For me, at least, this thing brings to mind making love, not war.
Barbara Bach has had three distinct periods of fame. The first was as an actress in numerous Italian movies during the late 1960s and the entire decade of the 1970s. Her second stage came when she starred as Anya Amasova in 1981's James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me. This was the third Bond outing for Roger Moore, and the last before he stopped taking the role seriously and began smirking and mugging his way through the role. Not that we disliked it. The smirky Moore was fun. Bach became globally recognized in that film, as all Bond girls do. Her third stage of fame was as the wife of one of the most recognized men in the world—Ringo Starr of the Beatles. Mixed into all of that were a few American movies, and one of them was a 1980 comedy called Up the Academy, from which the above promo photo came. The movie arrived on the heels of a string of successful comedies like Animal House that slayed at the box office, but Up the Academy bombed with critics and ticket buyers. We absolve Bach of any blame, though. We haven't seen Up the Academy, but we have zero doubt she was one of the best things in it.
James Bond submarine car sells at auction. We’ve shared a lot of James Bond memorabilia over the years (who can forget our Honeychile Ryder figurine), which means we couldn’t possibly let this story pass. The Lotus Esprit turbo used in the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me sold at auction yesterday in London for £550,000, or about $864,000. The car is one of eight used in the film. For the sake of comparison, other Bond vehicles, such as the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 used in Goldfinger, have sold for millions. But probably the price was low here because the car, though equipped with a propeller and fins, is not a functional vehicle, according to the auctioneers RM Auctions. But what makes the story so interesting is that the car was found in a Long Island storage unit in 1989 by a construction contractor who’d bought the contents unseen. American storage companies often arrange blind auctions when rental payments on storage spaces lapse. Buyers take the chance that something valuable might be inside, but just as likely might find nothing but junk. This particular buyer had been hoping to find power tools or other useful items, but instead was shocked to find the Lotus. His purchase price for the storage unit—$100.
Munro perfects the classic arm-bra manuver.
There’s been a lot of death on the website recently, so today we’re reversing the trend by bringing back one of our earliest femmes fatales, Scottish actress Caroline Munro. We suspect every woman learns instinctively and early how to cover herself this way when the situation requires, the same way every guy knows how to cover his nuts at an early age. They're protective manuvers that might be embedded in the DNA. Just a random thought. Anyway, Munro appeared such films as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Spy Who Loved Me, and the awesome Starcrash, which we'll get to later. She was born today in 1950.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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