“Brooklyn Bridge”

To be a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in the 1950s was to realize that Brooklyn is a heritage thing, rooted firmly in the cornerstone of family. Throughout the borough, several generations of a family lived in the same neighborhood.  In some cases, they lived in the same...

1960s Sex Symbols: Spy Girls

The success of the James Bond franchise during the Cold War inspired several imitators.  Like any trend, the spy genre invited parody.  In the 1960s, especially. Get Smart partnered Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, with a woman possessing the combination of brains and beauty....

Hollywood and the Homefront

Warner Brothers churned out animation during World War II like an assembly line.  Its animated short films injected optimism into the American spirit. In Super Rabbit (1943), Bugs Bunny takes on the persona of the title character, a parody of Superman.  He battles the...

Tarzan Takeoffs in Films

Tarzan inspired film studios to invent their versions of a jungle hero.  The results range from hysterical to sober. In 1973, Disney mined Tarzan for laughs in The World’s Greatest Athlete, a benign film set on the fictional Merrivale College campus.  Faced with...