https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbAx6oznWKw Why, you may ask, are we watching a women’s prison musical number called ‘The Lockstep’ featuring an act known as ‘The Dodge Twins’ photographed in two-strip Technicolor on a lavishly vertical set (if one can refer to a prison as ‘lavish’) accompanied by dozens of imprisoned chorus girls all
There are several things that this morning’s cartoon lacks. 1) Color. 2) Humor. 3) Porky Pig, as we’ve come to know him. This Porky is grossly fat, can barely speak and appears to have no fidelity at all to his poor suffering little train, which manages to win a race
Here’s the (in)famous ballroom dancing match-up between James Cagney and George Raft from ‘Taxi’ (1932) directed by Roy Del Ruth. According to a dance savvy Youtube commenter: ‘Neither Raft nor Cagney are doing the Foxtrot. Mr. Raft is doing the Peabody and Mr. Cagney is mixing the Two Step into
I’m not sure what this cartoon, possibly the best Daffy Duck directed by Friz Freleng, has to do with ‘Yankee Doodle’ or anything remotely Independence day related but it’s a major hoot. I was always particularly delighted as a kid when this one turned up and got all too familiar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWbTMJNWl4 James Cagney began his career as a ‘hoofer’ in Vaudeville–an admittedly self-taught dancer who picked up steps quickly and was athletic and acrobatic enough to try just about anything, all in the name of putting on a good show. He wended his way to Hollywood in the late 1920s
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 trailer of the 1975 remake of Raymond Chandler’s ‘Farewell My Lovely’ starring Robert Mitchum as Phillip Marlowe. Yesterday I posted the trailer for ‘The Long Goodbye’ made two years earlier with the decidedly more eccentric casting of Elliot Gould as Marlowe. I seem to recall seeing this one
Here’s another wicked-cool trailer for a Peter Bogdanovich movie (see yesterdays ‘Paper Moon’ trailer), this time for ‘What’s Up Doc?’ Once again PB is featured heavily and the general mood and tone gives us the sense of filmmaking actually being a pleasurable and amusing adventure, which in fact it rarely
Behold this most eccentric of movie trailers. It’s a four minute theatrical trailer for ‘Paper Moon’ which features Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal and…Peter Bogdanovich. Indeed the wunderkind director is all over this, mugging with the cast, laughing off-camera, playing director with great enthusiasm etc. It reminds us of what a