Here’s a remarkable piece of film. It’s the surviving five minutes from an otherwise lost 1933 film called ‘Mr. Broadway’, featuring a very young Ed Sullivan (you can see him in a couple of cutaways sitting at a table with Bert Lahr). The film is essential viewing for any devotee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bBG3R_ex60https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2nPoSWtv-k Though the weekend wouldn’t be complete without some Three Stooges action, I thought I’d mix things up a bit today and, instead of offering a short comedy, offer a fascinating short reel of home movies featuring the boys. These were shot at some point in the early-to- mid 30s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdNDRDsFdk0 Let’s tie together this weeks poker on film theme with our now regular Friday’s-with-Ernie Kovacs feature with this little poker-themed nugget from a 1961 Kovacs special. Let me be honest; it’s not very good. But its important to remember that visionaries like Kovacs often are more process-oriented than result-driven
There is simply no more entertaining poker scene ever filmed than the above match-up between Paul Newman and Robert Shaw in ‘The Sting’ (1973). Newman commands the scene from the moment before he enters the room–he takes a beat, exhales and preps himself to go on stage like any good
Yesterday I posted a poker game featuring a cheating W.C. Fields. Today it’s the Three Stooges turn. This is from ‘Goofs and Saddles’ (1937) and features Curly singing that inane little soprano humming song (the lyrics are: ‘lo-lee-lo…la lee la…lo-lee-lo…la lee la…) that always indicates his faux innocence or distractedness.
I must admit to a complete lack of interest in the annoyingly retro-cool game of Poker. For me Poker belongs to the same crowd that reads Cigar Aficionado, professes to like small-batch Bourbon and Scotch and makes a big deal about betting on the Kentucky Derby. Having gotten that off
To commemorate the year of my birth (my 60th b’day is coming up in a fast 27 days) I’m posting a few minutes of excellently restored home movie footage taken from a car driving around Hollywood in that banner year of 1964. In addition to this being particularly high quality
Continuing our Friday Ernie Kovacs posts, here’s Kovacs most famous routine–The Nairobi Trio performing ‘Solfeggio’. Even if you’ve seen this before–and chances are that you have–it remains weirdly delightful and beyond definition. As always with Kovacs, the ‘meta’ of it all is also fascinating–how did he describe this routine to
Here’s the rather original first trailer of ‘The Thin Man’ (1934) starring…well, if you read this blog I’m pretty sure you know who played Nick and Nora Charles. It uses a rather striking ‘book-end’ gimmick–William Powell doubles himself and Nick Charles in a split screen in which Nick stands within
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwk0kwETsYIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlMxXrRCMAI Above are two clips depicting Hollywood premieres of the late 1920s. The first is the ‘real thing’–some marvelous, restored black&white newsreel footage of two different premieres, ‘Broadway Melody’ and ‘The Divine Lady’ (both 1929). The second clip is the opening sequence of ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ (1952), which is