On Monday I posted a brief TCM doc about the ‘pansy craze’ of the late 1920s and early 30s. Among other things, the doc serves as a good introduction for those not already in the know to the premiere pansy performer of the era, Jean Malin. Born GENE Malin in
Yesterday I posted Busby Berkeley’s wonderfully choreographed ‘Hopping Dance’, performed by Bobby Van. The dance’s spiritual cousin–or perhaps it’s parent really–was a Berkeley production number from fifteen or so years earlier, ‘Horray For Hollywood’ from ‘Hollywood Hotel’ (1937). It features Benny Goodman and his then wildly successful swing era big
On Tuesday I reminisced a bit about my chance encounter with performer Bobby Van just months before his untimely death at age 51. I was perhaps a bit dismissive of Van’s talents and intend to rectify that today by offering up what is probably his career highlight, the ‘hopping song’
Before ‘The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis’ was a silly TV show, ‘The Affairs Of Dobie GIllis’ was a silly musical movie. (Before that it was a series of silly stories by Max Shulman who was responsible for all the silliness. He must have a made mega-ton of money from
This week I’ve posted two examples of the stunning work of forgotten movie musical director/choreographer/designer Dave Gould. Above is one of his best sequences, the ‘Hollywood Party’ number from the 1934 film –er–‘Hollywood Party’. For a brief stretch in the 1930s, Gould was given the resources of major Hollywood studios–RKO,
Here’s an extraordinary piece of musical filmmaking that really should be more celebrated than it is. It’s the big, fat, ultimate dance number from ‘The Gay Divorcee’ (1934), the second film to pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the first to be properly considered a starring vehicle for them.
‘Monkey Business’ (1931) is the Marx Brothers third movie and the first not to be an adaptation of a stage play. The movie is a non-stop delight–75 or so minutes of one laugh after another., And yet the last line of the film is famously (amongst Marxists anyway) disappointing. After
I was listening to a Gilbert Gottfiried podcast while driving today in which he and his guests began extolling the remarkably varied talents of Jerry Lewis. Not only was he a comic, a director, a writer, a philanthropist but he was also…an excellent dancer? Well, sort of. It’s true that
Athlete’s are athletic types, as we know. And athletic types often express themselves athletically. Hence the occasional meltdown in professional sports, wherein an organized game of athletic endeavor devolves into a street brawl that can’t be contained. Witness the above 1960 boxing match as captured by British Pathe, featuring a
Early talking films are invaluable relics of a dead civilization–namely the 1920s. The acting, pacing, diction, style and behavior are as incomprehensible and different from anything we now consider normal as sitting around a cave might be with its cro-magnin inhabitants. The movies aren’t really useful anymore to us in