The Daydreamer

THE DAYDREAMER was a 1966 feature film based on Hans Christian Anderson tales that was part live-action and part puppet animation. Narrated by Boris Karloff,  it featured an all-star voice cast and memorable ad and album art by the great caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. 

  

Bing and Andy in '66

Fanzines

Comic Book Fanzines were just starting to come into their own in '66 before their peak period of the early '70's. Here are a few from that year.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Released in late Summer of 1965 but still playing in 1966, Russ Meyer's oddly titled FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! was a new type of movie. It was an exploitation movie but hardly the same as standard fare. It was explicit but it was hardly pornography. It was funny and bizarrely shot but with odd sensibilites and violence. Meyer would carve a niche for himself and his big-breasted heroines throughout the sixties and seventies that even the rise of more explicitness in film could not stop. It's said that he made a fortune more off of his cult films with the coming of video!

Flying Saucers-Serious Business

Things you couldn't find in a school library in the sixties--Edgar Rice Burroughs books, Ray Bradbury books, science-fiction or fantasy books in general, comic books or graphic novels.

One book you COULD find...at least in MY school...was 1966's FLYING SAUCERS-SERIOUS BUSINESS! I checked it out so much in 1969-70 I may as well have considered it MY copy! I guess I probably did!

Batstuff # 20

This was one of my favorite of all the various Batman coloring books that came out during Batmania.

Modern Monsters

 In the wake of the popularity of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND since the late fifties, there were a score of other monster mags on the stands throughout the decade. This one, MODERN MONSTERS (except for the first issue, MODERN MONSTER) only made it out in '66. Note the bat symbol on issue two!

  

Superman in Macy's Parade

Happy Thanksgiving! Here we have the man of Heliu...I mean Steel, himself--SUPERMAN. This is the 2nd version of the Superman balloon from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This version debuted in '66.

Batstuff # 19

Tommy Gunn Vs Action Man

In reaction to the success of the US GI JOE (the original, taller, military one), England came out with TOMMY GUNN, a homegrown version of same.

Not stopping there, however, the UK also came out that same year with ACTION MAN which actually WAS a version of GI JOE.

Both franchises had a long and successful career with both now commanding nostalgia and high prices amongst UK boomers.

Las Vegas Hillbillys

Cashing on in at least the name of TV's popular BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, movies like this were often released exclusively in the Southern states. Generally there would be a rudimentary plot, a couple of guest stars who used to be bigger names than they were by that point and a whole bunch of country music stars performing in scenes that really don't have anything to do with the rest of the movie.

Jayne's career, as we noted the other day, had seen better vehicles. Mamie Van Doren, herself also a sex symbol holdover from the fifties, didn't have much of a film career beyond this but is still around and a fun presence on Facebook.

Country music was still a few years away from hitting the mainstream big.

Aladdin and His Magic Lamp

Kiddie matinees were big throughout the sixties. Many of the features were cheap, badly dubbed Russian or other Eastern Bloc films. They all had pretty good posters, though, and some, including this one, were actually quite good.

Jayne Mansfield

Marilyn Monroe may have passed a few years earlier under still cloudy circumstances but her chief rival in the blonde star department, Jayne Mansfield, mother of Mariska Hargitay, remained a viable sex symbol even though her career was waning. Seen here is her March, '66 cover of MODERN MAN, a magazine she had adorned a number of times over the previous decade. Tragically, her life, too, was to be cut short the following year.

They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

Still one of the weirdest, most demented and psychotronic songs to ever make the Top 40, the pseudonymous Napoleon XIV hit as high as # 3 with this creepy little number in 1966!

It Had To Be You-Barbra Streisand

From her 1966 TV special, COLOR ME BARBRA. Her looks may have been unconventional but all you had to do was hear her voice and you were won over. She proved in time to be a brilliant comedienne and a great actress, eventually slipping into the status of living legend.

Herman's Hermits--No Milk Today

Clifford

Clifford, the Big Red Dog has been a children's favorite since his 1963 debut. The future TV star had two books out in '66. CLIFFORD TAKES A TRIP and CLIFFORD'S HALLOWEEN.

The Yardbirds-Shapes of Things

Laurel and Hardy Cartoon

The late Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were in the early stages of the great revival of their work in '66. With both of them deceased, however, there was no new work forthcoming...at least until someone got the bright idea of doing new L&H shorts...in animated form.

Adult Films

 Yes, Virginia, there were adult films in '66. In fact, there have probably been adult films since the invention of the motion picture camera. They weren't easy to see in the mid-sixties though as only certain large cities showed them. For the most part, these weren't hardcore pornographic films but odd, low-budget mixtures of either nudity and comedy or nudity and violence. Here are posters from a handful of the many released in 1966.

Batstuff # 18

Batman-Red?? That's what we seem to have on this Italian poster for the 1966 BATMAN feature.

Paint It, Black-The Rolling Stones

Released in May, 1966

The Trouble With Angels

 I didn't see this until it premiered on TV a few years later but THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS starred one of my childhood favorites, Hayley Mills, the sole reason I have always enjoyed a woman with an English accent. After mostly Disney films, this was a step into more adult material for Ms. Mills...although not too much. Her next film, THE FAMILY WAY would deal with more adult themes and even feature a few seconds of nudity. None of it had the desired effect of getting her more substantial adult roles, however, and her film career thinned out considerably starting here. But it's a wonderful comedy with Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame...as a Mother Superior. A sequel, WHERE ANGELS GO, TROUBLE FOLLOWS came along a couple of years later with Russell back and Stella Stevens as a hip young novice.