Happy 10th Anniversary to Out of The Past: A Classic Film Blog

It was ten years ago today that Out of the Past: A Classic Film Blog was launched by Raquel Stecher. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Out of the Past, it is a wonderful blog dedicated to classic movies. Raquel writes on a wide variety of topics related to classic film, from movies set at New Year's to film noir. She also regularly reviews books on classic film, and she hosts the annual Summer Reading Challenge, in which participants read books on classic film and then review them on their blogs, Instagram, or Goodreads. Over the years Raquel has conducted several interviews, including ones with Kurt Norton (co-director and producer of the documentary These Amazing Shadows) and Sheena Ochoa (author of the Stella Adler biography Stella! Mother of Modern Acting).  Each year she also offers some of the best coverage of the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival one will find anywhere.

I am proud to say that I have read Out of the Past: A Classic Film Blog since its earliest days. While I had read other movie blogs before, it was the first blog dedicated exclusively to classic film I ever read. Raquel then became my first classic movie blogger friend. In fact, she was the first person I ever followed on Twitter. We do have a lot in common. We are both fans of Bobby Darin, Jack Klugman, Robert Mitchum, Norma Shearer, and the Charlie Chan movies. Raquel remains a dear friend to this day.

And I must say that I am very proud of her for 10 years of blogging! To give you an idea of why this is a major accomplishment, in the Naughts, Perseus Development Corporation did a study on the phenomenon of blogging. They discovered that 66% of all blogs had not been updated in over two months and many had apparently been abandoned. About a quarter of all blogs had only a single post, made on the day the blog was set up. In terms of the lifespans of most blogs then, a ten year old blog is positively ancient!

I urge all of you who have not yet done so to stop by Out of the Past: A Classic Film Blog. I guarantee that if you are a classic film buff you will enjoy it immensely. And I also want to wish Raquel a happy 10th blogiversary!