This extraordinary piece of film is a new one to me. It shows sections of a trolley ride–the camera mounted in the front of the car–down Broadway, from Herald Square to Union Square sometime in the very early twentieth century. Though the quality of the picture is poor, there is
Above is a charming reel of a few old RCA Victor television and radio ads. As always with ads for old technology, the yuk-yuk factor is easy, low-hanging fruit. Of course old TV sets look silly. So do the annoucers who sit there extolling their virtues. (They also sound silly–the
The LaserDisc made its debut in 1978 with a high-quality version of ‘Jaws’, exciting film lovers the world over with its superb visual and audio quality, its inclusion of the then brand new concept of extras and chaptering and its handsome packaging. It died the death of a dog in
Music has been delivered for decades on various forms of discs that spin and scratch, from the 78rpm shellac recording through the 45 to vinyl and finally, in the mid-1980s, the Compact Disc. It’s hard to remember that the CD was once a miraculous piece of technology–especially now that most
Some rarities of the past are so deeply weird–so obscure and near indecipherable–that viewing/listening to them is akin to discovering hieroglyphics of long dead civilizations and attempting to translate them into something relatively meaningful. Which brings us to ‘The Voice Of Hollywood’, a series of short films produced by Poverty
Recently I decided to unearth a pile of delicate, glass 78rpm records that I’ve been dragging around with me from one house to another over the years, each move threatening the life of these beauties. I hadn’t played them for many years–most were acquired when I was a kid and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiWpmprZDrAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufop72Q74fA Here are two deleted scenes from ‘Cafe Metropole’, a 1937 20th Century Fox musical (sort of) starring Tyrone Power, Loretta Young and Adolphe Menjou. Both feature tap-dancing legend Bill Bojangles Robinson, who already had made screen history by dancing with Shirley Temple in another Fox movie ‘The Little Colonel’
This fascinating footage appears to be Jerry Lewis rehearsing a bit for his nightclub act in front of a live crowd–though they’re not the regular audience but rather a ‘test’ audience. Jerry was known to shoot footage of himself in order to play it back and see what things were
Yesterday in my post about New York City’s Elevated Trains, I mistakenly added 10th Avenue to the many streets that once hosted El trains. Actually, 10th (and 11th) Avenue hosted something much more interesting (and grim) than an El train. For many years before the construction of the High Line
Our ‘transportation series’ (see Tuesday’s post) continues with this marvelous ten-minute short film about the history and vanishing of New York City’s elevated trains. In the first half of the twentieth century the city was jammed with El trains–2nd Ave, 3rd Ave, 6th Ave, 9th Ave, 10th Ave all had