My longtime love/hate affair with Jerry Lewis has entered a new phase; the one in which I’m discovering talents of his that were–ready for this?–subtle and skillful. These are not words often associated with Joey Levitch but check out his dancing in the above clip from ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby’, a 1958
‘Squareheads of The Round Table’ was the 106th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, December 9th through Thursday, December 12, 1946 and released on Thursday, March 4, 1948, fifteen months after its making. The reasons for this are buried (one might
Yesterday I posted a late 1960s Volkswagen TV ad featuring a young (and very funny) Dustin Hoffman. Apparently, fifteen or so years later, Hoffman remembered the ease with which he’d picked up a few shekels by pimping himself out for a car he would never drive and put the word
The VW Fastback Sedan–a car you simply never see on the road anymore–received a big boost when newly famous star of ‘The Graduate’ Dustin Hoffman became the car’s key pitchman. Hoffman is still so close to his ‘Graduate’ persona that watching the commercial makes it seem like Benjamin Braddock found
W.C. Fields last home in Los Angeles was in a Hollywood neighborhood called Laughlin Park. The neighborhood is close to the hills of Los Feliz and gated for privacy. The house was for sale last year and a rather nice video was made showing the joint off. The house was
‘Dizzy Pilots’ (1943) is the seventy-fourth two-reel comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, April 6th through Friday, April 9th 1943 and released on Friday, September 24th of that year. The central gag of the film–one of their strangest and most inventive–involves Moe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A11EWc2_WJQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qYmFXWtdo8 Yesterday I posted about the amazing George Mann home movie footage of Broadway in the late 1920s. Mann performed in a number of Earl Carroll reviews during that decade and in 1928 he was part of the seventh edition of ‘Earl Carroll’s Vanities’ along with W.C. Fields. Although Fields
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C_sYUQl7xM ‘Oily To Bed, Oily To Rise’ (1939) is the forty-second short film made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Thursday, March 16th through Monday, March 20th, 1939 and released on Monday, October 6th of that year. Make sure to pause and crank up the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjV5U7W8X6E On Wednesday I posted two of Michael Cimino’s mid-1960s commercials which I’d sought out while reading Charles Elton’s fine new biography of Cimino. But it occurred to me that I’d never (except for his ‘Deer Hunter’ Oscar acceptance speech) heard him interviewed. And then I turned up the above,
Here are two mid-1960s Ginger Ale commercial spots, both of which use the same hipster narrator and Heffner-esque ‘Penthouse After Dark’ tone. The campaign line here is ‘one gulp is for thirst, the other gulps are for kicks’. We are deep in groovy mid-century party-land, with sexy chicks wearing striped