Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller was born on May 21, 1904, thus making today his 122nd birthday. Waller was a singular figure in the music world. Nobody had a career remotely like his–he was a brilliant composer, superb pianist, innovative jazz organist, swinging singer, delightful comic personality and purveyor of infectious joy
As many of you cinema-geek sorts probably know, the original ending of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ was a pie fight that broke out in the war room. There are different reasons given for why it was cut–the above five minute doc claims the studio was nervous because Kennedy had just
Here’s a lovely clip from a 1970-ish Dick Cavett show featuring an interview with Orson Welles. Here, Welles trots out a few anecdotes that are popular in his repetoire but still delightful to hear from the great man himself. And trying to separate fact from fiction with Welles is always
I recently re-watched an excellent, not-too-well-known noir from 1955 called ‘The Big Combo’. It was directed by Joseph Lewis who most film buffs know as the man who directed the famous one-take bank robbery sequence in the 1949 noir ‘Gun Crazy’. In ‘Big Combo’, Lewis takes his limitations–it’s clearly a
Did you know that actor/director/restauranteur/sailor/guy who-co-produced ‘The Sting’ Tony Bill was a serious pilot and aviation history buff? A master pilot and aerobatics flyer, he’s owned and flown an envy-producing bunch of vintage hangar-candy among which are a 1946 Globe Swift, a 1935 Aeronica Chief, a 1929 Parks P-2A bi-plane,
A week or so ago I posted a wonderful clip of crooner Russ Columbo from a 1934 film called ‘Wake Up and Dream’. Columbo had a meteoric rise and was riding high when he died after a gun he was cleaning discharged in his face. I tend to believe the
There are many words that come to mind when watching the above Betty Boop cartoon from 1934, ‘Betty In Blunderland’. They include surreal, nightmarish, demented, outlandish and, most importantly, fascinating. The Fleischer brothers approach to animation was madly untethered to anything resembling reality. Plot doesn’t exist, though ‘Alice In Wonderland’
Of all the cool quasi-line dances that appeared in the 50s and 60s, there was one that stood out precisely because it was so uncool. ‘The Stroll’ was a song performed by the Diamonds and above are two examples of the dance step it inspired. The first is from a
Here are a handful of late 1950s/early 1960s animated TV commercials for such diverse products as pretzels, underarm deodorant, children’s cereal, Lucky Strike cigarettes and Beechnut chewing gum. The last mentioned features a nifty jazz score and the others are all witty and interestingly drawn. We’re beyond the lush and
Why did I wake up with the theme song of the old ‘Herman and Katnip’ cartoon series in my head this morning? Could I have revisited the series in my dreams? Highly unlikely–I don’t remember liking them all that much but I sure do seem to have liked the theme