You’ll Never Know Barbra…

On December 29, in 1955 a thirteen year old girl sung a beautiful song: You’ll Never Know

She was an American actress and singer that her discography consists of 117 singles, 33 studio albums, and numerous compilations, live albums and soundtracks and she is the second best-selling female recording artist of all time and has sold more than 240 million records worldwide. Barbra Streisand!

“You’ll Never Know” is a popular song with music written by Harry Warren and the lyrics by Mack Gordon. The song is based on a poem written by a young Oklahoma war bride named Dorothy Fern Norris.

The song was first introduced in the 1943 movie Hello, Frisco, Hello where it was sung by Alice Faye. The song won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Original Song, one of nine nominated songs that year. It was also performed by Faye in the 1944 film Four Jills in a Jeep but she never released a record of the ballad. Then follows an outstanding history for this song!

It was recorded in 1943 by, among others, Frank Sinatra and Dick Haymes, (Sinatra’s version spent two weeks at number 2), in Britain, was recorded by Vera Lynn and it was popular during the ongoing Second World War, than Rosemary Clooney recorded the song with Harry James in 1952, and a version was recorded in 1954 by Big Maybelle. Bette Midler performed the song for the Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook. Quite a few…

The song was the opening song on Barbra Streisand 4-CD box-set Just for the Record (1991).

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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Marlene Dietrich – an American Star from Germany

As in today on 27 December, in 1901 a blonde star was born: Marie Magdalene Dietrich 

She was born in Berlin, Germany and was the younger of two daughters (her sister Elisabeth being a year older). Dietrich’s mother was from a prosperous Berlin family who owned a clock making firm and her father was a police lieutenant.

Around the age of 11, she contracted her two first names to form her famous name “Marlene”.

Dietrich was known to have strong political convictions and the awareness to speak them. In interviews, Dietrich stated that she had been approached by representatives of the Nazi Party to return to Germany, but had turned them her back. Dietrich, a loyal anti-Nazi, became an American citizen in 1939.

From the early 1950’s until the mid-1970’s, Dietrich worked almost completely as a highly paid cabaret artist, performing live in large theaters in major cities worldwide. Her show business career largely ended on 29 September 1975, when she fell off the stage and broke her thigh during a performance in Sydney, Australia.

Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as “Lola-Lola” in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame and provided her a contract with Paramount Pictures in the US. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express and Desire exploited on her glamour looks, making her one of the highest-paid actresses of the era.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of all time.

I let you enjoy the exotic view of Marlene through paper memorabilia…

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Christmas day along with Isaac Newton

On Christmas Day, the 25^th of December in 1642 the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived was born: Sir Isaac Newton!

He was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth out in English countryside. He was born three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton. Although it was claimed that he was once engaged, Newton never married.

He was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, laid the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation (the known apple theory) and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.

The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever written because assisted in setting standards for scientific publication down to the present time.

Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Newton remains influential to today’s scientists, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of members of Britain’s Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton).

It’s really hard to describe and choose few things about a life so full of great success and so meaningful for the humanity. We give you the paper memorabilia, some of them very difficult to own, to show to you that he was a great person in all aspects.

Merry Christmas to every one!!!

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Aristocats against butler Edgar

On December 24 right on Christmas Eve, in 19970 an animated feature produced and released by Walt Disney Productions is released: The Aristocats!

This film is very important because is noted for being the last film project to be approved by Walt Disney himself, as he died in late 1966, before the film was released. It gained positive reviews on first release and was a box office success.

The story is about a mother cat named Duchess and her three kittens, Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse, live in a mansion in Paris in 1910.  The landlady was a retired opera singer Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, along with her English butler Edgar. She early on settles her will with her lawyer Georges Hautecourt, an aged, eccentric old friend of hers, stating that she wishes for her fortune to be left to her cats, who will retain it until their deaths, upon which her fortune will revert to Edgar. Edgar hears this and is unwilling to wait for the cats to die naturally before he inherits Madame Adelaide’s fortune, and plots to remove the cats from a position of inheritance. An alley cat acquaintance helps the kidnapped kittens from the butler.

You can hear the voices of Eva Gabor, Phil Harris, and Roddy Maude-Roxby as Edgar the butler, the anti-hero of the story.

By watching this film you get to love the cats more…

Another wonderful animated movie from the master of the art.

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The Mousetrap by mystery author Agatha Christie

On 23 December, in 1970 a record took place in a theater: it was the day that the 7,511th performance of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” was performed!

The Mousetrap is a murder play by the great mystery author Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in a theater in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 25,000th performance taking place on 18 November 2012. It is the longest running show (of any type) of the modern era.

By tradition, at the end of each performance, audiences are asked not to reveal the identity of the killer to anyone outside the theater, to ensure that the end of the play is not spoiled for future audiences.

The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play began broadcast on 30 May 1947 called Three Blind Mice.  Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London. The short story has still not been published within the United Kingdom but it has appeared in the United States in the 1950 collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories.

When she wrote the play, Christie gave the rights as a birthday present to her grandson Matthew Prichard. Outside of the West End, only one version of the play can be performed annually and under the contract terms of the play, no film adaptation can be produced until the West End production has been closed for at least six months. Mrs. Christie’s vagaries!

The suggestion to call it The Mousetrap came from Christie’s son-in-law, Anthony Hicks.

What’s out! A mouse Trap!

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Tennis match with Chris Evert!

On 21 December, in 1954 a world no. 1 professional tennis player was born: Christine Marie “Chris” Evert

Chris was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Colette Thompson and Jimmy Evert, and raised in a devout Roman Catholic family. Her father was a professional tennis coach, and tennis was a way of life in his family.

She was a huge tennis star winning 18 singles championships and three doubles titles. Overall Evert won 157 singles championships and 29 doubles titles.

Evert reached 34 Grand Slam singles finals, more than any player, man or woman, in the history of professional tennis. She reached the semifinals or better, in singles, of 52 of the 56 Grand Slams she played, including the semifinals or better of 34 consecutive Grand Slams played from the 1971 U.S. open through the 1983 French Open (Roland Garos). Evert never lost in the first or second round of a Grand Slam singles tournament.

Chris’ affairs and weddings were some of the stories! The romance with the top men’s player Jimmy Connors captured the public’s attention in the 1970s, mostly after they both captured the singles titles at Wimbledon in 1974. They got engaged, when she was 19, but the romance did not last. A wedding was planned for November 8, 1974, but it was called off. In 1979, Evert married the British tennis player John Lloyd and changed her name to “Chris Evert-Lloyd.” The marriage ended in divorce in 1987. Then in 1988, Evert married two-time Olympic downhill skier Andy Mill and they have three sons together. This also ended in a bad divorce on December 4, 2006, with Evert paying Mill a settlement of U.S. $7 million. Recently Evert and Australian golfer Greg Norman were married on June 28, 2008, in the Bahamas. But after 18 months of marriage they announced their divorce.

All the above was “food” for the media. The bottom line is that Chris was one of the biggest and most inspirational woman tennis player of all times. And this is it in our hearts!

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Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate

On December 20, in 1967 an American comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols debuts:  The Graduate

This film it is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and Calder Willingham. The film tells the story of Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman), a recent university graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who is seduced by an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (played by Anne Bancroft), and then proceeds to fall in love with her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross).

In 1996, The Graduate was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Initially, the film was placed at #7 on AFI’ s 100 Years… 100 Movies list in 1998. When AFI revised the list in 2007, the film was moved to #17.

Adjusted for inflation, the film is #21 on the list of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada.

The film boosted the profile of folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. Originally, Nichols and O’ Steen used their existing songs like “The Sound of Silence” merely as a pacing device for the editing until Nichols decided that substituting original music would not be effective and decided to include them on the soundtrack, an unusual move at that time.

On the strength of the hit single “Mrs. Robinson”, the soundtrack album rose to the top of the charts in 1968 (knocking off The Beatles’ White Album).

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence…………………………

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Christmas Carols with Ghosts of Charles Dickens

On 19 December 1843 a novella by English author Charles Dickens published by Chapman & Hall. This was A Christmas Carol!

Everyone knows the story that tells of sour and miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge’s conceptual, ethical, and emotional transformation resulting from supernatural visits from Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim.

The book was written and published right on time when in early Victorian era Britain, was born both strong nostalgia for old Christmas traditions and a beginning of new practices such as Christmas trees and greeting cards.

Dickens’s sources for the tale appear to be many and varied but are mainly the embarrassing experiences of his childhood, his compassion for the poor, and various Christmas stories and fairy tales.

A Christmas Carol remains popular until today, has never been out of print, and has been adapted to film, stage, opera, and other media multiple times.

Dickens’ Carol was one of the greatest inspirations in revitalizing the old Christmas traditions of England. It brings to the reader images of light, joy, warmth and life and at the same time it brings strong and remarkable images of darkness, hopelessness, coldness, sadness and death. Scrooge himself is the personification of misery but is followed by the renewal of life, so too is Scrooge’s cold, pinched heart restored to the innocent goodwill he had known in his childhood and youth.

A Christmas Carol was published 27 years before the author’s death. When Dickens died on June 9, 1870, his obituary in The New York Times said “He was incomparably the greatest novelist of his time.”

We get into festive spirit with the most famous Christmas book of all time!

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Happy birthday Mr. Steven Spielberg!

As today December 18, in 1946 a man that he finally became a symbol in the movie history was born; Ladies and Gentlemen we present you through paper memorabilia Mr. Steven Spielberg!

It’s really hard to talk about a living legend. In that case we say just a few words for his early life and we “shoot” some paper memorabilia to show to you very few of the famous and unforgettable moment he gave and still giving us this extraordinary director.

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish family. His mother, Leah Adler was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold Spielberg was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. He spent his childhood in Haddon Township, New Jersey, where he saw one of his first films in a theater. In 1958 as a boy scout director he fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm film entitled The Last Gunfight. As a teenager, Spielberg made amateur 8 mm “adventure” films with his friends, the first of which he shot at the Pinnacle Peak Patio restaurant in Scottsdale. He charged admission (25 cents) to his home films (which involved the wrecks he staged with his Lionel train set) while his sister sold popcorn.

Well… a brilliant mind back then. Even more nowadays!

We experienced tremendous moments through his amazing cinematography. We hope there is more to come! Thank you Mr. Spielberg and …happy birthday!

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The first successful flight by the Wright brothers

On 17 December, in 1903 an essential achievement occurred for the future of the humanity: the first successful flight of the Wright Flyer, by the Wright brothers.

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were two Americans inventors, and aviation pioneers who were credited with inventing and building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on today’s date in 1903. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.

In camp at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina, they suffered weeks of delays caused by broken propeller shafts during engine tests. After many flight test and repairs, the Wrights finally took to the air on December 17, 1903, making two flights each from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to 27 miles per hour (43 km/h). The first flight, by Orville, of 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) over the ground, was recorded in a famous photograph that we show underneath.

Orville Wright’s wrote for the final flight of the day:

“Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just about 12 o’clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by the time three hundred ft had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The course for the next four or five hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about eight hundred feet the machine began pitching again, and, in one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over the ground was measured to be 852 feet; the time of the flight was 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder was badly broken, but the main part of the machine was not injured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in condition for flight again in about a day or two.”

Today we fly in a few hours in the other side of the globe. Just because of Wright brothers…

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