Much like the Ernie Kovacs clips I’ve been posting over the past few Fridays, SCTV was very much an acquired taste. If you got it, you got it forever. One of my favorite bits was Rick Moranis’s cruel (and impressively accurate) impression of Merv Griffin. They never did an actual
Here’s a recently ‘unearthed’ (according to the YouTuber who has kindly provided it) promotional film for Las Vegas made in 1955. It’s a remarkable document, not so much for what it includes as for it what it excludes. While extolling the many fun activities tourists can have when visiting the
Here’s another of YouTube artist NASS’s wonderful colorized views of old New York City (with added sound bed of urban atmosphere). This time we are exclusively on Fifth Avenue in midtown. The year is somewhere between 1936-1938 based on the automobiles. The city is unusually clean–the streets literally look polished
This is pretty messed up. I’ve been re-reading James Ellroy’s ‘The Black Dahlia’, the first novel in his L.A. Quartet and one that I haven’t revisited in many years. Thus, it’s fair to say that I am fully immersed in the post WW2 L.A. noir of it all. Now, YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqIeYLSMDew In the land of great public meltdowns, this clip from a 1975 local L.A. television show called ‘Both Sides Now’ is royalty. George Putnam and Mort Sahl faced off in what was supposed to be an invigorating hard-ass debate. But things went south almost from the get-go, as you’ll
In December, 1929 the above remarkable footage was shot in the Times Square Theater during rehearsals of the Gershwin show ‘Strike Up The Band’. I’ve posted this before but every so often I rewatch it and am freshly amazed at what a rare and peculiar document it is. In it,
In 1931 George and Ira Gershwin went to Hollywood for the first time to compose the score for a Janet Gaynor/Charlie Farrell musical called ‘Delicious’. No popular songs of any particular note came out of this endeavor but, Gershwin being Gershwin, a symphonic masterwork somehow snuck its way into existence.
Last week (or was it the week before?) I posted an experimental 1929 film called ‘Skyscraper Symphony’ by Robert Florey, which was a paeon to art deco New York and the then startling proliferation of the massive and impressive buildings of the era. On a very different note, avant garde
‘Don’t Throw That Knife’ (1951) was the 131st short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, June 20 through Thursday, June 22, 1950 and was released on Thursday, May 3rd, 1951 (the 123rd day on the Gregorian calendar). I think this is one
This Friday’s Ernie Kovacs entry is a guest appearance he made on ‘You Bet Your Life’. Kovacs and Groucho are an uneasy fit and this little segment is proof that comedians often sniff around each other, uncertain as to who has the power.in the dynamic. Ernie to his credit shows