Spurred on by yesterday’s ritual viewing of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ I went in search of James Cagney interview footage and turned up this 1980 interview with Tom Snyder, shot on Cagney’s farm in upstate New York. The first thing that struck me was how incredibly unlined Cagney’s face was at
I keep meaning to post a cartoon that isn’t a classic Warner Brothers Bugs/Daffy/Elmer/Porky number. But have you seen Tom and Jerry lately? Or, God help you, Andy Panda? (We skip over Disney entirely for the simple reason that nobody ever really wanted to see those cartoons to begin with–they
Here’s a very clean, clear look at Hollywood Blvd. circa 1952/53 (based on car models) driving languidly east from Crescent Heights all the way to Highland Avenue. The street signs are helpfully subtitled and a few interesting things happen during this long-ago cruise. For instance: at 43 seconds the driver
Today marks my 58th trip around the sun. What better way to wish myself happy birthday than with a clip from Our Gang’s ‘Practical Jokers’? Ah, pineapple…not bad!
Behold “The Home Electrical”, an informational film produced by General Electric in 1915 demonstrating all the new, modern and convenient devices one could now litter there home with, thus making the home ‘electrical’. It’s a fascinating view into another century (actually two centuries since the film was made early enough
Ten or so years prior to the delightfully comedic Peter Sellers TWA ads of the mid 1970s that I posted yesterday TWA had a different vision of how to present itself to the public. Above is a one-minute ‘informercial’ ad from 1961 featuring Miss Mary Ann Lynch in a ‘day
The great Peter Sellers picked up a little bread and butter cash doing a series of ads for TWA in the mid-seventies and the first of the above posted ads, where he plays an Italian ‘Via Veneto or Bust’ swinger, was one of my favorite ads of my childhood. This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7BBc36e9U&t=143s Here’s ‘Daffy The Commando’ from 1943 directed by I. (Friz) Freleng. I kind of desperately want the title card art framed and hanging in my guest bathroom. The hell with it–my bathroom.
I’m quite certain this is the only time you will ever see Lee J. Cobb aka Johnny Friendly aka Willy Loman dance. It’s a misbegotten routine from a Dean Martin show that somebody in some writers room thought was a good idea. It features Dino, Cobb, Buddy Ebsen (the only
The inimitable Joey Heatherton dances ‘The Hullaballo’ on this undated mid-1960s episode of the dance show ‘Hullabaloo’. But is it, in fact, an original dance? Or something of a cross between The Jerk and The Monkey? You decide. I have to catch a train. By the way, dig how the