Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

There’s an apocryphal tale told about the very earliest days of cinema. In this anecdote, a film is shown where a large steam train puffs its way towards the camera. The audience, so the story goes, panicked and started to race out the cinema. I’ve heard this story a lot, and its always told with the angle that we should laugh at the naïve early cinema audience. A crowd, as this story implies, were so ignorant of the new technology that they genuinely thought they were about to be run down by a non-existent train. Such illiterate fools!

Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

On 7 December 1931, a little known stage actor, just signed to a Hollywood studio entered an office and emerged with a brand new name. Everyone in the room agreed that the one he’d been born with wasn’t quite striking and glamourous enough for movie posters and fan magazines. And so, in one short meeting, Archibald Leach became Cary Grant.