DVD Review: The Waltons – The Complete Ninth Season

When The Waltons hit the air in 1972, producers Earl Hamner Jr., Lee Rich and the series other executives constructed the show to emphasize both the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Depression in an effort to evoke a kind of nostalgia for the recent past. Hamner, Jr. understood that while it should be obvious […]

DVD Review: Kitt Kittredge – An American Girl

Directed by Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park) and produced by Julia Roberts is the fourth film to be based on the popular line of American Girl dolls. As any fan of the dolls knows, each of them comes with their own backgrounds and histories. Of the four films produced based on the American Girl dolls, Kitt […]

Patty Duke Is 61 Today

Patty Duke was born Anna Marie Duke in Elmhurst, Queens, New York to an Irish American father, John P. Duke, and an Irish-German mother, Frances McMahon. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother suffered from clinical depression and was prone to periods of prolonged depression. When Duke was 6, her mother threw her father […]