Author: Jennifer M Wood

By the end of the 1960s, the production team of Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass had a well-established niche in the annual holiday TV schedule. Their “Animagic” stop-animation specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Little Drummer Boy were eagerly anticipated each December and were well on their way to “classic” status. In 1969, the Rankin/Bass team introduced yet another holiday-themed special based on a song, Frosty the Snowman. The special premiered on Sunday, December 7, following the network’s annual revival of 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. Here are a few things you might not have known about the legendary animated special.

1. IT WAS A HIT SONG LONG BEFORE IT WAS A TV SPECIAL.

The song “Frosty the Snowman” was written by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson in 1950 (with a melody that is strikingly similar to 1932’s “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee”) specifically as a means of capitalizing on the success of Gene Autry’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The record wasn’t as huge as “Rudolph,” sales-wise, but Frosty’s story was nevertheless perpetuated via Little Golden Books and Dell Comics.

2. RANKIN/BASS WASN’T THE FIRST TEAM TO ANIMATE FROSTY.

In 1954, United Productions of America (UPA) brought Frosty to life in a short cartoon that is little more than an animated music video for a jazzy version of the song. It introduced the characters mentioned in the lyrics visually, from Frosty himself to the traffic cop. The three-minute, black-and-white piece quickly became a holiday tradition in various markets, particularly in Chicago, where it’s been broadcast annually on WGN since 1955.

3. FROSTY WAS VOICED BY A NOT-SO-FAMILY-FRIENDLY STAND-UP COMEDIAN.

Deadpan comic Jackie Vernon was known for his “slideshow” routines, where he’d narrate slides (unseen by the audience) and “change” them with a handheld clicker. Quite often his routines ended with a graphic description of some sexual perversion that he’d innocently stumbled onto via the recommendation of some stranger, about whom he’d always comment “… and I thought, ‘Gee, what a neat guy!’”

4. THE NARRATOR WAS UNIVERSALLY REGARDED AS A NICE GUY.

Jimmy Durante was a jazz pianist, singer, and comedian whose career spanned a little over 50 years. In the 1950s, he was a regular not only at Las Vegas’ Desert Inn, but also at the Guardian Angel Cathedral, where he stood outside and greeted fellow parishioners with the priest after Sunday mass each week. Durante loved children, and is famous for turning down a performance fee at the Eagles International Convention in 1961. When asked by the organizers “What can we do, then?” Durante replied in his trademark Brooklynese: “Help da kids.”

5. LEGENDARY VOICE ACTORS JUNE FORAY AND PAUL FREES WERE REPLACED AFTER THE ORIGINAL AIRING.

The original film featured June Foray performing the voices of both the schoolteacher and young Karen, who accompanied Frosty to the North Pole. Paul Frees was the Traffic Cop and Santa Claus, and the two combined to voice the remaining schoolchildren. For reasons unknown (even to Foray herself), nearly all the children’s voices—including Karen’s—were redubbed by unidentified child actors for the 1970 airing. All subsequent TV appearances and video releases contain this new soundtrack. The original is only available on the 1970 soundtrack LP and a 2002 CD release by Rhino.

6. FROSTY WAS PARTIALLY MADE IN JAPAN.

Frosty the Snowman was the first Rankin/Bass Christmas special to utilize traditional animation (versus the stop-motion method used in their other projects). Paul Coker, Jr., a long-time MAD Magazine illustrator, provided both the main character and background drawings. The animation was done by Mushi Studio, the Japanese company founded by Osamu Tezuka to produce Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion cartoons.

7. FROSTY’S HOMETOWN IS ARMONK, NEW YORK.

Lyricist Steve Nelson lived in nearby White Plains and loved to visit the historic hamlet of Armonk as a young man. The Village Square mentioned in the lyrics of the song is now the Armonk Historic District in the town of North Castle. Local historians also claim that the traffic cop who hollers “Stop!” is based on former chief of police John Hergenhan. Armonk hosts an annual Frosty Day parade and celebration that is officially listed as one of the “10 Best Things To Do in Westchester County.”

8. FROSTY HAS MAGIC FINGERS AS WELL AS A MAGIC HAT!

Watch carefully when Frosty attempts to count to 10: He has five fingers on one hand for a brief moment, then when he clasps his hand and flexes his digits, he’s down to four fingers. Maybe that falls under the category of “animation blooper” rather than “magic.”

Christmas trees are everywhere this time of year—in the mall, in the town square, in your living room. However, some cities around the world get creative and jettison the idea of what a traditional holiday tree looks like. After seeing the following 15 trees, you’ll never look at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree the same way again.

1. FLOATING TREE // RIO DE JANEIRO

In the summer of 2016, Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas’s lagoon in Rio de Janeiro was the site of the Olympic rowing competitions, but in the winter it houses a 27-story Christmas tree weighing 542 tons. Every minute, the nearly 3 million lights (75 miles worth) change colors. The tree appears to float above the lagoon, because it’s attached to 11 floats. During the weekends, the lagoon sets off fireworks and creates a carnival atmosphere around the tree.

2. GODZILLA TREE // TOKYO

In 2011, Aqua City Odaiba mall in Tokyo created a Godzilla-shaped tree, replete with glowing red eyes and steam billowing out of its mouth. ‘Zilla donned a Santa hat and had white lights strewn all over its green body. If the tree actually came to life, the mall—and Tokyo—would be in deep trouble.

3. LEGO TREES // WINDSOR, ENGLAND; SYDNEY

Every holiday season, LEGOLAND in Windsor, Berkshire, England, builds its resort tree out of LEGOs as part of its Christmas Bricktacular celebration. The 26-foot tree is made from 300,000 LEGO bricks and takes four weeks to build. In 2015, an angel made from 4550 LEGO bricks topped the tree. Over in Sydney, in 2014, a LEGO tree was displayed in Pitt Street Mall. It was built from half a million LEGO bricks, weighed 3.5 tons, towered at 32 feet, and took 1200 hours to amass, becoming the largest LEGO Christmas tree in the Southern Hemisphere. But the largest LEGO Christmas tree ever award goes to London’s St Pancras Station, whose 2011 tree measured 40 feet in height.

4. POINTE SHOES TREE // LONDON

Each winter, the English National Ballet performs The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. For the 2015 season, dancer Amber Hunt had a brainstorm. “It all started by people asking me how many pairs of shoes dancers would use in a year,” she said. Turns out, it took 40 hours to stack 588 pointe shoes into the shape of a tree. “We had to drill over 1000 holes into the shoes so we could tie and hold them together on wires, and then we plated all the ribbons around the tree,” Hunt said. “We also added a pointe shoe star at the top.” It took 40 hours to complete the project.

5. EMIRATES PALACE HOTEL // ABU DHABI

In 2010, the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi created what’s supposedly the world’s most expensive Christmas tree. The artificial tree cost only $10,000, but the jewels that decorated it bumped the tree’s value to $11 million. Necklaces and earrings adorned the tree: 181 diamonds, pearls, emeralds, and sapphires. This year, though, the hotel’s gone back to a more subdued (a.k.a. jewel-free) tree.

6. GOLD DISNEY TREE // TOKYO

Not quite as expensive as the Dubai tree, in 2012 jewelry store Ginza Tanaka in Tokyo offered for sale a “tree” containing 88 pounds of gold, that stood eight feet high and three feet in diameter. The store hired 10 craftsmen to create 50 gold cutouts of Disney characters that were engraved on the tree like ornaments. The whole tree, which was created to celebrate Walt Disney’s 110th birthday, was worth 350 million yen, or $4.2 million.

7. CHURCHILL ARMS TREES // LONDON

During the spring and summer, the Churchill Arms pub in Kensington, London—which pays respect to Winston Churchill—covers its rooftop, windows, and exterior pub with an overwhelming array of 90 flowers and plants, like an unwieldy garden. For the holidays, though, they exhibit a swath of pine trees—80 to be exact. Several years ago they started with 30 trees, but this year have a record 80 trees and 18,000 lights. The pub’s interior is also filled with a lot of Christmas decorations, and random objects hanging from the ceiling. In 2013, Arms manager Gerry O’Brien told Daily Mail, “There’s no room for any more [trees],” but he apparently found more space.

8. MOUNT INGINO TREE // GUBBIO, ITALY

Since 1981, instead of assembling one large tree, Gubbio, Umbria, Italy, has taken advantage of its trees on the slopes of Mount Ingino and outlined them with 300 green lights. The lighting display covers 130,000 square meters; the base is 450 meters wide and reaches 750 meters, or 2460 feet up the hillside. In recent years, Pope Benedict XVI has initiated the lighting ceremony remotely in Vatican City via an Android tablet.

9. UPSIDE-DOWN TREES // BOSTON

The next best thing to an upright tree is an upside-down one. Every holiday season, the Liberty Hotel in Boston installs six inverted trees in its 90-foot rotunda lobby. The artful trees hang from beams, and are decorated with glowing lights.

10. CIRQUE DU SOLEIL TREE // LONDON

In 2015, the St Pancras rail station/shopping center in London displayed a Christmas tree made from plush Disney toys, such as Mickey Mouse, Marie the cat from The Aristocats, and Dumbo. This year, the station presented a Cirque du Soleil tree as a means to raise money for Oxfam. The Amaluna Christmas Tree, which is named after Cirque’s show Amaluna (based on The Tempest), stands nearly 40 feet tall and includes a water bowl orb with moving underwater projections, showing bits of the show.

11. SHOPPING CART TREE // SANTA MONICA

One of the more unusual trees, Santa Monica’s shopping cart Christmas tree is just that—a tree-shaped structure built from 86 carts that reach 33 feet. Anthony Schmitt founded the tradition in 1995 so he could communicate ideas of abundance, commercialism, and homelessness. The “tree” can be found on Main Street, in front of Edgemar, a mixed-used retail center.

12. ABSTRACT TREE // BRUSSELS

In 2012, Brussels’s main square, La Grand Place, strayed from its customary pine Christmas tree and instead opted for something abstract—and controversial. The 78-foot tree was a light installation made out of steel-framed boxes. At night, the square treated people to a laser show. The cost of the tree was one-third less than a real tree, so it seemed like a win-win situation. But some people were outraged about the non-religious tree—named Xmas 3—with 25,000 people signing a petition to have it removed (it was taken down on December 28). “For people who want a traditional religious symbol, we have the nativity scene here in the square,” Brussels tourism councillor Philippe Close told the BBC. “For people who want modernity, we have this new tree.” Since then, La Grand Place has stuck with conventional trees.  

13. LOBSTER POT TREE // PROVINCETOWN

Provincetown, Massachusetts is home to a lot of lobsters, so it makes sense to use lobster pots to form a tree. Artist Julian Popko started the annual event 12 years ago when he borrowed lobster pots from local fisheries and displayed the tree in Lopes Square. Today, 112 lobster pots make up the two-story tree, which also contains 3400 LED lights, 120 red bows, and 46 plastic lobsters.

14. PUFF PASTRY TREE // JAKARTA

Being the “The World’s Tallest Choux Pastry Christmas Tree” seems like a strange accolade, but that’s how hotel The Park Lane Jakarta rolls. (MURI—the Indonesia World Records Museum—anointed the hotel the coveted title). Last year, Park Lane debuted the tree, made from 18,000 choux pastries (croquembouche). The tree stood 29 feet tall, and the hotel staff used more than 250 pounds of flour, 169 pounds of butter, 2112 eggs, and 12.6 pounds of sugar to make the pastries.

15. WINE GLASS TREE // SEATTLE

The boutique-y Kimpton Hotel Vintage Seattle specializes in wine, with vineyard-themed rooms, vinos from local wineries, and, of course, a Christmas tree in the lobby constructed from wine glasses. The tree will probably make guests thirsty, so luckily the hotel hosts a daily wine reception for its guests, to squelch their thirst until they can reach Washington State’s wine country, which is comprised of 700 wineries.

Though the holiday season can be fraught with stress and a last-minute to-do list, it’s also a time of extreme generosity—a month-plus of merriment that often sees total strangers reaching out to lend a helping hand in the name of humanity and the spirit of the season. From anonymous donations to charitable flash mobs, here are 20 such stories from this holiday season.

1. MALL SANTA LEARNS SIGN LANGUAGE SO THAT HE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH ALL KIDS

Every kid deserves to tell Santa exactly what he or she wants for Christmas, but deaf children can have a difficult time communicating with their local St. Nick. Not kids in Racine, Wisconsin: The Santa at Racine’s Regency Mall knows sign language. He signs with kids who are hearing impaired, so that he can ask them—and they can tell him—what they want for Christmas. Because the warm fuzzy feelings of the holidays don’t just come from getting the right present—they come from feeling like part of a loving, inclusive community.

2. MOM BATTLING CANCER IS SURPRISED WITH A FLASH MOB DONATION

When Amanda Kofoed, a 30-year-old Idaho woman, discovered that she had stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma earlier this fall, she had to put her teaching degree on hold and prepare for six months of chemotherapy treatments. When she worried aloud to friends about her lack of insurance, as well as the future of her four young children, a group called the PRAYnksters (which is known for staging random acts of kindness) stepped in with a plan. They took Amanda and her husband, Clint, to a coffee shop, ostensibly to help them film a GoFundMe video. But as the camera rolled, nearly 200 children and adults flooded the coffee shop, all piling cash on the table as Amanda and her husband fought back tears. Amanda received more than $13,000 that day, and her GoFundMe has more than doubled its goal amount thus far.

3. “LAYAWAY ANGEL” PAYS OFF NEARLY $200,000 IN BALANCES AT WALMART

An anonymous angel visited three Pennsylvania Walmarts this month, paying out thousands of dollars at each location to clear strangers’ layaway balances. In the last two weeks, the donor has left $74,000 in Harrisburg; $46,000 in Lebanon County; and another $46,000 in Everett, for a total of $166,000 of erased debt. “When customers quietly pay off others’ layaway items, we’re reminded of how good people can be,” a Walmart representative told ABC27 News. “The joy that comes from these transactions extends well beyond dollars and cents. We’re honored to be a small part in these random acts of kindness.”

4. RESTAURANT OFFERS FREE CHRISTMAS MEALS TO LONDON’S ELDERLY AND HOMELESS POPULATIONS

The holidays will be a little bit brighter this year for some of London’s lonelier residents, thanks to a Turkish restaurant opening its doors on Christmas Day. Shish Restaurant in southeast London posted a note on its window in November with the message: “No one eats alone on a Christmas Day! We are here to sit with you … Any homeless or elderly are welcomed.”

The restaurant’s owner got the idea to offer a free three-course meal to those with nowhere else to go when an elderly woman walked into his eatery last month. She was looking for someone to help her close her window, and also mentioned that she would be spending Christmas alone this year. Inspired to help her and others like her, the restaurant staff shared the message that they would be welcoming the community’s homeless and elderly members on Christmas Day. Many people were touched by the story; so far, approximately 50 people have volunteered to cook, clean, and drive people to the restaurant.

5. LIBRARY GIFT-WRAPPING EVENTS RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY

Here’s a solution that benefits the gift-wrapping-challenged and charity to boot: At two libraries, teens are wrapping gifts to raise money for charitable causes. The Fairborn Library in Fairborn, Ohio held a “Gift Wrap Extravaganza” on December 19 to benefit the Fairborn Food Pantry, and on December 15 and 16 at the Lane Memorial Library in Hampton, New Hampshire, teens from two local schools wrapped gifts in exchange for donations to benefit charities End 68 Hours of Hunger and the NHSPCA.

6. HOSPITAL WORKER SAVES ALL YEAR IN ORDER TO BUY TOYS FOR SICK CHILDREN

Each Christmas for the past eight years, Jessie Tenyani, a cafeteria worker at Chicago’s Advocate Trinity Hospital, has bought thousands of dollars worth of toys for all of the children at the hospital, the state’s largest pediatric care facility. She sets aside part of her paycheck each month, and this year, she took Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday off from the hospital, rented a U-Haul, and bought $5000 worth of dolly buggies, electric keyboards, soccer balls, and other toys to distribute to kids of all ages at Christmas. “I feel so blessed to have this opportunity to serve these children,” Tenyani told Good Morning America. “I feel great and I feel at peace because what I do is to put a smile on the face of a child who is going through so much, whatever the pain they might go through.”

7. SECRET SANTA PAYS OFF LUNCH BALANCES

The spirit of the season is alive and well at HW Good Elementary School in Herminie, Pennsylvania. Earlier this month, a generous secret Santa wrote the school a check for more than $900 to clear the overdue lunch balances of 44 children. The only thing the do-gooder asked for in return was to remain anonymous. “Sometimes, all we see are the sad things going on in the world, so it’s really, really nice to know there are great people out there who would give up their things to help others,” the school’s principal, Amy Larcinese, told ABC News.

8. WESTJET THROWS PARTY FOR PEOPLE WHO LOST HOMES IN WILDFIRES

It has been over seven months since the Fort McMurray wildfire in Canada devastated about 20 percent of the homes in the area, but there’s still a lot of healing and rebuilding to do. The airline company WestJet generously stepped in to provide the people of Fort McMurray with some much-needed holiday cheer. The airline threw a Christmas party for the town’s residents that was stocked with all the fixings of a great time: 500 stockings, 300 pounds of candy, and 348 parachutes holding special gifts inside. Nearly 50 WestJet employees—who were moonlighting as elves—arrived to help make the party a success. According to WestJet, 826 Fort Murray citizens took part in the celebration.

9. LOCAL BUSINESS GIVES WOMAN A NEW ROOF FOR CHRISTMAS

The roof of Cathy Barker’s home in Jackson, Tennessee is falling apart. Barker, a longtime employee of the Kroger grocery chain, has been battling cancer and hasn’t had the money to repair it. Now she won’t have to: In early December, representatives from the roofing manufacturers at Reed’s Metals surprised Barker at work with the news that out of 100 applicants, she had won the company’s “Covering our Community” award, and they’d install her new roof—worth as much as $6000—before Christmas. Her sons, who’d nominated her for the award, hugged her, and her co-workers cheered.

“It’s really great,” a teary Barker told WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News.

Barker isn’t the only one who will receive a free roof from Reed’s Metals, which has 10 locations in five states. The company says it will provide a free roof to five others, including Baldwyn, Mississippi resident Bobbie Lou Hill.

10. SHELTER EMPLOYEES WILL DELIVER ADOPTED ANIMALS ON CHRISTMAS MORNING

Getting a pet on Christmas morning is an incredible experience for any animal lover, but it can be hard to orchestrate the sudden arrival of a new dog or cat. In Franklin, Tennessee, local shelter employees are more than happy to serve as Santa’s elves. Staff members at the Williamson County Animal Center have volunteered to get up early on Christmas morning and deliver any animals adopted between December 17 and December 24, making sure that lucky pet-parents-to-be get the best Christmas surprise imaginable.

11. “FOOD FOR FINES” PROGRAMS FORGIVE LIBRARY AND PARKING FEES IN EXCHANGE FOR FOOD BANK DONATIONS

Cities across the country are turning delinquent fees into charitable donations with “food for fines” programs. The concept began in Lexington, Kentucky two years ago, when the city offered citizens a sweet holiday deal: donate 10 cans of nonperishable food and get $15 off a parking ticket. The program was a huge success, netting more than 6000 items for a local food bank. This year, officials say, they’re on track to beat that record.

Parking enforcement offices and libraries across the country have taken up the torch, swapping overdue fees and parking fines for canned corn and tuna.

“It’s wonderful to see organizations like LEXPARK engage with our food bank in creative ways to fight hunger and deliver hope,” one food bank executive told Kentucky Forward.

12. FAMILY DELIVERS RECORD NUMBER OF GIFTS TO RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE

In 2015, Marion and Jason Sanford spent nearly six months living at the Ronald McDonald House in Saskatoon, Canada, while their 5-year-old son Rhett underwent surgery following an ATV crash on their family farm. Rhett’s 6-year-old brother, Blaine, was also involved in the crash and tragically died on the way to the hospital. Last December, after Rhett made a slow but full recovery, the family began a “new Christmas tradition” of donating toys to the place that showed them so much kindness during their time of need.

This year, Marion and Jason teamed up with Innovation Credit Union to up the ante: They established 28 drop-off locations across the province, where people could leave donations. As a result, the family filled an entire Mack truck with gifts—the most the Saskatoon Ronald McDonald House has ever received. Of her charitable spirit, Marion told CBC News, “Part of the reason I do this is because I want my son [Blaine] to be proud of me. He would be so excited to be part of this.”

13. MASSACHUSETTS COMMUNITY DECKS THE HALLS FOR A WIDOW IN NEED

After the passing of her husband in February, Amesbury, Massachusetts, resident Jeanne Hallisey couldn’t muster the energy to decorate her house for Christmas. “I wanted the lights up but didn’t have any holiday spirit at all,” Hallisey told the Daily News of Newburyport.

Hallisey solicited help stringing lights and garlands on Facebook, and was overjoyed when dozens of neighbors—armed with coffee, doughnuts, and hand warmers—answered her call. Included in the do-gooders were a handful of players on the Amesbury High School football team and an electrician who made sure all the wiring was safe.

14. SHIRTLESS RUGBY PLAYERS RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY IN BELFAST

Bare-chested members of the Bangor Rugby Club sang carols at Corn Market in Belfast, Northern Ireland earlier this month to raise money for Action Cancer and other charities. In the video above, you can hear coins dropping into donation bins and see a particularly animated “conductor” leading them along. The club hopes to raise about $5000 for charity—which is nothing to shake a Santa hat at.

15. BEST BUY WORKERS CHIP IN TO BUY A WII U FOR A LOCAL TEEN

Employees at a Best Buy in Valley Stream, New York recently pulled off a sweet game plan. After the staff noticed that a local teen made daily trips to their location just to play one of the Nintendo Wii U systems on display, they chipped in to get him a console of his own, CNN reported. “Consider it an early Christmas present,” one employee told the speechless teen when they revealed the $300 gift. The group also added a new copy of Super Smash Bros., a game he often plays in store—and a ride home. According to Inside Edition, the teen was nervous and making the trek home with his expensive gift.

16. STUDENTS COLLECT GIFTS FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

Students at Culleoka Unit School in Culleoka, Tennessee are organizing a gift drive for seniors living in local nursing homes. They’re collecting unwrapped gifts right in their K-12 school, located in central Tennessee. Among the suggested donations: adult coloring books, puzzles, toiletries, robes, blankets, stuffed animals, and radios.

Nowhere near Culleoka and want to bring some joy to a senior this holiday season? Google is your friend. There are similar programs across the country, including the Share the Love campaign in Thousand Oaks, California; a gift drive in North Fulton, Georgia, for elderly Meals on Wheels participants; and the Adopt a Senior program in the metro New York City region. There’s also the national “Be a Santa to a Senior” program, administered by Home Instead Senior Care. Its program in Delaware could really use your help: It’s about 1500 gifts short of its goal.

17. STOLEN DONATION LEADS TO A MUCH LARGER DONATION

Earlier this month, Melissa McMonigle, an English teacher at Ohio’s Northmont High School, was shocked when she discovered that $164 of the $194 her students had raised for a local family in need had been stolen right from her desk. “I was so sad and so disheartened,” McMonigle said. “And my students were angry when they found out.” While that easily could have been the end of the story, what began as a theft turned into a community-wide act of kindness when, according to McGonigle, “Within a 24-hour period, teachers started handing me money in the parking lot. Students who aren’t even [in my classes] started handing me money the hallways. There were parents who came into the main office and asked if they could give money to Miss McMonigle for the needy family. It was happening all day long.” As of December 9, McMonigle’s students and colleagues had raised more than $800.

18. TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT ISSUES UNUSUAL TRAFFIC CITATIONS

Police in Godley, Texas, are offering a fast track off the naughty list this holiday season. In lieu of fines for minor traffic violations, Mashable reports that officers are handing out “tickets” asking recipients to donate presents to the police department’s toy drive. Police chief Jason Jordan told Mashable the department has “probably handed out a couple hundred” so far, and added that he’s currently figuring out a way to carry the program through to the New Year with clothing and school supply donations.

19. POLICE DEPARTMENT PAYS IT FORWARD

When 6-year-old Landon Naumann’s bicycle was recently stolen, he and his mom went to the police station to report the crime. The officer who took the report thought the boy looked familiar—and then he realized why: Landon had previously made a visit to the local police station to drop off goodie bags for the local police force to thank them for all that they do for the local community. There was even a picture of Landon and his goodie bags on the wall. So the police officers reached into their own pockets to purchase a new bike for the boy, which they presented to him as a birthday gift.

20. TEENAGER BUILDS LIGHT DISPLAY TO BENEFIT MAKE A WISH

While a charitable spirit at any age is something to be admired, there’s something extra special about a young do-gooder—and that’s just what 18-year-old Jordan Maywald is. The Austin, Texas high school senior tapped into the holiday spirit by creating an elaborate, 50,000 light display at his home. But this wasn’t a case of Maywald simply trying to emulate Clark Griswold: He posted a Make-A-Wish donation box outside his home, so that in addition to admiring his twinkling handiwork, those who come to gawk at the display can also make a donation to the nonprofit organization. “There’s no better feeling than giving money to them for children who are ill so they can go on a vacation or something they want it’s just very heartwarming to us,” Maywald said. He’s hoping to raise $5000 this holiday season.

Since making his feature directorial debut with the 1971 TV movie Duel, Steven Spielberg—who was born on this day in 1946—has gone on to create some of Hollywood’s most iconic films. In 1975, he singlehandedly invented “the summer blockbuster” when Jaws racked up nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. In the years since, Spielberg has directed a few other films you might have heard of, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, E.T., and Lincoln. In honor of the Oscar-winning director’s 70th birthday, here are 30 things you might not have known about some of his most famous films.

1. DANIEL DAY-LEWIS IS THE FIRST ACTOR TO WIN AN OSCAR FOR ONE OF SPIELBERG’S MOVIES.

Plenty of actors have been nominated for their work in Spielberg’s movies, but it wasn’t until 2013—when Daniel Day-Lewis took home the Best Actor Oscar for his work in Lincoln—that Spielberg directed any actor to an actual Academy Award win.

2. THERE’S NOT A LOT OF JAWS IN JAWS.

The shark doesn’t fully appear in a shot until one hour and 21 minutes into the two-hour film. The reason it isn’t shown is because the mechanical shark that was built rarely worked during filming, so Spielberg had to create inventive ways (like Quint’s yellow barrels) to shoot around the non-functional shark.

3. HE CONSIDERS DUEL AN INDICTMENT OF MACHINES.

When asked about his first feature, Duel, Spielberg described it as “an indictment of machines. And I determined very early on that everything about the film would be the complete disruption of our whole technological society.”

4. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND WAS INITIALLY A VERY DIFFERENT FILM.

Spielberg’s initial story outline involved UFOs and shady government dealings following the Watergate scandal, which became a script entitled “Watch the Skies.” The idea involved a police or military officer working on Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s official study into UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s, who would become the whistleblower on the government cover-up of aliens. There were numerous rewrites—Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader even took a crack at it, penning a political UFO thriller titled “Kingdom Come” that Spielberg and the movie studio rejected—before the story we know today emerged.

5. IF HE HAD TO MAKE THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS AGAIN, HE’D DO IT COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY.

“That’s the one film that I can honestly say, if I had to do it all over again I’d make Sugarland Express in a completely different fashion,” Spielberg said of the 1974 crime drama.

6. E.T. WAS INITIALLY PATCHED TOGETHER FROM DIFFERENT IDEAS FOR SEPARATE MOVIES.

With his newfound success following the back-to-back smash hits of Jaws in 1975 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, Spielberg wanted to tell a smaller, more personal story for his next film. Entitled Growing Up, the proposed movie was inspired by the divorce of his parents when he was 15 years old. It included the feelings of alienation Spielberg felt being Jewish in an all Gentile neighborhood in Arizona and was told from the perspective of three children.

When the project was shelved, Spielberg moved on to another big budget film, 1941, but the basic idea stayed with him. Around the same time, Columbia Pictures demanded a sequel to Close Encounters. Spielberg wanted no part of that, though he had a small idea about what would have happened if an alien didn’t go back to the mothership at the end of that movie. To ensure they didn’t make the sequel without him, he instead commissioned writer/director John Sayles to create a script for a pseudo-sequel called Night Skies, about a suburban family terrorized by a group of aliens with one befriending the family’s son.

The project was too dark in tone for Spielberg, though, and ultimately, he had Columbia just re-release Close Encounters in a Special Edition with additional scenes. But he still recognized the potential of a film like Night Skies, so he and screenwriter Melissa Mathison then combined Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical story with the benevolent alien visiting a boy on earth to create E.T. The idea of the terrorized family was refashioned as another eventual Spielberg production: Poltergeist.   

7. TOM SELLECK WAS SUPPOSED TO PLAY INDIANA JONES.

Prior to the production’s start date in May 1980, George Lucas and Spielberg set up shop in the old Lucasfilm corporate headquarters to begin the casting process. Actors and actresses in consideration for the lead roles of Indiana Jones and his tough but beautiful companion Marion Ravenwood included Jane Seymour, Debra Winger, Mark Harmon, Mary Steenburgen, Michael Biehn, Sam Shepard, Valerie Bertinelli, Bruce Boxleitner, Sean Young, Don Johnson, Dee Wallace (who would later go on to star as the mother in Spielberg’s E.T.), Barbara Hershey, and even David Hasselhoff.

For Indy, Lucas and Spielberg eventually settled on actor Tom Selleck. But when CBS got wind of what the two were up to, the network legally barred Selleck—the lead of the hit show Magnum, P.I.—from appearing in the film. Spielberg then suggested Harrison Ford as a quick replacement, but Lucas was reluctant to cast Ford because he was already Han Solo in his Star Wars films. But Spielberg’s quick thinking prevailed, and Ford was added to the cast just two weeks before principal photography began. (A similar snafu happened with Danny DeVito, the first choice to play Indy’s jovial companion Sallah, who couldn’t take the part due to his contractual obligation to appear on the popular ABC show Taxi.)

8. SPIELBERG DIDN’T THINK 1941 WAS FUNNY ENOUGH.

Much has been made out of the bomb that was Spielberg’s attempt at more of a straight comedy, the 1979 war comedy 1941. But the director himself has a pretty good handle on what went wrong with the film. “What happened on the screen was pretty out of control,” he said, “but the production was pretty much in control. I don’t dislike the movie at all. I’m not embarrassed by it—I just think that it wasn’t funny enough.”

9. A KING KONG RIDE INSPIRED SPIELBERG’S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR BUILDING THE DINOSAURS IN JURASSIC PARK.  

The logistics of Spielberg’s original plans to bring the dinosaurs to life were inspired by the Universal Studios “King Kong Encounter” ride. Disney Imagineer Bob Gurr designed Kong as a full-size animatronic with an inflatable balloon-like skin surrounding a wire frame. Unfortunately, the plans to build all of Jurassic Park‘s dinosaurs as similarly full-size animatronics proved too costly.

10. HE DIRECTED INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM OUT OF JEALOUSY.

After finding great success with—and loving the experience of directing—Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg’s main motivation for stepping behind the camera for its sequel, 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was jealousy. “I got separation pangs,” said Spielberg. “I knew that if I didn’t direct Temple, someone else would. I got a little bit jealous, and I got a little bit frustrated.”

11. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE WAS AN APOLOGY FOR TEMPLE OF DOOM.

“I’m making the third Indiana Jones movie to apologize for the second,” Spielberg announced. “It was too horrific.”

12. SPIELBERG REFUSED TO ACCEPT A SALARY FOR SCHINDLER’S LIST.

Though Spielberg is already an extremely wealthy man as a result of the many big-budget movies that have made him one of Hollywood’s most successful directors, he decided that a story as important as Schindler’s List shouldn’t be made with an eye toward financial reward. The director relinquished his salary for the movie and any proceeds he would stand to make in perpetuity, calling any such personal gains “blood money.” Instead, Spielberg used the film’s profits to found the Shoah Foundation, which was established to honor and remember the survivors of the Holocaust by collecting personal recollections and audio visual interviews.

13. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THE COLOR PURPLE WAS ITS CHARACTERS.

“The big difference in The Color Purple is that the story is not bigger than the lives of these people,” Spielberg said of his Oscar-nominated adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel. “I didn’t want to make another movie that dwarfs the characters. But here the characters are the story.”

14. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN IS PARTLY BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Contrary to popular belief, Saving Private Ryan is not based on the Sullivan brothers, a group of five brothers who were all killed in action while serving in the US Navy during World War II on the USS Juneau. The movie is actually based on the Niland brothers, four siblings who all served in the US Army during World War II. Three brothers—Robert, Preston, and Edward—were supposedly killed in action, which caused their remaining brother, Fritz (whom the titular Private Ryan was based on) to be shipped back to America so that the Niland family wouldn’t lose all of their sons. Edward, who was originally thought dead, was actually found alive after escaping a Japanese prison camp in Burma, making two surviving brothers out of the four who fought in the war.

15. AMISTAD BECAME TOO MUCH OF A HISTORY LESSON.

“I kind of dried it out,” Spielberg said of 1997’s Amistad, which failed to capture a huge audience. “It became too much of a history lesson.”

16. MINORITY REPORT WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO TOTAL RECALL.

Total Recall was another movie adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story. The Minority Report movie rights were held by cinematographer-turned-director Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) at one point, who ended up getting a producer credit on the film without ever setting foot on set. Eventually Cruise approached Spielberg about an early version of the script, written for de Bont by Jon Cohen, which Spielberg hired Scott Frank to rewrite. When Cruise and Speilberg’s schedules were finally both clear at the same time, they went to work.

17. THE REAL FRANK ABAGNALE, JR. WAS PLEASED WITH CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

“I wasn’t very involved with the making of the film, but I thought Spielberg did a great job and only changed very minor things,” Frank Abagnale, Jr., the inspiration for Catch Me If You Can, told WIRED. “In real life I had two brothers and a sister, he chose to portray me as an only child. In real life there was a back and forth relationship with my father (Christopher Walken in the film) but in real life once I ran away from home I never saw my parents again and my father passed away while I was in prison. And when I escaped from the aircraft I escaped from kitchen galley where they service the plane, but in the movie they had me escape from the toilet. But other than very minor things, I thought he stayed very straight to the story.”

18. JAWS ORIGINALLY ENDED JUST LIKE MOBY DICK.

The original ending in the script had the shark dying of harpoon injuries inflicted by Quint and Brody à la Moby Dick, but Spielberg thought the movie needed a crowd-pleasing finale and came up with the exploding tank as seen in the final film. The dialogue and foreshadowing of the tank were then dropped in as they shot the movie.

19. HE CONSIDERS EMPIRE OF THE SUN HIS DARKEST FILM.

The 1987 World War II drama, which introduced Christian Bale to the world, was a bit of a departure for Spielberg. “I made a movie to satisfy me, not the audience,” the director said of his choice to delve into darker terrain. “It’s as dark as I’ve allowed myself to get.”

20. GARTH BROOKS NEARLY PLAYED PRIVATE JACKSON IN SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Frank Darabont was hired to do uncredited rewrites on Saving Private Ryan, and created the role of the Bible-quoting sniper, Private Jackson, to be played by country singer Garth Brooks. Brooks dropped out of the movie after Spielberg came onboard and cast Tom Hanks in the lead role. Apparently Brooks didn’t want to play second fiddle to Hanks, but Spielberg offered him a chance to play another role of his choosing. Instead of a specific role, Brooks allegedly said he wanted to play the “bad guy,” but in Saving Private Ryan there is no real bad guy other than the entire Wehrmacht, so Spielberg ultimately decided to drop Brooks from the movie.

21. WAR OF THE WORLDS WASN’T INTENDED AS A FAMILY MOVIE.

“I never made War of the Worlds for a family audience,” Spielberg said of his 2005 adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel. “It was a very intense post-9/11 apocalyptic movie about the end of everything.”

22. EVERYTHING IN THE FAMOUS SHOT OF ELLIOTT AND E.T. FLYING ACROSS THE FACE OF THE MOON WAS REAL—EXCEPT ELLIOTT AND E.T.

Visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren and his team at Industrial Light and Magic were tasked with creating organic special effects to surround the potentially inorganic looking E.T. puppet. Surprisingly, the iconic shot of the boy and alien flying across the full moon was mostly a “real” shot. It took Muren and his team weeks to find the right spot to film a low moon among trees, so they used maps and charts to coordinate the scene once they found the right spot. In the shot, Elliott and E.T. are puppets that were added with special effects in post-production, but the rest is photo-real.

23. ONE QUARTER OF THE BUDGET FOR MINORITY REPORT WAS FINANCED BY PRODUCT PLACEMENTS.

Toyota paid $5 million to get a futuristic Lexus called the Mag-Lev in Minority Report. Nokia shelled out $2 million for the characters to wear Nokia headsets. The Gap, Pepsi, American Express, and Reebok got in on the sci-fi action, too.

24. JURASSIC PARK BROKE NEW CG GROUND.

Spielberg wasn’t 100 percent happy with the wide test shots of the dinosaurs—they just weren’t photorealistic enough. So Muren and his ILM team, spurred by their revolutionary experience in designing and incorporating fully computer-generated characters into films like The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, showed Spielberg an early CGI dino test of a group of Gallimimus skeletons running through a field. Spielberg was in awe of the ease of movement and realism of the effects, but he was still wary that they wouldn’t hold up under intense scrutiny—and he didn’t want to scrap Tippett’s practical animation talents altogether. So the director urged Muren and ILM to go further. When they came back with a CG test of a fully rendered T. rex walking across a field in broad daylight, the director decided to go full CGI for some shots.

25. SCHINDLER’S LIST IS TECHNICALLY A STUDENT FILM.

Thirty-three years after dropping out of college, Steven Spielberg finally received a B.A. in Film and Video Production from his newly minted alma mater, Cal State Long Beach, in 2002. The director re-enrolled in secret, and gained his remaining credits by writing essays and submitting projects under a pseudonym. In order to pass a film course, he submitted Schindler’s List as his student project. Spielberg describes the time gap between leaving school and earning his degree as his “longest post-production schedule.”

26. THE IMPORTANCE OF BRINGING LINCOLN TO THE SCREEN WAS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

“We were playing with one of the most beloved, and mysterious, characters in American history,” Spielberg said of 2013’s Lincoln. “I wanted to make sure that everybody on the film understood that.”

27. MUNICH WAS MEANT TO BE “A PRAYER FOR PEACE.”

Spielberg described 2005’s Munich as “a prayer for peace. I was always thinking about that as I was making the picture.”

28. SPIELBERG TOLD CRUISE NOT TO TAKE A SALARY FOR MINORITY REPORT.

At the time, Spielberg claimed that he had not taken a salary on a movie in 18 years. And he wanted Cruise to do the same. Instead, the two reportedly agreed to receiving no upfront money in exchange for approximately 15 percent of the box office apiece. (The film made more than $358 million worldwide.)

29. THE D-DAY SEQUENCE IN SAVING PRIVATE RYAN COST A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY.

The D-Day scene alone cost $12 million because of the logistical difficulties and the realistic scope needed to complete the sequence. The entire budget of the movie was only $70 million. Spielberg didn’t storyboard any of the D-Day sequence.  

30. THE MEMORABLE 5-NOTE TONES IN CLOSE ENCOUNTERS TOOK A LONG TIME TO FIGURE OUT.

Composer John Williams worked with Spielberg to come up with the movie’s distinct five-note musical method of communication between humans and aliens—which Spielberg partly based on the Solfège system of musical education—a year before shooting began.

Williams initially wanted a seven-note sequence, but it was too long for the simple musical “greeting” Spielberg wanted. The composer enlisted a mathematician to calculate the number of five-note combinations they could potentially make from a 12-note scale. When that number proved to be somewhere upwards of 134,000 combinations, Williams created 100 distinct versions, and they simply whittled the combinations down one by one until they had a winner.

How much would it cost to be Santa Claus?

Kynan Eng:

It will cost $24.3 billion to make the toys, plus $683 million to deliver them by ocean and road freight (delivery time 2 months). Or, if it absolutely, positively must be there overnight, air freight will cost $95.8 billion before discounts. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough planes in the world to deliver everything in one day and airport capacity is limited, so it will take around 5 days if every commercial and military plane in the world (40,000 planes total) is pressed into service. Further details below.

How many kids in the world? Where are they?

Around 27 percent of the world’s population is aged 0–14, according to the CIA. As a crude approximation, we can extrapolate that to 32.8 percent of the world being aged 0–17. People are spread out around the world as shown in the list below, as of August 2016. Note that some regions of the world have a higher proportion of kids, but we will ignore this factor for the purposes of the calculation.

Population by Regions in the World (2016)

• North America: 579 million (190 million kids)
• South America: 423 million (139 million kids)
• Europe + Russia: 887 million (291 million kids)
• Africa: 1216 million (399 million kids)
• India: 1252 million (411 million kids)
• East Asia/Oceania: 3043 million (988 million kids)

TOTAL: 7.4 billion (2.43 billion kids)

How expensive to produce a toy?

In 2000, one McDonald’s Happy Meal toy cost 43 cents to produce. Let’s be generous, and say that we expend a production cost of $10 per child on toys, including packaging and wrapping paper. We will also assume that these toys weigh a total of 2 kg per child and a volume of 0.01 m3, including packaging. So our toy budget is $24.3 billion and we have to ship 4.86 billion kg, with a volume of 48.6 million m3.

Where are we shipping from?

Depending on who you ask, Santa Claus lives in one of several locations:

• Alaska, USA
• Rovanemi, Finland
• Kakslauttanen, Finland

However, in reality, modern Santa produces in and around Shenzhen, China. His northern residence serves mainly as a theme park, marketing headquarters, and tax haven. So everything must be shipped from Shenzhen or nearby Hong Kong.

Shipping cost: Ocean + road freight

The most cost-effective way to send stuff is by ship and then road. The data here comes from an online freight calculator. A standard 40-foot shipping container has an interior volume of 67.6 m3, of which about 60 m3 is usable after accounting for fork lift pallets, etc. So we can fit 6000 presents into each container. Therefore we will need to ship 405,000 containers. The world’s largest container ships can each carry upwards of 9000 containers, so we will need only 45 ships to carry all of the presents. The ocean shipping costs are broken down below ($cost/container x number of containers):

• North America: Hong Kong – Los Angeles: $1400 x 31667 → $44.3 million
• South America: Hong Kong – Panama: $1450 x 23167 → $33.6 million
• Europe + Russia: Hong Kong – Rotterdam: $750 x 48500 → $36.4 million
• Africa: Hong Kong – Port Said (Egypt): $625 x 66500 → $41.6 million
• India: Hong Kong – Mumbai: $600 x 68500 → $41.1 million
• Asia: Hong Kong – Shanghai: $400 x 507167 → $39.5 million

For the road shipping cost, we will make a wild assumption that the average road distance is about 2400 miles, which is about the distance from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. This costs around $1100 per container in the USA, which we will use as the overall cost. So we get:

Total ocean + road freight cost = $236M + $446M = $683M

Shipping cost: Air freight

The point of origin will be either Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport or Hong Kong International Airport, which are very close to each other. Air freight requires two air legs (Hong Kong → regional hub → destination city) and one road leg. The exception is within Asia, which requires just one flight. The first-leg air freight costs are as shown below (cost quoted per present).

• North America: Hong Kong – Los Angeles: $19 → $3.61 billion
• South America: Hong Kong – Panama: $20 → $2.78 billion
• Europe + Russia: Hong Kong – Frankfurt: $19 → $5.53 billion
• Africa: Hong Kong – Port Said (Egypt): $22 → $8.78 billion
• India: Hong Kong – Mumbai: $25 → $10.28 billion
• Asia: Hong Kong – Beijing: $21 → $20.7 billion

Total first leg: $51.7 billion, plus second leg ($18/present): $43.7 billion, plus road: $446 million = $95.8 billion

Do we have enough planes? In short, no. In 2015, FedEx shipped 16.02 billion tonne-km of air freight, while the top 10 companies combined shopped 85.528 billion tonne-km. This works out to shipping our load 17600 km—so it would be possible to do it only if every air freight company could delivery their annual capacity in one day. Modern cargo aircraft range in capacity from around 39,780 kg (Boeing 757–200 freighter) to 134,200 kg (Boeing 747–8F). If we take an average payload of 80,000 kg per plane, we will need 60,750 long-haul flights, plus the same number of short-haul flights. The world has about 20,000 civilian aircraft and 20,000 military aircraft, but most of them are not long-haul—so we will need some sort of well-organized short-hop relay system.

Another bottleneck is the number of airports. The capacity of a modern airport is around one take-off every 60 seconds, which is 1440 flights/day. There are 10 civilian airports within 300 miles of the area, so we can start around 15,000 flights/day. So it will take around four days to get all of the stuff out by air. After that, regional and local airports can handle the traffic easily—the world already handles around 100,000 scheduled flights per day.

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Of the many dual titles that exist in Hollywood, actor-musicians may be some of the most frequently encountered hyphenates. But for every individual who has shown genuine talent in both disciplines (see: Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Tom Waits, Zooey Deschanel, Mos Def, Liza Minnelli, and Jamie Foxx), there is, well, a Steven Seagal. Here are 15 well-known actors with all-but-forgotten musical careers.

1. EDDIE MURPHY

The 1980s were a very good decade for Eddie Murphy. In addition to being one of Saturday Night Live’s biggest stars, he was drawing huge crowds as a stand-up comedian, turning those comedy shows into iconic pieces of pop culture history with Delirious and Raw, and headlining some of Hollywood biggest blockbusters. In the midst of all this, he somehow found the time to try and launch a singing career and actually managed to produce two hits, 1985’s “Party All the Time” and 1989’s “Put Your Mouth on Me.” Rick James, who produced the former tune, was clearly a fan. Though it’s actually kind of catchy, it’s regularly been cited as one of the worst songs of all time.

2. ALYSSA MILANO

Having conquered the small screen as the star of Who’s the Boss?, Alyssa Milano set her sights on the music world and, at least internationally, actually had some success. Her 1989 album, Look In My Heart, turned out to be pretty big in Japan. Stateside, she was best known for singing the theme song to her workout video, Teen Steam. Though she told Paste Magazine that she’s never pulled out the old cassette tapes, she said that she has “watched a couple of the music videos, because my brother is in them with me. It was definitely ’80s pop, so it was just singing and dancing, all that stuff I love to do, but there’s nothing too outrageous. We were able to control all of that. It was like that bubble gum pop era… that Tiffany, Debbie Gibson era. Clean, good fun. I was 14 or 15, so I don’t really remember a lot of it.”

3. LEONARD NIMOY

In the late 1960s, one science fiction icon paid tribute to other sci-fi greats with a pair of albums that celebrated the genre with a lineup of songs with titles like “Alien,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Earth,” “Lost in the Stars,” and what is perhaps his most famous recording: “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” (see above), which appeared on his second album, Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy.

4. WILLIAM SHATNER

Though more of a spoken word artist than a full-on musician, Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek co-star also made a bit of a splash on the music scene, beginning with his 1968 spoken word album The Transformed Man, where he gave well-known songs like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” a Shatner-esque twist. He has recorded a handful of albums since, including 2013’s Ponder the Mystery.

5. STEVEN SEAGAL

In addition to his run as one of Hollywood’s best known action stars during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Steven Seagal has attempted a number of other careers: aromatherapy specialist, energy drink maker, law enforcer, and, yes, musician. Years after giving his music a part in a few of his own films, including Fire Down Below, Seagal released his first album, Songs from the Crystal Cave, which Sputnik Music described as “the Plan 9 From Outer Space of records.”

6. BRUCE WILLIS

Steven Seagal is far from the only action star to try his hand at music-making. In 1987, at the height of Moonlighting’s success, Bruce Willis released The Return of Bruno, an album that mixed pop music with blues and managed to produce a hit single, “Respect Yourself,” featuring The Pointer Sisters. The accompanying video (above) was appropriately cinematic. In 1989, he released a follow-up album—If It Don’t Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger.

7. JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT

Thanks to her early acting career on the variety show Kids Incorporated, Jennifer Love Hewitt has been singing for as long as she has been acting—and even sang backup on fellow Kids Incorporated co-star Martika’s hit 1989 song, “Toy Soldiers.” Though she released her first album, Love Songs, in 1992—when she was just 12 years old—it wasn’t until after she gained fame as an actress that her music career found some steam. “How Do I Deal,” a single she recorded for the soundtrack to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer in 1999, became her first song to chart. In 2009, it was reported that Hewitt was working on material for a country album; sadly, that has yet to surface.

8. JOEY LAWRENCE

Jennifer Love Hewitt wasn’t the only ’90s teen heartthrob to take a stab at a recording career. In 1993, at the height of Blossom mania, Joey Lawrence released his self-titled debut album, which included “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix,” which became a bona fide hit around the world. In 2014, he told Queen Latifah that he was thinking about making a return to the music scene. Whoa!

9. JOE PESCI

Before he was an actor, Joe Pesci was a barber. In between, he attempted to mount a musical career—and didn’t do too badly at it. In his earliest days, he played guitar with several bands, including Joey Dee and the Starlighters (the band went through a few rotations, but Jimi Hendrix ended up playing the same gig as Pesci at a later point). In 1968, Pesci released a solo album as “Little Joe” called Little Joe Sure Can Sing!, on which he covered a handful of major hits—including several Beatles songs. In 1998, six years after My Cousin Vinny, he released an album in character called Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You.

10. DON JOHNSON

While his Miami Vice co-star Philip Michael Thomas was busy trying to become an EGOT, Don Johnson was making a foray into the music business as well. During the 1980s, he released two solo albums, and scored a major hit with “Heartbeat,” which made it all the way to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. His cover of Aaron Neville’s “Tell It Like It Is” (above) also managed to log some radio play.

11. MR. T

Mr. T made no secret about pitying the fools who didn’t take advantage of getting an education, and he released a series of videos on this very topic­—plus a 1984 rap album titled Mr. T’s Commandments, which basically implored kids to stay in school and to just say no to drugs.

12. MILLA JOVOVICH

Today, Milla Jovovich is best known as the ass-kicking hero of the Resident Evil movie franchise. But her first step into the spotlight came as a model, a career she began at the age of 9. She broke into acting as the star of a made-for-TV movie called The Night Train to Kathmandu, which premiered in 1988—the same year she began recording her first album. In a 1990 interview with Rolling Stone Australia, she described her style as “a mix between Kate Bush, Sinéad O’Connor, This Mortal Coil, and the Cocteau Twins.” Her first studio album, 1994’s The Divine Comedy, was well received by critics (Rolling Stone called it a “remarkable recording debut”). While she has continued to record since (her last single was released in 2012), acting has remained her busiest career.

13. BURT REYNOLDS

One year after infamously posing nude for Cosmopolitan, Burt Reynolds took another chance and released an album, Ask Me What I Am, and also put his pipes to use alongside Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Music fans didn’t seem all that interested.

14. COREY FELDMAN

If you’ve noticed ’80s star Corey Feldman’s name trending lately, it’s likely due to a couple of odd live musical performances he’s put on for the Today Show. And while the fallen star definitely began his career in front of the camera—he began landing some television roles back in the late 1970s—he did try to make a go of a musical career dating all the way back to 1992’s Love Left. And he’s still trying. Some people have called his latest album, Angelic 2 The Core, the year’s worst album. His prior attempts—both professionally, and one incredibly embarrassing performance he concocted for his ex-wife on an episode of his reality show The Two Coreys (above)—haven’t fared much better.

15. SHAQUILLE O’NEAL

Yes, Shaquille O’Neal is best known as a superstar athlete. But don’t try telling fans of Kazaam—or users of Icy Hot, Gold Bond, or the dozens of other products Shaq has endorsed over the years—that the man is not a consummate actor as well. In the early 1990s, Shaq added “rapper” to his repertoire and gave music fans the platinum album known as Shaq Diesel.

You can’t talk about the history of independent film without talking about John Cassavetes. The New York-born writer/director/actor was successfully making and distributing his own films decades before the indie boom of the 1990s, nearly always to critical acclaim, and sometimes even for financial gain. The most prominent was 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence, one of eight movies he directed that starred his wife, Gena Rowlands, and the only one for which they were both Oscar-nominated.

Though they didn’t win, Rowlands’s performance as a housewife having a nervous breakdown is still regarded as a master class in acting, and Cassavetes’s sensitive, naturalistic style influenced everyone from Jim Jarmusch to Martin Scorsese. Here’s a peek behind the scenes of one of the 1970s’ most celebrated dramas.

1. IT WAS GOING TO BE A PLAY, BUT IT PROVED TOO INTENSE.

John Cassavetes first wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a stage play intended for Rowlands, who’d said she wanted to do a play about the difficulties faced by modern women. Rowlands loved what her husband wrote but realized it was too intensely emotional for her to perform it night after night without having a nervous breakdown herself. Cassavetes retooled it into a screenplay, sparing Rowlands’s sanity.

2. JOHN CASSAVETES DIDN’T APPROACH IT AS A STORY ABOUT A CRAZY PERSON.

Asked if he did any research into mental illness or nervous breakdowns when he wrote the film in an interview included on the Criterion Blu-ray, Cassavetes said, “No, because I don’t think it’s about that. I’m half crazy myself, and I think almost everyone is verging on some kind of insanity. I believe very strongly that all women who are married for any length of time—and if they love their husbands—they don’t have any place to put their emotions, and that can drive them crazy … This particular woman, I don’t think she’s crazy … I think she’s just frustrated beyond belief. More than being crazy, I think she’s just socially inept.”

3. NOBODY WANTED TO FINANCE THE MOVIE.

You’ll probably file this in the “I didn’t know that but it doesn’t surprise me” category: Though Hollywood studios were taking risks in the 1970s, giving directors more free rein than they’d had previously, nobody wanted to spend money on a film about (in Cassavetes’s words) “a crazy, middle-aged dame.” Instead, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and took up a collection among actor friends to finance the film.

4. PETER FALK PUT UP $500,000 OF HIS OWN MONEY.

Half of the film’s final budget came from Cassavetes’s longtime friend Peter Falk, who was then starring in TV’s Columbo. (Cassavetes had guest-starred a couple years earlier.) Falk was so taken with the screenplay for A Woman Under the Influence that he not only co-starred in it, he turned down another movie (The Day of the Dolphin) and ponied up half a million of his own Columbo dollars to get it made. (Perhaps that’s why he gets top billing over Rowlands.)

5. IT REQUIRED SOME STOLEN ELECTRICITY.

Making an independent, low-budget film means being resourceful. For one outdoor scene, Cassavetes powered his equipment by hijacking a municipal power line.

6. IT ALSO REQUIRED SOME UNPAID LABOR.

Cassavetes was then serving as the first filmmaker-in-residence at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies, in Los Angeles. That gave him access to eager young people who wanted all the practical moviemaking experience they could get. Most of his crew consisted of these students, working for free or for deferred salaries, some of whom quit before it was over (hey, you get what you pay for).

7. IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST MOVIES TO BE SUCCESSFULLY INDEPENDENTLY DISTRIBUTED.

Not only did none of the studios want to finance the film, they weren’t interested in distributing it when it was finished, either. Ever the do-it-yourselfer, Cassavetes personally called theater owners to get them to book it, relying on his good reputation in the art-house community (A Woman Under the Influence was his seventh film, his fourth as an independent producer). He also booked screenings on college campuses, where he and Falk would appear to do Q&As. It wound up making $6.1 million (as of 1976, according to Variety), all of which went back to Cassavetes, his investors, and the cast and crew, none to any studio.

8. MARTIN SCORSESE ENGAGED IN A BIT OF BLACKMAIL TO GET IT SEEN.

A Woman Under the Influence‘s big break came when it was screened to great acclaim at the 1974 New York Film Festival, some 18 months after Cassavetes finished it. But even that almost didn’t happen: the festival rejected it. In desperation, Cassavetes called his friend Martin Scorsese (there was a lot of mutual admiration between the two), whose documentary Italian-American was already on the festival’s roster. Scorsese threatened to withdraw his film unless the festival organizers gave Cassavetes’s film a chance. (Note: In some tellings of this anecdote, it was Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, also playing at the 1974 NYFF, that he threatened to withdraw. The most reliable firsthand or almost firsthand account we could find, however, says it was Italian-American.)

9. GOOD THING SCORSESE’S GAMBLE WORKED, OR CASSAVETES MIGHT NEVER HAVE MADE ANOTHER FILM.

Cassavetes gave a long interview to journalist Judith McNally at the New York Film Festival, after he’d spent 18 months trying to find a distributor. He was also burned out on making four movies in a row without studio help. “I can’t like making films anymore if they’re this tough,” he said. “The pressures are too unnatural. I’m not crying, because I enjoy it. But I am saddened by the fact that I have physical limitations.”

Yet working with profit-minded studios was hard, too, since Cassavetes refused to bend on his artistic principles. “If that means I’ll never make [a] film again, then I’ll never make another film again,” he said. McNally followed up. “You don’t have any plans at all for another film?” He replied: “Right now all I can hope is that [A Woman Under the Influence] is extremely successful. And if it isn’t, I won’t make another one—that’s all. Which in itself is no great tragedy.” He did, in fact, go on to make five more films before his death in 1989.

10. IT FEELS IMPROVISED, BUT IT WASN’T.

Rowlands and Falk give very naturalistic performances, often seeming like they’re having unscripted conversations. When an interviewer asked Cassavetes about that, he gave a succinct, unambiguous answer: “No, the entire script was written and there were no improvisations whatsoever.”

11. RICHARD DREYFUSS HELPED PROMOTE IT.

During an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show that Falk was co-hosting, Richard Dreyfuss was asked if he had seen the movie Falk was there to promote. Dreyfuss replied enthusiastically: “It was the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie. I went crazy. I went home and vomited.” (Falk piped up, “It’s also funny! It’s a funny movie!”) During the commercial, Falk telephoned Cassavetes in a panic—”He’s telling everyone how terribly dark and scary the movie is!”—but the director laughed and said, “He can say what he wants.”

Additional sources:
Interviews and commentary on the Criterion Blu-ray.
Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented American Independent Film, by Marshall Fine

What is the origin of the Christmas tree?

Bill Petro:

It is generally believed that the first Christmas tree was of German origin dating from the time of St. Boniface, English missionary to Germany in the 8th century. He replaced the sacrifices to the Norse god Odin’s sacred oak—some say it was Thor’s Thunder Oak—by a fir tree adorned in tribute to the Christ child. The legend is told that Boniface found a group of “pagans” preparing to sacrifice a boy near an oak tree near Lower Hesse, Germany. He cut down the oak tree with a single stroke of his ax and stopped the sacrifice. A small fir tree sprang up in place of the oak. He told the pagans that this was the “tree of life” and stood for Christ.

MIDDLE AGES

A legend began to circulate in the early Middle Ages that when Jesus was born in the dead of winter, all the trees throughout the world shook off their ice and snow to produced new shoots of green. The medieval Church would decorate outdoor fir trees—known as “paradise trees”—with apples on Christmas Eve, which they called “Adam and Eve Day” and celebrated with a play.

RENAISSANCE

During Renaissance times there are records that trees were being used as symbols for Christians first in the Latvian capital of Riga in 1510. The story goes that it was attended by men wearing black hats in front of the House of Blackheads in the Town Hall Square, who following a ceremony burnt the tree. But whether it was for Christmas or Ash Wednesday is still debated. I’ve stood in that very square myself in the Winter, surrounded by snow.

For this is indeed the greatest gift, which far
exceeds all else that God has created. Yet we believe so sluggishly,
even though the angels proclaim and preach and sing, and their lovely
song sums up the whole Christian faith, for “Glory to God in the
highest” is the very heart of worship.

Returning to his home after a walk one winter night, the story goes, Luther tried unsuccessfully to describe to his family the beauty of the starry night glittering through the trees. Instead, he went out and cut down a small fir tree and put lighted candles upon it.

In a manuscript dated 1605, a merchant in Strasbourg, Germany wrote that at Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlors and “hang thereon roses cut out of paper of many colors, apples, wafers, spangle-gold and sugar …” Though the selling of Christmas trees is mentioned back to the mid-1500s in Strasbourg, the custom of decorating the trees may have developed from the medieval Paradise Play. This play was a favorite during the Advent season because it ended with the promise of a Savior. The action in the play centered around a fir tree hung with apples.

ENGLAND

The earliest date in England for a Christmas Tree was at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor by Queen Charlotte, the German born wife of George III, for a party she held on Christmas Day, 1800, for the children of the leading families in Windsor. Her biographer Dr John Watkins describes
the scene:

In the middle of the room stood an immense tub with a
 yew tree placed in it, from the branches of which hung bunches of
sweetmeats, almonds, and raisins in papers, fruits and toys, most
tastefully arranged, and the whole illuminated by small wax candles.
After the company had walked around and admired the tree, each child
obtained a portion of the sweets which it bore together with a toy and
then all returned home, quite delighted.

GERMANY

The Christmas Tree was most popularized in England, however, by the German Prince Albert soon after his marriage to Queen Victoria. In 1841, he began the custom of decorating a large tree in Windsor Castle. In 1848, a print showing the Royal couple with their children was published in the “Illustrated London News.” Albert gave trees to Army barracks and imitation followed. From this time onwards, the popularity of decorated fir trees spread beyond Royal circles and throughout society. Even Charles Dickens referred to the Christmas tree as that “new German toy.” German immigrants brought the custom to the United States and tree decorating is recorded back to 1747 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

AMERICA

Many individuals and communities vie for the honor of having decorated the first Christmas tree in America. One interesting story tells of Hessian soldiers who fought for George III in the Revolutionary War. As they were keeping Christmas in Trenton, New Jersey around a decorated tree, they left their posts unguarded. George Washington and his troops were hungry and freezing at Valley Forge, but they planned their attack with the knowledge that the Hessians would be celebrating and thus would not be as able to defend themselves.

Christmas trees really became quite popular in the United States following the invention of the electric light. In 1895, President Grover Cleveland decorated the tree at the White House with electric Lights. This idea caught on and spread across the country.

This post originally appeared on Quora. Click here to view.

Whether you’re deeply invested in their modern lore or roll your eyes at the mere thought of undead fever, there’s no denying it: zombies have infiltrated pop culture. Found throughout contemporary culture, zombies can be fast, slow, sexy, goofy, or just gross, and their headcount just keeps growing.

Believe it or not, though, today’s zombies all descend from the same series of characters—ones that united diverse spiritualities against the real-life horror of slavery, and which have helped us explore our greatest fears and faults, from contagion to consumerism.

WHERE DO ZOMBIES COME FROM (OTHER THAN THE GROUND)?

According to BBC Culture, the word “zombie” may come from any number of terms in West African and colonial-era languages, such as ndzumbi, the Mitsogo word for “corpse,” and nzambi, “spirit of a dead person” in Kongo. In several West African traditions, such terms have alternately referred to harnessed spirits of the dead, fairies, humans transformed into animals, and even misbehaving children, to name a few. According to the book Race, Oppression and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition, “Aside from being scary monsters, what all of these [figures] share in common is an idea of subjugated agency.”

The closest relative to modern brain-hounds, however, is the Haitian zombi. It’s often been depicted as a soulless human shell that may be reanimated by potion, enchantment, or other foul means to toil for all eternity under total command of a bokor, or sorcerer, of the Vodou religion. Not to be confused with ‘voodoo,’ Vodou is “a loosely affiliated, syncretistic religion … [that] began when slaves of wide-ranging African backgrounds were brought together in what became the hub of the slave trade—Haiti … [and] systematically ‘converted’ to the Catholic Church,” according to Race, Oppression and the Zombie.

According to Farewell, Fred Voodoo author Amy Wilentz, the idea of zombies developed among these Haitian slaves. As the slaves endured notoriously cruel conditions through the 17th and 18th centuries, West African traditions evolved to reflect these horrors. Between the new spiritual traditions of Vodou in Haiti, Obeah in Jamaica, and la Regla De Ochá (a.k.a. Santería) in Cuba, BBC Culture says, “[it] gradually coalesced around the belief that a bokor or witch-doctor can render their victim apparently dead and then revive them as their personal slaves, since their soul or will has been captured.”

Overall, said Wilentz, the zombie was “a very logical offspring of New World slavery. For the slave under French rule in Haiti—then Saint-Domingue—in the 17th and 18th centuries, life was brutal: hunger, extreme overwork, and cruel discipline were the rule.” BBC Culture pointed out, too, that while the new figure was real-life horror manifested in myth, it also threatened something even worse: an eternity on the plantation, “without will, without name, and trapped in a living death of unending labour.”

VOODOO SPREADS—AND CREATIVITY ERUPTS

In 1791, a slave rebellion erupted against colonial rule and the fatally cruel conditions in French Saint-Domingue (then renamed Haiti), and after a long revolutionary war, Haiti became the first independent black republic in 1804. Word of the carefully engineered overthrow spread as far as Europe and the Americas, inspiring slaves and troubling their oppressors. Soon after, bolstered by plantation owners and investors, shocking rumors of so-called voodoo practices among slaves began spreading around the world.

“The imperial nations of the North became obsessed with Voodoo in Haiti,” BBC reported. “From then on, it was consistently demonized as a place of violence, superstition, and death … Throughout the 19th century, reports of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and dangerous mystical rites in Haiti were constant.”

Artists from imperial nations began picking up those stories and putting them to enthusiastic use. Articles, short stories, and novels in English on the imagined ‘dark magic’ of voodoo were popular fare in the 19th and early 20th centuries, according to filmmaker Gary D. Rhodes. Generally, however, “those English authors who wrote of Haiti were not in the least concerned about the negative repercussions of their work,” Rhodes wrote in White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film, saying “such depictions of Haiti and voodoo both echoed and inspired dominant U.S. prejudices that have existed through the 19th and into the 21st centuries.”

According to Rhodes, it was information and flourishes from this kind of writing—and particularly material in William B. Seabrook’s 1929 book The Magic Island—that inspired the first full-length zombie flick in history: 1932’s White Zombie. Starring Bela Lugosi (and with a plot not unlike Dracula’s), the film depicted a betrothed young woman being forced into a romance in Haiti using a version of the island’s “black magic.”

The movie impressed audiences enough to earn its producers a small bundle but never garnered much critical success. However, along with a series of scary-to-goofy films that also took up these premises in the ‘40s and ‘50s, according to Rhodes, White Zombie provided key, largely invented details about voodoo, its practitioners, and “zombification” that future directors would bring to shores around the world.

ROMERO’S LIVING DEAD TAKE OVER, CHANGING ZOMBIES FOREVER

Over the past several decades, zombies in popular films and television series have alternately run or walked, groaned or chatted, and chewed human flesh or rather saved themselves for brains; however, according to Kim Paffenroth, author of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth, they all reflect the work of a particular filmmaker. Paffenroth explained, “When one speaks of zombie movies today, one is really speaking of movies that are either made by or directly influenced by one man, director George A. Romero.” Beginning with his “landmark” 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, Paffenroth said, Romero established a new and now widely accepted set of rules for the undead that has shaped modern zombies across all mediums.

Oddly enough, the director didn’t set out to reinvent the concept of zombies. In fact, Romero told WIRED that the famously slow-but-unstoppable undead characters in his first film were simply called “flesh-eaters.” His legions of fans consistently called them “zombies,” though, so for 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, he gave into popular demand and renamed the hordes. Romero’s choice to drop the Haitian context for zombies (realistic or demonizing) led to major changes for the genre, too. “I just took some of the mysterioso stuff of voodoo out of it, and made them the neighbors,” he told WIRED. “Neighbors are frightening enough when they’re alive.”

Intentionally or not, Romero’s work with zombies had a big impact on the horror genre from the get-go. In the post-Romero film tradition, zombies are no longer living people who’ve been rendered powerless supernaturally, Paffenroth explained. “Such zombies are more victims than monsters, and can usually be released from the malevolent control by killing the agent that is controlling them, thereby returning them to human status, or to the peaceful rest of death,” he said. “The new type of zombie, on the other hand, is a horrifying killing machine in its own right that can never revert to ‘human.’”

With these fundamental changes, Paffenroth said, Romero and his colleagues pivoted modern zombie stories not just into new shapes and geographic regions, but also new areas of meaning. Whether it’s caused by a virus, a solar flare, or an otherworldly scheme, the revolutionary “zombie apocalypse” scenario popularized by Romero’s films has allowed artists to explore the fears and potential consequences of contemporary society, from authoritarianism to pandemics.

“In the movies, the cause of [zombism] is, of course, more or less irrelevant: it is only a necessary plot device to get us to the point of, ‘What would happen if corpses got up and started walking around?’ And the story that each movie offers is to look at one very small band of survivors in their struggle to survive, not to find explanations.”

SO, WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN UP TO LATELY?

In recent years, zombies have pretty much invaded Western culture, popping up everywhere from popular comedies to blockbuster video games. In some ways, they’ve become welcome figures (or, at least, more manageable ones) as part of a favorite new world fable. As such, the zombie apocalypse is even starting to serve as a kind of shorthand backdrop for tough times that may lie ahead—or, put another way, for when “all hell breaks loose.”

The CDC, for one, has been pushing Zombie Preparedness as a way to help get humans better equipped for handling a host of different disasters. There’s the potential impact zombies could have on international politics, too, while the inevitable challenges of “Death and Taxes and Zombies” continue to be areas of concern.

For zombie expert Max Brooks, who authored The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, the immense popularity of zombies makes perfect sense. “The [zombie] genre cannot exist outside of the apocalyptic,” Brooks told The Independent. “Since we are living in times of great uncertainty, zombies are a safe way of exploring our own anxiety about the end of the world.”

And while, from certain angles, the modern zombie may seem to have branched far away from its Haitian roots, experts aren’t so sure. In many ways, this character that “sprung from the colonial slave economy [is] returning now to haunt us,” and for good reason, said Wilentz. She explained to The New York Times:

“The zombie is devoid of consciousness and therefore unable to critique the system that has entrapped him. He’s labor without grievance. He works free and never goes on strike. You don’t have to feed him much. He’s a Foxconn worker in China; a maquiladora seamstress in Guatemala; a citizen of North Korea; he’s the man, surely in the throes of psychosis and under the thrall of extreme poverty, who, years ago, during an interview, told me he believed he had once been a zombie himself.”

No one knows if there’s a zombie apocalypse in our future, but given our long cultural history with the undead, it seems likely that many humans can already see bits of ourselves and our civilization reflected in those zombie hordes—and vice versa.