This It happened week!

The musical film about a magical car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, arrived in theaters in 1968. Where is the vintage-looking vehicle these days? It was bought at auction for $805,000 by film director Peter Jackson, who reportedly used it to drive cast members of The Hobbit around New Zealand while playing the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang theme song!

Following the success of the 1963 liveaction movie, The Pink Panther made its television debut as an animated series in 1964. In the movie, “the Pink Panther” was actually the name of a valuable pink diamond, so-called because, viewed closely, a flaw at its center resembled a leaping pink panther!

Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker was first staged in Russia in 1892. A flop, it only became popular after it was revived in New York in 1954. Its popularity rose even more in 1993 when a film adaptation starring 13-yearold ballerina Jessica Lynn Cohen and actor Macaulay Culkin as the Prince was released! Marvin Gaye’s soul classic “I Heard it

Through the Grapevine” shot to the top of the charts in 1968 where it stayed for seven weeks—longer than any other Motown hit. It enjoyed another surge in popularity in 1987, when it was performed by a group of dancing Claymation raisins in commercials for California Raisins! Oscar-winner Brad

Pitt was born in Oklahoma, in 1963. Like his peers Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, he studied journalism in college but dropped out just two weeks shy of graduation to seek fame in Los Angeles. Arriving with $325 in his pocket, he had to sleep on singer Melissa Etheridge’s couch!

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