When Marx Brothers movies are discussed, they are generally broken into two main categories–Paramount (the first five features up through “Duck Soup”) and MGM (“A Night At the Opera” and the next–and increasingly less impressive–four movies). (The two worthless coda items, “A Night In Casablanca” and “Love Happy” rarely rate
Here’s a fascinating three minute clip from Mervyn LeRoy’s 1930 talkie “Showgirl In Hollywood” starring the always strange Alice White. (Shamefully, I’ve yet to see this film–though it’s happily extant and reputed to be quite good). It shows the making of an early musical number–complete with views of the cameras in booths, reverse shots
According to a post on the imdb page for “It’s Always Fair Weather”, Gene Kelly had been offered the lead in “Guys And Dolls” (presumably Sky Masterson) but MGM nixed it, refusing to loan him out to Samuel Goldwyn. As a result, they had an unhappy star to placate and
The lucky Mr. Cyd Charisse, vocalist and entertainer Tony Martin, was a major pop singer in the forties with a number of hit records to his credit, most memorably “To Each His Own”, “There’s No Tomorrow” and “I Get Ideas”. He also appeared in a number of movies starting in the
Once Arthur Freed’s musical unit closed up shop at MGM, the studio itself went more or less in the tank. Indeed the finish of the Freed era in the late 1950’s more or less conincided with the “end of history” for MGM–not that the studio went out of business (though
I mentioned the other day, while discussing Susan Hayward, Hollywood’s brief foray into a sub-genre that I think of as “musical melodramas.” These films are all post-war items–the era brought with it a frankness about human frailty, compulsions and violence that wasn’t earlier considered appropriate for mass entertainment–and used period
I wish I could say that my story of meeting Rudy Vallee ended with him giving me his megaphone. It didn’t. But still it ended in a pleasant enough way to warrant this final Rudy posting. I did as Tommy, his friend/helper, suggested (see 1/11 post) and sent Rudy a
So there I am, standing in my parents house with a letter addressed to me from Rudy Vallee. I recall my mother coming in the room and saying–as if nothing before in her life had ever been quite so strange–“Raymond…did you get a letter from Rudy Vallee?” I opened it,
Does anyone remember the huge fuss made in newspapers around the world in the early 1970’s when the scandal broke that a faded star of yesteryear– singer Rudy Vallee–desired to change the name of the street he lived on (Pyramid Place in the Hollywood Hills) to Rue De Vallee? A Congressman
No, I didn’t in fact get that review, but I have reason to be modestly proud of the reception of my three and half years in the making documentary “Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris”, which opened last Friday in New York City to all around (mostly) excellent reviews.