The YouTube genius NASS (I’ve posted his/her/their videos before) has once again worked his/her/their magic on some old footage of a city from the past, in this case Los Angeles in the 1940s. Much of it appears to me to be stock footage most likely shot by a studio crew
Here’s another Fats Waller short made for jukebox consumption in 1941 (see yesterday’s post for ‘Your Feets Too Big’). ‘The Joint Is Jumpin’, written by Waller, Andy Razaf and J.C.Johnson, is another of his hit novelty numbers and it’s given a rowdy treatment in this dramatization of what a Harlem
Last Friday I posted about a beautifully restored jukebox that was equipped to show films of the bands performing the songs in the jukebox. These films, known as ‘soundies’, are a great preservation tool as far too little film of performers of the day exist, especially black performers who were
Here’s an excerpt of a musical sequence from an obscure 1944 Republic Studios movie called ‘Atlantic City’. The number is ‘Harlem On Parade’ and it’s a more-than-slightly-valuable documentation of three of the prime black entertainers of the 1930s/40s. I refer to the above mentioned performers who all are given a
As a kid I would repeatedly attempt to watch ‘It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World’ every year when it received its annual nighttime network showing. But I always fell asleep at some point as the movies massive length eventually defeated my ability to stay conscious. One thing I always
‘No Census, No Feeling’ (1940) was the fiftieth short subject made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Saturday, May 25th through Wednesday, May 29th, 1940 and was released on Friday, November 4th of that year. The film begins with the inadvertent destruction of a shopkeepers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Vc3S0X5tA The words ‘restraint’ and ‘Jerry Lewis’ (and I consider his name a word, not a name) don’t usually go together. But one of the most striking things about this famous clip from ‘The Nutty Professor’ is how this dance manages to be out-of-control but in exactly the way that
Here’s a production number from the 1930 version of ‘Good News’, adapted from the hit 1927 Broadway musical of the same name by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson. The lead singer/dancer is Penny Singelton who later played ‘Blondie’ in the Columbia Pictures series of that iconic comic strip. Here she does
Yesterday I posted the extraordinarily strange acrobatic comedy diving-board routine of Larry Griswold. It occurred to me that, beyond the athleticism involved in Griswold’s act, there was a comic style to the movements, all of which were clearly choreographed. I believe that it’s based on the wonderful and long-forgotten art
Here’s a quick dose of Jerry Lewis in his greatest period (1957-64 for my money) in a scene from ‘The Delicate Delinquent’ (1957). He’s part of a police line-up and his behavior is precisely what I’m sure mine would be if put in the same situation. The tough-ass cop is