I’m pretty sure I posted this once before but it’s so extraordinary that it never gets old. It seems that one day on the ‘Animal Crackers’ set, sometime around when they were shooting the opening (which includes ‘Captain Spaulding’ of course), a camera rolled during a rehearsal. For an all
This past week I’ve discovered a terrific podcast about the Marx Brothers called ‘The Marx Brothers Council Podcast’. Each episode is a witty, deep dive into one of their movies as well as other topics covered (such as the infamous ‘Marx Brothers Scrapbook’ as conceived and edited by the late Richard J. Anobile).
‘Income Tax Sappy’ (1954) was the 153rd short film made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. No dates are available for its production period but the film was released on Tuesday, February 2nd, 1954 so we may assume it was photographed sometime during the calendar year 1953. It’s one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIiZuAVZH4whttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SkYdsvgOpw Here are two videos demonstrating Bob Fosse’s stratospheric performance talent, which was largely ignored or forgotten once his stratospheric choreographing and directing talent erupted for all to see. Though he began as a performer, Fosse, always super show-biz savvy, must have seen that he was never going to be
This is pure YouTube at its best. Apparently knowing of my admiration for the opening sequence of ‘All That Jazz’ which I posted yesterday, YT dredged up this extraordinary seven minute reel of raw footage of Fosse directing that very sequence and greeted me with it this morning. It must
Dig this crazy/cool Fosse dance sequence from ‘Sweet Charity’. Set to the go-go-ized strains of ‘Big Spender, the dance known as ‘The Aloof’ is a masterful creation, Fosse at his most crypto-sexual and controlled, with a centerpiece dancer who is nothing short of phenomenal. (Who is she? Is she out
‘Loco Boy Makes Good’ (1942) was the 60th short film made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, July 29 through Friday, August 1, 1941 and released on Thursday, January 8, 1942, making it the first Three Stooges short to be released after the attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_2Jw8S_uEghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCiiWOSa9pA Above are two exceedingly obscure and quite fascinating glimpses of Cyd Charisse in the early 1940s prior to being discovered by Arthur Freed and Robert Alton at MGM. The first is a ‘soundie’–a short musical film made to be watched in a special Jukebox that showed film reels of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3smUviG1G_s My friend Marc Myers of JazzWax sent me this terrific guest appearance by Jerry Lewis on ‘The Tonight Show’ from 1984. Unlike many of Jerry’s appearances which were often fraught with tension and humorous banter with Carson that had a curious edge of unease, this one is straight-up delightful.
The original screenplay of ‘The In-Laws’ was written by Andrew Bergman, who was known up to that point chiefly as one of the authors of the ‘Blazing Saddles’ screenplay (he was, in fact, the originator of the entire project but these things have a way of straying from their original