This Day in Pop Culture for February 7

1964: Beatlemania Begins

On this day in 1964, “Beatlemania” made its way from London to New York via Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101. The Beatles had just made their first #1 U.S. hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” six days prior. The “fab four” were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans and two days later, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison made their first appearance on the popular television variety show, the Ed Sullivan Show.

It is estimated that about 73 million U.S. television sets (about 40% of the population) were tuned in to watch the spectacle. By April, all five best-selling U.S. singles were Beatles songs. By August, the film A Hard Day’s Night was released.

1940: Pinocchio Becomes a Real Boy

Walt Disney’s second full-length animated feature, Pinocchio was released on this day in 1940, but it should have been the third. After Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937, Walt had planned to release Bambi as his next movie, but the studio was having difficulty with both the story and the illustration of the animals, so Bambi went on the back burner.

Pinocchio has been called “groundbreaking” in that movie was able to create realistic movement to vehicles and the items found in Geppetto’s workshop.

Other natural elements like rain, lightning, smoke, shadows and water also looked more realistic than in previous animated works.

Although considered one of the best animated films ever created, Pinocchio did not do well of his first official outing in terms of box office sales. However, the film was the first animated movie to win two Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“When You Wish Upon A Star”). It wasn’t until the movie’s reissue in 1945 that Disney made a profit on the film.

In the mid-2000s, DisneyToon Studios began to work on a sequel, something that John Lasseter cancelled after being named Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2006.

1988: ‘America’s Most Wanted’ Begins its Long Run

Although CBS once aired a similar show called Wanted for three months in 1955-1956, the inspiration for America’s Most Wanted ironically came from a 1967 German show (translated as File Reference XY…Unsolved) and a 1984 British show (Crimewatch).

When developing the show for FOX, executives found it difficult to find a good host. Of those considered for the role included Rudolph Giuliani (before he was the mayor of New York City); former governors Chuck Robb and Bob Kerrey; journalists Linda Ellerbee and Bob Woodward; and Theresa Saldana, a victims advocate before they settled on John Walsh. Walsh’s own six-year-old son, Adam, had been kidnapped and murdered in 1981. His advocacy (and a little help from a made-for-TV movie called Adam) had resulted in the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

America’s Most Wanted debuted on this day on just a few FOX stations across the country. David James Roberts was the first fugitive featured, and he became the first person caught due to viewers’ tips.

The show ran from 1988-2011 on FOX and then moved to Lifetime for just one season before it was dropped. FOX brought back the show in 2021 with Elizabeth Vargas as the host which only ran for a handful of episodes. In 2024, the show came back with Walsh hosting once again along with his son, Callahan Walsh.