(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, we bring you a selection of stories spanning decades from our archives.

From Steve Kerr... (Stece Kerr) That I got picked by Phoenix.

(Tom) ...to Hamlet the pig.

(VO)- He just makes it a lot more fun being here.

(Tom) Up With People is one of Tucson's largest cultural exports.

(VO) I would consider Up With People the single greatest leadership training program in the world.

(Tom) In a new segment, we'll take you to hear some piano at the Morley Arts District in Nogales.

(VO) Here at the border, we're constantly looking at two sides.

(Tom) And a look at the Fox Theatre while its renovation was far from over.

(VO) The theater opened on April 11, 1930 and closed on June 18, 1974.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

And we are joining you from a very strange but interesting place.

This room is Arizona Public Media's archives on the University of Arizona campus.

In fact, it's a virtual museum of advances in broadcast technology over the last 60 years.

And these tapes are filled with stories of Southern Arizona.

As we prepare our move to our new building, the Baker Center, in the coming years.

Everything in this room can't possibly come with us.

So we've been working to digitize as much of this media as possible.

We found some incredible stuff.

Now, the following is a collection of some of our favorite stories from over the years, including Steve Kerr being drafted, a pig named Hamlet, and some nerds who got their revenge here in Tucson.

♪ UPBEAT PIANO (Peggy) It came in the second round.

The announcement that Steve Kerr- [ CROWD CHEERING ] - had been selected by the Phoenix Suns.

Kerr was a favorite son of sorts in Tucson, extremely popular with the fans and extremely effective for the team, especially those famous three-pointers.

(Steve Kerr) ♪ I'll drill it in from three-pointers ♪ [ CROWD CHERING ] (Peggy) Kerr was at his mother's home in Pacific Palisades, California when he received the call from the Suns, telling him he had been selected.

We spoke with him moments later.

(Steve Kerr) Everybody's happy that I got picked by Phoenix because with the NBA, the teams are spread out all over the country, and chances are you're not going to get picked by somebody near your home, but I was lucky, and we're all very happy.

(Lute) Well, I think that's great news for Steve and great news for the Phoenix Suns.

I'm sure with the following that Steve has in the state of Arizona, not just in Tucson, but I think all over the state.

(Peggy) Coach Olsen is busy this week with session two of his basketball camp.

Would be Steve Kerr's and Shawn Elliets are working on their skills, hoping to follow in the footsteps of those who shine with the cats and those who move on to the NBA.

Three years ago, Steve Kerr said talk of a career for him in the NBA was premature.

He said a career in coaching was more likely, but this year it was obvious that Kerr intended to play basketball as long as he could, anywhere he could, and of course the NBA was his first choice.

McKale Center used to be Kerr's home court.

Now it will be up the road.

Coach Olsen says he plans to take in some Suns games, and he says that drive to Phoenix will be a lot easier to take, knowing that at the other end he'll be watching Steve Kerr play basketball.

[ SQUEALING ] (Reporter) Hamlet the Pig is the official ambassador at the Pet Cemetery of Tucson.

He arrived in February of 2000, a little piglet from the Humane Society.

(Woman 1) He greets people.

He helps straighten the vases.

He basically just entertains people.

(Woman 2) We come to visit our aunt's pets here.

We love animals and we love love putting flowers down, and it's pleasant and quiet, and we just like coming and spending time with Hamlet.

(Reporter) Now I understand you came the first day that Hamlet was here.

(Kid) Yep, we did.

We came around the corner, and there's a little pot-bellied pig sitting there.

It just makes it a lot more fun being here.

(Reporter) Cemetery owner Darlin Norrish says "Hamlet also has an important job."

(Darla) Most people who are here have lost a dog or a cat.

Their cat or dog has died.

It's not lost.

They know exactly where it is.

The pet has died.

And yet they can interact with another animal that doesn't remind them directly of their particular death, which is a cat or a dog.

He attends the funeral services.

(Reporter) Did I mention Hamlet eats?

He is a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, but he's on a veterinarian-approved diet.

(Darla) We're hoping that he- because of following his diet so carefully, and lots of exercise that he gets because he does run the four acres here, -that he will probably stay under 50 pounds.

(Reporter) And he'll be here as long as his natural life lasts.

(Woman 1) No, he'll never be a pork chop.

He'll always stay at the cemetery.

And his life expectancy is 25 to 30 years.

So... [ CHUCKLES ] (Reporter) And then he has a home here afterwards.

(Woman 1) Oh yeah, he's already got his gravesite picked out.

Come on.

(Reporter) No Shakespearean tragedy here.

Hamlet the pig Hamlet the pig will entertain and comfort at the Pet Cemetery of Tucson, hopefully for many years.

(Peggy) Today, the first evidence of the film was seen as long lines of U of A students waited for their turn to meet with the casting director.

(Casting Director) It's a busy film.

Any other questions?

Now let me tell you that these cards are my form of communication with you.

I don't care if your picture is a Polaroid or if you take it in one of these little machines.

I just want to see your face there.

(Peggy) The Revenge of the Nerds had a stormy beginning.

U of A officials first decided the film could be made on campus, then they withdrew their permission because, among other reasons, they felt it would portray campus life in a less than flattering manner.

But after a secret meeting with the film's producers, the U of A administration did one more 180 and decided the film could be made here with a few conditions.

The casting people are looking for all kinds of people for the film, specifically athletic types, very tall women, Blacks and cute cheerleaders.

Everyone else will be a nerd.

(Casting Director) In the script, if they're not football players or the social stream of the college and they're the young freshman type just coming into the school, they are termed the nerds, [ CHUCKLES ] unfortunately.

But it's a fun thing.

(Peggy) The film represents an opportunity for cinema students at the U of A.

Some are hoping for production internships while also putting in their bid for being in front of the cameras.

(Man 1) This is an excellent opportunity because there are still speaking parts which are available, which comes under the Union's Screen Actor Guild's requirements that if you are capable of speaking parts and a very good actor, you can receive a card, which enables you to work in union productions anywhere in the country or the world.

(Tom) "Up With People" might be Tucson's largest cultural export, and we've covered them plenty over the years.

This next story from 2017 looks at the group's historic rise, and it includes a lot of material from these very archives.

(Narrator) Did you know a group that formed in Tucson went on to perform at two presidential inaugurations?

For two popes?

At six world expos and four Super Bowl half-times?

They were mentioned on "The Simpsons" and "South Park," and had backing of some of the largest multinational corporations in the world.

And if you're under 35, you've probably never heard of them.

(Dale) Today we may be the most polarized politically, racially, ethnically, that we have been in 50 years.

And I believe now is the moment for "Up With People."

♪ HIP HOP MUSIC (Narrator) Welcome to "Up With People" day at the Pima Community College downtown campus.

It's hard to estimate the size of the crowd because people keep getting out of their seats and running on stage.

Before long, more people are on stage than in the audience.

That seems to have no impact on the group's enthusiasm.

♪ UP WITH PEOPLE SINGING ♪ (Narrartor) So what is "Up With People"?

Even after 50 years, that question can be hard to answer.

(Blanton) Well, it started here in the great city of Tucson in the turbulent '60s.

(Narrator) This is Blanton Belk.

He founded "Up With People" and claims the group prevented World War III.

(Speaker) It is an expression of the positive voice of youth from around the world.

(Narrator) Belk was part of a movement called "Moral Rearmament," which hosted sing-outs in the mid-60s under the message of love, honesty, purity and unselfishness.

(Blanton) No rules, but bring your guitars.

We're going to have a hootenanny.

(Speaker) They feel a sing-out is the best way to express themselves.

(Narrator) They became a square alternative to hippie youth culture.

In 1968, Belk split from MRA and started "Up With People."

The group's first, and perhaps biggest, fans were politicians.

(Blanton) 95 congressmen and senators came to the first show in the Hilton Hotel with 5,000.

Standing ovation was led by Senator Goldwater, your senator from Arizona, and Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas.

And if we can bring people together, stay on the road and we decided we want to do it.

We said we'll do it.

That was the beginning.

(Narrator) The rotating cast from diverse backgrounds would travel for a year at a time doing community service and concerts wherever they went.

To date, they claim to have had 24,000 performances in 72 countries, and along the way have done over 3 million hours of community service.

In December of 1985, a 127-member cast of "Up With People" visited five Chinese cities with a musical show and a determination to open doors.

"Up With People" was the second western-group to play in China after George Michael and Wham!.

♪ SINGING The musical performances have been described as inoffensive as puppy dogs eating ice cream and apple pie, but some question the group's underlying motives.

A documentary called "Smile Till It Hurts," the "Up With People" story, paints the group as naive and quasi-cultish.

(Speaker) It is also a season for unofficial diplomacy and the warmth of friendship.

(Narrator) The film criticized its ties to large multinational corporations, which might have gained from the group's diplomatic efforts.

(Producer) Did you like it?

(Brian) That's an understatement.

Some Tucson residents and former cast members remember it differently.

I joined "Up With People" as a student in 1986, so July of 1986 was my first trip west of the Mississippi River.

(Julia) Mr. Belk and my dad were good friends.

I grew up with the family, and I thought, "Okay," and I wanted to be a fundraiser, which I am now.

Brian Kanter and Julia Waterfall Kanter met while working with "Up With People" that have been together ever since.

They say the experience was life-changing.

(Brian) To say it's special is putting it mildly.

(Julia) I would consider "Up With People" the single greatest leadership training program in the world.

And then there's this thing.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I met my husband, so it was life-changing.

♪ SINGING (Speaker) Music has always been a reflection of the times.

(Narrator) At the height of its popularity, "Up With People" had multiple casts with hundreds of members touring the world at the same time.

Their enthusiastic performances inspired today's Super Bowl halftime shows.

Before "Up With People," marching bands were the standard.

(Woman) Ladies and gentleman, "Up With People!"

(Narrator) During the 1982 Super Bowl in Detroit, "Up With People" gave a halftime tribute to Motown.

Performance was panned by critics, and Sports Illustrated rates it as one of the 10 worst halftime performances in history.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC The era of post-modernism marked by cynicism and irony clashed with "Up With People's Earnest Offerings," corporate funding declined.

They played one last Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans in 1986.

In 1993, the group moved its offices from Tucson to a suburb of Denver, and in 2000 it suspended operations.

(Dale) This is really special.

You'll find a lot of people know "Up With People" here.

(Narrator) In 2005, "Up With People" relaunched in a smaller, more manageable form.

Cast members travel for 20 weeks or one semester at a time.

Today, they've arrived in Tucson, the third city on their tour.

The incredibly diverse cast will do two days of community service at local organizations and play two shows at the Fox Theater.

While in town, members stay with host families who arrived with bizarre signs, clues, and identifiers to find their guests.

To date, the organization claims that over 800,000 families across the world have hosted cast members.

They say this builds meaningful relationships.

It also saves money.

Two days later, they're back at Pima Community College for "Up With People" day.

There are performances, outreach and a culture fair.

(Brianna) So "Up With People" came to my city in Tijuana, Mexico.

It was the first time I saw an "Up With People" show.

So since then, I fell in love with it.

And after graduating high school, I remembered that group that came to my school.

And I was like "I want to be part of that."

(Performer) One of our most popular is the conga line.

We have even done it at the Olympics.

(Narrator) The cast seems to be having a good time, and despite different levels of experience, are trying hard during their performances.

You could even catch them going over their routines in their downtime.

(Yumeka) Not so many people have experiences of performing or singing or dancing, but we are trying as much as we can.

I'm in fourth year of university right now in Japan, and I'm taking a year off to come here.

(Narrator) This new model for the group is much more reliant on tuition fees from cast members.

Currently, it costs a little over $17,000 a semester, or $27,000 a year.

That doesn't include the cost to travel home from Europe after the group performs its last show.

(Dale) Well, it does cost, and it's very similar to tuition to go to college.

Most of our students are taking a gap year or a semester out from their studies.

(Eddie) My name is Eddie.

I'm going to college here at Pima.

I'm passionate about business, and my favorite movie would probably be "Dumb and Dumber."

(Tariq) Hi, everybody.

My name is Tariq.

I'm from the very small island of Bermuda.

I'm 19 years old.

Obviously, I'm a product of people.

(Narrator) It's hard to gauge the effectiveness of these outreach exercises, but it is cool to meet someone from Bermuda or the 19 other countries cast members hail from.

(Blanton) Peace is not just an idea.

It's people becoming friends.

That sounds damn trite, but it's not.

The true security in any country is the friendship of your neighbor.

And as far as walls go, we have a basic belief that those that believe in freedom and democracy and liberty build bridges.

(Dale) Whether it's Tucson or the United States or our global community, we have to find a way to work together.

And I think that message is more relevant today than it has been since "Up With People" began ♪ SINGING Looking back through time, it's easy to see "Up With Poeple" as naive, and maybe it was.

But not any more or less than anyone else who tried to make the world a better place through song and dance.

♪ UPBEAT POP MUSIC (Tom) This next story is new.

It's not a part of our archives here.

And it features pianist and community organizer Evan Kory, who's led revitalization efforts in downtown Nogales and founded the Morley Arts District.

And it's part of a four-part series produced on their efforts there in Nogales.

These stories were produced outside of AZPM with editorial independence, and funding was provided by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Santa Cruz County American Rescue Plan Act.

(Evan) My name's Evan Kory.

I'm a musician, pianist, and harpsichordist, and also president of La Linea Arts Studio, as well as an organizer of the Morley Arts District.

I've been playing the piano and several instruments as a child for as long as I can remember.

I was about five years old when I started at the piano, and took it very seriously early on and left for high school actually to study in Michigan at Interlochen when I was 15.

So I've basically been a professional pianist since I was 15 years old.

I love Nogales.

I grew up on Morley Avenue because of our family stores, La Cinderella and Kory's Bridal, which were started by my grandparents in 1947.

Even back then and before, Morley Avenue was established and developed by immigrant families.

So my family's Lebanese, there were obviously now Korean and Chinese merchants presently, but before also the Jewish families, the Capins, the Brackers.

So everyone came from a different place and unified here on Morley Avenue, creating this diverse area in a small town.

My career and experiences as a musician helped me very much to do the work that I'm doing now with arts organizations and the Morley Arts District and our local efforts here.

To do this kind of community work, it's social work.

You're dealing with people and relationships.

And as a musician, you do the same thing.

As an arts organizer, you have to be able to communicate ideas, and especially with artists, there's so many viewpoints that you have to be able to really listen and incorporate what everyone thinks.

Otherwise, you don't have teamwork and you don't have a real collaboration.

There are families that have been here for many generations.

Because of that, there's this sense of community and sense of place and ownership of the area, which also gives it a different feeling from other larger cities where maybe you have no one to approach about using a space.

And in fact, La Linea Art Studio was created because we had the support of a family that wanted to see something positive happen on Morely Avenue, where they love and care about the buildings.

We envision artists from other places coming in.

We want to be a place where people feel welcome and excited to visit, too.

We have enough happening locally where now we can embrace artists from elsewhere.

Maybe you want to come and stay for a while and share their gifts and their vision.

I think that's the next thing for us here.

At the core of all art is a message of some kind.

In our case here at the border, we're constantly looking at two sides.

Because we're bi-national, we're American and Mexican, everyone here has this awareness that I think is rare and unique.

It doesn't exist in other parts of the world.

And probably in other border communities, it's similar.

The art that we produce tells a story of some kind that people, when they see it, maybe it'll spark ideas that they don't naturally come to.

It's important to cultivate that art and to share it because of that duality that we possess here.

♪ PIANO MUSIC (Tom) I'll just let former host Bill Buckmaster introduce this next story.

(Bill) One of the centerpieces of the Rio Nuevo Downtown Revitalization Project is the restoration of the historic Fox Theater.

In tonight's art scene, our arts producer Sooyeon Lee gives us an update on the effort to return the historic landmark to its once glory days.

(Sooyeon) There's change in the air these days in downtown Tucson.

It's downtown revitalization.

(Herb) The Underpass, the Science Center, the new Thrifty Block development, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, a lot of critical mass, and I think we've finally gotten the community's attention fully.

♪ GUITAR MUSIC (Sooyeon) The Fox Tucson Theater is one of the projects to revive downtown.

(Herb) This theater opened on April 11, 1930, and closed on June 18, 1974.

So a lot of people had their first date here, their first kiss, a lot of those things.

This was really the heart of downtown.

This was, as they say, the "A" theater, your "A" date.

You took them here.

This was the nicest place in town.

So we really want to bring that back.

It was the largest, the nicest theater in town, and it will be, because of its size, it's unique.

It'll be 1,200 people.

So coming in, there's probably a little bit of change here in the lobby.

We've continued to do the demolition.

(Sooyeon) Executive Director of Fox Tucson Theater Foundation, Herb Stratford.

(Herb) And I'm on the board of the National League of Historic American Theaters, and so we hear from people around the country.

And every major downtown revitalization in the United States has, as part of a historic theater.

And everybody knows that this is the kind of thing that helps bring people back downtown.

It generates interest.

It gives a venue for different kinds of programming that has left downtown.

So this really is a cornerstone to a lot of other things.

And while everything else is important, housing and museums and other attractions, this kind of a venue that can be open six nights a week dumping a thousand people on the street who need restaurants, who need shopping, who need those kind of things, that's really what you need as a catalyst for a revitalization.

So since the last time you were here, we've removed all the seats, and we took them out, and we're going to keep the parts we can, and we'll have to get new parts for some of the other things that we need to do before we reseat.

And of course, the chandelier is down.

We were putting some more bulbs in and fixing some of the glass.

(Sooyeon) Selected as a national landmark, the theater has less than a year until it opens if the foundation raises enough funds.

(Herb) We've been real successful so far with public dollars, and that is, you know, grants from, we're part of Rio Nuevo, federal grants, things like that.

And really what we're focusing on right now is the private dollars.

And we really need to, first of all, we need to match the city's Rio Nuevo money two to one.

So for every dollar they give us, I need to show two dollars privately.

So the city has given us about a third of the cost, and I have to raise the other two thirds.

So we're in the middle of our capital campaign, which is to raise the rest of the money about 5 million dollars, and we are plugging away on that, just trying to, as soon as we can get those funds in hand, we can set the opening date and finish the construction.

So this is kind of a back stairway for performers using the Fox, and a way for them to get up and around without people seeing what they're doing.

So there'll be a bathroom here for the crew and for the stage people, and then as you come down in here, we're going to have the dressing rooms for all the performers.

You'll have chorus, which is the group dressing rooms and the star dressing rooms, and then you'll have an organ storage room and some other technical things that you want to keep out of sight of the performers.

And so out here we have the orchestra pit, which actually is about a ten foot extension on the stage that entirely is on an elevator, and it goes up and down and it'll raise the organ, and it'll raise different things that we need to do and it can stop at different levels.

And that's kind of a nice addition.

I mean really at this point, what we have the money for, we're just finishing up the funds that we need for the lobbies, and that's about a million dollars to do the lobby spaces.

There's three floors of lobbies, and so we hope to start that construction this fall, have it done by February, and then people will really get a taste of what this building's going to be.

(Sooyeon) Stratford believes that the opening of the Fox Theater will have a domino effect.

(Herb) And I think this is the kind of thing that really leads to a lot of other development, and all the restaurants that are close by are going to see a huge increase in the people that are here.

And so they're all kind of, they're waiting patiently, but they want to see this happen as quickly as possible.

(Tom) Well thank you for joining us from here in the Arizona Public Media vault.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you next week, for more Arizona Illustrated.