Here is a 1965 KTLA (Channel Five on the period local LA TV dial) documentary on the building of the then still-in-progress Century City. The ‘development’ (as its referred to in the doc) was built on the site of what had been the Fox Ranch–all studios kept a large amount
This week we’ve seen views of Greenwich Village in the 1940s, early 60s and late 60s verging on the 70s. Now we have a minute of deep 70s village at hand. In some ways this clip is so period-perfect that it doesn’t feel real–more like an expensively re-produced set (complete
Our Greenwich Village history week continues with this very nice one minute clip of color footage of the Village in the 1940s. We are in three locations–Washington Square North, MacDougal Alley and Eighth Street which, as you’ll see in this footage, was once lined with artists peddling their wares. (It’s
This is a real find–a lovely ten or so minute travelogue style journey around Greenwich Village featuring lots of the fashion of the time and plenty of views of streets and buildings that are all pretty much still there. From the look of things I think we’re in 1968–a close
In 1960 a filmmaker named Stewart Wilensky spent the summer shooting footage of New York’s Greenwich Village which he turned into a twelve minute doc called ‘Village Sunday’ which was completed in 1961. If you were watching the film back then then you’d likely see it as a sort of
The previous two posts of ColorSonics short jukebox ‘videos’ failed to mention the company’s predecessor Scopitone. Which brings us to today’s little look inside the Scopitone ST-36 jukebox. Somebody clearly put a lot of love and care into restoring this thing and putting it into working order, complete with the
Now this is going to take a little explaining. Yesterday I posted one of Robert Altman’s mid-60s Color-Sonics music ‘videos’ (check it out if you haven’t already–you’ll be glad you did). Here’s another one that he did with the famous ecdysiast Lily St. Cyr called ‘Don’t Call Me’. Except the
What happened to the massive cassette tapes pictured in the above posted RCA promotional film about the ‘revolution in tape?’ Huge consoles seemed to hold four of these biggies which required no threading–imagine! It’s easy to be amused by dead technology but this one is a real puzzler. Did it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbAx6oznWKw Why, you may ask, are we watching a women’s prison musical number called ‘The Lockstep’ featuring an act known as ‘The Dodge Twins’ photographed in two-strip Technicolor on a lavishly vertical set (if one can refer to a prison as ‘lavish’) accompanied by dozens of imprisoned chorus girls all
I freely admit to never having had any specific interest in Elvis. He’s been part of the wallpaper of pop culture in my mind ever since I was a kid–always identifiable, sometimes fun, more often than not a subject of ridicule or pity. Now, in light of Baz Luhrmann’s towering