We're fans of Monroe here at The Signal Watch, and whether that's because of her film work - and she's terrific in most of the work I've seen, or knowing her as an icon of the 20th Century - I don't know. She was gone more than twenty years before I really understood who she was.. But even when it's a movie I don't love (see: The Seven Year Itch), or something far greater than I expected (Some Like It Hot, The Misfits), she is what they say, and few talents before or since have come anywhere near her place in the zeitgeist.
There's no one else left, really, from this era of film that I think today's young adults and youths would readily recognize. And even then, they may not even know she was an actress - she's simply a face on a t-shirt. I don't know. But she remains an icon, maybe an ethereal one at this point, but someone still seen as a sign of glamour. We can save our comments about how some trash celebrities try and tried to steal some of her light.
Happy Birthday to pop music icon and occasional actor Kylie Minogue.
Kylie is having a good year! She wrapped up her international Tension tour*, she won Christmas with her poptacular song XMAS, and she has released a documentary on Netflix and I believe a concert film of the Tension tour is also set to debut on Netflix.
And she's re-releasing four albums on vinyl later this year (lil' heads-up for Jamie) including the much sought-after (by me) Light Years.
You don't really know what else she'll get up to - but maybe she'll get back in the studio for another album.
Anyway - happy birthday to Ms. Minogue. May she have a grand birthday.
If you weren't in middle school by 1986 or 1987, I don't care what you think about Frank Miller's four-issue series, The Dark Knight Returns. Sorry, young reader!
There was context to when the comic came out, an understanding of what was changing in media and culture and comics, and if you grew up on comics in the wake of Dark Knight Returns, it's like trying to tell people Revolver isn't a breakthrough album after all, or that Citizen Kanedoesn't matter (which the internet is always more than happy to do, and seem quite foolish in the process).
I don't do this often - generally I'm a "hey, like what you like, but here's my opinion" guy. But sometimes The Kids(tm) are just wrong, and I don't think you had to be there at the time - you can just have a reasonable knowledge of recent history, comics history and have read a book somewhere along the line. And so, in this case, when I have seen 10,000 bad takes by bad take-havers, here is mine.
Krypto appeared 17 years or so after Superman first appeared and 10 years after we'd been introduced to Superboy - tales of Superman when he was a boy. In short, Superman had been around, had a radio show and had been on television for three years by the time Krypto appeared in a Superboy story.
Until Krypto appeared, four years before Supergirl, Superboy had been really the only survivor of Krypton. This space-faring dog was Superboy's first real, direct connection to not just his home planet, but his actual parents and home.
While Krypto was shown to be an untrained pest (shades of 2025's Superman movie), he was also a fellow, last Kryptonian.
His story in this comic was that he was the El family dog who had been sent by Jor-El in a test rocket that got knocked off course and lost in space until the events of this issue, Superboy arriving on Earth and becoming a teen in the interim.
Hey! It's the birthday of Geena Davis! Who doesn't like Geena Davis?
I believe my intro to Davis was as Larry in Fletch. After that, she was just sort of omnipresent in movies. But I decided she was *great* (post-Oscar win) when I saw Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Ownwithin a year of each other.
I didn't see a few of her bigger movies til well after the fact, but I can always say, along with Sigourney Weaver and a few others, if you say "hey, Geena Davis is in it", I'll watch it.
Davis is less in the spotlight these days - the last thing I saw her in was GLOW, where she crushed it as a casino manager and former showgirl. But she's not just doing the acting and producing thing (she's a very successful TV and film producer). She founded the Geena Davis Institute.
I think she's the right person to have started such an org, and their work is important, bringing research and spotlights to issues of "equitable representation in media" (from their website).
Here's to Geena Davis - trailblazing and playing my favorite ballplayer in a movie.
Happy b-day to Bitsie Tulloch, the actor who brought Lois Lane to life on the recent TV show, Superman & Lois. If you haven't seen it - fix that now.
Tulloch brought exactly the vibe I was looking for in Lois Lane on a show I admit I was deeply skeptical of when it went into production. But I happily watched all four seasons, and would have continued had WB not hard-rebooted their entire slate the past year.
Tulloch has had plenty of roles, including the lead on the entire run of NBC's show Grimm, but I'm always reminded - she's multi-lingual and a Harvard graduate. No dummy, this Lois.
Not sure what her next roles will be, but we'll certainly be paying attention.
Happy Birthday to singer, song-writer, performer, actor, philanthropist, movie producer, theme park mogul, and all-around American Icon, Dolly Parton. Today, she turns 80.
Here's her latest - a Dolly classic, but now with some friends aboard. This version was released over this weekend, I believe:
Happy birthday to actor, singer and all-around cool person, Helen Slater. I missed her birthday yesterday, but what kind of world are we living in if I can't retroactively share a birthday celebration?
Slater was the original live-action Supergirl, and maintains strong ties to the fans and franchise. But she's also appeared in favorites like The Secret of My Success.
Here's to another trip around the sun for our Girl of Steel.
Dick Van Dyke is now 100. What a delight to do a "at 100" post and have the person still with us and in terrific shape.
He's easily one of the earliest actors whose names I knew who wasn't a Star War. As a kid, I remember being taken to a re-release of Mary Poppins, and it was part of how I fell in love with movies. And, of course, reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show played well through when I was a young adult - when I feel like I finally got the appeal (no, not just Mary Tyler Moore - it's really funny and now I kind of want to watch it again). Not bad for a show that ended 9 years before I was born.
Later, I'd see him in Bye Bye Birdie and other films. The man is an entertainer.
Here's to lasting a century and somehow remaining universally beloved. You have a lot of choices of how you want people to think of you at 100, if you're remembered at all. This may be the absolute best case of all.
1925 marks the founding of what was then the "Missouri Rockets", in St. Louis, who would swiftly move to New York City and become The Rockettes.
The Rockets were a Midwestern response to someone seeing a Ziegfeld Follies show and saying "I could maybe do that". And, indeed, Russell Markert brought his vision to the stage in the Midwest and a sensation was born.
If you've never checked out the remarkable history of the Ziegfeld Follies, it is weird, wild stuff. There's nothing like it in 2025 (and who can say if we're better or worse for it). But suffice to say, Florenz Ziegfeld made an impression that echoes through to today in more ways than we can count.
Circa 1932, the Missouri Rockets moved to New York's Radio City Music Hall, renamed themselves The Rockettes, and by 1933, they put on their first Christmas Spectacular, which dazzles to this day.
If that date and location seem a bit ominous, Pitt was also Jewish and spent time in a concentration camp. She and her mother escaped.
Pitt became an actress in Europe and tried her hand in America. Her largest success was in England, especially in horror films. In the US, she's a cult horror figure, famous for appearances in The Wicker Man, The Vampire Lovers (one of my favorite films), Countess Dracula, The House That Dripped Blood and others. She also appears in British action movies, including the dynamite film Where Eagles Dare (recommended).
She also penned a few books, including an autobiography and a series of horror-related books.
Her filmography is not particularly deep, and she was never a Bond girl, so her exposure in the states in minimal. I, personally, think she's great. In the sea of Hammer's extraordinary talent, in my opinion, she's one of the absolute best to do it.
We are somewhere in the year of the 100th Anniversary of the release of Phantom of the Opera (1925), the silent film starring Lon Chaney, man of 1000 Faces.
I haven't watched it again this year, but I will! I promise.
I can't say when or where we are in relation to the original release schedule. Google is telling me the release date was November 15th, but I'm seeing much earlier in the year on Wikipedia. In the 1920's the movie would play in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major markets. Then, it might move on to other cities. This could be several months apart. Eventually, beat-up prints might leave the country or be sent to podunk towns. So who knows when or if Phantom of the Opera played most cities. But 1925 is the year in which the movie was released.
I saw Phantom of the Opera the first time circa 1990 on a lo-fi VHS tape obtained from a bin at Walmart. As the film precedes 1928, it fell out of copyright, and I found a copy produced by "Goodtime Videos" that set me back less than $10, and as an angsty teenage kid I spent an evening watching my first feature-length silent film while listening to some moody music.
Frankly, I was blown away.
I'd expected the movie to just be actors more or less pantomiming in front of shoddy sets, and all in wide shots. And, instead, a film taking place against the massive backdrop of the Paris Opera House unspooled, with wild visuals and dramatic moments. What I do not recall is if I had already read the novel of Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, but I sort of suspect that I had. I do know I had seen the film and watched the movie by the time I saw a non-Andrew Lloyd Webber stage play of the story toward the end of that same academic year.*
If silent-era films aren't your jam, I get it. I struggle with them as well and hats off to the folks who've trained themselves to watch silent films that aren't Buster Keaton or Chaplin. But I think Phantom of the Opera is practically must-see/ assigned viewing. It gives you an idea of how complex storytelling was handled during the era and the spectacle that could be created on the silver screen with visual tricks, gigantic sets, etc... It's almost hard to believe it wasn't actually filmed on location somewhere.
Lon Chaney is absolutely brilliant as Erik, which seems trite to say, but every time I watch the movie, I'm stunned by how terrifying he is. Others are good, no doubt. One does not dismiss Mary Philbin who plays Cristine and Mary Fabian's Madame Carlotta is terrific.
Whether I loved the recent Frankenstein or not, what I can say is that I love how it swung for the fences as an epic. We get one of those every few years in the horror genre, and it feels like Phantom of the Opera is the first of these in America. And, dang, you owe it to yourself to see this thing.
Happy 100th, Phantom of the Opera!
*I have no feelings on Andrew Lloyd Webber's version as I've only heard it and never seen it
