Hooray for Hollywood. And Neighborhood Bars.
The evening of October 18, 1922, saw the introduction of what has now become a pop culture staple: the premiere. Specifically, it was the movie premiere of the silent film Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood starring, well, you’ve probably guessed from the title.
As a quick aside, the movie also starred Alan Hale, Sr., father of Alan Hale, Jr., better known as The Skipper on Gilligan’s Island. He would have been about one-and-a-half at a time, and we hope the future Skipper was toddling around Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles swatting people with his tiny captain’s hat that night.
But we digress. Back to the topic at hand.
That first movie premiere really started the ball rolling. Most movies made their grand entrance by having premieres in places around the world. For example, Hollywood bore witness to the party for The Wizard of Oz at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 1939. Also in 1939, Gone with the Wind made its debut at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta. These were followed by the premiere of Rear Window at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City in 1954, Dr. No at the London Pavillion in 1962, The Godfather at Loew’s State Theater in New York City in 1972, Ghostbusters at Avco Cinema in Westwood, California, in 1984 and The Rocketeer at the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles in 1991.
Now networks and streaming platforms have upfronts for potential advertisers. TV shows have season premieres and finales. And so on. Where movies go, so goes other media, which is where we start to come in.
(Quick side rant: While conducting our extensive pop culture research, we learned there was no premiere for the best movie ever made, Airplane!. Turns out they shrugged and dropped it into a handful of theaters in Toronto and Buffalo in late June of 1980, clueless they had a future hit on their hands.)
Speaking of being clueless, we are about to premiere the first episode of our second season. We’re not ready to reveal our topics or a drop date quite yet, but if you enjoyed our first round of episodes, we think you’re going to like what we have up our sleeves. (And if you didn’t like our first season, we’ve rebuilt this thing from the ground up and this season is totally different. Think of your favorite podcast. We’ve made it sound just like that. So you should listen anyway.)
What next?
Get your tuxedo t-shirt to the dry cleaner. Dust off your favorite pair of bunny slippers. Grab and begin chilling the alcoholic beverage of your choice and dig up the charger for your bluetooth speaker. We want you to look good and feel good as we host listeners both old and new back here in our neighborhood bar.
See you soon!