Here’s Don performing at Ronald Reagan’s 2nd inaugural in 1985. The fact that I was surprised while watching it that nobody jumped on stage and slapped him says a lot about where we are in our current comedy culture, which is a very sad place indeed. That Rickles was free
Today marks the forty-sixth anniversary of the first time Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had seen each other in twenty years. It happened on Labor Day, 1976, and was facilitated by Frank Sinatra who, as you’ll see in the above history-making clip, took the opportunity to also throw in his
This video is likely to be the closest thing we’ll ever have to a time machine thanks to a very skillful history buff and Youtube artist who calls themselves NASS. The footage shows three views of Fifth Avenue from the back of a moving vehicle. Each view runs from 60th
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWJzqOTWjc&t=674s Here’s a very good 50 minute doc about Roberto Rossellini, featuring some marvelous color on-set footage of the ‘Stromboli’ shoot (the one he did with Ingrid Bergman after she fled America to take up with the Maestro). The video roll in the first few minutes eventually ceases so don’t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al61LQEeB5U Just last week I finally watched ‘Rome Open City’ for the first time. Don’t ask me how I managed to miss this event through what amounts to almost fifty years of classic cinema going. Sometimes ‘great’ films (like ‘great’ books) are so ‘great’ that one avoids delving into them–they’re
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPLhQl9ZLrM The Culver studio was originally created by silent movie pioneer Thomas H. Ince and has operated under a multitude of names: Ince Studio (1918-1925), De Mille Studios (1925–1928), Pathé Studios (1928–1931), RKO-Pathé Studios (1931–1935), Selznick International Pictures (1935–1956), Desilu-Culver Studios (1956–1970), Culver City Studios (1970–1977), and Laird International Studios (1977–1986).Through all these
Here is an extraordinary find. It’s a forty minute silent doc (no music either–just ghostly silence) detailing the inner workings of the MGM studio lot in 1925. We see images of the lot in its silent heyday, with tours of the exterior, views of the interior stages, lots of groupings
In 1970 James Aubrey, the new and much hated head of MGM, ordered an auction to be held of all of Metro’s old props, costumes and souvenirs of former sets. The event was loudly objected to in Hollywood but in the end the objectors didn’t really make any difference; Debbie
Yesterday I posted a doc on the creation of Century City, which rose atop the rubble of the former 20th Century Fox ‘ranch’ portion of the lot, which was sold in the early 60s to developers to cover the cost overruns on the Fox epic ‘Cleopatra’. A few years later,
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