https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1peQ5iagq7shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoBVNmZS9wI During the early days of World War 2, the phrase ‘Keep ‘Em Flyin’” was used on propoganda posters to encourage voluntary enlistment in the Army Air Corps. So popular was the phrase that it became the title of a 1941 Abbott and Costello vehicle. Above is a strange hybrid
Yesterday I provided the mood-enhancing mirror scene from ‘Duck Soup’, explaining that when I’m depressed there are three things that can provide a way out of it; The Marx Brothers, Bugs Bunny and Laurel & Hardy. Today I’m not depressed but why should that stop us from watching a Bugs
It’s a gloomy day in the Connecticut countryside and I’ve been stuck in a low-grade depression for most of it. (It may not help that for some reason I’ve spent much of the day watching YouTube videos of fatal airplane crashes). How to get oneself out of these funks? I
Let’s put a button on this bizarre, embarrassing and absurd week–I speak of events on the world stage–with something that makes absolute, delicious sense. Here’s Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth doing the ‘Shorty George’ from ‘You Were Never Lovelier’ (1942). Watching this perfection is like drinking a long, cold glass
Actor Keith Baxter never achieved the level of respect and stardom that other British actors of his generation–Albert Finney, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton–did. But his superb turn as Prince Hal in Orson Welles ‘Chimes At Midnight’ will forever assure him a place in movie history. Here he is, sitting in
Yesterday I posted an interview with Rock Hudson in which he speaks about his collaboration with director Douglas Sirk. One of the eight films they made together was ‘The Tarnished Angels’ (1957), based on a novel called ‘Pylon’ by William Faulkner. It’s the story of a trio of barnstormers–flyers who
This weekend we watched Fritz Lang’s classic crime drama ‘M’, starring Peter Lorre as a child molester/murderer. The film is still shocking. Cinematically it’s filled with technical achievements years ahead of the times. Dramatically it’s perverse, scary and ultimately moving in a quite horrific way. Click here to read more
As humor goes, blooper reels are set at a pretty low bar. Hearing actors screw up and punctuate things with a tasty expletive gets old fast. So why am I posting a 14 minute reel of Warner Brothers contract actors blowing their lines from films made in 1939? Because it’s
Venice Beach, California, has always been a home for freaks. It was built for freakish reasons–to resemble Venice, Italy which it doesn’t at all–and was captured on film by freaky genius filmmakers; Orson Welles used it to sub for Tiajuana in ‘Touch of Evil’, Charlie Chaplin filmed ‘Kid Auto Races
Formation flying is an exacting and treacherous art–it’s still done and it’s still beautiful to behold, but it’s now greatly aided by technological communication. In the earliest days, however, there were no Bose headsets or radio transmission between pilots to be had, so the entire feat was accomplished using hand