On November 5th, 1930, the third Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. Below is what it looked like. But a seven minute film was made of the ‘event–or at least a restaged tab version of it–possibly for newsreel consumption. It’s as
Once upon a time, a Catholic-baiting/politically liberal/legendary Jewish comedian sat down across from a politics-obsessed/regally contemptuous/possibly anti-Semitic Conservative icon and engaged in a spectacularly uncomfortable one hour of banter. Yes, Groucho Marx and William F. Buckley actually did an episode of Buckley’s ‘Firing Line’, the televised debate show which always
Saul Bass, master designer/title-ist/graphic wizard and doormat creator (I’ll get to that in a minute) designed one of his most felicitous credit sequences for Edward Dmytryk’s 1962 movie version of Nelson Algren’s ‘Walk On the Wild Side’. There’s nothing more for me to say about it. Simply watch and enjoy.
It’s 1916, see? And we decide to take a ride on the brand new elevated train that travels up Sixth Avenue from the bottom of the Island to 155th. You get me, toots? So you pass your downtown ‘ladies mile’ area, move through midtown (Broadway, land o’ suckers and loafers),
Here’s a twenty or so minute travelogue made in the mid 1950s showing off the Southern California ‘lifestyle’ before that last word was invented. It’s in color, has nice shots of the usual spots and is otherwise unremarkable, though a perfectly pleasant way to waste twenty or so minutes. If
Philip Roth, one of my ten favorite Jewish humorists, died yesterday. Since none of Roth’s books translated particularly well to the screen there isn’t much point in posting a clip of one the movies based on his work. And his interviews were few and far between (and I imagine the
Above is a lovely visit to Harlem in the early ’30s (very early, maybe even late ’29 given the fashions on the women specifically). We see a world of pride, fancy clothing, friendly neighborhood deameanor…and perhaps that’s all that British-Pathe, who shot this footage (which includes a very good floor
Above is the audio only of a talk Jack Benny gave at UCLA in March of 1973, the year before he died. It’s a monologue (as you might expect) in which he rambles through various subjects–humor, cheapness, Bob Hope, how he got started etc. His manner is affable and very
Or so Lawrence Welk supposedly once called it while announcing Billy Strayhorn’s immortal ‘Take The A Train’. The above is Duke’s 1943 band playing the band’s theme (as of 1941 when it was written) on a train apparently–it’s a scene from a wartime contraption called ‘Reville With Beverly” (har). The
On Wednesday, April 18 1906, the San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 AM. Four days earlier, on Saturday April 14th, a man mounted a camera on the front of a trolley car on Market Street–a main artery of the city–and photographed the journey posted above.