In commemoration of this unbearably anxiety-inducing, nausea-producing week, we’re watching the lousiest musical numbers ever filmed. We began yesterday with the dreaded Ritz Brothers doing a ludicrous number in ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ and continue today with the climactic number from the catastrophic 1984 sort-of-comedy “Rhinestone”, starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolly
In queasy acceptance of the fact that the most noxious week in American history has now officially begun, I’ve decided to post the most noxious musical numbers ever filmed. What better way to kick things off than with this stinker from ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ (1938) featuring the wildly unfunny Ritz
As the dreaded day of the impending catastrophe known as the 2024 election approaches, I thought it would be appropriate and sobering to take a brief look back at the Hollywood Ten, a group of filmmakers who were tried, convicted and imprisoned for having been members of the Communist Party
In yesterday’s post featuring documentary footage of Hollywood and environs in 1928, we saw views of a number of long defunct studios. Chief among them was the legendary and beloved Hal Roach Studios, home of Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Charley Chase and others. The studio was in Culver City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG0rnd-m3CU Here is a fascinating travelogue reel showing Hollywood and environs in 1928 (not 1929 as the YouTube poster has labeled it). I date it as late summer/early winter ’28 as the two movies we see advertised, ‘Four Rooms’ and ‘The Man Who Laughs’, were released in August and November
When Ted Turner began to colorize black and white classics in the 1980s the entire film buff/film history/old Hollywood community rose in a uproar. How dare he desecrate the gorgeous and historic black and white films of the past! Who was this heathen who couldn’t appreciate the true cinematic art
Color film began much earlier than most people think–it was in 1908 that Kinecolor process was first introduced. But I’m only one sentence into today’s post and already I’m getting lost in the weeds. The purpose of today’s viewing is to demonstrate a later (but still early) process called MultiColor.
‘Three Smart Saps’ (1942) is the 64th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, April 7th through Friday, April 10th 1942 and was released on Thursday, July 30th of that year (the 211th day of the Gregorian Calendar). This is peak Curly,
Yesterday I posted a reel of trailers of a number of Marx Brothers movies. The reel failed to include trailers for their first four films and, in an uncharacteristically lazy moment, I theorized that perhaps they’d been lost. Wrong! Above is the trailer for their third film ‘Monkey Business’ (1931)
Here’s a nice little compendium reel of some Marx Brothers movie trailers. It’s by no means complete–the first four films are represented by sloppily assembled half-trailer/half-clip reels instead of proper trailers. (Possibly the original trailers were lost?) And perhaps ‘The Cocoanuts’, which dates from 1929, never had a proper trailer