What do we know about Ricky Ricardo’s career? Chiefly that he came to New York via Cuba sometime in the pre-war years (just as Desi Arnaz did) but that the similarities between the two mens CV’s ends there. Desi hit it big on Broadway in 1939 in Rodgers and Hart’s
Not only was Desi Arnaz seriously underrated as the mind behind the building of Desilu Studios (see last weeks posts) but he was criminally underrated as a performer. In this 1951 clip from ‘I Love Lucy’ he and Lucille Ball perform a specialty number called ‘Cuban Pete’. It’s a frigging
Behold a nifty little mini-doc (under ten minutes) about the history of Desilu Studios. Directed and edited by an admirable TV historian named William French, it answers a number of questions I’ve always had about the pioneering TV studio/production company, including what back lots they owned and how much land
Here’s a chronological history of the Desilu logos, starting with ‘I Love Lucy’ and going all the way through…I don’t know. I forgot. But all the shows are here and after awhile it begins to feel like a role call of everything you watched after school in reruns–‘Gomer Pyle’, ‘Dick
Here is, for my money, the most beautifully crafted of all TV logos–graphics, music, concept all working in concert to grab the viewer and seduce them into seeing what was, in actuality, a pretty crappy presentation. I speak of the ‘ABC 4:30 Afternoon Movie.’ (It’s actually more than a logo–‘intro’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjOLJxUQAc Behold the ‘Screen Gems’ logo that proceeded (and ante-ceded) all Three Stooges shorts and many other programs of my youth, chief among them ‘The Flinstones’. The above version is the ‘old’ Screen Gems theme and icon, a simple rehash of the Columbia Pictures torch lady. I watched this logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwC_hvhSVN4 Here’s a Warner Brothers logo from the mid 1930s that I’ve never seen. It’s the same WB in a heart shaped box as always only this one begins from nowhere and dramatically zooms toward the audience. Beyond that, what’s interesting about these credits is the tangle of companies listed
Behold Grand National Pictures logo, as fancy and fine an Art Deco logo as you’ll ever see. All this for a low-rent studio that lasted only three years (1936-1939) and went into receivership only to have its assets taken over by the only studio at that time lower on the
The generically named ‘Producers Releasing Corporation’–or, familiarly, PRC–was an ultra low-budget, poverty-row movie studio that existed from 1939 to 1947 and is now primarily known as the studio behind Edgar G. Ulmer’s immortal noir ‘Detour’ (1946). Ulmer made a number of PRC movies–others include ‘Strange Illusion’ with Hedy Lamarr and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkattXslzEo After exhausting the subject of film leader (see previous three posts) I’m moving onto what comes after the leader is finished counting down. And that would be the logo of the studio who produced/released the film. Logos are an essential part of the filmgoing experience as they set up