Not of this World: Stepin' Fetchit George Seminara Let's begin by acknowledging that Stepin' Fetchit is an incredibly controversial and polarizing figure in Hollywood History. Now that that's out of the way let's start. When I was about eleven, sometime in the dark ages, I watched Charlie Chan in Egypt on television. It was playing on our mammoth fourteen-inch black and white Zenith television receiving from WOR-TV 9 from the tower of the Empire State Building. About Charlie

ALL REGULAR ICFH BOOKS FROM 2022 NOW 50% OFF THROUGH NOVEMBER 28TH! That's right, every regular edition book we have published this year is available until Monday November 28th for 50% off! Now is the time to catch up on anything you might have missed or stock up on gifts for cinema loving friends and family. Email us at itcamefromhollywood@gmail.com and let us know what you would like to get. We will invoice your order via PayPal (with standard shipping) and when the order i

Collecting VHS in the Good Old Daze! Jim Rex I'm gonna take you back what seems a couple hundred years to the glorious decade that was the '80s. I know, things weren't anymore perfect then than they are now, but they were good times if you were of a certain age, you didn't have to work and pay real bills and you had all the time in the world to watch movies. I had always collected comic books and then horror comic magazines (like the Warren titles and some Marvel scary funni

Another interesting person I got to point a camera at. John Gielgud, April 14, 1904 – May 21, 2000 It was a beautiful day in London, sometime in the middle 1990s. White puffy clouds dot the sliver of sky I can see between the buildings from my window. I stumble down the three narrow flights of steps from the flat and onto the street. It's early, and Soho is quiet. I stagger into the Bar Italia. Caffeine! Two double espressos and, a large Americano, three sesame cookies. I'm r

Charles Francis Jenkins and one of his projectors Charles Francis Jenkins Minutia from George's Brain George Seminara After Moving to Washington DC from Richmond, Indiana to be a stenographer, Charles Francis Jenkins was less than thrilled with the hurly-burly world of stenography. He spent the moments between taking notes to think of the world at this exciting spot as the new century was approaching (the 19th century - hey, this was 1891). How was he going to make his mark?

I recently binge-watched Blockbuster on Netflix. It's a bittersweet look at how changing times dictate how media is viewed. I'm not here to talk about the show but I enjoyed it for what it was. It did get me thinking about things. I'm an old guy. I love movies. I love collecting movies on whatever format and watching them repeatedly. I love discovering some old movie I missed the first time around. But I still love going to the theater. I used to enjoy standing in line in fro

In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase By William Witney And a bunch of other stuff George Seminara Jackie Chan wouldn't exist, John Wick wouldn't exist, Neo and Morpheus would never exist, and Marvel movies wouldn't exist if it weren't for William Witney. What!?! Don't you know who he is? Don't feel bad. It's the kind of knowledge that guys who obsess a little bit too much about movies know. Guys like Quentin Tarrantino, Martin Scorcese, and I know. (That's an Ita