The Celebrity Archaeology Podcast

Disney darling Annette Funicello on our episode cover from 1978. Annette was one of the original members of the Mousketeers. She joined "The Mickey Mouse Club" at age 13 in October 1955. Fans who viewed her every afternoon on their small black and white TV sets sent her over 6,000 letters a week!

A young Caroline Bouvier Kennedy warmed America's hearts as part of the First Family in the early 1960's. The adorable child had blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles.
She was photographed riding her pony Macaroni on the White House lawn, disrupting her father's press conference while wearing her mother's high heels, hiding with her younger brother John under her father's Oval Office desk and greeting the original seven astronauts.

Our cover photo of Margaret Trudeau and artist Andy Warhol was taken in 1978 at Studio 54 in New York. At the time, Margaret was an embarrassment to Canada because of her wild antics being recorded in the press. She was the wife of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and would later become the only woman to had been a Canadian Prime Minister's wife and now mother to a Canadian Prime Minister. Her eldest son Justin became Prime Minister in 2015.

Bella Sophia Loren! The ageless Neopolitan beauty is show in a photograph from 1984. She famously said: "Everything you see, I owe to pasta!" If only the Mediterranean diet was the perfect answer for everyone. But for Sophia-it works!

How much testosterone can fit in one photograph?
Plenty, if the subjects are John Travolta and Sylvester Stallone in this photo taken in 1983 at the premiere of the film "Stayin' Alive."
Stallone as director and Travolta as returning character Tony Manero weren't enough to save the film, which was a sequel to the very successful "Saturday Night Fever", but superstars John and Sylvester wouldn't let this dud do them in.

Paul and Linda McCartney, photographed in 1982, are on this episode’s cover. We can thank Linda for being the inspiration behind Paul's most beautiful ballads including "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "My Love."

Paul told People Magazine in 1993 that "Any love song I wrote was written for Linda." Their marriage lasted 29 years until Linda's death from breast cancer on April 17, 1993.

The way they were! Woody Allen and Mia Farrow photographed in 1983. Although they had a 12 year relationship that began in 1980, the stars never married. They were tied by their work together in films, two adopted and one questionable biological child and a famous uncoupling. Be sure to get comfortable in your chair, as there are a lot of moving parts to this story!

Goodness gracious, Great Balls of Fire! The cover art for this episode: It's the piano man and the piano man photographed in 1977. Billy Joel with Jerry Lee Lewis.
There is plenty to say about Jerry Lee Lewis "The Killer" who broke ground during the early days of rock 'n roll. He turned the piano into a rock 'n roll instrument for the first time and entertained while playing with his foot on the keyboard.

Love her or hate her, Jane Fonda (on our episode cover photo from 1979) has managed to look ageless even at 80! The former model, actress, political activist and exercise guru is still very much on the scene after she vowed to retire from films in the early 1990's.

Joe Namath is a former American football quarterback and actor known as much for playing on the field as playing off the field.
The Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania native 1969 Super Bowl III star made headlines while escorting arm candy such as Mamie Van Doren, Randi Oakes and Raquel Welch

"How can you mend a broken heart?" These lyrics were

prophetically written by brothers Barry and Maurice Gibb with Maurice's twin Robin joining in on the group's vocals. Together they were known as The Bee Gees.
The year was 1971 and the song became their first number 1 on the US's Billboard Hot 100. The Bee Gees would go on to become the only group in history to have written, recorded and produced six consecutive number one songs.

This episode photo of Michael Jackson, taken in 1980 at age 19, was before he became the "King of Pop." The adorable teen idol, who grew up before our eyes as a member of the Jackson 5, would continue to be embedded in pop culture history throughout his life.
Born in Gary, Indiana, he began performing with his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon as "The Jackson 5".

" I like the big hairdo, the gaudy clothes. I’ve never thought of myself as being a sex symbol and I don’t want to have to be a beautiful woman, like Raquel Welch.
'I want people to know it’s me when they see me coming and when they see me leavin'... 'So I figured I might as well look even more extreme,'" she said in an interview."

Yoko Ono was known as"The woman who broke up The Beatles." John insisted on her attending the recording sessions that had been off limits to girlfriends and wives.
Shadowing John into the studio and pushing her musical critiques onto the other three band members created a resentment and was seen as the force behind The Beatles breakup in 1970.

Today’s trifecta. The jiggler, the jingler and the mermaid together in 1982. Pictured are Suzanne Somers, Barry Manilow and the late Esther Williams.
This unlikely threesome is just one of the many odd couplings of celebs that you'll find on Celebrity Archaeology.
Suzanne Somers. She'll be forever remembered as the blonde in the white Thunderbird in American Graffiti. After playing many dumb blonde roles, Suzanne has lasted in show business by taking detours.

Dion DiMucci and Bobby Rydell are our cover subjects photographed in 1984, for this episode. The two former teen idols were at the top of their game in the 50's and 60's and are a big part of American music history.
Robert Louis Ridarelli who changed his name to Bobby Rydell was another Italian-American teen idol at the time. His inspiration came from the street corners of South Philadelphia.

Donatella, who has enhanced her appearance with rumored botox treatments, a puffier lower lip and possible jaw bone implant, still maintains the year-round tan and blonde locks. But she seems to be more of a caricature of her true self in appearance today. "Natural? What is Natural?," she asks. "I do not believe in totally natural for women. For me, natural has something to do with vegetables. I don't even know what my natural (hair) color is."

Get ready to hear some great tales of film director David Lean (Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia) and Kate Hepburn.

Stephen Silverman is the author of a dozen books, including The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America; Funny Ladies: One Hundred Years of Great Comediennes; and the critically acclaimed biographies of the filmmakers David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia) and Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain), which featured introductions by Katharine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn, respectively.

Joan was touted as Twentieth Century Fox's answer to Elizabeth Taylor-the other brunette beauty. She was put under contract but would never attain the top roles like Taylor. Her first film role came at age 19 and she continued with a steady acting career in film and television (Star Trek fans of the original series will remember her as Edith Keeler in the episode called “The City on the Edge of Forever” which aired in April, 1967.

Liberace - The Italian-Polish American performer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin in 1919. He began playing the piano at age 4 and performed with the Chicago Symphony at age 20. The classically- trained pianist who was bullied in his youth because of his effeminate behavior turned glitz , glamour , expensive costumes and his signature prop of the candelabra on the piano into high voltage performances on television and in Vegas showrooms.

The defining moment of the Catherine Zeta-Jones/ Michael Douglas law suit against Hello! magazine came, surely, when a lawyer superciliously observed that no one offered him a million quid to publish photographs of his wedding. Ms Zeta Jones looked him up and down icily, and said: "Yes. I can understand that."

This podcast is a reading of an article by Philip Hensher, first published in The independent 2/12/2003. Used by permission.

Public relations guru David Granoff and his epaonymous based firm have represented such luminaries as the late Anna Nicole Smith, Dr. Nicholas Pericone, Whihelmina Models, Alberto Culver, Revlon, Glorida Gaynor, David Edelstein, and The Related Companies, among dozens of others including the legendary Studio 54.

How Photography Makes Celebrity So Irresistible

In 1954, Photoplay, the doyen of fan magazines -- it had been around since 1911 publishing feel-good stories written by publicity agents -- printed an article about the early love lives of Jeff Chandler and Susan Hayward, who were childhood friends.

Adam Scull talks about his becoming a celebrity photographer in the late 1970's and covering the famed Studio 54 in its heyday.

CelebrityArchaeology.com, preserving the art and cultural heritage of celebrity photography from decades past for the benefit of future generations.