Yahoo Lifestyle My Mind Is Absolutely Blown From These 47 Photos That Are Making Me Look At These Pop Culture Moments And Famous People Differently
1.In 1983, Carrie Fisher did a beach-themed Return of the Jedi photo shoot for Rolling Stone, complete with her wearing Princess Leia's gold metal bikini:
Aaron Rapoport / Corbis via Getty Images
There were lots and lots of photos taken that day, but according to the photographer, Aaron Rapoport, the magazine only ran two:
Aaron Rapoport / Corbis via Getty Images
2.Before Kermit the Frog became famous as the leader of The Muppets, he was actually well-known for his drag act! He went by "Kermina" and performed a lipsync-comedy act to Rosemary Clooney's "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face." Here's a screenshot of him performing it on The Steve Allen Show in 1956:
And here is a screenshot of Kermit performing the lipsync-comedy act on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967:
3.Batman has actually appeared onscreen a lot longer than you might realize. He was first portrayed in 1943, by Lewis Wilson (with Douglas Croft as Robin) in a film serial:
4.In the '80s, there was a Gilligan's Island and Alf crossover! Alan Hale Jr. (The Skipper), Bob Denver (Gilligan), Dawn Wells (Mary Ann), and Russell Johnson (The Professor) appeared in the episode "Somewhere Over the Rerun," where Alf has a dream that he is stuck on the island with them:
5.These are photos of Mae West in 1920, before she dyed her hair her signature platinum blonde color:
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
6.And this is a photo of Lucille Ball looking a bit unrecognizable without her trademark red hair — with her natural hair color — in 1938:
7.Speaking of Lucille Ball, this is what the set of the Ricardos' Connecticut home on I Love Lucy looked like in color:
/ Courtesy Everett Collection, Courtesy Everett Collection
8.And here is a photo of actor Richard Keith (who played Little Ricky on I Love Lucy) with the real-life son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Desi Arnaz Jr.
9.This is what the set of the Petries' living room on The Dick Van Dyke Show looked like in color:
10.Oscar the Grouch was orange during the first season of Sesame Street, but that wasn't meant to be his original color. Originally, Jim Henson wanted Oscar's fur to be magenta. However, color TVs at the time couldn't really process magenta very well, so Jim settled on orange. Though, he then changed his mind and gave Oscar his signature green fur for Season 2 — with Oscar explaining the color change was a result of him being covered in mold and slime after a vacation to a swamp:
11.This is one of the last photos of James Dean alive. He was filling up his Porsche at a gas station in LA's Sherman Oaks neighborhood before driving up to participate in the Salinas Road Race — he would die a few hours after this photo was taken:
12.Here's a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks putting their handprints and signatures in cement outside the Chinese Theater in 1927. They were the first two celebrities to ever do it:
13.This is a photo of Cyndi Lauper and Paul Reubens as Pee-Wee Herman playing mini golf in 1984 while she promoted her album:
14.In the original pilot for Friends, the show was called Friends Like Us, used a different font for the credits, and used R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People" as the theme song. Friends Like Us was actually what the show was called when the cast auditioned for it and signed on. However, they changed the name to Six of One (and eventually just Friends) to avoid confusion with Ellen DeGeneres' TV sitcom These Friends of Mine, which had premiered earlier that year:
Michael Flanagan/ Warner Bros. Television / Via youtube.com
ICYW, These Friends of Mine would change its name to Ellen to avoid being confused with Friends.
15.This is what Monica and Rachel's apartment on Friends looks like behind-the-scenes:
16.And this is what Central Perk looks like behind-the-scenes:
17.Here's a photo of the characters from Dinosaurs vs. a photo of the puppeteers who play them:
Abc Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
18.Gone With the Wind is a classic and considered one of the greatest films of all time. The film also did a lot of firsts, including being the first color movie to win the Best Picture Oscar and having the first Black actor to be nominated and win an Oscar — which was Hattie McDaniel for Best Supporting Actress. However, one first you might not know is that it was the first film to have its premiere televised (and yes, TVs existed back in the '30s, but they were EXTREMELY rare). Gone With the Wind's New York premiere was televised, and below is a photo from the premiere announcing it:
The development of television was delayed because of WWII.
19.This is a screenshot of the first toilet to ever appear on TV. In 1957, the series Leave It to Beaver featured a toilet tank, which the producers had to fight the network to feature (they couldn't show the bowl, though):
20.These are a couple of photos of Sarah Jessica Parker filming the very first episode of Sex and the City in June of 1997:
New York Daily News Archive / NY Daily News via Getty Images
21.You might have never noticed, but Jack Nicholson gets top billing on the poster and opening credits of Batman (over the lead, Micheal Keaton). This was part of Nicholson's list of demands for signing on to play the Joker:
22.This promotional photo of Jack Nicholson in the "Here's Johnny!" moment in The Shining was what got him cast as the Joker. In 1980, Michael Uslan, who would go on to executive produce all the Batman films, picked up a copy of the New York Post, and when he opened up the movie section, he saw this photo of Nicholson, which was advertising that The Shining was opening that weekend. Uslan, who had bought the film rights for Batman the year prior, immediately thought that Nicholson was the only one who could play the Joker. When he got home, he tore the photo from the paper and drew the Joker's face over it using Wite-Out and markers. The drawing, indeed, looks a lot like the Joker from the film:
According to Uslan, "The day Jack Nicholson was hired was the best day of my career to that point."
23.Here's what Humphrey Bogart looked like in color as his Casablanca character Rick Blaine:
24.If you've ever seen Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, then you know it's one of the funniest movies ever and has aged surprisingly well. This is what Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis looked like in color as their drag characters Josephine and Jerraldine/Daphne:
25.While here's a color photo of the rehearsal on the train scene in from Some Like It Hot:
26.This is a candid and unretouched photo of Marilyn Monroe taken in the 1950s:
27.Speaking of Marilyn, here she is talking with fellow bombshell Eartha Kitt at a charity event held at the Waldorf Astoria in 1957:
28.Here's Eartha Kitt meeting Queen Elizabeth in 1958:
29.These clay models of Woody and Buzz's faces were created for Toy Story so that they could be scanned into the computer whenever needed so that animators could always get the right shape, depth, and scale when animating them:
Buena Vista Pictures / ©Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
30.This is a photo of Liza Minnelli backstage at Wicked alongside Idina Menzel, Joel Grey (her Cabaret costar), and Kristin Chenoweth in 2004:
31.When The Wizard of Oz started filming, the Wicked Witch of West was not as menacing looking as she would be in the final film, with Margaret Hamilton wearing less makeup and a long bob wig. While Judy Garland's Dorothy wore a strawberry blonde wig and a lot of makeup to give her a "baby-doll" look:
Getty Images, MGM/ Courtesy Everett Collection
32.Two weeks' worth of footage was shot with the characters having these looks until the film's director, Richard Thrope, was let go from the film, after MGM executives thought that the scenes he shot "did not have the right air of fantasy about them." The movie was paused and Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West's costumes were redesigned to what we saw in the final film:
Also, none of the footage Thrope shot survived.
33.While both Dorothy and the Wicked Witch were redesigned, it does seem like the early design photos of the Wicked Witch might have been given out as part of promotional materials. As you can see from this 1939 Wizard of Oz movie poster from Spain, the Wicked Witch is depicted with her long bob design:
34.Here's Margaret Hamilton (Wicked Witch of the West), Ray Bolger (Scarecrow), and Jack Haley (Tin Man) reunited for a promotional photo taken for a TV showing of The Wizard of Oz in 1970. The trio got together for the photo a year after Judy Garland died — that year's broadcast was dedicated to her:
35.Margaret Hamilton continued working throughout her career. She even had a recurring role on The Addams Family, playing Morticia's mother, Hester Frump:
36.Also, this is what the mysterious and spooky, and all together ooky cast of The Addams Family looked like in color:
37.The Beatles' performance on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time is a seminal moment in both modern American and pop culture history. Everyone's image of it is usually of the black and white footage of the performance. Here's what the performance looked like in color and while being filmed:
38.The Flintstones was sponsored by Winston Cigarettes during its first two seasons, and the characters did several integrated commercials for the brand:
Warner Bros. / Via youtube.com
39.This is what Sleeping Beauty Castle looked like while it was being built at Disneyland:
40.Here is a photo of former first lady Bess Truman and former President Harry Truman riding Peter Pan at Disneyland in 1957:
41.Shot by Disneyland photographer Renie Bardeau, this is the last photo taken of Walt Disney at Disneyland in 1966:
42.Here's a behind-the-scenes photo from The Godfather of Marlon Brando getting his Vito Corleone aging makeup applied. He was only 47 during the filming of the movie:
43.If you grew up watching The Golden Girls, then you probably only think of the actors on the show at that age, but this is what Rue McClanahan looked like in 1967 when she was 33 years old:
44.And here's Betty White at age 32, in 1954:
45.Here's talk show host Dick Cavett with Jim Henson, who is holding a Muppet of himself:
46.Here are two photos of Britney Spears rehearsing her iconic "I'm a Slave 4 U" performance she did at the 2001 VMAs:
Dave Hogan / Getty Images
47.And lastly, Titanic was originally supposed to open in the summer of 1997, but the movie went over schedule and was delayed until December of '97. This advance poster, which was created for its summer release date, marketed the film more in the style of an action summer blockbuster:
