Photo: © 1978 David Sutton / MPTV.net 

Summit Entertainment's "Twilight" premiered at Mann's Village Theater in Westwood, California on November 17, 2008.  Among those who attended were:

Robert Pattinson

Kristen Stewart

Alyson Michalka

Stephenie Meyer

Gil Birmingham

Justin Chon

Rachelle Lefevre

Taylor Lautner

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Kim Basinger

Camilla Belle

Teri Polo

Photo: © 2008 Joe Martinez / MPTV.net

Legendary soprano Yma Sumac, the "Peruvian Songbird" who dazzled music lovers in the 1950s and 60s with her incredible vocal range, died at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles, her website said Monday. She was 86.

John Lee Hooker and Carlos Santana - My assignment was to do a studio session with Carlos and John Lee for John Lee's new album, "Healer," which featured Carlos on several tracks.  To loosen everybody up, I suggested they do a couple of songs.  Hours later, they were still jammin' -- a private concert by two of music's living legends.  I put them in the corner of my studio to give the impression of jamming in a basement.

Nikon F4     Plus-X     125 ASA     1/60 sec.     f/8     50mm f/1.2    

Photo: © 1987 Richard E. Aaron

Jayne Mansfield (April 19, 1933 — June 29, 1967) was an American actress working both on Broadway and in Hollywood. One of the leading blonde sex symbols of the 1950s.  Mansfield, like Marilyn Monroe, was a Playboy Playmate of the Month, and appeared in the magazine several more times over the years. She won the Theatre World Award, Golden Globe and Golden Laurel. Mansfield starred in several popular Hollywood films that emphasized her platinum-blonde hair, hourglass figure and cleavage-revealing costumes.

Though Mansfield's career was short-lived, she had several box office successes. As the demand for blonde bombshells declined in the 1960s, Mansfield was relegated to low-budget melodramas and comedies, but remained a popular celebrity. In her later career she continued to attract large crowds in foreign countries, and in lucrative and successful nightclub tours.

Notable performances include " The Girl Can't Help it" and " Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter".

Photo:  © 1978 Wallace Seawell / MPTV.net

James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997), popularly known as Jimmy Stewart, was an American film and stage actor best known for his self-effacing persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and one Lifetime Achievement award. He also had a noted military career, rising to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.

Throughout his seven decades in Hollywood, Stewart cultivated a versatile career and recognized screen image in such classics as "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "The Philadelphia Story", "Harvey", "It's a Wonderful Life", "Rear Window", "Rope" and "Vertigo". He is the most represented leading actor on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) and AFI's 10 Top 10 lists. He is also the most represented leading actor on the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time list presented by Entertainment Weekly. As of 2007, 10 of his films have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry.

Stewart left his mark on a wide range of film genres, including screwball comedies, westerns, biographies, suspense thrillers and family films. He worked for a number of renowned directors later in his career, most notably Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra and Anthony Mann. He won many of the industry's highest honors and earned Lifetime Achievement awards from every major film organization. He died in 1997, leaving behind a legacy of classic performances, and is considered one of the finest actors of the "Golden Age of Hollywood." He was named the third Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

Photographer Ted Allan started his career working as a commercial artist for the Art Guild in Los Angeles. While still in his teens he opened a photographic concession in a dime store on Hollywood Boulevard, where he photographed many actors and aspiring movie stars. These pictures led to employment as a photographer for several large film studios including Fox and MGM. He opened the Ted Allan Film Studio in 1952 and worked mainly on shooting documentaries and low budget feature films.

Photo: Ted Allan / MPTV.net 

 Young Frankenstein is a 1974 comedy film directed by Mel Brooks, starring Gene Wilder as the title character. Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, and Gene Hackman also star. The screenplay was written by Brooks and Wilder.

The film is an affectionate parody of the classical horror film genre, in particular the various film adaptations of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein produced by Universal in the 1930s. This is reflected by the fact that most of the pieces of lab equipment used as props are the same ones created by Kenneth Strickfaden for the 1931 film Frankenstein. To further reflect the atmosphere of the earlier films, Brooks shot the picture entirely in black-and-white, a rare choice at the time, and employed 1930s-style opening credits and period scene transitions such as iris outs, wipes, and fades to black. The film also features a notable period score by Brooks' longtime composer John Morris.   

Michelle Phillips (born June 4, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She gained fame as a member of the popular 1960s singing group The Mamas & the Papas and is the last surviving original member of the group.

Phillips was born Holly Michelle Gilliam in Long Beach, California, the daughter of Joyce Leon (née Poole), an accountant, and Gardner Burnett Gilliam, a merchant marine. She grew up partly in Mexico City where her father was attending college on the GI Bill. She married John Phillips on December 31, 1962, when she was 18 years old, long before the formation of the band. In 1968 they had a child together, Chynna Phillips, who went on to co-found the singing group Wilson Phillips.

Phillips helped co-write some of the band's most popular hits, including "Creeque Alley" and "California Dreamin'". During 1970, Phillips sang backup vocals on a Leonard Cohen tour. That same year, Phillips married actor Dennis Hopper for eight days. Of that marriage, Phillips said: "I will say this about Dennis Hopper: We were married for eight days and truly... they were the happiest days of my life."

On January 12, 1998, Phillips was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York City, along with her fellow bandmates. For the first time in over two decades Michelle performed California Dreamin live with Denny Doherty and John Phillips. Phillips was later inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2000 (for the Mamas & Papas) where she again performed live with Denny Doherty, but without John.

Phillips began acting in the 1970s and continues to act in movies and in television today. In 1974 she was featured in "The California Kid" with Martin Sheen. In 1977, she appeared with Rudolph Nureyev in the film Valentino where she performed daring nude scenes.

She has made many guest appearances on programs as diverse as Spin City and Star Trek: The Next Generation (where she appeared the episode "We'll Always Have Paris" as a former love-interest of Captain Picard). Phillips' most recent serious acting job has been a recurring role on the WB drama 7th Heaven as Lily Jackson, sister of family matriarch Annie Jackson Camden (Catherine Hicks). She played Laura Collins in the 1996 television movie No One Would Tell.

However, Phillips is best known to modern television audiences for her roles as mother to two prime-time vixens. She starred for several seasons on Knots Landing as Anne W. Matheson Sumner, playing the mother of future Desperate Housewives star Nicolette Sheridan (a role which Phillips returned to for the 1997 TV-Movie Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac). Then in the mid-1990s she gained a whole new generation of fans for playing Abby Malone, mother of Valerie (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen) on Fox's Beverly Hills, 90210.

Phillips is renowned for her youthful appearance which she attributes, in part, to staying completely away from direct sunlight. With the death of Doherty on January 19, 2007, Phillips became the only surviving member of the original Mamas and the Papas. She also sang at Doherty's funeral in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

She was good friends with Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Wojciech Frykowski, who were killed by members of Charles Manson's cult on August 9, 1969. In a 2006 interview for the History Channel show Our Generation: Death of the Counterculture, she said that it was still hard to talk about the murders.

Photo:  © 1978 Kim Maydole Lynch / MPTV.net

"Wonder Woman" is an American television series based on the DC Comics comic book character Wonder Woman, created by William Moulton Marston. It starred Lynda Carter as Princess Diana/Diana Prince and Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor.

After an intensive talent search, a former beauty pageant winner and Bob Hope USO cast member from Arizona named Lynda Carter was chosen to play the lead role. For the role of Steve Trevor, the producers chose Lyle Waggoner, who at the time was better known as a comedic actor after several years co-starring in The Carol Burnett Show. He was also known to Ross as having been one of the leading candidates to play Batman a decade earlier. Waggoner was also considered a pin-up hunk, having done a semi-nude pictorial in the first issue of Playgirl.

Although the pilot followed the original comic book closely, in particular the aspect of Wonder Woman joining the military under the assumed name of Diana Prince, a number of elements were dropped. While the comic Diana obtains the credentials of a look-a-like nurse, in the pilot Diana Prince appears as a Navy enlisted woman (First Class Petty Officer Yeoman) without explanation. The ancient myths and legends which formed many of the early Wonder Woman comic book stories were lost too, in favour of more conventional stories involving Nazis. And, on a minor note, Steve Trevor was no longer blonde, but dark haired.

One change which was later to become synonymous with the show was the twirling transformation which dissolved Diana Prince into Wonder Woman. Lynda Carter claims to have suggested the move herself. For television, Wonder Woman also had the ability to impersonate anyone's voice, which sometimes came in handy over the phone. This ability vanishes after the first few episodes.

Unlike the earlier pilot, the comic book origins of the character were emphasized not only by the retention of the character's traditional costume and original setting but through the use of comic book elements. The series' title sequence was animated in the form of a series of comic book panels featuring Wonder Woman performing a variety of heroic feats. Within the show, location and exposition were handled through comic book-style text panels. Transitions between scenes and commercial breaks were marked by animated starburst sequences.

The series began at a time when violence on television was under intense scrutiny. As a result, Wonder Woman was less frequently shown punching or kicking people the way she did in the early episodes. The character would usually be shown pushing and throwing enemies, or using creativity to get them to somehow knock themselves out (jumping high into the air causing pursuers to collide). Despite the wartime circumstances, the character never resorted to deadly force (the only exception occurs in the pilot film when she sinks a Nazi submarine with an explosive plane, although the fate of the sailors aboard is never actually specified).

Wonder Woman herself was occasionally defeated by the Nazis, but she always came back in the second half of the show to save the day. Among the things the Nazis used on her were chloroform and poison gas. Her enemies also occasionally stole away her belt (leaving her without her super strength), her lasso, and her bracelets (leaving her defenseless against gunfire), but Wonder Woman always recovered the respective stolen component by the end of the episode.

Photo: Gene Trindl / MPTV.net

Charles Milles Manson (b. November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led the "Manson Family," a quasi-commune that arose in the U.S. state of California in the later 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders, which members of the group carried out at his instruction. Through the joint-responsibility rule of conspiracy, he was convicted of the murders themselves.

Manson is forever associated with "Helter Skelter", the term he took from the Beatles song of that name and construed as an apocalyptic race war that the murders were intended to precipitate. This connection with rock music linked him, from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title of the book that prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.

At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict, who had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. In the period before the murders, he was a distant fringe member of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly via a chance association with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. After Manson was charged with the crimes, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially; a number of artists have covered his songs in the decades since.
 
Manson's death sentence was automatically reduced to life imprisonment when a decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's death penalty. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment did not affect Manson, who is an inmate at Corcoran State Prison.

Photo: © 1978 Gunther / MPTV.net

"It was the 60th day of the 45-day shooting schedule for the film "Sleeper" when I saw Woody seated in his director's chair.  He was reading my list of credits which I had listed on the outside of my stage locker.  This list included various Richard Dix "Whistler" films, Chester Morris' "Boston Blackies" and Warner Baxter's "Crime Doctor."  Woody remarked just how much he enjoyed watching "those old films," saying, "If I see that any of those movies are listed to be shown on television, even as late as two or three in the morning, I stay up and watch them.  I think they are just great."  When I told him that they were the typical "B" product and that they were all made in just five days, there was quite a long pause before he said, "Impossible.  Nobody can make a motion picture in five days and have it turn out to be any good."  "Woody," I answered, "You would not stay up until two or three in the morning to view a film that you knew was no good, would you?"  He then wanted to know how it was accomplished, and as best I could, I told him . . . . "

Photo: © 1978 Bill Avery / MPTV.net