Yesterday I posted the opening credit sequence from ‘The Delicate Delinquent’. Today’s offering is the musical credit sequence from his next movie ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby’ (1958), featuring the witty title song by Harry Warren and Sammy Cahn. A reader posited that the ‘Delicate Delinquent’ sequence might have been directed by Jerry
Here’s the fabulous opening credit sequence to Jerry Lewis’s first non-Dean Martin solo effort ‘The Delicate Delinquent’ (1957), written and directed by Don McGuire. The crisp black and white photography, the stylized pre-‘West Side Story’ fusion of violence presented as abstract dance, and Lewis’ peak pantomime performance combine to make
It wasn’t easy to become a member of the premium-level all-girl 1920s orchestra ‘The Ingenues’. As you’ll see, you not only had to be a woman who’d mastered one of many instruments that, for various reasons, were not necessarily associated with female players (saxes, trombones, tubas etc.) but you had
Here’s an astoundingly lousy Vitaphone short from 1929 featuring ‘Harry Wayman and His Debutantes’. Yes, it’s an all girl orchestra much like the one in ‘Some Like It Hot’ (‘Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters’). The only differences are 1) The leader is a guy not a woman. 2) There
‘Rusty Romeos’ (1957) is the 181st short film made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed on Tuesday, February 12 and Wednesday, February 13, 1957 and released on Thursday, October 17th of that year. The film is a scene by scene, joke by joke, practically line by
When I was a young’un I took great pleasure in watching ‘The Lawrence Welk Show’ on Sunday evenings. My parents and their contemporaries found this strange since Welk was way to square for them. (I can’t imagine what people my age thought of my devotion to the show). There were
Here’s an outstanding reel of home movie footage shot by Ira Gershwin featuring a veritable who’s who of 1930s cultural heroes. Much of it was filmed at the house that Ira and George shared at 1019 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. (It was later occupied by Rosemary Clooney and
Here’s an extraordinary piece of film. Apparently in December 1929, footage was captured of George Gershwin at rehearsals of his show ‘Strike Up The Band’, complete with chorus girls and a pre-rehearsed patter with star comedians Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. We see George playing the piano as well as
Yesterday I posted a terrific clip of Fred Astaire dancing with the divine Paulette Goddard from the movie ‘Second Chorus’ (1941). The six-degrees of Paulette Goddard takes us now back four years to 1937 when Goddard met and began an affair with George Gershwin, who was in Hollywood writing the
Since last week I’ve been posting Fred Astaire dancing with non-Ginger Rogers partners. Eleanor Powell was probably most impressive. Rita Hayworth was slick and ineffably charming. And now we come to the wildly fetching Paulette Goddard, who was no dancer but who is somehow the most adorable to watch. This