There is something hypnotic and more than a little melancholy about this three minute silent reel of 8mm film shot in New York City in 1983 (our ‘year of the week’–see previous post). It appears to document a family outing on a warm spring or summer day. Our family appears
It’s easy to mock or criticize the 1980s but I have rose-colored glasses on when it comes to that decade. I turned 16 in 1980 and spent the happiest decade of my life roving around the quirky, edgy and still dirty and crime-laden New York City on display in this
Today I’m posting the last of the three short interview films made in 1931 under the series title ‘Intimate Interviews’ (see previous two posts to catch up on what little history I’ve been able to figure out about the how and why of the existence of these fascinating little oddities).
Yesterday I posted a fascinating little oddity of an interview with James Cagney shot in 1931 for a series of shorts called ‘Intimate Interviews’. There were two more of these done, one with Bela Lugosi and the last with Walter Huston. Above I’ve posted the Bela Lugosi, filmed as the
Here’s a new find (at least for me). It’s a 1931 short film called ‘Intimate Interviews’ featuring a journalist named Dorothy West interviewing the new screen sensation James Cagney at his home. There are so many interesting things about this eight minute time capsule that its hard to know where
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWbTMJNWl4 James Cagney began his career as a ‘hoofer’ in Vaudeville–an admittedly self-taught dancer who picked up steps quickly and was athletic and acrobatic enough to try just about anything, all in the name of putting on a good show. He wended his way to Hollywood in the late 1920s
Here’s a very clean, clear look at Hollywood Blvd. circa 1952/53 (based on car models) driving languidly east from Crescent Heights all the way to Highland Avenue. The street signs are helpfully subtitled and a few interesting things happen during this long-ago cruise. For instance: at 43 seconds the driver
Today’s “whatever happened to the real New York” video comes in the form a gussied-up tourist public relations ‘video’ (ten years before their were ‘videos’) shot in the early 70s. Lightning fast cutting and annoying music take us through a whiz-bang tour of the city during the John Lindsey era.
Here’s a few minutes of ghostly, black and white silent footage of the area around Broadway and 88th/89th streets in 1971. Nothing of any interest happens–which is what makes it oddly fascinating (to me at least). The everydayness of this portrait gives it an unintended weight–it achieves gravitas through its
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zk0eyKzp1c Here’s another of these fabulous old urban footage updates, this one supplied by the Youtube artist known as GuyJones. It features random street scenes of London in the swinging year of 1967. As always the added ambient sound helps immeasurably in bringing the footage to life and placing us