David Bowie’s 1972-73 tour has been fictionalized on the silver screen in films like Velvet Goldmine and Hedwig and the Angry Inch — but it also became a movie in its own right. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture was filmed at a July 3, 1973, concert in Hammersmith, West London. It was Bowie’s last show using the Ziggy persona. Directed by veteran documentarian D.A. Pennebaker (who also did Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back in 1967), the film combines both the kookiness of early-’70s glam with Bowie’s near ageless hits, including “All the Young Dudes,” “Oh, You Pretty Things” and “Space Oddity.”
TIME’s take: “Bowie looks like an extra directly out of A Clockwork Orange — an effect heightened intentionally at the start of each concert by the use of jabbing white strobe lights and the electronic version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from the sound track of the Stanley Kubrick film.”
His Purpleness was never sultrier or sexier than the 1980s, when the artist formerly and latterly known as Prince churned out pop classics with embarrassing ease. But despite a string of hits like “1999″ and “Purple Rain,” mainstream America remained resistant to his charms. Sign o’ the Times, then, can be seen as Prince’s attempt to show his countrymen just what they were missing. The film was intended to be a concert documentary of Prince’s 1987 performances in Rotterdam, Holland and Antwerp, Belgium, but had to be almost completely reshot due to technical problems. According to saxophonist Eric Leeds, as much as 80% of the final cut came from footage produced on a soundstage at Prince’s Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis. The box-office take wasn’t exactly boffo (a lifetime gross of $3 million), but a subsequent release on VHS catapulted Prince into the living rooms (and hearts) of many.
Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79.
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
