Happy Independence Day! A great country is one year older today. May all your fireworks be bright, and your barbecues plentiful. Happy Birthday America!
Just for you from a Canadian blogger, here is a picture of the last boatload of Brits leaving New York City in 1783. And here is a whole blog devoted to the history of the Fourth of July.
Whitney Houston's famous version of the anthem, Super Bowl XXV (1991).
Star Spangled Banner played outside Buckingham Palace after 9/11.
Orson Welles's Magnificent Ambersons (1942), a great film about the invention of the automobile and the rise of modern America, based on the 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington. The movie portrays the fall of the Ambersons, a family that prospered in the pre-automobile era. Video Source: Youtube.
Magnificent Ambersons Prologue:
"The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873. Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city. In that town in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet and everybody knew everybody else's family horse and carriage. The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt at once, and wait for her, while she shut the window, ... put on her hat and coat, ... went downstairs, ... found an umbrella, ... told the 'girl' what to have for dinner...and came forth from the house. Too slow for us nowadays, because the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare."
Tom's speech "I'll be there" in the Grapes of Wrath (1940), film based on Steinbeck's novel about the Great Depression. Video Source: Youtube.
America from West Side Story (1961).
No comments:
Post a Comment