In queasy acceptance of the fact that the most noxious week in American history has now officially begun, I’ve decided to post the most noxious musical numbers ever filmed. What better way to kick things off than with this stinker from ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ (1938) featuring the wildly unfunny Ritz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG0rnd-m3CU Here is a fascinating travelogue reel showing Hollywood and environs in 1928 (not 1929 as the YouTube poster has labeled it). I date it as late summer/early winter ’28 as the two movies we see advertised, ‘Four Rooms’ and ‘The Man Who Laughs’, were released in August and November
When Ted Turner began to colorize black and white classics in the 1980s the entire film buff/film history/old Hollywood community rose in a uproar. How dare he desecrate the gorgeous and historic black and white films of the past! Who was this heathen who couldn’t appreciate the true cinematic art
Color film began much earlier than most people think–it was in 1908 that Kinecolor process was first introduced. But I’m only one sentence into today’s post and already I’m getting lost in the weeds. The purpose of today’s viewing is to demonstrate a later (but still early) process called MultiColor.
Yesterday I posted a reel of trailers of a number of Marx Brothers movies. The reel failed to include trailers for their first four films and, in an uncharacteristically lazy moment, I theorized that perhaps they’d been lost. Wrong! Above is the trailer for their third film ‘Monkey Business’ (1931)
Here’s a nice little compendium reel of some Marx Brothers movie trailers. It’s by no means complete–the first four films are represented by sloppily assembled half-trailer/half-clip reels instead of proper trailers. (Possibly the original trailers were lost?) And perhaps ‘The Cocoanuts’, which dates from 1929, never had a proper trailer
When America banished Charlie Chaplin in the early 1950s during the height of the ‘The Commie’s Are Coming’ era, Chaplin fled with his wife Oona and their two young children Michael and Geraldine to Vevey, Switzerland where, by all accounts, he led a tranquil life of semi-retirement. Above is a
Let’s close this autumnal week with some madcap 1920s dancing featuring Joan Crawford. Above and below I’ve posted a few minutes from ‘Our Dancing Daughters’, the 1928 silent vehicle that officially launched Crawford’s career and world wide fame. Actually, calling the film ‘silent’ isn’t quite accurate as it was released
Today I offer two views of this week’s subject Gloria Swanson in the late 1920s/early 1930s. Above is a little reel that jams together a few obscure but interesting snippets of film–it’s a bit of a hodgepodge but I thought worth including in our loose and free-wheeling survey of La
Apropos of yesterday’s post featuring a 1965 interview with Gloria Swanson, here’s a nifty little 22 minute doc about the making of Billy Wilder’s masterpiece. I’ll let the film speak for itself. The only thing missing is a discussion of the film’s original opening, shot but cut after a bad