Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

A MARILYN MONROE SCREEN TEST (OF SORTS)

Here’s a 1950 screen test of Marilyn for a movie that apparently was never made called ‘Cold Shoulder’. The actor she’s testing with appears to be Richard Conte which leads me to believe the film was a Fox production. When I hear ‘screen test’ I usually think of a one-take

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MARILYN; SPRING, ’62

Marilyn Monroe is quicksand. Once you step into the topic it soon controls and consumes you. Witness my mention of her house Monday–meant to be a one-off blog entry–and the weeds into which I wade as I focus on the last months of her life. While living at the Helena

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12305 FIFTH HELENA DRIVE: A MARILYN MONROE JOINT (literally)

Yesterday we looked at some creepy silent footage shot the morning of Marilyn Monroe’s death at her house in Brentwood. Today we look at some equally creepy footage–but creepy for an entirely different reason. Apparently the house was offered up for sale in 2010 but for whatever reason didn’t sell–it

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THE MARILYN MONROE HOUSE: 8/5/62

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtXlX7uAlCQ I’m reading James Ellroy’s magnificent new novel ‘The Enchanters’, much of which has to do with the still mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe. Most of the Monroe material thus far (I’m halfway through) revolves around her house in Brentwood, where she was discovered dead of an overdose of barbituates

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WEEKEND STOOGEFEST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paXKTN4qoSg ‘Sappy Bullfighters’ (1959) is the 190th and final short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed on Monday July 4 and Tuesday July 5, 1957 and released on Thursday June 4, 1959 (the 155th day in the Gregorian calendar). It’s a remake of a

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ABBOTT AND COSTELLO–VARIATIONS ON A THEME

The ‘Niagra Falls/Slowly I Turn’ bit–which we’ve been examining this week in excruciating detail–found a variation of sorts in this Abbott and Costello routine from ‘Keep ‘Em Flying’, a 1942 wartime vehicle co-starring Martha Raye as twins. (Click the above link–the person who posted the video declined to share it

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‘SLOWLY I TURN’…(and see Errol Flynn?)

My dogged pursuit of the increasingly obnoxious vaudeville routine known as ‘Niagra Falls’ or ‘Slowly I Turn’ continues with a Colgate Comedy Hour version starring Abbott and Costello featuring Errol Flynn. This is the worst version thus far of the routine–Flynn is miscast, unable to convincingly be broad and over

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‘SLOWLY I TURN’–THE LUCY RICARDO TAKE

See yesterdays post (as well as the weekend Three Stooges offering) for more info than you could possibly ever need about the classic Vaudeville sketch commonly known as ‘Niagra Falls’ but accurately titled ‘Slowly I Turn’. We’ve seen the Stooges version, we’ve witnessed Lou Costello’s interpretation and now we come

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‘SLOWLY I TURN’–THE LOU COSTELLO VERSION

This past weekend I posted the Three Stooges movie ‘Gents Without Cents’ which features a classic Vaudeville routine known (incorrectly) as ‘Niagra Falls’. (It’s correct name is ‘Slowly I Turn’). The Stooges were one of many comedians to do a version of the sketch and above we see Lou Costello

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LOWER MANHATTAN IN 1901–AFTER & BEFORE

Here’s some gorgeously colorized footage of lower Broadway and the surrounding environs at the beginning of the last century. Unlike the colorized footage of the city in 1947 that I posted last week, this includes the black and white version of the same footage–it comes after the colorized stuff finishes

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