https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwC_hvhSVN4 Here’s a Warner Brothers logo from the mid 1930s that I’ve never seen. It’s the same WB in a heart shaped box as always only this one begins from nowhere and dramatically zooms toward the audience. Beyond that, what’s interesting about these credits is the tangle of companies listed
Behold Grand National Pictures logo, as fancy and fine an Art Deco logo as you’ll ever see. All this for a low-rent studio that lasted only three years (1936-1939) and went into receivership only to have its assets taken over by the only studio at that time lower on the
The generically named ‘Producers Releasing Corporation’–or, familiarly, PRC–was an ultra low-budget, poverty-row movie studio that existed from 1939 to 1947 and is now primarily known as the studio behind Edgar G. Ulmer’s immortal noir ‘Detour’ (1946). Ulmer made a number of PRC movies–others include ‘Strange Illusion’ with Hedy Lamarr and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkattXslzEo After exhausting the subject of film leader (see previous three posts) I’m moving onto what comes after the leader is finished counting down. And that would be the logo of the studio who produced/released the film. Logos are an essential part of the filmgoing experience as they set up
Here are six beautiful countdowns complete with some random V.O. (‘Lifeguard’…final mix’…etc.), the requisite flash frame of a pretty 1960s-ish woman and the curious private language found in the world of leader: the letters CF stand for ‘check frame’ and the beeping sound on the number 2 is called a
Take a trip to the dark side of yesterday’s humor with ‘Hollywood Night Court’, a 1930 ‘blue’ record meant for private consumption only at parties. The three minute sketch traffics in stereotypes of gay men and female prostitutes, using low-down double entendre to garner its laughs…if indeed anyone laughed at
Apropos of yesterday’s post here is another short (3 minutes) reel compiled of old film leader. This one is particularly cool as it features all kinds of weird graphics and unusual countdowns that I’d never seen before. There is also a slate used as slug from the movie ‘The Time
Film leader is a length of film attached to the head or tail of a film reel to assist in threading a projector. The leader attached to the head of the reel is called ‘head leader’ (or sometimes simply ‘head’) and a leader attached to the end of the the
Watch this extraordinary instructional video of an extraordinary machine, the 1931 RCA VICTOR RADIOLA AUTOMATIC ELECTROLA. Designed to allow listeners to listen to up to thirty minutes of music at a time instead of having to get up and flip their 78rpm record every three minutes, the machine retailed for
Here’s four minutes of the Los Angeles I grew up in, circa 1975. Perhaps the strangest thing here is the lack of SUV’s on the road. Otherwise it’s pretty much the same LA–bland, ugly and weirdly seductive–that it is today, only quite a bit emptier.