Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Mister Rogers treated fan mail as part of the job
He received roughly 50–100 letters a day and answered them himself or with help from assistants. Children did not simply get a standard form letter. The…
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The first TV commercial cost just nine dollars
Bulova paid $9 for a 10-second spot that aired before a baseball game in 1941.
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Most famous movie alien was originally a guy in a suit
The role was played by a seven-foot-tall Nigerian graphic design student in a heavy, hot rubber suit.
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The first wireless TV remote could be confused by sunlight
Zenith's 1955 Flash-Matic used a directed light beam to trigger sensors around the screen. It let viewers change channels or silence the sound, fulfilling the…
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Thieves dug up Charlie Chaplin for ransom
In 1978, two men stole Charlie Chaplin's coffin from a Swiss cemetery and demanded money from his widow, Oona. She refused to pay. Police recovered the coffin…
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Friends was almost called Six of One
Producers considered several longer titles before settling on *Friends*, a simple name that put the show’s central group at the heart of its identity.
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Warner Bros. is older than the Republic of Turkey
Warner Bros. was incorporated in April 1923; the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed that October, after the Ottoman sultanate had been abolished in 1922. The…
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A missing copyright notice helped set Night of the Living Dead free
The distributor changed the film’s title at the last minute but left off the copyright notice, causing it to lose copyright protection.
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James Bond got his name from a bird expert
Ian Fleming chose the name from a field guide to Caribbean birds because he wanted his protagonist to have an ordinary, forgettable name.
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Film editing can make the same neutral face look hungry or heartbroken
Viewers infer an emotion from the image placed next to the face: the soup suggests hunger, while the crying child suggests sadness.
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How filmmakers built impossible worlds before CGI
Artists painted landscapes on large glass panes, leaving clear openings where live-action scenes could be filmed. The painting filled the rest of the frame…
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The cheap half of a double feature created room for experiments
Theaters paired films to give audiences more entertainment for one admission. Lower-budget supporting features gave producers a market for quick genre…
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How classical music made cartoon violence cheaper
Because many classical compositions were in the public domain, studios could use them without paying royalties, then time slapstick gags to the music's…
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The Flintstones brought a married couple's bed to prime-time animation
Fred and Wilma shared a bed on the animated sitcom, alongside the show's prehistoric versions of familiar domestic routines. The series put a modern suburban…
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Alfred Hitchcock never won a directing Oscar
He received five individual Oscar nominations over his career but never won one for directing.
Discover moreGeorge Lucas imagined Han Solo as a green alien
Lucas first imagined Han Solo as a slimy green alien, but later script revisions made him a cynical human smuggler to give the character more emotional…
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The Fugitive left a real train wreck behind
For the 1993 Harrison Ford thriller, filmmakers staged a full-size train-and-bus crash near Dillsboro, North Carolina. The wreckage remained beside the…
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A legendary comedy film was entirely shot in thirty days
Wayne's World was filmed in just 34 days, including its musical sequences and cameos.
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A futuristic music video cost millions of dollars to make
The 1995 video’s spaceship world required huge practical sets, early digital morphing, and complex wirework, making it the most expensive music video at the…
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An 1888 garden scene survives as a few seconds of film
Louis Le Prince recorded people moving in a garden at Roundhay, Leeds. The surviving sequence is extraordinarily brief, and its playback length depends on the…
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A cinematic genius feared commercial flying
Kubrick's fear of flying meant crews recreated the jungles of Vietnam outside London instead of traveling to film on location.
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Kirk never said Beam me up, Scotty
Kirk said variations such as “Scotty, beam us up,” but never the exact phrase “Beam me up, Scotty” in a Star Trek episode or canonical film. The familiar…
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Goofy and Pluto show two different jobs for a cartoon dog
Goofy wears clothes, speaks, and lives a human-style life; Pluto remains a pet whose gestures carry the performance. Disney uses similar animal origins for…
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The Lion King hides a medieval death chant
The four-note Dies Irae, a medieval chant associated with Catholic funeral Masses, signals death or doom; composers hide it in scores from The Lion King to…
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