 Don't be scared—I just want you to be absolutely still for the next five hours while I curl up on your lap. 
Above, another promo poster for the classic comedy mystery The Cat and the Canary, with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. We showed you a Swedish promo last year but didn't talk about the film. It's based on a 1922 play by John Willard, which makes it old enough that even the cleverest jokes are probably too recognizable for modern viewers to generate legit laughs. A century is a long time in the evolution of humor. Well, except for your embarrassing country grandpa who thinks it's funny to spit chaw on his arthritic old smellin' hound. Time has stopped for him. Did a while ago. Point is, you've seen these gags reused hundreds of times.
But here's what matters. Hope and Goddard have great chemistry and emanate a lot of charm. As films of this sort go, this one has everything: creepy old house in a swamp, a contested inheritance, secret passages, misty gardens, disappearing bodies, a painting with peephole eyes, confounding clues, a love story, and a bang-up climax. It's a great flick. The first version was made in 1927 with Laura La Plante and Creighton Hale, and the latest version was made in 1978 with Honor Blackman and Michael Callan, but this version—the best of the lot we think—premiered in the U.S. today in 1939.       
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
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