‘Corny Casanovas’ (1952) is the 139th short subject made by The Three Stooges for Columbia pictures. It was photographed from Monday, December 3 through Wednesday, December 5 1951 and was released on Thursday, May 1, 1952. (Perhaps ‘knocked out’ is a more appropriate term than ‘photographed’). If you don’t like
Apropos of yesterday’s post featuring the 1926 song hit ‘Yiddishe Charleston’, here’s a clip from a Warner Brothers/First National movie from 1932 called ‘Taxi’. In this famous scene, James Cagney speaks fluent Yiddish with a Jewish man who seems to be in some sort of trouble with an Irish cop.
The 1920s saw a rise in Jewish humor throughout the country, featuring comic strips like Milt Gross’s ‘Nize Baby’ and dialect comedians like Willie Howard and the team of ‘Smith And Dale’ (who were the models for Neil Simon’s vaudeville team in ‘The Sunshine Boys’). The superstar 1920s female Jewish
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post which featured a superb Eleanor Powell number from ‘Ship Ahoy’, here’s Eleanor dancing a nifty number with Fred Astaire in ‘Broadway Melody of 1940’. Apparently this was her favorite of her own on-screen dances. That’s all the sparkling dialogue I’ve got for today–I’m late
Eleanor Powell, Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s tap-dancing super-star of the 1930s and early 40s, is now an oddly marginalized figure in the world of dance history. Perhaps it’s because the movies she appeared in–featherweight musical vehicles–are now mostly unwatchable. (I hate it when that happens). One of them, ‘Ship Ahoy’ (1942),
What exactly is the ‘Foxtrot’? It’s the dance you see couples doing in movies of the 30s/40s/50s when they’re on the dance floor of a nightclub or restaurant and talking to each other and not really dancing. In other words, its the faceless and pointless ‘wallpaper’ of dancing, the blandly
‘Calling All Curs’ (1939) was the forty-first short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, December 27th through Friday, December 30th, 1938 and was released on Friday, August 25th, 1939. The film is a top-notch Curly entry from the richest era of their
Here’s a fascinating little fragment of W.C. Fields and director Mitchell Leisen on the set of ‘The Big Broadcast of 1938’. It’s hard to figure out what this was for. The first section is a little mini-routine between Fields and Leisen–they’re wired for sound so clearly this was meant for
This is a real curio. It’s clips and coverage of a concert that the Jackson 5 did in 1971 at–get this–West Side High School in Gary, Indiana. Imagine that? The Jackson’s coming to your auditorium for a little after school concert? (When I went to High School we once had
Given that Spotify reports that Earth Wind & Fire’s immortal ‘September’ has been played on its platform 1.18 BILLION times, I’m hardly breaking new ground by posting the above clip. However I just read the NY TIMES Obit of drummer Fred White–half brother of EWF founder and all-around auteur Maurice