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Billy the Kid Week 2010: Review of Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw (1943)

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, nostalgia, pop culture reviews on August 9, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to the beginning of Billy the Kid week where I will watch and review a bunch of movies featuring the historical character Billy the Kid. This started with the 20th birthday of Young Guns II on Aug 1. It will continue throughout this week and will include a review of Young Guns which turns 22 years old on Thursday, Aug 12.

The first movie I’ll review for Billy the Kid Week will be Howard Hughes’ infamous The Outlaw from 1943.

This movie introduced audiences to the gorgeous Jane Russell. The movie became highly controversial and extremely famous for the battle Hughes had in trying to release it. At the time, movie makers followed what was called the Hays Code which was a set of strict guidelines that movie makers had to follow when portraying women, their clothing and sex. In making this movie, Hughes completely ignored this code. Howard Hughes produced this movie (even co-directing it with Howard Hawks) and used it to push the boundaries of what a movie could show…sex-wise. Hughes picked Russell because of her looks and even designed a brand new bra to contain Russell’s breasts (however she refused to wear it).

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Young Guns II turns 20 years old today plus Billy the Kid Week

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, sequels with tags anniversary, Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, pop culture, Young Guns on August 1, 2010 by Paxton

As you know, we love movie anniversaries here on the Cavalcade. Together, you and I have seen huge franchises reach their 25 and 30 year anniversaries (Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back), which, I don’t know about you, makes me feel old as hell. Anyway, today’s movie could still be considered a “young” one (compared to these other franchises, oh, and PUN!). It was released in the first year of a new decade, 1990, but is hands down one of my favorite movies from when I was growing up.

Young Guns II was released on August 1, 1990, 20 years ago today. I was 16 years old when this movie was released.

The original Young Guns was one of my favorite movies of all time. So, needless to say, in 1989, while watching MTV Movie News, when I first saw a report about the filming of Young Guns II: Hell Bent for Leather (original subtitle while it was filming), I nearly lost my damn mind. I had no idea they were going to make a sequel (oh, the days before the internet).

So, I saw this movie the day it came out and I loved it nearly as much as the original. In my mind, it had a few flaws but it was a solid sequel. Both of these movies touched off a love in me for the Old West. I was soon reading everything I could get my hands on about Billy the Kid and other famous gunfighters like
Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the Sundance Kid. I even started reading Louie L’Amour novels (which are boring as all hell). It was the Young Guns movies that got me to watch Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns (The Good, Bad and the Ugly) and newer “modern” westerns like The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead and Tombstone. I actually had a picture of Clint dressed as Josey Wales hanging above the bed in my college dorm for 4 years. I still have a love for westerns (as well as Billy the Kid).
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Empire magazine celebrates issue 250 and Back to the Future’s birthday

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags anniversary, Back to the Future, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Time Travelogues on July 1, 2010 by Paxton

Back in April, British magazine, Empire, celebrated it’s 250th issue. At the same time they also celebrated Back to the Future’s 25th Anniversary. For that month’s issue they had a Back to the Future themed cover on newsstands. Here is their 250th issue.

They also had an exclusive subscriber cover. It featured the more traditional Struzan artwork from the poster.

Inside was a nice interview with Bob Gale and Steven Spielberg about making the film. Not much new information was gained by the interview, they mainly treaded the same ground as all the other documentaries and interviews they’ve given over the years. They talked about the genesis of the idea for the movie (Gale wondering if he would have been friends with his dad in high school) and Spielberg talked a bit about the troubles in getting Michael J Fox into the Marty McFly role (Fox was the original choice but couldn’t get out of Family Ties obligations). Even the pictures were mostly retreads from the souvenir magazine and the Official Book of the Complete Trilogy.

It was a nice nostalgic article, though, that also featured “Viewing Guides” for all three movies with trivia items to watch for.

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Famous First Editions: A look at the origin of our most famous toys

Posted in Americana, nostalgia, pop culture with tags nostalgia, pop culture, toys on June 4, 2010 by Paxton

There are so many toys that have become timeless. Toys your parents played with, toys you played with, toys your own kids will play with. As I’m soon to be a dad myself, I got to thinking about these toys that have become ubiquitous, that have spanned the generations to be enjoyed by different children in different eras.

Here are some of our most famous toys that have been around for decades and look to be around long after all of us are gone.

1st matchbox car with box (Pics via darkens.net.nz)
Matchbox die cast cars – Matchbox cars were started in 1953 by British toy company Lesney Products. Co-owner Jack Odell created the idea for the tiny cars because his daughter was only allowed to bring toys to school if they could fit in a matchbox. So he decided to scale down one of their larger toys, the red and green road roller, and that became the #1 1A Diesel Road Roller (pic above), the first Matchbox car ever. A dump truck and a cement mixer would complete the first 3 cars in what would come to be known as the original “75 series” of Matchbox cars. The website darkens.net.nz is a great resource for pics and information on vintage Matchbox products.

Hot Wheels die cast cars – As seen above, Lesney dominated the small die cast car market from the time they introduced Matchbox cars throughout the ’60s. Mattel decided to throw it’s hat in the ring to grab some of that die cast money with it’s Hot Wheels line in 1968. That series of cars in 1968 has come to be known as the “Sweet 16” (see pic on left via Worthpoint.com). They were all released at roughly the same time, but the first numbered car was #6205a – The Custom Cougar (pic on right via Hot Wheels Wiki).

(via Dolls4Play)
Barbie – A Mattel executive’s wife noticed that all girls’ dolls looked like infants. There were no adult female dolls for kids to play with. When she brought this up to her husband he and the rest of Mattel were unenthusiastic about the idea. I mean, she was just a woman, what the hell did she know about dolls? Am I right? Anyway, on a trip to Europe the wife came across the German Bild Lili doll, which was an adult female doll based on a popular comic strip character. She bought three, brought them home to America and worked with Mattel engineer Jack Ryan to create the first Barbie doll which was named after her daughter, Barbara (see pic above). Barbie was introduced at the 1959 Toy Fair in New York. Retailers were reluctant at first but within a year the dolls were selling out of stores across America. Ken was introduced in 1961 (named after Barbara’s brother) and then Skipper in 1964 (no idea where that name came from).

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The Origin of the Choose Your Own Adventure books

Posted in books, nostalgia, pop culture with tags books, Choose Your Own Adventure, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews on March 25, 2010 by Paxton

(via Something Awful)

I grew up loving Choose Your Own Adventure books. All of the different series were fun; Find Your Fate, Time Machine, Which Way. They all had interesting stories, some of them completely insane, and were fun to read. Shawn over at Branded in the ’80s has been reviewing a bunch of his off the wall, zany Find Your Fate books and it got me excited to finish this article I started over a year ago. Let’s take a look at how the whole “Choose Your Own Adventure” genre started. And, surprisingly, it started with one man, Edward Packard.

While telling stories to his kids, author Edward Packard came up with the idea of writing a book that the reader chooses how the story progresses. In 1969 he would take this idea and write Sugarcane Island. Packard, at first, could not find a publisher who would print the book. However, in 1976, Vermont Crossroads Press bought it and printed the book which is now considered one of the first gamebooks ever published.

(via Demian’s Gamebook Page)

For the first printing, Sugarcane Island was released under the banner, The Adventures of You (on left). Its plot has you, the reader, aboard a ship that is wrecked by a huge wave and you must survive on an isolated and very dangerous island. After being published in the Adventures of You series, Sugarcane Island was published under the Which Way banner (middle) in 1982. Then, in 1986, it would finally come under the popular Choose Your Own Adventure banner (right), which was created by Packard.

After Sugarcane Island, Packard published two more stand-alone gamebooks called Third Planet From Altair and Deadwood City. The first was a Sci-Fi adventure giving the reader the task of determining the origin of extraterrestrial messages. The second was a western casting the reader as a drifter into the town of Deadwood City looking for a job and finding adventure. Neither of these stand alone gamebooks were as popular as Sugarcane Island. Even though these two books were stand-alone, they both contain the phrase “choose your own adventure” on their covers and are considered the “unofficial” beginning of Packard’s Choose Your Own Adventure series. Both Deadwood City and Third Planet from Altair would be reprinted under the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) banner years later.

(via Demian’s Gamebook Page)

A separate writer, RA Montgomery, wrote a second book in the Adventures of You series called A Journey Under the Sea in 1977. Subsequently, this was to be the last book in the series, however it would also be reprinted under the CYOA banner.

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