1. In the original pilot for Friends, the show was called Friends Like Us, used a different font for the credits, and played R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People” as the theme song. Friends Like Us was actually what the show was called when the cast auditioned for it and signed on. However, they changed the name to Six of One (and eventually just Friends) to avoid confusion with Ellen DeGeneres’ TV sitcom These Friends of Mine, which had premiered earlier that year:
Michael Flanagan/ Warner Bros. Television / Via youtube.com
ICYW, These Friends of Mine would change its name to Ellen to avoid being confused with Friends.
2. This is one of the last photos of James Dean alive. He was filling up his Porsche at a gas station in LA’s Sherman Oaks neighborhood before driving up to participate in the Salinas Road Race — he would die a few hours after this photo was taken:
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive / Getty Images
3. Here’s a photo of a 23-year-old Sean Connery competing in a Mr. Universe pagent in 1953 (and no, he didn’t win):
Ullstein Bild Dtl. / ullstein bild via Getty Images
4. Here’s Jim Henson in 1963, puppeteering Rowlf the Dog, who was the first breakout Muppet character. Rowlf was the sidekick character on The Jimmy Dean Show:
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
5. And here is a behind-the-scenes photo of Daniel Seagren, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz rehearsing a Bert and Ernie scene for Sesame Street:
David Attie / Getty Images
6. Oscar the Grouch was orange during the first season of Sesame Street, but that wasn’t meant to be his original color. Originally, Jim Henson wanted Oscar’s fur to be magenta. However, color TVs at the time couldn’t really process magenta very well, so Jim settled on orange. He changed his mind, though, and gave Oscar his signature green fur for Season 2 — with Oscar explaining the color change was a result of him being covered in mold and slime after a vacation to a swamp:
David Attie / Getty Images
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7. This is what Gucci’s Fifth Avenue store looked like in 1965:
Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
And this is what the store looked like inside (at the time, they didn’t sell ready-to-wear clothing, only accessories, and leather goods like shoes and bags):
Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
8. Here’s a behind-the-scenes photo from The Godfather of Marlon Brando getting his Vito Corleone aging makeup applied:
Paramount/ Courtesy Everett Collection
9. And here’s a behind-the-scenes photo of Alfred Hitchcock directing Janet Leigh in the iconic shower scene in Psycho:
Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
10. Julie Andrews was not the first person to play Mary Poppins on screen. It was Mary Wickes (pictured below) who played the character in 1949 in a one-hour TV adaptation that was part of CBS’s Studio One series:
Cbs Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images
11. The Beatles’ performance on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time is a seminal moment in both modern American and pop culture history. Everyone’s image of it is usually of the black and white footage of the performance. Here’s what the performance looked like in color and while being filmed:
Universal History Archive / Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
12. And this is the Beatles, except for George Harrison, who was sick, with Ed Sullivan (and their manager, Brian Epstein, on the left), the day before the taping, during their rehearsals:
Cbs Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images
13. Here’s a photo of Fidel Castro with Malcolm X in 1960. Castro was visiting New York for a United Nations conference, but was snubbed by some hotels and political figures, so Malcolm X arranged for him to stay in a hotel in Harlem, where he received a warmer welcome:
Photo 12 / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
14. Here’s a photo of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright inside the very first modern-day mall, Southdale Center in Minneapolis, a month after it opened in 1956:
Star Tribune via Getty Images
15. Anna Wintour has LONG been a figure in the fashion world. Here is a photo of her attending the Yves Saint Laurent Spring 1972 Haute Couture Collection fashion show, when she was an editorial assistant at Harper’s Bazaar UK:
WWD / Penske Media via Getty Images
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16. This is what the McDonald’s sign looked like before it added its iconic double Golden Arches to it in 1968:
Sjöberg Bildbyrå / Sjöberg Bildbyrå/ullstein bild via Getty Images
17. Here’s a screenshot of very early TV makeup. They needed special makeup techniques because the black-and-white cameras couldn’t capture colors the way our eyes do. Lipsticks or blushes in red often appeared too dark or muddled on screen, so actors used shades like green, blue, or even purple to make their lips and features show up properly in grayscale. They also needed to do large contours so that people would be able to make out parts of the actors’ faces through the low-resolution:
18. The Flintstones was sponsored by Winston Cigarettes during its first two seasons, and the characters did several integrated commercials for the brand:
Warner Bros. / Via youtube.com
19. Shot by Disneyland photographer Renie Bardeau, this is the last photo taken of Walt Disney at Disneyland in 1966:
Disney / Everett Collection
20. This is James Earl Jones in 1962, in one of his first TV appearances. He played Othello in The Cue for Passion, a five-episode series which featured excerpts from the works of Shakespeare:
Cbs Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images
21. And no, this is NOT James Earl Jones! This is his father, Robert Earl Jones, who was also an actor:
Historical / Corbis via Getty Images
This photo is often mistaken for being of James online.
22. Here’s a photo of a 3 ½-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio alongside his stepbrother on the front porch of their home in LA in 1978:
Peter Fleming Photos / Getty Images
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23. These are photos of Mae West in 1920, before she dyed her hair her signature platinum blonde color:
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
24. No, this is NOT a photo of Betty White in the 1940s. This is actually Betty dressed up in ’40s clothes to promote her hosting the 75th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade (which was in 1964). As part of the promotion, Betty dressed up in different eras during which the parade was held…
Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
…like the 1890s and 1920s:
Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
25. Much like we’d throw ’90s, ’80s, or ’00s nostalgic-themed parties today, people in the ’50s threw 1920s-themed parties. Below are a couple of photos from the ’50s of a 1920s-themed party, complete with everyone wearing period-appropriate costumes and the woman on the left doing the “Charleston”:
Graphic House / Getty Images
26. These clay models of Woody and Buzz’s faces were created for Toy Story so that they could be scanned into the computer whenever needed so that animators could always get the right shape, depth, and scale when animating them:
Buena Vista Pictures / ©Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
27. To promote the remake of Child’s Play in 2019, promotional posters of Chucky killing Toy Story characters were released:
/ ©Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy Everett Co / Everett Collection
The poster designs were based on the promotional character posters for Toy Story 4 — which was released on the same day as Child’s Play:
/ ©Walt Disney Co./courtesy Everett / Everett Collection
28. This is what it would have looked like if you were sitting in the audience during a taping of I Love Lucy:
Courtesy Everett Collection
29. And if you ever wondered what the set looked like in color, here is a rare promotional color photo:
CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images
30. You might not have noticed, but Michael Keaton’s Batman wears Nike sneakers in Batman and Batman Returns. However, there are contradictory reasons why this came to be. According to the assistant costume designer on the 1989 Batman film, one of the producers had struck a product deal with Nike and needed them in the movie, and because they didn’t fit stylistically with any of the other characters or background actors, they incorporated them into Batman’s costume. The lead costume designer on the 1989 movie, meanwhile, remembers Nike gifting it to them without a tie-in:
Warner Bros / ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection, Murray Close
31. Batman has actually appeared onscreen a lot longer than you might realize. He was first portrayed in 1943, by Lewis Wilson (with Douglas Croft as Robin) in a film serial:
Columbia Pictures/ Courtesy Everett Collection
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32. This is what Macy’s New York flagship store looked like in 1908:
Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
And here is the store in 2025:
Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
33. No photos of the Titanic’s Grand Staircase exist (well, at least before it sank). The photos we see of the Grand Staircase are actually from the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, which had an identical staircase. The two ships were built side-by-side and were nearly identical:
Universalimagesgroup / Getty Images
34. This is Steve Jobs at the very first Apple event in January of 1984, where he unveiled the first Macintosh:
Medianews Group / MediaNews Group via Getty Images
35. And here’s a photo of the iPhone when it was first introduced on Jan. 9, 2007, at Macworld, with people snapping pictures of it with their digital cameras — the very device the iPhone would soon largely replace:
David Paul Morris / Getty Images
36. These are a couple of photos of Sarah Jessica Parker filming the very first episode of Sex and the City in June of 1997:
New York Daily News Archive / NY Daily News via Getty Images
37. Here is a screenshot of Britney Spears and Madonna rehearsing the iconic kiss they did during the 2003 VMA’s “Like A Virgin”/”Hollywood” opening performance:
38. And here’s a screenshot of Christina Aguilera kissing Madonna during rehearsal, which wasn’t seen during the original telecast because the camera people cut to Justin Timberlake to get his reaction:
39. These are the Polish movie posters for Sunset Boulevard and Star Wars: A New Hope. The reason they look so distinct is that during communist rule, artists had limited access to Western marketing materials (sometimes the films themselves were even smuggled in) and were given creative freedom to interpret films however they wanted. Instead of showing actors or scenes, they used bold graphics, surreal imagery, and symbolism to capture the film’s mood or themes:
LMPC / LMPC via Getty Images, ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
40. And lastly, when The Wizard of Oz started filming, the Wicked Witch of West was not as menacing looking as she would be in the final film, with Margaret Hamilton wearing less makeup and a long bob wig. While Judy Garland’s Dorothy wore a strawberry blonde wig and a lot of makeup to give her a “baby-doll” look:
Getty Images, MGM/ Courtesy Everett Collection
Two weeks’ worth of footage was shot with the characters having these looks until the film’s director, Richard Thrope, was let go from the film, after MGM executives thought that the scenes he shot “did not have the right air of fantasy about them.” The movie was paused and Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West’s costumes were redesigned to what we saw in the final film:
MGM/ Courtesy Everett Collection
Also, none of the footage Thrope shot survived.
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