Here’s a new find (at least for me). It’s a 1931 short film called ‘Intimate Interviews’ featuring a journalist named Dorothy West interviewing the new screen sensation James Cagney at his home. There are so many interesting things about this eight minute time capsule that its hard to know where
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWbTMJNWl4 James Cagney began his career as a ‘hoofer’ in Vaudeville–an admittedly self-taught dancer who picked up steps quickly and was athletic and acrobatic enough to try just about anything, all in the name of putting on a good show. He wended his way to Hollywood in the late 1920s
Spurred on by yesterday’s ritual viewing of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ I went in search of James Cagney interview footage and turned up this 1980 interview with Tom Snyder, shot on Cagney’s farm in upstate New York. The first thing that struck me was how incredibly unlined Cagney’s face was at
I keep meaning to post a cartoon that isn’t a classic Warner Brothers Bugs/Daffy/Elmer/Porky number. But have you seen Tom and Jerry lately? Or, God help you, Andy Panda? (We skip over Disney entirely for the simple reason that nobody ever really wanted to see those cartoons to begin with–they
Today marks my 58th trip around the sun. What better way to wish myself happy birthday than with a clip from Our Gang’s ‘Practical Jokers’? Ah, pineapple…not bad!
Ten or so years prior to the delightfully comedic Peter Sellers TWA ads of the mid 1970s that I posted yesterday TWA had a different vision of how to present itself to the public. Above is a one-minute ‘informercial’ ad from 1961 featuring Miss Mary Ann Lynch in a ‘day
The great Peter Sellers picked up a little bread and butter cash doing a series of ads for TWA in the mid-seventies and the first of the above posted ads, where he plays an Italian ‘Via Veneto or Bust’ swinger, was one of my favorite ads of my childhood. This
I’m quite certain this is the only time you will ever see Lee J. Cobb aka Johnny Friendly aka Willy Loman dance. It’s a misbegotten routine from a Dean Martin show that somebody in some writers room thought was a good idea. It features Dino, Cobb, Buddy Ebsen (the only
The inimitable Joey Heatherton dances ‘The Hullaballo’ on this undated mid-1960s episode of the dance show ‘Hullabaloo’. But is it, in fact, an original dance? Or something of a cross between The Jerk and The Monkey? You decide. I have to catch a train. By the way, dig how the
Annette Funicello is back with us again this time with a dance called ‘The Clyde’. Have you heard of ‘The Clyde?’ No? Well there’s a reason for that. It’s because it stinks. A truly lousy dance. Performed on a Bob Hope Chrysler show from 1964, it’s followed by another lousy