Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

DOES ANYONE STILL DRINK DR. PEPPER?

Next on our list (or YouTube’s list really) of catchy, never-to-be-forgotten-if-you-watched-a-lot-of-TV-in-the-70s jingles is the classic ‘Be A Pepper, Drink Dr,. Pepper’ production number. The lead in this niftily staged ad is David Naughton, later to star in ‘An American Werewolf In London’ and a slew of TV shows many of

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MILK & DRUMS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fAqa1ACGdA Yesterday I posted the much-beloved ‘Haw Haw’ song used in a Levi Jeans commercial from the mid-1970s. Naturally this provoked YouTube to drop a dumpster full of 70s TV commercials into my queue. I’m glad they did. First up was the above classic which I couldn’t wait to share

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THE HAW-HAW SONG

Why did I wake up this morning with the song from the Levi Jeans commercial (circa mid 1970s) playing in my head? And why did I find I could remember every word of the lyric? And why am I not surprised to see in the comments section that those who

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THE JED CLAMPET DANCE PARTY

Dig Buddy Ebsen dancing up a storm in two clips from the 1930s. As promised last week, Friday will be graced with dance only videos henceforth, in an effort (hopefully not in vain) to drown out the dreadful noise generated around the world during the week prior. Swing it, sister!

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A JOHN STURGES TALKFEST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6korx4cE1KUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGBaU0msiKA&t=569s Yesterday I posted a video showing director Mark Robson on the set of ‘Valley Of The Dolls’. Today we hear the audio of a half hour interview with director John Sturges (‘Bad Day At Black Rock’, ‘Magnificent Seven’, ‘The Great Escape’ etc.) The two men have quite a few

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ACTION ON THE ‘VALLEY OF THE DOLLS’ SET

Bobbie Wygant was a semi-legendary local Fort Worth celebrity interviewer for a local station, KXAS. Despite her local status, she was able to get a remarkable amount of celebrities to agree to be interviewed by her, sometimes in quite sophisticated settings (she traveled to them, not they to her). In

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CREDITS THAT SPEAK (CONTINUED)

Last week I posted several versions of talking front titles, courtesy of the Hal Roach Studios. Both movies were made in 1930 (the year Roach tried this experiment) and I confidently contended that the only Roach players that didn’t get this treatment were Laurel&Hardy. A reader wrote in to tell

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GENE NELSON ROCKS

Every week should end with a spirited, delightful dance number. That’s my new resolution. Which brings us to the fabulous, criminally-underrated Gene Nelson. Nelson is as athletic as Gene Kelly (and also a lot taller) and his light-hearted spirit adds an infectious quality that the often overwrought Kelly sometimes doesn’t

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SINGING CREDITS, PREMINGER-STYLE

If you ever watched ‘Skidoo’, Otto Premingers 1968 fiasco, and made it all the way to the end then you’d have been treated to what is clearly the film’s highlight–the singing end credits, courtesy of Harry Nillson. Otto’s richly Viennese voice is heard at the beginning of the sequence (‘Before

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CREDITS THAT SPEAK PT.2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8JKEso5a3Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LELTZmD3gWY In 1930, Hal Roach experimented with having the opening credits of some of his comedies spoken by two young women who appear to be identical twins, posed on a very nice quasi-Egyptian themed deco stage. Much like the soundtrack of the trailer I posted yesterday, this was likely another

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