On November 15, 1956, Love Me Tender, featuring singer Elvis
Presley in his big-screen debut, premiered in New York City at
the Paramount Theater. Set in Texas following the American
Civil War, the film, which co-starred Richard Egan and Debra
Paget, featured Elvis as Clint Reno, the younger brother of a
Confederate soldier.

Originally titled The Reno Brothers, the movie was renamed
Love Me Tender before its release, after a song of the same
name that Reno sings during the film.

On August 25, 1939, The Wizard of Oz, which will become one of
the best-loved movies in history, opened in theaters around the
United States.

Based on the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), the film starred Judy Garland as
the young Kansas farm girl Dorothy, who, after being knocked unconscious in a tornado, dreams about following a yellow brick
road, alongside her dog Toto, to the Emerald City to meet the
Wizard of Oz. Along the way, Dorothy encounters a cast of
characters, including the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly
Lion and the Wicked Witch of the West.

On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock music festival opened on a
patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New
York town of Bethel.

Promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and
Michael Lang originally envisioned the festival as a way to raise
funds to build a recording studio and rock-and-roll retreat near
the town of Woodstock, New York. The longtime artists’ colony
was already a home base for Bob Dylan and other musicians.

Despite their relative inexperience, the young promoters managed
to sign a roster of top acts, including the Jefferson Airplane, the
Who, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin,
Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many more.

While Porky’s Hare Hunt was the first Warner Bros. cartoon to
feature a prototype of Bugs Bunny, A Wild Hare, directed by
Tex Avery character designed by Bob Givensand released on
July 27, 1940, is widely considered to be the first official Bugs
Bunny cartoon. It is the first film where both Elmer Fudd and
Bugs, both redesigned by Bob Givens, are shown in their fully
developed forms as hunter and tormentor, respectively; the first
in which Mel Blanc (below) uses what became Bugs’ standard
voice; and the first in which Bugs uses his catchphrase, "What’s
up, Doc?" A Wild Hare was a huge success in theaters and
received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cartoon
Short Subject.

Months before its release, Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane began generating such controversy that Radio City Music Hall eventually refused to show it. Instead, Citizen Kane, now revered as one of
the greatest movies in history, made its debut at the smaller RKO
Palace Theater on May 1, 1941.

George Orson Welles
(May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985)

Orson Welles  is considered to be among the
greatest and most influential filmmakers of
all time.