https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVy-7IVPFSYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyndUDxjqLY Yesterday’s post contained some poignant footage of the long-gone Santa Monica Amusement Park ‘Pacific Ocean Park’. The footage appeared to have been shot at the end of the parks short life–it opened in 1959 and closed a scant nine years later–with views of shuttered and abandoned concessions, rides and
The YouTube artist (and I mean artist) known as NASS has posted another of their awesome videos showing old footage of a city cleaned up, remastered, with frame rate adjusted and a creative soundbed added. The result is a virtual time machine, a mesmerizing look into the past using footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjX16FwJezM Here’s another of the George Mann home movie items, this one of W.C. Fields clowning around in front of his house in Great Neck, Long Island. The year is 1928. Though Fields is a Broadway star, his move to California and his eventual international stardom from his movies is
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
Here is some extraordinarily rare and truly one-of-a-kind footage shot from the backstage wings of the 44th Street Theater in January, 1930. It shows us a few moments of a variety show in-progress called ‘Earl Carroll’s Sketchbook’, which starred Eddie Cantor, Patsy Kelly, William Demerest and a dance team called
The YouTube genius NASS (I’ve posted his/her/their videos before) has once again worked his/her/their magic on some old footage of a city from the past, in this case Los Angeles in the 1940s. Much of it appears to me to be stock footage most likely shot by a studio crew
Here’s another Fats Waller short made for jukebox consumption in 1941 (see yesterday’s post for ‘Your Feets Too Big’). ‘The Joint Is Jumpin’, written by Waller, Andy Razaf and J.C.Johnson, is another of his hit novelty numbers and it’s given a rowdy treatment in this dramatization of what a Harlem
Here’s an excerpt of a musical sequence from an obscure 1944 Republic Studios movie called ‘Atlantic City’. The number is ‘Harlem On Parade’ and it’s a more-than-slightly-valuable documentation of three of the prime black entertainers of the 1930s/40s. I refer to the above mentioned performers who all are given a
The above reel shows some of the most beautiful shots ever made of the late, great Penn Station. It was apparently shot (according to the Internet Archive where it was found listed under ‘dailies’ for films–i.e. uncut footage) for a movie called ‘Young Widow’ starring Jane Russell, released in 1946.
This terrific compilation video shows the teaser/intros to an astounding forty-two shows that comprised CBS’s 1962 season line-up. How was it possible that there were so many shows in one season? For one thing prime-time was defined more broadly then than it would be now–7PM to 11:30 PM. Also, most