‘Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb’ (1938) was the thirty-first Stooge short, released on May 20th, 1938. This is prime Del Lord-directed Stooge stuff, with the pacing, characterizations and the plotting holding together in a brisk sixteen and a half minute ride of perfection. Curly’s running leap onto the top of the
Recently I posted some outstanding footage of upper Fifth Avenue in the late 1930s, colorized and with added period sound effects. The mesmerizing result of this restoration was the work of NASS, a Youtube artist who has done many of these videos usually featuring simple footage of cities in the
Here’s Don performing at Ronald Reagan’s 2nd inaugural in 1985. The fact that I was surprised while watching it that nobody jumped on stage and slapped him says a lot about where we are in our current comedy culture, which is a very sad place indeed. That Rickles was free
What’s funnier than Don Rickles on a serious roll in front of a large audience? I would venture that Rickles on a serious roll on a local TV show with no live audience but with the crew and co-anchors becoming disabled by laughter is even better. Here he is on
Today marks the forty-sixth anniversary of the first time Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had seen each other in twenty years. It happened on Labor Day, 1976, and was facilitated by Frank Sinatra who, as you’ll see in the above history-making clip, took the opportunity to also throw in his
In the previous post I wrote about my warm and fuzzy feelings (mostly) for Jerry’s yearly labor day weekend bash. If you ever enjoyed watching the train wreck of a sleepless Jerry, or if you ever grooved to guests like Lola Falana and Joey Heatherton and Charlie Brill, then the
For years, Labor Day meant nothing to me except that it was the endless weekend that the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon was on. As a kid I stayed up later watching Jerry than I ever managed to do with Johnny Carson. It wasn’t the acts per se that made the
Did you know that there’s a movie that dramatizes the making of ‘Rome Open City’? It was made in 1996 in Italy and appears to be incredibly difficult to find a viewing copy of. I did manage to find the trailer though and have posted it above. The film was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWJzqOTWjc&t=674s Here’s a very good 50 minute doc about Roberto Rossellini, featuring some marvelous color on-set footage of the ‘Stromboli’ shoot (the one he did with Ingrid Bergman after she fled America to take up with the Maestro). The video roll in the first few minutes eventually ceases so don’t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al61LQEeB5U Just last week I finally watched ‘Rome Open City’ for the first time. Don’t ask me how I managed to miss this event through what amounts to almost fifty years of classic cinema going. Sometimes ‘great’ films (like ‘great’ books) are so ‘great’ that one avoids delving into them–they’re