https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TtERu8NKf8 A few days ago I posted a video of Vincente Minnelli’s abandoned mansion in Beverly Hills. It’s a fascinating and acrid experience to witness the shards of a once worldly and elegant existence. So lets close the week with a more sophisticated and Minelli-esque moment and bring the man
Before you read any further let me quickly give you fair warning that the above posted videos are a complete and total waste of time, lacking in anything remotely akin to cultural interest, intellectual rigor or even pop-culture delight. Still, I find the mid-show plugs that aired in the middle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0emVTQEWhjM Dig a live radio remote from the premiere of Judy Garland’s 1954 “A Star Is Born”, featuring the voices of Judy Garland, Moss Hart (who wrote the script) and Kitty Carlisle (Hart’s wife). Moss Hart sounds like a man playing the role of a playwright named Moss Hart and
If you’ve never seen a restored Technicolor three-strip movie a real cinematic treat awaits you. The color is by no means realistic–it shimmers, glistens and looks like an especially scrumptious box of colored candies that probably costs a fortune (I’m thinking of a specific designer sweets shop on Madison Avenue).
What more appropriate metaphoric way to end 2023 than by watching a movie about two idiots trying not to fall off a high floor of a building under construction to their certain deaths? Laurel & Hardy’s ‘Liberty’ (1928) is one of the greatest of their silent shorts and is their
The great character actor/painter/writer Burt Young (a.k.a. too many alternate names to list here) passed away ten days ago, though his death was only publicly announced yesterday. Burt was my good friend and collaborator–I directed him in two movies and spent a great deal of time with him making a
Behold a rare few moments in two-strip technicolor of Mae Murray singing/dancing/impersonating a bullfighter in the 1930 movie ‘Peacock Alley’. Murray was a former Ziegfield Follies star who achieved major movie stardom in the 1920s, known as ‘the girl with the bee-stung lips’. Her career climaxed in 1925 when she
Though director Edward Buzzell was never a household name, it is nonetheless a name that is known to send shudders down the spines of Marx Brothers aficionados. Buzzell was the director of the Marx’s two worst films, ‘At The Circus’ (1939) and ‘Go West’ (1940). Far from being a workman/hack
Above is a reel containing all the various iterations of the RKO Studios logo over the years, including not only the opening logo but the different styles of the words ‘The End’ which naturally appeared at the finish of the films. Of all the studios in the heyday of Hollywood,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2J4YHuJ9Ahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZP6UfkFe0 In 1928, composer Louis Alter created ‘Manhattan Serenade’, an art-deco orchestral piece designed to be recorded on what was then a long-playing Victor 78rpm disc (four minutes and forty-five seconds–almost two minutes longer than standard 78 RPM records). The piece is very much of its era–a 20s ode to