Long before Quentin Tarantino mined Asian cinema, Woody Allen had the crazy idea to re-dub and re-edit a Japanese crime thriller called Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi—aka International Secret Police: Key of Keys—and change the plot so that it revolved around an egg salad recipe. Though silent films had been dubbed with dialogue before, Allen spliced and diced a J-pulp cop flick starring Mie Hama, Akiko Wakabayashi, and others into something new and crazy, and in the process invented Mystery Science Theater 3000 twenty-two years before Joel Hodgson. This was Allen’s first film, and could well have been his last if the idea flopped. But instead he struck gold, today in 1966. The rest is film history.
1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame
Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,300 stars.