Believe it or not today marks the 25th Anniversary that one of our all-time favorite films was released…Big (1988) starring the one and only Tom Hanks. The film was a BIG success and of course gave Mr. Hanks his first Oscar nomination (he lost to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man). Big would go on to inspire a 1990’s Broadway Musical whose Playbill we happened to find in our Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. And you can check out a dvd copy of Big at multiple branches of the NYPL. Find out what is so special about Baskin!!!!
Happy 70th Birthday to the great Christopher Walken! In celebration our amazing librarian at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jeremy Megraw, wrote an awesome blog about Walken. Jeremy also uncovered some rarely seen photos of a VERY YOUNG Walken from The Library’s incredible Billy Rose Theatre Collection. The photo above is from Ronnie Walken’s (his birth name) 1955 acting resume. Our friends at Gothamist also shared some of these photos as well as some that they found as well…
There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C. when Saul and Delilah Korn’s inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before then couples hooked thumbs.) …. Well, this one left them all behind.
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The Princess Bride, William Goldman
In honor of International Kissing Day today, one of our favorite quotes from one of our favorite books (circa 1973)-turned-movie (circa 1987)-turned-classic (circa forever).
Did you see the awesome new trailer for the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History & Genealogy? (Yes, even library research divisions can have trailers.) Find out how it was made and what the mysterious researcher was investigating. Perhaps his search will inspire you to dig up your own family secrets…
Rusty Goffe, an original oompa loompa from the 1971 film classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was joined by a group of oompa loompas (with Golden Tickets!) as he visited the New York Public Library to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the movie. You can check out the DVD (and look for Rusty) at NYPL!
It’s alive! The NYPL has animated the first book Frankenstein author Mary Shelley ever worked on - a kid’s story called Mounseer Nongtongpaw, or the Discoveries of John Bull in a Trip to Paris. It was published by Shelley’s anarchist philosopher dad William Godwin in 1808 when she was a mere 10-years-old and is “probably the first book publication Mary Shelley was ever involved in,” said Charles Carter, a librarian from the Pforzheimer Collection, which houses the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, his family and his friends. “She basically came up with a plot sketch for what was going to happen in the story. She had help from adults, but still, it’s very interesting.” In-house digital producer Jonathan Blanc put the video together in only a few weeks, Carter said, as a way to promote a new exhibit opening today called Shelley’s Ghost at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. The show - a version of which will come to NYPL in 2012 - features 12 of the collection’s “greatest treasures,” said Carter, who wrote a blog post about it today. “I was trying to think of ways to promote it that would be adaptable to an electronic medium,” he said. “This particular item, because it’s so heavily illustrated, would lend itself well, I thought. I was thinking of a Reading Rainbow kind of thing.” Well done, and appropriate. The story was originally based on a comedic song from the early 1790s. Mary Shelley and company remixed it into the book. Since the book and its lavish artwork are part of the public domain, we were free to remix that and create our little animated adaptation. Some things never change.
