico Club in New Orleans and…
Jalacy J. Hawkins was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929. He spent his early years in an orphanage before enrolling at high school to study piano, tenor sax and opera. After leaving school, he became a professional middleweight boxer and served…
The Champs grew out of a group of Texan studio session musicians Gene Autry hired for his fledgling Challenge Records label in Hollywood. Their first and greatest record, Tequila, evolved from a studio jam at Challenge in Los Angeles. Written…
Three members of Morton Fraser’s Harmonica Gang – Gordon Mills, Don Paul (born Donald Paul Fountain) and Ronnie Wells (born Ronald Cresswell) – decided to form a breakaway trio in 1958 and were signed to Pye and managed by Larry…
The Mudlarks were a family group from Luton, Bedfordshire, originally comprising Jeff Mudd, Fred Mudd and Mary Mudd. They all had jobs at the Vauxhall motor plant in Luton and spent their spare time singing together. In 1958 they attracted the attention…
Mink DeVille was one of the most distinctive bands to emerge from New York’s mid-1970s punk scene. Though they shared the CBGB stage with artists like Television, Blondie, and Talking Heads, their sound was not punk, but rather a post-Brill…
A gang of crooks drive their car – which has been customised with a battering ram – through the window of a jewellers shop in the wee hours of the morning. The passenger, Sid (Sid James), advises his boss, Fingers…
That sun! That music! That being together and being young! Steve (Ray Winstone) learns in Borstal (a type of youth detention centre) that he is a good swimmer and, upon his release, decides to demonstrate his ability in the Devon…
On the back of his success with the two Beatles’ movies, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965), director Richard Lester recruited John Lennon in his first solo acting gig for this wildly surreal satire on war movies. Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody (Michael…
“It isn’t Jesus. It’s just a fella”. A group of scruffy, adorable children, led by gumdrop-eyed Hayley Mills, discover injured escaped convict Arthur Blakey (Alan Bates) sleeping in their barn in Lancashire and think he’s Jesus Christ. They hide him…
Splendid performances highlight this sharp, satirical adaptation of John Irving’s dark best-seller about the adventures of an illegitimate, eccentric young man hell-bent on being a writer. T.S. Garp, magnificently played by Robin Williams in an amalgam of emotions tinged with…
This musical fantasy update on the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet is set on Earth at some point in the future. The globe is divided into two rival factions: Beatland, populated by teenage beat musicians and singers, and Balladisle,…
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…
The unlikely and satirical adventures of this small and furry creature with the short trunk first appeared in the Daily Mail in 1949. Created and drawn by Canadian artist and jazz musician Wally Fawkes, Flook ran for 35 years before its sudden…
1 9 0 8 – 1 9 7 3 Lyndon Baines Johnson was born in Stonewall, Texas, and trained as a teacher and lawyer. While working as secretary to a Texan congressman, he attracted the attention of Franklin Roosevelt, who…
On 6 June 1933, the world’s first drive-in movie theatre was opened in Camden, New Jersey, USA, by Richard Hollingshead Jr. Hollingshead patented a ramp system that slightly elevated the front of the vehicle, allowing viewers to sit back in…
Until the early 1960s, the artefacts of our so-called mass culture were never taken seriously by social and cultural critics. More often than not, these artefacts were either routinely ignored or simply dismissed as an example of the mindless fluff…
January 01 – The Watergate criminal trial ends. Aides of former President Nixon (Attorney General John N. Mitchell, Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, Robert Mardian and John D. Ehrlichman) are found guilty of trying to cover up and convicted…
January 01 – Golda Meir wins Israeli election. 01 – 38 Italians die when an Italia Airlines Fokker Friendship crashes near Turin. There are four survivors. 02 – US legislation for a national speed limit of 55 mph is signed…
January 01 – Britain, Denmark and Ireland join the European Economic Community (the “Common Market”) bringing the total number of member states to nine. 01 – Baseball star Roberto Clemente is killed in a light plane crash off Puerto Rico.…
January 01 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect. 01 – American actor Cesar Romero – famous as The Joker from the classic Batman TV series – dies at the age of 86. 02 – In South…
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 – The ‘Uniform Monday Act’ moves Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day and Columbus Day holidays in the US to Mondays. 02 – 66 Football fans are killed when a barrier collapses at Ibrox Park in Glasgow following a match between…
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Enjoy your trip in the time machine!
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…
To outsiders, it seemed that Pete Duel had everything to live for – a loving girlfriend, a nice home, money and a hit TV series. Yet shortly after 1:25 am…
The first time I appeared on Juke Box Jury, I wasn’t on the panel. I was in the “Hot Seat” – that famous chair hidden from the panel behind the…
The history of Australian band The Groop is divided into two distinct periods. The original line-up issued several novelty singles, while the second, more successful line-up boasted a strong R&B…
Johnny O’Keefe produced more Top 40 hits than any other Australian recording artist. He had a total of 29 hits spanning 1958 – 1974, five number ones and another eight…
Following in the footsteps of the first film – and magnificently ignoring the second – Howling III integrates werewolves into social life and acknowledges their distinct nature as an evolved…
Sydneysider Harry Joy (Barry Otto) is a successful advertising man, with a nice house, a wife he loves (Lynette Curran) and two children, David (Miles Buchanan) and Lucy (Gia Carides).…
It is St. Valentine’s Day in Australia, the year is 1900, and a party of schoolgirls from an exclusive finishing school are giddily embarking on a picnic excursion to a strange,…
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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Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 2009 and is presented as a historical artefact. Some words and references which reflect the prevailing attitudes of those times may be considered culturally insensitive, discriminatory, offensive or inappropriate today..