Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

GRAPE NUTS; EUELL GIBBONS MEETS…JIMMY BRESLIN?

Behold the magical cereal known as ‘Grape Nuts’. I’m a fan but must admit to understanding why the nutty, fiber-heavy, kind of weird/bitter and hard to chew and swallow cereal is not for everyone. As an acquired taste it’s attracted wildly disparate fans and who could be more wildly disparate

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THE RETURN OF THE FOLLIES OF FOX MOVIETONE

‘Fox Movietone Follies of 1929’–sometimes referred to as ” Movietone Follies of 1929 and The William Fox Movietone Follies of 1929–is a lost film. Or is it? Wildly successful upon its release in the spring of 1929–a year of true American madness, peaking that summer and soon to collapse in the fall–the film

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WINCE-INDUCING ADS OF THE 70s

Here’s a dandy reel of deeply offensive television commercials from the 1970s. There’s loads of chauvinism, sexual harassment, mockery of Native Americans to go around, and cameos made by convicted rapist Bill Cosby and convicted murderer O.J. Simpson do not help matters. The female stockings commercials would make Benny Hill

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MAMBO FRIDAY

Last Friday I suggested a new weekly tradition of posting a Mambo dance to round out the week. Our first example was the lustrous Silvana Mangano–dig this clip of her killer Mambo if you missed it last week. Today we jump ahead a decade and dive into the ‘Dance At

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‘HELLS ANGELS’–PREMIERE NIGHT!

Above I’ve posted actual footage of the premiere of Howard Hughe’s 1930 World War 1 aviation epic ‘Hells Angels’. And below I’ve posted a recreation of the event in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant Hughes biopic ‘The Aviator’ (2004–ish). The real event is shockingly huge in scope—just the lit-up sign advertising the

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‘HELLS ANGELS’ PART 3: RARE OUTTAKES

Here’s an astonishing four minute reel of outtakes from ‘Hells Angels’, saved apparently by accident and carefully preserved and lovingly restored. I can’t begin to tell you how rare it is to see outtakes from a film this early–movie outtakes began to be saved in the mid-thirties as a result

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‘HELLS ANGELS’ PART DEUX: THE COLOR OF HARLOW

Yesterday we began a weeklong look at Howard Hughes’ landmark 1930 World War 1 aerial epic ‘Hells Angels’ by viewing the film’s brilliantly achieved air-born climax. Today we hit the ground with a resounding thud and move from the astoundingly impressive to the astoundingly awful, with a two-part scene set

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‘HELL’S ANGELS’–WHEN HOWARD HUGHES WAS SANE

The saga of Howard Hughes epic World War 1 film ‘Hells Angels’ (1930) has been well documented–if you don’t know it then this Wikipedia entry does a good enough job of giving you the basics. Essentially, the young Texas millionaire/aviator was infatuated with the movies from a young age and

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O QUE MAMBO!

I have an idea. From now on (and perhaps forever after) let’s make Friday ‘Mambo’ day. What hipper, cooler dance was ever invented (except for the ‘Black Bottom’ of course)? Here’s the glorious Silvana Mangano giving the dance a run for its money in the appropriately named ‘Mambo’ (1954). The

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MAE WEST; POST-CODE

Here are two clips from a Mae West film I’ve never seen called ‘Goin To Town’ (1936). The film is a ‘Post Code’ West and, as you know, she’s really more of a ‘Pre-Code’ kinda gal. All you really need to understand the story of the film are these two

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