Having just come from a doctor’s appointment on 31st Street between Park and Madison and thus having spied the lurking grandeur of the Empire State Building on nearby Fifth Avenue, I decided to search out the famously scary photographs of the workmen sauntering around the framework high in the sky
The Youtube artist/film technician named NASS specializes in restoring, colorizing and adding ambient sound to film of cities from the past. The results are extraordinary. (See yesterday’s post for his amazing work on old L.A. footage). Here’s a little under ten minutes of old San Francisco circa early-to-mid 1940s (the
The Youtube artists who calls themselves NASS does extraordinary film restorations, taking documentary footage of street scenes from the past and colorizing, restoring, setting them at 60 frames per second and adding ambient sound. The result is footage of cities from the 1920s, 30′, 40s etc. that looks so real
In honor of the approaching snowstorm in the east (I am tucked securely away in my New York City apartment) I’m posting this fragment of a sleigh-jam in Central Park in 1898. The fat guy who crosses frame at 37 seconds is a cop, no doubt–his self-important gait, while not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT2tU_zAxuc As opposed to yesterday’s eastward drive on the Sunset Strip in 1967, today we’ll drive west on the Strip in 1963, starting at the curve near Horn/Holloway. Many thanks to the Youtube poster who put this terrific piece of footage up but I must disagree with their assertion that
Here’s a terrific one-take driving view of the Sunset Strip on a long-forgotten afternoon in 1967. (There are helpful supered street signs to orient you–Havenhurst, Crescent Heights etc.). We are looking south, starting somewhere east of La Cienega, passing the ruins of the demolished Garden Of Allah (dig the hippie/druggie
I mentioned yesterday that in addition to hosting an array of glitzy show-biz guest, Merv Griffin also hosted his share of important and controversial guests. One of them was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who appeared on Merv’s show in 1967. I had no idea that this interview existed when
I find every second of this thirteen minute clip of Ray Charles rehearsing ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ with an orchestra that he’s clearly never worked with before absolutely mesmerizing. Charles’ clarity and precision with what he wants (needs, really) from the band and his direct and not
Behold Grand National Pictures logo, as fancy and fine an Art Deco logo as you’ll ever see. All this for a low-rent studio that lasted only three years (1936-1939) and went into receivership only to have its assets taken over by the only studio at that time lower on the
The generically named ‘Producers Releasing Corporation’–or, familiarly, PRC–was an ultra low-budget, poverty-row movie studio that existed from 1939 to 1947 and is now primarily known as the studio behind Edgar G. Ulmer’s immortal noir ‘Detour’ (1946). Ulmer made a number of PRC movies–others include ‘Strange Illusion’ with Hedy Lamarr and