By Ben Marks — On August 12, 2014, I interviewed cycling legend Gary Fisher for an article I was writing about the origins of mountain biking in Marin County, California. It was the day after Robin Williams committed suicide, which was all anybody could talk about. Indeed, my conversation with Fisher began with an unprompted recollection on his part of his old high-school chum. “I went to Redwood High School, class of 1968,” Fisher told me that day over the phone. “I was a year older than Robin, but we...

Is This Treasure Trove of Movie Ads From the Heyday of Newspapers Worth $20 Million?

By Ben Marks — Once upon a time, in a galaxy suspiciously similar to our own, people decided what movies to see on Friday nights and at Saturday matinees by thumbing the pages of their daily newspapers until their fingers were dark with ink. Eventually, after much rustling and folding, they’d arrive at the paper’s “entertainment” section, where single-color, text-and-graphics advertisements for the latest flickers from Hollywood promised thrills, chills, action, laughs, and romance. There were no...

When Ice Was Hot: A Skater Shares His Lifelong Love for Ice Show Razzle-Dazzle

By Ben Marks — At last count, there were no less than six Disney on Ice shows touring the United States. In “Worlds of Fantasy,” costumed cartoon characters from “Toy Story,” “The Little Mermaid,” and “Cars” glide across the ice via skates strapped to their feet, fins, and tires. “Passport to Adventure” promises an icy escapade starring Pumbaa and Timon from “The Lion King” and Lilo and Stitch from their eponymous animated feature. As for the main draws in “Frozen,” you get one guess. "Morris Chalfen...

Slut-Shaming, Eugenics, and Donald Duck: The Scandalous History of Sex-Ed Movies

By Lisa Hix — After excusing herself from the dinner table, the 13-year-old girl begins to shout, her excited voice ringing through her family’s Mid-Century Modern home, “I got it! I got it!!” Her mother, in a Donna Reed-type dress, beams, while her 10-year-old brother looks up quizzically and asks, “Got what?” The boy’s father turns to him and says, brusquely, “She got her period, son!” I saw this film in a middle-school sex-education class in 1988, and even though I’d read, “Are You There, God? It’s...

Black Glamour Power: The Stars Who Blazed a Trail for Beyoncé and Lupita Nyong'o

By Lisa Hix — Nichelle Gainer knows a thing or two about glamour: She spent most of her career working for magazines like “Woman’s Day,” “GQ,” “Us Weekly,” and “InStyle,” with a focus on celebrity, fashion, and grooming. But her true passion is fiction, so she decided to write a novel about black beauty pageants in the 1950s, partially inspired by one of her two glamorous aunts, who was a model in the 1950s—the other was an opera singer who rubbed shoulders with the biggest celebrities of her day. "If...

Did Hollywood Give the 1920s a Boob Job? 'Gatsby' Costume Designer Tells All

By Lisa Hix — Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” has the straw boater hats and bowties, the cloches and drop-waist dresses, and the shiny roadsters that you’d expect of the Roaring Twenties. But in terms of women’s fashion, there’s one dominant element you would not expect: Boobs. "People would be startled if filmmakers put real 1922 fashion in 'The Great Gatsby.'" Breasts are everywhere in 2013’s new “Gatsby,” which came out on DVD last month. They’re pushed up to create cleavage, peeping out of...

Dawn of the Flick: The Doctors, Physicists, and Mathematicians Who Made the Movies

By Ben Marks — Early optical toys from the 19th century are expressions of our almost primal urge to animate the inanimate. Or so believes Richard Balzer, one of the foremost collectors of optical toys, magic lanterns, camera obscuras, and other objects that play tricks on the eye. For Balzer, these early optical toys, as well as our continued fascination with flipbooks, are part of a continuum that has culminated in the movies. “The quest for animation is very old,” he says. “Cave drawings often depicted...

Hidden Gems: Lost Hollywood Jewelry Trove Uncovered in Burbank Warehouse

By Joanna Mangan, as told to Lisa Hix — Oh. My. God. I've just been given the location of the largest stash of Golden Age Hollywood jewelry in the world. Worn by stars like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, and Greta Garbo, thousands of gems have apparently been gathering dust in an unmarked warehouse, unmolested for half a century. It sounds too good to be true. What are the chances, I wonder, that the treasures are still there? Wouldn't they be in the world's biggest museums by now? Worn by the stars'...

Before Sesame Street and Electric Mayhem, a Crude Kermit Lip Synced Pop Standards

By Ben Marks — When "The Muppets" storms the world’s multiplexes this holiday season, there will no doubt be lots of little kids who, thanks to “Sesame Street,” will associate the wide-mouthed cloth puppets with learning to count to 10 and reciting their ABCs. But for many of their Gen-X parents and Baby Boomer grandparents, “The Muppets” will conjure school lunch boxes, flannel pajamas, and brightly colored board games, all inspired by "The Muppets Show," a variety-style hour of family-friendly TV that...

Lady Gaga, Innovator or Copycat? We Dissect “Born This Way”

By Lisa Hix — Lady Gaga has a reputation as a wildly original trendsetter. But based on the evidence we found in "Born This Way," she's also a mega recycler of pop-culture history. Being connoisseurs of cool old stuff, we noticed that even her most outlandish imagery in the head-spinning video for "Born This Way" owes a great debt not only to Madonna's "Express Yourself," but also to works of science fiction, movie history, famous artworks, television, camp culture, and religious artifacts throughout...

Letter from Jack Kerouac to Marlon Brando

By Helen Hall — In 2005, I moved to New York to head up the Entertainment Memorabilia department at Christie’s, New York. One of my first assignments was to go to Marlon Brando’s home on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles to select property to include in an auction of his estate. What a job! I spent around 10 days at the house. The last room to check was Brando’s office. Along one wall was a bank of filing cabinets. We started to pull drawers out, finding old insurance documents, receipts for work done on...

From Ruby Slippers to Kermit the Frog: Pop Culture Artifacts at the Smithsonian

By Maribeth Keane and Ben Marks — I’ve been at the Smithsonian for 28 years—I never thought I’d stay that long! The first job I had was as a producer and annotator of recordings. We used to have a very active program of archival recordings that we’d release. I came here to work on a set of American popular songs. I remained with the Division of Performing Arts until it was cast asunder and absorbed by the Museum of American History. Then I did public programs, and then I became curator of the Entertainment History...

'Mad Men' Prop Master Scott Buckwald Explains How He Re-Creates the '60s

By Maribeth Keane and Jessica Lewis — I always wanted to work in film, but I didn’t have anybody in my family who worked in the film business. I’ve been a major movie buff since I was a child, and I’ve always been very meticulous. I’ve always been a collector. The Beatles are definitely my main thing, but my wife and I collect old metal lunch boxes and I’ve always just been good at holding onto things. I have a fairly nice collection of movie memorabilia. For example, I like collecting police badges. I did the first props for...

Collecting James Bond, Doctor Who, and The Beatles

By Jessica Lewis — Ever since I was a child, I wanted to work in the auction business, specifically in the entertainment part. I liked the idea of handling, owning, and being a part of objects that were lynchpins in the history of music, film, or television. To accomplish my goal, I studied film, got an art-history degree, and earned an M.A. in fine-art valuation. I started out as a general auctioneer working with all kinds of antiques before moving into the entertainment field. I like film posters, but I...