THE NAME OF THE GAM

How can you play unless you know the rules?

Once again we delve into Hollywood name changes, this time with née Rita MacKay, who had a pretty good name to work with, we’d say, but changed it to Rita Gam and achieved stardom. We may put together a list one day of the most interesting showbiz name changes—Diana Fluck to Diana Dors, Archibald Leach to Cary Grant, Willis Van Schaack to Lili St. Cyr, Ingeborg Klinkerfuss to Kaaren Verne, et al. We kind of just made a list there, didn’t we? Well, a longer list. Or maybe that notion will go into the giant bin of forgotten ideas for posts never brought to fruition.

The point is, in Hollywood it can help to have a catchy name. It isn’t an absolute rule, but without a cool handle some aspirants feel hobbled right from the jump. Gam jumped into television to start, managed to fit in some movies, but was more of a small screen star, appearing in shows like Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Rockford Files. Despite a pretty extensive résumé we can’t recall seeing her in anything except the classic detective drama Klute. We’ll watch that again, because it’s good, and we’ll see what else we can dig up. These shots were made to promote the 1954 drama Night People. Gam and her gams will return.

Can humanity make it to the 41st century? Maybe, if it looks like this.

Two thoughts here. First, we really wish we could go back in time and have the job of making 1960s prop sci-fi guns. They’re so fun. No need to look practical at all. A beam of light added by the efx department and you’re good. We’d love to have this example on a shelf. Second, a good thing about this site is that it makes us seek out films beyond the obvious ones. Jane Fonda is best known for Barbarella, Klute, On Golden Pond, and maybe 9 to 5, but she was a staple in cinemas, and we’ve gotten to appreciate her choices and range over the years. Everything from Les félins to Coming Home to They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? to Youth were interesting at a minimum, and great often. Oh, and a third thing: Fonda was one of the hottest phenomena on Earth or in space around the time she made this photo in 1968. See more Barbarella shots here, here, here, and here. Why so many? Because the movie is like a costume design orgy, which makes every promo image worth seeing.

Hand over all your disco albums right now or you're dead meat.


We don’t know if this low-cut kaftan or whatever U.S. actress Rosalind Cash is wearing is suitable garb for a machine gunning, but who’s going point that out to her? She’s probably going to Studio 54 later. The image was made for 1971’s The Omega Man, which starred Charlton Heston and was based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, a book we discussed a while back. Talk about getting your career off to a good start. Cash’s first role was a small part in the classic drama Klute, with The Omega Man coming out months later and featuring her third billed in what was at the time considered a big budget sci-fi epic. From that point Cash worked steadily for twenty-five years, finishing her movie career with 1995’s Tales from the Hood. We’ve also seen her in Uptown Saturday Night and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, two blaxploitation movies we may talk about later. Cash is good at looking tough. For confirmation, check out this shot

Fonda and Sutherland’s understated murder mystery remains a top film of the era.

This Italian poster was painted by Rodolfo Gasparri to promote the mystery/thriller Una squillo per l’ispettore Klute, which means “A call girl for Inspector Klute,” but was of course originally released in the U.S. as merely Klute. Jane Fonda won a best actress Oscar for her portrayal of the big city call girl Bree Daniel, Donald Sutherland received acclaim for his role as a soft-spoken rural detective, and the movie remains quite good, a game changer when it was released, and an enduring time capsule of 1960s culture turning the page to something different. If you haven’t seen it add it to the queue. Klute premiered in Italy today in 1971.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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