In Hollywood’s somewhat frantic search during the 1950s to find ways to best television’s increasing appeal, various different cinematic visual innovations were introduced–3D and Cinemascope being the most famous. But there were others that were actually superior to those innovations yet not fully utilized to their best advantage. One of
If you’ve never seen a restored Technicolor three-strip movie a real cinematic treat awaits you. The color is by no means realistic–it shimmers, glistens and looks like an especially scrumptious box of colored candies that probably costs a fortune (I’m thinking of a specific designer sweets shop on Madison Avenue).
‘Crash Goes The Hash’ (1944) was the 77th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures Corporation. It was photographed from Monday, October 11th through Wednesday, October 13th, 1943 and was released on Friday, February 4th, 1944 (the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar). This
A couple of days ago I posted a reel of 1970s TV commercials. My sense was that the 70s saw an upturn in the humor and style of commercials as opposed to the style of the 50s ads which were largely straight and often painfully earnest and the 60s which
Here’s an extraordinary reel of film documenting the sights and sounds of Times Square in 1931. It’s filmed with the then-experimental sound-on-film process as pioneered by Fox Movietone News. Thus the sounds of the streets are what you were really hearing, not added later and not professional mic’d. There are
What do Ann Miller, Roy Scheider and Bing Crosby all have in common? The answer: commercials in the 70s! While Ann and Bing were very much known and recognizable, Scheider appears to have been just an everyday lucky actor who got a much sought-after gig doing a Folger’s Coffee commercial–I
I’ve never made it through an entire Martin & Lewis movie but their nightclub-style routines are precious to me. They usually closed their ‘Colgate Comedy Hour’ shows with a free-wheeling, mostly unscripted rampage like the above which was performed on a local Los Angeles telethon in 1952. Their untethered energy
‘I Can Hardly Wait’ (1943) is the 73rd short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, March 15 through Thursday, March 18, 1943 and was released on Friday, August 13th of that year (the 225th day in the Gregorian calendar). I think the
Above I’ve posted the Jeanne Eagels starring vehicle ‘The Letter’ from 1929. Click here to read my post from earlier this week about Eagels tragic life and brilliant career. The movie is well worth watching and only runs 60 minutes. In my collection of antique New Yorker Magazines I found
Yesterday I posted the excellent final scene of legendary stage star Jeanne Eagels’ only surviving film ‘The Letter’ (1929). Today lets watch a very good breakdown scene from the 1957 Kim Novak-starring biopic ‘Jeanne Eagels’. The movie is largely fictionalized which is a shame–Eagels real life was filled with so