Here’s an interesting reel of opening credits and set-up sequences of the shows you were likely to see if you were watching TV in the late 1940s. Television had of course been around in various forms and incarnations for almost twenty years by then, but it was in 1947-48 that
The YouTube artist known as NASS has once again worked his/her/they’s magic on some rare footage of New York City. This time we are on Park Avenue in 1951 (the newest car seen on the street is a ’51 Oldsmobile, which is how the date was arrived at). By slowing
It’s said that there is always time for one of three things: a cup of coffee, a bite of cheese, and a vintage airline commercial. Actually, that’s not really said by anyone. But a vintage airline commercial (or infomercial as is the case with the above) is a refreshing three-minute
Here’s a knockout dance number from the MGM 1947 version of ‘Good News’, featuring the great and mostly now-forgotten dancer/performer/personality/actress Joan McCracken. The original Broadway show, a big hit in the late 1920s, had long been on producer Arthur Freed’s list to adapt as a movie musical at MGM and
It wasn’t easy to become a member of the premium-level all-girl 1920s orchestra ‘The Ingenues’. As you’ll see, you not only had to be a woman who’d mastered one of many instruments that, for various reasons, were not necessarily associated with female players (saxes, trombones, tubas etc.) but you had
Here’s an astoundingly lousy Vitaphone short from 1929 featuring ‘Harry Wayman and His Debutantes’. Yes, it’s an all girl orchestra much like the one in ‘Some Like It Hot’ (‘Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters’). The only differences are 1) The leader is a guy not a woman. 2) There
Here’s an outstanding reel of home movie footage shot by Ira Gershwin featuring a veritable who’s who of 1930s cultural heroes. Much of it was filmed at the house that Ira and George shared at 1019 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. (It was later occupied by Rosemary Clooney and
Here’s an extraordinary piece of film. Apparently in December 1929, footage was captured of George Gershwin at rehearsals of his show ‘Strike Up The Band’, complete with chorus girls and a pre-rehearsed patter with star comedians Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. We see George playing the piano as well as
Yesterday I posted a terrific clip of Fred Astaire dancing with the divine Paulette Goddard from the movie ‘Second Chorus’ (1941). The six-degrees of Paulette Goddard takes us now back four years to 1937 when Goddard met and began an affair with George Gershwin, who was in Hollywood writing the
The 1920s saw a rise in Jewish humor throughout the country, featuring comic strips like Milt Gross’s ‘Nize Baby’ and dialect comedians like Willie Howard and the team of ‘Smith And Dale’ (who were the models for Neil Simon’s vaudeville team in ‘The Sunshine Boys’). The superstar 1920s female Jewish